We’re hosting Heineken’s The Spot, a Latino pop up curated by Remezcla, but Uptown Collective is covering it best. About to celebrate its second birthday, Uptown Collective is carving a big niche as a journalism outlet that covers uptown as a distinct neighborhood, not an insignificant outpost of Manhattan.

“I think the mainstream media has a hard time covering a local beat because they are usually not part of the communities they cover,” says Led Black, Uptown’s editor-in-chief. UC has 17 contributors including Black, a blogger since ’06 who splits his time between Uptown and a telecom job. The Dominican Republic native is helping to do what underrepresented areas are doing all over town/the country/the world: Taking control of their own identity. That means dismantling the violence-meets-poverty narrative, a fiction story told over and over in areas without their own media outlets.

For the past two weeks, though, Uptown Collective has been paying especially close attention to downtown – specifically Mulberry St. That’s where Remezcla put together a lineup of Latino musicians typically found playing in stadiums and packed clubs. Below are a selection of Uptown Collective pictures of The Spot by DJ Boy, an Uptown Collective staff photographer. For more coverage of Heineken’s The Spot, and to get to know Uptown NYC as it really is, go there.

Greg Spielberg | July 22 2011
greg@openhousegallery.org

Heineken The Spot at Openhouse Gallery. The Tego Calderon concert by photographer DJ Boy of Uptown Collective

Heineken The Spot at Openhouse Gallery. The Tego Calderon concert by photographer DJ Boy of Uptown Collective

Tech taking over at the Tego Calderon concert at Openhouse Gallery. Photo by DJ Boy of Uptown Collective.

Photo by Briana E. Heard of Uptown Collective

Check out more of Uptown Collective’s The Spot coverage.
See DJ Boy’s blog
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