Last year’s first ever Holiday Market was a hit with over 1,000 attendees over the course of the two day event. Now, this it will be MUCH bigger!
The Bronx Museum is seeking vendors for our 2nd Annual Holiday Market Weekend! In collaboration with FromTheBronx.com, The South Bronx Farmer’s Market, THE POINT, and The Bronx Beer Hall, the Bronx Museum will welcome over 30 local artists, artisans, farmers, bakers, brewers, and more on Saturday, December 10 and Sunday, December 11 from 11:00am to 6:00pm and YOU could be one of them. For information on becoming a vendor contact Lauren Click at lclick[at]bronxmuseum.org . Please note that we’re looking strictly for businesses that are individually and locally owned and operated. Fees for vendors will be 15% of gross sales so make sure to contact Lauren if you want to participate!
We’re excited to introduce a new feature at Welcome2TheBronx and it’s one that many have been asking for—a calendar for Bronx events!
Not only will this calendar help you find out what’s happening in our awesome borough but it will also help organizers who have sought a central location of Bronx events so that they can avoid overlapping with other awesome events as best as possible.
With our Bronx Calendar, you have the ability to view the event’s location on a map and even import the event into your calendar via Android phones and iPhones.
The calendar will be updated on a daily basis so make sure to check in as much as you want so you’re up to date on what’s happening in the good ol’ Bronx.
Make sure to bookmark The Bronx Calendar or you can access it in the following ways:
From your desktop computer, you can access the Bronx Calendar from the menu selection on the main page or within a post.While reading a post on a desktop, you’ll see the next 5 events on the right hand side column.Via mobile devices, just tap on the menu and click Bronx Calendar
Have an event you’d like us to post? Send details to events[at]welcome2thebronx.com and we’ll be happy to post it!
Community leaders and activists for decades have pleaded with the MTA to increase service at Melrose’s Metro North Station at 162nd and Park Avenue which not only would benefit those who work in the Bronx’s downtown and civic center but also the legions of Bronx residents who reverse commute up to Westchester and Connecticut.
Melrose, the first stop in The Bronx on Metro North along with Tremont, only saw trains stop every two hours but now that is to change to hourly beginning this coming Sunday, October 2nd and will continue through October 2017 as a trial and if successful, permanent changes will be made.
The MTA is also dramatically increasing the hours of operation of Metro North by up to 2 1/2 hours with southbound service and 4 hours for northbound service.
In an effort to build ridership and provide Bronx residents with more convenient travel options, the railroad will implement a demonstration project to increase service at the Melrose and Tremont stations from the current two-hour frequency to hourly frequency. This demonstration project will make service at Melrose and Tremont stations consistent with other Bronx stations.
In addition to the increased frequency, the service day will be extended, with earlier inbound service on weekdays and significantly later outbound service on weekdays and weekends.
Weekday southbound service will expand from: 7:20 a.m. – 10:41 p.m., to: 5:51 a.m. – 12:55 a.m.
Weekday northbound service will expand from: 5:38 a.m. – 9:25 p.m., to: 5:38 a.m. -1:16 a.m.
Weekend southbound service will expand from: 6:44 a.m. – 10:44 p.m., to: 6:44 a.m. – 12:44 a.m.
Weekend northbound service will expand from: 6:25 a.m. – 9:25 p.m., to: 6:25 a.m. – 1:16 a.m.
This demonstration project will continue through October 2017. If ridership and operational impact deem the project a success, the railroad will undertake the necessary steps to make the service permanent.
Elsewhere on the Harlem Line, to improve on-time performance, running time adjustments of between 1-2 minutes will be made to 11 morning rush hour trains and to 10 evening rush hour trains.
The 9:25 p.m. shuttle from Southeast to Wassaic will depart two minutes later to reflect the performance of the connecting train, for a total New York City-Wassaic timetable increase of four minutes.
New Haven Line
To further address congestion in Stamford during evening rush hour travel, the 7:04 p.m. local train from Stamford to Grand Central Terminal will depart 3 minutes later. This change will better streamline New Haven Line operations during the evening rush, improving on-time performance.
Two minutes of travel time will be added to five morning rush hour trains, reflecting actual station dwell times and improving on-time performance. One additional train will have intermediate stop times adjusted, but no overall running time increase.
Bridge timber replacement and catenary work at Devon will be complete. As a result, the temporary Devon Transfer station will be decommissioned, and customers will once again be able to transfer to/from Waterbury Branch trains at Bridgeport.
Hudson Line Service Change on Saturday, October 8 and Sunday, October 9
On the weekend of October 8 and 9, Metro-North will be completing the final phase of its project replacing switches in the vicinity of Yankee Stadium. The work at this critical location on the railroad requires two of the three main line tracks to be taken out of service. As a result, Hudson Line service will be reduced from half-hourly to hourly at most times during that weekend. A limited number of additional trains will be operated during the busiest travel times on both days the project is taking place. In addition, some trains that operate between Grand Central Terminal and Poughkeepsie will operate in two sections – Grand Central/Croton-Harmon and Croton-Harmon/Poughkeepsie – and will require customers to transfer at Croton-Harmon.
