John Howard Defeated!

Australian prime minister John Howard conceded defeat to Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd today. Howard, a big supporter of Bush-style foreign policy, looks like he’s going to cry in the picture the Times included in their story.

Among Rudd’s first acts as PM: Try to ratify the Kyoto agreement and withdraw all 500 Australian troops Howard sent to Iraq.

Could it be that a majority of people around the world are rejecting this war-all-the-time mentality?

Better yet, don’t good things happen in threes?

Blair was one…

Howard was two…

Bryant Park Back in Business

By Joe Filippazzo, Danny Teigman, Tyler Mitter and Vinita Singla

Bryant Park was a maze of boxes and bubble wrap in preparation for The Shops’ debut.

Band saws and hammers serenaded an ice rink full of smiling families as vendors built the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park today. The sixth annual showcase of boutiques, which begins this Saturday, will be open until Dec. 30.

This year vendors will be housed in small green shops huddled around the Pond – the city’s only free ice-skating rink and seasonal rendezvous. And with four days to go, crews scrambled to construct and stock a mini outdoor mall.

Across the sidewalk from her booth, Advah Shani’s two assistants crouched on the gravel, dipping long pieces of torn newspaper into two buckets filled halfway with a water-flour-glue mixture: papier-mâché. They wrapped the gooey strips around chicken wire shaped like tree branches. When the booth opens Saturday, painted metal butterflies and heart-shaped hanging sculptures will spin from the branches in the wind.

Another vendor, Martha Almeida and her daughter, Maria, also busily prepared their 6 feet by 12 feet boutique to stock handmade purses, T-shirts and other holiday trinkets.

“Basically hand craftsmanship is really wished for in a market like this,” Almeida said, “the customer can find unique pieces.”

Martha and Maria Almeida set up their shop, Bluet, the day before opening.

Although the Broadway stagehand strike concerned her, Almeida remained confident that tourists – approximately 50 percent of her business – would still come to shop.

“You also have a lot of customers who work in offices around the area,” she said.

Maria, 25, wearing plaid pants and blue T-shirt spotted with white paint, said the Bryant Park event is a great opportunity for struggling local artists to gain notoriety. The Almeidas, like most of the park’s temporary shopkeepers, hope to make $50,000 in the next six weeks.

The event, which began in 2002 with 70 vendors presenting their wares in plain green and white tents, has evolved into a more welcoming and entertaining holiday experience in New York, said Frank DiPrisco, the event’s executive director. “The shops are meant to be a collection of local artisans with products in every price range, from all parts of the world,” DiPrisco said.

One local artisan, Cake Borrira, who has been selling ornaments she bought online for the last six years, acknowledges the difficulties of setting up shop in a park “This is a product people buy,” Borrira said, “but we have to worry about the weather. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it snows.” On a slow business day, Borrira sells 200 pieces from $14 to $24 each, she said. On good days, it’s more than 4000.

Fluffy teddy bear ornaments, adorned with hats and candy-caned patterned scarves, hang from a white, plastic chain wrapped around a red and white stripped pole. But Borrira, her 65-year-old father and hundreds of others still have a lot of work to do before Saturday.

“It’s kind of an adventure,” said Mariusz Zak, a construction worker for the shops.

When asked how he would feel on opening day Zak’s response was measured but excited. “I’m kind of a backstage guy,” he said. “I feel comfortable when everything works.”

Youth Explosion Puts the Fun Back in Faith

Dressed in the latest urban fashions by Roca Wear and Baby Phat, hundreds of teens stand with their eyes closed, arms stretched outward, listening, praying, and asking to be saved. They are a part of Youth Explosion, a rapidly growing youth ministry at Christ Tabernacle Christian church in Queens that helps kids stay off the streets and out of gangs.

Photo: AnnMarie Costella

The Youth Explosion service has many of the components of a traditional service but with some added flair. A DJ spins Christian rap and reggaton music while lights and smoke fill the air. Two jumbo television screens play music videos like “Hittin’ Curves” by the Christian rap duo, Grits.

