Go Green Walk

As New York City gets greener, more people are getting involved. 1199 SEIU Child Care Corp. and the Fordham Road Business Improvement District (BID) are pairing up for a day of awareness.

On May 17 at 10 a.m. about 500 children and their families will walk along Fordham Road and end in Poe Park, where there will be a fair with performances from the children, a dj in the bandstand, presentations on the kids’ science fair projects and popcorn, along with free blood screenings and other health services.

Of the children at 1199 SEIU, who range in age from 8 months to 4 years old, the 4 year olds have been leaning about keeping the environment and themselves healthy by doing experiments. For one of the experiments, the kids put Vaseline on index cards and left it on the windowsill, checking it with a magnifying glass. By the tenth day, the Vaseline was dark.

“They got to see how dirty the air is on Fordham Road,” said Bonnie Mallonga, chief operating officer of 1199 SEIU.

In another experiment, the children put a t-shirt, a piece of plastic and a banana each in some dirt to see how they would decompose. This environmental focus of the child care facility has always been a concern, and because NYC is slowly going green and the most recent science fair was a success, Mallonga decided to take the project to the streets.

The Go Green walk involves much preparation beforehand. The BID has handed out surveys to its 350 or so members, while 1199 SEIU has distributed them to the 250 families it serves. The surveys ask how concerned business owners are about environmentally-friendly practices, and what “Go Green” represents to them. In addition to these surveys, the results of which will be presented at Poe Park after the walk, the children are going to the businesses and conducting interviews with business owners. Two children from each class are preparing with practice interviews so they aren’t too shy around the new faces.

The surveys and interviews are aimed to “gauge awareness” of the businesses, said Dan Bernstein, director of the BID.

“If a child is there, it might be a little easier for them to want to participate,” he said.

There are questions as to how much the children understand about what they are learning. In order to gauge this, Mallonga and the teachers use charts and have one-on-one meetings with the kids to see how much they are absorbing. The real results occur at home, though, where the parents report that their kids talk about their projects, pushing their families to have recycling bins at home.

“They really don’t understand why people don’t recycle,” said Bernstein of the kids.

In March, the classes made recycling bins and painted them green. However, Toni-Ann Campbell, a teacher at 1199 SEIU, said they had to get rid of them because they were falling apart and getting smelly. The children “keep asking if we can continue,” she said, so 1199 SEIU is talking with the Department of Sanitation to get proper recycling bins so the kids can continue recycling.

There have been some harder lessons. One of the projects was to trace where the waste from the Child Care Corps go. The kids went outside and saw the private garbage company dumping the garbage and recycled materials together. Mallonga says they will be conducting a letter writing campaign to see if they can change this.

There is a precedent for seeing change come from their efforts. After learning about recycling, some of the children wrote letters to the cafeteria about their findings, and now the kitchen has stopped using Styrofoam and replaced it with paper. The next idea is to switch to using real spoons instead of plastic ones.

Although much work needs to be done before the children are ready for the Go Green Walk, they are doing what Mallonga calls transformative learning, where the kids are changing behavior based on the what they are learning.

“These are the children of the future,” Mallonga said. “They need to take care of the environment because they will be the ones profiting from it.”

Salsa at Mambo 101

When Omar Martinez started teaching salsa in the Bronx in 2003, he had 40 students and used the space in what used to be Jimmy's Bronx Café one night a week. Today, five years later, he has his own studio and around 125 students in nine classes a week.

Starting his own business without any prior experience wasn't easy, but with the help of friends and a little persistence, Martinez now owns Mambo 101, a basement studio off of Fordham Road. The entrance of the studio is unassuming: a silver-painted metal door with a red awning reading "Mambo 101" crunched between the signs and buildings around it. Inside, there are two mirrored rooms where salsa music is blasting as students learn Susy Q's and hook flicks.

After moving to the current 214 East 188th Street location almost five years ago, Martinez was struggling to run his own business while working a day job as a pre-print manager for a printing company. Carlos Vasquez, owner of La Salsa de Hoy in Brooklyn, where Martinez first started teaching lessons in 1997, gave him advice, telling him to worry first about getting students and then about other aspects. By handing out fliers and through word of mouth, "slowly but surely it started to grow," he said. After three months, he could afford wall-to-wall mirrors, and a few months later, he painted the studio.

