Diamond Cut Barber Otis Tyson Knows Best

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Otis Tyson, 62 has been a barber for over 45 years. Growing up in Havana, Cuba, he used to watch his grandfather cut hair and says that’s where his connection and passion for the the profession grew.

But this charismatic barber didn’t start out in the business, he was an accountant first and went to Law School at NYU for a semester before dropping out and working in sales.  He sold commercial furniture and traveled nationally before he realized his passion remained at a barber shop and cutting hair invigorated him like nothing else.

He calls the barbershop a place for camaraderie among the men who work there and the clients they serve.  He likes that he can make up his own hours and in essence be his own boss.

On a typical day you can find Tyson working 12 hour shifts and tending to over a dozen loyal clients who have followed him to the very shop he is in now. Building a clientele base only comes with time he says and trust is something that needs to be earned. And over the span of four decades, his barber’s chair has become a place for therapeutic sessions for the many men who come to him not only for a haircut  but also guidance.

 

Choreographer Melissa West discusses her new project

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Staten Island-based dancer and choreographer Melissa West is working on a new project tentatively named “in the eve they plant flowers” after a poem she wrote of the same name. West says she was inspired by classic literature and recent worldwide protests, including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.

This is West’s first time developing a dance with the aid of books.

“Normally I use paintings or visual arts, so this is very it’s very funny,” she says. “This is a very different perspective for me.”

Diary Post: Job Satisfaction Survey

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When I sat down to find another community for my survey, facebook was the first social media tool I tried. I figured it would be a good place to start since I was used to it already. I typed “job groups” and “career organizations” into the search bar.

Perhaps these searches weren’t specific enough. Neither of them turned up anything substantial. I kept finding groups for networking support, as well as career planners and life coaches. Although these topics are jobs related, they would not offer me an audience specific enough for my survey. My survey is geared towards those who already have a job or career, not those who are planning and deciding on one.

I was more successful with Meetup.com. After setting up an account I choose “New Career,” “Career Network,” and “Jobs” as my interests. Like facebook, I found similar networking and job search groups. The difference was that I was also able to find groups with people who already had a job, and were sponsoring upcoming job fairs. Bottom line, meetup was more suitable because I could find a specific group I knew would take interest in my survey. One such group was named “Creating Change: Get the Job, Results, Life You Want!”

The next step was for me to join the groups I found and contact their members. This also turned out to be fairly easy; I could read the profiles of the members to see if they listed a job or not.

Meetup members can send emails to anyone in their group. Even though I can do the same on Facebook, I like the fact that Meetup seems to be a more mature, professional setting. I proceeded to email my survey to as many members as possible.

Oulimata Ba

Social Security Survey: A Primer on Methods

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As a nation, the United States has a stable of perennial debates, but none are as pervasive as the subject of Social Security.

Despite the politics driving the discussion, Social Security merits a serious, contemplative look. Our parents and grandparents paid into a system that they rely on today thanks to young workers, and we’ll spend the next couple of decades looking for some degree of security when we get to a point where we can’t work any longer.

“Does Social Security Matter” is a survey aimed at getting a nonpartisan survey on a range of demographics. To that end, there were no questions about partisan politics or the pending elections. Instead, the questions are limited to individual experiences and opinions about not just Social Security, but also retirement in general.

As of Tuesday night, 43 respondents of differing ages, regions and opinions responded to the survey. The first few responses were almost exclusively students in the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism program, but many of those students also come from different perspectives and experiences with retirement. That said, all of them are too young to really experience a gripping reaction to the need of a solvent retirement plan.

I extended my search for responses by reaching out to an e-mail list of more than 30 individuals from around the country, and requested that the recipients forward the request to their circles. I then used Google Reader to search for articles and blog posts discussing Social Security. I would then register in the respective communities and post a comment asking readers to take part in the survey.

