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.
2014: MRL on Beacon Reader

City's climate plan says it includes "over $15 million in natural infrastructure resiliency projects funded by the Department of Interior in Jamaica Bay, the Bronx River, and elsewhere [and]
Hunts Point Lifelines—food distribution center investments in coastal protection, waterfront access, and energy resiliency." We'll see...

This, we had to announce: distribution of backpacks with “a secure place for displaced citizens to hold their belongings, and feature a spacious main compartment for a large amount of items, a hide-away poncho designed to keep both the bag and its wearer dry, a ballistic nylon outer shell strong enough to combat the elements, a synch-top closure for extra waterproofing and anti-theft measures” in these Bronx locations:

Much needed: the second annual Bronx Gentrification Conference, set for January 17...

Last week Rep. Engel said, "Barnes & Noble is the last brick and mortar bookstore in The Bronx." Is that true?

So on Monday, Oct 20, BP Diaz will be at Casita Maria’s 80th Anniversary gala at the Plaza Hotel - 768 5th Avenue, Manhattan. Who knew? Elouise. Meanwhile, since Casita Maria is taking it to Manhattan, we like this, on the Lower East Side: Councilwoman Rosie Mendez at a street co-naming ceremony in honor of former Councilwoman Miriam Friedlander, southeast corner of East 6th Street and 2nd Avenue. Right one.

This, we want to hear more about: “State Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson and New York City Councilman Andy King and others hold a press conference to advocate for open, early and automatic delivery of evidence through the repeal of criminal procedure law 240, Bronx Civil Court, 851 Grand Concourse, Bronx.”

We note this, Brownfields application for “Webster Avenue Residences, site ID #C203075. This site is located in the Borough of Bronx, within the County of Bronx, and is located at 1960-1982 Webster Ave. and 4269 Park Ave.”

Constance Malcolm – the mother of Ramarley – said last week: “We are encouraged that the Department of Justice has opened a full investigation into the killing of our son Ramarley. We believe clear and sufficient evidence of civil rights violations exists for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to bring charges against the NYPD officers responsible. Police officers cannot bust into a house without a warrant and shoot an unarmed civilian in front of their grandmother and 6-year-old brother, as NYPD officers did to Ramarley, without legal repercussions."

On June 11, Inner City Press went to a Valley National Bank in Manhattan to seek its CRA Assessment Area / Statement. At the VNB branch at 350 Park Avenue, Branch Service Manager Daniel Solomon when asked about the CAR Assessment Area at first tried to give Inner City Press a CD-ROM of the bank's 2013 Annual Report. Then after much back and forth he emerged with a binder that did not include the assessment area, directing the public elsewhere -- with the wrong address -- for that.

This is indicative of Valley National Bank's approach and attitude to CRA. There should be public hearings and on the current record, Valley National Bank's application should be denied.

Bobby Sanabria
- Diana Gitesha Hernández
- H+ | The Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory
- Not4Prophet
As the City Lore Gallery. 56 E 1st St

On Syria, UN Censors Try to Cut Off Questions, Ask Who the Questioner Works For

This week for whatever reason we went back and watched the old Bill Moyers report on the South Bronx, “The Fire Next Door.” It had a lot of human detail, but missed the issue of redlining. Too bad...

Oh, Operation Clean Halls: Jay Victorino was outside of his mother's apartment when NYPD nearly arrested him for trespassing, if his mother hadn't rescued him...

This week, we go arty - and angry. Downtown at the The New Museum there's a collection of art works produced in New York in the year 1993. Most are from Manhattan - the only mention of The Bronx is Pepon Osorio’s “The Scene of the Crime” -- alife-size diorama of an apartment complete with a woman’s body under a bloody cloth. Spanish radio plays ads for detergent and the chairs are draped in Puerto Rican flags. Talk about a cliche...

The Hunger Action Network NYS says “the South Bronx Congressional District represented by Congressmember Serrano continued to have the highest rate of food insecurity in the Country.” That can't be good..

