By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — With flame-red hair and pale skin, 23-year-old Chloe Fischbach doesn’t strike most of those who know her as a stereotypical Washington Heights native.
But Fischbach’s video, "Girl from Washington Heights," in which she mimics a fictional neighborhood teenager recounting the story of running into an ex-boyfriend at a local club, has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and other sites so far, with most fans calling it a dead-on impression and a few others rejecting it as a racist jibe.
"This is how I talk to myself at home," said Fischbach, a City College graduate who lives in Hudson Heights. "I just put it on YouTube, because I was driving my mother crazy."
Most of the people who watched Fischbach online, including Upper Manhattan locals, raved about the video after it first hit YouTube.
"This is the most accurate thing I've ever seen!" tweeted MusNYK20.
"I watch this video MULTIPLE times a day! It honestly never gets old," wrote YouTube user AshleyBrookexo.
The video got 55,000 hits on YouTube in the first week, and picked up another 340,000 views after getting re-posted on the website World Star Hip Hop.
A handful of others called Fischbach a "racist" white woman who was imitating a "Dominican woman."
Fischbach, who is Jewish, said she was impersonating a "generic fictional girl from [her] neighborhood" and said she didn't mean for her impersonations to be interpreted as disrespectful.
"I was scared at first to put the video up, because I didn’t want to insult anyone. My respect is shown by doing the imitation right," Fischbach said. "It means I’ve been watching and really listening to what someone is doing."
She added that she’s gotten lots of positive feedback.
"The best was when someone told me they were depressed before watching my videos and that changes their day. It felt good."
Fischbach's other impressions, including an "Official Jewish Aunt" and a Brooklyn boy asking her out on a date, have now netted more than 10,000 and 55,000 views respectively.
Fischbach grew up in Hudson Heights mimicking people she met and knew, making friends laugh and, sometimes, driving her parents crazy.
The impersonations were an outlet for when she wasn’t painting, working with her family or finishing her degree in fine arts at City College in 2008, but never something she thought to pursue professionally.
That’s all changed in light of the reception her videos have gotten online. She’s been approached to star in a one-woman play and would love to try out for "Saturday Night Live" someday.
"I had no idea she had such a talent," said neighbor Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, who has known Fischbach since she was a child.
"It's not just the accents, but her keen sense of linguistic mannerism and rhythm. She nailed so many different voices not just in terms of how people talk but also what they say."