“Off topic, but if any TK readers have a moment, I’m a student journalist doing a quick nonscienti­fic, nonpartisa­n survey on Social Security and am hoping to get some feedback. It’s just a few questions aimed at better understand­ing how people perceive Social Security and retirement­. If you have any interest in participat­ing, it’s at http://bit­.ly/ss_sur­vey.

Cheers.”

The comment was left on a range of sites: Huffington Post, Hot Air, Patterico’s Pontifications, Daily Kos, Think Progress, the Washington Post’s Wonkblog and The Daily Caller. All blogs are political blogs of different political affiliations but with vibrant and active commenter communities.

The responses are candid, and most seem willing to express their honest opinion. The biggest hurdle was in my asking for e-mails. I decided against requiring it until halfway through the first three weeks only because I didn’t want to deter people from participating. Unfortunately, I found that interesting answers had no attribution and I had no hope of reaching out to the person. Making e-mails required, however, led to at least one false e-mail and responses to comments asking if I was just phishing for e-mail addresses.

Otherwise, I’m fairly confident that my questions were targeted and that the survey was structured in a logical and productive way that garnered a good share of helpful data points.

Barbering In The Blood Of Bronx Stylist

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After 44 years as a barber/ stylist, Iraida Reyes has not intentions of retiring and leaving the customers she not only cuts hair for, but also counsels.

She knew since the age of seven that what was considered a traditional career for a woman would not be for her after spending one day in her father’s barber shop in Puerto Rico.

A bloodline of Barbers is what Reyes comes from. Not only was Reyes’s father a barber, but her great grandfather, uncles and three older brothers were too.

“ I call it hair spray in the blood,” she said.

After that one day in the late 1950’s, Reyes spent everyday in her father’s barbershop.  Instead of learning how to sew and cook, she learned how to cut hair.

At just 10 years old she did her first cut for a friend. From then Reyes cut the hair of friends and family members until graduating from Paris Beauty School in the Bronx at 17 as a professional in 1967.

She has cut hair for three and our generations of some families in the Melrose section of the Bronx, often helping couples through marriage problems and others with drug addiction.

The 63-year-old known commonly says she wants to cut hair until she now longer can.

 

Working Like a Dog

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When you walk into Camp Bow Wow in Long Island City, N.Y., the smell of dog is the first thing you notice. This isn’t a camp for children, but for New Yorkers’ furry friends – their dogs.
Stephen Neagus brought the Camp Bow Wow franchise to New York for the first time in 2008, after leaving his job in finance. Three years later, Camp Bow Wow employs 12 people, houses around 20 dogs a night and provides daycare to around 20 more. Neagus puts owners’ minds at ease with an interview process that ensures that dogs can handle the social atmosphere, and 24/7 webcam access that they can check with an app he sells for iPhones. For an extra fee, Neagus will pick up campers in the “Doggie Bus,” and transport them to his 10,000 square foot doggie daycare facility.
Neagus credits his success to people’s devotion to their canine companions. People will cut back on creature comforts for themselves because of hard times, he said, but caring for their beloved pets is still a high priority. Because of his continued success, Neagus’s business has recently been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, and he is planning an advertising campaign in local subway stations.
Although Neagus took a pay cut at first to start his business, he said he’s never been happier and that working for himself, for something he loves, has made him a changed man.

 

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Working Like a Dog

Survey Diary

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I thought my idea for a survey was a great one, and one that everyone, regardless of whether or not they had a job, could relate to. I hoped that this broad appeal would make people more likely to take my survey.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. I think what I learned from this assignment is that web surveys are extremely easy to ignore. I was the first person to post my survey onto the J-School group, and got maybe three or four responses for an assignment that all 90 of us had. What’s worse, I realized that I did the same thing, taking just a few of the dozens of surveys posted onto the group.

In the end, I got 32 responses, and that was after convincing my own mother that she had to take the survey. I had posted the survey on facebook multiple times, and twitter one or two times, with limited response. At some point, it was 2 a.m. and I was bored, and figured that any of my Facebook friends that were still awake couldn’t have anything much more valuable to do than fill out a quick survey, and started digitally bum-rushing my friends with survey links.

