But I like this project the best.

Not least because I love taking pictures and the pictures themselves — go blame the Asian sensibility that I have in my DNA. I really liked hanging out with the guys, and taking pictures of them. And I think it comes together nicely with music and interviews.

Sure, the final product can be refined — the background music when Dave spoke clashed with my happy Havana music, and the audio transitions can be smoothened out. But whatever, I’m happy with this. 

Notwithstanding the endless frustrations and sleepless nights, I do like the visual aspects of telling a story. And once you get into it, editing becomes somewhat of a soul-absorbing endeavor which sucks you in and does not release you until you’re done. 

So, in the spirit of my multimedia lessons, here’s my top five takeaways from this whole experience. 

M: Merciless. No matter how good the footage or interview is, be merciless in cutting away material. Do not be emotional. If it does not fit, cut. Nobody wants to sit though 4-5 minutes of video or a podcast. Many times, I included an extra soundbite because I thought it sounded great, but in actuality, it could simply have dragged on the video unnecessarily. 

E: Edit, edit, edit. Now I know the reason why great editors are sought after. While I might have great footage and interviews, it’s the editing that makes the material really shine and captures the heart of what you’re trying to tell. I’m still getting the hang of how to structure a video or podcast, but some lessons I’ve picked up is to keep the energy level high throughout the video and to think through the script before plunging into the editing zone. 

D: Deal with it. No matter how stupendously stunning you think your video is, you better get used to being crushed by your audience’s under-whelmed responses. Maybe it happens because they’ve simply watched too many videos, but no matter, you just have to take the criticism on your chin. Figure out whether the feedback is something that will improve your work. 

I: In-demand. Like a story that needs a news hook or good angle, videos also need to be topical to be attractive to viewers. Of the three videos that I uploaded on YouTube, the one on psychic readers on Wall Street got by far the most hits – almost 600! And I got a number of comments on my blog postings too. This really gave me a big thrill since as a journalist, it’s nothing like getting public interest in your work. 

A: Ask a friend. When in doubt, ask a friend who can shower you with advice and comfort. God knows how many nights in the lab were brightened up because of shared pizza, thai noodles and conversations that do not make sense after the fact. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without my partners in crime — Sui, Ana and Tatyana! Thanks guys. 

So there you have it. It’s been fun telling stories with a camera, and who knows, I may well do it again. After all, practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?

I believe I have never labored so arduously and expensively over a school project.

My night started innocuously enough. After a marathon nine hour session at the lab the previous night, I trotted dutifully to my second home last night all geared up to finish my podcast and slideshow. I had finally psyched myself up to record the sound of my own voiceover. I did it five times, and yes, I did hop up and down 20 times in my apartment before starting. To get the heartrate going, you see, and so I would sound all perky and energetic. In writing and reading the script, I tried to make it as conversational and simple as possible.

Sounds simple enough. I was all eager to start cracking on the podcast, then came the first realization: I had recorded all my interviews and soundbites on my Ipod, and downloaded all of them into my iTunes library on my computer. Combining the awesome security power of Apple and my abysmal tech saaviness, I was getting increasingly frustrated trying to transfer the voice memo clips onto the lab’s computer. At least five different people tried to help, but all went away throwing up their hands. “I’m dumbfounded,” said one. “You’re dumb?” her partner-in-crime said in astonishment. “No…dumbfounded, not dumb, dummy.”

It was that kind of night. Finally, I gave up and decided to go home and test the creaky processing power of my cranky computer. It was midnight. With trepidation, I double checked with the chief labber Song on what I had to do. “It’s simple. Just download Audacity. It’s free and you can edit it from there.” Heart in mouth, but with no choice, I ran out into the cold, flagged down a cab and was on my way home.

***

Ok. I can do this.

I took several deep breaths and said a prayer before I plunged into the task. What transpired over the next seven hours was a crash course in downloading all sorts of applications onto my computer, listening to my audio files over and over again, and figuring out the precise moments to cut and insert the clips. One thing I was thankful I did was to write out a script for the podcast, as I just had to trust what I had written and to follow the script in editing. It made life, at 4am, that much bearable.

