Rediscover New York with Gesso’s Summer Staycation Series

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June 18, 2020

 

 

LOCATION-BASED ARTS AND CULTURE PLATFORM GESSO OFFERS FREE, SOCIALLY-DISTANCED IMMERSIVE AUDIO WALKS FOR NEW YORKERS TO ESCAPE THE CITY WITHOUT EVER LEAVING THEIR FAVORITE NEIGHBORHOOD

 

NEW YORK, NY: Gesso, the Brooklyn-based tech and culture company known for its location-based audio experiences, announces a new Summer Staycation series consisting of free self-guided walks around New York’s most artistically-rich neighborhoods.   

 

As traveling abroad is put on hold this summer, city dwellers are looking for more meaningful ways to engage with their surroundings while maintaining social distance. From El Barrio to Bed-Stuy, the Gesso Experiences app illuminates underreported histories and empowering stories of community strength, secret details of treasured buildings and even themed walks from guided meditations and murder mysteries. The Gesso team encourages New Yorkers who are curious about their own city to try Gesso’s premium, self-guided tour product for free all summer, allowing individuals to be in charge of their own exploration. Sometimes the simplest vacation is to be a tourist in one's own city, if only for a few minutes.

 

Gesso has established itself as a groundbreaking tool for art and exploration.

With over 500 podcast episodes downloaded 60,000+ times and original content snippets tagged throughout New York City, the Gesso Experiences app brings the past, present, and future of place to life. 

 

Every neighborhood has a story, and the Gesso team plans to share these powerful narratives through their audio walks, inviting locals to see their city with a fresh perspective.

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Gesso’s Summer Staycation Self-Guided Release Schedule:

 

• June 27 | Pastoral Paradise: Prospect Park

• July 10-17 | Paris in New York

• July 11 | The Last Eccentrics of Greenwich Village 

• July 18 | Art + Anarchy: Creatives and Misfits of the Bowery 

• July 25 | Tide + Toil: The Enduring Work Ethic of Dumbo

• August 1 | Hipsters + Holdouts: Masters of Style in Williamsburg 

• August 8 | Halfsung Heroes 

• August 22 | Hi-Fi, Lo-Fi, Bed-Stuy

• September 12 | Practical Grandeur: The Making of the Brooklyn Bridge 

 

Released on Saturdays, available all summer. Each tour will begin in a different location, and the app will tell users where to start. All they have to do is put their headphones on and press play.

 

For the latest updates on Gesso’s Summer Staycation series, visit gesso.app/staycation

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Contact: Henna Wang, Co-Founder, Henna@gesso.app

 

About Gesso:

Gesso is named after the priming layer of paint that must first be applied to a canvas before crafting a masterpiece. In the spirit of its namesake, Gesso makes audio-first, geo-responsive digital guides that go under the surface of a city - presenting the world’s hidden gems through exclusive original content, a curated selection of the best podcasts, and official audio tours through the storied cultural institutions and forgotten corners of the world’s most famous cities. 

 

About the Founders:

Co-founded by Henna Wang, Michael Reynolds and Demetrio Filocamo, the Gesso team brings together decades of experience in technology, art and social impact.

 

Henna Wang is an art historian and sociologist who is deeply interested in human creativity and connection. Henna’s background is in the arts and international development, and has worked with organizations ranging from the Met, the Smithsonian, Sotheby’s, Phillips, the Aspen Institute, the Cherie Blair Foundation and the State Department. For Gesso, she leads on partnerships and design.