18) On the way to Standard Hotel, I saw a man sitting on the curb with a cardboard sign on his neck asking for money who introduced himself as a Homeless Italian in the meatpacking district.
19/ Homeless Man.
SCV: What do you wish for in the New Year?
HI: A beautiful girl and a lot of money. I need to get off the street I have been on the street for 4 years. I need also a girl. I’ve never had a girlfriend and I haven’t been with a girl for many many years. I come here every night and there is the prettiest girls in the whole world here. I can go after all of them, but they don’t like me
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20/ 4.00 am. Hot and random. Style maker.
Happiness. Good friends, good times. I just want to be happy more than anything else. I don’t care about anything else but being happy, I really don’t. If everything else fails, if I am broke, if I don’t have any clothes (which is what I really love) I just want to be happy more than anything else. That’s my biggest thing. So many people live such fake lives and I feel like they are not really happy.
SCV: What makes your happiness not fake, but real ?
R: Because I say what I mean, I tell the truth, am real, I don’t bullshit.
I loved this article!! Whenever I walk around NYC, I’m always curious about what the strangers next to me are thinking or what their stories are. Of course I never have the balls to ask them (especially because I don’t want to be punched in the face because I’m being creepy), but this photo essay totally fed my curiousity! It’s amazing to read about all these people — who would have thought a pedi-cab driver was trying to get a degree in international business in order to get the hell out of here? I demand more photo essays!!