Not to sound like an ass but DUH! Come on now, we’ve been saying this for years about that other borough! The rich culinary offerings of the Bronx are enough to make even the pickiest of taste buds to quiver with anticipation! And as we have ALWAYS said, the real Little Italy is in the Bronx – not the Disney-like attraction that tourists flock to in Manhattan.
Though the increasingly nasal and seemingly conspiratorial promotion of Brooklyn as New York’s crucible of great food has not yet played out, the almost-total neglect of Queens and the Bronx smells of both ignorance and outright snobbery. The fact is, just one square mile of the Bronx, known as the Belmont neighborhood, has more food culture and history than Red Hook, Williamsburg, and Dumbo combined.
Our Belmont is one of those best kept not so secrets among the region but has yet to garner a reputation in the general mainstream. Do you think this kind of publicity is good for the Bronx? What other areas, landmarks and neighborhoods would you recommend to tourists if they asked you why should they visit our borough?
NPR jumps on the bandwagon to continue propagating the past history of Hunts Point – and indeed the Bronx in this somewhat follow up to the Chris Arnade disaster of a few years back. You know, the guy who worked on Wall Street and decided to trek to Hunts Point to photograph the sex workers? To any reader outside of the Bronx, they will read these stories and pretty much believe that that is all there is to this neighborhood.
The Bronx still has a long way to go in shedding its tarnished past although we have definitely gotten a better perception now than anytime before the Great Decline, however, it seems that poor Hunts Point will never get a break. “Journalists” seem to just latch on to that image of it for what seems to be purely sensationalistic reasons. There is SO MUCH MORE coming out of Hunts Point than this garbage.
Read if you will, below, and follow the link at the end for the rest of the “story”.
Michael, aka Michelle, is one of the subjects of “Portraits of Addiction” (Chris Arnade)
In this episode of Micropolis, WNYC’s Arun Venugopal ventures into the home of Michael, a transsexual prostitute and heroin addict — and, as you can hear in the segment above — given to baking cookies for her guests.
Michael, who also goes by the name Shelly, or Michelle, is one of the subjects of “Portraits of Addiction,” an ongoing project by Wall Street trader-turned-photographer Chris Arnade and writer Cassie Rodenberg.
The series, now in its third year, brings viewers into close contact with addicts and prostitutes in Hunts Point, in the Bronx. View the series Tumblr here, or the Flickr page.
In addition to images, the project gives us insights into the lives of its subjects. Thirty-five year old Vanessa, seen below, “was standing on the cold street corner looking for business, wearing only flip flops and smoking with her two friends.” When asked how she wanted to be described, one friend jumped in and said “She’s the sweetest woman I know. She will give you the shirt off her back, if she has one on.”
South Bronx Unite calls on Governor Cuomo to take a closer look
at BOEDC and the FreshDirect Deal
South Bronx Unite (SBU) is a group of Bronx community activists and neighbors that formed in response to the City and States’ announcement, in February 2012, that it planned to give the online grocer Fresh Direct upwards of $130 million in public subsidies to relocate its warehouse/trucking facility to the South Bronx waterfront from Queens, without community input or environmental review, after FreshDirect issued false, “race to the bottom”-type threats that it would move its business across the river from its customer base, to New Jersey. The South Bronx has among the nation’s highest asthma rates, and Fresh Direct would bring upwards of 2000 daily truck trips through its already clogged and overburdened streets, while blocking the community from the recreational type waterfront access increasingly enjoyed by the rest of the City. Over 40 community groups have signed on to SBU’s platform of environmental, economic, labor and food justice for South Bronxites and all New Yorkers.
SBU commends Governor Cuomo for vetoing the recent attempt by State Senator Jeff Klein to funnel $17,500 in “pork” payments to the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation (BOEDC), and we call on him to go farther. As BOEDC is a key Bronx player in the FreshDirect deal – pledging $500,000 in capital funds and a $3 million subsidized loan – we ask the Governor to take a fresh look at the entire Fresh Direct deal of inappropriate land use, subsidies and tax credits and to join us in demanding a full Environmental Impact Statement of FreshDirect’s proposed relocation.
We Bronxites awake to fresh stories of public corruption almost daily. We request the Governor’s help in stopping the flow of our public coffers into questionable projects that create few benefits and often generate great harm in our communities. BOEDC (which was also censured for not filing its annual financial statement with the Authorities Budget Office) is often a driving force behind these projects, providing funding and political muscle to streamline massive projects with no public review.
Far too often, these massive public subsidies are issued with little scrutiny or public oversight, accompanied by vague promises of job creation. A March 2012 audit issued by New York City Comptroller John Liu found the New York City Economic Development Corporation was subsidizing largely “empty job promises”– essentially rolling the dice with public money and hoping for the best: “The EDC… has handed out huge taxpayer subsidies with alarmingly spotty results…. Corporate subsidies must be used more sparingly and only be granted after careful and thorough assessment that the job creation and retention will be real.” (http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/press/2012_releases/pr12-03-025.shtm)
The FreshDirect proposed subsidy package and FreshDirect’s potential environmental impact on the South Bronx community need to be carefully reexamined. The people of the Bronx and New York taxpayers deserve and demand better.
