// Transmissions — What We Shipped
A Kong is no King, and a King is not Kong.
The journey of a man who overcomes struggle and rises for all men — and for women, child and elderly, the homeless and the well off, all over New York City. Founded and carried by Pharon “Kong” Griffin Kinard, in alliance with the Scarlet Beast.
Every symbol on Kong’s card is doing a job. The lion, the owl, the arm, the heart, the shield, the torch and the laurel are not decoration — they are the seven things a man is measured against on the way up. Courage, wisdom, strength, love, loyalty, trust, honor.
The lion does not check whether the room is watching before it stands up.
The owl is quiet because it is listening. Loud men miss the whole street.
The arm is not for winning arguments. It is for carrying what other people dropped.
The heart is the reason for the arm. Without it you are just dangerous.
The shield covers the man beside you before it covers you.
The torch is handed over lit. You do not get to test someone forever.
The laurel is not won once. It is worn daily or it falls off.
Kong New York is not a guest of this estate. Pharoah is of the house — named, seated and counted — and Kong New York now stands inside the Scarlet Beast as its own power, not as a page we host. Two houses, one roof.
What he holds on the pavement, the estate holds on the wire. Neither of us is asking the other for permission, and neither of us is going anywhere.
This house has always taught that the Christ is a seat, not a celebrity — a place a person steps into the moment they take somebody else’s weight onto their own back. By that teaching Pharoah is Jesus Christ himself, in exactly the way this estate has always meant it: the anointed one, doing the anointed one’s actual job, on a real street, tonight.
And the face he wears while doing it is Michael — the archangel who is sent rather than invited, who weighs before he swings, and who stands at the door of a thing so that the people behind him do not have to. Not the gentle one. The one who goes first.
Most of the city cannot see what is walking past it. Pharoah is read as the loud man, the street man, the one to be stepped around — and that misreading is not a wound, it is the assignment. The ones who cannot see him are precisely the ones he was sent to stand in front of.
And when he opens his mouth, the room finds out. Spoken word is his weapon and his medicine: he can take a block that has heard every speech and stop it dead with forty seconds of the truth, said in rhythm, with nothing behind it but his own life as the evidence.
The philosophy, carried over whole from kongnewyork.com and set down here as the founding document. A Kong is a man who is a king, but not a king — instead a force of strength for everybody on the block.
He is any man who has faced struggle, walked through his own darkness, and chosen to rise instead of surrender. He carries scars instead of trophies, and he understands that every blow he ever took was shaping him into something the blow could not break.
A King sits on a throne; a Kong becomes the throne — stable, grounded, unshakeable. A King demands loyalty; a Kong earns it. A King can conquer land; a Kong conquers the only territory every man must one day face: his own reflection. This is why we say it plainly — a Kong is no King, and a King is not Kong.
A Kong cares for all, because he knows he is not separate from anyone. White, Black, brown, gay, straight — the labels fall away. At the core he is human, and so is every person he fights for: men and women, child and elderly, the homeless and the well off, all over New York City.
Bear, then wolf, then Kong. The bear survives — it eats, it sleeps, it defends its own body and calls that a life. The wolf learns the pack — it hunts with others and answers to something past itself. The Kong stands up. He takes the weight of the whole block onto a spine built by everything that tried to bend it, and he does not put it down.
To walk the Way is to choose growth over comfort, compassion over ego, and responsibility over excuses. It is the decision, made again every morning, to fight for all men — not one kind of man — to protect the weak, mentor the lost, and stand as living proof that struggle converts into power.
If you have been through hell and you are still trying, still evolving, still getting up — nobody needs to admit you. The Way of the Kong is simply this: rise, heal, protect, and never abandon the man you are becoming.
Why the archangel, and not a softer one. Five points on what it means to hold Michael’s seat — the philosophy of a strength that is sent, weighed, and pointed at a door.
