Freelance Journalist & Editor Showcases Diverse Experience
1. Journalist & Editor
Freelance
New York, NY (2012–present)
• Articles, essays and blog posts have appeared in Goth-
amist, Put A Egg On It, Flux Magazine, BUTT Magazine,
The Bushwick Review and others
Associate Editor
Next Magazine
New York, NY (2015–present)
• Write and pitch cover stories, reviews, interviews, essays,
listings, and articles for weekly print magazine and web
• Copy edit all content for magazine
• Upload content to website
Editor
SALT
New York, NY (2013–present)
• Oversee concept, interviews, promotion and distribution
of 1,200 circulation newspaper about food and pain.
• Interviewed chefs about food-related injuries and paired
stories with related recipes
• Solicit & compile stories for New York City Heartbreak Map
Editorial Assistant
Butt Magazine
New York, NY (2011–2012)
• Edited content for BUTT Magazine’s website, wrote copy,
and organized pop-up shop at the Ace Hotel in Palm
Springs
Reporter
Honolulu Weekly
Honolulu, HI (2009 – 2011)
• Wrote cover stories, articles, profiles, and album reviews
for Oahu’s only alternative weekly
Mitchell Kuga
mitchellkuga.com
mitchellkuga@gmail.com
808-224-6030
Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, 2009
B.A. Magazine Journalism, minor English and Textual Studies, Queer Studies
3. Mitchell Kuga, Selected Work 4
Spam Is Making A
Comeback At Hip
NYC Restaurants
gothamist.com/2014/04/01/spam_
brooklyn_hipsters.php
On a recent Monday night at New York Sushi Ko, between
courses of braised pork belly with dollops of yuzu foam and
aged, wild caught blue fin sushi, chef John Daley reached
over the bar to present a bowl of Spam fried rice. Topped
with seared ahi and flourishes of fresh pineapple, the dish
was a far cry from the hangover breakfasts of leaner times—
and an unexpected lowbrow pop on the restaurant’s $135
special one-night tasting menu.
“Is it just regular Spam? Like from the can?” asked LauRenn
Reed, one of five diners seated at the 7-seat sushi bar. All
were partaking in an offbeat, Hawaiian-inflected night of
Daley’s omakase, which loosely translates to “chef’s choice.”
“Fresh from the can!” joked Daley, a former chef at 15 East
who spent a couple of years living on Maui. “And sourced
locally from the nearest bodega.”
“Gosh, I haven’t had Spam since the eighties,” said Reed,
staring into her bowl. “I grew up with it. I’m not anti-Spam at
all. It just reminds me of poorer days.”
There was a gap in conversations as palates processed the
orchestra of flavors to the loose swing of reggae pouring out
of Daley’s speakers. The Spam—diced and roasted—popped
through with salty bursts.
“It’s so good though!” Reed declared. “It reminds me a little bit
of oxtail. So savory. I’m thinking of all the ways I could eat it.”
The final course, a plate of sushi, included Spam musubi, a
Hawaiian staple composed of a slab of fried Spam affixed to
a bed of rice with seaweed. For an added level of authenticity,
Daley wrapped it in saran wrap, a nod to the Hawaiian street
food available at local gas stations and 7-Eleven. Next to fish
sourced from Tsukiji Market, it’s easy to interpret Daley’s use
of Spam ironically, a suggestion he’s quick to dismiss.
“No, no, no. If I wanted to be funny I would’ve opened a bar,”
explained Daley. “I love my food. I love Spam. I wouldn’t be
doing this if I didn’t love it.”
A little after 11, a group of four walked in, shedding their
coats for the waiter.
“Yo John! You still doing the Spam thing?” asked Leah
Cohen, a contestant on Season 5 of Top Chef and the chef at
Pig and Khao.
“Got it!” Daley fired back.
Amid a food scene populated with grass-fed beef and
humanely butchered pork, it’s surprising that this brick
of protein has been popping up on New Yorkers’ menus.
This isn’t an artisanal, organic or house-made variety. It’s
a gelatinous block of Hormel canned meat; sliced, glazed,
and fried without a hint of irony or intended shock value. And
in pockets of New York known for more refined palates, it’s
garnering a surprisingly enthusiastic response.
