Those
who live in the nation’s oldest city can typically be labeled as eccentric and diverse,
although those characteristics barely scratch the surface when describing the
life of Jorge Rivera, a well-traveled humanitarian and local talk show host.
Rivera is known around St. Augustine
as the local online personality. He hosts the St. Augustine Tonight Show and
started producing content with First Coast.tv three years ago. The journey to
get to where he’s at now in his career didn’t start off the way most would
typically expect it to. While sitting at Dos Coffee & Wine, sporting a red
beret that he got from East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall and an
assortment of jewelry across his body, Rivera began recounting his story.
Rivera was born in New York and was
raised traveling back and forth between Puerto Rico and the city. After having
spent most summers back in New York, Rivera moved to Orlando, Florida, and
started his life-long journey centered around the theater and helping others.
Shortly after moving to Orlando, Rivera went through schooling to become a fire
fighter.
“I had worked when I was younger as
a translator in emergency rooms,” said Rivera. “I always found myself working
around people that needed help.”
When he was young, Rivera remembers
expressing an interest in the arts while in high school. After putting off his
love for painting and poetry while in Florida, a friend suggested that Rivera
apply to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After auditioning and being
invited to the Academy, Rivera moved back to New York to try his hand at
acting.
“I started my life as an actor when
I moved back to New York and began auditioning for off-Broadway shows,” said
Rivera. “I was part of playwright circles, I worked with the Puerto Rican
Traveling Theatre, and when I got to my late 20’s I saw that there wasn’t
really a future in what I was doing so I became an electrician for the New York
Public Library.”
Rivera moved on to work with the
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as tech help for private screenings.
Through this job, Rivera was able to meet some of Hollywood’s biggest names in
the film industry including Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Brigitte Nielsen and
Sofia Loren.
“While working there, I kept going
to evening workshops for acting and met an amazing group of friends,” said
Rivera. “Then around 1989 when the AIDS epidemic and homelessness issue was
going on in New York, I started losing a lot of friends. Many of them were
passing away and dying and I started to ask myself if I really wanted to stay
in New York.”
After some consideration, Rivera,
then age 34, quit his job and sold his belongings so he could start traveling
around the world for a year. With the money that he got from selling his
things, Rivera bought a car and started driving to San Francisco.
“I met so many kind and interesting
people,” said Rivera. “I stayed with a lesbian colony in D.C. and they would
invite me to watch them play rugby. Man, those girls were tough. I also stayed
with some farmers in Oklahoma and stopped in Nashville and Memphis and went to
see the Grand Canyon. After a few months, I made it to California.”
San Francisco was not Rivera’s final
destination; he was saving up money to buy a one-way ticket to Japan. After
securing a ticket from a friend he made in Chinatown, Rivera flew to Tokyo and
kicked off his journey across the globe.
“When I was traveling through
Europe, I worked with an organization called Volunteers For Peace to do a
language program for five weeks in Russia in order to better relationships
between Russians and Americans,” said Rivera. “So I was there for five weeks in
the summer, it was beautiful but it was still communist Russia.”
Through the organization, Rivera was
placed in camping grounds to teach English to Russian children who were sick
and poor.
“In Moscow, there was a food
shortage, so we as students, we would break up in groups and search for food,”
said Rivera. “We would meet around 7:30 p.m. and someone had found rice,
someone had found a piece of cheese, someone had found a bottle of champagne
and some eggs and we’d cook it all together. That’s how we would survive at
that time because there was a horrible shortage of food in Moscow.”
After leaving Russia, Rivera left
through Scandinavia and traveled through continental Europe, stopping in East
Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall.
“My one year trip ended up being 14
years.” Rivera said. “I stayed in Italy, London, Paris, and I went back into
theater working with the universities putting on productions in English.”
In 2003, Rivera married a French woman that he had met in the theater in Germany and moved to Maui, Hawaii,
starting a family with his wife, Rachelle. The couple moved to St. Augustine,
Florida, when she was six months pregnant so they could be closer to her
family.
Rivera and Rachelle separated two
years later, and in 2008 Rivera brought his mother to St. Augustine from Puerto
Rico to live with him.
“I still have many, many, many
cousins and relatives in Puerto Rico,” said Rivera. “This past year we had set
up a GoFundMe page to try to get my godfather to the United States because he
needed dialysis which he was unable to get in Puerto Rico after the hurricane.
Unfortunately, he passed away on Christmas Eve but I’m very thankful that the
rest of my family fared well after the storm.”
Rivera fell in love with St.
Augustine and realized that no one else had been reporting on the lives of the
people that live there. The only coverage that the city got was through blogs
and some photography.
“I said to myself, the world is
video, why are we still blogging? We need a video blog at the least. So about
three years ago I started FirstCoast.tv and I started with an iPhone,” said
Rivera. “Then about a year ago I had met so many wonderful people that I
decided to start a TV show, a tonight show, and people loved it.”
Rivera hosts the St. Augustine
Tonight Show and posts his segments online for the community to interact with. The
show has filmed all over town, at the Lightner Museum, at the St. Augustine
Lighthouse and at the Corazon Cinema and Café.
“Where it’s gonna go, I don’t know.
It’s not making any money but you know, my dad used to say ‘You could do
something for love or for money; love lasts much longer.” Rivera said.
When asked why Rivera has stayed in
St. Augustine after having experienced the world in ways that many will never
get the chance to, Rivera said that he enjoys seeing the city in a new
dimension.
“Because of the show, I’ve gotten to
experience the spiritual pulse of the city,” said Rivera. “Of course there’s
still things that need to change in this town, but doesn’t everybody need to
change something in their lives?”
Rivera envisions himself moving back
to Europe in a few years after he has gotten his fill of St. Augustine and its
people.
“People really do inspire me,” said
Rivera. “I’ve found so many people that are treasures in my life. I will always
be thankful to God for the opportunities he has given me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment