Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 507

"Are you friends? Brothers? Lovers? Enemies?""Well, we’ve...

"Are you friends? Brothers? Lovers? Enemies?"
"Well, we’ve been all of the above."

"We dated in high school, but drifted apart and ended up...

"We dated in high school, but drifted apart and ended up marrying different people. Our cousins married each other, though. So we’d see each other at reunions, funerals, weddings… things like that. When his wife died, and my husband died, we got back together. We’ve been together for ten years now.” 
"Why did you guys break up in the first place?"
"Because he was ‘hot to trot’ back then. He really got around. And I came from a traditional Italian family, so no way my father was going to let me marry somebody like that."

"If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of...

"If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?"
"Try to keep on the right side of the sidewalk."

"My greatest struggle is trying to come to terms with where I am...

"My greatest struggle is trying to come to terms with where I am in life."
"How do you mean?"
"I’ve gotten old, I’ve lost my wife, I’m largely incapacitated, and I’m worried about money. Things aren’t so happy for me right now."

"I want to be a photographer.""What’s the best photograph...

"I want to be a photographer."
"What’s the best photograph you’ve ever taken?"
"A big tree!"

"I really enjoyed The Mists of Avalon, which is a retelling of...

"I really enjoyed The Mists of Avalon, which is a retelling of the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the female characters."

"You know those dreams and aspirations that everyone seems to...

"You know those dreams and aspirations that everyone seems to have? Well I don’t have any. I’m not lazy. I just don’t have dreams."

"I see something in animals that I don’t see in humans....

"I see something in animals that I don’t see in humans. They have a focus and energy that humans don’t have. They just want to live. They aren’t trying to impress anyone. They aren’t trying to hurt anyone for no reason. Even the rat you see in the subway— his only thought is finding the food he needs to survive. Animals only want to live. It’s humans that demand more than they need."

Today in microfashion…

Today in microfashion…

I made my first website with a friend when I was in 7th grade....

I made my first website with a friend when I was in 7th grade. It was called Gaming Galaxy Online. It was extremely cheesy— with a giant animated GIF as the title graphic, and pretty much all content harvested straight from other sources. The page never got any traffic, but I remember how exciting it was to build the site. The internet seemed like a place where a 7th grader could participate in the adult world on a level playing field. My friend and I tried one website idea after another. None of them really worked, but we felt very empowered. On the internet, it felt like we were one good idea away from a very adultlike level of success. And like pretty much everyone else in 1996, our free websites were hosted on Geocities.com.

Fast forward almost 20 years—- in my late twenties, after countless attempts, I’ve finally managed to create a popular website. And last night I was out gathering content. I was walking past the Apple Store on 59th and 5th when I spotted a man sitting alone in the plaza. I asked for his photo, he agreed. “What was the happiest moment of your life?” I asked him.

"Probably when my company had its IPO," he answered. "I founded a company called Geocities.com."