#FoodSwag: Michael Zaslowsky, Simon Toybis, Devon Khan, Isadore Betesh

The theme behind #FoodSwag’s video is to portray interaction through food.  We start at Ray’s Pizzeria, then we transition to a halal food cart and end with Shake Shack.  Pizza, halal food, hamburgers, and fries are all common foods that every New Yorker eats, unless something prohibits us from doing so.  Throughout the video these limitations are noted through geography and religion.  However, as New Yorkers, we don’t actually realize the limitations of food that some people have to go through.  By eating with different people we realize the limitations that others face.  The video touches on a few things, but there are many more limitations.

Pertaining to interaction, New Yorkers fail to realize how much food serves to help people interact with each other.  When we go to eat, we usually eat with other people and end up taking and hour to eat our meal because we are spending fifty minutes speaking with each other.  Our group, #FoodSwag took meal conversations a little deeper and portrayed different ethnicities and religions through our meals.  This just shows the scope of conversations that revolve around food because food is the one thing every culture can speak about.  People love food.

Even though New Yorkers in the city eat out a lot there are many places they haven’t gone.  Some people don’t know what halal is and some still haven’t been to other well known places like Shake Shack, Five Guys, Two Bros, and more.   For this reason, New York can always be an adventure and a new place, which is why we decided to make our video seem touristy.  There can only be a handful of New Yorkers that have been all over New York, and because New York is so ethnically diverse we are always experiencing new things.

As New Yorkers we fail to realize the role food plays in our lives other than the purpose of keeping up full and sustaining our lives.  Our group, #FoodSwag, stresses the role of food through conversations and learning about each other.  The range of food available in New York is unbelievable, which is one of the reasons New York is a great place to live in.

Questions the group has:

Is it clear, through the video, what points #FoodSwag are touching on?

As New Yorkers can you relate to any of the characters?

Are there any times where the video isn’t believable?