Just what The Bronx needs: more clowns. “Twelve clowns on a two week international tour of the U.S. and Malaysia will stop at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore to entertain children with juggling, acrobatics and magic to cheer them up and brighten their hospital stay.” Nice...

The two toughest neighborhoods in New York City to be a kid are both in the South Bronx. “Hunts Point was ranked the toughest place for the city’s kids, with a 49 % child poverty rate and just 28% of elementary and middle school students meeting state reading standards in 2011. Mott Haven was ranked second toughest, with 99 cases of reported child abuse or neglect per 1,000 kids in 2010.”

Here's a show we support, and so to which we devote this week's update: “SEIS DEL SURDispatches from home by six Boricua photographers – at the Bronx Documentary Center” - go check it out.

From the serious to the culinary loss: Saturday saw a vigil for the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Ramarley Graham by police officer Richard Haste...

On Arthur Avenue, Umberto's Clam House is no more. No explanation given; spin from Mike's Deli. In Manhattan, Umberto's remains open. Why not in The Bronx?

Now it's been decided: slated for closure in June are • Holy Spirit School, 1940 University Ave., The Bronx;

After the MTA's hype about Select Bus service, for example along Fordham Road in The Bronx, recently Inner City Press was told when a bus without the signature blinking blue lights rushed by the regular bus stop and to the select, that "a lawsuit means we can't use the lights anymore."

So riders can't see which bus is which, and don't have time to get the paper ticket required on the Select. Good job, MTA...

Bronxites -- and Inner City Press -- are asking Timothy Cardinal Dolan to keep the doors open at St. Jerome School, at 222 Alexander Avenue in Mott Haven. The threat is to close it in 2013; one theory is to sell off the land. Give them a chance!

Is it clean? "The Site is an irregularly-shaped parcel approximately 0.36 acre in size and is bounded on the west by Prospect Avenue and on the east by Reverend James A. Polite Boulevard. Historically, the site was utilized for automotive repair/oil change and was a former gasoline filling station. These uses resulted in contamination to soil, groundwater and soil vapor. The primary contaminants of concern were petroleum-related volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The Site is currently undergoing redevelopment activities associated with the construction of a new rental apartment building." But is it really clean?

$150 million for a 150 foot high bridge to City Island? Too high. We're against it.

Let's compare to the low number of banks: in The Bronx, McDonald’s has 44 stores, Dunkin Donuts leads with 68. Subway, up two, is now at 55...

"FreshDirect is scaling back its footprint in the South Bronx, where it plans to relocate in several years, and where it is being sued by a community group that opposes its development plan. The Long Island City-based grocer filed court papers on Thursday indicating that it would give up about three acres of land by the Harlem River that would have served as a parking facility for its fleet of delivery trucks. 'We are now going to incorporate our trucking operations into the parcel of land that will house our main facility," the company said in a statement. "This will have the benefit of addressing a number of concerns expressed by residents arising from the proximity of our trucks.'"

A 38-year-old construction worker from the Philippines, Michael Tristan Mananghaya was killed when a 40-foot-long industrial cooling unit fell from a crane and crushed him to death in The Bronx last week. Mananghaya was guiding the crane operator who was hoisting the air-conditioning unit at a construction site at the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, when a chain that linked the massive air-conditioning unit to the crane allegedly snapped, dropping several feet, clipped the edge of a trailer and flipped onto its side on the sidewalk, pinning Mananghaya. Mananghaya’s employer C&L Towing in New Jersey, as well as Agrekko -- the air conditioning company -- are not commenting so far...

Bagel nosh: OSHA fined Bronx-based Zaro's $118,000 for whizzing machine parts weren’t covered, and a lack of locks to prevent machines from starting while workers were cleaning them, and exit doors locked or blocked -- sounds like Happy Land, but the union's being quiet...

Hurricane Sandy's impact: the New York Department of Finance Services went weeks without issuing a Weekly Bulletin of merger applications. So the Apple - Emigrant comment period must still be open, right? Especially since the Department only now acknowleged receipt of Inner City Press' Freedom of Information Law request for a copy of the application, and STILL hasn't provided it...

