In my absolute favorite Sidetalk video, a group of African boys is chanting in East Harlem. What should be the most popular video, sometimes never is. People say, ‘Hey, come check out this event…’ We don’t whip out a camera, people are inviting us.” Simonian understands this: “We’ve always gone everywhere because we get invited. You’ll never see Simonian or Byrne giving out their opinions and trying to say funny things themselves. That’s why the genius of Sidetalk is that they let people talk. The act of turning New Yorkers into content, whether it is in a kind context or not, can be disorienting for people who are from and live there. The very nature of photographing or filming people, especially people of color, in a city where the poor’s aesthetics (it’s rarely their humanity or politics) are co-opted by the elite can be tricky. (It’s also a city whose police saw their mandate vastly broadened last week.) People aren’t mascots they’re people, with an extraordinary amount of pain, complexity, and joy. So we match it up with what is going on today.” When we do interviews with, we like to integrate them to our format because they love talking their shit. That’s the most essential part of our videos.” On the other hand, Byrne was inspired by music. “He recently said that New York was his muse. While Sidetalk can at times bring to mind the old tradition of direct-to-video hip-hop DVD series, like Cocaine City, which featured ad hoc, beef-incubating interviews with rappers, Simonian and Byrne say their inspiration is more YouTube-based, citing Casey Neistat in particular. “I just loved the way that he showcased the city,” Simonian said.
SIDETALK SERIES
In the case of the Subway Series video, its draw for many viewers was a man drinking out of a Timberland boot. Simonian and Byrne told me that they aren’t trying to contribute to the commodification of New Yorkers, though the videos that still go viral have tended to have an element of it. Many of their subjects are Black and brown. Many of the video makers are white, or white identifying. At worst, they can venture into cultural voyeurism and ignore the city’s imperfections. Besides Sidetalk, the form’s most known practitioners include New York Nico, the 30-something Nicolas Heller, who bills himself as “New York’s unofficial talent scout.” At best, the NYC meme videos have a sharp eye for the black humor that’s always defined New York street-level life but has pitched even darker postpandemic. Sidetalk works in a genre that I’ve come to think of as the “memeification of New York”-TikToks, photos, or Instagram accounts meant to explore all of New York’s trademark unconventional characters without necessarily talking about why those characters’ characteristics came to be. Most of the time, it is things that are already said,” said Byrne. “Sometimes, people go up to us and say things they think will be on Sidetalk. The resulting video that time, while not quite as comedic as their Knicks entry and more austere (this one takes place in the Bronx as opposed to midtown Manhattan), was another under-a-minute video that films its characters in a demonic hurry. In August, Simonian and cofounder Jack Byrne camped out on Jerome Avenue waiting for fans to exit Yankee Stadium after a crosstown game against the Mets. A few minutes is really all the pair need. She is always being herself,” cofounder Trent Simonian recently told me. We only got a few minutes with her, but she was exactly what you expect her to be. The channel excels at the riot video––brief micro documentaries like the Knicks one, o r another they shot in the Bronx featuring rap superstar Cardi B doing a classic stem-winder. Sidetalk has been there to document a lot of it. Such was life in the manic days of late 2021 in New York City as COVID restrictions loosened, vaccines were boosted, and the town’s 20-somethings were making up for 18 months’ worth of lost time. The joke, or shtick, in the video, is simple but effective: New York Knicks fans are sick-wicked and insane for a historically dismal team that went on to finish 11th place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference after that opening night high. A season and a quarter later, the video, created by the YouTube channel Sidetalk NYC, has 2.3 million views.
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