“Baking bread is not a big part of Korean culture. So, for a while growing up, whenever my  family made american food, we would just buy the pillsbury crescent rolls and wrap them in  ham to make the ‘dinner rolls’ we saw around,” said Shin. “Now I like baking, so I can make the  dough from scratch.”

 Shin only knows who’s playing today because her friends from Cincinnati made it explicitly  clear. She knows no controversies about the players because she doesn’t know the players, and  she will spend the game asking her friends questions about what’s going on, and occasionally  yawning. She wanted to host, offered to.

 “Honestly, I watch the Super Bowl for the same reason I celebrate Thanksgiving: to feel more  American,” said Shin.

 Twelve years ago, Shin landed in the U.S, from South Korea, family in hand, with the plan  stipulating that they would only be here a couple of months, but as these things often go, they  decided to stay.

 “I was excited,” said Shin. “I was never upset. And because it was supposed to be a temporary  thing, it felt like we were on vacation.”

 Before that initial landing, Shin spent her first nine years of life traveling. She was born in South  Korea, moved to Canada when she was two, moved back to South Korea when she was five, and  was there for four more years before making the final trek to the United States. For a long time,  she felt more Korean than American.

 And it was the American south that did it for her and her family: Mississippi, then Georgia, and  now New York. She was in middle school, she remembers, when she started hearing the  whispers.

 “I overheard some boys talking about it,” said Shin, grabbing for memories. “I thought it was  called the super ball, b-a-l-l, super ball.” She laughs.

 She found out about the game, and this superball thing became the Super Bowl.

 “People would start talking about it regularly, so I knew when it would come around,” said Shin.

 And in the weeks leading up to the game, she noticed a strange thing would happen.

 “At school, they would start serving…” and here she paused. “The Super Bowl lunch. Wings,  which they would never usually have.”

 Shin had never tried buffalo-style chicken before.

 “They were delicious. I was like, whoa, this is so good, I remember that.”

 Shin associated the Super Bowl with black friday, as just another thing that Americans do for  some reason. She idolized the image of picture-perfect American families opening big presents  on Christmas, barbequing on July Fourth, and eating wings on the Super Bowl. It sounded like  fun.  She would run home, and translate to her parents the traditions modeled to her by the kids  in her classes: the need to cook this dish, do this activity, wear this thing. And so, for some  occasions, that’s what her family started to do.

 “ My house tries so hard to do Thanksgiving even though  we don’t care for it,” said Shin. “We  don’t like turkey, or mashed potatoes, but we make it because everyone else does. ”

 In the United States,  Super Bowl sunday is, at this point, like a baby fourth of july: huge, and  all-american.  The first game of football was lost  by Princeton University to Rutgers, in 1869’s  version of New Jersey. The game at that point more closely resembled the rest of the world’s  football, what americans call soccer, but over the next hundred and fifty years, it would morph  into the intricate head-clashing rage we know today.  No other country in the world plays it to the  extent that we do, and the NFL, in all its wealth and power, is alone.

 Shin’s family never does anything for the Super Bowl, unless, that is, they’re invited to watch  somewhere else. So, when Shin imagines hers as the picture-perfect american family on game  day, she imagines them all wearing matching jerseys for whatever team, hosting, and cooking all  day for a crowd of friends.

 “Wings, pretzels, things like that. The way I’d imagine in movies they’d do it, I want to do that.”

 An hour before the game, Shin runs out to a nearby Wegmans looking for pillsbury dough, which  she is glad to see is not on the shelves, meaning everyone else has had the same good idea. She  buys a stick of butter and goes home to make her own.

 She knew she needed to make something that would proof quickly, so she chose pretzel dough.  Warm water, yeast, butter, salt, sugar, flour, and a big plastic bowl. Mix, with a ladle and not  with a whisk, until it’s no longer sticky, and finally bounces back. Now into a big ball.

 “You don’t need to knead this dough, which is good because I’m not good at kneading.

 K-n-e-a-d, good wordle word.”

 Shin’s apartment, overlooking the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, is cold, so in order to speed up  the proofing process, she turns on the oven light, and leaves the dough inside to double in size.  After, she pushes the air out with her fingers, makes 16 equal parts, coats each in a baking soda  wash, wraps them around her wieners, and bakes for twelve minutes.

 “It was fantastic,” said Shin. “I was so happy. I used to be bad at making dough, but I’m getting  good at it now. Dough is my calling”

 Shin laughs that she’s technically not American because she’s not a citizen. When she was a kid,  she thought of herself as a Korean who was just good at speaking English.

 “When I was in Atlanta, I didn’t have any other korean people who were born in Korea, just  those born in Atlanta,” said Shin. “I was proud of that; I’m a Korean citizen living in America.”

 She remembers Korea fondly; remembers the food, the language, the people. After graduating  from high school, Shin took a trip back to Korea, where she stayed with her aunt in Seoul,  humid, and warm.

 She knew what the Americanized Korean girl looked like, and thought she was not that. She did  not stand out, she thought. Did not feel different. Then people started to stop her; they would  ask her if she was “not from here,” and she wouldn’t know how to respond.

 “That was the pivotal moment,” said Shin. “My way of life, the way I see things, the social  standards I had for myself, were very different from those in Korea at that point.

 “It made me realize, and I knew it at that point, that I’m set to spend the rest of my life in  America,” said Shin. “I idolize this image of my home country, but when I was actually there it  was more distant than I felt. I feel more American now, because I’m gonna spend the rest of my  life in America.”

 Shin came back that summer, and a couple months later, flew to New York to start studying.

 “Why am I watching the Super Bowl? So I can throw a party with my friends,” said Shin.

 Guests at Shin’s Super Bowl potluck are encouraged to bring food in containers shaped either as  footballs or hearts (valentine’s day is only a day away). People bring tortilla chips, chili dips,  wings, rice and beans, devilled eggs, and nachos, and some celery to keep things healthy. They  sip their beers slowly, recovering from some light partying the night before. They get the most  active at halftime, when Snoop Dogg coolly waltzes on stage, and later when Kendrick Lamarr  appears behind his wall of dancers. And in the third quarter, when someone spontaneously brings up the celebrity feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson, the couch crowd wakes up,  and goes wild. The first half of the voices in the room ask questions, about points and about  blitzes and field goals and downs, and the second half echo one-another’s responses over and  over again, beginning with “Yeah, so basically….” The first half might retain answers for next  year.

 At Shin’s Super Bowl potluck is an indian-singaporean immigrant wearing a Cincinnati Bengals  jersey, who asks to turn the TV off when things end the way they do. There is the son of Polish  immigrants, who, years ago, was asked by his father to make a list of all the major sports teams  in the area, so that he could talk about them at work. There is the grandson of Nicaraguan  immigrants, whose mother loves the ads that play between the game that his grandparents could  not care less about. For some, the Super Bowl is not just the Super Bowl, and for others, that’s  the most it could ever be.

 Joyce Shin’s pigs in a blanket are a hit, gone before halftime.

The post You Can Get There By Candlelight appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“‘Where the f–k are we going?’” Lynch asked the driver, before settling into the car. “‘You’ll see,’ they told me.”

A few minutes later, they arrived at what used to be his local Chinese restaurant, just up the block from where he grew up in the Lower East side, now permanently closed. At the gate, everything clicked for Lynch.

“No one in the neighborhood knew what was going on, but I knew,” said Lynch, who had grown up with the owners, and been queued in on what might be happening inside. 

“So we get to the spot, right there, and they open the gate, “ said Lynch. “And it’s just tons and tons of coffee beans. Just a bunch of beans.”

The mound of beans that night had been imported by Lynch’s longtime neighbors, a Chinese-Guatemalan family that owns much of the block on which Lynch’s coffeeshop now stands. They had closed their old restaurant, invested in a turkish coffee roaster, imported the beans from their farm in Guatemala, and after witnessing Lynch’s previously successful entrepreneurial efforts, asked him to head the brand.

“I basically tripped and fell onto a coffeeshop,” said Lynch.

And so, after years of jobs including being a Rabbi’s personal driver, selling socks out of his car, and spending a decade as an artist manager, Lynch saw the makings of “DOWNTOWN,” a Black-owned brand that he originated in the Lower East Side, and which would become a major part of his identity. Like all business owners, he just had to build it first.

Aaron Lynch queues some music. Photo by Austin Barron

At the time, the music management industry, which Lynch had grown up in, was becoming too saturated for his taste, and he wanted out.