“For a lot of Asians it really is soul food,” said Mike Briones,
the owner and chef of Suzume, a small, candlelit ramen and
sushi bar located in Williamsburg. Last fall, Suzume began
serving Spam musubi as a special, a nod to the few years
Briones spent living in Honolulu. The reception has been
overwhelmingly positive. “Usually it’s one person at the table
who understands Spam, and then the other person will try it.
People are ordering it and asking if we’re going to put it on the
menu and taking it to go.”
It’s been a long and unlikely journey from Spam’s humble
origins, as a product born out of the Great Depression to a
special featured at a trendy Brooklyn restaurant. Produced
in Minnesota, the blue cans of blended pork shoulder and
ham debuted in American grocery stores in 1937, peaking
in popularity during WWII, when troops stationed overseas
referred to it as “Special Army Meat.” Since then, the pink
brick has been associated with harder times, the outcast of
preserved meats, left to linger in the dark recesses of the
cupboard. A Monty Python skit from 1970, in which two
diners are confronted with a Spam-centric menu, gave birth
to “spam” as electronic junk mail; an inescapable annoyance.
4. Mitchell Kuga, Selected Work 5
In Hawaii, which consumes around 7 million cans of Spam
each year, the connotations are more sunny. An annual Spam
Jam festival sees a main street in Waikiki closed to traffic in
celebration of the beloved street food. Local McDonald’s
serve Spam breakfast with eggs and rice. In New York,
framing Spam around the context of Hawaii is a logical way to
highlight its tasty attraction.
For Daley, who grew up in New Jersey eating Spam for
breakfast, the luncheon meat felt synonymous with riding
the bus. He vowed to never eat it again, even after moving to
Maui for a couple of years as an adult. “But you live in Hawaii
long enough and you end up eating musubi one day,” explains
Daley. “You have $2 left, one beer and one musubi. And it’s
like ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ It’s absolutely awesome.
Once I had it, I was hooked.”
The consensus amongst chefs is to avoid the desire to
elevate Spam into a more refined product, and instead focus
on pairing it with the right ingredients. Briones said it took
a while for his cooks to figure that out. For Suzume’s Spam
musubi they experimented with fancy glazes and different
cooking methods before Briones interjected, explaining that
the relationship between the Spam, rice and nori already
composed the perfect umami, or harmony of flavors. In short,
when it comes to Spam, less is more.
Spam isn’t just popping up as a surprise item on otherwise
upscale menus. Onomea, a Hawaiian restaurant that opened
last August in Williamsburg, serves Spam musubi and Spam
fried rice next to other humble island staples, like shoyu
chicken. For Hawaii born Cystalyn Costa, Onomea’s 24-year-
old owner, incorporating Spam on the menu was a no-brainer.
“You can’t open up a Hawaiian restaurant without having
Spam on the menu,” she said. “Spam is Hawaii. Hawaii is
spam.”
Comfort and familiarity was also what inspired the Spam
fried rice at King Noodle, whichopened last July in Bushwick.
Owner and chef Nick Subic grew up in Michigan eating
Spam omelets on Christmas morning as part of his family
potluck. The warm bowl of pan-fried Spam sprinkled over
a mound of rice, eggs and green onions comes served in a
less familiar setting: psychedelic track lights illuminating walls
coated in day glow graffiti. “To me it’s one of the most simple
and comforting dishes on the menu,” said Subic, a former
chef at nearby Roberta’s. “We just want it to be something
on the menu that when you try it, you go ‘Oh yeah, that’s
delicious.’”
For a more experimental approach there’s Maharlika, a Filipino
restaurant in the East Village that serves—in addition to other
dishes with Spam “fresh from the can”—beer-battered Spam
fries. Chef Miguel Trinidad came to his fries the way most
people come to Spam: he was running out of food. At the last
minute, a wedding reception that Maharlika hosted jumped
from 50 guests to 75. In a pinch, Trinidad battered leftover
pieces of Spam and threw them in the fryer.