To its credit, I also have to say that Audacity is a pretty straightforward program to use, once I figured out how to use its different functions. The most valuable tool was the “Split” key, which allowed me to break out different clips from one audio file. At 7am, I was done. I was exhausted and famished, having survived the night with lots of sweet gummies. But at least it was done.

I thought the hard part was over. But more challenges lay ahead. Uploading the file onto my blog. At first, I tried downloading another application called Lib to let me save my final product into an MP3 file but that didn’t work. So I just saved it as a .wav file. I thought uploading the file onto YouTube would do the trick, but good ol’ YouTube refused to cooperate. When I woke up after a two-hour catnap, there was still no progress. Why??

10am. Oh my goodness, you mean I have nothing to show for all the hard work?? I had exhausted all my search queries on Google, and one answer said I could buy an upgrade on WordPress to upload and insert my audio file. At this point, I was willing to do anything to get the job done, and forked out $20. But surprise surprise, the audio file was uploaded successfully, but I couldn’t insert the file.

If you see me in class with greyer hair (probably greasy too coz I didn’t have time to wash it!), all I can say is I really tried. And oh yes, it will get done but it will take a while to figure out the intricacies of the internet and its unworkable (at least for me) gizmos. Oh, and did I forget to give a hearty shout-out to my five-year-old ibook for being with me throughout the night and not crashing?

So there you have it: my podcast of torture.

Price: one cab ride $16, cost of purchasing upgrade on WordPress to attach podcast to post: $20, hours of sleep lost, millions of brain cells dead

Enduring the podcast torture: Priceless.

~~

Oh, if anyone’s interested, here’s the full transcript of my podcast.

PODCAST SCRIPT

Midtown: white sauce…hot sauce…

Walk down any street in New York, and you will encounter the quintessential Big Apple experience. The smell of candied nuts and falafels greets you, while the street vendors selling hotdogs and pretzels call out for your attention.

Food is never too far away, or too expensive to have. For $5, you can a meal of chicken over rice, or opt for a gourmet dessert. But for the vendors, life on the street is tough. They say there is too much competition on the street, and they are unhappy about the present rules.

New York City has over 14,000 licensed food vendors, but it only has permits for 3,100 food carts. The waiting list for the permits, now closed, has over 2,000 people on it. Last month, City Hall heard a bill to increase the number of cart permits from 3,100 to 25,000.

Those supporting the bill say it will help vendors who want to make a decent living on the streets. But others say more vendors will hurt store businesses, especially in an economic downturn.

Italian man: we got rent to pay here, we got tax to pay, we got lot of people, and those guys, they take each and every one, it’s 10% 4
different corners, it’s 20% the business go down….that’s how it is.
they don’t pay like us you know, we do pay alot of tax and alot of
stuff you know, and those guys, they make business but they don’t pay like we do here….the city should check more on that.

I took to the streets to find out if there are already too many vendors selling food.

Crazy sounding guy: I feel there’s too much going on around here. it’s $2 but they all taste the same, everything is the same, they all sell the same thing. so it’s all just kinda of a waste, it’s just too many people working for the same goal and i just i dunno…i just think it’s too much.

Mum and dad on union square: i dunno, there’s one on every corner.. it seems like there is enough. there are alot.

Indian woman: of course there should be more, like singapore you know where you have a real food cart market in singapore open air market, food market and even in india we have that. so people like us, we come in and we can’t afford to go to big restaurants, but we still need good food. the only options seem to be hotdog or a pretzel…of course there should be more.

Existing vendors do not want others coming in to get their business.

Druggie-sounding vendor: if this is true, they are going to put 25,000 people on the street, it’s going to be a disaster… it’s going to create a lot of problems. because i’m not going to make a lot of money, i’m not going to like it next to me, somebody sells the same merchandise. i know, the street is not mine, but you know, it’s fair for me, in a block maybe 2 vendors

Druggie sounding vendor continued: if they put on the street 25,000 vendors, where are all these people going to go? they going to come next to me, they are going to go to places they are not supposed to be, very simple, they are going to create a lot of problems.

