Full Biographical Arc — Extended Details¶

Childhood Location¶

• Grew up in Yorkville, Upper East Side
• Attended Saint Stephen of Hungary school, 82nd Street, Upper East Side
• Hungarian school — connects to father's Hungarian heritage

NYC Boroughs Lived In¶

• Every borough EXCEPT Staten Island:
• Manhattan: Upper East Side (Yorkville), Upper West Side, Lower West Side, Lower East Side
• Brooklyn: indoor trailer park (artist community)
• Queens: Long Island City
• Bronx: South Bronx
• Never Staten Island

Brooklyn Indoor Trailer Park¶

• Indoor trailer park in Brooklyn — amazing experience
• Community of ARTISTS
• One of the positive communal living experiences
• Art + community + low cost = ideal environment for dimensional activation
• Spent about a year there

Visual Arts¶

• Drawing: Wanted to be an animator as a kid
• Loved drawing
• Was NOT a natural talent
• Forced himself to learn — years of dedicated practice
• Eventually got pretty good
• Same pattern as everything: Will overcomes initial limitation
• Painting: Acrylics and oils
• Learned alongside Pablo (great artist, Mexico City friend)
• Photography: Fashion photography
• Enjoyed photographing women
• Got into technical aspects
• Bought expensive camera equipment and lenses with Techcenter money
• Documented his life in artistic settings and communities
• Fashion photography = Spatial + Interpersonal + Aesthetic dimensions
• Poetry: Wrote poetry throughout
• Available on triptomean.com

Company Evolution¶

• Pocket Powerhouse → The Techcenter
• The repair/tech business went through multiple iterations
• Used Techcenter profits for camera equipment

Pablo — Mexico City¶

• Met Pablo around age 18
• Pablo is a great artist
• Spent a couple of years with him in Mexico City
• Pablo's family connected to Mexican military (the Chiapas connection)
• Pablo was the bridge to Mexico, to art, to a different mode of being

The Age-18 Rejection of Work¶

• At 18, could NOT understand the concept of work
• 'Doing something stupid, wasting your time for money'
• The utility function U=V/(E×T) didn't balance — the V (value) was someone else's value
• Intuitively knew the equation was wrong
• Refused to engage with the conventional work system
• Was on the Lower East Side, surrounded by culture
• CHOSE the junkie life because:
• The intensity was real
• The chemical rushes were real
• The fear was real
• The pain was real
• Better to feel everything intensely than to feel nothing in an office
• Jean Genet as the literary model/guidebook
• Acknowledges: trauma affected his thinking and decisions
• 'A little twisted' from the abusive environment
• The trauma steered him toward intensity over safety

Genetic/Epigenetic Inheritance¶

• 'We inherit a lot more than we realize from our parents'
• Mother: alcoholic → tendency toward substance use
• Father: criminal, gangster → tendency toward system exploitation
• 'Whatever caused them to gravitate toward those things, we have the same tendencies'
• 'It's in our genetics, in our line, in every cell of our body'
• 'Each document you write is a compressed geometric projection of what's in your brain'
• Each book = a miniature, compressed projection of the mind's contents

2008-2009 Financial Collapse¶

• Was in England (Watford specifically) running the European operation
• Had an 18-year-old Hungarian girlfriend there (he was ~35)
• She was 'amazing'
• European financial crisis hit hard — business collapsed
• Meanwhile: employees in the US were STEALING profits from American stores
• Niko was never good at managing money — didn't care about it
• Had to come back to US from London/Watford
• This was the final disillusionment with business

Brother's Migration Pattern¶

• Every winter (cold northeast season): goes to a warm country
• Destinations: Panama (Bocas del Toro), Thailand, others
• Stays for MONTHS at a time
• Figured out how to live there on very slim budgets
• Brother has talent for finding amazing hidden places
• Niko joined him on many of these trips

Timeline Refinement¶

• Childhood: Yorkville, Saint Stephen of Hungary school
• ~14: Cut wrists, left home, Saint Cabrini's
• ~15-16: First Rikers (from Saint Cabrini's riot)
• ~18: Met Pablo, went to Mexico City, rejected concept of work, chose LES junkie life
• ~18-30s: Cycling through streets/institutions/travel/addiction
• ~early 2000s: Chubb Institute, carbonmedia/tntmax with Fred
• 2001: 9/11 (rollerblades rescue)
• ~2007: GeoHot iPhone unlock, stores across US
• 2008-2009: London/Watford, European collapse, employees stealing, return to US
• Brooklyn trailer park (artist period)
• Photography period (Techcenter money → camera equipment)
• 2020+: Pandemic, YouTube math, neurochemical stack, framework emerges