Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 225

“Ten of us got together and decided to escape. We were all 17...

“Ten of us got together and decided to escape. We were all 17 except for two really young kids who wanted to come with us. We had no plan really. The only time we’d ever left the boy’s home was when they brought us to Barnum and Bailey’s circus one time. Other than that, we knew nothing about how to survive in the outside world. The first night, two of us went into a grocery store and tried to steal a bunch of food for the group, but the owner called the cops. We all ran different directions when the cops came. I was the one they chased. I started to run up this mountain and I remember them shouting to me: ‘It’s going to snow tonight!’ All I had on were Nikes. And that night a blizzard came. I’d never been in a blizzard before. So I tried to get off the mountain, but it was dark by then and snowing hard so I fell 30 feet into a ravine. I was unconscious for a long time. When I woke up I was covered in snow, and my foot was frozen solid.” (3/3)

“I was in the home for 13 years. It was a very abusive...

“I was in the home for 13 years. It was a very abusive environment for everyone there. There were four staff members in particular that were especially bad. One of their favorite forms of punishment was the ‘full burn.’ First they’d make you take your clothes off and lay on the carpet. One of them would sit on your back, and the other one would pull you all the way down the hall. The worst was The Ice Man. If I saw him today, he’d be dead. He was like one of those guys you see in the movies, where even when he smiled, it was ice cold. He’d come in your room and tell you that you had a date with The Ice Man. Then he’d fuck you and make you suck his dick. Then afterward, he’d tell you when your next date was going to be, just so you’d have to worry about it all week. Ten of us tried to escape when I was seventeen. I had a date with The Ice Man coming up so I figured I had nothing to lose.” (2/3)

“My dad gave me up to the boys’ home when I was four. He told...

“My dad gave me up to the boys’ home when I was four. He told me that he was taking me fishing. He got the poles, the bait, everything. I was excited. He said he knew about a new spot. We pulled up to this huge building. He told me to wait in the car while he ran inside and got permission from his friend. Then he came back with two men. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you have to stay here.’ I kept screaming: ‘I’ll be good! I’ll be good! I’ll be good!’ And he kept saying, ‘It ain’t you. It ain’t you. It ain’t you.’ I ripped his shirt off his back trying to keep him from leaving, and he drove off without a shirt.” (1/3)

“It got so bad that we started hiding our mother’s keys just...

“It got so bad that we started hiding our mother’s keys just to keep her from going to the crack house. My grandmother finally rescued us from her right before I went into middle school. When we got taken away, my mother really went off the deep end. We never heard from her. There was a lot of resentment from my side. It was an awkward age. And whenever there were events at school and my friends brought their parents, I’d get angry all over again. Things started to change when I was 15. I got a really bad case of the West Nile Virus and I almost died, and suddenly Mom got serious about rehab. She didn’t laugh it off anymore. She’d call and talk about the things she was learning in her counseling sessions. She’d tell me about the milestones she reached. She finally got clean and now we’re best friends. We talk every day. Out of all my siblings, I’ve been the most forgiving. I think it was easiest for me because I managed to separate the addiction from the person. Even with how bad it got, and with everything she put us through, there was never a moment that I doubted she loved us.”

(2/2)

“From the ages of 7 to 12, we were pretty much on our own....

“From the ages of 7 to 12, we were pretty much on our own. Sometimes we’d be left alone for days at a time. We wouldn’t have lights, water, or heat. At night we’d huddle around the stove for warmth. We lived in a bad neighborhood, so we knew what was going on. We even knew where the crack house was. We’d walk down the street to see if our mom’s car was parked out front. We ate whatever we could find. Some days it was just cereal and sardines. We shared what we had. My younger brother was the hustler. He was nine. He’d knock on doors in the neighborhood, looking for jobs. He mowed lawns, raked leaves, shoveled snow. Then he’d always share his money with us to buy food. But a lot of times our mom would take it for herself. One time my mom brought us home a dog. We pooled all our money together to buy it food, and took care of it for awhile. But it got sick one day, and we didn’t know what to do, and we couldn’t find our mom. So it died.”

(½)

“I got a message from God the other day about how to solve the...

“I got a message from God the other day about how to solve the world’s problems. We’ve got to send all the world leaders to play on one of Trump’s golf courses. Then while they’re gone, we replace them with grandmas. Because nobody ever got invaded by a grandma.”

“Today’s his tenth birthday. He’s a very emotional young man....

“Today’s his tenth birthday. He’s a very emotional young man. He likes to solve other people’s problems. One time when he was five years old, he came with me to the store and we bought two pounds of fresh apricots. I let him carry the bag home. He walked a little bit behind me the entire way. After awhile, I asked him to hand me an apricot. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve given them all away.’ I knew then that I was raising a humanitarian.”

(Tabriz, Iran)

“I was so scared when they were building it. There was always...

“I was so scared when they were building it. There was always a doubt that it would work the same way that it did in my mind. When they sent me pictures of the construction, sometimes I wouldn’t even open the emails. I’d just move the images to a folder named ‘Bridge.’ It’s surreal that this once existed in my mind. I’ve seen it one million times on a computer monitor. I know every single one of these pipes, and I remember the moment that I decided where to place them. Now I am so much smaller than something that once only existed in my imagination. I can stand inside of it. It feels like being inside a movie that you directed or a book that you wrote. And you can’t help but feel powerful.”

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Leila Araghian is the young architect behind Tehran’s recently completed Tabiat Bridge. Construction of the bridge was completed in 2014 despite the difficulties of international sanctions. The bridge has become a cultural and physical centerpiece of Tehran, and Leila captured the imagination of the architecture world by winning the right to design it at the age of 26.

(3/3)
(Tehran, Iran)

“My father believed that confidence was the most important...

“My father believed that confidence was the most important thing you could teach a child. Even when I was little, he would do things to make me feel important. One of my earliest memories is a taxi driver asking my father to put me on his lap, so he could fit one more passenger. But my father insisted that I deserved my own seat. He’d bring me to work with him and trust me with jobs. He’d take apart mechanical devices and ask me to reassemble them. If I made a mistake, he’d never punish me. He’d even help me hide my report card if I made a bad grade. He was mainly concerned with building my confidence to attempt new things, so that I could always learn by doing. Now as an adult, people call me crazy for attempting things that seem ‘out of my depth.’ This bridge is one example. Nobody is prouder of this bridge than my father. He collects all the newspaper articles.”

———————————————

Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi are the young designer and builder behind Tehran’s recently completed Tabiat Bridge. Construction of the bridge was completed in 2014 despite the difficulties of international sanctions. The bridge has become a cultural and physical centerpiece of Tehran, and Leila captured the imagination of the architecture world by winning the right to design it at the age of 26.

(2/3)
(Tehran, Iran)

“When the competition was announced to design this bridge, I...

“When the competition was announced to design this bridge, I was still a student. I was only 25 at the time. I didn’t even feel qualified to enter. And I assumed the project would be awarded to powerful people with connections. But Ali encouraged me. He told me: ‘If you design it, we will win.’ So I submitted the design, and one month later I got a call. It was Ali. He told me that we’d won. I just remember staring down into an open drawer of my desk. I was excited. But I was also terrified. Designing it was one thing. Now we had to build it.”

———————————————–

Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi are the young designer and builder behind Tehran’s recently completed Tabiat Bridge. Construction of the bridge was completed in 2014 despite the difficulties of international sanctions. The bridge has become a cultural and physical centerpiece of Tehran, and Leila captured the imagination of the architecture world by winning the right to design it at the age of 26.

(1/3)
(Tehran, Iran)