Inner City Press' Bronx Reporter: 1.4 Million People, Redlining, EJ, Cultural Innovation,Invisible Money, Police Brutality, Housing Scandals

ICP has published a (double) book about a variety of Bronx-relevant topics -- a review in Commonweal magazine of Dec. 5, 2003, opines that "Predatory Bender... is as vivid an account of life in the Bronx as you are likely to read" -- click here for sample chapters, here for an interactive map, here for fast ordering and delivery, and here for other ordering information. See also, "City Lit: Roman a Klepto [Review of ‘Predatory Bender’]," by Matt Pacenza, City Limits, Sept.-Oct. 2004. CBS MarketWatch of April 23, 2004, says the the novel has "some very funny moments," and that the non-fiction mixes "global statistics and first-person accounts." The Washington Post of March 15, 2004, calls Predatory Bender: America in the Aughts "the first novel about predatory lending;" the London Times of April 15, 2004, "A Novel Approach," said it "has a cast of colorful characters." The Pittsburgh City Paper of Dec. 11, 2003, wrote that it "may, in fact, be the first great American lending malfeasance novel" including "low-level loan sharks, class-action lawyers, corporate bigwigs, hired muscle, corrupt politicians, Iraq War veterans, Wall Street analysts, reporters and one watchdog with a Web site." And all in The Bronx! Click here for that review; for more information, contact us.

The NY Police Department conducted 451,000 warrantless stops during the first three quarters of 2011, per a November report in November by the New York Civil Liberties Union. And so, a protest on Friday at the 42nd precinct. According to the report, eighty five percent of people stopped were African American or Latino; 88% of stops did not result in arrests or tickets. For shame...

"We chose the South Bronx for a few reasons: It has an abundance of warehouse space for a good price; it’s perfect for distribution, allowing easy access to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester, and New Jersey; it’s an easy commute for people coming from other parts of the city; [and] we love the energy of the area and are excited to be part of a community focused on revitalization!"

Could have noted the South Bronx' history with beer, for example the Ebling and other breweries. The one front on St. Ann's Avenue at 156th Street, until it was demolished, still had a dark and fertile basement, in which mushrooms were grown during Prohibition. Car scavengers took it over in the 90s; then absent a landmark status it was demolished...

"The site lies on the Hunts Point peninsula in the South Bronx. It was the former location of the Con Edison Hunts Point Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP), also known as the Hunts Point Coking Station. The initial coke oven plant at the facility was constructed over the period from 1924 through 1926 and had a capacity of 20 million cubic feet of gas per day. The gas produced was used as a primary source of energy for lighting and heating. Another battery of coke ovens was installed in 1931, increasing gas production capacity by 10 million cubic feet per day. The MGP included 46 buildings or structures and was devoted entirely to the manufacture of gas and its associated by- products, including coal tars, cyanide-contaminated purifier waste, sludge, and oils. The structures included two gas holders. The MGP operated into the 1950s."

It was only last month we received a notice from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (“NYSDEC”) Brownfield Cleanup Program (“BCP”), specifically about its draft Final Engineering Report (FER) for the remedial actions performed at the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site....The Site is currently being developed with a new ten (10) story mixed-use building that will provide affordable housing to 68 moderate income households, as well as 12,579 square feet of commercial space and 4,922 square feet of community facility space. Historically the Site has been used as a filling station, auto repair facility and car wash beginning sometime between 1927 and 1940. The car wash operation closed in 1993 and the service station closed in 2003. BP-Amoco was operating the station at the time of closure in 2003.Removal of (17) 550-gallon underground storage tanks

Unstated was that this is where the gas was bought for the Happy Land Social Club mass murder... And now, dated January 13, comes a DEC announcement "that cleanup requirements have been achieved to address contamination related to the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site #C203046 (Bronx), under New York's Brownfield Cleanup Program." That was fast...

For comment by February 3: "The Former Nessen Lamps Site is located at 3200 Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. It is located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Jerome Avenue and Van Cortlandt Avenue East. The site is identified as Block 3323, Lot 36 on the Bronx County Tax Map. Site Features: The site consists of a triangular-shaped, approximately 11,500-square foot property that is fully occupied by an approximately 18,200 sf, 2-story building. The building is currently vacant. Current Zoning: The site is currently zoned C8-2 (commercial district). Until summer of 2011, the building had been occupied by PS 51X (The Bronx New School), an elementary school serving Kindergarten through 5th grade. Until that time the site had been leased by the New York City School Construction Authority for the school since 1993. Historical Uses: Historical uses included automotive-related usage as a garage between 1928 and 1956, and for manufacturing between 1957 and 1988, including a Nessen Lamps Inc. factory from 1971 through 1988. Four 550-gallon buried gasoline tanks noted at the site between 1945 and 1992 prior to its use as a school. The site was also a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Non-Generator for the generation of unknown wastes between 1982 and 1987. Site Geology and Hydrogeology: Bedrock is approximately 20 feet below grade in the vicinity of the site and consists of pre-Cambrian rocks. Groundwater is approximately 12 to 16 feet below grade and is expected to flow in a westerly direction towards Jerome Park Resevoir."

Annals of the Bronx: 17 year old shoots 11 year old through the door of his apartment: "Kijana Jenkins, 17, is charged with criminal possession of a weapon, assault, and reckless endangerment. Police officials say he made statements incriminating himself. Sources say the boy was playing video games in his apartment on Creston Avenue in Fordham Thursday night when he heard the doorbell ring. When he went to answer it, he was shot through the door. The boy does not appear to have been the intended target."

Before Rutgers beat Iowa State on December 30 at the Bronx' Yankee Stadium, Iowa State players were lounging around the Sheraton Hotel down on 53rd Street, while union 32BJ was nearing the tentative contract which averted a strike. It was less than dramatic there: a promised December 28 demonstration was small, and van transportation related to the football game for elderly and youth was canceled. Manhattan, meanwhile, was chock a block with tourists, a real Bloomberg New York...

Wiener of the week: Jonathan Wiener of Chestnut Holdings, slumlord of 1520 Sheridan Ave: no cooking gas from August...

Echoes of the Congo: the City Board of Election was told of a potential voting system problem on October 6, 2011 (and the State Board on October 7), urging that the problem should be investigated before the machines used at P.S. 65 in the Bronx in 2010 were used again. But neither the City nor the State has indicated these machines would not be used again: for shame....

RIP, Books in the Hood: "LaVerne Harris opened it at 815 Westchester Avenues in Longwood in February 2007.. [she] worked overtime to pay the store's $2,500 a month rent. Then she retired in June 2010, with the business making only $900 a month." And now, RIP...

TIMES SQUARE, December 16 -- After dozens of arrests in Duarte Square followed by a march north shadowed by police, Occupy Wall Street descended on Times Square again, chanting and testifying in a sea of tourists.

"Christmas is canceled!" a marcher yelled into the crowd. "Bloomberg arrested Santa Claus!"

The march stalled on 44th Street, with police on horses on either side. Where to go next? One long time Occupier complained to Inner City Press, "I came to occupy Wall Street, not entertain tourists." A decision was taken to proceed north to the red staircase.

There testimonials through the people's mic began, each starting with "I occupy because." There was a surfeit of idealism: occupying for starving children overseas and in the United States, for unborn children, for Egyptians blinded by pepper spray made in Pennsylvania.

A woman said she'd come from unemployed Spain to occupy Wall Street, where the global problem started. As she spoke a passing tourist shouted, "Get a job!"

They were parallel universes. Speaker after speaker denounced the neon advertisements towering above them. "This is no beauty," said one. "I hate light pollution said another," from Buffalo by way of Oregon.

Finally things turned back to financial institutions. A chant begna, "Morgan Stanley, B of A, Occupy won't go away." Here's hoping. Watch this site.

The crackdown on Occupy Wall Street extended to The Bronx, during the relatively small protest to re-open the closed down garden by 149th Street and Third Avenue. The police deployed there were not, of course, fighting the actual crime in The Bronx...

When we saw the Jennifer Lopez' Fiat ad wasn't even filmed in The Bronx, it seemed like typical exploitation. Then came the complaint by, and settlement with, Tats Cru, for use of a graffiti mural that's copyrighted. One quibble: it is really a copyright case, or the use for commercial gain?

Last week we received a notice from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (“NYSDEC”) Brownfield Cleanup Program (“BCP”), specifically about its draft Final Engineering Report (FER) for the remedial actions performed at the 1800 Southern Boulevard Site....The Site is currently being developed with a new ten (10) story mixed-use building that will provide affordable housing to 68 moderate income households, as well as 12,579 square feet of commercial space and 4,922 square feet of community facility space. Historically the Site has been used as a filling station, auto repair facility and car wash beginning sometime between 1927 and 1940. The car wash operation closed in 1993 and the service station closed in 2003. BP-Amoco was operating the station at the time of closure in 2003.

Unstated: this is where the gas was bought for the Happy Land Social Club mass murder...

Protests have begun in The Bronx, where 17 of the 29 New York City post offices that are being considered for closure are. The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which requires the post office to make payments toward its employees future health benefits for 10 years, until 2017. The non-profit Congressional Research Service determined in 2009 that the payments were costing the postal service roughly $5 billion per year and are having a “considerable” impact on the post office’s profitability. And now this...

Even on Thanksgiving, Police Threaten Arrest at Occupy Wall Street, Egypt Protest

LOWER MANHATTAN, November 24, updated with video -- As Occupy Wall Street celebrated Thanksgiving amid guitars and turkey dinners, police arrived and threatened arrests for criminal trespass due to noise. Video here

Some called it cliche and other, "police state," as drumming was brought to a close. The drummers consented -- "just for today," one said -- and other protests were announced, including at the Egyptian embassy in support of those protesting in Tahrir Square.

In the crowd was "White Hat," who earlier in the week proposed canceling the Occupy Wall Street observation mission to Cairo and returning the $29,000 allocated to the General Assembly. As reported by Inner City Press, that proposal failed. But the mission has not gone.

Now another stop might be Sana'a in Yemen, where democracy and accountability activists are being shot for opposing the immunity deal given to strongman Ali Saleh, in a deal crafted by the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia and the Obama administration behind them. Click here for Inner City Press' story on the deal.

After the standoff on Thanksgiving, under the watchful panopticon eye of the NY Police Department watchtower over Liberty Square, many in the crowd suggested celebrating in peace. Occu-Pumpkin-Pie, one of them called out. Marching on the banks will have to wait another day. Watch this site.

Footnote: also in the crowd was former Philadelphia police department Captain Ray Lewis, in uniform, who told the Press that NYPD "white shirts" should not be involved in tussles with protesters, and that the tear gassing of a sit-in at University of California - Davis was indicative of mismanagement. He got a good reception.

Now the Bronx stands to lose Cibao Meat Products and its factory and more than 50 jobs on St. Ann's Ave. Without responsiveness in The Bronx, despite all the talk of economic development, it plans a factory in Paterson, N.J. "We would like to stay in the Bronx because all the people who work for us are from the neighborhood... We need to find a new location because we want to go into distribution and we need more space," said Julio Isidor, Cibao general manager. "We are looking at Newark as well as Paterson." Ah, the Bronx...

Either way it's unacceptable: 59-year-old Bengali "Bimal Chanda died Wednesday from severe injuries he sustained during an assault in his apartment building at 30 W. 190th St. in the Fordham section of the Bronx last Saturday... Police say they have no reason to believe it's a hate crime, but Chanda's widow wonders why two people would beat her husband so savagely and still leave his wallet filled with credit cards and $90 in cash intact. 'I've been hearing things, from other family, friends and relatives, other Bengali people, they've been getting mugged on a daily basis, and it's really not acceptable,' said one family member." It is important that the family's claims be investigated.

Just get it done: it's time for Amtrak and the state Department of Transportation to resolve a problem related to the Bronx River. They've bickered for years over a segment of the Bronx River Greenway, a new walking and bicycling route that must cross an Amtrak rail line. The Obama administration has yet to commit funds to the restoration of the Bronx River... Click here for this week's Occupy Wall Street coverage.

Regarding an increase in shootings in NYC, a police source is quoted that "normally the task force is used in high-crime neighborhoods where you have a lot of shootings and robberies. But instead of being sent to Jamaica, Brownsville and the South Bronx, they are in Wall Street." Don't blame this on Occupy Wall Street -- mostly days, there is no rationale at all for the number of police lazing around down there. See this week's Inner City Press Bank Beat report for story of the October 22 General Assembly, upcoming "trial" of Goldman Sachs.

At Occupy Wall Street in Washington Square Park on October 15, there were Bronx doctors talking, with mic check, about health care being a human right. It was good to see --

TIMES SQUARE, October 15 -- When the Occupy Wall Street protesters came to Times Square on Saturday, the police confined them to pens on both sides of the street then paraded those arrested down the broad "perp-walk" in the middle.

While some of the protesters still insisted that not only "we are the 99 percent" but also "so are you," others booed the police, saying "they'll take your pension too."

Police horses were deployed. Inner City Press witnessed one police horse being hit by a taxi, leading the crowd to blame the police for using horses for no reason. Up on 46th Street the horses remained stationed, along with riot police in helmets with visors.

A chant went up, "Who are you protecting?" There was also invective directed at Ray Kelly, the Police Commissioner who would be mayor.

Similarly, while cheers went up when those atop tourist busses gave a thumbs up, a number of stretch limousines were booed, with called of "there goes the one percent." But maybe it's a wedding, or a prom.

On 47th Street, however, the police were letting tourists through the barricades but not New Yorkers, including the Press. Video here. And later when questioned why, they threatened to arrest Inner City Press.

Via Twitter a call went out for a General Assembly in Washington Square Park downtown at 9 pm. And down at the arch in Washington Square Park, more police were massed.

Typical -- the New York Times tours Amanda Burden around Melrose Commons preaching the benefits of gentrification, leading to this gushing letter to the Times:

"I'm extremely encouraged by Mayor Bloomberg's vision and Amanda Burden's efforts in building a better South Bronx. In 2007, I moved to Mott Haven from Greenwich, CT (two polar opposite communities) and restored a brownstone. The South Bronx has definitely changed for the better, but I’m often discouraged by the filth. Most dog owners are irresponsible and don't pick up after their dogs, sidewalks and parking lots (including the 40th precinct police parking lot!) are strewn with litter (and dog feces), illegal dumping is prevalent and graffiti is tolerated. The sanitation department does an amazing job, but the apathy and sheer lack of pride by many of the residents hampers their efforts. Now it's up to the inhabitants to "build" a sense of pride in their revitalized neighborhood and community - keep it clean and graffiti free!"

This is, to put it mildly, not a common view in the South Bronx. But it's what the New York Times prints....

Beyond historic concerns about the digital divide in the South Bronx and areas like it, now the concern is profiling: a name "associated with “Need Cash” generated ads for 'Selling Your Settlement' on the Upper West Side while associated ads with her name generated only payday lending and similar options in the South Bronx." Do algorithm generated ad differ by geography? It seems they do. We'll have more on this.

Conflux of The Bronx and UN, from the White House September 15 briefing (and UN this week) --

Q Congressman Eliot Engel said that President Obama has a problem with Jewish voters in his Bronx, New York district. Why do you think -- or why does the administration think there's a perception problem?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I would disagree with that. I don't know about the congressman's district itself. I think as recently as last week or the week before, the Prime Minister of Israel made an incredibly strong statement about the remarkable commitment, unshakeable commitment, that this President has to Israel's security, and the unprecedented assistance that this President has provided Israel. Both -- he has said this when I was with the Vice President in Israel and visiting with the Prime Minister, with regards to our overall -- this administration's overall efforts and commitment to Israeli security, and he said it again just in recent days with regard to President Obama's specific assistance to the Prime Minister of late.

So this President's absolute commitment to Israel's security is, I think, demonstrated and unshakeable. The fact is that he is committed to the process of trying to get the two parties to negotiate, get the two parties to go back to direct talks, because he believes it's in the interest of Israel and in the interests of the Palestinian people for them to reach peace in a way that ensures Israel's security and allows them to resolve their issues. That, in the end, will ensure that the Jewish state of Israel survives and prospers.

Q Is the administration concerned that you've let it get to this point, that we're on the cusp of UNGA and they may be facing a statehood vote?

MR. CARNEY: Well, we've been talking about this off and on for weeks and months that -- if this problem were not complex and difficult it would have been solved a long time ago. Many administrations have made significant efforts to deal with it. And we are completely focused on it, committed to it. And we are convinced that the only way that Israelis and Palestinians can reach the goal that they share is through direct negotiations. So we will keep on that.

Among commenters SUPPORTING Capital One - ING Direct are groups in New York City, some purporting to serve The Bronx. We'll have more on this.

A little Bronx history: while Kosovar Albanians now expand, there was a time in the early 1990s when a shadowy Serbia-based group called the Black Hand patrolled Belmont, with the help of some "turncoat" Albanians from Montenegro. Have they now given up?

Amid much Hurricane Irene hype, it arose there was no plan to evacuate Rikers Island. Mayor Bloomberg was asked about it, and quickly replied that it is higher than the rest of "Zone A." But of course people can't move. They are just lucky...

It all started with this: five years ago, "California-based real-estate firm Milbank announced the Bronx 'one of the last boroughs to offer affordable rent, which would also be positioned to undergo significant gentrification.'" Then the carcass of the overpriced buildings was picked over by Deutsche Bank and Bank of America. Now, going forward, the fight back...

The vacant site of the former Stella D’oro factory will likely have a new owner any day now, it's reported. Current owner Brynwood Partners and purchasers Metropolitan Realty Associates, along with Angelo, Gordon and Company are set to close on the 184 W. 237th St. site this week...Where the empty factory currently stands, Metropolitan and Angelo, Gordon and Co. are planning Riverdale Crossing, a shopping center anchored by big box retailer BJ’s Wholesale Club. According to a May report by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., non-managerial workers at the Bronx Gateway Mall, which houses the South Bronx BJ’s location, pay an average starting wage of $8.80 per hour.

How can it be that of 34 proposed Post Office closings in all of New York City, fully 17 would be in The Bronx? This is compared with only Manhattan with six, then Brooklyn and Queens with five each and Staten Island with just one. Per USPS.com the proposed Bronx closures are

So just in the run-up to the weekend in The Bronx, there was a five year old shot outside a bodega in Bronxdale, and a four year old girl bitten by a pit bull on 170th and Third Avenue. What was that, about New York getting better? For whom?

The five borough comparison in the New York Post of July 24, while interesting, overfocused on the income of those employed in the private sector. Through this prism, the Bronx came out ahead of Brooklyn and even Staten Island. But viewing the more important median household income, Staten Island nearly doubles the Bronx. Why? The first prism exclude the unemployed, and public employees. Staten Island the home of New York Strongest...

“As in DUMBO and Williamsburg, empty warehouses and factories are converting into affordable apartments and studios. The Clock Tower boasts two-bedroom rentals with new appliances, rooftop access and a gym for $1,850... The economic downturn hit the South Bronx art community hard, with some galleries closing recently... Mary Brimage hawks novelties from porcelain Rosenthal teacups and a $2,500 polished oak wardrobe.”

Sleazy is as sleazy does: now the Upper East Side of Manhattan is arguing that IT is a environmental justice community, because it has a housing project:

“'I have nightmares just thinking that there’s a possibility that they might come back,' said Ms. Johnson, 66, a disabled resident of the Stanley M. Isaacs Houses, at 94th Street and First Avenue. The proximity of public housing figures prominently in a battle by Upper East Side residents to derail a city plan to reactivate a waste transfer station on the East River at 91st Street. In lawsuits, rallies and lobbying in the State Legislature, they argue that economically disadvantaged residents, already struggling, should not be saddled with additional problems. 'How can you ignore the fact that the closest community is 80 percent minority?' said Anthony Ard, president of the Gracie Point Community Council, a neighborhood group that was founded to fight the plan.”

This argument is made in order to jam the waste transfer station back to the South Bronx. For shame.

“In a time when most public schools in the Bronx don't have a gym or auditorium and have to share diminishing space, a new charter school is bulldozing a parking lot, garage and defunct social club in the South Bronx to make way for a new building.”

“Lighthouse's elementary school, which currently houses about 420 students, is surrounded by a mixture of charters and public schools like Banana Kelly High School on Longwood Ave., which is slated for 'restart' by the city Department of Education.”

“The red-and-gray elementary school is in bright contrast to the dull, brown apartment buildings and parking lots dotting the wide street.”