So here we are with BronxMama, The Bronx Socialite and of course the folks at From The Bronx at The Bronx Beer Hall minding our business as we plan on how to continue promoting our wonderful borough and who walks in? Yup, Alan Alda! He sat down next to our table and is enjoying some of our wonderful Bronx brews with friends and enjoying the crowds.
Right in the heart of the Bronx and the heart of the Arthur Avenue, The Bronx Beer Hall is an awesome spot to relax with friends have some great grub and beer of course. Make sure you check them out!
I could sit here and write paragraphs and hundreds if not thousands of words as to why we not only deserve but NEED better representation in the South Bronx.
But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll provide all the information that’s out there for you in one concise posting so that you can come to whatever conclusion that you may. Read all about it folks. Oh and to quote Maria Del Carmen Arroyo’s official website: Service with a passion is her motto. “Our people deserve no less”. Perhaps we should heed her words and make sure she’s not re-elected because “less” is already representing us.
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ENID, ALVAREZ/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
HEAT FROM the slush fund scandal may have made it tough for Bronx Councilwoman Maria Del Carmen Arroyo to steer taxpayer cash to relatives through dubious nonprofits, but she’s still finding ways to line her family’s pockets.
Arroyo put her husband on her campaign payroll — paying him $15,000 from her campaign funds for “consulting” over the past six months, records show.
Her husband, lawyer Ricardo Aguirre, has gotten the vast majority of the $21,173 she has spent so far on her reelection.
City Council members and staffers yesterday predicted that Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo could be the next member of their body indicted in an ongoing “slush fund” probe that just snared fellow Bronx Democrat Larry Seabrook.
“Everybody I spoke to today thought she was next,” said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another said, “Everybody’s speculating [about Arroyo]. There’s lots of talk.”
And a third council member noted that after Seabrook’s arrest on federal charges Tuesday, city Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said the probe is not over.
Maria del Carmen Arroyo’s nephew was charged last year in a headlinemaking “scam.”
Arroyo, who refused to answer questions yesterday, is a member of a powerful political family whose members have close and complicated ties to several nonprofit groups that have received taxpayer funds at the behest of her and her mother, state Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo.
In the Bronx, you could take your pick, but in this case it seems South BronxCouncilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo and her mama, Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, have been pumping taxpayer bucks into the South Bronx Community Corp., which employed Maria’s sister Iris and Iris’ politically ambitious son Richard Izquierdo, now abuela Arroyo’s chief of staff and apparent successor-in-training.
A mother-daughter pair of Bronx pols got free airfare to Puerto Rico with cash stolen from a nonprofit controlled by a relative, prosecutors charged Wednesday.
Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo and her daughter, City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo, got the free flights.
The check writer was Richard Izquierdo Arroyo, the assemblywoman’s grandson and the councilwoman’s nephew.
Izquierdo Arroyo was charged with stealing more than $200,000 from SBCC Management Inc., a Bronx group that’s supposed to manage low-income apartment buildings.
He also spent $3,800 of SBCC’s funds to install a new floor in his grandmother’s Assembly district office and $9,000 for illegal donations to her campaign, prosecutors said.
Last week, tenants at a run-down 145-unit apartment building for seniors in the South Bronx cut a cake to celebrate their new owner, a Manhattan-based nonprofit housing group that had just bought the property’s foreclosed mortgage for $1, promising to make $8 million worth of desperately needed repairs.
And they gathered to breathe a sigh of relief that City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo failed in her efforts to deliver the seven-story property—known as Borinquen Court—to a politically connected team that did not have the experience needed to operate it, according to federal housing officials.
By inserting herself into the situation, Ms. Arroyo upended a process established by federal law that gives local government agencies, such as the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the power to ensure that certain distressed buildings go to qualified buyers. When properties like Borinquen—built in 1979 with a loan from a federal housing program—go into foreclosure, the city typically works with tenants and advocates to choose a nonprofit group committed to preserving the property. In this case, they chose West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, a 35-year-old nonprofit that focuses on Manhattan but has a presence in the Bronx.
Make sure you also check out the excellent segment Joe Mauceri of PIX11 did on the Veggie Mobile Market as well as Patrick Wall of DNAinfo!