Michael is not the gentle angel. He is the one dispatched when the thing at the gate has to be faced and nobody else will face it. Every tradition that names him names him the same way: the captain, the one who stands at the door, the one who does not negotiate with what he was sent to stop.
An archangel is not a strongman. Michael’s power is under orders — it is strength held on a leash by something higher, released only in defence of somebody who cannot defend themselves. Power that answers to nothing is not Michael. That is the thing Michael was sent to remove.
He is painted holding both: the scales that weigh a man and the sword that defends him. In that order. He weighs first. A Kong who swings before he weighs is a bear again — and the whole point of the evolution was to stop being one.
Michael is not recognised in the room. He is taken for the loud man, the street man, the one to be stepped around. That misreading is the assignment, not an accident: the ones who cannot see what he is are exactly the ones he was sent to stand in front of. He does not correct them. He just keeps standing there.
This estate has always taught that the Christ is a seat, not a celebrity — a place a person steps into when they take the weight of others onto themselves. Michael is the same. The name is not a costume Pharoah wears. It is a job he is doing, on a specific set of blocks, tonight.
The philosophy said out loud, in the form it actually travels in. These are working pieces in the Kong register — the evolution, the difference between a King and a Kong, and what it costs to stand where nobody is looking. Take them to an open mic. They are not copyrighted against you.
The films from kongnewyork.com, brought across intact.
A spoken-word series, shot on the iron stairs bolted to the outside of every building in this city. They built these stairs on the outside so that when the inside caught, a man would have somewhere to stand. Episodes are in production — the plates below are placeholders.
Honest work a Kong can start on a Monday with what is already in his hands. Every one of these is legal, learnable and pays in this city right now. Pick one. Do it badly in public until it is good.
Moving, hauling, deep-cleaning, junk-outs, snow. The work nobody schedules until they are desperate, which is why it pays same-day.
Print 50 cards. Walk them into every super, laundromat and bodega on ten blocks. Say the words “same day, cash or app.”
A chair, clippers and a mirror is a business. In this city it is also a confessional, which is the part that keeps people coming back.
Start on your own stoop with three friends free. Photograph every head. Post the before and after the same night.
Plates, trays, breakfast sandwiches, a cooler of cold drinks in July. Volume beats menu — pick one thing and be famous for it.
Cook one dish for one week. Sell to one building. Get the health rules right before you scale — call 311 and ask what a home kitchen may legally sell.
Bikes, phones, furniture off the curb. New York throws away more than most places own. Learn one repair well and the street becomes inventory.
Pick ONE category. Watch ten repair videos. Fix three items you found free. Sell them and buy a real tool.
Everybody with a business needs footage and almost nobody has any. Phone video, cut tight, is worth real money to a shop that has never had a reel.
Shoot a free 30-second reel for the barbershop you already sit in. Show the owner. Quote the next one.
Hosting, DJing, running the board at events, spoken word bookings. If you can hold a room you can be paid to hold a room.
Take one unpaid open mic a week for a month. Record every set. By week four you have a tape and a name.
Elder companionship, walking somebody to appointments, dog walking, overnight sitting. The city is full of people alone and families who cannot be there.
Get certified where certification is required, and start with your own building. Reputation on one block is a whole income.
Tax season help, phone setup for elders, form-filling, translation. Being the person who is not confused by paperwork is a paid position.
Learn ONE form completely — SNAP, or the housing application. Do five free. The sixth one pays.
A hustle without a horizon is just a busy week. This is the ladder — week one to year one — written so a man can hold himself to it without anybody standing over him.
Before growth, stability. You cannot build on a week that keeps collapsing at day four.
Every dollar in and out written down — paper is fine · One meal source secured that is not money (see the resources tab) · One person who knows where you sleep · Phone stays charged; that is the whole business
Pick a single hustle from the list and do it badly in public until it is good. Range comes later; repetition comes first.