A lot of government money's been spent on “dull” buildings on Intervale Avenue....

Several business leaders in Ivyside Plaza near the Penn State Altoona Campus say they are not sorry to see the the Varsity Cafe, located at 535 E. 25th Ave., shut down this past weekend because, they say, the bath salt Blizzard was being distributed from there and was causing havoc with their businesses. Blizzard, although called a bath salt, is used as a drug by many to give the user a cocaine or methaphetamine-like high.

Robert Hecker, the owner of the tattoo company, joined Patel outside the now-closed cafe to talk about the problems of the past four or so months. He said people looking for Blizzard would come to the plaza and, not knowing exactly where to go, would end up at his tattoo shop. Hecker said he wants nothing to do with the drug scene, and he posted a sign on the door stating succinctly, "We don't sell Blizzard." He said people would get the Blizzard and come to an area near the shop where they would sniff the Blizzard or shoot it up. "We had to physically remove a couple of people," he said. He said police were called by other business people several times because of the problems. Hecker said shop owner sent emails explaining the situation to the plaza's owners, The Blair Companies. "I'm glad they are out of this place," he said of Varsity. He said the Varsity location not long ago was a good place to get sandwiches. Then it became a type of coffee shop. He said the sale of Blizzard started several months ago. "It turned into the South Bronx overnight," he said.

So the City and AT&T plan to put free wi-fi this summer in 20 parks in the five boroughs. Some thought that would by the math, 20 divided by five, mean four for The Bronx, or more given Staten Island's low population and that Bronxites might be more in need of free wireless than others.

But no - only three of the 20 NYC sites are in The Bronx. Why not Crotona Park, for example? Why indeed.

So the so-called Bronx Brewery of MIT's Chris Gallant is in fact producing its suds not in The Bronx, but with a “Connecticut contract brewer.” So it's not “Bronx pale ale” but rather “Metro North Malty.” Typical.

The US Postal Service is trying to move mail sorting out of 149th Street and Grand Concourse to Manhattan - but it is being opposed.

Tale of two 140s: amid a photo show and “VIP” session by Jonas Broncks Beer on 141st Street and Courtlandt Avenue -- we wish we'd made it there but couldn't -- the police blotter of May 19 describes a scene on nearly 144th and Third Avenue, man beating a woman while shouting “You're interfering with me making money, I'm a hustler!”

Was the woman asking him to stop selling the crack he was arrested with? Or was she just asking for her cell phone back?

“A.L. Bazzini Co., which makes peanuts, among other products, announced last month that it was moving its manufacturing plant from the Bronx to Pennsylvania. Other food manufacturing companies that have left the city in the past two years include Stella D'oro, hummus maker Sabra and Old London, manufacturer of Melba Toast. The Hunts Point wholesale produce market in the South Bronx is also contemplating a move to New Jersey.”

So why DID Bloomberg select the Nissan NV over the Turkish firm which proposed to build the Taxi of the Future in New York City? If it was because the Turkish firm didn't have enough experience, why were they allowed to be on of three finalists? Something doesn't smell right -- and the selection process has been sued...

Now the Wall Street Journal joins the New York Times in bemoaning the slow down of gentrification in the South Bronx:

The dynamics that initially inspired what some called gentrification in the South Bronx were similar to what triggered rapid development in neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Long Island City in the '90s: a steady influx of artists looking for affordable studios and loft spaces. While this trend continues in Mott Haven today, albeit to a lesser extent, the arts scene in the area has also suffered in recent years, according to local artists.

"At one point in 2006 there were at least half a dozen galleries here and now there are one or two left," said area resident Barry Kostrinksy, whose gallery Haven Arts closed in 2009 after a six-year run due to a lack of funding. "Most people don't think of South Bronx as a place to buy art; well-heeled collectors go to Chelsea, maybe Brooklyn."

Long-held attitudes about the rough-and-tumble character of the neighborhood are difficult to shake off, given the landscape of industrial lots and housing projects. The economic downturn also hit the borough particularly hard compared with Manhattan and Brooklyn, locals say. Unemployment in the Bronx stood at 11.7% in March, the highest county jobless rate in the state and well above 8.4% for New York City as a whole.

"I saw a lot of people lose their jobs and go from being food connoisseurs to not being able to afford a cup of coffee; from treating their friends to lunches and dinners to losing their homes and moving back to the states they came from," said Chris Dimitriyado, owner of Alexander's Café, which also opened in the area in 2006.

The latest development to go up in the neighborhood, Bruckner by the Bridge, is a low-income housing project with 419 rental units in three buildings.

Actually, it's NOT entirely low income housing affordable to those who live in the area -- which is why they'll have to reach beyond Community Board 1 to fill it...

Bloomberg talks of a new New York. And in midtown the tourists throng. But in just the past few days in the South Bronx, a 17 year old was killed for $10, and a couple stomped a 61 year old man to death. New New York?

The NYT reports “half the apartments at Bruckner by the Bridge are reserved for residents of the borough’s Community Board 1, the minimum salary required to qualify to live there — about $35,000 for a family of four — is far too steep for the area.”

Inner City Press: Why not require that half the apartments go to area residents, and make the rents have to come down to meet this threshold?

Those criticizing the NYC Housing Authority will expand, we hear, to include South Bronx Churches. There is a concern that the City may retaliate on the Nehemiah funding they receive. We'll see.

Inner City Press has long criticized the Community Reinvestment Act record of New York Community Bank, which for example insisted on providing its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data in paper form, to evade review of its fair lending record.

More recent opponents on April 8 came to Bryant Avenue in The Bronx and “called on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to force New York Community Bank to evaluate the finances and living conditions at 34 rundown Bronx buildings in foreclosure, and then disclose information on building repairs that are needed. The move to pressure the FDIC to get involved is the latest salvo in a three-year campaign by officials and advocates to hold banks responsible for loans they made on multi-family properties that ended up falling into a state of disrepair. An amendment inserted in last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gives the FDIC the power to intervene. Tenants in the Bryant Avenue building are contending with dangerous conditions, officials said. Problems include a broken elevator, toxic mold and a carbon monoxide leak from the boiler.”

So “The family of a Bronx third-grader who was handcuffed by police after a classroom fight is suing the NYPD. Sofia Bautista, who was a third-grader at Public School 132 in Morrisania last April, was arrested by police after she got into a fight with a classmate. 'They arrested me and they shouldn’t have arrested me,' Bautista said. In the lawsuit, the family claims she was taken into a squad car, handcuffed to a bench for nearly three hours at the 42nd Precinct in the South Bronx, interrogated without either of her parents present, and threatened with jail. Cops allegedly refused to allow her mother, Amarilis Bautista, to see her. 'Sofia was screaming for me, but there was nothing I could do. My daughter feels afraid all the time now.'” Great job, NYPD.

Geraldine Ferraro was born in the South Bronx, but the news of her passing repeatedly said she was "from" Queens. Even there, P.S. 85 under the El where she taught second grade is now named for one of the Vallone clan. Inner City Press suggestion: why not rename it for her, since the Bridge was given to Ed Koch?

Passed away in Belmont: the empanadas place on Hughes and 187, with healthy juice: now store for rent. And laundromat 189. Academic gentrification?

What a scam: NYC Mayor Bloomberg's proposed budget calls for postponing the construction of new marine transfer stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn until 2016-19 -- leaving the burden on the South Bronx. Some environmental (in) justice...

Bloomberg Plans to Double City Gym Fees Despite Health Ad Campaigns

By Matthew Russell Lee

NEW YORK CITY, March 13 -- The Bloomberg administration is trying to double fees at NYC Parks Department gyms by June, despite its loud campaigns against obesity and for public health, Inner City Press has learned.

City gym staff told Inner City Press that the annual usage fee will rise from $75 to $150 in June. Similarly, the annual fee to use City tennis courts will double from $100 to $200.

While both are for now relatively affordable, a 100% increase would drive future usage down. Meanwhile the MTA subways are full of ads with graphic depiction of heart disease caused by, among other things, sugared soda and lack of exercise.

Another public health campaign, to require grocery stores which sell cigarettes to feature graphic posters of rotten teeth, has reportedly been put on hold by litigation.

A bodegera told Inner City Press on March 13 that a District Court injunction now posted on her Plexiglass replaces the rotting tooth posters. Asked who was behind the lawsuit, she said “the people from Newport.” Watch this site.

March 14, 2011

Pure sleaze: “New York Community Bank has sold the mortgage on eight dilapidated buildings in the Bronx, bank officials said Thursday, disposing of its interests in properties that have attracted tenant protests. The purchaser bought the mortgage, which had a $16 million balance, at a discount. The bank declined to identify the buyer or to say how much the buyer paid.”

The buildings include 2345 Crotona Avenue and 735 Bryant Avenue..

"We received several offers on the note," said Ilene Angarola, a spokeswoman with New York Community Bancorp, the bank holding company. "We feel that this party has the experience and capacity to properly care for and manage the properties."

Yeah then why not say who they are?

March 7, 2011

So, what would be accomplished for the residents of the South Bronx and other low income neighborhoods by NYC “Int. No. 485 - A Local Law to amend the New York City charter, in relation to classification of depository banks” ? We'll have something to say soon.

February 28, 2011

So the police beat up 19 year old Jorge Cartagena for riding a bike on the sidewalk, and put him through the system for a day and a half -- and then exonerated themselves...

February 21, 2011

So now the Hunts Point Market is openly threatening to move to New Jersey when its lease expires in May. How did it come to this?

February 14, 2011

If you forgive the screaming capital letters, this is the type of protest we don't see enough of in The Bronx:

“The UNITED NEW YORK CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY RESIDENTS of the 36th Senatorial District will hold an early afternoon candlelight vigil for all the fallen victims of violence in our combined NYCHA residences. UNR will be holding a press conference in support of our poor and working families of NYCHA residences, who DEMANDS more security and immediate installation of Close[d] Circuit TV (CCTV) Security Cameras Promised to the residents. Our Children and Seniors are DYING! We MUST have more security NOW!”

February 7, 2011

When Bronxite Ilia Lopez was killed by a hit and run livery cab at 4 am on February 4, the Post reported that she on her way to a methadone clinic on 121st Street and 2nd Avenue “that she typically visited at 4 a.m. daily for her dose” -- from Norwood in The Bronx.

Beyond the tragedy, some want to know why a methadone clinic is open at 4 a.m., drawing patients from the North Bronx. Lawsuit?

January 31, 2011

When Inner City Press on January 27 received an “urgent” press release about a $20,000 college scholarship program in The Bronx, it was opened with anticipation. Strangely, thought, SoBro was urgently requesting that local media cover a small-in-context grant from right-leaning media colossus News Corp, parent of the New York Post and Fox News. Why don't THEY urgently cover it?

And why didn't SoBro appear and give a quote in amNY's piece last week detailed failed attempts to gentrify the South South Bronx?

January 24, 2011

In the New York Times' demographic map page on January 23, The Bronx' census tracts are mostly dominated by US-born Hispanics, except for a track in the West Bronx that is mostly Caribbean immigrants. The only notation the Times makes is a tract with the “largest concentration of US born Hispanics (93%)” -- which it labels “Morrisania.” Looks more like Longwood, Simpson or Freeman Street....

January 17, 2011

We must comment, negatively, on the Daily News' decision to re-assign long time Bronx reporter Bob Kappstatter to lower Manhattan, even if on the police beat. One praiseworthy feature of the Daily News was its pages on The Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. And now?

January 10, 2011

Hats for sale, baby pit bulls and cell phone companies working on commission: welcome to Fordham Road!

The proposal to merge the New York Banking and Insurance Departments, made by new governor Andrew Cuomo, is not only about the alleged convergence of the industries, but about the marginalization of the NY Banking Department.

One after one, large New York based banks switches from state to national regulation as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency offered preemption of all state laws. Citibank NA -- national association -- was followed by JPMorgan Chase and HSBC all switching to national charters.

The result was a Banking Department largely concerned with small mortgage companies and even check cashiers. Now comes Andrew Cuomo, proposing to put behemoths like AIG under the NYBD's jurisdiction. We're ready.

January 3, 2011

When massive amounts of public and private money were spent building a replica Yankee Stadium on the north side of 161st Street, it was said it would help the area, including with restaurants open all year round. A recent visit to the Hard Rock Cafe in the base of the new Yankee Stadium found it almost entirely empty -- two tables out of dozens had customers. A bartender explained that it is open when there are tours of the Stadium, and that they would be closing early that night. Big improvement for the neighborhood...

December 27, 2010

From the NYT last week: the NYPD “will begin videotaping interrogations. Investigators will be able to use cameras to videotape suspects as part of a pilot program in two precincts: The 67th Precinct in Brooklyn and the 48th Precinct in the Bronx, a police official said. 'In one squad, the camera will be obvious,' said the official, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. 'In the other, the camera will not be obvious.' He declined to say which camera would be in plain sight and which would be hidden, but he said that part of the pilot program’s aim was to establish how cameras make a difference when detectives interrogate people. At all times, he said, the police must disclose if a camera is present if someone under questioning asks questions about it, Mr. Browne said.”

But if the camera is not visible, why would a person ask about it?

December 20, 2010

East Tremont has been rebuilt at a higher density than the rest of the South Bronx. It started with a six story building on Washington Avenue, now mirrored by one on Third Avenue between the Cross Bronx and East Tremont. And above East Tremont, another one. They are relatively faceless and there has not been an increase in the number of stores. Yet.

December 13, 2010

Better late than never? Now Nadine Panton faces up to 25 years to life for the gruesome 2003 robbery and slaying of Nellie Hocutt. Her accomplice, Sparkle Daniel, was convicted in October. "After seven long years, both killers are finally going away," said Hocutt's 43-year-old grandson, Omar Whitfield.

But why did it TAKE seven years? In 2007, a person the two had confessed or bragged to turned them in, after a seemingly deceptive Daily News article said that new leads had emerged.

But why did the TRIAL take three years?

December 6, 2010

At Gracie Mansion, Jokes of Cathie Black & Bloomberg, Moses History & Onion Tart

By Matthew Russell Lee

GRACIE MANSION NYC, December 3 -- At Mayor Michael Bloomberg's holiday party for the press on December 2, the jokes were about Cathie Black and her lack of background in pedagogy. Bloomberg was given as a present a box of Nilla Wafers, said to be from a 99 cent store on Chambers Street, which on the back said Vanilla Waivers.

More interesting was a tour of the upstairs of Gracie Mansion. The guide, who will remain in the shadows for reasons that will become clear, began with what he called the master bedroom. Until Bloomberg, he said, it was called the Mayor's bedroom, as all New York City mayor's from LaGuardia to Giuliani slept there.

Next came the room of the the wife of Mayor Wagner, who raised some $800,000 dollars to build a new wing on Gracie Mansion, where downstairs Bloomberg was working the crowd of reporters, who nibbled on onion tarts with the ubiquitous balsamic vinegar and passable holiday cookies.

Facing the East River, across which British cannons in Queens fired at George Washington's artillery set up on this spot during the Revolutionary War, is a guest room which has hosted, among others, Nelson Mandela, Menachem Begin and Desmond Tutu. Guiliani's daughter's room was converted by Bloomberg's personal interior decorator Jaime Drake into an “old country” bedroom complete with long armed bed warmer in the fireplace.

By the staircase to get back down is a sign board with the names of contributors to the Gracie Mansion Conservancy. Inner City Press asked if companies which do buiness with the City can give money to the Conservancy.

The Conservancy is separate from the City, Inner City Press was told. We will have more on this. Quickly a higher up in the Conservancy approached. The tour would have to be called off, Inner City Press was told. Any such questions should be directed to the press office, not to the “docent.” It was implied that Inner City Press would somehow need the press office's permission to write this article.

Downstairs the drinking and eating continued, the latter largely from the kosher table. There is an oil painting of Mrs. Wagner, and a breakfast room where, among others, the Russian oligarch owner of the Nets was hosted. Ah, Brooklyn real estate. In the room there is a convex mirror, too high to see your face in, meant to spread light.

The history of the Gracie Mansion was finally explained. Gracie was a Scottish businessman -- he might have owned the Nets or Knicks of his day -- who looked for a place “uptown in the country” to do his entertaining. He chose the site from which George Washington was routed.

His business failed, and the house passed from hand to hand, finally ending up abandoned when it was taken by the City under eminent domain to build what's now the FDR Drive. During construction, New York's “Master Builder” Robert Moses had the lawn raises so the highway would go undernearth.

No such delicacy was used by Moses in the Bronx, where tenements and bus depots were mowed down for the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ironically, in one of Gracie Mansion's downstairs rooms on Thursday night, a flat screen TV played images of the South Bronx in the 1970s, the burned out blocks of Charlotte Street and graffitied Number Five train over Southern Boulevard and Boston Road. It played without the sound on.

LaGuardia, originator of Public Markets in the Bronx and Essex Street, was offered two mansions as possible homes: one on 75th and Riverside deemed “too fancy” by the Little Flower, and Gracie Mansion, which he okayed. Moses had the Mansion renovated -- it had become a public restroom, a storehouse for the Parks Department and purveyor of Italian ices -- and LaGuardia moved in. All mayors since, until Bloomberg, lived here.

The reporters talk turned to Bloomberg, how he bought a floor of the townhouse next to his on 79th Street in order to extend his living room, how he serves popcorn and hotdogs on expensive china, how an SUV drives him to the express IRT stop on 59th Street for his subway ride downtown. It was time to go.

November 29, 2010

We recommend 80 Blocks From Tiffany's, shot in the Bronx in 1979. Released only as an educational VHS in 1985, it's now out on DVD. It's based on a 1977 Esquire piece by Jon Bradshaw about the Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads...

November 22, 2010

From last Sunday's Times on Hunts Point: “Although developers say that tight credit has put the brakes on additional co-op construction, and although prostitution is a problem in Hunts Point, the area has nonetheless stabilized.” Tight credit...

November 22, 2010

November 15, 2010

In the windows of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan there are photos of The Bronx by Lisa Kahane, of holes in cinder block sealed buildings, a building on fire, a garden in a lot surrounded by abandoned buildings. Three blocks away on 6th Avenue and 43rd Street in the International Center of Photography there is an exhibit, reviewed below, which includes similar photographs of Madrid after Franco's bombing...

In NY, Spanish Civil War Photos Scream of Propaganda, Echo Sudan & Sri Lanka

By Matthew Russell Lee

NEW YORK, November 13 -- Even undoctored photographs can serve as propaganda. The Spanish Civil War photographs of Robert Capa, Chim (David “Seymour” Szymin) and Gerda Taro on display in Manhattan's International Center of Photograph through January 9 show heroic Republicans fighting Franco's fascists, shot for Leftist magazines in France, the UK and even Germany.

The captions make clear how the photos were intended. Chim shot a series about Republicans trying to save Spanish and Catholic art words from fascist attacks -- to counter the idea, the caption says, that the Republicans were anti-Catholic, barbarians who would destroy Spain's cultural patrimony.

Taro, in the battle of Brunete she would die in, took photos to show Republican victories “when written reports were discredited.” But did people, even then, believe their eyes?

Chim took a photograph of a woman breastfeeding her baby, looking up at the sky. Later a magazine called Madrid published it with airplanes arranged above, and it became known as a photo of a air raid. But it was not.

The French weekly Regards sent a letter of introduction for Capa, saying “you know our magazine, we will use this to serve the Spanish people.” One imagines applications today to the government of Sudan to cover the war in Darfur, or to Sri Lanka to cover the shattered Tamil areas. “Our photos can help you” -- but will they?

Capa documented French run camps for refugee Republicans on their way to Mexico. The camps were surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers, like the internment camps for Tamils at Vavuniya in Sri Lanka. There, the government barred journalists for months, as it has now denied visas to media which showed pictures of the dead.

The exhibit is called “The Mexican Suitcase” -- in which the three photographers' 4500 negatives were found in 2007 -- and runs through January 9, the day scheduled for the South Sudan referendum. There are photos, too, from there. Plus ca change.

November 8, 2010

In the Sheraton's ballroom on the night of November 2, the press assembled hours early as Democratic staffers tested the sound system. And now! Our Governor elect! Androooooo Cuomo! Mario and Matilda. Waiters came out and put bags of chips and popcorn on the tables then withdrew them. A cash bar was set up, fully $16 for “premium” liquor. But just outside the ballroom was a sign, Union Members Only. Inside were tables piled with good. Membership has its privileges, apparently. Thompson was interviews with Fios-1, and left without bodyguards. Inner City Press left too, to monitor the evening's wider results.

