I moved to New York because I was looking for something different in life. I was living in Chicago, the heart of the midwest, and it's a great city, but even Chicago acknowledges it self as the largest small city in America. Chicago offers a lot, but in terms of general experiences (meaning not specific business', places and such), anything you can get in Chicago, you can get in New York, but the reverse is not always true.
That statement gets me a lot of flack from people I know back in Chicago. The two cities are just completely different experiences, and I pick where I want to live based on the type of experience I want. If my goal was cheap rents, or owning a huge condo, or everything within walking distance there are much better cities to choose to live in then New York City.
In fact, it would be a lot easier as a cartoonist and illustrator to live in a cheaper area, since you can draw anywhere, and technology makes communication so easy. But for America, New York is special. It's the fact that there are so many people there.
Always. It's a little hard in fact to escape from that fact, which I find invigorating. Even as I write this, sitting alone in my apartment, I'm reminded of the proximity of others, as about 20 people are currently giving the apartment courtyard a make over, with new pavement and lots of plants.
New York has helped me wake back up, and old ideas and dreams are coming back, and I find this time, I'm acting on them. Maybe this would have happened in Chicago, or where ever I decided to live. Maybe not, I'm not one to dwell on maybe's and what ifs. The fact is, I'm here in New York, it's doing wonders for me, I'm more productive then ever. I know that part of that has to come from me, but the environment you live in is a major factor as well.
I hope to capture what I feel about living in New York, in my comics, as well as part of my past.
Right now, my friend Sion, a photographer gives me a lot of inspiration, mostly because if there was ever an example of do what you love, it's Sion. He's a street photographer, who spends a lot of time, armed mainly with his iPhone, taking pictures of New York and all his travels. He's a new breed of photographers, who are able to capture real moments of life, because to the subject, he's just fiddling with his phone, they don't know he's taking pictures.
I started doing this myself as well, before getting to know Sion. (FYI, I meet Sion and his boyfriend Anton via Facebook, through friends we had in common, social networks can work!) I have a series of pictures of people I see on the subway that for whatever reason, strike me as interesting. Often I use these people as inspiration for my comics, when I need people in the background. Mainly my picture taking serves as reference source for myself. But people find it interesting to look at.
However, Sion's pictures are really on the level of art, compared to mine. In fact, Sion's pictures capture a lot of what I love about New York. Which is the reason for this long post, to give you Sion's link to his Flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sionfullana/
If anyone ever thinks about moving to New York, look at these photo's and ask yourself if this is the kind of environment you want to live it.
I know I do, because just like Sion's photo's, I find myself living in an exciting, vibrate, always moving, always something, sometimes joyous (people jamming in Central Park, with everyone singing along), sometimes frustrating (Did you really need to just step in front of me, and then stop walking?), but always, always something.
In New York, it's almost impossible for something not to be going on. And that's the experience I wanted to live in. And those moments when it's quite and still and nothing really is happening? Well, that's special too.
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