"I don't make that much doing this," he said. "It's a sacrifice I make with my life. But it's paying my son's way through college."

"I have fun with this," he added. "There are days I'm sick and I'm manic because I want to come in."

Martinez runs his studio a little differently than others. While many schools teach on a per-class basis where anyone can drop in and learn a few steps, students pay for monthly lessons at Mambo 101 and follow a curriculum. A list of 80 "shines," or individual dance moves, hangs above the floor-length mirrors, and in each week, the instructors progress one or two moves down the list.

"It feels like you're learning from the core," Yvette Rivera, 51, a student in the beginner class, said.

Mambo 101 fosters building upon skills taught, and when an instructor starts a beginner class, they continue with the same students until too many of them drop out. To date, the longest class with the same group of people has been progressing for one year and two months. According to Martinez, this way the students get to know each other and become friends. Some meet to practice during the week and form friendships that last beyond the class.

There is a trend of long-lasting connections at Mambo 101 that extends beyond students. Angelique Hernandez, Fordham alumna, CBA '06, would wait in the studio as her mom took lessons about four years ago. Martinez saw her dancing and gave her things to do while she waited, showing her how to break down the moves to be able to teach them. Martinez decided to bring Hernandez to his lessons with Eddie Torres, innovator of the "Mambo on 2" step popular in New York and what Mambo 101 teaches.

"I think Omar had an idea of what he wanted with me before he told me," Hernandez said. In fact, that was true.

"I can tell somebody's potential just by looking at them," said Martinez. "I took Angelique to Eddie Torrez to test her. By the following week, she was fine." Now, Hernandez teaches her own class.

Martinez has a long-standing relationship with his office manager, Damiana Garcia, who describes herself as "Omar's right hand." The two met in 1999 in an AOL chat room. She started taking lessons at Jimmy's Bronx Café, followed the studio in a location change, and now works as an office manager and has started teaching her own class.

The classes themselves are two hours long, one night a week. If you work at it, Martinez said, within three months you understand the counts and mechanics of the dance, and within six months a student can be a "decent dancer." But it's not about "breeding professionals, but teaching regular people to dance." Martinez recalled a story from his earlier salsa days when he went to a club and saw a girl he wanted to ask to dance. He got up the courage to ask her and she turned him down.

"I took lessons, and when I went back, she saw me," he said. "She came up to me and asked me to dance, and I turned her down."

But it's not all about competition.

"It's such a fun dance to learn," said Martinez. "It's not just dancing, but a way of life."

Pizza Palates

Pizza is a food that permeates our lives as New Yorkers; it's everywhere you go. People eat pizza for dinner, lunch, and yes, sometimes for breakfast. We eat it hot from the oven or cold the next morning, at parties or on the subway. At any temperature, meal or location, you can find a slice waiting to be eaten.

But this versatile food isn't simply a lump of ingredients. It brings with it many different meanings - from a family business, to an art, to nourishment - and there are likewise a variety of opinions as to what makes it great.

In 1889, pizza was invented in Naples, Italy. Though it was originally a meal for peasants, Raffaele Esposito made the first pizza for visiting royalty. He used mozzarella, basil and tomatoes (which were actually brought over from the Americas) to represent the colors of the Italian flag. Historians know, though, that in ancient times, Israelites, Egyptians and others in the Middle East were making unleavened bread like pitas, and Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean were eating flatbread with olive oil and spices on top.

The first pizzeria in America was opened in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi on Spring Street in New York City. Today it is hailed as the best pizza in the nation according to magazines like Forbes Traveler. Forbes Traveler features 10 pizzerias in the United States; four of them are in New York City, two of those are on Arthur Avenue.

Ranking second in Forbes Traveler is Zero Otto Nove, located at 2357 Arthur Avenue. The name reflects the area code for Solerno, 089, the Italian town that owner Roberto Paciullo is from. Zero Otto Nove opened six months ago and already it has risen to the top.

Part of the reason for its success is the pizza maker, Riccardo Rinaldo, an Italian from Solerno who has been in America for about as long as Zero Otto Nove has been open. He is young and made pizza for over seven years in Italy before he was introduced to Roberto by the owner of Trattoria Da Sasa, a restaurant in Solerno.

Rinaldo said that the pizza in Solerno is much softer than it is in America, Rinaldo said. When he came to the Bronx, he made pizza that was crunchier than he was used to, though still softer than most New York pizza.