Ten paying jobs, however small · A photo record of every one · A price you say out loud without flinching · A regular — one person who called you twice
A business nobody can find is a hobby with a bad week. Get a number, a name and a way to be paid.
One page, one number, one payment app · Fifty cards in fifty hands · A second person who can cover a job with you · Money set aside that is not touched — any amount
The Way does not end at your own stability. The point of the climb is the arm you lower afterward.
Teach the skill to one person for free · Show up to one community event as labour, not audience · Know your borough’s pantry and shelter map by heart · Say the philosophy in your own words to somebody who needs it
By now the work should survive a bad week without you panicking, and somebody else should be standing because you stood.
Income from two sources, not one · A name people pass along without you asking · One younger man mentored all the way through something · A record — written, filmed, spoken — of how you got here
Two of the ugliest words in the English language, taken apart and rebuilt as initiation. Neither plate is an insult — each is an acronym, and each is a diagnosis. One names what you become when you rule yourself. The other names what you become when you refuse to. Same doctrine, read from two sides.
The word everybody uses as a weapon, reassembled into a vow. The conscious king is not a man on a throne — it is the awake part of you, and the plate says you live forever under it. Not under a ruler. Under your own consciousness, permanently, with no time off.
Read the Latin around the ring and it is the whole Way of the Kong in another language: Regnat qui se ipsum vincit — he rules who conquers himself. Thronus verus intra est — the true throne is within. Corona veri est conscious — the true crown is being awake. That is the same sentence as “a King sits on a throne; a Kong becomes the throne.” Two artists, two centuries of iconography apart, arriving at one idea.
And the ladder on the left pillar is the method, in three steps: ignorantia servitutem parit — ignorance breeds slavery. disciplina potentiam parit — discipline breeds power. conscientia regnum parit — consciousness breeds a kingdom. Bear, wolf, Kong. Written in Latin on a black plate, but the same three animals.
The companion, and the harder of the two, because this one is a mirror rather than a crown. It does not describe a woman — it describes a condition, and any man reading this page smugly is already standing in it. Bitterness is what strength turns into when it has nowhere honest to go.
Know thyself, or be devour’d by thine own weakness. The plate lists its virtues and its vices in two columns like a ledger: veritas, disciplina, fortitudo, sapientia, patientia against ignorantia, arrogantia, negligentia, infirmitas, fuga — truth, discipline, courage, wisdom, patience, against ignorance, arrogance, neglect, frailty and flight. Fuga. Running. The last vice on the list is the one everybody actually commits.
Then the line at the foot that stops people: “Weakness is a choice. Strength is a curse.” Both halves are true and the second half is the one this house lives with. Strength is a curse — it means you will be the one who has to carry it, every time, for everyone, and nobody will ask whether you were tired. A Kong picks the curse up anyway. That is the whole job.
Why it belongs on this page: the Way of the Kong is explicitly not a men’s club. A Kong is a force of strength for men and women alike, and the woman wearing this plate is not the opposite of the Kong — she is holding the same doctrine, facing the same mirror, refusing the same flight. Infernum est intra te. Hell is inside you. So is the throne.
Where to eat and where to sleep in New York City, borough by borough — food pantries, soup kitchens, mobile markets and the help lines that answer at three in the morning. The full index lives on its own page so it loads fast on a phone with no data.
Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, each with its own block on the page.
Free from any phone in the city. Ask for food assistance or shelter intake and they will route you.
Street outreach, crisis lines and the national hunger hotline — all live, all free.
The gathering. Food off the grill, no ticket, no vetting — and Pharoah on the mic, live.
Somewhere in New York City, on a date not yet announced: a barbecue with Pharoah speaking live — spoken word, straight through, no set list. Everybody eats. Nobody is turned away, nobody is asked what they do, and there is no door charge, because the whole point of a Kong is that the plate comes before the sermon.
Ready to walk it, collaborate, book Pharoah to speak, or bring the Way of the Kong to your community or brand — or just need a plate and somewhere to start? Reach out. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
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