“What I did was I took all my connections from the music industry and I introduced them to coffee,” said Lynch. “I hit up my boy Juju one day, who was working at 300 Studios as a manager, and presented the idea of me doing a coffee tasting. Producers, label execs, it was the weirdest thing ever, we were all just in a music studio drinking coffee. It blew their minds.”

The tasting was a success, and now they had the investors they needed.

“I was supposed to handle the brand, and they were gonna handle all the coffee and management,” said Lynch, referring to the family who had presented him with the opportunity. “All the roasting, the blending, everything. I didn’t care about coffee.”

The team got to work. Lynch decided to design the store front to be a contrast to most coffeeshops: vibrant, almost-neon paint covers the walls, and music is always blasting. 

“Every coffeeshop is just brown, and really quiet, and not fun at all,” said Lynch. “How the fuck do you get inspiration there? You go into a place to create….”

In February of 2020, after building the store front with his father, and only a few weeks before COVID, Lynch and the family finally opened Downtown Coffeehouse in the Lower East Side. Two weeks into being open, the people in charge of roasting the beans flew to Honduras to work a quick job, planning on returning promptly. What they didn’t foresee was the swift and devastating impact of the pandemic.

“Airlines shut down, no in or out,” said Lynch. “They were stuck in Honduras.”

The back of the store had blended and roasted enough beans to last at least a few weeks, more than enough for the duration of their intended absence, but not nearly enough to last until their  unforeseeable return.

“Month one, month two, and I’m running out of coffee,” said Lynch. “I’m asking my girl, Blue, ‘What the f–k are we gonna do?’ So, I called them, and learned how to roast over facetime.”

Nailah “Blue” Berkeley  makes a cortado. Photo by Austin Barron

For Lynch and his business, the pandemic was a turning point to a more independent future. At that point, he had already brought his girlfriend, Nailah “Blue” Berkeley, onboard as a barista. Together, they were working around the clock to keep things running. 

“I taught him how to make coffee,” said Berkeley, laughing. “And I had to learn how to build credit, and manage my money.”

With the team gone, Lynch and Berkeley were forced to gain business, management, and roaster experience, and as a result, Lynch finally fell in love with the coffee he was creating.

“With all the flavors you can get, it’s like a science and a culture,” said Lynch. “Remember in the early pandemic? No one knew how to act. They were opening doors with elbows, feet, and immediately sprayed things down when they arrived. ‘Did you see that guy cough!?’ But people always came in, because they needed their damn coffee.”

Eventually, Lynch and Berkeley were able to confidently run the entire business on their own, and after some brief tension with the employees upon their return from Honduras, that’s exactly what they did.

“They warned me,” said Lynch. “‘The overhead, the running a business all alone, it’s a lot. Are you sure you can do it on your own?’ And I’m so ‘Yep!’ that I’ll say yes regardless, even if I have no idea how I’m gonna figure it out. I’ll take on the bills, I’ll stand my ground, f–k it. Something happened, where I really started loving the coffee.”

So, Lynch and Berkeley inhereted the full weight and control of Downtown Coffeehouse, and it worked.

“So much has changed,” said Berkeley. “I had to go from doing a nine-to-five online sales job in SOHO, to being a partial independent business owner. I needed an out for so long, and it took a pandemic for it to happen.”

Berkeley and Lynch can’t say exactly when they met, but they know it was somewhere in New York’s underground party scene, many, many years ago. 

“Yeah, hell no, we can’t do that anymore,” said Lynch. “Running a business, there’s no time for the party scene.”

Before they were co-owners, Berkeley and Lynch were good friends, and then romantic partners. Lynch, an early-riser, is usually the first to get to the coffeeshop, around five or six in the morning. And, after some extra hours of slumber, Berkeley will arrive around 10 to relieve Lynch of his shift. He knows her to be an attentive, logistical thinker: someone who loves to lay in bed. She knows him to be determined and creative, if not occasionally forgetful.

“All the art and design is his, but right now we’re about to run out of small cups,” said a smiling Berkeley. “We’re a tag team. We compliment each other.”

According to Lynch and Berkeley, their business is like their child: no matter what ends up happening between them, it will always come first.