So when MetroNorth has "third rail" trouble, who pays the price? If you bought a vaunted "City-Pass," you got no refund in any meaningful way. From Fordham Road, they told you, you could ride north to Wakefield and then south again. But the next train north was an hour off, and no new trains were scheduled or stopped.

And still, the red "Connecticut" MetroNorth trains stops at Fordham Road, but refuse to pick up fare paying riders. Does this fall along racial lines a la disparate impact? It does. Watch this site.

On Fordham Road, "Candy's" is closed: a glimpse into its open door found a garbage strewn hall. What gives?

Ruling: New York City violated State environmental law when it built a Bronx school complex on contaminated land without making public a detailed long-term monitoring plan before construction, the state’s Court of Appeals has ruled, against the City’s Education Department and School Construction Authority. If the city wants to build a school on a polluted site, state law requires it to present in-depth remediation and monitoring plans to the public during the initial environmental review process....

Bronx redlined: BankUnited in Florida has applied to open four branches in New York: three in the most affluent parts of Manhattan, and one in suburban Suffolk County. Not only is this redlining, it also jumps the gun: due to a non-compete clause and settlement, the branches couldn't even be opened until February of 2013. Inner City Press has commented - receipt confirmed - asking for the applications to be suspended or withdrawn pending among other things a review Florida NCRC members have requested. We'll have more on this.

So Metro-North is pitching its "Penn Station Access environmental assessment," including four proposed stations in Morris Park, Co-op City, Hunts Point and Parkchester to provide connections to Penn Station, Westchester & Connecticut...

Apple Bank is seeking to acquire nearly all the branches of Emigrant Savings Bank in New York. When ICP comments were submitted to the New York State Financial Services Department as well as the FDIC, only the FDIC has so far responded.

The comment noted that in the NYC Metropolitan Statistical Area, Apple in 2011 made 13 conventional home purchase loans to whites, and NONE to either African Americans or Latinos.

Apple collects deposits in, for example, the South Bronx -- but look at its lending record. It should not on this record be allowed to acquire Emigrant's deposits and similarly redline with them.

For refinance loans in the NYC MSA in 2011, Apple made 27 loans to whites, only one to an African American applicant (while denying another), and NONE to Latinos.

Apple's "Chairman, President and CEO" Alan Shamoon, despite his bank's lack of visibility and weak community lending record, submitted a short response under his own signature, calling the mortgage lending analysis "disparagement" and "devoid of substance," to be "dismissed." Takes one to know one. Watch this site.

So, "the mean age of pending felonies in the Bronx was 408 days, compared to only 237 days for Manhattan." Is that fair? Will the court's un-merger fix it?

· Intro 799 concerning the unlawful searches that those subjected to stop-and-frisk often experience;

· Intro 800 concerning profiling by the NYPD, expanding protections against profiling based on age, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, immigration status, housing status, language and disability, in addition to race, religion or ethnicity; and

· Intro 801 that requires NYPD officers to identify themselves and explain their actions.

So Occupy Wall Street did celebrate its first birthday or anniversary in lower Manhattan, and Inner City Press was there -- click here.

It was good to see Occupty back in the streets on September 15, see Inner City Press story here, and video here.

The killing of Reynaldo Cuevas just outside the Franklin Avenue bodega where he worked deserves a full investigation...

Quoth El Raven: Edgar Allan Poe, who lived unhappily in Kingsbridge and what is now Fordham University, will be the topic September 8, 7:30pm–9:30pm at the Bronx Documentary Center near Inner City Press' old stomping grounds, 614 Courtlandt Avenue (ICP was 680). There'll be music by drummer Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché. Nunca mas, nunca mas!

Seems The Bronx has the least free wi-fi in NYC, despite needing it the most, with only Hunts Point Riverside Park, the north playground of Joyce Kilmer Park, and Devoe Park on West Fordham Road and University Avenue. What about Crotona Park?

The absurdity of using government subsidy, especially at this time, for a Trump golf course in the Bronx hasn't yet been enough to stop it. Yet.

Meanwhile the New York State Department of Financial Services quickly filed and settled charges against Standard Chartered Bank for laundering money for Iran to evade sanctions against that country, the same NYSDFS has been remiss in its more local duties.