That strategy worked well, in one night I doubled my respondents. I tried posting my survey to other people’s walls, to help spread it to a wider audience, but not bites. I think that surveys need to be very actively pitched to people, or else they won’t bother spending the time to do it. I think this week I’m going to try spamming a few LinkedIn groups, because I think that the type of people who are more active on LinkedIn might be more likely to fill out this survey.

I know from my own survey habits though, I won’t do it unless it’s literally right in front of my face, or there’s something in it for me. Phone calls sometimes work on me, and people in the street with clipboards nearly always do. I bet I would have a lot more responses if I went out and beat the pavement for this thing.

Diary Post: Workplace Romance Survey

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When creating this survey, I wanted to choose a topic that most people would be interested in. Since I knew a fair amount of people who had dated their co-workers I thought creating a survey that asked participants what was the result of the dating would be interesting.

I found that when making up the questions, having some that were open ended were the best way to get good full-fledged responses. The participants were very open and talked about their experiences with dating people that they have worked with while also disclosing some funny and intimate anecdotes. Even though my survey had more questions than other people’s survey in the class, I think it worked. The participants were very willing to answer all questions and didn’t leave any blank, which I found to be very encouraging. They also forwarded the survey to other friends and colleagues which allowed me to get a good range of people.

I ended up with 60 people who took the survey. The results surprised me because I thought there would be more people who dated a co-worker than not. But the results showed there was pretty much an even amount with most people admitting nothing happened after the dating and that it was awkward once they broke up.

Conducting this survey was really fun for me because I got to read people’s responses about how they handled being around a co-worker that they dated and how they dealt with the awkwardness that came afterwards.

Diary Post: Preparing for the job market

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In creating my survey, I ended up targeting a very specific group of people: those who have recently been faced with finding a job after graduating from college. This was something I was interested in after graduating myself and seeing the struggle of my friends who did not choose to continue their educations. As I attended a university that is known for specializing in a fairly obscure field (music business), I was also interested in learning about the experiences of people who went to other schools. Additionally, I decided to focus on recent graduates who have been most directly affected by the economic downturn, though satisfaction with colleges’ career services departments was my primary concern. In an environment where everyone is brought up to succeed but then knows they will likely fail, there are certain things to consider.

I made my survey on Google Docs for ease of organization. My questions focused on the responder’s relationship with his or her undergraduate institution and how prepared for the job market he or she felt. Unfortunately, there was one typo that I didn’t catch before initially sharing the survey, and I think I should have made sharing an email address optional for potential follow-up opportunities. Playing off of in-person interview techniques, I made sure to allow for an “Anything else?” box at the end, particularly because I thought people would have frustrations to vent.

Of course, I started with sharing the link to Facebook. I only have a personal page right now, as I do not think my current level of popularity as a journalist necessitates a professional fan page. Additionally, my intended field, music and entertainment journalism, is not as strict about potential biases as hard news is.

I tweeted about the poll twice. The first one was retweeted by four people, the second by one. In the former case, it was retweeted by users that I have not personally interacted with–fortunately, a friend encouraged her friends to take the survey, and they shared it with their followers. At the point of this writing, I have 350 followers, though this number was somewhat lower when I first started. Due to the fact that I do not block spam accounts in order to look more popular, I am not sure what percentage of these followers are actual humans.

I did utilize one particularly unconventional method to spread around the survey. I have been a longtime member of a popular celebrity news and gossip aggregate blog that does a free for all comments post every Friday in order to foster a sense of community with its users. One Friday, I shared the link to the survey on the week’s free for all post, asking other users to participate. I figured that this would get me good results, as an online community frequented by people in their early 20s. As anticipated, this was a success and significantly more responses were submitted after posting the link on this site.

So far, I have received 40 responses to my poll. I may try to share the link around some more, but I think I have acquired enough data at this point to draw some conclusions.