Midtown man: they fight to each other, can kill each other.

Some say the problem is not with the quantity of food carts, but their quality.

Crazy sounding guy: ooo…like what kind of food, like chocolate carts, like you know,like chocolate pretzels or strawberries, like fondue carts or something like that, would be really great…

Indian woman: some thai food, some vietnamese food,
sandwiches, oh of course sandwiches you have, some hot foods, maybe soups. you know, the options are always the same thing. if you want to make new york really tourist friendly.

Kid: wouldn’t it be cool if we have a macdonald’s food cart…yeah
that’ll be cool if we have that in new york? like a salt cart yeah like a salt….

From New York University, this is Joyce Koh

~END~

And it’s just one day.

I spent almost the whole day with the Calexico cart in Soho, from 10:30am to 4:30pm, trying to capture snapshots of what it was like to be a food cart vendor. And boy was it tough. For me at least, all I wanted to do after I got home was to soak my feet and have a nice massage. But these guys do it day after day, with unfailing cheeriness. What a weakling I am!

I hung out with Dave, 25, who is the youngest of the trio of brothers who founded the cart, which sells Tex-Mex food on the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets. Helping him were Marco, 21, who cooks the food, and Stewart, 27, who assembles the ingredients into a hefty burrito or taco. Throughout the day, the boys appeared like they were at a cookout at a friend’s yard. It was a good vibe. Music blasted from the speakers (I wonder why other vendors don’t play their own music, it makes time past faster), they joked around with one another, they took smoke breaks, but throughout, they were super serious about serving their grub to a clientale that kept streaming in. The pace rarely let up. When the woose that I am kept asking each of them what it felt like being on their feet the whole day, the boys said they were used to it, and it was better than being cooped up in the kitchen. At least, on this prime corner of Soho, just next to Camper and Club Monaco, the sun was shining, the people were interesting, the scene was good.

For me, I tried to act like a fly on the wall that just snap, snap, snap. I think the photos turned out well visually – the weather was fortunately sunny and nice (even though my finger nearly froze in the morning before I decided to do the sensible thing and get some gloves), the boys were very cooperative and cool about me hanging around like a leech and I loved the food (especially the steak which is extremely flavorful). After a while, I tried to pretend I was a photographer on a fashion shoot (this was Soho after all), and do moody shots of Marco smoking against the wall, Stewart against the sunlight, Dave clowning around. I guess one big plus was the location and I could wander in and out of stores when I decided not to be a pest.

I’m pretty excited to put together the slideshow. I took 300 photos!! And got some good interviews and soundbites. Thanks guys.

Now for some foot cream and then the editing starts…Wish me luck.

It was more challenging than I thought it would be. I went from St Mark’s to 34th Street to Bryant Park to Washington Square Park to Union Square. Sure, there were lots of food carts but the thick swell of people and tourists made it difficult to stop someone while they were midway through a hotdog and get them to answer a question. As for the food cart vendors, many of them were immediately suspicious when I drew out my recorder and did not want to be interviewed. Many also did not speak much English, making it a no-go for me. As for the ones who agreed to talk to me, I had to be sensitive to the fact that they were carrying out a busines, and time was money to them, so I had to back off whenever there was a customer. Keeping in mind that this was a podcast and sounds were important, I was super conscious about trying to get the appropriate background noises – like the sizzling of cooking meat, the ka-ching of the cash register, or the tossing of nuts around a stove.