From Soho to Brooklyn, Must Alternative Arts Just Mean Gentrification? Of Fashion MODA

By Matthew Russell Lee

BRONX, October 29 -- How do independent artists try to avoid being stalking horses for real estate development? What is alternative art?

The questions were raised on October 29 in a self styled alternative space on Tenth Avenue in the West 30s, when Stefan Eins of Fashion Moda previously in the South Bronx (and now in Harlem) spoke, along with Beka Economopoulos of the Not an Alternative space in Williamsburg.

Inner City Press asked each of them, and the other panelists who appeared along with Beka, about gentrification and the limits of good intentions. Avram Finkelstein, designer of the Silence = Death anti-AIDS logo, said one has to consider ownership, not only of property but also ideas. He recounted how AmFAR edited from a poster any reference to corporate greed.

Earlier in the panel discussion at Exit Art, tales were told of alternative spaces on Greene Street and Bleecker and Bowery, all locations now firmly gentrified. The Asian American Arts Center has, in a sense, been gentrified out of existence. It has retreated from a McDonalds invaded building on the Bowery to a smaller space on Norfolk, seeking grants to digitize photos of its former exhibitions.

To Inner City Press' question about how artists can avoid being the vanguard of gentrification, Exit Art founder Jeannette Ingberman whispered an answer about capitalism. Earlier, NYU academic Melissa Bachleff Burtt had recounted stories of Yoko Ono's loft on Chambers Street, and the 10th Street co-op scene.

Alanna Heiss of P.S. 1 and the Clocktower Gallery, among other great stories told about the Crown Heights Police Station, saying it “made Fort Apache [The Bronx] look like a garden party, with artists' studios in holding cells and a commander, Adam Butcher, who spoke of poets, painters and policemen. And now, it's condominiums.

Stefan Eins of Fashion Moda told Inner City Press that although his iconic space on Third Avenue and 147th Street closed, he moved to a brownstone in Harlem, and has traveled as far as Osh in Kyrgyzstan to present about Fashion Moda. That never triggered gentrification, perhaps because it closed. Or could that be why it closed?

In Exit Art, many alternative spaces were memorialized in cardboard boxes: the Longwood Arts Project in the Bronx, Gran Fury and others. (The Fashion Moda box contain, along with photos of Ahearn murals, a photo book by On the wall were posters of the Real Estate Show held on Delancey Street in 1980, and a photo of Elenor Holmes Norton when she was with the Studio Museum in Harlem. The show, and the boxes, are worth seeing.

October 25, 2010

Let's compare the J train over Broadway in Brooklyn to the El trains in The Bronx. Those over Jerome and Westchester Avenues in The Bronx are sturdier, were built as fancy suburban trains. East New York, from whence the J train comes, seems to have been working class for some time. Walk it to Myrtle, where you'll find the Kiwi Market, an amalgam of Asian vegetables, yuppie staples like goat cheese, and a largely Mexican clientele. Across Broadway is a good take-out Chinese, photo of a tranquil lake above a bulletproof Plexiglass counter. A man comes in repeatedly asking for “two quarters.” There are no takers.

October 18, 2010

Up on Gun Hill Road, on October 16 there was a fish fry to raise money to build a church's community center: red snapper! The Jamaican health food store sold carrot and sorrel juice, some with Tiger Bone (some wag asked, Tiger Woods?) and sour sop. In the housing project an FDNY truck spoke loudly to children, incongruously with a British accent. Some of the Bronx is changing but some is not.

October 11, 2010

Oops-- After all the money spent, a typo on a sign along the Willis Avenue Bridge is confusing commuters. The northbound exit sign alerts drivers to Interstate 287, instead of the correct Interstate 278. The NYC Department of Transportation confirmed the error. The sign will be fixed by the weekend, according to DOT press secretary Scott Gastel...

October 4, 2010

We have written before of the fall off in service in the Mount Carmel Post Office in the Bronx on Saturdays. But on October 2 things hit a new and comical low. Behind the counter two weekend fill ins were joking, about serving time in jail, fighting with customers. A man came in and asked, “Could you give me a money order for $150?”

“I don't know about giving it to you,” the fill in joker said. “If you pay for it, maybe.”

Next up was a Caribbean woman who asked how much it cost to send registered mail.

“That's for stocks and bonds and jewelry,” the fill in joker said. “Do you have those?”

“Are you supposed to ask me what I'm sending?”

“I'm supposed to inform you about the product if you don't understand it.”

“What makes you think I don't understand it?”

Joker 1 paused then said, “I'll step away from the window and you can continue with my man here.” And then he did.

But the Caribbean women said, “What was that man's name?”

“Mister Harris.”

She continued, “because he needs to be reported.”

September 27, 2010

In the wake of the murder last week in the Bronx of Nicaraguan consular official Cesar Mercado, many at the UN and elsewhere have been asking why Mercado was living on the Grand Concourse and 180th Street, given his diplomatic salary. Inner City Press is told that he received a lump sum for housing costs, and was allowed to keep -- and send back to Nicaragua -- anything he didn't spend... Sources also tell Inner City Press that the person who discovered his body was not his “driver,” as has been reported, but another employee of the Nicaraguan Consulate. Mercado was always on time, so when he was late, the employee was sent uptown to look into it. The superintendent let the employee into the building, the sources say, but Mercado's apartment door was open. It's said that it was unlikely the killer was a stranger. We'll see.

September 20, 2010

From the News: “Cops recently dismantled a huge, entrenched heroin ring that had hundreds of customers lining up on Valentine [Avenue]. The Rev. John Jenik, pastor of Our Lady of Refuge Church on Bainbridge Ave., has been fighting the blight for nearly 30 years. He took National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske for a tour of Valentine on June 7, when Kerlikowske was in the Bronx to launch an anti-drug campaign for teens... E. 194th St. is a bustling commercial strip with a pizza place, hardware store, fruit market, video shop. Against this backdrop, on Valentine between E. 194th to E. 196th, the La Perla organization ran a $40,000-a-day heroin enterprise.” This is not the only place in The Bronx...

September 13, 2010

The night before Ferragosto, the Arthur Avenue Trattoria re-opened after more than a week of renovations. Gone were the posters of Casablanca, replaced by exposed brick. Still, a half carafe of Orvieto was only $12, as was a bento box of antipasto. The chef, now nearly a year on the job, said that even while the place was closed, they worked up dishes for the Ferragosto. But his wife and not he would serve them: he had catering to do.

September 6, 2010

With the Bronx Bombers in first place in the AL East, the Staten Island Yankees ended their season on September 5 below .500, with another loss to the Vermont Lake Monsters. It was a brilliant sunny day but the stadium, with its views of the harbor and Lower Manhattan, was half full, even with an all you can eat promotion. This turned out to be a scam, offering only one item at a time: a dry cheeseburger, thrown through the air from one attendant to another; Sierra Mist free but Tropicana Twister now, somehow deemed premium.

The Baby Bombers' starting pitcher gave up three early runs on a series of doubles. The Yankees cut it to 3-2 before a reliever came in and gave up a bases loaded triple. Game over, though in the bottom of the ninth with two outs the Yankees got a two run homer to at least cut the lead.

There are red capped Marines prominently in the stands and on the field. An award was given to a recruiter of soldiers to fight in Iraq. At game's end, kids -- some of them overgrown -- were allowed to run the bases. “See you next year,” the announcer said. We sure hope so.

August 30, 2010

... Entering the Bronx over the soon to be demolished Willis Avenue bridge on the Bx 15 bus, the new building on Bruckner Boulevard blots out the view now. The bridge's walkway runs right by the buildings windows. One wonders how they have not yet be broken, or will not in the future be.

Jump cut to the stretch above 163rd Street, new buildings on each side and still the Franklin Avenue Armory looming on the hill. To jam hundreds of family into this sullen stretch - the construction clearly has nothing to do with the market or any organic growth, simply the availability of subsidy at some time in the past. New empires being built, which will someday collapse...

August 23, 2010

In Near Empty UN, Four Yankees Shine Light on Sierra Leone and Refugee, GM Cashman on Sox, Rays and AL Headaches

UNITED NATIONS, August 18 -- It was a slow August day at the UN when four players of the New York Yankees plus the team's general manager arrived with 17 year old refugee from Sierra Leone Mohamed Kamara, set to meet his country's ambassador to the UN in the Indonesia Lounge next to the General Assembly.

It was described to the UN press corps as a photo op. Some 15 correspondents showed up, Inner City Press among them. UN Protocol and security officials scurried around. Finally up the escalator came Derek Jeter and C.C. Sabathia, with Curtis Granderson and Marcus Thames. They stood for a photograph then went in for what was described as a meeting.

Syria's Ambassador to the UN ran in after them. One reporter joked, is he looking for an autograph? Another came up with a phrase: the Damascus Destroyer chases the Bronx Bombers.

When it was over, general manager Brian Cashman took three questions. One was baseball related: what does he think of the Tampa Bay Rays? Cashman said not only the Rays are tough, there's also Boston , Texas and Minnesota, all of them headaches.

While some restaurant in Belmont like Roberto's just get more and more expensive, the Arthur Avenue Trattoria sprang up this year, converted from a dessert place, and began serving antipasto and pasta at $14, with $18 carafes of homemade wine. It's a hit, with the obligatory posters of the Sopranos and Good Fellas but also Casablanca on the walls. The antipasto comes in what looks like a Japanese bento box. They are not yet so arrogant they think the customer should be grateful to be there. On a recent visit, the linguine with walnuts was superb, as was the service. Mid-meal, the face of Mike's Deli across the street came in, glad handing. Later passing through the Market, he asked, “so how'd you like it?” while passing out the trattoria's business card to his salami customers. So there might be some connection there...

Also opening on Arthur Avenue is a place called Gerbasi. On August 14, they were painting the place and passing out their glossy business cards. It is in the space that previously had karaoke. We wish them luck.

In NYC's Central Park, The xx and Chairlift Raise Hipsters' Spirits, Bronx Death Continues

CENTRAL PARK, NYC, August 8 -- A surprise free show by The xx in Central Park's Summer Stage drew a crowd that could not fit in the venue. Also drawn by Brooklyn based Chairlift, hipsters filled the park's hills and rock formations, chased by security guards as they surged closer to hear the music.

One had to move close to hear The xx, especially at the beginning. The set began with only bass. Inner City Press saw several less than committed hipsters get up and leave, muttering “Just play the songs!”

But The xx did. By the time they reached Basic Space, the crowd inside the Summerstage and out on the grass was roaring. Because of the stripped down arrangements, the bands sounds as good or better live as on recording.

When they played “Shelter,” with the all purpose lyrics about if I said something wrong, let me make it right with the light turned on, several in the crowd were crying.

Meanwhile a security guard chased listeners down the hill by the Park's 72nd Street entrance. He shouted, “They're not letting anyone else in!” But The xx won't play in New York for some time.

There was the smell of marijuana; there were Brazilian drums from elsewhere in the Park. One imagines Mayor Bloomberg taking credit even for this, as he did for the Dumpster swimming pools on Park Avenue and 40th Street on Saturday, saying the publicity draws more tourists.

In the outer boroughs, the Bronx and eastern Brooklyn, people are being shot like dogs. But in Central Park and by Grand Central, hipsters and tourists are doing just fine. That is Bloomberg's New York. But after him, will it be more democratic? Watch this site.

Now, following the New York Times, it's the NY Post pitching Bronx real estate, describing rising prices as an unmitigated good, no mention of affordability or displacement:

Hector Nazario, famed South Bronx graffiti artist with TATs Cru, has suffered a tragedy: the shooting death of his son Bleu. Rather than a mural, he is establishing a fund for other parents who suffer this bereavement. We urge support -- and accountability.

Oh how the South Bronx is used. Al Pacino, selling out to do an ad for an Australian coffee company, says “Those cold mornings in the South Bronx, granddad would go into the kitchen, heat up some coffee and there I was, little Al, and he would just give me a little sip.”

And of George Steinbrenner, may he RIP, Ray Negron says Steinbrenner “made the Bronx more beautiful.” He did many things -- but that?

There is a street fair in Belmont, complete with free refills of pina coladas right in front of the church.

The NY Times' July 7 breathless story about Belmont shifting from Italian to Mexican is both too late and too superficial. One thing is misses is that Latinos overtook Italians in the neighborhood some time ago, are are the political power at present. Amazingly, the article contains no quote from or question to the Rivera dynasty, nor much mention of the Kosovar and Albanian presence. The Times covers The Bronx so infrequently and so superficially, there is no continuity...

In NYC, Fireworks Are For Tourists, Afghan Iraq Echoes, Illegal Bronx Fight Back

UNITED NATIONS/Bronx, July 4 -- New York City's fireworks on the Fourth of July were top heavy with tourists, marveling at the pyrotechnics, the history and present of war on the Sunday's agenda. Days after the U.S. had to switch generals in Afghanistan, bringing in its Iraq hero, the significance of the aerial display seemed lost on Brazilian and PIGS -- Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain -- tourists reveling by the Hudson River.

The route to the fireworks led through a tourist packed Times Square, and an extension of Little Brazil from 46th to 48th Street. While Mexican immigrants are to be cross examined in Arizona, more affluent South American tourists preened in front of the Marriott Marquis.

“Give us your decadent, your tourists with thousand dollar cameras, we'll will fleece them in theme park restaurants” -- was THIS was America was about?

Earlier on July 4, Obama played golf, as his chief of staff mocked BP's executive for going on a yacht. The throngs moved east on 49th and 48th Street, past the UN's temporary peacekeeping office on Madison Avenue.

In the Congo, over 200 died in an oil tanker crash, buried in mass graves. In Times Square, decadent European tourists argued about frozen yoghurt. The UN was dark, the world without direction.

But up in The Bronx, the fire crackers were illegal, the fire hydrants were open, the summer was beginning...

Footnote: Vicious circle -- The “Play Me, I'm Yours” public arts project people put only four pianos in the Bronx, unlike other boroughs. Then, or and so, two of the four got broken, including the one at Fordham Road....

It's World Cup season in Belmont. On June 26 when the US scored its one goal versus Ghana, albeit by penalty kick, the vuvuzelas were blown, and several social clubs erupted in cheers. When Mexico got blown out by Argentina the next day, an air of depression fell over the area.

Change change change in Belmont. The landmark Pete's Cafe, following the death of founder Pete on February 2 of this year, has turned into something of shrine, with his image everywhere. It's touching. And there's there the World Cup on a small screen television, on which on June 20 Italy got tied by New Zealand. Que verguenza!

And on 188th Street, the group previously known as "Federation for European American Rights" -- that's right, FEAR --- is now SACO. Good name change. The FEAR is gone.

Strange that the publisher's summary and an NYC review of the book "The Fires" focused on the RAND Corporation's role in the destruction of the South Bronx, with nary a mention of redlining by banks and insurance companies, which sped up the incentive for arson...

In Belmont there's new sushi, in the wake of Sake II. A fancier place on Arthur, with ball bearings on strings as curtains, where Italian Frank's once was. On a recent visit, no one else was there. The Age Tofu came in liquid with a Halloween like sauce. But the bento boxes, with curried pork chop and salmon, hit the spot. At the end, fried Oreos on the house. We wish them well.

Last week the story was teenagers killed in Bronx street. This week it's gone indoors, inside the Melrose Houses, where 14 year old Emonee Williams was stabbed 20 times by her sister's father / mother's ex boyfriend. A Bronx web site calls him a "pseudo boyfriend" -- hindsight is 20-20. The Wall Street Journal, in its new cover the New York waterfront iteration, chimed in on the story, with some details others didn't have. A sad, sad story.

Last Sunday two teenagers, Quanisha Wright and Marvin Wiggins, were shot and killed in the lobby of a building in Mount Hope. Saturday their parents and others rallied in Claremont Park against gun violence. But that night on Gun Hill Road, 15 year old Jeffrey Delmore was killed -- with a knife...

So has Belmont become entirely gentrified? On May 7, 187th Street was flush with Fordham students, a party on Crotona Avenue got out of hand. Just a few years ago, you wouldn't see this number of students on 187th Street all year. Is it the safety? Is it the rising rents?

And at Roberto's, which began as a small Italian restaurant with broccoli rabe and a piano, they now have thousand dollar bottles of wine, and few Bronxites inside. This is progress?

Bronx action of the month of April is the lawsuit against Wells Fargo for failure to maintain ten apartment buildings it is foreclosing on, including 3018 Heath Avenue. The case involves over 500 families, tenants of Millbank Real Estate before it defaulted on its $35 million mortgage. Then Wells Wargo and LNR Partners moved in. Alongside the lawsuit, Wells Fargo was hit by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Junior and the local Councilman Fernando Cabrera.

On Cablevision's News 12 The Bronx, BP Diaz fielded calls from constituents, telling most of them to call his office of constituent services, including about potholes in Moshulu. But when another caller said that the City's 311 call in provided faster service, Diaz said you could call them to. The exchange exemplified that the Borough President's Office right now don't have much function. Cabrera, a long time Pentacostal pastor in the area, also protested the planned move of a NYC high school from near Bronx Community College down to the South Bronx High School site. Our question:is it that BCC is too full, or that SBHS needs a tenant? Watch this site.

There's a controversy, in the NYC parks and open space community at least, about the appointment of Lee Stuart as head of "New Yorkers for Parks." The reason? Ms. Stuart pushed for Nehemiah Homes in the South Bronx, displacing parks, leading to arrests. We of Inner City Press were there, and can testify to the hard ball politics of the era.

Meanwhile, on the day before Earth Day, the Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza had Colombian -- or was it Venezuelan? -- flutists, cheese cubes and coffee in the park across from the UN. There's a one day a week Green Market, diplomats munching vegetable tart. A short distance but a long way from the South Bronx... So's this:

We have reported on the banks which left The Bronx, snooping for example around old Chase Manhattan branches turned into churches. But it's time to mention Melrose Credit Union, which runs radio advertisements during Yankee games. Perhaps you've seen their sign, if you drive to or from JFK airport. The institution says, right on its website, that

"since 1922. Melrose was initially established to provide financial resources for individuals and small business owners from the Bronx, NY. Through the Credit Union, community residents were afforded the means to pursue their American Dreams. The success of Melrose Credit Union has not diminished its original mission statement: Empower the community by offering affordable financial products and services. Today that community commitment has helped transform Melrose into an over $1 billion credit union with over 20,000 members residing across the country and around the world."

Melrose is a neighborhood in the South Bronx, which this "successful" credit union left behind. It has no branch in The Bronx; it left the borough but speaks about empowerment of (presumably other) neighbhorhoods. What was that again, about there being no need for a Community Reinvestment Act on credit unions?

Speaking of baseball, not the Yanks by the Mets, after 20 inning game on April 17, which the Mets won 2 to 1 after St. Louis started pitching outfielders, NPR radio the next morning reported on the marathon game, but said that St Louis had won 2 to 1. Talk about getting no respect. Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya as Rodney Dangerfield?

The New York Times' coverage of the Bronx has hit a new low. Earlier this month, under the headline "On the Cross Bronx, Torture. On the Stoop, Entertainment," the Times devoted over 1000 words to portraying Bronxites as grateful to this destructive and polluting highway. There was something of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" to the article, and no mention of asthma or displacement caused by the highway and the continuing reverberations. Times on Bronx? No Thonx.

For some weeks we've somewhat coasted in this Bronx Report, reviewing Albanian groceries and juice and salad bars. But this week we sampled a place so surreal, so in a sense revealing, that we must remain on the theme. It's "Dolce Amaro" on Arthur Avenue, sporting signs of Karaoke and Internet Cafe, "BYOB" Bring Your Own Booze. There is only one problem -- they charge five dollars for you to "bring your own booze." This after offering to sell you bootleg wine. We mention this because they also, while purporting to take credit cards, tell you that the tip must be in cash -- then impose an extra five dollars on credit cards anyway. The karaoke, on Friday April 2, consisted on five people in a red painted basement, one of them asleep in a LaZboy reclining chair in front of a Good Fellas poster. In the front were two Roman statues, in the base an Asian family reading the lyrics on the screen.

Upstairs the main waiter couldn't recite the list of special. "The book they write them in," he said, "got wet." He brought the sandwich board in from the sidewalk, then charged five dollars more than listed for the ravioli with shrimp pesto. The ravioli, he said when asked, came from Restaurant Supply. Why not from Borgatti's?