"The first word I learn is 'crispy,'" he said with an Italian accent.

To many people, the dough is the most important part. This is true for Stan Petti of Full Moon Pizza at 600 E. 187th Street. He said that each pizza restaurant has its own characteristics, setting it apart from the others.

"Everybody talks about our crust," Petti said.

Full Moon doesn't use a brick oven, which some think is essential for pizza perfection. Petti says that it is a different process, one that is not ideal for him. With a brick oven, heat is regulated with wood, which takes more attention, and the opening is small and inconvenient when you are frequently opening and closing the oven in a small space.

Rinaldo agrees that it is a different process but said that the pizza cooks faster in brick ovens. Gas ovens cook slowly and dry up the ingredients, he explained through hand gestures and the translation of Paciullo's wife, Chiara.

Mario's Restaurant at 2342 Arthur Avenue uses a combination of the two types of ovens: a brick oven that is gas-heated. This seems to work for them since Forbes Traveler lists Mario's as the tenth best pizza in America. Joseph Migliucci is the fourth-generation owner of the store, since his great-grandmother used to make pizza and other meals in 1919. His secret to great pizza is no one particular thing.

"It's about the formula," Migliucci said. "It's a combo of everything: good ingredients, whole milk mozzarella, basil, olive oil."

It's not about the pizza for everyone. For Sal and Pina Natale, owners of Pugsley's Pizza, it's about family, from their own to Fordham students. Sal wants Pugsley's to be a place students can develop talents, like singing in the Pugsley's Idol competition coming up this month. Everything in Pugsley's says family, from the photos of students hanging on the walls and ceilings, to the old photos of Sal's family sprawled out on the blue and white checkered table, to the home video of a little girl eating pasta playing on the TV.

Pugsley's hasn't forgotten about the pizza, though. Although Sal won't reveal his secrets, he says that he and Pina make food home-style, like you would eat in your own kitchen.

"We're not chefs, we're artists," he said.

Whether it is about the pizza or the people you're eating with, there is no doubt that this flat, round bread has become something more than physical nourishment. If you want to add something to your own experience, take a walk to Arthur Avenue and get your own dough, sauce and cheese, call a few friends and make your own meaning.

Paperbacks Plus, Lone Bookstore in the Bx

When Barnes and Noble decided to open up shop in the Bronx ten years ago, there were two independent general bookstores in the borough. Now, there’s only one.

Life in general is getting more and more difficult for books – and those who sell them – with the ease of browsing and buying books online growing more and more popular. If you can read the first few pages of a novel on Amazon.com, or get inexpensive texts on Half.com, what’s the point of walking into a store? Ok, of course there’s a point. I am one of those people who will walk into a bookstore, collect as many books as I can, and find a corner to sit down in. I have no shame when it comes to this. But do I ever buy one of those books I pulled off the shelf? Well, sometimes. That happens even less often now that I discovered that interlibrary loans make practically any book available in the same amount of time it takes for shipping and handling to get it to me. And it’s free.

I’m basically killing the industry right here.

Offering lower prices and the perks of internet sales is the dilemma for independent bookstores. For these smaller stores who cater to a regular crowd, going online means less personal interaction, and a large portion of these stores’ business comes from strong community relationships.

For that one independent bookstore left in the Bronx, Paperbacks Plus at 3718 Riverdale Avenue, these relationships are what the store thrives on. Joe Pilla, store manager, describes the shop as a storefront that “can fit in one corner of the biggest Barnes and Noble” (where I would be sitting with my stack). However, Pilla is concerned that the store has not started selling books online. He thinks it would be a smart step to move online for the sake of keeping up with the changes of the times, but the store is very community oriented and the majority of its patrons are long-time regulars who couldn’t imagine the neighborhood without it. In thinking ahead, though, Pilla would like to draw more teens and young people to the store who will grow up and bring their kids in.

This problem is common for non-specialty, independent bookstores in general, but the Bronx has another obstacle in attracting more bookstores, and that is its rough and tumble reputation. There is no doubt that improvements have been made since the time Paperbacks Plus opened in the 1970s, but progress is slow, especially when it comes to people’s mentalities and corporate retailers need to view the Bronx as desirable in order to dig their roots here.

Former assemblyman Stephen Kauffman who advocated for Barnes and Noble to move north ten years ago, said that the presence of bookstores shows that people have the economic stability to buy books. That’s true, but perhaps other developments need to occur before Bronx communities will see bookstores sprouting up, though that doesn’t mean community members and local politicians shouldn’t keep trying.

