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Mark Basso, 27
Photograph: Allison Michael OrensteinMark Basso, 27

Public eye: Mark Basso, 27

New York street interviews: Stories from the sidewalk as told by real New Yorkers about their lives in the city that never sleeps.

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Public plaza between Sixth and Seventh Aves, and 48th and 49th Sts

Lunch break? Yep. I’m just enjoying this waterfall and the sunlight.

What do you do?
I’m a project manager.

Where?
I forget the name.

That’s shady—is your job a secret or something?
It’s top secret, unfortunately. Undiscussable.

Don’t you know there’s no such thing as secrets anymore?
[Laughs] I don’t know if the NSA even knows what I do, but you could ask them and get back to me.

Is it some kind of super-awesome dream job you have?
Absolutely, yeah.

I’m starting to think you’re an accountant and just don’t want to talk about it.
[Laughs] That could be, but you’ll never know, will you?

Are you an X-Man?
Uh, I wish. Only on my lunch break. If you had caught me on another day I might have been playing ukulele. It’s a great spot because you can’t really hear it over the sound of the waterfall, so you can be hidden in plain sight.

Is the ukulele making a comeback?
Yeah; I started playing seven or eight years ago, back when there would only be, like, one ukulele in any given music shop. Now, everywhere I go people are playing them, and if you go to a music shop, there are, like, 50 to choose from. I’m happy to see it getting more prominent.

Shall we credit the—
Basically, I started it. No one had played it since the ’60s till I picked it up . It’s my waterfall performances. [Laughs]

Right. And you’re a committed Marvel fan.
Yes, this is the sixth book, so it’s not just a casual read. X-Men are the ultimate outsiders—they have to hide their existence from a humanity that fears and, perhaps, hates them even though they’re generally trying to do good. There’s a lot of metaphor there and interesting stories that come out of that.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Flying is awesome; you can soar above everything and get another point of view of the world that you live in. Oh, and Wolverine can heal from any wound; that would be pretty key.

More from Mark

“Music Row on 48th Street was where all the famous music stores used to be. There’s only one left now.”

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