Photo: AnnMarie Costella

“It is like having a spiritual compass, so that they don’t have to be pressured into making choices that can have harsh consequences,” said Rev. Michael Durso, the church’s senior pastor. “Having godly morals, a godly standard to judge things by, respect and honor for parents and authority makes a winning situation for everyone. It is that kind of training that turns a young person into a mature, conscientious, and responsible adult.”

Louis Cappuccio, 17, travels from the Bronx every week to come to Christ Tabernacle. “I spend my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights with Jesus,” he said. “People they go ‘What? Friday. You should be out chillin’ and I just say: ‘Nah, I’m worshipping.’ God is awesome.”

Hey There Little Birdie, Safety First

Those wacky Staten Islanders. When they aren’t running from the ninja burglar or dodging City Councilman James Oddo’s f-bombs, they are making sure pigeons practice safe sex.

In order to combat the ever-growing pigeon population in the St. George ferry terminal Oddo is proposing that contraceptives be added to the tops of bird feeders.

OvoControl-P, a type of birth control that makes pigeon eggs unhatchable would be mixed in with the bird seed.

Photo: Google Images

The pigeons, who are also lovingly referred to as sky rats, have been a headache at the terminal for a long time.

Ferry workers are plagued with the unpleasant task of removing the germs and waste that the unsanitary birds leave behind.

Animal rights activists support Oddo’s plan as a more humane alternative to other options such as traps and poison.

hurts so good

Courtney Gross’s comprehensive article in the Gotham Gazette, “Paying the Price for Living in New York,” finds a lot of the points of tension that make me a New Yorker who hates to move, but really wishes it were easier to live here.

I commute from the Bronx, the borough Gross says actually has a lower weekly wage than the national average. That makes parents up here, already commuting to work, driving forever to find free parking at night and leaving their kids in low-cost child care, even more tired, as they may have to work more than one job. More than half of Bronx residents work in the service industry, where most low-paying jobs are found.

That’s why the Bronx needs development, but at a reasonable rate and with businesses that want to pay decent wages. Otherwise, you have a few million burnt-out city dwellers up here who can easily fall into road rage or domestic violence and lack energy to participate in community activities like neighborhood watches or park clean-ups.

Gross is right in her assessment of how an increase in cost for basics like groceries, subway fare, water and electricity will either push some Bronxites who can afford to leave, out to the ‘burbs, or push them under, into the ugly realm of poverty living  that New Yorkers shouldn’t want up here any more than they did in Times Square.

An unofficial second language

I saw first hand how much frustration exists on both sides of the language debate while working on my previous protest story. Many non-Hispanic people I spoke with said, “Just learn English.” And many Spanish-speaking people said, “It takes time.”

Spanish-speaking people are immigrating to America in such large numbers that many claim Spanish is quickly becoming an unofficial “second” language in the states. The argument is complicated by the fact that America doesn’t have an official language, although some groups are working to change that.

No matter what you believe about language disputes, there is no denying that September has been a month of linguistic change.

Just in time for back to school, classes with native English speakers and native Spanish speakers are now meeting all together, with the goal of helping both become bilingual.

On September 9, seven out of eight Democratic candidates appeared on Spanish channel Univision for the first ever presidential debate broadcast entirely in Spanish.

And a few days later it was reported that the first ever Spanish-language Social Bookmarking Aggregator Script, (which in human terms is just digg en espanol), popped up on the internet.

Maybe the coming shift is already here?

Vigil for Felix Najera

A community vigil was held October 12 for Felix Najera, the homeless Mexican immigrant set on fire in East Harlem:

City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Vivitero announced that Najera had died a few days earlier from his injuries:

A memorial for Najera outside the church on East 103rd Street where he lived on the sidewalk, and was set aflame:

By the next afternoon, neighbors had left beer and a plate of food:

It’s not easy being green…and good looking

I had the good fortune to sit next to Majora Carter at a lunch once, and experience for myself the young woman’s “drive and tenacity” as an “urban revitalization strategist,” while she told me about projects to take back green space in the Bronx and look for ways to make it more family friendly with trees and parks. After graduating from college, Carter came back to the Bronx, bought a home near where she grew up and founded Sustainable South Bronx.