For information about Metro-North train schedules, visit our schedules page at http://web.mta.info/mnr/html/planning/schedules/schedules.htm or download the free Metro-North Train Time App for train times. The app is available via the Apple Store for iOS devices or Google Play Store for Android along with MTA eTix™ – Metro-North Railroad’s mobile ticketing app which allows customers to buy Metro-North tickets on their mobile device — anytime, anywhere
The Bronx Museum of The Arts at 1040 Grand Concourse offers FREE admission to the public.
Once again, another article discusses The Bronx as some undiscovered paradise, a terra incognita for artists looking for a new place to colonize and bring their art and culture (and gentrification in tow) as if the borough was somehow bereft of the arts—and people.
Let’s get one thing straight before we even continue: The Bronx is not some undiscovered virgin territory in waiting—our borough is and has always been alive with arts, music, culture, and a beautiful tapestry of people from around the world. From City Island to The South Bronx, Riverdale to Hunts Point and every neighborhood in between, we’ve been creating.
When we first started writing about The Bronx seven years ago, you would be hard pressed to find a remotely positive article on our beautiful borough. In fact, that was the reason we began to write: To challenge head on the negative stereotypes that have been perpetuated by the media for decades.
People looked at us as recently as even 5 years ago that we were crazy if we thought The Bronx was a great place.
Puerto Rican Bomba Dancers From the Group Bombayo which resides at the Andrew Freedman Home
Now, for the past few years and particularly this year, everyone is jumping on The Bronx bandwagon as if we didn’t exist before they wrote about it, ate at some local mom and pop restaurant we’ve been eating at for half a century, or went to The Bronx Museum or any of our many cultural institutions that have been rooted and cemented in our community’s DNA for decades.
The article by Crain’s starts:
Wait what? New and growing cultural organizations? Sure there are new kids on the block in The Bronx art scene but this statement implies somehow that this is a recent “phenomenon”.
Easy to be a working artist? It might be easier for some, especially those coming in from overpriced Manhattan and Brooklyn, but overall, Bronx artists don’t necessarily find it easier to be a working artist. In fact, many of our artists who have been working here for decades or their entire lives, constantly are in conversations on the difficulties and financial challenges they face to survive as an artist in our borough.
Arts and craft thanks to BxArts Factory at Boogie on the Boulevard
The path of the native Bronx artist is anything but easy.
Not that we know every, single artist working in The Bronx, but we are immersed in the art scene and artists rarely if ever are proclaiming how easy it is. Many artists are juggling one or two jobs, and overtime just to be able to afford living in The Bronx with ever increasing rents and to be able to focus on their crafts.
The article proceeds to speak about Chilean artist, Ivan Gaete, as moving to The Bronx from Brooklyn a few years ago to “join a small but growing number of artists living in The Bronx.”
Yet another WTF moment. Small? The Bronx art scene has been anything but small. We are the borough that birthed Hip Hop, Salsa, taking graffiti from the subway and streets to the top museums and galleries in the world, a slew of cultural icons and giants that shape today’s entertainment industry from fashion to theater to the big screen and our radio airwaves.
We are and have been everywhere.
The ridiculous article continues with other moronic ascertations like, “there is a true [artistic] community developing” which again is pretty insulting and dismissive of the dozens of organizations that have been deeply rooted in our borough for decades.
Yes there are newer institutions such as The Andrew Freedman Home, which thanks to a major exhibition by New Longer Empty four years ago, is now a major cultural hub under the leadership of its director, Walter Puryear.
The Andrew Freedman Home went from being a place many knew little about to an important fixture in out community practically overnight.
The BxArts Factory is also mentioned (perhaps one of the most active art organizations of its size and age), a collective of Bronx artists bringing art projects to the community and helping bridge that gap.
The Bronx Documentary Center, which celebrates its 5th year anniversary this fall has been an incubator of photojournalism and documentary photography of Bronx photographers from middle school and high school students to photographers living in our borough for practically their entire lives.
The Boogie Down Booth installed by The Bronx Music Heritage Center played curated selections reflecting our borough’s rich cultural and musical legacy.
It’s wonderful that our artists and organizations get the recognition they deserve and have worked hard for but it’s offensive to imply our beautiful Bronx is somehow just starting this artistic journey when in fact we have opened the doors and way to so many artistic disciplines now considered mainstream.
Saturday, September 24th from 12:30PM to 8PM at Hostos Community College at 500 Grand Concourse at 149th Street Join an important community conversation!
