Jung Il woo in Brooklyn, New York.

February 2019

I was in New York for a Conference and decided to visit the area where Jung Il-woo had taken those photos that were at the end of his “10 thank you” Japanese Book. I really loved the street art in them and wanted to see where he had them taken. Fortunately! a couple of them had street names, so I took it from there. I found out they were in Brooklyn.

The area that he visited is in a neighborhood called Bushwick. It is a place filled with many factories and street art. The street art is Graffiti (words and phrases written on cars, trucks, ATM’s, etc.) and murals of different sizes. Some of the murals were very elaborate and were created by a group of local artists called “The Bushwick Collective.”

This is their headquarters at 427 Troutman St. New York, New York 11237:

It’s a huge building with artwork all around it:

I will now tell you the story of this beautiful cold artsy day and I will show Jung Il-woo’s photos mixed in with the ones I took …

I took the M line (orange) into Brooklyn to a stop called Flushing Av. I had to take this line as it was Saturday and the more convenient L line (gray) does not have weekend service. (If you are going during the week, take the L line to Jefferson St.) It takes about 30 minutes to get there from mid Manhattan on the M line.

I did a walk search for 49 Bogart, as I saw this was a bit to the left of the Bushwick Collaborative area. And I headed there first. It was a 13 min walk! I was so excited because this was a place on my side of the world, in my country where Jung Il-woo had been at!

And after 13 minutes, Fan 13 made it there! 🙂 This is the place:

I tried finding the stickers from his photo in 2013 in the photo of 2019… Cost was not there anymore! 🙂 Gone are the skull and the red sticker next to his leg and…

At this point I had walked about an hour and a half. My fingers were numb, my cheeks burning… and I was really tired and thirsty, so I decided to find a place to dring something warm… I ended up choosing this place:

And when I walked in I couldn’t believe it! It was a Korean Fusion Eatery! K-pop music was playing and the menu had some Korean foods in it! In this moment I felt so happy! I felt Jung Il-woo was with me! That energy that brought him to my life to begin with keeps bringing me things related to him… it’s so magical! This is what the place looked liked inside, and I had a hot chocolate which was so soothing.