Book Review

Bronx Noir, a collection of stories edited by S.J. Rozan

Akashic Books, 2007

“I could have found it in my sleep, I could have made my way by touch, or even sense, through the turnstiles, to the trains, to the seat, my seat, the one at the middle, the one that let me out closest to the Fordham Road exit,” begins Robert J. Hughes’s short story, “A Visit to St. Nick’s.” This piece is one of 19 in the anthology Bronx Noir, a collection of narratives published last year. Each story takes place in a different neighborhood or location of the Bronx, including areas worn by the passing of Fordham students. There’s a story of mafia activity on Arthur Avenue with an unexpected ending, a piece about a hunter tracking his prey in the Bronx Zoo and a one-night stand tale in Riverdale.

The book is part of the Akashic Noir Series, which includes Wall Street Noir, Dublin Noir and Delhi Noir, all edited by different people. You can find the Bronx version, at Paperbacks Plus, which is about a half hour bus ride away depending on traffic. Just take the Bx9 to 231st and Broadway and transfer to the Bx7 and get off at W 236th.

Bronx Museum of the Arts

(To see photo captions, scroll over "notes" at bottom right corner of slideshow)

Standing inside the Bronx Museum of the Arts Sunday, guest-curator Carey Lovelace was asked to describe the overall feel of the exhibit titled Making It Together: Women's Collaborative Art and Community. She had just kicked off the opening of the exhibit, part of the museum's spring exhibitions, with a chat to museum-goers and an interview with a brightly lit News 12 camera. Without pausing for a second, she answered the question with a single word: "Pink!"

It was true; the walls that held the artwork were painted a soft, creamy shade of pink, and a chair or two scattered around the room were upholstered or painted the same color. The hue helped to set a mood that Lovelace described in more detail as "very lively, humorous - satire to make a point." Looking around the room, the photographs, writings, film and other media all contributed to the sense of theatrics Lovelace was talking about.

"It's not just ho hum, we're here on the wall," she said. "This branch of activism, humorism, is what people like the Guerilla Girls were going for." She points to a picture of a woman wearing fishnet stockings, leaning against a stool and wearing a guerilla mask. The engaging and bold nature of the exhibit is appropriate, given it took its inspiration from the1970s feminist movement.

The theme of theatrics making a political point pervades the whole exhibit, though not always as playfully as the Guerilla Girls have interpreted it. The first thing viewers see when they walk through the museum's doors is a mural covering an entire wall. The colors are not as soft as the pale pink; instead blood red, black, neon green and white make up the color scheme. The mural depicts the faces and names of various women, from a young girl standing with her hands on her hips, to Elvira, whose name is grouped with the words "single mother," "cleaning lady" and "Mexican immigrant." Phrases like "Abuse of Power," and "We pay with our Bodies" are graffitied across the mural.

In addition to the still art, there was a panel during the opening day that discussed how feminist thought and gender-based critique has shaped artists' collaboration over the past 30 years. There will also be a Day of Collaborative Performance on May 17 from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. with The Brainstormers, in collaboration with the Guerilla Girls, Christal Brown and Ridykeulous, among others. The cost of cocktails at the event will reflect the disparity between men and women's wages.

"Making It Together" is one of two featured exhibits currently at the BMA, and a thread that ties them together is community. One explores the community of a collaborative feminist movement and the other of people in New York City who represent and inspire social activism. The latter is expressed in photographs taken by Jamel Shabazz in the 1970s and 1980s.

Shabazz's photos are of all kinds of people: a Vietnam veteran with his fist raised high in the air, kids posing on a motorcycle, the homeless amidst wealth, a break-dancer in the middle of a head spin, a member of the Blood gang on a park bench. Shabazz says he always had his camera with him, loaded with film.

"I understood history was being made every day," he said, adding that every photo was "spontaneous."

The exhibit was curated by a group of teenagers from local high schools as a part of the Teen Council Internship Program. Out of 30 applicants for the internship, only about eight new members are chosen each year. They arranged the artwork, included items from Shabazz's life, a documentary made by last year's students, and made a zine, MuseZine to accompany the art.

