Cultural Fingerprints explores the interactions between language, culture, technology, and place. Hosted by Rhea Kapur, the show features conversations with designers of urban signage in NYC; readings and analysis of folklore from around the world; interviews with language and culture experts; musings on how AI can aid in multilingual and interdisciplinary inquiry; and more.
For additional details: culturalfingerprints.com (https://www.culturalfingerprints.com/)
Story Behind the Choking Sign: New York Basketball, Filipino Culture, and Hoy! with Kristofferson San Pablo
At Hoy!, a new casual Filipino joint on the Lower East Side, the choking sign features the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson helping Wemby (Victor Wembanyama) cough up a lumpia, or Filipino egg roll. During this summer’s fated game, the Spurs choked on the lead… and so on the poster, Wemby chokes on something from Hoy!’s menu. Los Angeles-based artist and creative director Kristofferson San Pablo came up with it while himself in New York for the finals, when he was also helping his cousin, owner-chef Cyed Adraincem, bring the longtime idea of Hoy! to life. The two grew up in California’s Inland Empire and talked about opening a restaurant for years. When Cyed finally called with the keys to a corner space in the Lower East Side, Kristofferson took on everything creative, from logos and merch to the hand-painted interior and plans for music. The concept draws on Filipino night markets, with Kristofferson bringing his years in fine art, streetwear, and DJing into the mix. Our conversation follows those connections through the restaurant: how their choking sign doubles as a basketball comic, how their Filipino DJ friends will contribute to a planned mixtape series and live sets at Hoy!, and how their restaurant concept reflects and brings awareness to the Filipino-American cultural identity. We also talk about Kristofferson’s recent first museum exhibition at UC Irvine, his journey with his commercial and fine art practices, and his insistence that his cousin Cyed get in front of the camera, so people can see the Filipino team behind Hoy!’s food.
Hoy!: @hoy.nyc
Kristofferson San Pablo: kristoffersonsanpablo.com
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
22 Aug 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Maya Congee Cafe with Layla Chen, Ray Sison, and Yuan Wei
Ray Sison was a regular at Maya Congee Cafe in Bed-Stuy for months before its owner, Layla Chen, asked what he did for a living. When she found out he ran Playlist, a design studio, it sparked an organic collaboration: one that actually turned into a full rebrand once Layla decided to open a more grown-up, sit-down second location of the restaurant. Ray brought in his studio partner Yuan Wei, and together the three of them built an identity around something deeply personal to Layla: a 90s calendar print of Shanghainese women playing mahjong that she'd kept since childhood, an image she tied to a specific era of newfound freedom and comfort for women in China. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, we talk about how that calendar print hanging on the walls found new life on Maya's choking sign, how popular folklore about the Lazy Susan’s American origins gave the branding its cross-cultural throughline, and how Ray’s years teaching design shaped his approach to running a studio and mentoring the people in it.
Maya Congee Cafe: mayacongeecafe.com
Playlist Studio: playlist.studio
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
26 Jul 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Rosella with Peter Arkle and Jeff Miller
Ask chef Jeff Miller how he knows someone, and the answer is often through Rosella: regulars, others in the restaurant industry, and even his wife, who first walked up to their counter as a guest. Illustrator Peter Arkle is on that list too. Bold yet comforting flavors solidified their friendship during the pandemic, when Jeff would pass bites to Peter from behind a screen at Grape and Grain. After Rosella opened on Avenue A in the East Village, the choking sign was the first thing Jeff asked him to draw. Peter came back with two namesake Rosella parrots in collared shirts, swapping wings for slender arms (with painted nails) to allow for clear visual communication of the steps of the lifesaving maneuver. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, we discuss how drawing may actually be one of the best ways to learn about the world, why Rosella diverged from the fine-dining omakase craze in favor of accessibility, and how eating out around New York City functions as an ongoing cultural and culinary education.
Peter Arkle: peterarkle.com
Rosella: rosellanyc.com
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
9 Jun 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Merging Skateboarding, Graffiti, and Cartoons with Van Eggers
Van Eggers has been a skateboarder since he was five and a graffiti artist since he was eleven, and the core of his artwork traces back to those two identities. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, Van walks us through his Long Beach years: living in the legendary Winnipeg Street skate house, full of pros sleeping on army cots and exchanging music, art, and skate lore; relentlessly pitching his work to anyone connected to the skate brands he’d grown up admiring; and painting murals at the parks by day before skating under their lights after dark. Those experiences eventually led to Van’s Common Meadows Creamery choking sign, drawn in the spirit of the mid-century advertisement illustrations he loves. Van reflects on how the incredibly diverse mix of communities in skateboarding surfaces in the boards, graphics, and clothing the sport produces, and on why skating, painful as it’s become with his ankle injury, remains his way of staying alive.
