A Gratefulness Letter to Damon and Jo
I looked at myself in the mirror of the hostel bathroom in Paris, France as I put on my large, hoop silver earrings. I felt good and almost complete. I lathered on my purple lipstick and pulled on my large thrifted blazer that completed my outfit going for my edgy, grungy look of 2019.
It was the beginning of March of 2019, and I was twenty-two years old. It was one of those nights where I was out living my dream of gallivanting around Europe in my twenties. Nothing is ever perfect, but this night was going to be close. I took one more look in the mirror before shoving my wallet and phone in my sports bra to head out to the streets of Paris. The sky was darkening as I walked along the narrow streets to the coffee bar called The Hood. I got to the door with my phone in my hand with my ticket pulled up brightly on the screen.
Through the glass doors, I saw a girl standing there with familiar curly black hair. Her back was towards me, but in my head, I was thinking oh my gosh that’s Jo Franco. I willed myself to walk through the door, and she turned towards me with a smile.
She greeted me and asked for my name, I told her. “Cool name,” she replied.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a minute of random relief that my name still sounded not common, “I can’t believe I’m looking at you right now.”
She laughed, “I know, I feel like a doorman.”
I eventually took my seat around the coffee house and made small talk with some other girls. It was a night that was full of really good conversations with other people who are out living their lives. The event started and I enjoyed every single second of it. The topic of the event was learning French slang combined with a meet and greet with Damon and Jo.
I drank the glasses of wine they were serving at the bar and held authentic conversations with other travelers. Eventually, it was my turn to take go up to talk to them. Jo told me now we could have a proper greeting instead of the quick interaction at the door.
She asked me where I was from and she gave me a hug. She said, “Are you studying in Paris?”
“No, actually I’m studying in Sweden, but I was in Copenhagen for the weekend so I found a cheap flight to Paris for this event,” I turned to Damon and told him I saw him talking about the event on his Instagram story. I told them I just decided to fly to Paris just meet them because honestly, it was my dream.
They both grabbed each of my arms, and Jo exclaimed, “Shut the f**k up!”
She then asked me if I knew who Nasir was, who was their content manager at the time because they were making a video and were interviewing several people. I nodded, and she looked at me saying, “Go find Nasir and tell him that.”
We then took a couple of pictures, and honestly, will forever be some of my favorite pictures ever. It was soon the next person’s turn to meet the duo, and I shuffled back into the crowd of people to find Nasir standing on the steps leaning against the banister. He kindly looked at me with a smile, “Do you want to be in the video?”
I nodded and followed him to the upstairs of The Hood with two other people. He asked us various questions, and honestly, everything felt like such a dream.
The event eventually made its way down to a bar a block away. I remember ordering a drink at the bar and later seeing Damon and Jo walking through the door. They were sitting with their friends in a corner. It felt so surreal that Damon and Jo were only a few feet away from me. A few minutes after midnight, I knew I should catch a few hours of sleep before I had to wake up at 3:30am to catch my early flight back to Denmark. I glanced over to where the duo was sitting as if to take a mental picture of that night.
I walked out onto the dark streets of Paris and briskly walked the few blocks back to the hostel. I walked up the spiral staircase up the second floor of the hostel sending the pictures to my mom and sister of the night. I climbed on the second bunk of the bunk bed and snapped pictures of the polaroids they gave us of the night. I laid in bed and wrote a heartfelt post on Instagram before falling asleep dreaming of travel stories and narrow, brick streets. I woke up the next morning to a comment from Damon on my Instagram post saying, “THANK YOU SO MUCH” and gratitude filled me more for the amazing night.
This will always be one of my favorite nights. Meeting Damon and Jo was an absolute dream come true. It was everything I had been waiting for since when I first started following them over a year and a half ago at this point.
It all started in the fall of 2017 and I was sitting on the lumpy, black futon in my junior year dorm room. At the time one of my biggest dreams was to move to New York City someday so my laptop was laid across my lap as I typed into the Youtube search bar, “New York City apartment tours.” One of the first ones that popped up was a video by a channel called DamonandJo who was managed by Damon Dominique and Joanna Franco. The video was Damon and Jo showing a tour of Damon’s NYC studio he shared with a roommate and you could tell just by that video they were very low maintenance and real.
I quickly learned the video was all about travel and how to travel cheaply which is one of my favorite topics. I dove into binging their videos and anticipating their new videos for the next two years. They became my favorite Youtubers. I was in love with their content and their views on life. Excitement poured out of me when they hit one million views on YouTube.
In November of 2019 when they announced the new chapter of their lives by how they were going to stop posting so frequently on the DamonandJo channel, but post on their own individual channels. My heart broke when I watched the video, but it broke even more as months and months went on with no posting.
A few months ago (when I first started writing this piece), Damon posted a video on his channel addressing the issue of the DamonandJo channel. When I heard him say the words they weren’t friends anymore. They weren’t getting coffee together anymore, weren’t traveling together anymore, and basically, it was over. Their videos would always be out in the world, but they were done. They had “divorced” as friends. In 2017, I had idolized their friendship and always wondered since the beginning what it would be like to travel with your best friends and work together.
The first nights after watching Damon’s videos, I stayed up until two in the morning watching a bunch of their old videos reminiscing. I’m still accepting that my favorite travel duo has gone separate ways. I know many of their followers have their opinions, but from what I’ve seen I’m glad a lot of people aren’t taking sides and still supporting both of them. Both of them have inspired me so much, taught me so much about traveling, believing in myself, and I will be forever thankful for that.
I wish both of them all the success and happiness in their lives. I hope everyone else can too.
Thank you, Damon and thank you, Jo.