“Everyone went nuts,” he said. The next week it was on the
menu. “I wasn’t ordering enough Spam. I would order a case,
12 cans, and it would be gone in two days. People were just
coming for the Spam fries.”
While Spam’s reputation may always precede it, it’s clear that
New Yorkers are starting to recognizing its virtues, thanks to
a small but growing handful of chefs and business owners, a
feat in an increasingly health conscious food scene.
“At the end of the day, it’s not good for you,” said Briones.
“Personally I’m really healthy. All the protein here is as
hormone and biotic free as possible. Except for the Spam.
But it’s good for your soul.”
11. Mitchell Kuga, Selected Work 12
Indisputable
Distortion of
Juliana Huxtable
nextmagazine.com/content/indisputable-
distortion-juliana-huxtable
A review of the downtown It Girl’s avant-garde multimedia
performance at MoMA.
If the crowd at Friday’s sold-out premiere of There Are
Certain Facts That Cannot Be Disputed was any indication—
club kids, art critics, and a cross section seemingly plucked
out of a J. Crew catalogue—Juliana Huxtable hardly needs an
introduction.
The Bushwick-based artist and nightlife queen has used
New York’s club scene as launching pad, swiftly embedding
herself in the contemporary art world. The most notable
example being at this year’s New Museum Triennial, where
she appeared as both muse, in Frank Benson’s sculpture of
her naked body, and artist, through a series of Inkjet prints
showcasing texts culled from her Tumblr “Blue Lip Black
Witch-Cunt.”
Huxtable’s Tumblr—a hodgepodge of reblogged memes, pics
from her modeling career, trans discourse, and her body of
DJ mixes and original writings—is an appropriate springboard
for the subjects explored in There Are Certain Facts. The
multimedia performance, co-commissioned by Performa
and MoMA, sought to reflect the discord between Internet
ephemera and the need to preserve digital history in an age
when so many identities, particularly those that transgress
gender lines, are forged online.
Told in three parts, the hour-long show combined video
projections, live music, and Huxtable’s voice, an instrument
she manipulated into a cyborg-like growl through an Auto-
Tuned microphone. After a projection of scrolling clips from
far-reaching origins spanning Raquel Welch’s One Million
Years B.C. to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Huxtable
emerged in white Renaissance-era garb. The first act,
“TRANSITION,” explored how our historical imaginations are
determined by the information technologies at our disposal.
“Thirsting for the moment where freemen and relics of the
Harlem Renaissance cross into the twilight zone, that grey
and unclear passage between yesterday, once upon a time
and the historical,” she drawled, timed to the punctuations of
a digital symphony. Geocities, Angelfire, and OkCupid were
given nods.
The second act, “MOURNING,” opened with Sadaf H. Nava,
who wailed and yelped to her looped violin, and Joseph
Heffernan, who banged raucously on the drums to a video
of Huxtable traversing the woods. Huxtable read through
the cacophony as a laser scanned her body, much of her
words rendered incomprehensible through the noise. In an
act concerned with grieving the impermanence of the web,
maybe that was the point.
Things clarified in “AVATARS,” when Huxtable ditched the
Auto-Tune in favor of her raw timbre, joined on stage by three
friends dressed in colonial costume, wielding weapons;
an interpretation of the American Revolution as realized in
the video game Assassin’s Creed III. With the refrain: “I am
a player switching between first and third perspective, a
paradox of the way of seeing things,” the figures struck poses
to a projection that made reference to black radical icons
Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. “Memes of black
travelers on the Oregon Trail,” Huxtable purred.
The effect was a slice of avant-garde theater about distortion
told through distortion, cultural signifiers, and layers of sound
and image that often reached an ecstatic fever pitch. A
woman who understands the complexity of identity politics
in a landscape of Google cache and reblogs, Huxtable
wasn’t concerned with being palatable. She wanted to be
understood on her own terms.
Throughout the performance a girl seated in front of me
scrolled through Instagram, face lit by her phone. When she
reached the end of her feed, she pressed refresh, and started
all over again.
16. Mitchell Kuga, Selected Work 17
Shape Shifting
fluxhawaii.com/shape-shifting
From first birthday parties to body painting bashes,
Jeremiah Mandel has hosted it all at Brooklyn’s
Kinfolk 94.