In the middle of the meal, an Asian woman came in selling bootleg DVDs. She had the Hurt Locker, Green Zone and Brooklyn's Finest. An offer to break bread was ignored. It was surreal.

The cold antipasto, we must say in fairness, was not bad. It's not difficult, in a neighborhood full of fresh mozzarella and sausage. But there was also shredded eggplant, and small but tasty olives. We suggest that dish, and bringing your own booze and glasses, to protest any extra five dollar charge.

Well, we have to reverse course and return to last week's praise along Hughes Avenue. On a colder Saturday, Quick Fresh's glass doors were closed to keep the wind out. A salad that's five dollars in Manhattan cost eight. Chicken soup, albeit fresh, was nearly four dollars for a small cup. This is their second store, after upper Manhattan. But will The Bronx, even Belmont, bear these prices?

At the new Albanian grocery, there are limitations too. The smallest container of goat cheese -- all from Bulgaria -- costs $9.50. Tourists walk in speaking German. Is this even The Bronx?

There are at least three new additions on Hughes Avenue in Belmont. Where the fancy empanadas place closed down, a juice and salad bar also with empanadas has emerged: Quick Fresh. An early test finds many of the fruits for juices missing, and a switch to chicken and corn empanadas without consent. But the place has promise: a juice bar with mamey, pastrami empanadas, the salad not bad.

Next door in the spot that used to sell eggs creams, a luncheonette has opened, with newly orange walls, salsa playing and a menu filled with mis-spellings (fires for fries, garbled nuggsts and cheeseseteak). While "eggs any style" are on the menu, a request for poached eggs resulted in a "what's that"? The coffee is good. And the eggs, fried, are not bad!

Two block south on Hughes is a new Albanian grocery, Vjolca-European Market. It is full of Bulgarian cheese, orange soda from Pristina and sausages. Unlike similar markets nearby, it does not feel like a social club, but a market. We wish them luck.

The Bronx According to the Sunday New York Times of March 14: suburban City Island, a Bronx cheer unrelated to the borough, obesity and a man killed by a freight train. That's it?

Yes, Serafin Mariel is the banker who took the money from the Yankees' scam community benefits agreement and put it in "his" bank at no interest, causing him to be sued for mismanaging the fund. But while the sign on the bank still says "New York National Bank," it is now owned by the already questionable Hudson Valley Bank...

The Daily News' real estate section of February 26, under the heading "A New Bronx Tale," touts gentrification in Belmont. It quotes one long time, locked jaw Belmontian as promoting gentrification: "This is not gentrification like Park Slope or the upper West Side. We're turning a corner." The article says, "maybe this has a change of becoming a new Williamsburg?" We hope not. People need to be able to afford to live here. And those who sell that out are not friends.

Yes, the Bronx has been named the least healthy place in all of New York State. The ranking's based on longevity, baby weight and how residents feel physically and mentally. Researchers also ranked smoking, exercise, access to parks and number of doctors available. Correlation to income? To political corruption?

So when the New York Times of February 20 mentioned the South Bronx, we wondered: what would it be about? Turned out it was only a suburbanite passing through on Metro North commuter rail, learning via an iPhone app -- Foursquare, partner of the NYT which was promoting it -- of a single Bronx location in the area they keep trying to gentrify, the Bruckner Bar & Grill. Typical...

The street scape of Belmont is changing, the sign scape, the storefronts. On the corner of Hughes and 187, the empanadas place is being reconfigured, the yellow sign is done. Next door the old newsstand has now been painted inside, it is Roma Bagel, the egg cream crowd seems gone. And what of the juice bar, naturelle juice, that only recently opened on 187 between Arthur and Hoffman? On February 13 is was closed in the afternoon, never a good sign. They are "pulling a Belmont Cafe," as one observer put it. And so it goes.

The New York State Department of Labor recently reported that the unemployment rate in the Bronx was at 13.9 percent, making Bronx the county with the state's highest unemployment rate.

In the run up to soccer's World Cup in South Africa, German (and former New York Cosmos) star Franz Beckenbauer told AFP, "If you are alone in Soweto at night, then you could be in trouble, but then you would not walk into the South Bronx of New York alone at night." He was defending FIFA's decision to award the 2010 World Cup to South Africa after Bayern Munich boss Uli Hoeness said, "I was never a fan of the World Cup being held in South Africa, or anywhere on the African continent, as long as safety aspects are not clarified 100 percent," the Bayern boss had said. So in purporting to be progressive, Beckenbauer trashed the South Bronx. How... Cosmopolitan.

The owner of the American Diner on E. 204th Street paid $2,000 to have it burned down just before Christmas, it is now alleged. Arson is back... And so is slander: In Australia,

"Liep Gony, a 19-year-old refugee from Sudan, was brutally murdered in Melbourne on September 26, 2007. The killing became a pretext for an outpouring of racially-charged statements from politicians and media commentators about the involvement of African-Australian youth in violent crime, despite the fact that the only African involved in this crime was the innocent victim. On December 18, Clinton Rintoull was sentenced to 16 years for the killing. In passing sentence, Justice Elizabeth Curtain described the murder as “vicious, brutal and unprovoked”, according to the Herald Sun that day. She described how Rintoull was seen day with the metal pole he used in the crime shouting, 'These blacks are turning the town into the Bronx. I am looking to take my town back.'"

Pop quiz: so what's more "shocking" -- that two Bronx bodegas were pegged by a tabloid to be selling vodka to minors, that Stoli gushed on Twitter about it, or that the State Liquor Authority has eleven investigators for the five boroughs?

"NYPD Sgt. Reginald McReynolds, who is African-American, said he was a victim of racial profiling when he was stopped by two fellow police officers while in his girlfriend's apartment building in the Bronx on October 26. According to the official police report, the officers were responding to a domestic abuse call in the same building and mistook McReynolds for the suspect, handcuffing him."

Ask yourself -- if in the suburbs police were responding to a domestic abuse call in one house, would they handcuff a neighbor who was coming home?

In the storefront that housed the ill fate Belmont Cafe, a Japanese restaurant has opened. It's Sake II, advertising both sushi and hibachi. They don't have a liquor license yet, and the food is cheap, at least at lunch. Six dollars for hibachi chicken, with fried rice, vegetables, miso soup and the ubiquitous salad with thousand island dressing. The chicken is cooked on the griddle -- is it the one belonging to the Belmont Cafe? -- and for there there is 20 percent off. Whether this area of the Bronx is ready for a Japanese-only restaurant is not clear. We will continue to cover this.

From the Montreal Gazette of December 17, 2009 : "Although Montreal North might be 'bad' by Montreal standards, it's nothing at all like the South Bronx. I grew up in New York City and have been living in Montreal for five years. The officer who said 'Montreal North is like the Bronx' (Dec. 4) has obviously never been there." This is a double whammy: a Canadian cop compares a neighborhood to The Bronx, a reader says that the Bronx is worse...

UNITED NATIONS, December 11 -- Both the UN and New York's City Hall are covered by fewer and fewer mainstream journalists. At a December 10 event at Gracie Mansion, Mayor Michael Bloomberg joked that there were gatecrashers like at the White House, the proof being that they said they were with the New York Times Metro section, "clearly fake."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, at a similar event on December 4, did not joke about the increasing flight of the press from the UN. That was left for master of ceremonies Richard Roth of CNN, who joked that soon the UN would only be covered by "the bearded blogger."

At the Gracie Mansion event, the joke by the New York Post's David Seifman was that there were only eight reporters present, the rest being publicists. Inner City Press, which attended both events because it covers both beats, was pitched even during Bloomberg's jokes by a promoter of hotels, from Crosby Street to Eighth Avenue and 44th Street and even the Bronx' City Island.

A running joke throughout the December 4 event was that the already begun gut rehabilitation of the UN building is releasing not only rodents but asbestos. As it happened, by December 10 the UN's contractor was furiously testing for asbestos release right by the UN's gift shop, which is open to the public.

Bloomberg's sister, the City's liaison to the UN, has already barred public school children from touring the UN's Conference Building. One wonders if she knows of the suspected release by the UN gift shop: some gift.

CNN's Roth got laughs, for example by suggesting that outgoing spokesperson Michele Montas go on a vacation to Club Med in Sri Lanka with this publication.

Seifman's jokes at Bloomberg included a Bronx reference, a gift certificate for Kingsbridge Armory which he called the Ruben Diaz Junior Mall. Seifman said Bloomberg would need the Bronx Democrats' American Express, available from Reverend Ruben Diaz Senior.

While at the UN there is discussion of a law pending in Uganda which would criminalize homosexuality, one wonders what the Reverend Diaz thinks of it. Inner City Press asked for Ban Ki-moon's position, and the first line was, "we have no specific opinion about domestic legislation" -- not true in the case of the cap and trade climate change proposals in the U.S. Congress. We will have more on this.

While Mr. Ban stood next to a blinking disco ball and used a TV screen, Bloomberg handed out gifts, for example a "Spanish by Bloomberg" dictionary and a City University of New York football helmet for a reporter heading into academia at CUNY. Ban joked that as his spokesperson he has wanted this reporter, but ended up with Martin Nesirky.

Nesirky, during his speech, said he had brought a gift from Austria: Mozart's golden balls, which he awarded to your truth for having, well, balls. Bloomberg's spokesman Stu Loeser joked that both his boss and Sarah Palin said that if God hadn't wanted people to eat animals, He wouldn't have made them out of meat.

As he handed out gifts, Bloomberg joked that he can buy anything -- read, the election. Afterwards, a UN official to whom Inner City Press compared the two events noted that Bloomberg is a billionaire. Perhaps the jokes too were bought.

The Gracie Mansion event avoided at least one obvious topic, Dominick Carter. Until recently the go-to TV show for NY politicians, now with the host convicted of domestic violence / attempted assault, there's a pothole on the Road to City Hall. Why no reference? Why no jokes? We will try to find out, watch this site.

Whatever the dished being offered are, you can't see them through the steamed up glass.

Inner City Press, in candor, ordered a chicken empanada. While only one dollar, it was cold, strangely red inside, and an hour later there was a stomach ache. Calling the Department of Health....

One in every 1,767 homes in Bronx County received a foreclosure filing in September 2009, according to RealtyTrac.com ...

Thanksgiving question "what about the 150 workers at the Stella D'Oro cookie factory in the Bronx? They lost their jobs and their healthcare when a company owned in part by Goldman Sachs bought Stella D'Oro and closed the factory down."

What's called the Little Italy of The Bronx, Arthur Avenue between 188th and 183rd Street, is now festooned with red and black Albanian flags. They appeared suddenly on lamp poles. Actual Italian residents of Belmont have been in decline for years, residentially replaced primarily by Latinos, and by Balkan social clubs. Still, are the Albanian flags a turning point? So far, none of the Italian push back that would have followed any Hispanic nations' flags going up on the Little Italy strip...

The NYS Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) on November 9 held a public hearing at Hostos Community College on its plan to use eminent domain to widen the Major Deegan Expressway by two lanes between E. 138th Street and the Macombs Dam Bridge. Despite pollution and the displacement of small businesses, they aim to push it through. We'll see.

Bronx-based foster care agency Family Support Systems is closing and laying off 92 staffers. The move comes aside funding cuts from the NYC Administration for Children's Services, according to a filing with the New York State Department of Labor. It's called the WARN Act. But what more does it portend?

October 31 in the Bronx has full of kids and screams, stores handing out candy from joint compound buckets, horror masks marked down by 20% on the day itself. There were Barack Obama masks, and downtown Richard Nixon. Lazy revelers just got orange prison overalls.

The New York Times' foray last week into West Africans in Claremont / Webster Avenue not only mistakenly said French is spoken in The Gambia (the Francophonies could only wish) -- it also missed the African - Caribbean dynamic. Why, is not clear, since the article itself reports that there are more Latino than African residents in Claremont. Could it be because the two groups get along? Take the stretch of Webster, referred to in the article, with African videos on the east side, Spanish (and African) restaurants on the west: the two co-exist, competing only for parking spots. But that's not news...

Also on the restaurant front, we must now report that the innovative but short lived Belmont Cafe has gone belly up, a For Rent sign on its rolling metal gate. It had cheap burgers and fries and bubble tea, and an order-in-advance African chicken dish. But it never stuck to its hours, and ultimately no one could count on it. And now it is gone...

From Fordham, according to Douglas S. Massey, Ph.D., a new sort of separation is taking its place, with money taking the place of skin color. Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, presented “The Changing Bases of American Segregation” at Fordham's Rose Hill campus on Wednesday, Oct. 14. His lecture was the first annual urban studies lecture, and coincides with the inauguration of Fordham’s Urban Studies Master’s program."

But right on Rose Hill on October 17, on Fordham's Bronx campus snaked a line of nearly entirely people of color, as nearly all white students walked by. Segregation indeed...

This week, again a new restaurant review. Michael Angelo's has opened in what used to be a bakery, on the now college claimed corner of 189th and Arthur. Its sign advertises wood burning stove pizza, but once inside the prices are decidedly upscale, in light with Roberto's and its wood burning affiliate with the little clown car in front, but still not authentic enough to justify it. It remains Italian American food, even with the "candle lit wine cellar" and Italian pop music. They either have to take the level of the food up, or drop the prices, a better plan given the location. We'll see.

From a comic book review: "the Bronx no longer looks the way it’s shown briefly in the comic. I’m not offended. It just made me chuckle that the creative team portrayed the Bronx the way it looked in the 1970s and not the way it looks now. I still wouldn’t raise my kids there, but it has gotten better." Thanks...

The U.S. Post Service, in the Bronx, is looking to close seven branches: Botanical, Clason Point, Crotona Park, Hillside, Melcourt, Oak Point and Van Nest. These are 17% of the Bronx' post offices and six of the seven are a full half mile from the "replacement" branches. If a bank make these cuts, one could protest to federal regulators. But when the Fed's themselves are cutting?

THURS, AUG. 27th, 11:40 p.m. – Belmont Ave. and East 189 St. Officials indicated that no one was injured as results of shots being fired in the Belmont community. Responding police officers checked the area, but were unable to local any victims. Police did recover evidence that supported the original report.

We wuz there -- the Emergency Services police pulled up the sewer grate while a mother with a baby in a stroller jaw boned the officers....

A recent trip down Southern Boulevard and across 149th Street found continuity -- for example the still abandoned building on Jackson Avenue just below 149th -- amid change, the proliferation of Children's Aid Society offices along Southern Boulevard around Jennings Street. The Gaseteria where Southern meet 149 is still vacant and burned out. Just north there's a coffee shop with a sign, "SUNKIN DONUTS," in a strangely familiar font...

What kind of New Yorker is "The New Yorker" (for)? In recent weeks, they've run a near 100% pro Bloomberg profile, and now a hit job on the teachers' union. On national politics, the r/mag is knee jerk liberal. But in New York?

Smaller picture in Belmont, The Bronx, we can report the inclusion of Salvadoran arepas on the menu of the Empanada Company on Hughes and 187. Meanwhile the Ecuadorean restaurant on Hughes and Crescent appears to have done belly-up. Maybe having a menu would have helped....

From the Department of "A Plague on Both Their Houses," we have this from Kingsbridge: some are pushing for a Community Benefits Agreement with the Related Companies for the Kingsbridge Armory which would prohibit a supermarket from going into the site. This is clearly to protect the smaller supermarkets on Jerome and Kingsbridge and Fordham. Then again, the Related Companies displaced many small businesses further south at the Bronx Terminal Market, inking like the Yankees a weak fig leaf of a Community Benefits Agreement. What's worse?

Click here for this week's CRA report: on Obama and Bernanke at the Federal Reserve

August 24, 2009 --On Iran and Vendex, Sudan to No Bid Contracts, NYC Comptroller Candidates Square Off

NEW YORK, August 19 -- Veering from issues of no bid contracts and corporate background checks, four candidates New York City Comptroller were asked by Inner City Press on Thursday morning if in investing City funds they would bar or penalize companies engaged in predatory lending, or which do business in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Burma or Iran. This being NYC, and all four candidates Democratic members of the City Council, the answers ranged from "yes" to "of course," with a few differences.

Melinda Katz said that seven years ago, she proposed such a ban on companies "having anything to do with Hamas or Hezbollah." She added that when current Comptrollers Thompson and DiNapoli proposed divestment regarding Sudan and Iran, she applauded them. All four which she named are Islamic, unlike Burma and Sri Lanka were which asked about but ignored.

John Liu also avoided mentioning the two Asian countries, along he answered generically about human rights violators. He expanded the question to companies with abusive human resources practices, and those which took Federal bailout funds and still pay huge bonuses to their executives.

David Weprin said he was an early proponent of divestment in Sudan and Iran, based on genocide and terrorism respectively. He cited the precedent of the campaign against apartheid. He also reminded the audience that under Mario Cuomo he was a deputy superintendent of banks for New York State, and required in-state checks to clear in three days.

David Yassky, who began the morning's debate by touting his endorsement by Felix Rohatyn, said he sponsored a ban on Sudan, and co-sponsored one on Iran. He said that the City should invest in companies whose profitability came from such places. As such, at least he admitted all moral decisions cannot be defended as economically best as well. Similarly, to an audience of human services professionals, he said that he is against member items in which Council members direct funds to specific groups.

The event, held in the auditorium of PricewaterhouseCoopers on Madison Avenue, was co-sponsored by the United Way and the Human Services Council, and the other questions were focused on how slow the City is to disburse contract awards to non-profits and how burdensome the City's VENDEX background check is. John Liu joked that the audience seemed tired because they'll stayed up the night before filling out VENDEX forms. There was polite laughter and then the event was over.

Footnote: back in December 2007, Inner City Press put a similar question to Adolf Carrion, who had just announced he would run not for Mayor but Comptroller. Carrion said he would "also take into consideration the return for pensioners" -- click here for that story.

A block south on 187, there is a new juice bar between Arthur and Hoffman -- we recommend the smoothie de mamey -- and the Empanada Factory on Hughes is coming along, with the manager cranking out new dishes while bragging of his 15 years in fine dining, mixing it with cheese steak flavor to bring the Fordham students in. He says they'll offer online ordering soon...

Once again, a new restaurant in Belmont, on 186th between the library at Hughes Avenue and Belmont Avenue: La Casita Poblana. The space used to be a garage. Now it has four tables, and a cooler full of Mexican sodas. There are Arabe tacos for $2.50, sopes and gorditas, a fine avocado salad for $4.50. The demographics of Belmont are changing, and the food along with it.

After the weekend's shootout between police and Sevilla Moran's on Southern Boulevard, the police "recovered a handgun near his body. 'This is as clean as it gets,' said a police source at the scene." Yeah -- except for all the blood...

The old and new Bronx coexist in Belmont. Example of the former is the fire in the building on the corner of 187 and Cambrelleng, apartment windows boarded up with plywood, Albanian grocery in the storefront closed down, at least for now. Meanwhile a much more expensive storefront is opening, out on Third Avenue and 189 -- the chain Applebee's has a spot in Fordham Plaza, and has a hiring center, but only for grill cooks with two years experience. So much for helping the neighborhood....

On 187th Street, there's the second street fair of the summer, complete with a ride called the Berry Go Round and a stand handing out Right to Life literature of the type found, in every season, in Borgatti's Ravioli. A new entry on Arthur Avenue is "Frankie's Franks," which serves up dogs on Addeo's pizza bread -- i.e. the loaf shaped like a donut -- with peppers, onions and potatos, all for less then four dollars, the price of eggs, toast, potatoes and coffee, all day long. We wish them well.

The asphalt playground and handball court on 188th Street and Bathgate Avenue has been padlocked in the middle of the summer as a crew of only four workmen slowly jackhammer holes in it. The park is usually daily used by both adults and children, from a youth club on 189th Street. Why the City scheduled this work at the height of summer, and chose a company that is sending such a small crew -- making the job take longer -- is not clear...

Last week the City Council rubber stamped a 30-block rezoning of the lower Grand Concourse in the Bronx, claiming it will bring as much as 841,000 square feet of new commercial uses and "facilitate the development of 3,100 new housing units, 520 of which will be affordable." -- a far too low a percentage of affordable housing for a development in the South Bronx. It it (and the nabe?) LoCo...

When Mayor Mike Bloomberg rolled up to the park across First Avenue from the UN on June 23, he had climate change on his mind. But the Press questions quickly turned not only to the lack of safety in the UN's buildings and their fix-up, but also to the Bronx. Inner City Press asked for his response to the declining business of Bronx merchants near Yankee Stadium, despite the massive city subsidy to the facility. Bloomberg said that they might want to start selling other merchandise. Just another modality of gentrification?