"One main reason we're so excited is that we got to curate the exhibit," said Teen Council Assistant Manuel Gonzalez, 19. The BMA has hosted teen art curated by teens before, "but here we got to curate renowned, professional artists," he added.

The images are meant not only to document street culture, but to inspire young people through portrayals of their peers and neighborhoods. The introduction printed on a buttery yellow museum wall describes the images as "the unseen, the unnoticed, the mundane beauty and the simple detritus that we walk past on our way to school every day." The photos aren't particularly dramatic or sensational but depict scenes you would see as you were walking around on any given day.

Although both exhibits discuss important social issues that impact our society, each of them does so with a sense of levity, "Making It Together" with its humorism and sensationalism, and "Jamel Shabazz," with the liveliness of his photography and the energy of the teen curators. The Bronx Museum of the Arts, which is located at 1040 Grand Concourse, will run these exhibits until Aug 4. For more information, visit BronxMuseum.org.

Grand Avenue Undergoes Drastic Changes

Be sure to scroll over "Notes" at the bottom right corner of the slideshow for captions.

Dr. Donald Clarke’s home on Grand Avenue in the Bronx is a spacious three-story, seven-bedroom home enveloped by a wrap-around porch and sheltered from the sun’s glare by a large leafy tree out front. A short way down the street is a brick building in the midst of construction, flanked by uneven planks of wood in a graffitied make-shift fence. The structure is without windows or a roof and gives off a toothy grin. Finally, a few houses down on this block of transitions is a multi-family home with a series of bay-windows protruding from the front. There are cars parked in the driveways out front and little kids play outfront.

In recent years the Victorian homes in the Bronx have been slowly torn down and multi-family units are being built in their place. Clarke, who receives one or two offers a week to sell, knows first hand how much developers are salivating for the opportunity to transform these old homes into block units.

A chemistry professor at Fordham University, Clarke has lived in his Grand Ave. home since 1962 when he, his wife and seven kids moved from Queens because their attached house was getting to be a tight fit. Forty years ago, he said the whole block was filled with Victorian homes. Although the development frenzy started before 2000, he said a particularly drastic change occurred last year because many of his neighbors recently retired and developers jumped right in. The change has brought a new feel to the neighborhood, sometimes positive and other times negative.

“There were no children on the block,” Clarke said. “Now there’s much more life on the street.” Now, children play outside their homes and other bike by after school. It’s harder for Clarke to get to know his neighbors in the multi-family homes because of the age gap, but he admits the change is good.

More children in the area might liven up the block, but it has other effects as well. While building more homes in a city with a housing crunch helps alieve that stress, it also means overcrowding, pointed out Greg Lobo-Jost, deputy director of the University Neighborhood Housing Program.

“In some ways it’s great to have more places to live,” he said. “But the downside is over crowding of schools.”

Another quality of life issue Lobo-Jost worries about is more aesthetic. People are attracted to the idea of buying the three-family buildings and then renting out two of the units to make money on rent. However, Lobo-Jost said some buyers rent out all three units and live elsewhere, leaving the tasks of maintenance lingering.

“It’s like a mini apartment building without a super[intendent]. Who’s taking care of the property and upkeep?” said Lobo-Jost. “There’s already a lot of graffiti on some of the garages.”

The change from older architecture, single-family homes to utilitarian, three-family buildings is not unique to the Bronx, or to New York City, and there are many such trends occurring across the United States. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is an advocacy group that provides information on preserving historical homes, offers information about teardowns. The term “teardown” refers to buying a home on a lot, demolishing it and building a usually larger building in its place. In some cases the teardowns result in much larger single-family homes next to more modest, smaller ones, but in the Bronx the result is larger buildings that house multi-family structures.

It might be possible to turn these older homes into landmarks and people can collect information about a particular house and write up a nomination for the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. While the house is on the calendar waiting to be considered, all construction on the house must cease and the process can take years. However, this would stall the inevitable unless the house was actually named a landmark. In the Bronx, though, community members don’t seem to be taking up this option as a means to preserve the homes on Grand Avenue. Whatever the reason, development is continuing to occur rapidly.

One reason for this growth is the improving image of the Bronx over recent years. It is difficult to shake the borough’s history of the ‘70s, but developers have been working on projects outside residential ones, like stores and office buildings. There is even a discernible change in billboards on Fordham Road, the Bronx’s main outside shopping district, where there are more current ads going up.

