Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that New York City is on track to enter Phase 3 reopening which would allow for more easing of social distancing regulations as COVID-19 health metrics continue to drop.
Under Phase 3, restaurants will be allowed indoor dining on a limited capacity. Under the third phase, eateries will only be allowed inside dining at 50% capacity, with tables and people kept at 6 feet apart and everyone must wear masks inside.
Also allowed under phase 3 are personal care services like tattoo and massage parlors, spas, and nail salons. Beyond that not much else will open.
The Mayor also said that phase 3 will also allow the reopening of outdoor recreational areas like basketball, tennis, handball, and volleyball courts. Bocce courts will also reopen and even dog runs.
You can read the guidelines for these industries here which includes mandatory practices as well as best practices.
Phillip Grant didn’t anticipate that a deadly virus would shut down New York City when he started the job of general manager at the Hunts Point Produce Market 10 months ago.
In March, when concern over COVID-19 compelled much of the tri-state area to close indefinitely, many doing business at the Bronx facility worried about its survival.
Would businesses at the massive complex — which contains a produce market, a fish market and a meat market — be forced to close? How many of those employed would get sick? Or laid off?
Three months later, as the region begins to reopen, much of the worst has been averted, Grant told THE CITY. No employee has been laid off or furloughed, according to Grant and city officials, even as restaurants were limited to take-out business for months.
As the city locked down, Grant said, leadership at the market quickly rolled out a disaster preparedness plan, gaming out almost every frightening possibility.
“We went down to the worst-case scenario: What if all of, or a good chunk of our 125 workers, had the virus?” said Grant, who previously oversaw construction projects at the city Economic Development Corp., which owns the facility. “What do we do? Management would then go out and man the gates.”
The team’s responsibility is a big one, he noted. Some 4.5 billion pounds of food come through the distribution center annually. The half that does not get sold in New York City ends up elsewhere in the region, according to the EDC.
And about half of the customers at the market are independent restaurants and cafes, according to EDC, while supermarkets and bodegas make up around 40% of the market’s shoppers.
Anti-Virus Game Plan
To stem the spread of the virus, market managers took the preventive steps most in other industries did, like stocking sanitizer and soap, as well as staggering schedules and arranging enhanced cleanings of workspace.
Those who could do their jobs remotely did, Grant said. Those who had to come in to work received masks and gloves at the entrance to the complex, employees said.
“Every single day we sanitized everything — twice a day sometimes,” said Victor Davila, 28, who works in maintenance at the market.
Market management also regularly collected data on the spread of the illness among the more than 1,860 workers at the site, through surveys of the 150-plus merchants at the cooperative.
Members were asked how many confirmed cases of COVID-19 they had on staff, how many of those who were confirmed sick had returned to work, how many had been sent home — or were out for other reasons, like taking care of a family member.
The data was periodically published online, along with Centers for Disease Control guidelines on COVID-19 and the list of actions taken by management for worker safety.
According to the most current data from produce market management, 84 employees there were tested positive for the virus as of June 1. Of these, 73 had returned to work.
As the city enters Phase 2 of its reopening and looks beyond, management at the produce market is monitoring what its city and state partners are doing, Grant said.
“We continue to follow the guidelines issued by the state and city,” he added.
Appreciation Day
On June 17, city and industry leaders for truckers, market employees and other food supply workers held an appreciation event for employees near the produce market’s gates.
“If they were not willing to come to work during this pandemic, we would not be eating,” Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who was appointed city food supply czar by the mayor for the coronavirus pandemic, said at the event.
When it comes to the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19, Garcia said, “We are prepared.”
During the morning celebration, employees entering the complex got free food, thanks to the Trucking Association of New York. Officials say 15,000 trucks come through the area each day.
“If the trucks stop moving, within a day there would be no fruit,” said Barry Panicola, vice chairman of the association.
Within a week, Panicola added, the city would run out of things like bread and medicine, he added.
“Everyone put their life in jeopardy as essential workers,” he added.
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and Councilmember Rafael Salamanca (D-The Bronx) also addressed the workers praising them, while noting ongoing food insecurity for area residents.