Not only is the new Yankee Stadium too expensive for Bronxites (and others), not only have they failed to replace the park land they took away -- now the small promises of small business benefits are turning out to be false. Store owners around the stadium complain that they get fewer customers than last year. The Yankees try to lure them into their branded maw of Hard Rock Cafe and "official" merchandise. Few venture even a half block south of 161st Street. Who will be held accountable?

Despite the rainy weather, the sign that summer has arrived in Belmont, The Bronx is the St. Anthony Street Fair. In the drizzle on June 13, a band played while from plywood stands in front of Mount Carmel church frozen drinks were sold, zeppoles topped with powdered sugar, goldfish could be won. Who can know who will come each year to this "Feast"? On the corner of Hughes Avenue, the Albanian restaurant has closed, replaced by Mexican, the New York Empanada Factory. It looked empty and forlorn behind its "Grand Opening" plastic banner, but we predict that won't be for long. Unless they're too white bread. In the Bronx, you can forget the cross-over audience. Make your business on your people -- other than the Chinese, of course. If others come, it's a bonus.

In Washington, in the wake of the predatory lending meltdown, there is a Community Reinvestment Act modernization bill. And in the Bronx, there are thos who woder why Eliot Engel is not listed as a sponsor....

The "South Bronx" was all over the news last week, not only because of the Yankees, but in the flurry of coverage of the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor, described as growing up in "a housing project in the South Bronx." Some here, however, note that the Bronxdale Houses are not in the South Bronx as it is often defined, as Community Planning Districts 1-6, stopping on the Western shore of the Bronx River. The Bronxdale Houses are on the other side of the river. But that's an inconvenient fact, and therefore ignored...

The Cross-Bronx Expressway, despite the local damage it has caused it apparently here to stay. But the fight to demolish the Sheridan Expressway is gathering force, and appears in PBS' "Road to the Future" show along with bicycle issues. Inner City Press, passing through Copenhagen, Denmark, finds the comparison with the Bronx and New York City striking. In Copenhagen there are bikes everywhere, and people even leave them unlocked. There are bike lanes that are respected. In the Bronx, Inner City Press has been harassed by police for momentarily riding a bike on an otherwise empty sidewalk. In Denmark, it's bikes that have the right of way....

In the run-up to reviewing the Yankees' new monument to greed, Inner City Press last week ventured to Citi – or TARP – Field in Queens, for the Mets against the Braves. Best is that you can stand behind home plate, even if your ticket's in the upper deck. The hot dogs are pricey, but the onions and sauerkraut are hot. From above right field you can see Manhattan. Soon we will compare the Yankees.

For now in the Bronx, there's a new Mexican restaurant on 186^th Street by Hughes, in a former mechanics garage. Go, Puebla

This week again a restaurant review: the Belmont Cafe on 187th and Beaumont has dollar fifty burger (well, mini-burgers) and, a first for Belmont, bubble tea. It promises African style chicken, but twice as failed to have it. It has photographs of Fordham, including when the Third Avenue El was still standing. It's well worth it, for a dollar fifty...

This week, a poem on immigration, datelined not the Bronx but across the river(s) in Astoria Heights:

In front of the paint store
two blocks east of Steinway
two dozen Mexican men with backpacks
stand waiting for work

Some are old and some are beaten
still when they order tamales
at Casilda's taco stand
the girl calls them “campeon” --

Champion, is what it means, champion of immigration
who braved the freight trains from Oaxaca
the muggers and rapists of Juarez and Chihuahua
arriving here in Queens to stand again and wait

The city's hardly building
the yuppies all tapped out
and so the wait is longer
and the tacos more expensive

We need an explanation: the 4 train, usually local late at night, says it's going express. But in The Bronx, it jumps from 149 Grand Concourse to Burnside -- then all the way to Woodlawn. What happened to Fordham Road?

And a citywide MTA beef: using an unlimited MetroCard, you're prohibited from using it in less than 18 minutes.But if you rode one stop, you could easily need to use the card again within 18 minutes. What gives?

Spin war: "We're surprised and disappointed that Curtis Sliwa is attempting to sell tours that capitalize on the worst stereotypes about the Bronx," said Rafael Salaberrios, chairman of the Bronx Tourism Council. Salaberrios said tourists should instead be pointed to attractions such as the Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Garden and Yankee Stadium, as well as the borough's lesser-known museums, galleries and restaurants.

The Bronx Zoo closed down its tram service. Yankee Stadium is wildly overpriced and stole parkland -- but Yankee fans about to see them lose by twenty runs on April 18 poured mucho dinero into dining on Arthur Avenue before and after the game. Trattoria Zero Otto Nove, the Roberto's spin-off in what used to be McDonald's is, upon review, amazing, with a faux Italian street scene in the back complete with fake windows and brick arches with intentionally peeling stucco. Fusilli, rabbit and carafes of wine: what could be better? But very few local people go.

Let's compare, this week, the Bronx and Bushwick, Brooklyn. A recent visit to the latter found the previously burned-down Broadway still rough and tumble, from Fat Albert's on Flushing to cuchifritos further out on Myrtle. But two blocks north of Broadway are knitware factories turned into lofts. On Broadway itself, a white hipster with dreadlocks was ridiculed by local teens.

Back in the Bronx, other than in Mott Haven, no such influx has taken place. Is it the distance from Manhattan, or the reputation for higher crime? Do Bushwick's long-time residents benefit from the lofts, or only see their rents raised? We will continue to compare.

Facing off in debate for Bronx Borough Presidency at 1200 Waters Place on April 8 at 7 pm are Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. and Anthony Ribustello...

March 30, 2009 -- annals of environmental justice: the president of the Sierra Club wrote in the New York Times, March 26, that "We offer at-risk young people in the Bronx their first wilderness experience." No, we have some wilderness right here in The Bronx...

We take note this week of the re-start of Columbia Journalism School's Bronx Beat publication. Before even getting to a substantive critique -- we'll get there, rest assured -- something seems to be wrong. From their website, clicking on an article seemingly about foreclosures leads to a page of ads hosted by Go Daddy and, as an aside, the hard copies mailed to Inner City Press now used the wrong PO Box - it's 580188. What's happened, over the winter? Our overall critique is that there's not enough follow up from year to year. But this is too much.

Some neighbor -- the Botanical Garden, which previously sued saying that a radio town across Southern Boulevant from it was an eyesore, now owns an eyesore of its own, a vacant lot on Webster and Bedford Park Avenues on which it said it would build a parking lot. But now the funding's in doubt, and the lot is sitting there. The Garden asks for understanding. But did the Garden show it?

Lies, damn lies and statistics: from the suburbs to the North, "Frederick Arnold, a resident of the Town of Mamaroneck since 1995, is a “numbers guy” and the newly elected president of the board of RAINN (Rape Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation’s largest organization working to prevent sexual assault and help victims of this crime. 'the incidence of crime is as high in Larchmont, per capita as it is in the South Bronx,'" he said. Some "numbers guy"...

Oh really? It's reported that "there were cheers in the South Bronx, where there is hardly an Indian-American to be seen, when Slumdog Millionaire won the best-picture Oscar." Funny, we didn't hear them...

Months ago we wrote on a practice of Metro North Railroad, in which trains from Connecticut stop at the Fordham Road station in the Bronx but announce that while passengers can get off, no one can get on. This is true even for customers who have paid Metro North for a monthly pass between Fordham Road and 125th Street or Grand Central. Inner City Press got on, and was told by a conductor to "go argue with the MTA big shots" about the policy's absurdity. And so we did.

At a public meeting of the MTA in its headquarters on Madison Avenue in March 2008, Inner City Press informed the board of directors of the policy, and of its impact on Bronx residents. Some members laughed, others expressed surprise. Then-chief Peter Cannito explained the practice in financial terms: the State of Connecticut pays 60% of the cost of the red New Haven line trains. Apparently, even within the MTA, they had and have found no way to transfer money from the New York State Harlem line, which also stops at the Fordham Station, and the Connecticut New Haven Line.

With even some of his board members shaking their heads at this inefficiency, Cannito told Inner City Press things were not as bad as its testimony described. You can get on the train, he said, and just pay the extra fare between Fordham and the previous stop on the New Haven line, Mount Vernon East. Inner City Press bought a ticket for just this purpose.

On February 20, with the 9:16 Harlem line train running late, a red New Haven line train pulled into Fordham Station. Inner City Press got on. The conductor announced over the public address system, "This train takes no passengers." Those in the bar car in which Inner City Press had sat down rolled their eyes. Inner City Press started walking toward the front car with the conductor in it, but the train pulled out of the station. Inner City Press returned to the bar car.

The conductor came through the train and said, "I told you to get off." Inner City Press explained what the head of the MTA said at the public meeting. "Do you got that in writing?" the conductor demanded. No, the head of the company said it. "What was his name?" The last Metro North chief, the Italian guy.

"I'm the conductor. I'm supposed to enforce the rules. If I don't they crack down on me. I was out on the street for twenty days, supposedly assaulting a customer. They give us these hand held computers that freeze up all the time, then write us up if we don't collect fares with them, even when they're not working." He paused, looking like he might throw the hand-held computer, somehow reminiscent of the model in the NYC Parking Violations Bureau scandal, also with Bronx connections, years ago. "You tell me the big shots said you could do this. Do you have a letter that says that?"

It seemed fair to assume that what the head of Metro North said was the policy was in fact the policy.

"Oh, Cannito. His son in law made this software for this stupid computer that freezes up all the time. Great. Cannito told you." The conductor stormed out of the car. Welcome to Metro North.

Footnote: while a half dozen people in the car spoke against the Metro North practice, after the conductor left, one working man pointed out, you put him in a tough spot, you should have gotten off the train and put in for a refund, or get a letter from Metro North. Suggestions and reactions welcome.

At Inner City Press, we usually review restaurant on the affordable or even sidewalk side. But we're compelled to note Zero Otto Nove, a so-called trattoria on Arthur Avenue where the ill-fated McDonald's used to be. For some months, seeing a near-empty bar in the front behind a light blue clown car on the street outside, one assumed the restaurant was having trouble. Dead wrong. Inside, down a long corridor, is what resembles a side street in an Italian village, complete with fake windows and perspectives, a staircase up to a second floor, all under a skylight. At night candle come out, adding to the flicker from the wood pizza oven. There's light-fried zucchini, pasta with chick peas and bread crumbs, rabbit stew and more. Beware of what they call a carafe of wine: it's really a pitcher, costs $25 and leaves one staggering out afterwards. The lemon sherbet is tart, the coffee strong, Roberto's restaurant a success. The main thing lacking was Bronxites, something we hereby try to address.

2-1, 12:30 a.m. – 2407 Beaumont Ave. Police were alerted that a man had been shot numerous times. The unidentified victim was admitted to St. Barnabas Hospital in stable condition. Local sleuths will conduct the inquiry.
2-1, 1:35 p.m. – 922 East Tremont Ave. A search was conducted for a middle aged Hispanic male. Victims believe that the male Latino is in his 50’s who robbed a store at gunpoint. An unknown amount of money was taken, but no injuries were reported.

As the Bronx Zoo opens a Madagascar-themed exhibit, in the real Madagascar, security forces fired into crowds of protesters, killing 25... And the Skyfari has been discontinued forever.

New York Magazine reviews city restaurants in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens -- only.

"You nak buat kondo di slum area?" (You want to build condominiums in a slum area?). Raised eyebrows accompanied those words when real-estate developer Datuk Abdul Rahim Mohd Ibrahim told a friend of his plans to build a block of condominiums in Kampung Baru, a Malay settlement located at the heart of the city... Abdul Rahim's friends had labeled Kampung Baru in the same mould as Bronx, a slum area in the north of New York populated mostly by the colored communities and they were skeptical whether there would be buyers for the condominiums. Today, they have to eat their words as the condominium units are selling like hot cakes. The public knows that Kampung Baru is not a squatter settlement as the area was carved out as a Malay settlement in 1899 and known as the Malay Agriculture Settlement."

As we reported last spring, Key Food, in the mall at Bruckner Blvd. and White Plains Road, announced that landlord Vornado Realty was increasing its rent. DN: "The rent increase was scheduled to take effect in December, when the lease expired. But Vornado has not begun any eviction action, which Purcell and others speculate is because of the souring rental market." Yep...

In the wake of the US Air flight from LaGuardia to Charlotte driving into the Hudson River by a flock of geese, the Bronx connection slowly becomes clear. The day of the crash, a girl from Belmont in The Bronx called in to say she'd seen the plane's engines explode. It seemed incongruous, since the plane landed off the shore of midtown Manhattan. But later it emerged that as the plane curved over The Bronx, reported over the Zoo, it hit a flock of geese and began falling. There's been talk of hunting down geese in the area to avoid a repetition.

On Saturday, January 24 on Fordham University's grass circle a flock of geese lazed around on the snow, with nary a hunter in sight....

JPMorgan Chase will be closing a slew of Washington Mutual branches, click here for Inner City Press' January 23 article...

The new pizzeria on lower Arthur Avenue, with the garlic knots and free Internet, has already failed. In its place is a sign to look out for Frankie's Frank, the "Italian" hot dog. Will it fare any better?

Meanwhile in the same nabe, a recent arrival asked in the Mount Carmel post office on January 17 how to get his mail. Go to Tremont, he was told. Where's that? And the person working at the window, and the supervisor on duty, said they didn't know. Welcome to The Bronx...

As the Bloomberg Administration tries to gentrify the South Bronx, a recent visit to Bushwick in Brooklyn found both the brutality and banality of what has happened in the often similar place. Take the L train seven stop in, to Jefferson and Wyckoff. Competing the restaurants like Las Palmas on the corner of Starr are chic cafes like the North East Kingdom -- apparently named after the top part of Vermont -- and a music venue known as the Bushwick Starr, in the second floor of a former factory building at 207 Starr Street. Inside on a black-painted stage four youth men are thrashing; the band is called Drew and the Medicinal Pen. In front an entirely white crowd of young twenty-somethings jump up and down. Generally, their rents are paid by parents. Perhaps some of them will be artists, many however will not. But the impact on rent levels, on the economist ecosystem of Bushwick, will stay long after they leave. To Bloomberg, this may be progress. To locals it is harmful, it is unfair, it is reason against a third term.

This week Mayor Bloomberg said that if someone attacked you or your family, he'd want the NYPD to respond with everything they had. While in the South Bronx, NYPD officers beat up the Serrano family on Brook Avenue, Bloomberg flew to the Middle East in a "show of solidarity." Click here for Inner City Press' January 3 coverage of that region.

Click here for Inner City Press' review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate

WED, DEC. 10th, 9:00 a.m. – 1003 Woodycrest Ave. In the Highbridge section, local police arrested a city worker. A sanitation worker was taken into custody after a civilian informed officers that the city worker struck the victim with a stick after they had a verbal dispute.

TUES, DEC. 16th, 11:00 a.m. – Tiebout Ave. and East 183 St. Another city worker was taken into custody by patrol officers. This time a city Sanitation employee was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.

We've done it before, and we'll do it again -- the Ecuadorian restaurant on Hughes Ave and 186th Street stands alone, both for refusing to have a menu, and for ultimately serving up cooking that makes up for it. Most recently the dish of the day was bistek with papers, yellow rice with a friend egg on top, and French fries. The quesadillas were spicy, with chicken. The "sopa de bolas" was, in fact, dominated by a ball made of green plantains, peas and boiled egg, sort of like a stew made of pastelles. Outside, they sold steaming tamales on the icy sidewalk.

Of Bronx and NYC housing officials slated to move on to DC, we'll have more over the holiday. Happy holidays! Viva Ecuador!

St. Barnabas Hospital is bragging that even in the face of the financial meltdown, it still plans to spend $30 million building a parking garage. Of course, in the past this project was blocked because St. Barnabas could not even spring for lights for kids who use the sports fields on Quarry Road behind the hospital. But the activist who led that community fight-back has since passed away, and now St. Barnabas says it's ready to move forward. We'll see.

Given the difficulty that long-time South Bronx residents are facing in keeping up with rising rents, how could an executive of a non-profit purportedly working for the interest of such people offer unqualified praise for "upscale" real estate investment in area? Oh but it has happened, in the December 5 Daily News: "Peter Cantillo, president of SEBCO Development, a group that has been building affordable housing in the neighborhood since 1968 [said] 'The Bank Note is exactly the kind of upscale draw this neighborhood has worked toward.'" Speak for yourself...

Metro North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders was quoted last week that "Metro-North would love to run some of its Hudson Line trains across the Spuyten Duyvil and down the Amtrak rails on the West Side to Penn Station, not to mention running some New Haven Line trains on Amtrak rails through the underserved East Bronx to Penn Station... Metro-North has had a feasibility study for such a project partly done for some time."

Hey, if Metro North so badly wants to serve the "underserved" Bronx, why does it persist in having its New Haven Line trains stop at Fordham Road only to discharge but not pick up passengers? This outrage continues, the book-keeping and other excuses have not been addressed...

Two other 'Net notes: the Detroit "Campus Martius conservancyhired Egan Acres Farms in the Bronx, which specializes in jumbos. The tree is donated from a private home in New Paltz, N.Y. near Poughkeepsie." So what, a Bronx-business providing Poughkeepsie trees to Michigan?

An Ethnic Food Examiner says "Bronx: in all fairness, I don't think I've been to the Bronx more than 10 times. It's got a fabulous zoo. (is that considered ethnic?). According to my sources, you can hit a double in the Tremont area of the Bronx: Ecuadorian (and other Hispanics), and Ghanan." But the link to Ghanian is hardly limited to that country; the link to Ecuador is in fact about bachata, and says of
Claridad Restaurant, 373 E. 188th St.Bronx, NY, "Occasional local acts; call to find out; seedy atmosphere." Seedy is in the eye of the beholder...

The New York Times of November 18, aiming now at the commercial gentrification of Port Morris in the South Bronx, reported that "part of the area’s appeal is its access to transportation. Neil Pariser, a senior vice president of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that has renovated factories and apartment buildings in the area, said, 'Port Morris has unusually excellent vehicular access for trucks and even good mass transit' — the No. 6 and No. 2 subways." But the Number 2, a West Side train, hardly serves Port Morris...

Every single Bronx Councilmember voted to roll back the twice publicly-enacted term limits...

It's not just that the New York Times promotes gentrification -- it's that they don't even mention that it exists. That is, they just don't care, even about basic journalistic balance. From last Sunday's Times:

Leila Abdoulaye sublets a friend's loft in an old piano factory in the South Bronx, and she need never worry about repairs. Her building, called the Clock Tower, has a 24-hour superintendent.

Ms. Abdoulaye, a 25-year-old student and model who also works as a restaurant office manager, pays $700 a month for her room. She shares the apartment with a rotating stream of models. Ms. Abdoulaye minds the store, as it were, between work and classes.

''It's the quality of the place, the price of the apartment, and the social life,'' Ms. Abdoulaye says. ''It's a nice place to live. A happy place to live.''

Daniel Lundby, 32, an out-of-work designer from Iowa, also lives in the Clock Tower, sharing a bright, open space with a roommate.

When he moved to New York City, he lived in a tiny sublet on the Upper East Side. ''Now,'' Mr. Lundby said, ''I have three times the space for the same price.'' His rent has risen about $100 a year since he moved in more than four years ago, but he says he is satisfied. ''I think I'm still getting a decent deal.

Not for long... And the November 9 Times mentions The Bronx, a county of over 1 million people in the Times' home city, only 11 times, and even these are oblique: mentions in Mount Vernon, from "Snarky Gulch" and Riverdale. For shame...

As New York City set up for the Marathon on November 2, cars along First Avenue in East Harlem were getting towed, and the Bx 15 bus to the Bronx was radically re-routed, turning north on Lenox and leaving Park, Lexington and Avenidas Tres, Dos y Uno unserviced. The runners barely touched The Bronx, despite all the hype about its fix-up.

Meanwhile in Belmont, we return against to Estrellita Poblana III on lower Arthur Ave, where the caldo de chivo, goat soup, is well-worth its six dollar price. The tortillas are hot and at noon on the day of the marathon, it was full of duos of Mexican men in their Sunday best, some drinking Tecate and others Mexican Coca-Cola, with the pure cane sugar, taking digital photos of each other to send back south of the border. Look, mama, I'm making it in New York. Even during the financial crisis...