Amidst borough-wide development, Victorian homes are becoming extinct in the Bronx because of their high cost. For people like Clarke who have long paid off the mortgage, the price of maintenance and repairs are not restrictive and he can afford to stay. Many others, though, are forced to either sell their homes or rent out rooms, which can result in unsafe living conditions if too many people are living in the same space. Clarke recognizes this dilemma but is in a good position to stay, and frustrate more eager developers. If the amount of development occurring on Grand Avenue is any indication, the trend will continue and the area, for better or for worse, will continue to change.

Security Workers Call For Better Representation

Thursday Feb. 8, 2008
Security officer Daniels is now on duty with radio, logbook, keys and clipboard. Conditions are normal at this time.
After changing into his uniform and attending roll-call, James Daniels, 30, security guard at Fordham University, writes this entry in the logbook at the beginning of his shifts. The book is light blue and the pages inside are filled with handwritten entries of things that have happened during the shift, which is from 10:15 p.m. until 6:15 a.m. The logbook contains notes of students giving the guard a hard time or events where the guard on duty had to call the supervisor. It also records things like breaks and sometimes says, “No meals relief. Work through,” for days in a row.

The logbook is a diary of sorts, recording the goings-on in the dorms around campus. They describe in basic detail the duties of a security guard but they do little justice to the relationship some of the guards, like Daniels, have with the students and the part he plays in their lives. Daniels often plays the role of friend, chatting with students about where they have been lately, joking about how late they come back or trying to remember the Yankee’s starting pitcher in 2004. Although the residents of the dorms think they can sneak past him because he’s friendly, they eventually learn they can’t – often after getting caught.

When a girl tried to sneak in her friends without signing them in, Daniels knew what was happening before it even occurred. The girl came in and went upstairs, but he saw on the security monitor a group of her friends standing just outside the door, waiting. So he went to the main entrance and when the girl came down on the other side of the walkway, where the doors lead to O’Keefe Commons, and started beckoning her friends, Daniels was right there, waving to her.

Seven years of working at Fordham, most of them in O’Hare Hall, have seasoned Daniels to the job. Every night from Sunday to Thursday, he takes a 20 minute bus to work, sometimes bringing a “lunch” of spaghetti or steak with rice and peas to save money. His shift is 8 hours long and he makes $11.10 an hour, up from $9.75 when he started, which amounts to just under a 20 cent raise each a year. The attempted sneak-in may be common in the dorms, but it’s not one of the harder things the guards have to deal with; however, despite the stories he collects on the job and the low pay, Daniels says he likes his work.

The people he deals with at Fordham are admittedly less grating on the mind than those at his last job as supervisor at Bellevue Homeless Shelter. There, Daniels dealt with people turning purple from overdosing and dead bodies with needles still stuck in them.

“I had to get away from that environment,” he said.

Now, he describes his lifestyle as “almost good” and says there are things he would like to do for himself but can’t, like go to a movie or a restaurant once in a while. Instead, he said he lives check to check. He doesn’t have a 401k or pension, something he and the other guards are working on getting right now.

“I need that security blanket,” he said. “We protect campus, but nobody protects us.”

A few years ago, he tried babysitting and other off-the-books jobs to make a little extra money, but he only lasted a month, he said, too tired from his night shift at Fordham. He used to work over-time, but too often checks went missing or he wouldn’t get compensated for the hours he put in. He said that doesn’t happen too often, but enough to think, “Is my check going to be right this week?”

Daniels says he has more problems with his employer than with the students, but he doesn’t let it affect his job. Once, another girl who Daniels is friendly with tried to come in with two guys she had met at the bar, all of them very drunk. She pleaded with Daniels to let them in and when he wouldn’t, she cursed him and they went upstairs anyway, forcing him to call the supervisor. He knew where the girl lived and knew her name, so when the supervisor arrived, he found one guy under the girl’s bed and another hiding in the shower. She may have been upset then, but Daniels was worried about her safety with two drunk strangers in her room. The next day, she apologized to him for her behavior, but he knew it was just the alcohol talking the night before.

“We’re like the new parents now,” he said. “We have to tell them things their parents should’ve told them.”

