By Led Black
October 7 – October 12
DigiBunch, one of the nation’s most influential Hispanic communities online, recently announced it’s list of 20 Latino cultural leaders for its 2nd annual Latino Trailblazers video series and I had the honor of being chosen to the select list. This is to date, the biggest honor of my career and I feel extremely humbled and fortunate to be selected and to be among such a distinguished group of people. As part of this awesome accolade, I had the extreme good fortune of being immortalized in art form by the incredible artist Edwin Gil who uses recycled glass to create his masterpieces. Check out the video narrated by the very talented Flaco Navaja.
The first ever Uptown Lit Festival is going down on October 19th at the United Palace of Cultural Arts and Word Up Community Bookshop. Uptown Lit is a day long literary extravaganza that will take place in the very heart of our community. As part of the Uptown Lit festivities, I have been chosen to moderate The Big Read, which is an initiative by the National Endowment of the Arts that aims to get communities reading and discussing selected books. The featured book is none other than Luis Alberto Urrea‘s Into the Beautiful North, which is an engaging read that takes a humorous yet revelatory look at immigration. Please stop by Word Up Books and pick up your copy so you can be ready for the big day. See you there!
We recently posted a photo essay on Gagá pa’l Pueblo, which is an all-out celebration of Afro-Dominican identity and a weekly cultural festival mainstay every summer at the Anne Loftus Playground. This week we posted a truly awesome video below by Willian Aleman that so elegantly breaks down the meaning of Gagá pa’l Pueblo.
This week we also introduced you to Dasic Fernández, who is an award-winning Chilean-born street artist now based in New York City via another excellent short film by Dan Perez. Dasic’s murals have graced walls all over the globe.
The Best of the Boogie Down column by Jenni Ruiza featured the innovative gastronomic outpost, The Clock Bar. We also featured the latest song from Uptown Hip-Hop pioneer, Sacario; entitled Everyday’s a Saturday.
Keep checking us out at www.uptowncollective.com.
Led Black
Editor-in-Chief
The Uptown Collective
The UC’s mission is to become “the” definitive, transformative and community-based force impacting the arts, culture, business and New York City’s overall perception of Upper Manhattan. Its objective is to reset, reboot and positively redefine Uptown’s artistic, political, cultural and business spheres via the online space as well the collective’s initiatives and functions.
