Finland in New York
Either I was deliberately searching for them or I just happened to bump into these things. Little traces of Finland in New York, in places I did not expect to see them.
Nokia. I know, it's global, but where else do they have a whole theatre sponsored? NOKIA Theatre Times Square is according to its webpage "New York City's finest concert venue featuring the hottest rock shows in Manhattan". I dare to doubt this, however - for example, I'm not sure how hot or rock is LL Cool J, one of the upcoming artists there. Nokia just can't be cool - Apple is cool, Nokia is just...well, you know.
Teuvo Tulio. Yes, our very own Latvian-Persian-Turkish-Polish film director Theodor Antonius Tugai, born in St. Petersburg but later grown up in Finland and known as Teuvo Tulio (1912-2000) was consecrated a 4-movie series called "Master of Melodrama" in the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November. I went to see two of the movies which were very cute and nostalgic to me, with their countryside portrayals and music scenes but which might have left some part of the audience perplexed...there was a long article on Tulio in Village Voice, among others. A favourite of the movie freaks, if nothing else!
Moomins. I saw the whole Moomin series translated into English first in a bookstore, then at my (Finnish) friend's (American) landlady's home. No explanation for Finnish / Swedish / Japanese readers needed on the Moomins.
Kaiku. A "Finnish world music" band, with two Finnish singers residing in New York, Jaana Kantola and Paula Jaakkola. I had read about them in Time Out or some other up-to-date publication, and was then asked to see them live in Zebulon, a very nice live music joint in Williamsburg. It was weird hearing songs in Finnish (and partly in English, French and Spanish, I believe) performed in a bar in New York. Most of the crowd was not Finnish - that much I could gather by the way they looked like - and thus did not understand the lyrics at all. You can have a look at Kaiku on their website and listen to them in MySpace. Another musical discovery including Finns was a vinyl record in a record store in Williamsburg, Academy Records: they had a recording of the Helsinki University Chorus (Ylioppilaskunnan laulajat) from the 1970s, including some "famous Finnish songs". It cost something like 3 dollars and if I had had more space in my luggage, I would have surely bought that one...sigh.
Finnish candy and make-up. The vodka-filled chocolate candies by Fazer were received with great enthusiasm in my office at the UN. I was surprised to see Finnish candy a bit all over New York: I saw Halva liquorice at Duane Reade's (a big pharmacy chain, everywhere in New York: pharmacy meaning here a store in which you can find almost everything from food to beauty care to medicine) and Fazermint in many general supermarkets. Well done for marketing! The same goes for Lumene, the biggest make-up brand in Finland - they were also everywhere, competing with the big French brands. Nordic beauty sells...
Scandinavia House. From the official side, there is the all-Nordic cultural center Scandinavia House where I sadly never went to, just went past it when walking from the UN to the Penn Station to take the train for my Thanksgiving holiday trip. They have art exhibitions, musical evenings and film screenings - maybe I just wasn't homesick enough to go there yet.
Besides these phenomena that I noticed myself, I got following remarks on Finland from New Yorkers:
"Oh, it's a very metal country!" (clearly from a metal fan)
"Isn't it really dark there?"
"Don't you have a lot of suicides there?"
"Didn't you win the Eurovision song contest a few years ago?" (from an Israeli, no American would know the Eurovision...)
All of these are pretty much true. Except that the suicide rates have gone down the last few years, nothing to boast about anymore. Seriously, which other country would be sick enough to be so proud of their high suicide rates? Maybe it's just our morbid sense of humor. When I was asked to describe my home country, I told something like: "It's quite boring and a bit like Canada, lots of forest and lakes." At some point I also added "but we have free education and health care" which brought about a great awe in the US. Welcome to Finland...
Nokia. I know, it's global, but where else do they have a whole theatre sponsored? NOKIA Theatre Times Square is according to its webpage "New York City's finest concert venue featuring the hottest rock shows in Manhattan". I dare to doubt this, however - for example, I'm not sure how hot or rock is LL Cool J, one of the upcoming artists there. Nokia just can't be cool - Apple is cool, Nokia is just...well, you know.
Teuvo Tulio. Yes, our very own Latvian-Persian-Turkish-Polish film director Theodor Antonius Tugai, born in St. Petersburg but later grown up in Finland and known as Teuvo Tulio (1912-2000) was consecrated a 4-movie series called "Master of Melodrama" in the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November. I went to see two of the movies which were very cute and nostalgic to me, with their countryside portrayals and music scenes but which might have left some part of the audience perplexed...there was a long article on Tulio in Village Voice, among others. A favourite of the movie freaks, if nothing else!
Moomins. I saw the whole Moomin series translated into English first in a bookstore, then at my (Finnish) friend's (American) landlady's home. No explanation for Finnish / Swedish / Japanese readers needed on the Moomins.
Kaiku. A "Finnish world music" band, with two Finnish singers residing in New York, Jaana Kantola and Paula Jaakkola. I had read about them in Time Out or some other up-to-date publication, and was then asked to see them live in Zebulon, a very nice live music joint in Williamsburg. It was weird hearing songs in Finnish (and partly in English, French and Spanish, I believe) performed in a bar in New York. Most of the crowd was not Finnish - that much I could gather by the way they looked like - and thus did not understand the lyrics at all. You can have a look at Kaiku on their website and listen to them in MySpace. Another musical discovery including Finns was a vinyl record in a record store in Williamsburg, Academy Records: they had a recording of the Helsinki University Chorus (Ylioppilaskunnan laulajat) from the 1970s, including some "famous Finnish songs". It cost something like 3 dollars and if I had had more space in my luggage, I would have surely bought that one...sigh.
Finnish candy and make-up. The vodka-filled chocolate candies by Fazer were received with great enthusiasm in my office at the UN. I was surprised to see Finnish candy a bit all over New York: I saw Halva liquorice at Duane Reade's (a big pharmacy chain, everywhere in New York: pharmacy meaning here a store in which you can find almost everything from food to beauty care to medicine) and Fazermint in many general supermarkets. Well done for marketing! The same goes for Lumene, the biggest make-up brand in Finland - they were also everywhere, competing with the big French brands. Nordic beauty sells...
Scandinavia House. From the official side, there is the all-Nordic cultural center Scandinavia House where I sadly never went to, just went past it when walking from the UN to the Penn Station to take the train for my Thanksgiving holiday trip. They have art exhibitions, musical evenings and film screenings - maybe I just wasn't homesick enough to go there yet.
Besides these phenomena that I noticed myself, I got following remarks on Finland from New Yorkers:
"Oh, it's a very metal country!" (clearly from a metal fan)
"Isn't it really dark there?"
"Don't you have a lot of suicides there?"
"Didn't you win the Eurovision song contest a few years ago?" (from an Israeli, no American would know the Eurovision...)
All of these are pretty much true. Except that the suicide rates have gone down the last few years, nothing to boast about anymore. Seriously, which other country would be sick enough to be so proud of their high suicide rates? Maybe it's just our morbid sense of humor. When I was asked to describe my home country, I told something like: "It's quite boring and a bit like Canada, lots of forest and lakes." At some point I also added "but we have free education and health care" which brought about a great awe in the US. Welcome to Finland...
Comments
Welcome back to Finland!