“Trust each other, and just because things are not so good on one side of the equation doesn’t mean that it has to affect the other side,” said Berkeley. “It can be challenging, but if you keep that in mind, it can help.”

Lynch spent a large portion of his childhood on Cherry street, just a block down from the location of his coffeeshop. He says he’s seen businesses die and the neighborhood change. According to him, on one hand it has become more gentrified, and on the other, it has been populated with alcoholics, drug addicts, and homeless people. All of which he wants to feel welcome in his shop.

“Nate!” yelled Lynch, suddenly calling out for a man by the entrance. “Nate. I look out for you?”

To which Nate, who met Lynch on a construction job many years back, with a furrowed brow and nod of his head, quietly responded to a reporter, “Look. I’m a homeless guy. If I’m ever cold, or hungry, or I need a dollar or something, he’ll always be my help,” before pointing directly at the coffee shop owner.

Lynch’s own family has struggled with homelessness and drug addiction, and many of his friends in the music industry have histories of homelessness. In fact, much of the artwork that lines the walls of the coffeeshop was made by, and purchased from, the homeless people that Lynch knows on the street.

“A lot of times, we’re not raised to think about security, or having money to have just in case,” said Lynch. “I was not raised like that. Drug addicts, or family dies, and they have nowhere to go; for some people, it really is just their story. I’ve had to buy dollar slices plenty of times.”

If you walk up to Downtown Coffeehouse once the steady stream of customers has slowed down, you’re likely to see Lynch sitting on the wooden bench outside, talking, and probably smoking, with what looks to be a friend. This person could be one of his neighbors, who Lynch has caught in a friendly, conversational trap. Or, it could be Shon, his mother’s old friend who works as a bouncer on the weekends, and spends much of his time at the coffee shop.

“The first time I got his phone number, he got tight because I saved his number as ‘My Mother’s Friend,’” recounted Lynch. “He said ‘C’mon man! C’mon man! My name is Shon, man. Bet you don’t know how to spell it!’”

To which Shon, wearing a Canada Goose beanie and a necklace with a large, gold medallion on it, continued, “His mother used to hang out with my sister in junior high. So you’re talking about 40 years there. Now, I work in a hospital’s billing department.”

“Speaking of which, you didn’t pay for those coffees this morning,” said Lynch, an allegation that Shon promptly denied.

More than a year and a half after they first opened, Lynch and Berkeley decided to move the coffeeshop from it’s original location, two doors down, to its current location on the corner of Henry and Jefferson. Outside, spray painted on the pitch black exterior walls, is a fresh, giant, colorful globe, covered in bright orange letters spelling “DOWNTOWN.”

“This place is a blessing,” said Lynch. “And I’m happy now, I’ll tell you that. This is me now: me on a wall. But this is just step one, and there’s way more to go.”

The post The Chaotic Birth of a Coffee Shop appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“‘You need to know who you are, and what you’re capable of,’” Hart recalled her saying. “‘You are so powerful,’ she told me. And that stuck.”

Through his photoshoots with Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, and New York Magazine, and while working with artists such as Spike Lee and Flo Milli, he’s kept those words close to him.

“It was one of the first things ever that I really feel changed my way of looking at life,” said Hart, with a smile.

Hart is a 21 year old artist, and a senior at NYU. He’s gained recognition in the past two years as a strong, blossoming photographer, so far as to receive a hand-written note from Beyonce thanking him for his work.

“She’s everything,” said Hart. “And so to be recognized by her was just amazing.”

Drip2_EricHartJr.: Drip 2 by Eric Hart Jr.

A decade before Beyonce’s shoutout, Hart got his start in Macon, Georgia, taking photographs with an iPod touch. Out of boredom, he would capture moments in the life of his cat, or just things in his yard. And it was also on that iPod that he found inspiration. In addition to enjoying clips from the show Glee, Hart also began binge watching music videos.

“That was my first introduction into like, real art,” said Hart. “Even now, on my senior thesis, I made a playlist of songs that feel like they’re images. A lot of the shots I take are what I imagine to be the music video for a certain song.”

For Hart growing up, Black representation in art usually meant Tyler Perry movies. But to him, those stories were always missing something.

“When I think about Blackness, what I’m looking for there is also that element of queerness,” said Hart. “A lot of the times when I’m taking photographs, I’m speaking to the child who wanted to see himself. The child that couldn’t find his own stride. For me, that’s self love.”