“I submit to you this: If it were not for the work that you’ve been doing and continue to do, we would have had chaos,” Diaz said.
For Salamanca, the concern for workers was very personal.
“For those of you that don’t know, my dad worked here in the produce market for 18 years,” noted the Council member, whose father died in early April after contracting coronavirus.
“Essential workers — I have your back here in Hunts Point.”
THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.
Since we can’t go to the movies quite yet due to the COVID-19 pandemic, let the movies come to us!
Tribeca Enterprises, the hosts of the yearly Tribeca Film Festival is bringing the movies outdoors right here in The Bronx at Orchard Beach.
For four weekends starting in July, over a dozen movies will be shown. including hits like Wonder Woman, Black Panther (which is already sold out), Casino Royale, and even Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
According to their website you have to register to get your tickets which are free but it seems you still have to pay to get inside the Orchard Beach parking lot which is $10 bucks on weekends. Still not a bad deal and a lot cheaper than the movies.
Plus you get to enjoy the movies outdoors in the comfort of your car.
Check out the full movie line-up here and get your tickets now before they sell all out!
New York State, along with the rest of the tri-state region of New Jersey and Connecticut, will impose a 2 week quarantine on visitors from states where COVID-19 numbers are on the rise.
The quarantine will only apply to visitors from states where positive cases for the coronavirus reaches a certain threshold. Upon arrival in New York State, visitors will be required to quarantine for two weeks regardless of whether or not they are exhibiting symptoms.
The goal, according to Governor Cuomo, is to maintain the gains the state has made in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Screenshot from COVID Act Now depicting states at various levels of the COVID-19 Pandemic
As of now, New York is one of only 3 states on track to contain COVID-19 according to a study by Covid Act Now.
While the quarantine measures may sound harsh to some, the reality is that we can’t afford to go back to where we were two months ago when over 30,000 died across the state with the majority in New York City.
The Bronx can’t afford to be the epicenter of the pandemic again.
Democrats in the 14th congressional district spanning The Bronx and Queens didn’t fall for Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a “former” Republican who’s campaign was well funded by her Republican husband, Trump supporters, and Wall Street.
Despite raising millions, Caruso-Cabrera’s attempt to fool people into thinking she was for them failed miserably at the polls yesterday as preliminary results shows that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swept the floor to victory in a landslide win.
When I won in 2018, many dismissed our victory as a “fluke.”
Our win was treated as an aberration, or bc my opponent “didn’t try.”
So from the start, tonight’s race was important to me.
Tonight we are proving that the people’s movement in NY isn’t an accident. It‘s a mandate.
For the past two years, critics of AOC have claimed that her defeat of party boss Crowley was a fluke but yesterday’s victory proved that it was anything but.
Many Bronx residents, mostly Trump supporters, along with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera have made up false claims about Ocasio-Cortez ranging from her never being present in the district or in The Bronx to simple gross ad hominen attacks on her “intelligence” or being a former bartender.
Via The New York Times
Basically all braindead talking points from Fox and Trump supporters that aren’t based in reality but their delusional minds.
During the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus, AOC has fed thousands of Bronx families through food deliveries to the most vulnerable in her district with the help of volunteers and local organizations like Loving The Bronx.
She has held many townhall meetings in our borough, is constantly seen by locals near her home in Parkchester or grabbing a bite at a local spot.
For someone who is supposedly absent from her district she sure is spotted quite frequently there.
While the general election in November is still months away, we can safely say that the real winners are the residents of congressional district 14.
Many have seen the Netflix ‘Becoming’ documentary on Michelle Obama but did you know that it was directed by a Bronx woman?
Nadia Hallgren, a Puerto Rican and Black filmmaker and cinematographer hailing from Soundview, was approached Higher Ground, a film production company by the Obamas, and was told that they she should be the one to direct it.
Hallgren told Essence, “This wonderful woman that everyone loves, it was a whole life in-the-making and a whole set of experiences that built up to the moment where she stepped on stage as the first lady.”
“It was really important for me that we understood how that life becomes what it is — and it’s through community, it’s through love, it’s through parents who fought so hard to make sure their children were educated.” added Hallgren.
On the warm spring night of June 1, an eruption of looting left the owners of more than 100 Bronx businesses shattered.