Staying small bore but indicative, on Belmont above 189th a new store has opened, with baseball caps including multicolored camouflage, hip hop T-shirts and, as one Inner City Press source puts it, Ed Hardy hoodies for women and for men. The owners, who wear the caps they sell, built all contents of the storefront, but for the glass display. It's called E & J's, and just before a recent midnight, both E and J were there. We wish them well.

In the Bronx we traipse around, for example on October 18 and 19, from the 4 train at Yankee Stadium over to the D, and thereafter north under the Concourse.

Never say we don't follow-up: Angel's Ecuadorian Restaurant on Hughes Avenue and 184th has continued to improve, now with grilled tuna with platanos and avocado salad. Still no menu, and Angel hard of hearing -- but plaintains and tuna like this is not to be found elsewhere.

We return because we must to the New York Times' misrepresentation of The Bronx. The October 12 Sunday paper mentions the Bronx 18 times, but entirely from the perceived POV of Times readers: Riverdale real estate, sculpture and cider in the Botanical Garden, two obituaries, "Kosher Wars," and oh yeah, a reference to hip hop. That's keeping it real...

Click here for Inner City Press in Wash Post and Miami on CRA, here in Charlotte on the mergers, and here even praising the FDIC (on other grounds)

There were Wanted posters up along East Tremont and Bathgate Avenues on October 4, about an armed robbery in Harrison, New York, offering $15,000. Some of the posters were torn down, but other were there. By Webster Avenue, there were no more. Call it narrow-casting.

Also in terms of insular communities, now the "Bangladesh Plaza" neighborhood in Queens is echoed on a corner of The Bronx, 158 and Melrose, the Dkaka Discount, with the "Lotto" on the sign crossed out...

The closing of R&S Strauss, we now surmise is related to the loss of parking created by the mad "Bx 12 Select" bus plan.

Finally, new and second-time-around restaurant reviews: the new Arthur Avenue Pizza Co between 186 and 184 has high ceiling and free Internet but doesn't have beef patties...

Meanwhile, a second visit to Angel's Ecuadorian restaurant on Hughes Avenue and 184th Street found the food still excellent, if not better, juice goat and rice, ceviche, tamales Ecuadorian style in a banana leaf -- but still no menu, and major communications problems. There few things more striking in a restaurant than one that doesn't produce the food you order, or that refuses to take an order, both of which happened here. A co-reviewer is hoping it's just a communications problem. Time will tell. But better goat and rice cannot be found in the Bronx...

Fengwang Chen, 31, was ambushed as he tried to deliver a $22 order on E. 229th St. Saturday - what was supposed to have been his last day as a deliveryman for New China Garden, his wife said Sunday.

"He never picks a fight with anyone," Chen's wife, Yan Dong, said through an interpreter at Jacobi Medical Center, where he remains in critical condition.

The bullet that hit Chen, a father of two young children, entered behind his ear and lodged in his jaw. He is expected to survive.

More annals of Fordham Road -- while still awaiting local powers' spin on the closing of R & S Strauss, a reporter's recent pass-through the White Castle found, far from fast food, no one talking orders for foot traffic. Everything is directed at the drive-through customers. Some suburb...

For some years, Inner City Press has noted the lack of a Fed Ex / Kinko's in the Bronx. Now last week, it was explained, thusly: "The primary factor in choosing locations is customer demand," said FedEx Office spokeswoman Jenny Robertson. "We look at the density of small and medium-size businesses. And there's never been a 'ruling out' of the Bronx. We are just looking at those communities that have greater customer penetration." So, over 1 million people is not dense enough?

At deadline, we're told there is an explanation for, and even controversy around, the closing of the R & S Strauss auto parts on Fordham Road. If received, we will run it on this site.

This year's Ferragosto street fair on Arthur Avenue had, as before, peaches and red wine, plums and white wine, $1.50 Italian ices from Artusos, free samples of mozzerella -- and a cheesy and probably fraudulent presentation of "Florida Properties" complete with cartoon depictions of swampland. Like something out of the 1950s...

An Ecuadorian restaurant has opened on Crescent Avenue in The Bronx, with ceviche, goat and rice and that country's apple soda. The owner used to work for Arthur Avenue Catering and saved up cash. He's dubious about President Correa but attentive to the customers in his five-table storefront. To chicken soup he'll add white rice to thicken it. The hot sauce is made of radishes and there is not yet a menu. But we are wishing them well.

Meanwhile, gone from Fordham Road is the R & S Strauss auto parts store. What happened?

On the corner of Webster and 188th, there are flowers and prayers surrounding a street lamp, marking where a driver with crumbling brakes crashed and killed a pregnant woman and, days later, her child who had initially been saved. There is a music store and a playground. Another area resident was nearly beaten to death by the side of this playground, in the course of a robbery. One block up there is a Carvel's ice cream store, and then the under renovation and expansion Sears. Life, death and development continue in The Bronx.

Talk about nitty-gritty. The MTA has announced, regarding the 149th Street Hub, that

The Bx55 will have a new turnaround when changing from southbound to northbound: traveling south on 3rd Avenue, east on East 146th Street, north on Willis Avenue, and then north on 3rd Avenue. This will eliminate the bus stop on Willis Avenue at the far side of East 148th Street and replace it with a new stop on 3rd Avenue at the near side of East 149th Street. All other stops remain the same.

The Bx15 northbound will remain on the current route to Willis Avenue, then travel north on 3rd Avenue and return to the current route. Southbound, it will travel south on 3rd Avenue (passing 148th Street), then east on East 146th Street, south on Willis Avenue and onto the current route.

The Bx41 will leave its terminal on East 147th Street traveling west, head north on 3rd Avenue, west on East 152nd Street, north on Melrose Avenue, then resume the current route. Southbound, the bus will travel south on Melrose Avenue, east on East 154th Street, south on Elton Avenue, then south on 3rd Avenue and continue on its current route.

So what, no more Third-to-Melrose crosscutting by the Bx 41? How 'bout having the busses run on time?

So the NY Times has whipped up dissatisfaction with how Hunts Point is described in WikiPedia, quoting one non-profit head as unwilling to make edit to the entry, another calling WikiMedia and asking them to make changes. What happened to empowerment? And what of the use of the term Bronx for rough regions everywhere on else, for example in Jamaica?

The pizzeria that opened earlier this year on Fordham Road across from White Castle, in a space formerly occupied by a club that was closed for under-aged drink, has itself already been shuttered. We hardly knew ye...

Sadly we report that the oddly-placed Argentine coffee shop on Webster Avenue just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway has gone under, cut its name off the fabric awning, no more beef sandwiches...

Now the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation "is inviting public comments" on

The New York Organic Fertilizer Company's plant began operations in 1993. Over the years, repeated complaints have been made about odors emanating from the facility. It has been the subject of two major DEC enforcement actions during that period. In recent months, DEC has developed a new strategy to address the odor issues associated with the plant, and it is inviting public comments on its plans.

July 21, 2008 A Bronx Juror's Eye View: Gypsy Cab Whip Lash Crash 9 Years Ago Gets 1-Day Trial, by Matthew R. Lee of Inner City Press

The word now in the jurors' waiting room in The Bronx is that things are getting worse: the duty more frequent and each time for more days. There are at least two reasons, those who work there say. First, more and more cases are filed in The Bronx, because the county perceived as having poor and angry residents who award big damages. So for example when McDonald's was sued for making people obese -- and there are obese people all over -- The Bronx was chosen as the venue. Second, you have to be citizen and speak English to serve on a jury. These two characteristics have become less prevalent in The Bronx, as a clerk diplomatically puts it, even as the population has grown in the last decade.

Put these two together, and those eligible for it have jury duty more often, and for more days. Unless you luck out, and can get selected for the jury in one of the new one-day trials.

On a recent morning, this option was offered to early arrivals, and a long line quickly formed. Twenty two people were selected, and shuttled into a side room to fill out questionnaires. Have you ever sued anyone? Have you or a family member ever worked in a law office? Then the 22 took elevators upstairs to Justice Yvonne Gonzalez' courtroom on the fourth floor. They sat on one side of the courtroom, reading, lounging, complaining about the too-strong air conditioning even on this hot day. Ms. Gonzalez came in and smiled, went into the back. Five minutes later she re-emerged as a Justice, in black robe wearing glasses. "All rise!" the court officer said.

"You don't have too," Justice Gonzalez said. "We're going to pick 12 of you and ask you some questions. The rest of you can wait."

The first 12 were selected. Your witness was not, and cursed his luck. The questions got personal. What do you do, for work? What does your wife do? What exactly is a nutritional consultant? You choose patients' menus? Have the patients filed lawsuits? Do they talk to you about them?

Two of the twelve admit they want to go to law school. They will not be chosen. An Asian woman tells a long story about a customer in the nail salon where she works, who hurt her shoulder in a car accident and constantly complains about it. She too will be asked to leave, as this case is about a car crash, which injured a Ms. Filartiga -- not her real name.

Now the two lawyers are getting to ask the questions. Really, they are trying to put ideas in potential jurors' minds, things they couldn't say once the trial begins. If a person doesn't look injured, can you accept that they are still in a lot of pain? I guess so. Good, because that's Ms. Filartiga over there, and she's in pain. It's a sad looking old woman on the far side of the courtroom. "She's doesn't speak English," we're told. They why do we have to? Even if you speak Spanish, you have to focus on what the interpreter says. And in this one-day trial, to save money no court recorder is present. There will only be your memory, and that should be focused on the interpreter.

As jurors are stricken, your witness is called into the jury box. Questions are asked, to catch up with the others. Potential grounds for being stricken are disclosed. But the witness makes it, as Juror Number Seven, the alternate. The others are thanked for their service, and return to the jurors' waiting room for four more days of limbo. Those lucky seven of the 22 who remain are told to order lunch, to be paid for by the court system. The alternate may or may not get fed, therefore the dollar tip does not have to be paid at this time.

Triple decked roast beef and a diet Coke. Pickles? Why not. But how was the diner that gets all these court house orders selected? Was this to low bidder? The case begins, with opening statements. A taxi has been hit from behind, at University Avenue and McCombs Dam Road. The plaintiff was wearing a seat belt, but still be whipped back and forth. She has lost work since then, she has gone to many doctors. She will never be the same. She needs money.

That's the plaintiff's lawyer's story. The defense lawyer, for two New Jerseyites who are not here, tells a counter tale. The plaintiff knew the cab driver, that's why he hasn't been sued. The cabby stopped short and with no notice, causing the crash. The plaintiff's own doctors reports, which will be distributed at the end, will show that her injuries are not serious. Okay, let's get it on.

There is only one witness, Ms. Filartiga the plaintiff. It looks like she hasn't been prepared. She keeps interrupting her lawyer, staring off into space. Unprompted, she says she wasn't in fact wearing seat belt. Does that make her negligent? Let's at least quantify and get some damages, her lawyers seems to decide. When did she work, after the accident? There was the perfume factory... But only in the summers... She's not sure. But after March 1999, when did she work?

That's how it emerges, that this terrible important fender-bender took place more than nine years ago, and is only getting its one-day trial now. Why? How can it take nine years to hear this meager evidence? Did the defendants delay things hope Filartiga would die or move back to Santo Domingo? Did the plaintiffs' lawyer put the case to the back of the line as a small damages dog? The jury is never told. But no wonder no one can remember what happened that day, or afterwards.

The lunch has arrived, and the case is still not over. Juror Seven will have roast beef after all. The seven are led up a staircase to a room with peeling paint. "Don't talk about the case," they're told. "Sports or fashion is okay." Out the window is Yankee Stadium, where the All-Star Game's Home Run Derby is to be held that night. The youngest juror, now wildly thumbing his Sidekick, says even the tickets to Home Run Derby are expensive. The sandwich, though free, is not good. Perhaps they really were the low bidders. A Hispanic woman, maybe in her 50s, calls her boss and says she'll be back at work tomorrow, she lucked into the one-day trial. After that the silence is deafening. The one African-American on the jury, a large woman, gets up to go to the bathroom.

Juror Seven, to pass the time and drown out the sound of flushing, says Major League Baseball is screwing The Bronx by having the parade in Manhattan, and the memorabilia show too. There's no response. Oh really. He tries again, saying how in his jury pool, everyone one wanted to get on the jury. In most cases, people are trying to get off, saying, "I can't be fair" or "I hate the police." There are a few nods. Okay then, read the newspaper. In the corner of the room there's a stack of police accident reports, with drawings of automobiles and arrows for direction of impact. Could Filartiga's be in there?

Okay it must be time to go back down. No, says a large woman who used to be a school principal. "They come up and get us, I know this, I've done it before." She is white, and almost everyone else is Hispanic. She is ignored. Six of the seven creep down the stairs, where have metal mesh because criminal defendants are led this way too. They peer into the empty courtroom. Hey, the security officer says. "Go back upstairs." The principal was right, looks vindicated. Are they settling the case? Ten more minutes pass.

Finally they are led back into the courtroom, Juror Seven told to pick a spot in the second row. This is easy, this is fun. It will end today, they've said. The jury is told the Ms. Filartiga was 53 when the crash happened. She's 62 now and it is estimated that she will live to 84. "That's an average, of course," the plaintiff's lawyer said, adding the word "actuarial." She says, "You can decided how much each of her years will be worth." But can we? How?

The plaintiff's lawyer has forgotten to make photocopies of her exhibits. There will be only one copy in the deliberations room. The defense has copies, which are passed out to each juror including Number Seven. The exhibits are pretty damning. A doctor says the pain is fake. The police report on the accident says the taxi stopped too fast. Then again, that was only what the Jerseyites said. But only they spoke with the police. Why hasn't the cabby come to the trial to testify? Why didn't the plaintiff's lawyer try to address this hole in her case? Is the hope simply that six Bronx jurors, told a tale of a possible-hurt factory worker, will award millions of dollars?

Why didn't someone -- say for example, the Jerseyites' insurance company -- simply give Ms. Filartiga 40 or 50 thousand dollars, back nine years ago, and leave it at that? Did Filartiga ask for more? Did the insurers refuse to pay, then made her wait nine years? This is the background we need, to weight the equities. But none of the jurors get that information, much less the Alternate, your witness, who is now told to go. There is no closure, as in real life. Good luck Ms. Filartiga, hope you make it to 84 or more.

We devote our Bronx Watch footnote this week to an anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation win, NWBCCC vindicated against landlords which claimed that tenant organizers interfered with their relationships with Washington Mutual bank. On July 7, Justice Sallie Manzanet denied the landlords' claim, triggering 11 days later a press release by the victorious lawyers. Hats off. But the press release doesn't saying anything about legal fees and costs...

With the hype starting to swirl around the July 15 All-Star game at Yankee Stadium, Major League Baseball did not respond to repeated inquiries from South Bronx media about covering the game. Of course, the parade, concert and other events are all in Manhattan...

In front of Mount Carmel Church on July 13, the John Duke / Newark Symphonic Band played tuba music as a priest led a march down 187th Street past frying sausages and bubble tea.

In Belmont, now it's the Dolce Amaro restaurant, next to Modern's supermarket, that's been closed by inspectors, health and mental hygiene. The previously but only briefly closed Arthur Avenue Bakery is back open, this time seemingly legal, with a new inspection report in the window.

Of the new BX 12 "Select" service, these negative reviews: the moving of the Local stops in fact makes trips longer for many riders, as they can no longer take local or Select, whichever one comes first. Some local stops have muddy sidewalks, and no disabled access. Lawsuit, anyone?

And then there is the case of the hijacked banana trucks, stolen from Delaware and dumped, fruitless, in The Bronx...

The Empowerment Zone last week announced 11 awards, eight in Manhattan and three in The Bronx:

* $200,000 loan and a $50,000 grant to help Project Enterprise Inc. establish a micro-loan program in the Bronx Empowerment Zone. Since its creation in 1996 as a US Tressury-certified Community Development Financial Institution, Project Enterprise has served more than 1,300 entrepreneurs, disbursing more than 350 loans totaling over $1.2 million.
* $250,000 grant to help Rocking The Boat Inc.'s $960,000 project to consolidate and renovate its educational facilities. The project will help the company establish its first permanent home at 812 Edgewater Road in the Bronx. Rocking the Boat used traditional wooden boatbuilding and on-water education to help middle- and high school-age youth develop into empowered and responsible adults. Its programs serve nearly 2,000 students and community members, mostly from the south Bronx.
* $150,200 grant to help the New York Gauchos and Teamwork Foundation renovate its main gymnasium and entranceway at 478 Gerard Avenue in the Bronx. The Teamwork Foundation, founded 40 years ago, serves as the general business administrator of the New York Gauchos basketball program that has served approximately 11,000 young people ranging in age from 5 through 18. Fifteen Gaucho alumni have played in the National Basketball Association (including Stephon Marbury of the New York Knicks).

Nomination for worst bus line in the city: the Bx 41 along Webster Avenue. A recent evening at 149th Street, people waited for an hour. Later, up the line, the schedule was ignored, all busses stopped at Fordham Road, leaving those heading further north stranded again.

The week of the City's announcement of plans for "Third Avenue / Melrose Commons" on the real Third Avenue and 157th Street, Flynn Playground was entirely ripped up, while overpriced "luxury condos" were advertised between 156th and 157ths. Is this serving actual Bronx residents? Further south on Willis, at 145th, Peter Goodwine founded Fort Motte Baptist, and on 142nd there is Abraham House. More gentrification on Lincoln Avenue, beyond the Clocktower at 112, a whole new crowd. Again, is this helping those who've long lived in The Bronx?

It's street fair time again in The Bronx. On a rainy Saturday night on 187th Street, an old grinding machine sounding like African drumming chewed through sugar cane fed in by a man in a skull cap, in his pickup truck, sign calling it Bahar Fruit Juices. On Arthur Avenue in a Parks Department trailer, the band Streets of the Bronx played on, for only those under Palumbo's Caffe's awning.

The blues they played could be for the Hunts Point Market, which is threatening to move to New Jersey, just after the City moved the Fulton Street Fish Market up near it. Great planning...

Trolling the Federal Register, we learn that DOJ has sued and settled about illegal underground storage tanks, for gas, at 1303 Webster Avenue and 4090 Boston Road in the Bronx...

Leave it to the New York Times to gush about gentrification of the South Bronx without once mentioning its impact on affordability for the people who live here. While some of "Sobro's" new residents mean well, they should start thinking harder how to not only raise the rents. Here's hoping...

This week, media-watch at home and abroad. Now we know who the New York Times writes for -- in a piece about a factory fire in Mott Haven in the Bronx, the Times of May 28 wrote " People walking around East Harlem and the Upper East Side this afternoon may have noticed black smoke billowing in the air, visible from quite a distance." Apparently, no one in The Bronx saw the smoke, or is reading the Times....

Now is The Independent of London of May 27 snarking about the South Bronx: "Belgravia and the Upper East Side would be looking like swathes of Croxteth and the South Bronx already do with people; vegetation sprouting through the tarmac, litter blowing down the streets like tumbleweed, derelict dwellings with broken windows, dogs running wild, and not a policeman in sight." Wild dogs on the tarmac!

Now it's become clear that the parkland promised in exchange for that taken for the new Yankee Stadium will open, if ever, long after at the stadium does. So who's to blame? The Parks Commissioner won't talk, and the local pols who supported the deal continue to claim, against all evidence, that it is on track. And now it looks like the news stadium won't get an outdoor hockey game, either.

Meanwhile, MLB.com has placed the East Harlem restaurant Rao's north in... the Bronx. Click here.

From the department of "It Don't Mean a Think If It Ain't Got that Swing" -- We agree it's ridiculous that the renovated playground of Public School 138 in Soundview has no swings. According to the Daily News, the explanation is that NYC recently paid $3.5 million to settle a case brought by a woman named Daisey Vega who was injured in a swing accident in 1999 at Noble Park in the Bronx." Mayor Bloomberg is quoted that "you have one accident, everybody screams, 'More safety, another level of backup,' and then somebody sues. A lot of the old things that we did because there are some risks involved and people have sued . . . are no longer things that we do. Sad, I mean . . . you know . . . anyways." This in the same month he told a reporter asking about Sean Bell, "some nerve.. talk to my press secretary." And so it goes.

We are back on the Bronx-watch including watching how the term is used. No less than the BCC (okay, its Welsh service) used "South Bronx" as a generic insult in an article, here, about biking. Also in the UK, the Andover Advertiser of May 16 quotes a local pol that "We are in danger of scoring an own goal because the way we talk Tidworth is like living in the Bronx." And what's wrong with living in the Bronx?