“Oh boy. This isn’t good,” says Jeremiah Mandel, brushing his
fingertips over pink streaks of body paint staining the white
brick walls of Kinfolk 94.
“Last night here there was a naked dance party that Gawker
did for Skin Wars,” Kinfolk 94’s brand director explains,
referring to the television show on Game Show Network
that explores the world of competitive body painting. Mandel
flicks through pictures of the event on his iPhone: nearly nude
models painted like mutant fashionistas strutting down a
makeshift runway. “It’s kind of scary. Super fucking craze. It
was just a unique experience, and that’s what’s super exciting
about this place. I don’t see it as anything but a white cube
that we can fill with whatever we want to do.”
This “white cube” is Kinfolk 94 (the “94” derived from its
street address at 94 Wythe Ave.), a self-defined “multi-use
creative space” located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is the
offspring of Kinfolk, a lifestyle brand with roots in Tokyo (the
company was founded there in 2008, and has no relationship
to Kinfolk Magazine). Urban creatives shop at the adjoining
Kinfolk Store, which features Japanese streetwear labels like
Bedwin and the Heartbreakers in addition to the company’s
own line of baseball hats and chambray shirts. They also
hang out at Kinfolk 90, which functions as a coffee shop/
restaurant/bar that also doubles as a design studio.
But Kinfolk 94 is where they go to party. Mandel is
responsible for programming events and transforming the
former industrial storage space to fit a variety of specific
needs. Sometimes this means hosting a quirky weekly
gathering like Morning Gloryville, a sober 6:30 a.m. affair
whose description sounds like a parody of the Brooklyn
ethos: “An immersive morning dance experience for those
who dare to challenge morning culture and start their day in
style!” Other times it means temporarily installing flat-screen
televisions for get-togethers as commonplace as a World
Cup screening, which they did last year in collaboration with
Victory Journal. The mood at Kinfolk 94 can be incredibly
disparate over the course of a weekend, shifting from
housing a raucous hip-hop night—“definitely mad people got
pregnant”—to a first birthday party to a memorial service.
Camera crews have also capitalized on Kinfolk 94’s cinematic
potential: Saturday Night Live shot a scene for Swiftamine
there, a commercial parodying Taylor Swift converts.
“What I do here is create environments within the
environment,” says Mandel, sitting under the club’s sprawling
cedar, geodesic dome that resembles a ribbed wave.
“Whatever the occasion, I’m able to set that vibe.”
Mandel attributes his ability to connect with different scenes
to his upbringing in Hawai‘i, where his mother raised him
“single-mom style” for the majority of his life. “I’m good
at storytelling because it’s hard growing up a white kid in
Hawai‘i,” he says. “Being able to fabricate and express ideas
in a unique way became a forté of mine, and [I used] that to
make friends. Like if I’m at a hip-hop club and it’s all Filipino
… how do I not make myself an outcast there? Through talent
and conversation. Through being a perspective.”
Mandel, who’s 35, left the islands to attend Pratt University,
where he graduated with a degree in industrial design. The
former misfit, who almost failed out of Kalaheo High School
his freshman year, found a design-oriented community of
friends that included the future owners of Kinfolk. As the
brand expands, with a Los Angeles location currently in the
works, Mandel has also been spearheading the company’s
foray into the creative agency realm, lending Kinfolk’s stamp
as a small, community oriented design firm to mega brands
like Nike and Reef; they recently partnered with Masafumi
“Bebetan” Watanabe of Bedwin and the Heartbreakers for a
collaboration line of classic menswear staples.
Although he’s been in New York for more than 12 years,
Hawai‘i continues to inform Mandel’s interactions with high-
powered executives. He says he has learned to tap into a
well of island humility, gained from, among other things, years
surfing Makapu‘u, when doing business. “I find that just
hitting them with the nice simple personality, which is who I
am, really works with them because they’re … super receptive
to mellow chillness,” he says. “I don’t want to say no, because
I think there is a solution to every problem. Finding a way
to work together and build something is hard, but it’s so
rewarding.”
