Nuyorker on New York Daily News

By Pablo Calvi

THEY MIGHT NOT be among the 100 most influential Latinas, but Claire Frisbie and Nuria Net wanted their voices to be heard, too.

The two upper-middle class girls with a tongue-in-cheek attitude first met as deejays at a college radio station in upper Manhattan.

When they realized that they shared a multi-cultural background and a riveting interest in Latin music - but not reggaetón, God forbid! - they decided to start NYremezcla.com.

The bilingual blog, they say, caters to people like themselves: the cosmopolatinos (yes, we spelled it right), a Latin tribe that stands apart for its urban refinement and sense of style.

“The Latin culture in New York is much more than reggaetón and [the radio station] La Mega," says Frisbie, 25. Born in Costa Rica but with no other Hispanic background, Frisbie sees a Latin-alternative scene of different genres and languages, and a public — both Latin and non Latin — eager to learn about it.

“When we made our release party in a club at the lower East Side, the managers were afraid that we would bring a crowd of ‘bridge-and-tunnel’ people,” says Net, whose parents are Spanish and Puerto Rican. “But they were surprised; this is not our follow-up at all.”

Their audience is part of a larger group that CUNY professor Stanley Renshon describes as the multiple-nationality Latino generation.

“It's a growing phenomenon primarily because of globalization, also because technology allows people to stay connected to their cultures of origin, and finally because governments consent to the double-nationality citizenship.”

According to Renshon, these younger multicultural citizens have their own voice and the urge to express their “way to experience the American culture.”

That same urge prompted two Williamsburg hipsters, Chilean Leo Prieto and “through-and-through” New Yorker Adam Baruchowitz, to start their own blog for cosmopolatinos.

“With Nuyorker.com we aimed to make accessible in Spanish all the interesting independent cultural happenings in New York,” Prieto says.

He says the key to success is making their audience participate in some sort of highbrow intercultural scene. “We are not snobbish, but we want our audience to be part of a cosmopolitan world dialogue,” Baruchowitz says.

Both sites claim to have around 30,000 unique visitors a month, but neither Remezcla nor Nuyorker have generated any profits so far.

Etty Becke, a 25-year-old Venezuelan writer and editor of Nuyorker, says they are now aiming to make their site more lucrative.

“Meanwhile, we just write about what we like and we post what we think might appeal to people around the world.”