While the Bloomberg Administration loudly claims concern for the lack of supermarkets and fruits and vegetables in lower income neighborhoods, the gentrification it has fueled is part of the problem. In an example of commercial gentrification, Vornado Realty Trust is jacking up Key Foods' rent 500% on Bruckner Boulevard and White Plains Road, driving out the store in order to demolish it and leave residents of high-rises with a ten block walk to the store. Only in New York...

Cinco de Mayo was celebrated on 187th Street and Crescent Avenue on May 3, with no even as much fanfare as last year. The sponsor was Health Plus, which ran nearly every booth. Even by five o'clock, there were no tacos, no Mexican sodas, nothing. Que pasa?

The next day, May 4, six police cars, a fire department 4 by 4 and two ambulance converged on the same corner. Police engaged in a manhunt, while people stood in front of the mostly-Albanian social clubs gawking. A social club on 186th Street has a sign, Welcome Home, Ramush. But were the police working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia?

Finally the scandal of the 700 teachers in NY Board of Education "rubber rooms" has hit the tabloids, with the Daily News following-up on filmmakers' work, and saying it costs the City $65 million a year. But what of the scandal of "District 75," to which a mix of violent and learning disabled kids are sent, without notice or due process?

Spring has sprung in The Bronx, and the buildings are coming down. On 163rd Street and Third Avenue, the Powerhouse Church is down. The second courthouse has disappeared; there is a sign by Procida Construction advertising the chance to "join Dunkin Donuts and Popeyes" in a strip mall on the site. Whole streets are closed off to traffic. But we're back looking into it -- watch this site, and, on international issues, this streaming video http://www.bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/10560#

On the sidelines of Inner City Press' first-hand coverage of the Pope's visit to the United Nations on April 18 -- click here for that -- the venture to Yonkers involved telling residents of the Dunwoody neighborhood that they could not go out of their houses for hours on end. There was no reporting about hot sheet motels in the area...

Arthur Avenue Bakery update: even with two governmental "Closed" signs on the window, the bakery is still stocked, and a handwritten sign promises wholesale bread as special prices. Neighbors often wondered what took place in the half-finished cinderblock building above the bakery...

And now, a new restaurant review in the form of a cautionary tale. On Fordham Road across from White Castle, in the storefront formerly occupied by a bar that got closed for serving under-aged drinkers, the "Il Ponte Vecchio Pizza Restaurant" has opened. The space is long and narrow, like a railroad flat. On a recent visit, two reviewers walked through to sit in the back, next to an open door. The back yard has green Astro-turf, making it seem like a place to sit. But in fact there is a large refrigerator in the yard, into which restaurant staff disappeared several times during the 20 minute wait for fried calamari. One, the manager, reappeared carrying a head of lettuce in ungloved hands. "Sorry for the wait," he said. "It's that we make everything fresh." The next, a cook, came out with vegetables. On the menu, one can design a salad: walnuts 50 cents, cheddar cheeses 75 cents and the like. It is confusing and could, it appears, result in a $22 dollar salad.

There are pipes across the ceiling. One is for sprinklers -- safety is always a plus -- but the other pipe made noise during the visit. The decor includes vaguely Roman tiles, an incongruous chicken, and witch hats. There is a hole in the ceiling next to the light fixture, and another in the brick wall.

On the positive side, the Cuban panini came with fresh-made potato chips. "Those only come with the panini," the manager said. Oh well. He said they own nine other restaurants. These, we gotta see...

To be constructive, this restaurant can make money from Fordham students. But it will need to stay open later than 9 p.m., and otherwise raise its game, and/or lower its prices. The catering has promise, the hot chips should remain. And maybe the fridge should come in from the back yard...

Belmont journal: what do you say about a public library -- say, one on the corner of 186th Street and Hughes Avenue -- that doesn't have tax forms in the week that taxes are due? Why is yet another small grocery store opening up on 187th Street, between Beaumont and Cambrelleng, making it a total of eight in a three-block strip? Three of these are open 24-hours a day; whether the new one will be is not yet known. If you combined these eight, you could have a good-sized supermarket... This are back to morning, post unilateral declaration of independence in Kosovo, at the Albanian social clubs in the area. A strangely flashy place named Planet Wings has opened up in the same stretch, already offering franchise opportunities along with slightly overpriced wings. Cheapest item is a taco, at $2.16, but it is cold, cannot hold a candle to the little stands that have cropped up in Belmont. The sign says, best wings in the Hudson Valley. But this is The Bronx.. The area was filled with police this week, searching for suspects, throwing people up against the pharmacy's rolling metal gate. But the only "raid" that got publicized was of the Arthur Avenue Bakery, click here for that. Welcome to Belmont...

Metro-North follow-up: a week after defending his railroad's exclusion of riders at Fordham Station in The Bronx, and saying inaccurately that a center platform could be built for more express trains to stop at Fordham, Metro-North president Peter A. Cannito was quoted in a press release about a center platform -- for Yankee Stadium. It's a $91 million project, and according to Cannito, "Everyone is pushing to get it open as close to opening day 2009 as is safely possible." The press release continued, "The four tracks of Metro-North's Hudson Line pass just west of the stadium. The tracks are being relocated about 50 feet west to allow for construction of two center-island platforms." It's all where your priorities are...

In 2007 in its headquarters Metropolitan Statistical Area of New York City, Citigroup confined Americans to higher-cost loans above the rate spread 2.61 times more frequently than whites. Citigroup's disparity to Latinos was 1.90.

JPMorgan Chase, in what is also its headquarters MSA of New York City, was even more disparate, confining African Americans to higher-cost loans above the rate spread 2.92 times more frequently than whites. Chase's disparity to Latinos was 2.50. More here.

And now predatory lending has slowed the market: home sales volume in Queens dropped by 25 percent from February 2007 to February 2008, 31 percent in Brooklyn, 36 percent on Staten Island -- but fully 50 percent in the Bronx...

BRONX, N.Y., March 30 -- As New York government officials consider imposing a tax for driving into lower Manhattan, many of the Metro-North Railroad trains which stop to let off suburban riders in the Bronx refuse to take Bronx passengers on board for the last leg of the trip into Grand Central Station. When these trains stop at the Fordham Road station in the Bronx, the public address system announces that they are "discharge only" and that anyone who insists on getting on will be charged the highest possible fare. Among those excluded or over-charged are Bronxites who have paid over $140 for a monthly pass from Fordham to Grand Central.

This longstanding policy was questioned on March 26 at a public hearing of the Metro-North Railroad president Peter Cannito. Along with questions about allowing more bicycles on the MNRR trains and better policing late-night drunken riders, Inner City Press asked Mr. Cannito to explain why the company he runs, at least until later this year, denies its services to pre-paid customers in the Bronx. While several of the other MNRR board members present seem surprised that this takes place, Cannito said it is a product of an operating agreement between the states of Connecticut and New York. He said that since Connecticut pays 65% of the New Haven line's costs, they have requested that no passengers be allowed on the New Haven lines trains which stop to discharge passengers in the Bronx.

When Inner City Press questioned the social, racial and environmental justice logic of keeping paying customers from The Bronx from riding the suburban commuter trains even when they have paid, Cannito said, even if "you don't accept it," he had explained it. Another board member interjected that what Inner City Press had raised showed the "regionality of service" which is "something we are keenly aware of and working toward."

Further inquiry by Inner City Press has revealed as an explanation of the exclusion of Bronxites that the Connecticut and New York lines of the Metro-North system don't have in place a system to invoice each other for riders like Bronxites riding New Haven line trains south into Manhattan. The bureaucratic fix appears simple, unless an implicit selling-point of the New Haven line is the exclusion of more "urban" riders. While some intrepid Bronxites have found a way around the MNRR's policy of exclusion -- by buying a holding a ticket from Westchester to Grand Central, as if they had gotten on further north -- these games are not accessible to everyone, cost more and should not be necessary, particularly with congestion pricing looming.

Cannito offered a single, illusory concession. He said that MNRR is considering whether having a middle platform at the Fordham station would allow additional express trains from White Plains to stop at Fordham. But a cursory visit to the station shows that there is no room for a middle platform, and little chance of expanding the station outward, either into Fordham University where a dorm is being constructed, or out onto Webster Avenue.

Also at the hearing, a bicycle enthusiast derided late night drunken riders who, he said, often vomit in the cars. Just as a designated quiet car had been proposed, he suggested what he called a "designated pukers car."

Bronx news watch medley -- note to News 12: the Latin music legend who just died was named Cha-chow, not Cock-Hayo... And to report at length about the fight-back of a Bronx high school football coach without even mentioning why the principal banned him from the campus is not respectful, it's mystifying...

Last week in honor or search of La Francophonie, Inner City Press had to venture beyond the Bronx, first to DC then Manhattan then finally the Borough of Kings. Monday in DC, the Press' travails with the UN and Google were discussed. Monday night at the CUNY Graduate Center on Fifth Ave, an eclectic band played, saxophonist from Quebec, bass from Mali, keyboards from Japan. The M de C Paul Holdergraber from the NY Public Library is, despite his name, French. Who knew? The week was capped, however, by the surreal performance of a quintet called La Laque at the Luna Lounge west of Bedford, east of Lorimer in Brooklyn. Energetic drums, ethereal singing in French, vaguely Germanic keyboards. One of the few song-explanation said that Tuesday is French for weekend. "C'mon, that's funny," the singer deadpanned. Mardi, get it?

And while not French at all, we're compelled to note, across the street from Luna Lounge, the upscale-downscale meat emporium Fette Sau, faux Southern pork shoulder $15 a pound, we recommend the broccoli salad and sweet black chili sauce...

The day after news of the Federal Reserve's murky bailout of Bear Stearns through JPMorgan Chase, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch filed with the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a petition, complaint and series of requests, portions of which are available by clicking here. ICP has now made a similar filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, it's reported that Bear Stearns' CEO recently paid cash to buy two apartment in the former Plaza Hotel in New York, without a mortgage...

So how did Eliot Spitzer get caught? North Fork Bank, recently re-branded Capital One, filed a Suspicious Activity Report last July. Like most SARs, it went nowhere. Until HSBC filed its own, about transactions with shell companies QAT International and QAT Consulting Group, connected to Emperor's Club VIP. Now investigators took an interest, tracing back to Spitzer. Why was he banking with North Fork, of all places?

So why is the courthouse at 161st and 3rd being given to Imagine Schools, which in 2005 lost its charter for a Syracuse elementary school for having low test scores and high turnover among students and staff members?

Foreclosure tale from New York, by a charter-bus driver in the East Bronx who has a mortgage payment that went from $2,482 to $3,500 a month. I had a two-year teaser rate, now going up every six months to a maximum of 13.2 percent, "I spoke to Wells Fargo. I tried to get them to keep the rate at the teaser rate, 6.8 percent... I'm in a home that cost us $35,000 in the sixties. We refinanced three times, and we owe $400,000."

It appears that the UN is considering relocating some of its trees, including gifts from the Japanese mission, to keep them safe during construction. Inner City Press asked Capital Master Plan spokesman Werner Schmidt if he could confirm that the Bronx-based NY Botanical Garden, where the CMP's Michael Adlerstein used to work, is coming to check out and even price relocation of the trees. "There are tree issues," Schmidt replied. "We are talking to a number" of entities, "including the Botanical Garden." Watch this site. And see, on Inner City Press and free speech, www.bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/9329#

As you cruise past Cardinal Hayes High School, let's say on MetroNorth watching a new building rising where once the Police Academy was to have been, who would have guessed what the principal had on his hard drive -- or would that be his zip(per) drive? Also on the porn front, Inner City Press last week ran a three-story series that CUlMinated in the quiet removal of Smooth and King, replaced by Elle and Vogue. Click here. And now, to the Bronx...

A snowy Saturday night in Tremont, club-goers line up in front of the Jet Set Cafe on Webster, across from the deadly White Castle outlet, just south of where Popeye's Fried Chicken has moved in. If you need a selection of hundreds of hubcaps and rims, this is your area.

Across the world but related, In Kazakhstan, Ministry of Emergencies head Vladimir Bozhko last week warned ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel company, that it could be forced to close one of its coal mines it if does not improve safety conditions after an explosion last month killed 30 people. The company was given one month to draw up a plan to introduce 41 safety reforms at the Abaiskaya mine in central Kazakhstan. ArcelorMittal is making steel for New York's Freedom Tower...

Also high in the New York City sky is the multi-million dollar penthouse owned by Lichtenstein, on 40th Street and 2nd Avenue. It was put into a different light by the story this week of Germany's payment for a CD-ROM of its citizens with money in Lichtenstein. Enabling tax evasions as an act of war? Also about the UN, see this sample editorial.

Meanwhile, the NY Attorney General's office last week sent Inner City Press a letter about a years-old Freedom of Information Law request about predatory lending, responsive documents to which have still not been provided...

In the streets of the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx, lined with Kososar social clubs selling burek, cars honked their horns, flying red flags emblazoned with the Albanian black eagle. "Times Square one o'clock," a men in front of one of the social clubs told cars that slowed as they passed. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting for 1 p.m. as well, announced to the press not by the UN but by the French mission. What could the Security Council accomplish? Click here for Inner City Press' story from the UN on Kosovo, and also on " Death on UN Lawn Leaves Questions Unanswered, Photos Unexplained."

By Fordham Plaza, where every morning now a long time snakes down the sidewalk, patrolled by guards who cause a break in the line for certain overpriced storefronts, the environmental outrage recently occurred. The tall trees fronting the Metro North railroad tracks were unceremonious cut down. In any other borough, this would have triggered protest, probably before, and saving the trees. But this is the Bronx, where institutions do whatever they want and the people are made to wait endlessly in line...

Last week, Hudson Valley Bank's CEO said in a press release that Bronx landlord Barry Levites has been named to the board of New York National Bank, which sold out to Hudson Valley Bank. The press release mentions, only once, Hudson Valley Bank's Business Development Board, and that Levites was already serving on it. So Hudson Valley Bank's impact on NYNB has been to name a controversial Bronx landlord to its board. The missed j.a. lobbia wrote in the Voice during the 2001 mayoral campaign of donations from "Levites Realty, which has made headlines for its decrepit Bronx buildings, including one that had to be vacated in 1994 after the walls began to shake and crack." Welcome to the new New York National Bank...

Now this was innovative-- Luis Fernandez, 30, was arraigned last week on charges that he sold illegal drugs while making deliveries for Schmuger's Hardware Store on Third Avenue, including a sale last month to an undercover cop near E. 178th St and Third Ave...

Bloomberg's state of the city speech last week, delivered while still toying with a presidential run, took credit for rezoning the South Bronx, but not for closing schools and daycare centers, and presiding over the increasing unaffordability of housing to people who have long lived in The Bronx. Then in his canned radio address, Bloomberg equated fighting poverty with monitoring those getting out of prison, while saying that "another key priority of my second term [is] fighting poverty." We'll see.

From an Inner City Press correspondent in the North Bronx we have this -- Saturday January 19 near 241st Street, on an elevated train stopped between stations, police lay in wait to issue tickets to riders who walked between cars. Feeling it was a set-up, our intrepid correspondent got off at the next stop and stood telling entrants what the police were up to. And soon enough, the police left...

As protests continue of Bloomberg's closing of the day care center on 140th Street between Willis and Alexander Avenues, now the state Office of Children and Family Services is moving to shutter the Pyramid Reception Center in the Bronx.

Now slated for the Bathgate Industrial Park, which has had a weedy lot just below the Cross Bronx Expressway for more than a decade, is a warehouse for Pearlgreen Hardware, which claims it will add about 60 new jobs in addition to the 60 workers Pearlgreen currently employs. We'll see..

Dion DiMucci, formerly of the Belmonts, is moving back to New York, to... Wall Street.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has filed an administrative action against Rosenthal & Klein Inc., Bronx, N.Y. The action alleges that the company committed willful, repeated, and flagrant violations of the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA). In the action, it is alleged that the company failed to make full payment promptly to 16 sellers of the agreed purchase prices, in the total amount of $927,459.76 for 208 lots of perishable agricultural commodities. Food wars...

While trying to create buzz for a presidential run, Mayor Bloomberg is moving to close the Lucille Murray Child Development Center in the South Bronx by January 11. Not only is the Center being de-funded -- the building will no longer offer daycare of any kind. Great...

On the fight against the proposed take-over of Commerce Bank, including its drive-thru branch on Fordham Road, see, e.g., "Activist fights TD-Commerce Bancorp deal, citing racial gap," by Richard Newman, Bergen Record, Jan. 1, 2008, Pg. L7

In the Daily News' December 28 Pollyanna piece about crime drops in The Bronx, there's a quote from Augie Aloia, a professor of criminal justice at Monroe College in the Bronx, the "the new numbers as a sign that the Bronx is 'turning the corner...Because of the demographics, the Bronx is a tough borough and it always has been.'" But what demographics does he mean? If the reference is to income, that should be spelled out. By the way, grand larceny is up, and shootings and injuries have not declined as much as homicides: meaning that the decrease may largely be attributable to advances in emergency medicine...

Click here for Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch's challenge to the proposed take-over of Commerce Bank by Toronto Dominion. In the New York City MSA, TD Banknorth strikingly excluded African Americans from its marketing, outreach and lending. For home improvement loans, of which TD Banknorth made 126 loans to whites based on 266 applications of which it denied 115 (43.2%), TD Banknorth processed only 46 applications from African Americans, denied 35 of them (76.1%). For refinance loans, of which TD Banknorth made 10 loans to whites, TD Banknorth received nine applications from African Americans, and denied ALL of them. While strikingly excluding people of color from its offers of normally-priced, prime credit, TD's Banknorth has continued funding and enabling predatory / fringe financiers such as high-cost pawnshops... And see, "Advocacy group in challenge of TDBank-Commerce Bancorp deal," by Carrie Tait, National Post (Canada), December 29, 2007; "Advocates for poor protest bid to buy Commerce," by Harold Brubaker, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 29, 2007

Christmas in Belmont is not the same this year. What's missing? Well, the farm animals and horse-drawn carriage ride, from in front of Mount Carmel Pharmacy. There's said to a sickness in the family, so this year there's only a Santa in front, $5 a picture, small candy bars handed out free. To the side of Santa on Sunday, the neighborhood's ghost-like bootleg DVD seller greeted an African-American teen with an off-color salutation. "What'd you say, man?"

As Carrion Downshifts to Race for NYC Comptroller, Human Rights Disinvestment Balanced by Returns

BRONX, NY, December 13 -- As Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrion spoke at the Grand Hyatt Thursday morning, quoting from James Joyce and Emma Lazarus' poems on the base of the Statue of Liberty, he seemed inexorably to be moving to declaring himself a candidate for Mayor. In the audience were generations of Bronx elected officials, Jose and Joel Rivera, the Yankees' Randy Levine and a table bought by the Bronx Zoo, Herman Badillo at a table of lobbying firm Tonio Burgos and Associates. The real estate industry was making introductions, and filling the ballroom. There was no talk of rising rents, only of rising hopes. And then Carrion declared for... Comptroller.

In the media scrum that immediately followed, he was asked "why not run for Mayor?" His answer was "I've got kids," and that there are other young talents running for Mayor, two on whom he said he would call with the news: Christine (Quinn) and Anthony (Weiner). He shifted to say that New York's economy is doing well, even with the subprime lending crisis. He said there are "ten to twelve thousand families with subprime mortgages," an estimate that readily-available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data calls into question. But he's not yet Comptroller.

Looking ahead, Inner City Press asked Carrion for his views on using the city's pension fund and investment to advance human rights. "It's one of the strongest instruments municipalities have," Carrion said, "to go to enterprises, to multinational corporations or funds, and say we are uncomfortable with practices in parts of the company, in countries, the treatment of workers."

Inner City Press asked if he would divest from specific countries, and from companies doing business in them, using as examples what other government subdivisions have targets, Sudan and Syria. "Anywhere human or workers rights are violated, we need to rethink strategy," Carrion said. He went on to say he would "also take into consideration the return for pensioners." So if human rights violators are profitable? We'll see.

Footnotes: A study cited last week found that in Jamaica, Queens, a mainly black suburb of New York with a median income of $45,000, 46 per cent of mortgages were sold by sub-prime lenders; while in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a mostly white area with a median income of $50,000, 4 per cent of mortgages originated from sub-prime lenders... With Citigroup giving its CEO and chairman jobs to investment banker, now pundits speculate that the branch bank may be sold, saying Citi's "share in New York is way down from five years ago, when it had nearly 21% market share and 375 branches, because it moved a large amount of deposits from New York City to Nevada." Is that why Citi has felt comfortable doing less and less under the Community Reinvestment Act?

