New York City, 2021.

The city was entering its first year out since lockdown, a post COVID-19 era so to speak. I was in my spring semester of sophomore year in college, where Zoom classes became all too familiar and the routine of waking up to sit at my make-shift ‘work from home’ set up to attend classes from a small bedroom in the Bronx was beginning to drain on me. It was sometime in May that a recommended video on my YouTube homepage piqued my interest. The video was from Elliot Choy.

I had heard about Elliot from other YouTubers that I semi-short of watched but never committed to subscribing to their channels during my last year of high school. I mainly knew him from his viral Harvard video where he was handing out iPhones to students for answering questions correctly. Why I was attracted to this video was not because of Elliot Choy’s prior fame, but because of the video title, boy from indiana moves to nyc. Having experience lockdown and quarantining in NYC since March 2020, and witnessing my beloved city go through one of our darkest times, all that came to mind were questions:

why move to NYC when the city is still struggling from COVID-19?

when outdoor dining is the only option…

when quarantining is still mandated…

when masks are obligated on public transit…

when most of the city is still barely functioning…

why?

Not speaking on behalf of Elliot Choy, but these questions did not seem to matter to a freshly graduated college student from Vanderbilt University. Yet it was more than that. Rents were cheap. There were a lot of vacant units after people left the city in droves. Or shall I say, people who could afford to move away and/or quarantine elsewhere. Some apartment listings were offering up 2-3 free months of rent on StreetEasy, hoping this would entice some people to snag the deal–which some eventually did (I’ll come back to this).

Elliot Choy was not the only content creator (YouTuber) that moved to the city during 2021, he was one of many. As I continued to watch every new upload on his channel living in NYC, and his newfound NYC lifestyle, his motives for moving to the city became evident when he created ur mom’s house, a content creator house with fellow YouTubers, urmomashley, Kelly Wakasa, and Annemariechase. The first ever content creator house in NYC, as Elliot Choy would boost.

A content creator house in NYC–similar to that of LA’s content houses, where it seemed to first originate due to YouTubers collaborating with one another, such as the notorious Team10 house with the Paul brothers–filled with so much potential with young creators was a dream for Elliot Choy, who was the mastermind behind assembling this first NYC content house.

Yet, ur moms house barely lasted a year, November 2021 – October 2022.

Outside of the public fall out between Elliot Choy and Kelly Wakasa, which seemed to stem from internal conflicts in the house, the hopes of a concrete and stable NYC content house was still up for grabs yet again for another content creator to embark on. As sad I was to hear about this as a subscriber tuning to new uploads weekly during my junior year in college still living at home with my parents, and vicariously living through these content creators close in age to me, experiencing my city through $7 iced lattes, spontaneous lunches & dinners, spending money that I did not have, this is where my research journey began.

September/October 2020

I found the YouTube channel JamesandKarla, a native New York couple living in NYC with their charming dog, Hudson. I do not entirely remember how I found their channel but I am sure it was recommended to me via YouTube’s algorithm. They are a walking channel where they livestream (and still continue to do so!) walking around various parts of the city, not just Manhattan, with Hudson, speaking on historical facts about the city, but most importantly highlighting store fronts from local mom and pop shops in the city.

Due to my limited ability to travel around the city due to classes and work, I was also living vicariously through their livestreams, viewing parts of the city I had not visited since the lockdown. But what kept me interested and coming back to their livestreams, outside of cute Hudson eating pizza occasionally, were the moments they would walk into local mom and pop shops and speak to the owners directly, to which a majority of the store owners they knew by name. Karla would check-in with them, while James would hold onto the gimbal. They would talk about their store and the history of the building, and even the life story of the store owner and how they came to create a business. Most of the store owners would have a similar thread in their stories about having to take over family business, looking after the business, and so on. But the conversation would always go back to the pandemic, and how they were struggling. Before saying their goodbyes to the storeowners, Karla would always give the address of the store and hours, encouraging people watching to come and support the store. Soon after every livestream would end, I would have weekend plans to go visit the many local stores featured in the livestream and even eat at some (which I still do till this day).

As a native New Yorker, James and Karla’s channel struck me, as I began to view my city with fresh new eyes since there were so many local stores I never visited and ever heard about. I had thought I knew my city like the back of my hand. I enjoyed them walking through parts of the city that I walked through, saying hello to neighbors they knew in the East Village. It made me feel connected and encouraged as a New Yorker, especially during a dark time due to the pandemic. Outside of just a walking channel, they are architectural photographers, having their own business as well, and during the harsh winter months they flock to sunny Florida with Hudson.

ActionKid is also another walking channel on YouTube I had began watching during lockdown. Similar to James and Karla, ActionKid would talk about random facts and engage with those in the chat, whilst walking through the city. I had actually learned about James and Karla’s channel through ActionKid as they would at times livestream together visiting local stores. ActionKid is also a native New Yorker from Queens.