![]() They were devastated to have to interrupt their project. With no school and no dorms, Simonian was forced to return to his parents’ home in Malibu, Byrne to Long Island with his family. The Sidetalk account went from a few thousand followers to tens of thousands in a matter of days. Nicolas Heller, whom they had befriended on Instagram not long before, was with them at the time and posted his perspective on tagging them as a promotion. But it was the Purim video that was their breakthrough. We were just like, ‘Hey, guys, what’s up?’ ”Īfter starting Sidetalk their freshman year in the fall of 2019, the duo spent most days of the week outside, after, before, and in between classes, filming the people they encountered. “We ran up the steps of the brownstone into the house, and there were all these Hasidic men going crazy, jumping around. “We filmed that video in 30 minutes.” They’d been having a terrible day finding nothing to shoot, but with a mix of ease and fearlessness, they happened to see an open door and walked through. “We couldn’t remake it if we tried,” Byrne admits. There’s an unhinged energy to the encounter. In one of the boys’ favorite episodes, filmed on the dangerous cusp of lockdown last year, they crashed a Purim party in Williamsburg and danced with Trump-loving Hasidim. Watching them, I couldn’t always tell if they were being judgmental or celebratory. In the best episodes, Simonian has a subdued joy at being around chaos, like an anthropologist excited to join in the customs of a foreign land. 54, turned out to be fairly tame - less guerrilla than some of the most memorable Sidetalks. While working, they commune through a mix of whispers and what seems like ESP, never losing their cool no matter how many times it takes Mo to nail the line. Byrne, who resembles a Kennedy and speaks in the octave of Sam Elliott, is the cameraman, but beyond that, it would be hard to pick apart who’s really doing what - they often finish each other’s sentences. Simonian, the one with a shock of black Timothée Chalamet hair, is the straight man on-camera. ![]() “If I don’t get your vote, don’t let me find out who you are, ’cause I’m comin’ ova there, I’mma crack yoo ova tha head with a loaf of sem-o-leeena!” Mo yells into the camera as he paces the length of Mulberry Street. On this particular afternoon, their subject is Lil Mo Mozzarella, a proudly Italian aspiring TikTok star who has taken his ostensible mayoral campaign to the streets of Little Italy with his Moncler puffer unzipped and his velvet track pants shimmering. ![]() ![]() You might meet a man named Jesus humping a tree in Central Park or a foulmouthed child talking about women with big butts. Each post begins with the familiar bing-bong sound of the subway’s “Stand clear of the closing doors” recording, but after that, you might find the sloe-eyed Simonian deadpanning into the camera as a disturbed woman screams about Jezebel’s children. It’s not what you might expect if you’ve ever seen an episode of their raucous one-minute Instagram show, Sidetalk. The Saturday in January is crystalline and frigid, but the two NYU students arrive with open puffer jackets, no gloves, and a “Let’s get right down to business” competence that makes it possible to forget they’re only 19. on the dot, just as they said they would. Trent Simonian and Jack Byrne show up at 12:30 p.m. Photo: Jamel Shabazz for New York Magazine Whether you read your first Chalkbeat article in 2014 or today, thank you for being a part of our community and helping us prove what’s possible when people and communities have the information they need to create a better future together.Sidetalk’s Trent Simonian and Jack Byrne with their frequent guest Spider Cuz. We love what we do here, and we love our community. If the idea of growing a local news organization that cares deeply about our country is interesting to you, I hope you will sign up to follow our journey. We are also indebted to those who pioneered the idea of “civic journalism.” Finally, “Civic News” honors the larger emerging movement that our work is a part of, a movement of journalism that prioritizes community benefit instead of commercial gain thinks of readers as community members, not consumers and knows that our work is crucial to democracy. Civic also means local, and we believe that the American story is best told locally: in communities, with communities, and for communities. That is why we work so hard to cover them. We picked the name “Civic News Company” because education and elections are pillars of civic life. We are officially launching Civic News Company, the parent organization for Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and possibly future beats to come.
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