So Mayor Bloomberg, preparing to fly to Beijing and to Bali, announces without consultations that P.S. 220 in the Bronx will be closed. His canned quote was "We just can't sit here and let a school that does not do what it's supposed to do continue on its merry way" -- he said as he headed on his merry way to cut ribbons in China with Hank Paulson, and to resorts in Indonesia...

A Bronx tale, from last week's New York Sun, about Gloria Davis' successor Michael Benjamin: "He first saw her when he stopped by the William Hodson Senior Center on Webster Avenue... by his third visit to the center, he won a date with Ms. Benjamin, who accepted a lunch invitation at a nearby Albanian-run Italian restaurant." Okay, that'd be on Arthur Avenue. But which one? Noticed on Cambrelleng: a 4 by 4 with diplomatic plates, "Consul." Albania, anyone? In the run-up to the December 10th Kosovo (non) decision?

Subj: Belmont and e187th incessant Xmas music
From: Distracted
To: mlee [at] innercitypress.org
Date: 11/27/2007 5:51:50 PM Eastern Standard Time

Matthew: Do you have any idea who is controlling the two speakers on the pole next to Mt. Carmel Church on the corner of Belmont and 187th street. Xmas music is constantly blaring and the church says it is not them that does this? The music runs until 11pm at night - we need to sleep sometime. Thanks.

BRONX, November 24 -- "American Gangster" by Ridley Scott spent much money getting the visuals of 1970s New York, including The Bronx, down pat. There's a canyon of abandoned buildings, a foray to the Bronx under the elevated train (flash of a 176th Street Station sign), and incongruous street scenes on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. There are wide-windowed breakfast spots in Harlem, and housing projects like jails, with fencing on their breezeways. There is the growing heroin empire, and the dogged cop on its trail. No judgment is passed, no conclusion offered. It seems like a waste of money -- and, concretely, the Chelsea Clearview, after taking in $12 a ticket, makes sure that no other movies can be seen. Boo hiss.

Bloomberg Repeats Threat to Cease School Visits as UN Backslides on Fix-Up Commitments -- Does Real Estate Explain? Bronx Footnote

UNITED NATIONS, November 13 -- While the UN on Tuesday claimed that it had agreed to New York City Mayor Bloomberg's timeline for minimum safety repairs of the UN Headquarters building, the City's response to the UN notes two items as "not satisfactory," and reiterates the threat to prohibit public school visits to the UN. The City's letter, obtained by Inner City Press and put online here, accuses the UN of backsliding on previous timeliness for "compartmentalization" and for installation of smoke detectors.

"Building separation" was to have begun on January 8, a date that the UN's November 5 letter ignores. The City's Commissioner for the UN, Consular Corps and Protocol, Marjorie B. Tiven -- who is also Mayor Bloomberg's sister -- writes that "in previous meeting with the UN we had been told these dates were attainable. Your letter states only that a contract will be awarded by mid-December... That is not satisfactory."

On smoke detectors, the City required that 50% be installed by January 8 "and 100% by March 31, 2008, dates the UN had previously agreed were achievable." Commissioner Tiven writes that the UN's November 5 letter "states that the contract would be signed by the end of November 2007 and work completed 24 months after the signing of the contract. That is not satisfactory." Then Commissioner Tiven reiterates the threat: if the deadlines, including those listed above, are not met, "the City will have not choice but to direct the cessation of all public school visits to the United Nations, and if warranted, the City will take additional action as well." The letter is copied to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad, and the Mayor.

How then to explain the following statements, questions by Inner City Press, at Tuesday UN noon briefing? From the transcript:

Deputy Spokesperson: The Secretary-General and the Head of the Department of Management, Alicia Barcena, are in complete agreement with the Mayor in terms of concerns for the safety of visitors and staff and others who occupy this building, which I mentioned to you yesterday... I think we are moving along, and the city and UN continue to address these measures as expeditiously as possible.

Inner City Press: Yes, one follow-up on that. There seemed to be this very concrete issue of compartmentalization, which I guess means fire doors and also something to do with the fan system, which the city seems to think should be repaired by January. Is this...

Deputy Spokesperson: There is a benchmark date set for that and we've agreed to that. [Video here]

But the City's letter notes that the UN has not agreed to the benchmark dates, has in fact backed away from previous commitments. How these problems develop will be reported on this site.

It might also be attributable to not knowing or having been told of the letter -- also on Tuesday, receipt of a letter from biofuels trade associations could not be confirmed, and a question earlier in the week about submission of evidence of alleged corruption in UN's Kosovo mission UNMIK has still not been answered. Still...

On the UN side, some real estate-minded pundits speculate that beyond a concern for safety, the Bloomberg Administration may also be seeking to gain some leverage and influence over upcoming UN decisions that can impact the City's economy. Pending General Assembly approval, the UN will eventually be moving thousands of employees out of its headquarters to repair it. Where these employees go will impact local real estate markets. The City is also said to have its eye on the two building across First Avenue from the Headquarters, thrown up by the UN Development Corporation (UNDC). Could the UN help stoke up real estate values in Long Island City, Queens? Inner City Press asked the chief of the UN's rehabilitation project, Michael Adlerstein, who the UN's real estate broker is. After some hesitation, in halting transparency, he answered: Newmark. In New York, real estate is a major game in town.

Question: has the UN ever placed anything in the Bronx? (There was a half-ass link between UNDC and Melrose Commons). Has the UN ever done anything for the Bronx?

There is, upon reflection, at least one further angle. If Bloomberg does through his hat and money into the Presidential ring, without having a foreign policy beyond a private jet, having publicly tiffed with the UN could be of use. This is not lost on the November 14 New York Post, nor in the release of the second letter to CBS and others. Watch this site.

As the administration hires PR firms to drum up support for congestion pricing in the Bronx, already underserved by mass transit, downtown the diplomats are making sure they wouldn't have to be the "congestion tax."

UNITED NATIONS, November 8 -- If New York drivers find themselves paying tolls to enter midtown Manhattan, under Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing scheme, guess who will not pay them? UN diplomats. A little-noticed section of the barely-read "Report of the Committee on Relations with the Host Country," recounts that the representatives of Indonesia, Malaysia and Russia all expressed "concerns" about "the 'congestion tax' plan recently announced by the Mayor and whether it was intended to apply to the diplomatic community." The representative of the United States replied that "the actual wording was 'congestion pricing'... it was too early to discuss the matter as it was unclear whether the plan, which had yet to be finalized, would receive approval in Albany."

Forget for a moment the centrality of Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver. The U.S. representative's deferral on the question does not take into account that the U.S. State Department, in London where congestion pricing is already in place, argues not to pay it.

So here in New York, Ambassadors and their staffs even from oil rich countries will cross on bridges and in tunnels without paying. But only from some countries -- the report also contains the complaints of delegations from Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Sudan and Russia, about being barred from traveling more than 25 miles away from Columbus Circle. Wanting to attend a meeting at Princeton about the UN International Criminal Court, two delegates from Cuba were refused permission to travel that far south, whether by car or New Jersey Transit. The U.S. responded that its "obligations as host country" of the UN "arose only in respect of official UN meetings." Sometimes restrictions are tighter than 25 miles. When Radovan Karadzic came to the UN, he was limited to 42nd Street, between First Avenue and the Grand Hyatt on Lexington. No need to pay congestion pricing for that commute...

On parking tickets, the one topic in the Host Country Report that is periodically covered, Mayor Bloomberg's sister Marjorie Tiven, NYC Commissioner for the UN, recounted that "between October 2006 and January 2007, 2400 civilian vehicles had been summoned and 79 towed... Civilian vehicles received seven times more summonses than those of diplomats." The report says Ms. Tiven "announced that... a new telephone line had been established which was available 24 hours a day, 7 days a wekk, for diplomats to address their parking problems: 718-383-7596." There's only one problem: the number has been disconnected, and no further information is available about it...

Visions of the Bronx while leaving New York by Amtrak heading north -- over Randall's Island and the Bronx Kills, east past Murray Feiss with glimpses of the Brother Islands, Typhoid Mary's prison. Still mountains of rubble at 149th Street, Oakpoint Yards and the scam of Brite Star Homes, never cleaned. Hunts Point cross streets, Garrison and 156. Parkchester and Sizzler, from whence the DMV was relocated to Belmont. Soon Coop City and the bridge to City Island. High rise condos of New Rochelle and then you're gone...

From last Thursday's New York Times, a double South Bronx screw-up: "An article on Sunday about environmental and economic development projects in the South Bronx financed by Citgo Petroleum, the American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, gave an incorrect amount in some editions for discounted heating oil delivered to Americans last winter, and the amount it expects to deliver this winter. It delivered 100 million gallons, not 100,000, last winter, and plans to deliver 110 million gallons, not 110,000, this winter. Picture captions in one edition misidentified a man shown watering a rooftop garden in the South Bronx and standing with other members of a community group that received financing from Citgo Petroleum. He is Stephen Oliveira, not Henry Lajara." Off by a power of a thousand, and wrong caption in photo. What's next?

Well in the Sunday Times of October 28, the word Bronx was listed only 14 times, including "Bronx cheer." The substantive stories involved the autopsy of the 7 year old who died in P.S. 205 on Southern Boulevard, a piece on the Kingsbridge Armory, a review of the Bronx Museum on the Arts, and a breezy Halloween piece mentioning Pelham Bay and Riverdale. Typical...

The Hillary Clinton "where are the donors" story last week had at least two Bronx referents: a "one-table" Chinese restaurant (we call that a take-out, here, what the Brits call a talk-away), and "a man named Liang Zheng was listed as having contributed $1,000. The address given was a large apartment building on East 194th Street in the Bronx, but no one by that name could be located Census figures for 2000 show the median family income for the area was less than $21,000. About 45% of the population was living below the poverty line, more than double the city."

The Chronicle of Higher Education of October 19, reporting on possible merger of NYU and Polytechnic, mentions a professor "at NYU's Bronx campus when the university closed it and the engineering school in 1973." As we've previously dug into, still without satisfaction, NYU then sold the campus to the City at an inflated price for what is now Bronx Community College...

This week, Bronx and books. On Arthur Avenue, the long-delaying opening of the trattoria to replace the fake-Italian McDonald's that rented half of Teitel Brothers and caused a merchants' rift is now finally at hand. Workmen putting in final touches on Roberto Paciullo's Zero Otto Nove on October 13 said if not Monday, Tuesday it should open up. We'll have a review. Sooner or later. Further east on 187th Street, where the Korean liquor store closed down, a chicken wings place is moving in, claiming to have the best wings in the Hudson Valley. But this is The Bronx...

Downtown in Manhattan, on the Mexican tip, ex-president Vicente Fox was bloviating about his book "Revolution of Hope" and about Jesus at Barnes and Nobles in Union Square when he got asked a question about the murderous crackdown in Oaxaca. The questioners were hustled by security out of B&N, while Fox offered faint protest about freedom of expression. So now a bookstore chain is ejecting those who ask public policy questions...

Grant and rants: On October 4, the Bloomberg administration made much of a grant to, among others, Hendrickson Custom Cabinetry, a custom cabinetry and architectural millwork manufacturing firm located in the South Bronx. Bloomberg said-in-a-state that "We should spend our money helping those that have committed to job creation and promotion to train their entry level workers, instead of simply training New Yorkers with the hopes that jobs that match those skills will be available." Meanwhile, responding to sex discrimination case case against Bloomberg L.P., on which he has spoken with the company, Bloomberg at a South Bronx news conference said, “I am the majority owner, and I’m absolutely entitled to talk to the senior people and am entitled to know what’s going on." So if you know what's going on, you're responsible, right?

Click here for Inner City Press' October 5 encounter with ex-Governor Pataki at the UN.

For the NYC street food vendor award, there were four finalists -- four in Manhattan and only one in the "outer boroughs." To this location, Inner City Press ventured last week. On 30th Street and Broadway in Astoria, one block from the elevated train, you'll find the stand of Farez "Freddy" Zeideia, the King of Falafel. Meats are frying on the griddle, customers sit in white plastic chairs just inside the parking lot of a C-Town supermarket. The falafel sandwich, at three dollars, is crisp and saucy. Halfway through, Inner City Press interviewed Zeideia. The subject of the competitor brought a quick response. "The judges were all from Manhattan," Zeideia said. "So of course they picked a winner from Manhattan" -- in this case, dosa in the West Village. Zeideia, a 42-year old Palestinian, brings his cart every morning from Woodside, Queens. During the blackout, he and his generator kept serving shawarma and spiced chicken, without raising their prices. Nearby on Steinway Street in the hookah smoke-filled storefront of Cafe Beirut and others, the falafel is six dollars and not as juicy. Then again, they have backgammon boards and Arabic satellite TV. Le roi est mort, long live the King (of falafel).

This week, from dry to wet and wag-like. Who makes money off supposedly middle-income housing in the current NYC? Bear Stearns and Citigroup, both involved in predatory mortgage lending against this same population. From The Bond Buyer: the NYC "Housing Development Corp. last week began pricing $60.3 million of federally taxable and tax-exempt bonds to finance the construction of and permanent mortgages for four buildings in one development. HDC anticipates that the deal will close on Friday. Boricua Village will feature 452 apartments reserved for low- and middle-income families in the Melrose section of the South Bronx.... Bear, Stearns & Co. is underwriting the bonds and Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP is bond counsel. The two stand-alone bond series are backed by project revenue and are secured by a letter of credit from Citi."

A politically-incorrect wag on a recent stroll down Arthur Avenue remarked, "These days in Belmont you can't tell the different between the prostitutes and the college students. To whit, the crowds on 189th Street in front of Mug-Z's and Howl at the Moon, mini-skirts and cell phones ablaze, compared to the streetwalkers further east toward the Zoo -- what's the difference?" But their trajectories diverge, in the woods of the Botanical Gardens and elsewhere...

The Mayor's Management Report acknowledges that only in The Bronx did response time to fires get worse:

"Citywide response time to structural fires was 3 seconds faster in Fiscal 2007, continuing a downward trend that began in the second half of Fiscal 2006. Structural fire response time improved in four of the five boroughs and increased by 1 second in the Bronx."

And now a review of a diner that calls itself the best in the city, just over the Triborough Bridge in Astoria. It's too fancy for its own good: it's a diner with a bar, which doesn't allow customers to sit at a table and have only a coffee and a bagel -- while charging over three dollars for a bagel. On the other hand the bagel is good, and the view can't be beat. Cheaper and funnier are the bagels doled out at Fordham Plaza, like out of a skit on Mad TV....

Last week the centennial of Engine Company 82 and Ladder Company 31 was celebrated at a ceremony at the headquarters on Intervale Avenue. We note the prose stylings of John Ficayune in a preview of "When the Bronx Burned"--

"Luke and Jimbo, dragging their lengths of hose, were on their way to the building when they were joined by Mulligan, Juan, Lt. Bannon, Copper, and Bull. A hostile voice from a nearby group of young militant types shouted at them, 'Kiss my black ass, you white asses.'"

Something about that quote lacks verisimilitude. Still, should be interesting. As summer nears its end, we venture over the Triborough Bridge to Astoria, specifically to the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden on 24th Avenue. The sound of the elevated N train competes with oom-pa music, Czech pilsners flow, to a crowd increasingly of hipsters. There are tall trees and sausages, a dance floor, mediaeval tall swinging doors as if this were a walled city. What of the neighbors? And isn't there a beer garden like this in Throggs Neck?

This year's Ferragosto on Arthur Avenue had less freebies than usual. Calandra's Cheese, for example, which previously had a stand making and giving samples of mozzarella (even if they did glare at you if you came back too many times) this year had no stand outside, at least not at the 4:30 p.m. peak when "The Streets of the Bronx" launched laboriously into their rendition of "Good Love" and on Hughes and 186 Italian folk musicians played mandolin for an older crowd. There were the masked clowns and the roasting pig, sure, and the new restaurant on the block, Dolce Amaro, had a half dozen oversized motorcycles in front, including a three-wheeled named "Boss Hog." The police barricades were up on Hoffman and Belmont, 188 to 186. Mount Carmel Church had its stand and the library sold bags of book for two dollars, made to look like two hundred (200) on the sign in front. All in all a groovy time, as summer comes to a close...

In potentially less positive New York news, the New York State Banking Department has named as its new first deputy superintendent of banks hired Patricia Meadow, who has held positions at HSBC Holdings PLC and Citigroup -- both of which have settled governmental charges of predatory lending...

Could Michael Bloomberg -- "Mayor Mike" with the give-away, one-station-only radios given out during his campaign -- be to the right of George W. Bush? On predatory lending and credit discrimination, he appears to be, if last Friday is any guide. While Bush in Washington outlined some few reforms to help homeowners facing foreclosure, Bloomberg implied that lending discrimination cases are a perversion of justice, and that borrowers are to blame for being defrauded.

During his weekly radio address, Bloomberg said that "what happened here is a bunch of people who really didn't have the wherewithal to get mortgages got mortgages. If they didn't have access to those mortgages, the elected officials would scream you're discriminating against them. Some of them lied about their incomes," he added. "Now they said the salesman convinced them to do it. OK. But we live in a world where, when you put your signature down, you're supposed to know what you're signing, and we have to take responsibility."

The most offensive aspect, from our point of view, is bringing in the specter that "elected officials would scream you're discriminating against them." Who exactly is Bloomberg playing to with this screed? So, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and its enforcement are to blame for predatory lending?

This week we look north to Mount Vernon, just over the Westchester line. Mayor Ernest Davis, nothing if not a hipster, may also be more than that. Sources say that during his mayoralty, his income has soared -- there's a talk of Bentley luxury automobile, and of Davis wearing an ankle bracelet transponding to law enforcement. Mount Vernon, then, is above The Bronx, but just like it...

Also Bronx-like is the park in Red Hook were tacos and Salvadoran pupusas are sold. First the Parks Department said they'd put the concessions up for bid; now the Health Department says the vendors can't bring home-cooked food for sale anymore. But home-cooked is part of the point. And what about those selling tamales out of coolers, and corn on the cob with mayonnaise and grated parmesan cheese? Note to City: just leave these people alone...

Rather, the City should be looking into real hazards, such as in Belmont, the slap-dash leaving of a hole in the street at Third Avenue and 183rd Street by "SMC," which left metal plates so loose that a car, or bicycle, could easily fall into the hole in the pavement beneath...

On a Cablevision "public interest" show, Bronx BP Carrion said he aims to become a Met fan in 2009, for now he's just trying to "create a conversation with New York." But when asked about whether all Bronxites really benefit from these developments, many of which are unaffordable, Carrion was dismissive, saying that all projects have critics, "just like Westway." No, taking a public park, and displacing Bronx businesses for a subsidized mall, we are not fish but Bronxites....

This week, why doesn't the Bronx have venues like this? Traveling Saturday to the Africa Fest in Prospect Park, the 2 train for a full hour to Grand Army Plaza then the walk, one first came up Panamanian music on a hill behind the Brooklyn Public Library. A man stood rapping in front of a wall of speakers, a crowd undulated and clapped and food was for sale under at least a dozen awnings. A half-mile away, fronting Park Slope, a more formal stage with ads for Bud Light and the Village Voice, and on stage the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, celebrating the day of that country's landmark election. The mix, one undulator mused, was surprisingly heavy with reggae. The left-handed lead guitarist played fast and high-pitched West African riffs, and sang accompanied only by drums. The suggested contribution to enter was three dollars. Why doesn't the Bronx have venues like this?

UNITED NATIONS, August 11 -- As New York City's Bloomberg administration ratchets up pressure on the UN to fix the 866 violation found in the most recent inspection, Bloomberg's Fire Department has denied access to the report of inspection, even to accredited media who work in the UN headquarters.

Bloomberg's sister and commissioner for the UN, Marjorie B. Tiven, has written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that he is "putting at risk the lives of the people who work and visit the United Nations."

But when a formal request for the list of violations was made by Inner City Press under New York's Freedom of Information Law, it was denied in full, ostensibly because releasing the report could endanger the safety of persons.

This correspondent filed an appeal, emphasizing in part that as a person working inside the UN, knowing and reporting the specifics of the violations could help promote, and not endanger, safety. In this case, ignorance is not bliss -- it simply compounds the danger.