During this project we learned about a decade of our choice and really went in depth on the political, economical, and social aspects of one place in that decade. I chose New York in the 1990s and I was in a group with two other people. I learned a lot during this project because I had never studied the 90s before. One thing I learned was about the political side of the city during this time. In the 80s there was a lot of crime and people were very unhappy. When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he changed so much for the people of New York. He lowered the crime rate thanks to a new police commissioner and a new method he implemented, called the Broken Windows Theory. This theory basically says that minor felonies such as graffiti or broken windows encourages other major crimes such as murder. Law enforcement cracked down on those small crimes and people did not commit as many of the major crimes. One connection between the 90s and today is the music scene. Hip hop/rap is still extremely popular, and people from all walks of life are listening to it. It brings people together, and gives them a shared interest. Another connection is the food. The same foods are still popular now that were popular in the 90s such as hot dogs. New York has hot dog carts on every corner, similar to the 90s. My favorite artifact my group created was the CYOA story. I might be biased because I spent a lot of time working on it, but I am most proud of it and it was my favorite artifact. I feel like there is a lot of detail in the story, and in every single outcome. It gives a good description of what life was like in the 1990s for a young boy living in that time. I think I learned most about the political aspect of the decade because that really influenced the world we live in now. There were so many changes in New York during the 90s, politically, and I wanted to focus on that. If I could change one thing about this project, it would be the way we exhibited our final products. All we did was present to our team, but that felt useless. We weren't presenting to the community, and no one was really interested in what we had to say. I think we could've exhibited it a lot better. The book we read as a group was Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. It was a satirical novel and I actually really enjoyed it. It was about the narrator who befriends another character named Tyler. They start a fight club which gives them them a sense of feeling alive, and it just grows. Tyler grows the fight club into a cult and he has followers all across the country. It seemed kind of strange at first, but I could not stop reading it. I want to read more of his books in the future. This book takes place in the 1990s and it shows what life was like in that time because there were a lot of hopeless people and they just wanted a way out. In the book, the fight club was their way out and the key to what they considered a better life. We also created a book with 5 influential speeches from the 1990s and an analysis of the speech about what they were trying to convey. You can see it below. It is called Famous Speeches of the 1990's. We also recreated a famous dance called the Kid N Play Kickstep and the step by step instructions are below. Our third artifact we created was a diorama made from two shoeboxes. On the first floor we made it into a classic New York City street and on the second floor we made it into a miniature art museum. There is an image of it below. Our fourth and final artifact was a painting of Rudy Giuliani. We also made a choose your own adventure story about three boys growing up in New York in the 1990s. The link is below. At the end of the project, we had a potluck with our entire class. Everyone brought in a food that represented their book in some way. I brought in a box of cookies, because that is representative of when Tyler and the main character worked in the restaurant. They decided to ruin the rich people's food by peeing in it and doing things of that nature. It was one of the things that sparked Project Mayhem which played an important role later in the book. It was also one of Tyler's main sources of income, which is how they were able to pay the rent and buy the necessities. Below is an image of the food I brought.