A major New York bank franchise, Emigrant Bank, is up for sale to Apple Bank for Savings, but the NYSDFS appears asleep at the switch. The NYSDFS is rubbing stamping mergers and branch closings, and not responding to comments from the public.

Now there is a call on the City's DOT to begin the formal public input process regarding the scheduled construction of the new City Island Bridge, slated for next year, through ULURP as soon as possible. The bridge construction is required to undergo a ULURP review through the Department of City Planning, as stated in the DOT’s own document released in March 2007. See, http://on.nyc.gov/PztDzh

Be there: South Bronx residents will receive information about their legal rights during police encounters and document police misconduct and to pass the Community Safety Act, which would ban discriminatory profiling by the NYPD; protect New Yorkers against unlawful searches; require officers to identify and explain themselves to the public; and establish an NYPD Inspector General Office.

Monday, August 6th, 6 PM at Hostos Community College, Savoy Multipurpose Room, 120 Walton Avenue, 2nd Floor

And right by there is a billboard: you are allowed to film the police. And what about Tony Baloney?

Check it out: the NYC Districting Commission will hold a public hearing in The Bronx on August 23, 2012. These hearings are open to the public. The purpose of these hearings is for the NYC Districting Commission to hear testimony from the public concerning the initial phases of its work in drafting a new districting plan for the New York City Council. BRONX: Thursday, August 23rd, 5PM-9PM, Hostos Community College, Savoy D Building, 120 E.149th Street, Bronx, NY 10451

So if Metro North's machines are broken and the lines absurdly long and you get on the train from Grand Central to Fordham (or the other way around), they over-charge you to the tune of TWELVE DOLLARS for the ride...

On July 18, there was this: "Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, Health Commissioner Tom Farley, and Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar announce new anti-obesity initiatives, C-Town, 668 Crescent Ave., Bronx." Much needed there, with the Polaroids of shoplifters..

"The Bronx’s inability to catch up with the rest of the city’s phenomenal economic growth has been disconcerting. In the early 1970s, the Bronx and Brooklyn had similar average household incomes. Since then, though, the gap has grown significantly. The average Brooklyn resident is now around 23 percent richer than the average Bronxite; people in Queens are roughly 32 percent richer. (Manhattan residents are 265 percent wealthier; Staten Island residents, by the way, are 55 percent richer.)"

The thing is, usually what the New York Times suggests is increased gentrification.... And so: crocodile tears.

Talk about sleazy: Queens-based Triangle Equities has defaulted on its deal to build two buildings with retail space, office space, a supermarket and a school on city-owned lots in the Hub shopping district. Triangle was supposed to close on the parcels in May but didn't. Now Triangle is demanding public subsidies and wants the administration to slash the price of the property from $6.2 million to $2.2 million, allegedly because a charter school slated for one of the buildings backed out. Yeah, right.

The Bronx District Attorney's Office last week tried to shift the focus from Bronx ticket fixing beyond, saying it has had discussions with four DAs and two US attorneys about "questionable conduct" uncovered during a two-year investigation, though nothing matched the level of the abuse alleged in the Bronx. "During the course of our investigation, we became aware of questionable conduct by officers from seven other police agencies," spokesman Steven Reed said-in-a-statement. The probe so far has resulted in 22 indictments—including five of civilians—for more than 1,600 crimes. The Bronx District Attorney's Office says it has a list of 500 officers across the city accused of ticket fixing, and many are likely to face departmental charges. And it started in The Bronx!

Metro North, especially its Connecticut line, is still discriminating against The Bronx. On June 23, even with a City Ticket, Bronxites were not allowed on the red Connecticut train on its route into Grand Central from Fordham Road. Two tier system.

We note and support the fight of the tenants at 1511-1521 Sheridan Avenue against their slumlord, Normandy Real Estate Partners...

South Bronx residents filed suit last week to stop Fresh Direct's relocation from Long Island City to the Harlem River Yards. The suit asks for a full environmental review of the project, which critics say would add thousands of diesel truck and car trips to an already over-polluted community. "It's not about do we want jobs or don't we want jobs. It's about if you're going to do something like this in the South Bronx, if you're going to bring in a pollution, potentially pollution-intensive project. You got to study it," said NYLPI.

That MetroNorth conductors reacted to being exposed reading the newspaper while driving the train by covering up their windows is typical. This is the rail line that stops to let suburbanites OFF at Fordham Road, but does not allow those there, disproportionately riders of color, to get on the train, even with tickets. For shame....

In the Bronx, the National Labor Relations Board has now set June 28th as the election date for 172 Cablevision technicians. Back in January, 282 Brooklyn technicians became the first Cablevision technicians to join a union...

"Tenants from Patterson Houses and Mott Haven Houses began organizing last year, and met with Assistant Commissioner Lopez in December to ask for help, but no repair work has been done and the Commissioner has failed to respond to any correspondence. In February, NYCHA received $10 million from the City Council for repairs to be made in 2013, but tenants say they can’t afford to wait. Recent news that NYCHA commissioned a $10 million report that it refuses to make public have raised new concerns about the agency’s priorities and transparency."

Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch was asked by the NYC Responsible Banking act:

The growing movement to local Community Reinvestment ordinances is a response to the Federal regulators' lack of commitment to enforcing the CRA of 1977. Also, that law is enforced if at all only in connection with bank mergers, of which there have been many fewer since the subprime financial meltdown. So activists have had to look elsewhere.

Whether municipal authorities will ever have enough independence from corporate interests to bar a major bank from business with the city remains to be seen.

Cleveland, for example, has been seeking its own agreements with banks for some years. But one of its two major banks was acquired and moved its headquarters away. As with CRA challenges, there will be a need for activists in different cities to work together.

In an echo of the critique of the Harlem River Rail Yards sweet heart 99 year lease by Inner City Press and others, now two months after the City approved $82 million in subsidies for the company to move to the South Bronx, the Cuomo administration has been asked to halt the deal. The city, state and the Bronx have already committed about $120 million to FD but the Empire State Development Corp. has yet to approve an additional $9 million. It expects to vote on the grant this summer. When Harlem River Yard Ventures leased the site from the state DOT in 1991, the company vowed to develop a new rail system that would reduce local truck traffic. But it has signed subleases with heavy truck users such as FedEx, the New York Post and now FreshDirect. It collects about $500,000 per month from its subleases but pays just $43,000 per month in rent to the state. The city Industrial Development Agency relied on an outdated environment impact statement when it judged the FreshDirect plan. The 1993 statement was put together before rezonings that generated new housing and made the neighborhood less suitable for industry.

So what's wrong with the NYS Department of Financial Services? Why did they have a (much) shorted comment period that the FDIC on New York Community Bank's proposal to acquire over $2 billion from Lehman Brothers' predatory Aurora Bank? And why, when the FDIC replied formally to ICP on May 2, has the NYSDFS still had nothing to say?

On behalf of Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch and its members and affiliates (collectively, "ICP"), this is a comment opposing and requesting public hearings on the application by New York Community Bank to acquire substantially all of the assets, and $2.3 billion of deposits of Aurora Bank FSB.

Aurora is a subprime, some say predatory, lending unit of the scandal wracked Lehman Brothers. For the record:

"Aurora had become one of the largest players in that market, originating $25-billion worth of loans in 2006. It was also the biggest supplier of loans to Lehman for securitization. Lehman had acquired a stake in Aurora in 1998 and had taken control in 2003. By May, 2006, some people inside Lehman were becoming worried about Aurora's lending practices."

NYCB is a bank which has sought to fly under the radar -- for example, a recent search of the FFIEC HMDA data back for "New York Community Bank" reveals only one HMDA reporter, 0000016022-3, reporting geography specific data in only three MSAs.

In the Phoenix MSA in 2010, the most recent year for which data is publicly available, NYCB made 292 conventional home purchase loans to whites and NO such loans to African Americans. Based on its disparate marketing, NYCB received only four such applications from African Americans, and denied three of them. To Latinos, NYCB more only 14 such loans, compared to the 292 to whites.

In the Fort Lauderdale MSA in 2010, NYCB made 38 conventional home purchase loans to whites, and NO such loans to African Americans.

In the West Palm Beach MSA in 2010, NYCB made 83 refinance loans to whites and only ONE such loan to an African American applicant, and only seven to Latinos.

The NYSDFS should require answers, extend the comment period and hold public hearings.

Where the van fell into the Bronx Zoo on Sunday was the same place five people died in 2006. And it was NYC's deadliest vehicle crash since March 2011, when 14 died after a "Chinatown bus" coming back from Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino split in two on Interstate 95 in the Bronx. So what is it about the Bronx, including the Happy Land?

This is too much: Police are investigating the death of a 16-year-old boy who was found with trauma to the face at Melrose Houses in the Bronx. Officers responded to a report of an assault last Monday night and found Moises Lora with facial wounds. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Sources say there was an argument between Lora and group of people that escalated into a fight. They say the group surrounded Lora and hit him on the head, causing him to collapse.

Hit him on the head with what? Where ARE we? Well, could be Koreatown, too: a man 27 years of age died last week after being found bleeding from the mouth beside a second-floor entrance inside District 36 on West 36th Street near Fifth Avenue around 3 a.m. The victim's teeth had been knocked out, causing the bleeding. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died over an hour later...

In a South Bronx gentrification we predict the New York Times will soon mimic, a restaurant called Ceetay will begin serving "Asian fusion" on Alexander Avenue in Port Morris. Over on Bruckner Blfd, the Clock Café and Martini Bar opened a montn ago and now serves up cheese plates and tapas, alongside cucumber-mint martinis and grapefruit margaritas. Yep, gentrification...

Belatedly there is coverage of the police killing of Ramarley Graham in February in the Bronx, followed by protests at the 47th precinct. We'll have more on this.

April 2, 2012: In the first study of the just-released 2011 mortgage lending data, Inner City Press and Bronx-based Fair Finance Watch have found that Citigroup continued with high cost loans and disparities by race and ethnicity in denials and higher-cost lending.

2011 is the eighth year in which the data distinguishes which loans are higher cost, over a federally-defined rate spread of 1.5 percent over Treasury bill yields.

Citigroup confined African Americans to higher-cost loans above this rate spread 3.38 times more frequently than whites in 2011; Citi confined Latinos to higher-cost loans above the rate spread 2.42 times more frequently than whites in 2011, worse that its 1.72 disparity in 2009, the data show. For JPMorgan Chase, the disparity for African Americans in 2011 was 2.21....

This we like to see: Bronx Foreclosure Auction Blockade, Fountain in Joyce Kilmer Park, Monday, March 26, 12:30pm - Occupy Homes and Organizing for Occupation sing in a moratorium on foreclosures. Bronx Supreme Civil Court at 2pm...

UNITED NATIONS, March 17 -- When Occupy Wall Street rallied Saturday night in Zuccotti Park, police began to assemble on Broadway and Liberty Street. In the part, a small green tent went up, no more than a tarp hung on a line between two trees.

There was chants about an "American Spring," and against banks: "hit the road, banks, and don't ya come back no more." Then the police moved in.

First they surged in from Broadway, pushing the crowd back. Some were arrested and pulled up to Broadway where a paddy wagon was filled.

To the south of the park, a march arrived with a band playing Irish music on bagpipes, on this St. Patrick's Day. The police shut that down too. An MTA bus showed up, "Not in Service," to be filled with other arrestees. From inside an arrested tweeted there were 16 others; it was Bus Number 6694.

While the crowd was focused on that, police and security from Brookfield Properties, the owner of the prviate public public, rushed in with metal barricades to close off the park again. Meanwhile more NYPD vehicles showed up.

As Inner City Press sought information about the woman with the seizure, a three wheel police scooter drove up fast and did not stop. It was Vehicle Number 3530, in from the 78th Precinct.

Soon a wall of police was pushing the crowd south on Broadway to Thames Street. The police pushed, and some people fell down. But the police kept pushing foward.

