Hello everyone it’s Barry from Barry’s Auto Body again, this time writing about the winner for our Make Staten Island Laugh contest. Make Staten Island Laugh was an effort to get people from from around the country to produce and share a funny video in order to win a $2,500 total prize. $1,250 to the winner of the contest and $1,250 to the charity of the winner’s choice.
The winner of the contest was Staten Island’s own Eric D’Alessandro who won with a video of him teaching people how to do their best Staten Island accent. His acceptance and thank you speech was as funny as the video he entered. If you want to see more of Eric, he has plenty of hilarious videos on his instagram @ericdalessandro. Eric chose to donate the charity portion of his prize to the National American Indian Memorial Foundation whose mission is to continue the effort to get a monument to America’s indigenous people built in Fort Wadsworth. In 1911 there was a proposal by Mr. Wannamaker to build a monument to help fight hatred and violence against the North American Indian which was prevalent at that time. President Taft came to Staten Island to break ground for the monument in 1913, but when WWl broke out – the fierce bigotry and hatred towards the native Americans caused the private funding for the memorial to dry up. Pictures of the proposed monument can be seen in the video of the foundation accepting the check.
Thank you to all those who participated. You made the contest a success and you made thousands of people laugh. We want to congratulate Eric D’Alessandro for winning the contest and the $2,500 prize. And we would also like to congratulate the National American Indian Memorial Foundation for being the charity Eric chose to win the other $1,250. Lastly we like to thank all the fans who took the time to watch and vote for their favorite submissions.