Hart has previously said that being queer is something he thoroughly enjoys. But loving himself, he says, is something he had to learn.

Eric_Hart_Jr_12: Photograph courtesy of Eric Hart Jr.

“I was taught religiously, socially, being from Southern America, in Macon, Georgia, ‘You can’t be this. You are not supposed to act this way, you are not supposed to love this way,’” said Hart. “When you get to the place where you can finally say, ‘I love this. I love this element of myself. I love this part of me,’ it really is something that inspires me to create.”

Looking at Hart’s photography, it only takes a moment to see that self-love often manifests itself as confidence in front of his camera. His models hold their heads high, often looking down the barrel of the lens, their faces stoic, powerful. This confidence is something he searches for in his subjects. 

“Once I walked out of the train, it was kind of windy,” said Olajide Adeleke, describing the summer day on which he modeled for Hart. “It blew away the sweat, whatever beads I had. But it wasn’t from being anxious, it was the heat.”

Adeleke, who would describe himself as quiet, cool, and outgoing when he needs to be, modeled for Hart’s Unravel series. Even before collaborating with him, Adeleke had been an admirer of Hart’s photography for a while.

“It’s real dramatic.” regarded Adeleke about Hart’s work. “The way he captures people, they never shy away from the reality of being seen. He’s really able to capture the essence of an individual.”

SUITGROUP+115: Photograph from Unravel by Eric Hart Jr.

Unravel, like much of Hart’s work, is centered around the study of masculinity as a form of power. It is that essence of masculinity that Hart wants to capture within queer bodies, trans bodies, and Black men.

“I think he wants to approach it as a way to reclaim Black bodies,” said Adeleke. “You can go to a museum, and see how Black bodies have been beaten and treated like nothing. But to see power in the photos that he’s taken, life in the power of Black bodies, and the power in Black bodies owning the life that they have, knowing that they’re there without having to be hurt? That’s what’s up. That’s for real.”

Adeleke remembers Hart as someone who greets people with open arms, someone who will smile warmly at you, and hear you out when you’re speaking. If you ask Hart what his happy place is, he’ll tell you it’s listening to Beyonce, or eating his grandma’s spaghetti. He, of course, has ruts of self-doubt, and dreads the idea of succumbing to being average. But, when he finds himself in those moments of despair, his solution is simple:

“I just create more,” said Hart. “When I’m creating, that’s where I feel at peace, that’s where I feel comfortable, and that’s where I get that sense of connection to what I’m doing. That’s what always brings me back to ‘This is who I am and this is what I’m capable of doing.’ And so I keep going.”

The post Black photographer’s work reveals the power and beauty of Blackness appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” said Bragg, the night he won his campaign for Manhattan District Attorney. “I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstep. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan whose had a loved one reenter from incarceration and stay with him, and I’m going to govern from that perspective.”

Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black DA, is welcomed by many New Yorkers as being home-grown, and for confronting issues important to the community. In fact, he spent the week leading up to the election questioning members of the NYPD for their handling of Eric Garner’s death at the hands of a former officer.

“He came straight outta the barrel,” said Larry Thomas, who was raised in the Bronx and now lives in the Lower East Side, “and when you come straight out of the barrel, you know what help is needed, you know where the help is needed, and you know who the people are that really need that help.”

But while Thomas expressed hope that Bragg would bring more racial justice to Manhattan, he also wanted him to maintain a certain level of rigidity to the city. 

“He’ll have a good understanding of what’s going on in the community,” said Thomas. “But don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to have pity on people either. If they did something wrong they did something wrong, regardless of who they are.”

Thomas isn’t the only resident who shares this sentiment for wanting to maintain the strength of the justice department. 

“New York is a tough city, and needs someone who’s tough, and the democrats are kind of lax,” said Midtown resident Charles Amos. “I do like that when it’s a democratic state that we have more of a hippy state, so it’s nice to know that we have another four years of that feeling. But I’m gonna be looking at him hard.”

Bragg, a progressive democrat, has previously stated that he wants to “shrink the system,” by showing leniency to low-level offences, and not prosecuting people suffering from mental health issues. On top of that, following a steep rise in fatal shootings last year, Bragg said that his day one priority is to get guns off the streets. Though solid details on how he plans to do so remain up in the air, that initiative seems to be important to the community. 

