NEW YORK   STATE OF MIND

“They wanted me to keep my long blonde hair and be feminine, because it’s marketable… I knew that would never be me.”

It’s the Monday after New York City’s Pride parade. Rainbow flags still adorn the storefronts and apartments of Graham Avenue in East Williamsburg. Once a predominantly Italian-American neighbourhood, this odd pocket of Brooklyn remains one of the slowest to change, despite its proximity to perceived ‘cool’. Two stops away from the Times Square of Brooklyn – aka Bedford Avenue – ‘Via Vespucci’ is the kind of place where men on the corner still speak loudly with their hands and women sport sky-reaching bouffants. You’ll find an energy practitioner next door to a cobbler, traditional Giglio feasts taking over the same block where creatives produce comedy shows from their garage.

Since moving here 18 months ago, Lacey Baker has settled into the right place geographically, professionally and personally. Something about New York’s pace of life, its changing weather, its melting pot of communities feels like the right fit. Back in LA, the skater would be either in a car or in her apartment, avoiding traffic