The Tap Dance: Smithtown's All New Local Café and Brewery

There's a new microbrewery and café in town and you need to know about it! The Tap Dance, Smithtown's newest place to hangout with everything you need in a brewery. The Tap Dance’s menu includes their own IPA beer and gluten free beer. The menu is accommodating for all. The beers have a variety of flavors. The cafe also has a delicious menu for small plates and meals for you to enjoy with your beer. The Tap Dance is placed conveniently in the center of town and is a great place to go for summer weather. It is a great outdoor spot to gather with friends and family. The outdoor dining and tasting experience is just in time for the warm weather. The Tap Dance is locally owned by Smithtown’s own. This relaxed environment is perfect for small gatherings, parties, or a quick trip out with friends. It's all about enjoying yourself and feeling proud of your hometown. It's important for people to support local shops to keep the business in the town. Small businesses are a large part of our economy and we want to keep them going for years to come. The Tap Dance also wants the brewery and cafe to be a place for people to come and enjoy the town. Whether you're a local who's lived here for years or someone passing by town, this cute spot should be on your list of things to do.

The difference between a brewery and a microbrewery is the difference in how much beer they produce. Typically a microbrewery is going to produce less but will also sell some of that beer to off site locations other than their own. The Tap Dance does both. While keeping it very local and tending to the people of Smithtown they also ship out some of their own IPA to other breweries and stores around the country. Microbreweries became popular in the 1960s and have continued to grow in popularity since. People tend to like the localness of it and being able to have a taste of home at their local breweries. With the new concept of gluten free beer being produced in these microbreweries, it is giving an opportunity for those who fit into that category and is a more inclusive experience. With the warm temperatures nearing, we expect to see The Tap Dance becoming the new place to be this summer and we’ll be there too!

Café = 1M -10M, brewery = 1M-10M, local = 10k-100k

About Me

My name is Alexa Ondrush and I like to describe myself as a photographer/Music industry candidate. I am a senior at HPU and will soon be graduating to go into a career in music. I like to sing and have booked several gigs and would like to continue my singing career on the side. I have had the opportunity to perform at multiple charity events on Long Island and New Jersey. Singing the National Anthem at METLife Stadium for the National Football League's alumni gathering has been one of my favorite experiences. I have had three previous internships in the music industry. One of them was for artist management and the other two were in A&R (talent search). I really enjoyed it and can't wait to start new positions in the field. I study Music Business with a minor in Music Performance. I am also the president for HPU’s all female a capella group, Petal Points. I spend a lot of my time working on things for the group including planning our trip to Disney last month with the other two a capella groups. We are currently working on our set for the ICCA competition for a capella groups across the country. We meet 3-4 times a week where we practice our songs and choreography. I love leading this group because it is satisfying to watch the success and make the girls feel like they are a part of something great.

I have a very deep passion for the arts. When I am not singing, I love to take pictures. I have spent the past several years studying the art of photography and voice. When it comes to my photography, I created my own business about 5 years ago. It started as me taking pictures for my sister until more and more people asked me for it and I started making money. I created my own website and business cards and started booking shoots in NYC and the hamptons. I enjoy it a lot and make good money for a side job.

After I graduate in May, I plan to move into an apartment in NYC with my best friend from high school. I would like to work at one of the major labels as an A&R rep or do tour management. I have been told that whatever door in the industry opens, you should take it. So I am willing to start at a different position if it means getting my foot in the door.

Music, Music industry, photography, graduate, college, a capella, voice, singing, New york

 Media Law:

Final Technology Post

     Though out this semester our class has spoke a lot about technology and the positive and negative affects of it. I never really thought much about my relationship to technology until this class. It has really sparked my thinking and made me consider some things. Overall I think I have a good relationship with technology. I have always considered myself very proficient with technology. Since I was young I could always fix my devices and my family now calls me the IT. I think because I understand technology so well I have been able to use it in moderation and for good. I have and IPad, iPhone, and a Mac. I use these things for artistry, note taking, organizing etc. I find it very helpful and I absolutely love how I use my technology. I definitely think part of my love for technology could be because I am good at using it so I can imagine for people who don't understand it why it would be frustrating living in todays society. For someone like me I use it more for daily life and artistry reasons as opposed to using the internet. I should use technology to inform me on current news but I find myself not using it for that as much. Im very interested in the media and music side of things. As an artist and en employee of a record label, I like to stay up to date on all things music related.