Who ordered this crackdown, several in the crowd asked. There was some ugly back and forth. Buzz went through the crowd of more arrests, further north, and a march set off. American Spring? One hopes the focus remains on the banks, which continue to get over. We'll see.

Meanwhile in The Bronx, Bloomberg appeared with Roberto of Roberto's, at his pizzeria on Arthur Avenue: for shame.

Subsidized gentrification? At Via Verde on Brook and 156 Street, apartment are going for $146,000 and sales are being handled in-house, "income restrictions vary from $54,000 to $145,000." This is in the South Bronx...

This went in to court, ostensibly on behalf of "all 1.4 million residents of the Bronx" --

Judge Roann L. Mann
United States District Court
Eastern District of New York
22 Cadman Plaza East
Brooklyn, NY 1 1201

This letter is to alert you to our concerns, and the concerns of all 1.4 million residents of the Bronx, regarding any proposed Congressional redistricting proposal that would dilute the Bronx’s representation in the United States Congress.

As per the 2010 Census, the Bronx has seen significant growth in its population, especially among our Black and Latino populations. Given that, it would be appropriate-if not expected- that the Bronx would see its representation in the United States Congress expanded, rather than diminished.

However, various discussions on new Congressional lines have focused on carving up the Bronx into multiple smaller pieces, in order to benefit the political leadership of any other county.

Over the past few years, the elected leadership of the Bronx has been united as never before, and we remain united on the issue of redistricting. lt is unacceptable that the population of the Bronx would be potentially split among two new districts in an effort to make up for population losses among Voting Rights Act affected communities in other counties.

With that in rnind, our current Voting Rights Act district, represented by Rep. Jose Serrano, must be respected and remain wholly within the Bronx. In addition, both Rep. Serrano and Rep. Eliot Engel are lifelong Bronxites who have represented parts of our borough for their entire careers. If the Bronx were to lose their collective seniority in Washington-and the clout that comes with would do our borough tremendous harm.

In the Bronx, signs of the times: just as the Wodka vodka sign in Hunts Points -- "escort quality, hooker pricing" -- is coming this, there's this one going up: "Storage Post recently erected a massive LED digital billboard at their facility in the Bronx. The sign measures eleven and-a-half feet high by seventeen and-a-half long. It is capable of 144 quadrillion colors and has a brightness of 8,400 nits. That’s a lot of color and light! (A nit is a measure of light -- or luminance -- emitted per unit area. Computer desktop monitors have a luminance of 200 to 300. This sign is over 20 times brighter than a typical monitor.) The display animation can easily be changed to show a variety of messages, monthly specials, and animations." What kind of pricing?

Just another Friday in the Bronx: baby stabbed with a pen, man shot, both to Lincoln Hospital -- while Yemen's dictator Ali Saleh, ostensibly let into the US only for medical care, chilled at the Ritz Carlton down on Central Park South.

So the lawyers for Jateik Reed, beaten by police, have told the Bronx DA's office he won't sign an agreement requiring him to give sworn statements about the charges against him (reportedly the DA is refusing to conduct an investigation into police brutality allegations unless Reed signs this agreement.) Here's why Reed's attorney, Gideon Oliver, is advising Reed not to cooperate:

The DA explained to the court that they wanted our client to sign an excessive force investigation agreement which, among other things, would require Reed to give a sworn and recorded statement on the crimes with which he is charged and the allegations of excessive force. It would also require him to testify in front of a grand jury and waive physician-patient privilege.

But given the fact that the DA is prosecuting Jateik—and, more importantly, the symbiotic relationship between the DA and police department—we do not believe the DA is capable of conducting a fair and honest investigation. And it would be irresponsible for me to advise a client to provide several sets of sworn and recorded statements while he has criminal charges pending.

Seems obvious, right? But not apparently in The Bronx. The Bronx DA's office says, 'We believe that at the end of the day, they will be comfortable with our ability to fairly handle this matter." We'll see -- watch this site.

This is much belated fight back - 13 years after Amadou was shot down in Soundview, protesters take, how ever temporarily, 149th and Third Avenue. Video here

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.