Hartmann grew up just north of town in Westchester, and explains that until recently, he worked “at a nice corporate job — like, company enough that I had to put bad things into Salesforce and all the things I hated.” Running a rowdy Instagram account has led to quite a few opportunities – helping brands with their digital strategy here, and creating standalone memes there. Income, but Hartmann nevertheless considers himself a “huge scam” to make some money through sponsored posts and collaborations with brands such as M Jewelers. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” he jokes.

That’s part of the reason we talk: Hartmann has his eyes on the future. He’s excited about the collaboration he’s working with small modern studio. He jokes about franchising his niche meme page and starting a “conglomerate” of pages for different cities across the country. He has a lot of ideas, some of which require losing his anonymity: “I also want to make longer format content in front of the camera and bring some of this ‘comment’ to life in different ways,” he explains. He also loves to get into the consulting business.

Hartmann began creating and posting memes on Nolita Dirtbag’s account in 2021. One of the first to have any effect was a simple white background post with “IMMÁ PEE ON THE FLOOR” in the same font as the Aimé Leon Dore logo. His timing couldn’t have been better: It was right when the boredom, aggression, and pent-up turmoil of New York seemed to manifest itself in lower Manhattan.

Hartmann’s account takes its name from one of those New York acronyms that stands for more than just the collection of streets or neighborhoods it describes: North Little Italy. The name itself dates back to the 1990s, when realtors were looking to rebrand and lure big money into neighborhoods thought to be tainted by crime and neglect: SoHo, Tribeca and NoHo. The city that Hartmann documented long ago. New York City has always been an expensive place to live, but lately With rents at an all-time highIt has become frankly unbearable for most people. It’s completely post-enhancement, and no longer the weird, saucy place it’s always been so obsessed with by historians and pop culture specialists. Patti Smith, Richard Hill and Jean-Michel Basquiat have been replaced by people who can stand the appearance that they know what’s cool and interesting – but that doesn’t mean they are themselves be Cool and fun.

These are Hartmann’s subjects more than anyone else. I’ll just let him describe them: “Men in painted canvas carpenter’s pants. They’d probably wear a camisole, maybe a hoodie—there are different levels to that. If an AI had to spawn it, they’d also be wearing a pair of Salomons or Asics and a Western Hydrodynamic hat. Research. Then there is the sarcastic camouflage thing,” he says, as he rolls his eyes toward his hood, which is camouflage. “Obviously 90 percent of this is making fun of myself. I make fun of nonsense all the time I am.”