The “What Creates Health” community conversation will bring activists, artists, performers and local community organizations together to talk about how we can define what shapes health in our communities. Join us!
• Check out art, music and dance performances by local artists.
• Take part in workshops and panels on improving community health.
• Get immersed in interactive art installations.
• Have your voice heard in conversations on racial justice, social justice and health equity.
Free refreshments will be provided. The event is free and open to New Yorkers of all ages. Spanish interpreters will be on site throughout the day.
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La conversación comunitaria “¿Qué es lo que da origen a la salud?” reunirá a activistas, artistas, entretenedores y organizaciones comunitarias locales para hablar sobre cómo podemos definir lo que da forma a la salud en nuestras comunidades. ¡Acompáñenos!
• Disfrute el arte, la música y las actuaciones de danza de artistas locales.
• Participe en talleres y paneles sobre el mejoramiento de la salud comunitaria.
• Experimente instalaciones de arte de sumersión.
• Haga escuchar su voz en conversaciones sobre justicia racial y social y equidad en salud.
Se servirán refrigerios gratis. El evento es gratuito y abierto a los neoyorquinos de todas las edades. Habrá servicios de interpretación en español.
Somerset Partners and Chetrit Group’s waterfront towers planned for Port Morris
Welcome2TheBronx joined WNYC on a discussion about gentrification in The South Bronx centering in on Mott Haven and the surrounding areas for this long-term project on the housing affordability crisis.
(If you live or work in the South Bronx, WNYC wants to hear from you and journalist Sophia Paliza-Carre will be stationed at the Mott Haven Library on E 140th Street and Alexander Avenue a few hours each day. Reach out via email to: spalizacarre@wnyc.org or via social media using the hashtag #motthavenspeaks)
Listen to the segment on WNYC by Jessica Gould and Sophia Paliza-Carre:
Some concrete signs of gentrification creeping in are:
1. Developers are staking a claim
Somerset Partners and the Chetrit Group havebought up old warehouses along an industrial stretch of the Harlem River waterfront, just like developers did in Dumbo and Williamsburg years ago.
2. Artists and millennials are moving in
Galleries are sprouting up along the waterfront, and the new coffee shop is a hub for recent college grads who’ve been priced out of other boroughs.
3. Housing costs are spiking
NYU’s Furman Center recently listed Mott Haven among the city’s top gentrifying neighborhoods, with rents up 28 percent since the ’90s.
4. Community leaders are mobilizing
Developer Rubenstein and his partners got flak for trying to rebrand the neighborhood The Piano District, after the old piano factories that used to be there.
With 992 units planned, a 50,000 square foot YMCA, 10,000 square foot television studio for BronxNet, and also an astronomy lab and observation deck among many other features, La Central is one of the biggest mixed residential and commercial developments coming to The Bronx.
A 50,000 square foot YMCA will occupy building A along Westchester Avenue and Bergen.
It’s also one of the first that will include the controversial Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) which mandates that a number of units must be set aside as permanently affordable.
The number of units under MIH depends on which option the developer, in this case Hudson Inc, chooses.
The five building development will range from 12 stories to 25 stories with green rooftops fitted with 600,000 watts of solar power that promises a reduction by 50% on energy and reliance on the local grid according to Hudson Inc.
The 992 units will be a mix of studios, one, two, three, and four bedroom apartments with approximately 160 units set aside for older adults living with HIV/AIDS and veterans with mental illness while providing on site support via CommunLife.
While this affordable housing development seems great on paper, we already know that those who truly need deep affordability—the residents who live in the immediate area of Community Board 1, will not qualify for these apartments even though 50% of these units will be set aside with a preference for those residents.
With such a massive development, La Central also fails at providing opportunities for home ownership as was done at neighboring Via Verde which is a mix of cooperative apartments and rental units.
By not providing homeownership opportunities at La Central, the development misses a great opportunity to provide stability by way of ownership to the community.
Home ownership by way of affordable houses, coops and condos have already demonstrated market acceptance by local qualifying residents.
Without homeownership, the community has very little defense against encroaching gentrification.
No official date has been set for groundbreaking, but once it commences, this will be the fourth major development under construction in Melrose with almost 2,000 units spread throughout these projects.
So this happened overnight…a 1 Train was graffiti bombed all in the name of Trump and not against but what seems to be FOR the disgusting, misogynistic, racist candidate.
This isn’t the first time a train has been tagged up in recent years as evidenced by the title of this post.
So this happened overnight…a 1 Train was graffiti bombed all in the name of Trump and not against but what seems to be FOR the disgusting, misogynistic, racist candidate.
This isn’t the first time a train has been tagged up in recent years as evidenced by the title of this post.
The late Mother Teresa and the late Princess Diana of Wales in Mott Haven, The Bronx in 1997 just 6 weeks before both passed away / Image Credit unknown after an exhaustive search. Copyright infringement unintended.
