The Big Apple. Gleaming skyscrapers. Grand Central. Wall Street. Times Square.Bright lights. Big city.Big business. Big bucks. But what really runs this place are the small potatoes. The small business is what makes NYC tick. In my particularly populous region of Manhattan, there are small businesses everywhere. Sure, there’s a…
Browsing Category NYC
Connecting with Art
There’s something about those few days before Christmas. The city has a softer haze, time slows and moments are savoured more than the preceding 50 weeks of the year. For many it can be a strange time of year. Mixed feelings. Transition. You may find yourself away from what you know…
No AC to DC
It’s that time. I’m off to Penn Station. I’m taking the B line to what is, kindly, the B list of train terminals. And then my subway mysteriously skips my exit point, Herald Square. It doesn’t really even skip it. It just chugs, almost apologetically, except with no apologies forthcoming. …
Great (Un)Expectations
Below is a very lightly edited version of a brief introduction I gave at the final presentation day for the second cohort of the AMP NYC media & entertainment accelerator program in New York. I’d had a busy few days and showed up at the venue with nothing prepared at…
The perils of a chain reaction
Our well-intentioned but misguided desires to root for the independents. A couple of times a week I’ll walk with my wife to her subway stop before I head a few blocks uptown to my office on Union Square. On the way to the subway is a Bluestone Lane coffee shop….
22,000 songs in your pocket
Back in 2001, Apple CEO Steve Jobs uttered his now legendary one line pitch for a new product his company were about to release. ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ It’s unlikely even he knew how rapidly things would evolve from that point on. From iPod Classic to iPhone X; Pioneer…
The Portfolio Career Podcast
Two of things I love most about New York are its pay-it-forward approach and its densely networked nature. This combination means it’s possible to meet a lot of interesting people in a short space of time. Someone I met early on through this combination was David Nebinski. As we went…
Location Arbitrage
Go back 15 years or so and this was only a serious day to day consideration if you were an international trader looking to take advantage of fluctuations in currencies and demand for particular goods. For the rest of us, it may have come up as something to think about…
Demo Night
Taking my career building project Fondo out of the studio for the first time. New York City’s Canal Street is one of the main arteries in Downtown Manhattan (and until the 18th century was an actual canal). Cutting west to east, in its centre it splits the main parts of…
How to survive your first year living in NYC
At the time of writing I’m approaching the end of my first year living in New York City, more specifically in the East Village of Manhattan, one of the most boisterous and lively parts of one of the most energetic cities in the world. NYC isn’t for the faint of…