Overall, I talked to maybe 10-12 people, and I think I got a good mix of reactions from a variety of stakeholders in any regulation change. I got a cute little kid who told me “Why are there so many pretzel stands? There should be a MacDonalds stand.” And other tourists who say enough of hot dogs, more variety please. Then there are the store owners who not surprisingly said an increase in the food carts would hurt their business and be unfair to them since they had to pay higher taxes. And then there were the food cart vendors, who did not like the increase too. Sam, the chicken-and-rice man on 35th Street and 6th Ave told me: “Do you know that people would kill if their spot was stolen by another vendor?” And there was Archilles in Union Square along 13th street selling pretzels who said the competition didn’t make sense. Pointing out the five other vendors operating on the same street as him, he said any regulation change to increase the number of food vendors would be disastrous. Right now, I’m considering whether I should interview more people, perhaps get the Health Department stance and more voices from business owners. But I think I’ve got a good mix of reactions from the street already, which is what the podcast is meant to be about.

Anyway, my takeaway from this whole experience is the situation is infinitely more complicated then my initial hypothesis. My thinking that it would be beneficial to increase the number of food cart licenses if many are already operating illegally seems simplistic. The hungry horde of tourists would not be any happier if all they are greeted with is another hotdog/pretzel/nut stand. And besides the impact on the nearby store owner, the existing food cart owner also hurts from the increased competition on the street. Not that they aren’t already griping about the influx of people who are cooking the same fare as they are. Is better regulation of the street in order from the city? How many food vendors is enough? There is obviously a problem on the streets, and a blanket increase in the number of licenses will not solve it.

With all this in mind, I plan to work on my podcast tomorrow. It’ll be interesting writing a script for it – I suppose writing for radio/a podcast means I have to keep it really simple in terms of the language and the structure. It should be fun experimenting with editing the various voices I have in my i-pod, and combining them in a coherent flow. One caveat though, I don’t like the sound of my own voice too much. I think it sounds too squeaky! In any case, mental note in recording my voice: Do lots of jumping jacks in the morning!

“If Obama can reverse the psychology — make people believe that he understands the problem and will do what’s needed to solve it — then they will start to engage again with the economic system.”

I hope there will be a boost in confidence. I hope that this can mark some sort of turning point in all this unrelenting talk of doom and gloom. Certainly, the economic and financial web is so much more interlinked than one man and one team can start to unravel, but I hope that at least the death grip can be unloosened. Maybe then, businesses can start thinking about growth, and people can begin to plan for their futures. This would certainly help the trades plying out there on the streets.

It’s not as dramatic as the picture suggests. But for the vendors working on the streets of New York, the proposed changes heard at City Hall last week could bring about as dramatic a change in their lives. It’s been called one of the most comprehensive reviews of vending regulations in the city, and perhaps it’s high time given the large number of unregulated vendors out there. What struck me as the most significant proposal from last week’s hearings was the bill to increase the number of food cart permits from the current 3,100 to 25,000.

A eight-fold increase in these permits sounds like a huge leap. But having researched on the trade, it’s probably not as excessive as it looks. After all, even though the city only gives out 3,100 permits, there are about 10,000 licensed food vendors – that is, people who are allowed to sell food, but who may not be allowed to have a cart to sell them from. The alternative is that many buy these cart licenses from the black market for tens of thousands of dollars, when it costs the original owner only $200 every two years to renew the license. Some tell me the price for a two-year license now is about $10,000. The other solution is just to risk going against the law, sell your grub and run away when the police comes.

I think there is a case for increasing the number of permits, but there has to be a balance struck between being realistic about the proliferation of unlicensed vendors and taking into account the concerns of small business owners. An article in the New York Times quoted Michael Murphy, a member of the New York State Restaurant Association, saying: “This proposed intro is a direct threat to thousands of neighborhood retailers who are struggling in an era of rising rent, higher taxes, and increased regulatory abuse.” Flooding the market with food vendors now will surely raise the ire of these retailers.

Still, I do think it makes sense to raise the number of permits when people are openly flouting the rules, because at least it creates a more equal playing field among those who can afford to buy them off the black market, and those who can’t. Also, if these vendors are already on the street and making a living out of the carts, it’s going to be hard to weed them out and might it not be better to bring them under the city’s regulatory net? While I sympathize with the small business owners, I also think that we are, for the most part, looking at very different business models and audience, and it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison. That said, would the city really be able to absorb 25,000 food vendors?