HUMANS OF NEW YORK

I pre-ordered this book months ago.  What a happy surprise to find it waiting in my mailbox on release day, full of faces and stories waiting to be discovered.  Brandon Stanton quit his day job to photograph and interview New Yorkers, and since then has been sharing the results with his 15+ million followers on his Humans of New York blog.  This book includes highlights of these images and conversations.

My favorite story is one I followed avidly as it unfolded in real time on the HONY blog: Stanton interviewed a young teen in a low income area of Brooklyn who spoke with admiration of his school principal.  After a series of visits to the school, HONY followers eventually donated a total of $1 million to the school for scholarship funds and field trips to Harvard.  The student, principal and photographer were later invited to the White House to meet the President.

Humans of New York amazes because it reminds us: it’s not all about you.  The people we interact with every day have their own joys, sorrows, struggles, victories and passions that they may be experiencing.  It’s a message that applies anywhere – just more dramatically and colorfully in New York.

For this post I made – what else? – hot dogs.  I would say they ranked somewhere between the dogs at Nathan’s on Coney Island and Yankees Stadium.  Not bad for a suburban grilled special.