A WEST VILLAGE PICNIC | A FILM

Nearly 9 months ago, just a few weeks after Lucien was born, the ladies of Small Fry teamed up with Jenner Brown of Lumineux Films to shoot a few NYC families, and we were chosen to participate! I've been looking forward to seeing this for months, and am so excited to finally be able to share it with you!

I can't get over how teeny tiny Baby Lou is (I think he was about 4 weeks old?!), and how chubby and wobbly little Biet was! For the film, we stopped by all of our favorite places in the village picking up supplies for a picnic, and ended the day at Washington Square Park. Gaby even wrote the soundtrack especially for the film, a fitting song called "Todo Por Ti."

 Here is the introductory piece I wrote for Small Fry:

“Gaby and I met 11 years ago in the Lower East Side. I had just moved to NYC from the West coast and had gotten a job in a little French cafe on Ludlow Street. The cafe had these huge windows that looked out onto the street, and when business was slow I would sit and drink hot chocolate and watch the city going by. Ludlow Street was really neighborhood-y then, and everyone knew and took care of everyone else, and by watching the people go by I began to learn all of the characters and people and families of the block. One of those characters was Gaby.

Gaby worked across the street at at a venue that had live music and poetry and comedy every night. He was an Argentinean who had moved to NYC a decade earlier from Israel (our family is a crazy mix of cultures!) and made his career in music. He and his coworkers used to come into the cafe for sandwiches before work, and me and my coworkers used to go listen to music at the venue after work, so, over time, we all became good friends.  (Gaby still tells the story about the first night we met: He was working with his friend Paul, and I walked in with my coworker after we had closed up the cafe and we walked right up to them and introduced ourselves. We hung out all night listening to music and after my friend and I left, he turned to Paul and said “I’m gonna marry that girl one day.” Five years later, Paul married us.)

The longer I lived in the city, the more I experienced how everyone in the neighborhood, from the butcher to the deli guy to the waitress at the cafe (me) to the newspaper delivery guy, was a family of sorts. There are so many people in NYC with no roots or family close by, and over time they all band together and form an extended “family”, taking care of one another and growing together over the years, like you would expect of a small town. Its a really beautiful thing to experience and be a part of, and that’s what we wanted to convey with this film. You think of NYC as this big majestic metropolis, but it’s really a collection of small neighborhoods, like little villages.

Over time, Gaby and my friendship evolved from friends to best friends to boyfriend and girlfriend to, eventually, husband and wife. We were married in a park in the village, and all of our friends and people from the neighborhood came. Then we were blessed with a daughter, Biet, and a little less than two years later, a son, Lucien. Our community evolved and grew to include the West Village (where we shot the film) and now Brooklyn. It’s really important for us to teach our children the importance of growing your community, fostering relationships with friends and neighbors, supporting local businesses, and appreciating the history of the city. They don’t have any aunts, uncles, or grandparents here, but they have a loving family that we’ve built over time with friends and neighbors who love them dearly.”

Thank you so much Jenner & Small Fry! We really love it!
(pssst.. Daniel Day Lewis made a cameo in the film too! Can you spot him?!) :)