Daniels is not just there to protect students from themselves, though. Once, a man followed a group of students from the bars to their dorm and when they got there, they pulled Daniels aside to tell him they didn’t know who the guy was. He told them to go upstairs and he would take care of it. When the man tried to follow the girls inside, Daniels stopped him and called the supervisor who took over the situation and later discovered there was a warrant out for the man’s arrest. This doesn’t happen too often, though, and most of the time Daniels’s night is occupied by chatting with students or preventing them from sneaking in or sweet talking their guests into the dorm. Despite being their friend, he can’t be persuaded.

“I have a job to do,” he said.

Guardian Angels On Patrol

Recent Guardian Angel graffiti reading founder Curtis Sliwa's name. Only 10% of the time do they make citizen arrests.


Snitches get stitches and end up in ditches. That is unfortunately the mantra of many in the city, but for the Guardian Angels, the opposite is true. For an unarmed volunteer group that aims to provide public safety and goes where it’s called, the Angels rely on people speaking up, which is what brought them to the Belmont area of the Bronx recently.

About six months ago, Curtis Sliwa, one of the group’s founders, received emails from Fordham University students after there were a number of incidents near Fordham’s campus. Since then, members of the organization have “stepped up patrols in Belmont area.” On any given night, particularly weekend nights near Arthur Avenue, the Guardian Angels might be seen in groups of three or four patrolling the streets, wearing their signature red berets, red satin jackets, black camouflage pants and black combat boots. Their aim is to act as a crime deterrent and one of the main ways they do that is with their image.

“The fact of the matter is when people see us the will cease and desist,” said one of the founding members Arnaldo Salinas. “You’d have to be Helen Keller not to see us.”

Although the group may be known for making citizen arrests and following them through the court system, Salinas said they don’t often have to go that far, though they will intervene in a fight if they come upon one. If that happens, the first thing members are instructed to do is call 911. Then, the Guardian Angels would physically place themselves in the middle of the fight and separate people. If someone tried to leave, “we have every right in the world to detain,” Salinas said, up to handcuffing.

Although the Angels are all inclusive and accept people of all genders, races and backgrounds, there is an interview screening process to make sure the new recruit doesn’t want to join for personal vengeance reasons. Basic training is three months long and involves a variety of classes, learning to work as a team and field work.

Zeek Gavares, 38, joined the Guardian Angels last month after witnessing the group break up a fight near his home.

“They caught my attention,” he said. “I liked the way they acted.”

Although Gavares used to be a carpenter, he quit in order to become more involved in the Angels, saying he now has “more time on my hands to lend.” On a recent afternoon, Gavares was campaigning with Salinas and other recruits, but he wasn’t sure what exactly they were campaigning about. When asked about Salinas, he seemed to only know him by his nickname, Thirteen.

The nickname refers to the original 13 members of the organization when they came together in 1979 in a McDonalds on Fordham Road. Around that time, then-mayor Ed Koch decreased the number of transit police, and because Sliwa, Salinas and their fellow employees took the 4 train to work, they decided to pick up the slack. They started patrolling the subways, riding in adjacent cars. Eventually, in order to communicate more efficiently, they began to don red berets they would wave when they popped their heads out of the doors at stops to see one another.

The group functions pretty independently and they have no preconceptions that they are on par with the police department, but are trained citizens. However, Salinas did say that prominent politicians as well as residents have been known to call the Angels to ask for additional help in their neighborhoods and that many Guardian Angels go on to the police department or military. He also mentioned that in New York City, the group sometimes works with local precincts. These claims could not be verified.

One officer reached through the police press office who would not give his name, said he was indifferent to the group.

“We don’t deal with them. They do their own thing. What do they really do? I don’t know,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know of any officers who were once involved in the Angels. Another officer reached through the same line directed the call to John Kelly, who did not respond to multiple emails for comment.

Whether or not the Angels work with the police or politicians, there is not doubt that their two hundred or so members in New York City are active, patrolling drug areas and going where they are called.

“We’re not vigilantes,” Salinas said, “because we’re not judge jury and executioners.”

Welcome!

Welcome to Beyond the Bronx Beat! As a person who is obsessed with words and writing, I was excited when I got the opportunity to write a weekly column in the Fordham Ram, Fordham University's student-run weekly newspaper. However, as the industry rapidly undergoes fundamental changes, I decided to keep up and take the Bronx Beat off the page and into the realm of multi-media too.