Van Eggers: vaneggersart.com
Common Meadows Creamery: commonmeadows.com
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
25 May 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Sketching in the Restaurant World with Sara Rabin
Many custom NYC choking safety signs were drawn by those on staff. Graphic designer, illustrator, and artist Sara Rabin has two on the walls of New York City establishments: one made for Dimes in Chinatown, where she waitressed for a decade, and one from Rodeo in Crown Heights, opened by a friend from that same downtown restaurant orbit. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, Sara walks us through both: the hand-drawn Dimes sign she created not long after spotting a wall of bananas in its Chinatown window and deciding to work there, and the Rodeo sign, for which she dressed her boyfriend and her sister’s boyfriend in thrifted cowboy hats and posed them through every step of the Heimlich maneuver. We explore the summer she spent as a teenager at an all-women’s boardinghouse on the Upper West Side, which first sold her on New York City as the place to be. Additionally, we discuss the lasting influence of her training in fashion illustration at FIT, her lifelong loyalty to messy, sketch-style pen-and-ink work in the lineage of Shel Silverstein, and the tight-knit social scene of the service industry, where creative restaurant staff kept getting tapped to design the bars and restaurants in which they worked or which were opening up around them.
Sara Rabin: sararabin.net
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
19 May 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: City Aesthetics and Escaping from New York with Phil Ashworth
How did a dystopian John Carpenter movie end up saving lives in New York cafes? In this new episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, illustrator Phil Ashworth tells the story behind one of city’s most beloved pieces of restaurant safety signage: his Heimlich poster starring Snake Plissken, the reluctant antihero of Escape from New York (1981), begrudgingly saving a choking victim in a bombed-out cityscape (and checking their mouth for hidden razor blades along the way). We trace Phil’s path from drawing at his dad’s drafting table and studying illustration at RISD to pursuing the craft in the city, and we discuss how a basement brainstorm with Trey Kirchoff at Gimme! Coffee helped kick off a citywide wave of personalized choking posters in the cafes and bars of late-2000s New York.
Phil Ashworth: philashworth.com
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
14 May 2026
Spaces Between: Maxwell Neely-Cohen on Archiving Sound and Movement
How does a record collection started at age 12 shape a career spanning literary publishing, dramaturgy, and digital preservation? In the first episode of Spaces Between, a new Cultural Fingerprints series, Maxwell Neely-Cohen shares how growing up immersed in D.C.'s go-go, punk, and electronic music scenes laid the groundwork for a practice that refuses to sit in one medium. We dive into Max's early days as a classically trained percussionist and the makings of The HTML Review, the publication he runs with artist and engineer Shelby Wilson that treats the web itself as a medium. Then, we turn to his work as a consulting dramaturg at the New York Choreographic Institute and his passion for personal, community, and professional archiving, including why oral history might be the truest way to preserve dance.
SPACES BETWEEN uncovers the personal histories of those who work across disciplines and mediums. When crossing paths with someone who does not allow their practice to be placed within a box, this asks—what brought them there? What aspects of their background, unique experiences, beliefs, and life story informed that choice?
Maxwell Neely-Cohen: maxy.world
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
23 Mar 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Basketball, Food, and Design with Pitu Sanchez
How did this famed moment in New York basketball culture become embedded in a restaurant safety sign? In the second episode of Cultural Fingerprints, designer and art director Pitu Sanchez shares how he intersected his love for basketball, food, design, and New York in this legendary passion project: creating a restaurant safety sign that repurposes NBA star Reggie Miller’s iconic trash-talk “choke” gesture, famously directed at renowned filmmaker and New York Knicks superfan Spike Lee as he sat courtside, as a visual demonstration of a choking emergency. We dive into Pitu’s design philosophy as shaped by his upbringing in the diverse borough of Queens, his door-to-door giveaway efforts to make this sign the go-to choking poster for sports bars in New York, and the community of food and basketball lovers the work has brought together.
Pitu Sanchez: pitu.nyc
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
13 Mar 2026
Story Behind the Choking Sign: Fish Cheeks with Lia Kantrowitz and Jessica Saesue
A choking safety sign as art? In this episode, illustrator Lia Kantrowitz and creative director Jessica Saesue discuss their work on the custom choking sign for Fish Cheeks, a contemporary, seafood-focused Thai restaurant in New York. Their creative relationship began at VICE nearly a decade ago and now extends to teaming up on branding projects for not only Fish Cheeks, but also 55 Hospitality’s other culinary ventures! Lia and Jessica share how they interpreted the flexible regulatory language describing choking safety signage to decide on the layout and artistic style of the Fish Cheeks custom sign. They also discuss the connections and boundaries between designer, illustrator, and creative director roles within hospitality, educational institutions, and the real world. This conversation confirms that there is so much more to these signs than meets the eye; they actually hold the stories of the New Yorkers who create them.
Lia Kantrowitz: liakantro.com
Jessica Saesue: jessicasaesue.com
For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com
5 Mar 2026
Welcome to Cultural Fingerprints!
Welcome to the podcast for Cultural Fingerprints, a home for the intersections of language, culture, technology, and place. I'm your host, Rhea Kapur: a researcher, artist, urban archivist, and technologist. More at www.rheakapur.info and www.culturalfingerprints.com, or find me @culturalfingerprints on Instagram and TikTok!
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