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With the warm weather approaching, the sounds of ice cream trucks are sure to fill the air as the chirping of the birds in the morning. Trucks offering such delights are nothing new. Heck, we even have lunch and dinner trucks throughout the city serving up full fledged meals. But imagine a mobile Veggie Market that brings you the very important items that are often missing in your neighborhood, particularly economically depressed neighborhoods like Hunts Point, and really, the rest of the South Bronx. That’s exactly what Bronxite, Tanya Fields, is working on. Tanya is the epitome of a Bronx entrepreneur who, after years of frustration that comes with trying to raise a family on a healthy diet – something that seems anathema to local supermarkets and the infrastructure of our neighborhoods, left her job to battle against this injustice. Besides her beautiful children, food justice is her passion and she started on this battlefront from the ground up (literally AND pun intended). Through education and guerilla farming, by taking underdeveloped and neglected lots, she has taught the people that you can take control of your food supply. Let’s face it, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, we live in the poorest congressional district in the nation. A neighborhood plagued by obesity, hypertension, heart disease and hunger. As ironic as these combination of issues seem, the ultimate irony lies in the fact that Hunts Point and the Bronx is home to the largest food distribution center in the nation and indeed one of the largest in the world. All this wonderful food from meats, fish and poultry to fruits, vegetables and all sorts of produce of the highest quality and caliber comes into this neighborhood – but never gets to the tables of the folks who live here. The food is carted in and out of the area via trucks that contribute to one of the highest rates of asthma in the country. People are being killed by these trucks in pedestrian accidents. They are dying from the asthma.
With the Veggie Mobile Market all that can change. Fresh produce will be delivered by a solar powered school bus that runs on veggie oil! The Veggie Mobile Market isn’t just about delivering fresh produce but it will serve as an educational experience as it will have several vita-mixes to introduce folks to healthier living by way of green smoothies and drinks.
I rarely ask readers to invest in anything but if you have a spare $1, $5, $10, $100 or whatever you can, please consider in INVESTING in our community’s health and future. This entire project just needs $15,000 and they have already raised almost $2,500. $15K is a drop in the bucket compared to $127 million in tax subsidies that are given out to programs that will not benefit our communities.
Check out out the link below to see more about the Veggie Mobile Market and hear what Tanya Fields and others have to say about the issues!
As soon as the story by Winnie Hu of the New York Times broke yesterday, people immediately took to Twitter with their reactions. Below are some screen shots of those commenting on the piece.
Unfortunately when you act like an opportunist in the Bronx, your deeds do not go unnoticed. Majora Carter, who at first seemed to have the interest of Bronxites at heart, is revealed to have given in to corporate interests over our own health and well being. In this case, money talks and FreshDirect paid. NYTimes: Hero of the Bronx Is Now Accused of Betraying It http://nyti.ms/13VIEci
Today, the Bronx LGBT Community can finally rest knowing that Lisa Winters, former executive director of Bronx Community Pride Center has been sentenced to 2-6 years for STEALING…let’s not call it anything fancy like embezzlement because it makes her look smarter than she actually is.
Know that this isn’t gloating or being happy that she will be in jail but I will say that I am ECSTATIC that justice was served. Having been a volunteer at BCPC and having started what was the ONLY support group for HIV+ men in the entire Bronx along with a friend, we provided a service with NOT ONE DIME yet we got it done. Lisa Winters always promised to get money for us to do more thing but we never held our breath.
Just like everything Bronx, we’ll rise from the ashes and come out stronger.
Stay tuned in the very near future as we rebuild again from the ground up an establish a NEW LGBT Center we can all be proud of. If you are interested in starting a new organization with me, then feel free to contact me but be forewarned: We will not tolerate self-interested folks looking to promote themselves and not do anything for the people. The bullshit stops here. Feel free to distribute this far and wide.
After a three year ordeal, Lisa Winters, the former Executive Director of Bronx Community Pride Center has been sentenced to 6 Years For Embezzlement and taking 400k to support her lifestyle including dog walkers, cruise ships with her partner (pictured) and apartment upgrades. This is breaking news as per a current board member. More information as it becomes available!
Is there a haunted house in the Boogie Down? Scouting New York seems to think so when they stumbled up this Mount Hope beauty. What say you about this or any other places that you think are haunted or spooky? Personally, one of the spookiest spots in the Bronx is atop Vault Hill in Van Courtland Park – former burial ground of the park’s namesake family. It’s something straight out of a horror movie!
This morning I was looking at some stats for Welcome2TheBronx and noticed that someone landed on the website by searching for, “why can’t the Bronx be more like Brooklyn” . Well that person probably wasn’t expecting my post where they landed. In the simplest terms: WE DON’T WANNA BE LIKE BROOKLYN!
Don’t get me wrong, Brooklyn isn’t a bad place but we just simply have a lot more flavor than that other borough has going. The neighborhoods closest to Manhattan have already been diluted to the point that their identities have merged with Manhattan as if resistance is futile (Think the Borg). Why should we give that up?
We have Arthur Avenue, our Little Italy that makes Mulberry Street look like the Olive Garden. City Island, that little nautical New England-esque treasure in the Sound, a seafood lover’s delight (sorry Red Lobster but you might as well be imitation crab meat.
Oh and what about Melrose, Mott Haven, Morissania, Hunts Point, Longwood, Port Morris, Highbridge and others that are lumped together by those not in the know as The South Bronx? You know, that neighborhood that birthed music from Mambo to Hip Hop – if it wasn’t for the Boogie Down, Jay-Z wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play at the Barclay Center in his home borough of Brooklyn: You’re welcome.
I can go on and on but then I’d be bragging so, fuhgeddaboudit. As some would say, “Don’t get it twisted. We love the Bronx and wouldn’t have it any other way.”