At the time when we spoke, SSBx was taking on the diesel trucks that idled all day as they loaded/unloaded goods at warehouses near a public school. Since then, they have added all kinds of green projects to their list, such as green-collar job training, making garbage export less noxious to Bronx residens living near a transfer station, planning a greenway on the Bronx waterfront and removal of the Sheriday expressway.

As a Bronx resident, I follow Carter’s progress with interest, and was happy to hear of her award as a MacArthur Fellow. I’m not surprised, since so many green projects for the Bronx involve her organization.

One new project is Green Roofs, which literally grow grass in soil on building tops as an alternative way to keep buildings cool, keep electric usage down and collect rain water that otherwise runs off into overwhelmed sewers. Here’s a picture from the SSBx site(yes , another image on the page shows Carter in heels talking to a green roofer. Who says nature police have to dress badly?):

(You can also watch an entire roof installation if you’re that curious.)

Now another looker is joining the green campaign in the Bronx. Owen Wilson, by way of a contribution to Ed Norton and the oil giant BP’s project The Solar Neighbours Program, has helped fund a green building in the Bronx.

Jacob’s House, named after a local community activist Astin Jacobo, is an eight-story building on Webster Avenue featuring a 3,900 square foot green roof. It also has solar panels (Wilson bought some for his own home to make the contribution), that will run its elevators.

The building owner, Enterprise Community Partners, in cooperation with the low-income housing advocacy group Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, promises 7 units for homeless seeking housing, six classrooms for early childhood programs and community space.

Jacob’s place isn’t the first green housing in the Bronx. Houses on Sunflower Way in the Melrose section of the Bronx, opened in October 2002. It was the city’s first green project in the High Performance Building Program, an HPD initiative to get buildings to be “at least 30 percent more energy efficient” than building codes demand. Although the homes didn’t have green roofs, the did feature programmable thermostats, 100 percent recycled-content carpeting, high performance windows and fluorescent lighting.

Perhaps we just didn’t hear about that project since the ribbon wasn’t cut by a foxy celebrity.

Religious Tolerance in Queens

Even as a native New Yorker, it’s strange to explore areas like Elmhurst and Corona, where two neighborhoods combined encompass over forty different immigrant groups and over fifteen different religious sects. All within 2.4 square miles. Then again, stepping back and comparing New York City to the rest of the world, it’s never been a surprise Brooklyn has the highest Jewish population next to Israel and Queens as a whole contains more ethnicities than any other county in America. So from that frame of mind it also makes sense that a local housing complex like Lefrak City has a mosque next door to a Christian congregation two blocks away from a synagogue.

Elmhurst alone encompasses Protestants, Baptists, Lutherans, Evangelists, Roman Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews. The Elmhurst Baptist Church, on the corner of Whitney Avenue and Judge Street, labels itself “a caring, progressive multi-ethnic congregation,” and hosts English, Korean, Burmese, and Indonesian church services. But, since the majority of second-generation Indonesians in the community don’t speak Indonesian, those services are translated into English as well.

So, in the span of my recent exploration—even as the son of a Catholic turned Atheist from Rego Park and a Catholic turned Unitarian from Flushing—it was unbelievable to see the breadth of racial and religious tolerance in Queens. Here’s proof that disparate groups can coexist in tight spaces:

 

 

But, segregated pockets still exist nonetheless. Directly across the street from the Elmhurst Baptist Church, is the Christian Testimony Church, where one friendly Christian told me at the entrance, “You’re not allowed to come to this church. It is only for Chinese.” All could say in reply was, “Don’t worry, I practice Taoism.”

D Gigs

In other news— today the weather in Queens was a cool, clear 55 degrees with low humidity.

A New York Minute

New York City waits for no one. The stars on the ceiling of Grand Central Station, the lights of Broadway and the top of the Empire State Building shining through the fog are the beacons for those who come to make it. You shove, you push, you cram, you hold your nose, you sanitize, you eat food on a curb, you drink soda with a straw and you contend with the out-of-towners who are too slow for a true, fast moving, quick talking New Yorker. And when you do all of that, without realizing you are doing any of that, is when you have truly arrived. How Urban is that?

“I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”

Woody Allen