    However, in recent years I have started to truly believe the "don't always believe what you see on the internet" saying. I have started to realize that a lot of the things we see or read online are not true and are fabricated. Although this is a big issue it's not something I worry about on the day to day. I definitly think it is negatively affecting our society but its not so much a personal problem. I am concerned for this societies future however.  The continuess flow of false information online for billions of people to access can be very dangerous. It's contributing to the divide in society and America right now and if we continue on this path it can be detrimental to the country. I think a lot of people are worried about this issue however we have come to accept that it is an issue. People understand the consequences of this but no one knows what to do. It's come to the point where it might just be out of our hands and in the hands of the tech companies and the government. The attached picture is just one example of the many instances where false news is spread online. 

    For a negative example of social media: the Facebook like button. If you've ever seen The Social Dilemma you would know how crazy it is to hear from the people who created these technologies. In the film, the guy who created the Facebook like button explains how he had good intention but it has quickly turned into a negative thing. It's unfortunate because I think most if not all technologies were created with good intention and the ability to advance society for the better but society took it and used it negatively unintentionally. There is always going to be those people who ruin it for the rest of us. This article from The Atlantic talks about Facebook and how most Facebook users don't even know that Facebook takes their information. It's concerning that some people really have no idea what these platforms do. 

    For my own family, I know they can't appreciate technology as much as I do. A lot of them are technologically challenged so some very simple tasks are very difficult for them and it becomes more work to get things done. I will say I love the ability to be able to communicate with my friends and family while I am away so I think in that aspect we're all very grateful for technology. The technological advancements in communication especially from iPhone to iPhone is very impressive. FaceTime has made communication a lot easier and close to the real thing. 

   

    In terms of social media I think almost the whole world has a very negative relationship with it. This has messed with young peoples' mental and physical health. Almost every single person I know has had at least one experience with social media where they felt left out, bullied, or compared themself to something and it in turn created a negative affect. This article does a great job talking about this after a young girl felt victimized by social media. In this class we talked a lot about more complicated technologies but I think the whole industry gets a bad rap because of social media. I truly think that without social media we wouldn't see technology as such a bad thing. Don't get me wrong there are definitely other things wrong with technology but social media is the one thing we see come up every single day that almost every person in the world has access to. 

    When looking into my online footprint I was pleasantly surprised to see what comes up when searching my name. The first thing is my LinkedIn and it reads "Alexa Ondrush president of HPU petal points." The next link is my personal website. Following that is my Facebook which I only use for my photography business. The one after that is my YouTube for my singing videos. Then lastly the podcast I created last year. Im sure if I did some deeper digging I would find more but I pride myself on a clean online presence. My music career is very important to me so I like to post things that would help me move forward so LinkedIn and my websites are the most important to me. Overall, I would like to consider myself a positive technology user. Here is a short article on how to create a positive digital footprint to get ready for your future. I use it to get ahead in my career, to keep myself on track and organized everyday and to communicate with people and make connections. 

AI In Society

    This documentary was very alarming to watch. It's scary yet interesting to see how AI is going to change our society and already is. In the first story, they discussed how China is changing the world of facial recognition. The new technologies have these systems recognizing people at lightning speeds. China is putting these facial recognition systems on the streets to catch people for jaywalking. Fines for jaywalking aren't cheap either. It can recognize a person from far away even if the image is slightly blurry. They're also putting these systems in food establishments to pay for your meals. Soon, face recognition will be used everywhere. In a way this is very helpful to our society. It's convenient in some ways incase you forget your wallet or for safety reasons. It's easier to keep things more secure and can keep others from viewing bank accounts, passwords, your phone etc. The negative side of this can be the lack of privacy. Knowing that at any point while you're out in public a camera can access your face and your identity can be scary. This gives tech companies and the government the ability to know a lot about us just by scanning our face on a camera. In terms of security, I think this is revolutionary. With all these advancements security is a lot more secure.

    Another strong negative of the new AI advancements is the job displacement. Because these systems are so smart and are able to do most things humans can, a lot of jobs are being replaced by AI. This is becoming a problem for white collar jobs. Although this is not a white collar job we're seeing this problem especially in the truck driving industry. Embark is a company created by a young CEO engineer who created a self driving truck. This has become an issue for the truck drivers because they will soon loose their jobs due to the advancements of this industry. 

    The pros of AI other than the security is in the health industry. Doctors are working to create AI systems that can detect early signs of breast cancer. This is huge for the breast cancer community because they can catch the cancer before it spreads while it is still in the treatable stages. 