As it is now, small non-for-profit papers as well as larger publications are tampering with multi-media work - and there is no standard yet established by either. Pictures can say things words cannot, and words can go into a depth that a picture is unable to portray. The use of both together enhances the telling of a story like text, no matter how long and extensive, cannot. This blog will include my weekly column, in addition to a slideshow (which may sometimes become an audio slideshow) and sidebars. Please leave comments about the stories and how they are presented, and stay tuned!

Up Before Dawn

The job of selling food from a pushcart in New York City is not an easy one, but that doesn't stop Lorena Dareuch from loving it.



The job of street vending can involve a decade-long wait for a license, turf wars, a nearly nocturnal work week and hours on your feet. It seems a difficult career path to choose, but Lorena Dareuch doesn’t seem to mind.

A resident of Astoria, Queens, Lorena is a small-framed woman of medium height who talks and laughs often. Her uniform is a red apron and her big and brown eyes twinkle, making her look younger than her 50 years. As a vendor selling baked goods and coffee to commuters just outside the University gate on Fordham Road, Lorena gets up at 2:30 a.m. each morning to prepare for the day’s work.

She and her husband Hector, who also sells food in a pushcart on Fordham Road, visit four different bakeries each morning to stock up for the day. They go to one bakery for bagels, another for donuts, one for rolls and a different one for danishes. They pick up milk for the coffee and then head up to the Bronx with their pushcart hooked to the back of the car. Because there are two carts – hers and her husband’s – Hector drops her off at 3:30 a.m. and then takes the 20 minute drive back to Queens for his cart. Although they work across the street from one another, Lorena doesn’t see her husband until 11:30 a.m. when she closes up shop and goes to help him until 2p.m.

Their positions are strategic, and they seem to be working since Hector and Lorena have been there for over 10 years. Positioned next to a Metro North station and a main bus stop and across from Fordham University and the offices at Fordham Plaza, they get a lot of foot traffic.

To even have such a business in New York City, Lorena and Hector needed to get personal vending licenses issued in order to be eligible to apply for a Department of Health permit, of which there are only about 3,000 city-wide. The wait for this permit can be very long – Lorena waited six years for hers and her husband waited 10. Once you have these two things, maybe a decade later, you’re good to go. But of course you also need to have a cart (which costs thousands of dollars) and a garage where it is legal to park it (which rent for a couple hundred dollars).

However, the long wait seems to be paying off for the Dareuchs, who have been doing this for over 10 years now, each making about $300-$400 a day. Although her biggest complaint about the job is having to get up so early, she says the best part is the customers. She loves “to work with the people and talk with the people – to know many different people from everywhere.” Her enjoyment is evident and is also the reason most of her customers are regulars. She knows what they want and is already preparing it by the time they get close enough to order. On a recent morning, a smiling round man walked up to the window in the cart.

“You know my order?” he asked, but she was already on it. He usually patronizes her husband’s cart, but today he said he came to visit her. She has formed relationships with many of the customers and some of them give her gifts for the holidays. One woman, Norma, has been coming to Lorena for 13 years now, as long as she has been vending. When they met, Lorena was pregnant and had just started vending.

She had been working during much of her pregnancy despite the unfriendly working conditions – early hours, a small space with nowhere to sit, and no bathroom. Six months in, however, she had to go to the emergency room and stayed in the hospital for the next two weeks with painful fibroids.

“I almost lost the baby,” she said.

Since then, Norma has brought birthday gifts for Lorena’s son, Brendan. For the years of good customers, Lorena has only had a few bad ones. Once, a woman started verbally abusing her and threatened to throw hot tea in Lorena’s face. Most times, though, people are just plain rude, acting impatient and asking for refills as if she runs a diner.

“Some customers say they aren’t coming back and I say, ‘Oh, please,’” she said, putting her hands together under her chin as if to pray, pleading, “Do it.”
Despite this unfortunate reality in her business, there have been few bad customers over the years.

“I can count them on my hand,” she said.

Over the years, though, she had worse things to worry about than rude customers. Recently, the owner of a falafel cart decided to situate himself right next to Hector and started harassing him, bringing a group of men whom Lorena calls his “bodyguards” to the corner and verbally abusing her and her husband. Although they called the police, nothing has been done and the falafel cart has been there for a few months. Lorena complains about how dirty the falafel cart owner keeps his business and about the customers he takes away from Hector. Luckily, this is the first time something like this has happened, which is why Lorena is so cheery about the job. Despite the various hardships, she is sending her son to a Catholic high school next year.

“We worked hard to give him the best,” she said.