Joey Betras, Web Designer
Joey wears: denim jacket with lycra cotton lining and Japanese rib, pima cotton button top, infinity scarf of fleece shell and cotton lycra lining.
Me: So Joey, first things first, you are a web designer. I am always curious to know why people do the things they do. Why build sites?
Joey: It was kind of by accident actually. I used to be an audio engineer in a previous life, working at a mastering studio in the city. I left studio life though because it was killing me, and I needed something to do. I have a friend who is a really cool clothing designer (much like yourself) and we decided that I should build an online store to sell his closeouts, a store kind of inspired by Karma Loop. I had absolutely no experience in web development, but I was firmly convinced that I wanted to build the website myself, even the eCommerce part, rather than use some pre-made system. For some reason HTML, CSS and Javascript came incredibly easy to me, it was so intuitive. Not only intuitive, but fun too. Ha, seriously, building sites is like a puzzle to me, and I get really excited about making them all fit together and turn into something that people like to use. I do both the design and coding too, which allows me to express myself creatively at times, and at other times I get to get really geeky with the code, which is so much fun for me. After about a year on my own, I went to a program at NYU to really get solid knowledge about web development, and since then I've just been teaching myself via the amazing online community. The web development community online is one of the most open, helping communities that exists in any industry.
Me: While making my site I saw you posted a video on the blog section of Ray Barretto's Acid, one of my favorite salsa musicians and albums of all time. Any other interests in the Fania roster, and what else are you listening to these days?
Joey: Man, Ray Barretto is tops. His record "Acid" NEVER gets old, and of course the Fania crew is insane … Ruben Blades, Tito Gomez … all of them. I'm a drummer as well, so I'm all about rhythm. Latin rhythms - rhumba, mamba, salsa, samba and all that - are basically food for the soul. I am a big fan of African rhythms as well. Music has always been a huge part of my life. Right now I'm crushing on this Bela Fleck record called "Throw Down Your Heart" that he made in Mali. He plays this great meandering Malian music on his BANJO! Bela is the beez knees.
Me: I noticed you have been traveling a bit these days, any interesting travel stories?
Joey: I took a huge vacation for the whole month of August. Sometimes you just have to do that. I went to Paris, drove down to the south of France and back up to Paris, went to Barcelona for a bit, then went to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Barcelona is one of the hottest cities in the world, hands down. I'm a huge soccer fan, and Barcelona is my team, so that was special. I was there for 5 days and literally woke up and went straight to the beach every day and didn't come back until it was almost dark. I played in a great beach soccer game while I was there, which was cool, and picked up a gnarly black eye that I still kind of have the shade of, ha.
Me: To occupy or not to occupy?
Joey: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy The World, Occupy Your Mind. For real.
For more information about Joey Betras's work please visit joeybetras.com