“People get shot on this corner of the park,” said 25-year-old Chad, who lives in the East Village and didn’t feel comfortable giving his last name. “I’ve been to NYU for seven years. I don’t want to be out at night, coming out from studying, coming back from hanging out, and be scared of gunshots. You know? It’s creeping closer. “

White collar crimes also stand on the forefront, as Bragg inherits the power to prosecute Donald Trump, taking over the reins from district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who got Harvey Weinstein convicted, and who recently charged the Trump organization with tax evasion. 

For Chad, Trump shouldn’t be Bragg’s biggest concern. 

“Maybe they tax him, maybe they send him to jail, though I doubt that happens,” he said. “But it’s not really what affects my day to day goings on.”

For some, the opposing view is equally strong.

“Prosecute him,” said Thomas. “My personal opinion of Donald Trump? They should build a quadruple, super maximum security prison just for him, put him in it, and lose the key. And if they can’t lose the key, melt it.”

Bragg will take over from district attorney Vance starting January of next year.

The post Black New Yorkers Want Manhattan’s First Black District Attorney To Be ‘Tough’ appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“It’s just not a picture that people usually see,” said Oliver.

If you ask the 32-year-old, Atlanta-based photographer for one aspect of Black life that isn’t represented enough, he’ll quickly give you his answer: a sense of normalcy. It is this desire to capture the normalcy in everyday life that seems to keep this street photographer motivated.

Father And Daughter On Scooter. Photo Courtesy of Quintavious Oliver

“I think that Black life has been shown as something that’s extraordinary, and out of the norm,” said Oliver. “But I think that once we start to see the normalcy in everyday life as the thread that connects us all, there will be less of a conversation about why it’s important to show the differences in Black life as opposed to why it’s important to show that Black people are human beings. ”

Six hundred miles west, in Shreveport, Louisiana, 24-year-old street photographer Jamal Martin also spends his time, as he said, “documenting Black people.” Even though he knows his town is dangerous, what Martin sees in Shreveport is different. He sees Black people painting, drinking cocktails and spending time with their family. 

Young Kings At Football Camp. Photo Courtesy of Jamal Martin

“Me, with my camera, I have the power to say, ‘You’ve never seen these people before a day in your life, but they’re important,” said Martin.” And you see them now.’”

There is one thing Martin won’t photograph in his community, gun violence. It isn’t a part of his life and he doesn’t feel like it’s his story to tell.

“But even if I could, I don’t think I would,” said Martin. “We already get a bad rep for gun violence and drugs and hood stuff, so why would I show that? Why would I give somebody the opportunity to point and say, ‘Look, this is what yall are. This is what yall do.’”

Jamal Martin and Girlfriend Meagan Laboy. Photo Courtesy of Jamal Martin

So instead, Martin said he wants his focus to be on an aspect of normalcy he feels is missing, love.

“A lot of my feed is of me and her,” he said, referring to Meagan LaBoy, his best friend and girlfriend of two years. “That’s another thing that’s not represented, Black love in a positive light. A lot of people don’t get to see Black people having love that lasts and love that sticks. Whenever I share that with the world, our love speaks for itself. ” 

And when it comes to love, Oliver feels the same way, especially when it comes to photographing Black fathers with their children, riding scooters, and smiling.

“We’re often looked at as the aggressors, as animals,” said Oliver. “So, when I get to see a Black man smile, there’s a certain sense of peace and joy that’s there. That’s a love that I think a lot of people forget exists in our world.”

To Oliver, the balance of joy and pain in a work of art is crucial, but tells you less about what the artist finds important, and more about what the artist is experiencing internally. He also feels there’s nothing inherently wrong with leaning towards joy.

“Everyone knows that life is screwed up,” said Oliver. “I think that the most radical thing, the most anti thing you can do, is to be happy. That’s true rebellion right there.”

What Oliver wants his art to do, above all else, is make people feel seen.

“People need to be able to look in the mirror and love themselves, and fall in love with themselves.”

Neither Oliver nor Martin expect racism to end anytime soon. For now, they feel their duty to their community is to make sure that these moments aren’t lost to either ignorance or time.

The post Celebrating the Everyday Normalcy in Black Life appeared first on Pavement Pieces.