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Interviewee: Tyler Dow

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Stephanie Robinson-Ramirez

Summary by Emma Garr

May 8, 2025

Disciplines

African American Studies | Public History

Abstract

Tyler Dow is an actor, rapper, and activist from the Bronx, interviewed here in conversation with Doctor Mark Naison and Stephanie Robinson Ramirez. A 33 year old from Co-op City—the largest housing development in the United States—Tyler gives his perspective on the art and cultural scene of his neighborhood during the turn of the twenty-first century.

Beginning with the background of his familial ties to Co-op City, Dow explains that the first twenty five years of his life were spent in one of the neighborhood’s many high-rise apartments. He describes Co-op City as a proudly middle-class community, one that residents made clear was different from the adjacent project housing units. As a child, Dow attended a private school near Woodlawn and then Talent Unlimited High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan, a diversion from the expected path of Co-op City youth to the local Truman High School.

Growing up in Co-op City was, for Tyler, a unique experience. In the context of the greater Bronx, friends traveled to his neighborhood to frequent movie theaters, shopping, and more social activities that residents didn’t have to leave the area for. This isolation—though self-sufficient—made commutes a trek. The express bus for extensive commutes was a part of everyday life that members of Co-op City shared, which always involved at least one bus and often a transfer. Geographically isolated from the rest of the Bronx, the residents capitalized on their unique space to create a localized community, which they proudly displayed and defended.

This difference in attending school outside the borough, combined with the isolation from other parts of the Bronx, Dow remarks, shaped his personal interests and the artistic and cultural scene of the early 2000s in Co-op City. He remembers being different from the stereotypical Black kid from the Bronx. Instead of exclusively hip-hop, he enjoyed mosh pits and desired Jimi Hendrix-style hair. This placed Dow directly within the metal movement of the time, started by a guitar teacher from Lehman High School in a church basement. The First Lutheran Church basement became the epicenter of this cultural niche, bringing kids from the Co-op City area together to dance. Often overlooked in the shadow of hip hop and other Bronx art forms, the metal scene of the early 2000s held arguably equal significance, with over three hundred kids attending on any given night that bands were playing.

Tyler Dow’s excitable personality and pride for Co-op City are evident throughout the interview. Recounting his many memories and even adding a freestyle rap to the recorded conversation ([52:37-53:52]), he offers an account of middle-class lifestyle and metal-music culture that is essential for understanding Bronx history.

Link to Video Recording: https://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/baahp/id/64/rec/34

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