Today, 19 years after her death, Pope Francis officially declared the Albanian Mother Teresa a saint as many remember when she visited The Bronx.
On one of those occasions, Saint Teresa of Kolkata, as she is now known, was visited by her friend, Princess Diana of Wales who flew in from DC just to meet up with her at the Missionaries of Charity’s order on 145th Street in Mott Haven—the first in North America of the order which she founded in 1950.
Little would anyone guess that 6 weeks later, both friends would pass away just days apart from each other.
Saint Teresa isn’t without controversy, many have criticized her rapid ascension into the pantheon of Roman Catholic saints, a process which usually would take well over a century after someone’s passing.
Calcutta in India, as Kolkata was once known, became somewhat of a stereotype much like The Bronx thanks in part to the media narrative focusing solely on both’s poverty.
In a recent article by NBC News, they write:
A 1994 study by the UK-based The Lancet medical journal reported that even the most basic, life-saving drugs were not administered to salvageable patients who should have been admitted to a hospital rather than Mother Teresa’s famous home for the dying.
For a 2003 study, researchers at the University of Montreal and University of Ottawa examined nearly 300 documents belonging to the elderly nun.
The report noted “her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce.”
But Hitchens’ concerns and those of others will no doubt be drowned out by the joy of hundreds of thousands who are expected to attend Sunday’s Mass to pay tribute to her.
Even with such controversies, one can’t discount that her presence brought much needed attention to the plight of the poor not just in her adopted country of India, but across the globe and right in our backyard in The Bronx.
Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, walking around Morrisania in The Bronx
My own mother met Mother Teresa on two of the saint’s visit to The Bronx and on one of those occasions, she received a rosary given to her by Mother Teresa.
For many, especially our Albanian residents, today is a day of celebration regardless of how Mother Teresa, the once named Living Saint, is viewed.
Indoor sky-lit swimming pool (all renderings via STUDIOSC)
A year ago, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr said that there was no gentrification taking place but either he was flat out clueless or lying—we’ll let you decide for yourselves.
The new building will add 190 units to the existing 90 already at the landmarked Clocktower, a new fitness center, a game room, lounge, sports court, and an indoor sky-lit swimming pool.
According to plans and specs, most of the units will be facing E 134th street aka The Major Deegan Expressway and directly across from NYCHA’s Mitchel Houses on the other side of the expressway.
Outdoor area and swimming pool
Talk about a tale of two cities within a neighborhood.
Port Morris is separated from Mott Haven by the expressway and bridges leading into Manhattan and Queens creating a barrier between it and the rest of the borough.
Many pro-gentrification folks argue that there’s no displacement so no gentrification is taking place because “no one lives there” which is incorrect as thousands of people live in Port Morris.
What most pro-gentrification individuals don’t understand is the ripple affect that happens as such developments rise in a few neighborhood. Existing residents even in rent-stabilized apartments will feel pressure from their landlords to move, often times with the landlords paying tenants several thousand dollars to leave.
Lobby
There’s also the commercial aspect with developers snatching up retail storefronts to lease to their own favored businesses to create a neighborhood to their liking, something which Keith Rubenstein has already done with Filtered Coffee, Pizzoteca, 9J Designs, and a gallery on Third Avenue next to Filtered.
This is a signal to other landlords that they can raise rents out of reach of existing businesses because someone is artificially raising them by speculative purchases and leasing.
Lobby
There’s absolutely no doubt that mixed-income neighborhoods are a good thing in theory but sadly we haven’t seen it work successfully yet because of the forces of gentrification.
So as the Clocktower’s extension gets closer to completion as the South Bronx’s first ultra luxury market rate rental, this is only the beginning of Ruben Diaz Jr’s “New Bronx” which isn’t for existing residents who deserve better but for an entirely different economic demographic who won’t mind living on the “other side of the tracks” separate from our borough and all that ails us.
Typical unit finishings
How do we reconcile that luxury is being built in the poorest congressional district in the United States when hundreds of thousands are barely making ends meet and paying over 55% of their incomes towards rent, one of the highest in the nation?
How do we reconcile this gross example of inequality being constructed for outsiders, because let’s face it, the majority of residents in these developments will be from outside our borough, when Mayor de Blasio continues to push affordable housing that’s not affordable for the residents in the communities they are built in?
Centenarians aren’t strangers to The Bronx (like this 100 year old runner)but this Bronx woman celebrating her 101st birthday with her 100-year-old husband sure is a pretty unique story.
News12 The Bronx reports that Theresa Pearson, who was born in Georgia along with her husband of 73 years, Doc, celebrated her big day at a Riverdale nursing home.
According to News12: “When asked what their secret was to staying together so long, Doc replied, “It’s not a secret, I think I would say it was more of luck than anything. I am just lucky.”
