Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Berry and Marcos Mendéz
Hi Robert and Marcos, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We started our vlog in 2020, as, like many others, we had more free time than was normal. Robert fell and broke his wrist so we postponed filming and editing while Robert recovered from surgery, so our first few videos either had Robert wearing a cast, or were edited with him trying to hide it and it just wasn’t fun. Once Robert was healed and his cast removed, we began filming our lives in earnest. At first, we tried playing around with recording different aspects of our day to day lives in San Diego, primarily in our neighborhood of Hillcrest. After doing some research, we realized most channels about San Diego were about the beaches, the zoo, or travel related, all of which we love and feature on our channel, but we wished there was more day to day life of LGBTQIA+ folks in San Diego, so began recording more and more of our lives, our travels, and our beloved city.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not a smooth road to get where we are today, but the path was for sure fun. We are still learning the ins and outs of vlogging, filming and editing, and consider our channel a work in process. While Marcos enjoys filming and Robert enjoys editing, we’ve both had to learn certain aspects of what it takes to create videos for social media. We spent the entire first year of our channel focusing on YouTube and didn’t branch out to Instagram or TikTok until a couple years ago. Learning the new rules of social media hasn’t been easy, especially when you’re attempting to create edited content, rather than simply sharing a quick picture or video.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We’re so excited to be able to share our day to day lives from sunny San Diego with a queer POV, and hope our viewers are just as excited about life in Southern California as we are. What we love doing the most is showing just how “normal” life is in a part of the world that gets wildly glamorized on film and television. Being able to show our viewers that sure, the weather is gorgeous *most* of the time, and there’s for sure an appreciation of the outdoors, the beach communities and other typical SoCal things, there’s so much more to life here. Our life is just like yours, we just happen to live in a city where people travel from around the world to visit on their holidays.
We are most proud of documenting local small businesses while showing our viewers what life is life in San Diego. Like most towns and cities, it’s the small businesses that make San Diego so special, and we love showcasing them to our viewers.
We think we are set apart from others because we don’t try to overly glamorize our lives. We don’t try to hide any of the rough edges. Sure, we may take license to edit over a blemish, but we don’t record or edit anything in a way to make it seem more exciting or more sparkly than it already is. We’ve all seen so many content creators who provide such polished, edited work and only show the cleanest part of their home or the prettiest neighborhood in their city. We find beauty in the day to day things, and that to us is glamorous and romantic enough.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Not to sound too cliché, but we think success comes in many shapes and sizes. While we are still growing our audience and hope to reach more people this year, we feel we’ve succeeded in documenting queer day to day life in San Diego and feel so fortunate to be able to share what we love with other people from around the world.
In an age of likes, shares, comments and followers, we appreciate our loving audience so much and are grateful that they’d take time out of their day to watch our videos, leave comments and message us such uplifting sentiment. The sense of community we feel, both with our followers from abroad and our followers from our own neighborhood, is such an amazing thing. We love it when someone approaches us at a bus stop or a restaurant and tells us how much they enjoy our vlog. It’s such a fun feeling to know that you’ve brightened someone’s day.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesandiegodiaries
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thesandiegodiaries
Image Credits
Photo Credits: Robert Berry and Marcos Mendéz