    Overall, I think AI is something we need to look out for and as a society keep it under control. We also need to appreciate the technology advancements thus far because there are a lot of positive things that AI is doing for the world that we cant look past. 

EOTO #2 Reflection- Influencers

After watching todays presentations, I wanted to reflect on the "online influencers" slides. This is a topic I find very interesting so when I saw someone was presenting on it I had to talk about it. I have always been baffled by the fact that some people can actually make millions from posting videos online. I think it's very unfair and an unreasonable industry that we put way too much focus on. Today I learned that it's actually a 13.8 billion dollar industry. This is so unreasonable to me because you have other industries that are actually so important to society that aren't even worth this much. Another interesting fact is that moms were the start of the influencer craze. I almost wish thats still all it was because now its so out of hand. 49% of people actually depend on influencers for recommendation on products. This is interesting to me because half of the time when an influencer is promoting a product they don't even use it. Its a brand deal and they're making a lot of money off of so most the time they don't care if it works or not. 

I think this has had such a negative effect on our society for a few reasons. Fist being that you now have kids growing up thinking they can do this as their profession which is very hard to do. It's led young people to do stupid things online just so they can get noticed. This is concerning because people are going too far and doing things that can potentially be dangerous all for the likes. The second reason influencers are negative is because of the comparisons young people (specifically girls) make to these influencers. What people including myself fail to realize sometimes is that these people spend their whole day focusing on their health, working out, making videos and for some getting surgery even. Society cannot compare themselves to these influencers because most of us don't have the time or money to do what they do. This can be detrimental for a young persons mental health. 

Agenda setting is one of the media theories that dictates how we view the media. The theory was developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972. They came up with this theory from looking at voters and their behavior based off of the media.This is more about how the media can tell us what to talk about and what they present to us but not how we feel about it. How we feel is what we come up with based off of what we see.

 

Framing is another aspect of agenda setting. it was founded in 1988 and it's when the media can have the audience think a certain way to get to a conclusion. This works by the media giving certain facts and describing in a specific way so that you get to that conclusion but it feels natural. It feels like you came to that conclusion yourself when really it was based off the facts presented to you. You can learn more about framing and more details of agenda setting here.

In a video I watched on agenda setting, the presenter described the example of Obama Care vs The Affordable Care Act. Basically, both of them were presented to a group of people and the individuals felt differently about Obama Care because some people did not like Obama at the time. Obama Care and The Affordable Care Act are the same thing but because of the name and the way it was presented had people drawing conclusions without even knowing much about the topic. 

Agenda setting can be looked at in a visual format. First off you have reality which is the things happening in the world that we see. Then you have your gatekeepers who are basically the reporters of the world and the people bringing you this information. The next step is the media agenda which is the step at which the facts are put into the media and its decided what conclusion they want you to feel and how their going to get you to it. Public agenda is the viewing portion where people discuss the media that then turns into policy agenda. This is when the government comes in and politicians becomes important. This is when politicians can decide how they want the public to view them. They can see what voters want and they will please them by putting certain laws and policies in place. 

The policy agenda and the media agenda become a cycle because what happens in the policy agenda then becomes media for the media agenda so those go back and forth. The media agenda will decide how they cover stories based on how the policy agenda reacts. The audience is below all of this because we are influenced by all of it. 

Now that we understand the theory and what it is, we can decide, do we think this theory is correct? This is an opinions based question but I think yes. I think this can actually be seen as a really bad thing and we are seeing it a lot today. With politics being so prevalent and dividing our country more than ever, I think we're seeing this a little too much. Agenda setting is being seen lot on the political news companies which is contributing to the divide in the country. These companies are only showing certain sides to the story which in turn is turning the country on itself. It's causing fights between the left and right because people are not getting the same news. If we continue down this road it could lead to some serious implications with fighting in our country and we'll continue to go backwards as a society. While I do understand the reason for doing this is not to harm the country it could still be dangerous. News companies and politicians are trying to please the people so they're seeing more of what they're interested in which in turn creates more revenue for these companies. 

This generation is growing up in the age of "fake news" and a lot of this is coming from the theory of agenda setting. Giving the media too much control and allowing them to change stories or only share what they want you to hear should not be allowed. There should be a portion of the government that regulates this and ensures that all sides are represented equally and fairly. 

I like the propaganda pictures above and to the right because it does a great job representing what agenda setting really is. It's interesting because it makes you think you are viewing media on your own when it's really completely controlled by the gatekeepers.