BIG CITY, COOL DREAMS BY MARY SNIATKOWSKI

Words: Mary Sniatkowski
Photos: Dan Snyder
Mary Sniatkowski is a writer and marketing specialist living in New York City. Read about Mary's New York journey, and how she is discovering herself while exploring a new city.

After growing up in Vermont -- a place that only seemed cool once I left -- I did the coolest thing a person can do, I moved to New York City. I mean, come on. It’s a place filled with the cheat codes to cool; an afternoon at the Met, an evening on Manhattan’s most “urban-renewed” piers, drinks at the finest bars! Hell, anyone that lives outside New York would be impressed that I could visit the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree on a weekday (something I would never do). But, once I got here, I realized it’s cool to be in New York, but it’s not so easy to BE cool in New York. The Met gets 7 million visitors a year, urban renewal is superficial as fuck and, as it turns out, we all read the same “Coolest Bars in New York” article. This early revelation forced me to realize that I needed to put in more effort than paying an amount I’m too embarrassed to disclose for a room that did not even have four real walls.

NY BY BRYNN WALLNER

Brynn Wallner is a creative director, painter, producer and freelance writer based out of New York City. Here are some of her paintings portraying how New York feels to her.

"Could the city have been my first true love? I grew up just across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey and started my freshman year of high school in downtown Manhattan. Commuting was kind of a bitch, but emerging from the subway every morning was like, oh my god, the energy. I'm in New York. After school I would meander around the city, avoiding homework in favor of aimless, dreamy walks, listening to music burned on CDs by new friends and crushes. Lou Reed... one fine morning she put on a New York station, she couldn't belieeeeve what she heard at all. The Virgin Mega Store in Union Square, tiny hidden streets in the West Village, my best friend's dark loft on Walker Street, the American Apparel on Broadway. All these places I spent wasting time when it wasn't time wasted at all. It was a love affair, a New York education!"

-Brynn Wallner      

MAY PLAYLIST + MOOD

Here's May - the trees are really starting to turn a new leaf; spring time is officially here. Time to pull out the picnic blankets and find a shady spot with friends - happy park season.

PHOTO WALK IN FT. GREENE PARK

JOIN US ON A PHOTO WALK IN FORT GREENE PARK WITH LONG TIME FRIEND AND MODEL, AMBROSE.

The sun is out and the weather is nice, a perfect time to be in Ft Greene. Here's park in all its early spring glory. 

INTERVIEW WITH BLACKBIRD SPYPLANE

BLACKBIRD SPYPLANE IS A SUBSTACK (www.blackbirdspyplane.com), WRITTEN BY JOURNALIST JONAH WEINER AND DESIGN SCOUT ERIN WYLIE FOCUSED ON "UNBEATABLE RECON" INTO STYLE AND CULTURE. READ DAN'S INTERVIEW ABOUT THE DESIGN AND ORIGINS OF OUR SEASONAL CARDIGANS.

A few weeks ago, after we shouted out some flannels from NYC’s Corridor, that brand’s head designer & founder, Dan Snyder, hit us up to recommend a COOL book about fractals and ALSO to see if we wanted to SpyBless our “unbeatable readers” with some dope SS21 Corridor pieces — for instance, he asked, did we want to lavish the SpyFamily with a couple of his excellent new cardigans??

Our reply … was “O let’s do it.”

NY REBIRTH WITH COBEY ARNER

COBEY ARNER IS A PHOTOGRAPHER, MUSICIAN IN THE BAND REBOUNDER, AND GENERAL MAN ABOUT TOWN. HE LIVES IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE.

"It's primetime to start living again and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Here is New York, depicted in thirteen images, across three boroughs and three seasons. Always here to offer a warm hug or at least a polite head nod."

-CA