Hello again, friend! I have news, and I’m probably going to be insufferable about it for exactly two weeks…
From today, Sunday 1st November to Saturday 14th November, three of my cartoons will be running on the 2,200 LinkNYC kiosks around New York.
You know the ones. The tall silver slabs that replaced the payphones, nine and a half feet high, with a 55-inch screen on each side and a USB port on the front for people whose phones die on the wrong corner. (Every corner.) There are about 2,200 of them across the five boroughs. Mostly they show ads, bus times and the weather. Every so often, through a program called Art on Link, they show a New York artist’s work instead.
For two weeks, that’s me. Between the mattress ads. (Starting today. Marathon day!)
I didn’t actually choose the final art that will appear. I sent the program a bunch of pieces I’d picked very carefully: the stooping drawings, Curlie, and Tiger Hood.
Olivia, who runs the program, wrote back very kindly to say she’d been through my Instagram and found a few that would be a great fit.
Two rooftop water towers. One says STILL. The other says SPARKLING, The hats of the 2022 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and A large man at a hot dog cart, handing over his card saying “Keep it open.” (My white whale. If you know, you know.)
They also asked me to take my signature off, because they credit your Instagram handle instead. So for a fortnight, across every borough, my name is @newyorkcartoons.
I first got in touch with them in January 2019.
The woman running the program at the time wrote back straight away, and I pitched her a project called Creatures of New York: regular New Yorkers, same poses, same clothes, same accessories, but drawn as colourful creatures. She said it sounded like a great fit and she’d love to see it.
That was February 2019. I sent her a sample in August 2020. (I’m good like that.)
The email bounced. She’d left the company. I wrote to a general inbox; someone kindly passed me along to a colleague, and then nothing happened. I tried 4 more times in the ensuing years.
Then, this month I tried again, and Olivia said yes.
The kiosks were built to replace payphones, and I still managed to spend seven years on hold.
When I sent my first three pieces, I added one special request. My mum is flying in from Perth for November and early December, and I asked if there was any chance my work could go up while she’s here. She would lose her mind if she saw it on the street.
Olivia wrote back that a spot had just opened up. 1st to 14th November.
So at some point in the first fortnight of November I’ll be standing on a corner in Manhattan with a woman from Perth, waiting for my fifteen seconds to come round. We’ll watch an ad for a bank. Then the weather. Then a bus time. Then another ad. Then it’ll be there, and then it’ll be gone, and we’ll stand there and wait for it again.
I’ve lived here 12 years. I love this city more than anything in the entire world, and it has never once been obliged to love me back. For two weeks it’ll be showing my drawings to strangers on their way to work.
(And to my mum.)
That’ll do.
If you spot one, take a photo and send it to me, or tag @newyorkcartoons, with the corner and the time. I’ll put the best ones in a post. (And if you see a goofy-looking Australian and his mum staring at a kiosk for longer than is strictly normal, please let us be.)
‘til next time!
Your pal,
PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.
Congrats! Way to preserve.
Take a photo of your ma and you next to one of the kiosk cartoons when it displays! Or take a photo of her with one that she can show to her friends in Australia!