1
HOMETOWNHEROES
ATTENTION,PA SSEN G ER S!
N
icolas Heller, better known online
as New York Nico, wears his love
for the city he hopes to save on his head.
A wide-brimmed Yankees cap was the
first thing that popped into view when
he logged on to a Zoom call recently to
get to work on a new project. More than
half a million people follow his Insta-
gram, where he shares the stories of reg-
ular New Yorkers, such as bodega owners
struggling to stay afloat. (The exposure
is a boon to their GoFundMe campaigns.)
Now he has signed on to help another
New York sector in distress: the M.T.A.
She logged off and returned a few
minutes later, out of breath, holding two
more iPhones—just in case. “I told my
husband”—the rapper Papoose—“just
give me your phone!” Her laugh was big
and warm.
Heller asked her about taking public
transit while growing up in the Bronx.
“I remember riding the buses and trains
with my grandmother and getting the
paper transfers,” she said. She confessed
to selling her city-issued bus pass in ju-
nior high to buy Chinese takeout. “I prob-
ably owe the M.T.A. so much money
from hopping the turnstile.”
After following Heller’s instructions
on how to adjust the settings in her
Voice Memos app, Smith started re-
cording. “Yo, what’s up, New York? It’s
ya girl, Remy Ma,” she said. “Remem-
ber to always wear a mask on the train
and in the train station, and remember
to wear it the right way, not on your
chin, not on the back of your neck.”
“That really gets me mad,” she said
afterward. “When you see people and
their whole nose be out. Like, bro!”
“Yeah, it’s the worst,” Heller said.
“O.K., next is holding the doors.”
Smith hit Record: “Now, everyone
knows if you can make it here you can
make it anywhere, but if you hold the
doors nobody’s gonna make it any-
where.... You ain’t never seen those vid-
eos of people where they get their necks
caught and dragged down the platform?”
Heller: “Damn, getting graphic with
it.”
Next: priority seating. “Please re-
member, if requested, priority seating
one could see planes taking off from all
three major airports. “They talk about
their own buildings as the most amaz-
ing thing on the planet,” Schmied said.
“And yet they never mention them as
something you would like to look at.”
Addressing her, the agents focussed
on emotional fulfillment. To Zoltan, they
emphasized return on investment. They
tended not to mention that thousands of
these apartments remained unsold. (One
agent, on learning that she’d made a sale,
jumped up and down, and hugged a con-
struction worker, as she and Schmied, in
hard hats, made their way in a hoist el-
evator to the as yet unfinished hundredth
floor. “You better act fast,” the agent told
her.) But the agents considered it a sell-
ing point that most of the apartments
that had been sold remained empty, be-
cause they were investments—“a new
global currency,” as Schmied said.
“I will always remember the surprise
on their faces when I said I actually
wanted to live there. One of their favor-
ite tactics is to assure the buyer that no
one lives in the building,” she said. “As
if the fact that you will be completely
alone in this monster tower is desirable.
The deeper I went, the crazier it seemed
that all these giant, robust buildings with
this huge presence in the city that I imag-
ine ninety-nine per cent of the people
hate are not actually lived in and yet are
going to be there for so long.”
—Nick Paumgarten
A few months ago, the agency reached
out to Heller to see if he wanted to “col-
lab,” as he put it, and he proposed a se-
ries of public-service announcements
for trains and buses, to be voiced by
iconic New Yorkers, such as Jerry Sein-
feld, Desus and Mero, and Fran Leb-
owitz. The M.T.A. said sure.
The only catch: zero budget. That’s
why he was sitting in his Bed-Stuy apart-
ment the other day, waiting for Remi-
nisce Smith, the Grammy-nominated
rapper known as Remy Ma, to show up
on the Zoom to virtually record her mes-
sage. COVID-19 has made Heller’s work
as a documentary filmmaker disappear,
so he has plenty of free time. And the
equipment for the M.T.A. project is
simple: an iPhone. Given the state of the
subway’s P.A. system, he said, the record-
ings will “sound just as good as if you did
it in a studio.” He hopes that hearing
Seinfeld’s nasal voice declaiming “Hello,
New York, and welcome to the première
of ‘Comedians on Trains Getting Cof-
fee’” will be a morale boost for travellers.
(Daily ridership has plunged more than
thirty per cent in the past year.)
Heller, who is thirty-two and has a
beard and a nose stud, killed time while
he waited for Smith by checking his so-
cial-media metrics. “I never get traction
on Twitter,” he complained to his pub-
licist, also on the call.
“I told you—your thing is visuals,”
the publicist said. “Twitter is not the
platform for that.”
“Right, right,” Heller said. There was
some good news, though: Debbie Harry,
of Blondie, had said that she was into
the idea of recording a P.S.A. “I was
standing right by the Blondie mural on
Bowery when I got the message,” he
said. “Bizarre.” Finally, fifteen minutes
late, Smith joined the call.
“Hey, Remy,” Heller shouted.
“Hey!” The video wobbled as Smith,
who stars on the reality show “Love &
Hip Hop: New York,” walked around
a sunny studio in L.A., the click of her
heels echoing through the room. “I’m
looking for somewhere to put this
phone.” She brushed some hair from
her face and gave up. “I’ll just hold it.”
“Actually,” Heller said. He hesitated,
aware that Smith was doing this for free
in the middle of a busy workday. He
explained that she would need an ad-
ditional phone, to record the audio.
THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021 13
New York Nico and Remy Ma