Three weeks later, the fallout from that night lingers over the city’s poorest borough like a curse. Livelihoods are in danger, neighborhood services like pharmacies are reeling and initiators of the chaos appear to have mostly escaped unscathed.
The working law enforcement theory is that organized crews of thieves took what they wanted and fled before locals entered already-looted stores and got caught by cops.
And unlike luxury goods outlets such as Coach and Bergdorf Goodman hit by looters that same night in Manhattan, the stores set upon in The Bronx were almost all mom-and-pop operations.
Now those shopkeepers find themselves lost in a bureaucratic maze, struggling to get back on their feet as Phase 2 of the city’s reopening kicks in Monday.
Emergency grants announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio for Bronx small businesses hit by looters that night remain mostly just a promise. As of Friday, only five of the 125 operations identified as victims had been approved to receive funds, said Samatha Keitt, spokesperson for the city Department of Small Business Services.
“We understand the frustration that they’re feeling because their businesses have been hugely impacted. Setting up a program in two weeks is a huge feat,” Keitt said.
She suggested that business owners who are having problems applying should call an emergency hotline SBS set up (888-727-4692). “We’re actively acting to make sure these businesses are taken care of,” Keitt added.
‘They Gambled on The Bronx’
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. is furious that local shopkeepers — many of them Black or Hispanic — aren’t getting the help they were promised while corporations and airlines have already received millions in federal pandemic aid funding.
“This is why people protest,” fumed Diaz, who has been trying to help businesses targeted by looters June 1. “When you talk about systemic racism — these are minority owners. These are hardworking people who put everything into this.
“They gambled,” he added. “Of all places, they gambled on The Bronx. They helped us with the narrative of the comeback-kid story, and here we are weeks later and we don’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.
Diaz sees many victims in the looting.
The night of June 1 and into the pre-dawn hours of the next day, looters descended on several Midtown stores selling luxury items after similar sprees in SoHo that followed largely peaceful protests. At the same time in The Bronx, highly organized groups of thieves targeted dozens of small businesses on Fordham Road, Burnside Avenue and in between.
The looters appeared to target specific items such as sneakers, electronic devices, lottery tickets and store ATM machines. It was hit-and-run, with the perpetrators jumping into waiting cars and escaping long before cops arrived.
“They had cars. They compromised the gate. They go in and loot whatever they’re going to loot. And then they’d scream to the locals, ‘Hey, over here!’” Diaz Jr. said.
“The initial planners are not from the neighborhood,” he added. “Then people from the neighborhood took advantage and entered the stores.”
‘Our Door is Open’
That’s when the cops arrived, nabbing 58 people — mostly teenagers and 20-somethings from the neighborhood. According to complaints filed by Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, many of those arrested were caught inside already-looted stores without having taken anything.
A 19-year-old and a 20-year-old were found hiding in the ceiling of First Aid Pharmacy on E. Tremont Ave. A 22-year-old was seen exiting Paradise Pawn & Music on Grand Concourse with a white guitar in hand. A 24-year-old who was caught inside Jimmy Jazz on E. Burnside Avenue told cops, “I just want some sneaks.”
All of these young men now face third-degree burglary charges that could net them a stint in prison if they’re convicted.
One 22-year-old man faces a stiffer punishment, if convicted, because he was also charged with possession of a gun after allegedly taking medication from Planet Pharmacy on the Grand Concourse. His lawyer, Troy Smith, said the weapon belonged to someone who escaped, and that his client was “in the wrong place.”
“Young people sometimes make silly decisions,” Smith said. “They don’t have the wisdom that people of age have. That was certainly the case with my client.”
For the owners of Planet Pharmacy, the devastation hit on multiple levels.
Beatrice and Foster Akuoko, who are from Ghana, opened Planet Pharmacy six years ago. They serve the nearby Ghanian community, and senior citizens from the neighborhood are regular customers.
“Our door is open to everybody,” Beatrice Akuoko said. “We’re doing our best to help the community. We try to appear as one of them.”
“It’s very sad people would do something like this,” she said. “It’s sad because we are always here for them.”
Foster and Beatrice Akuoko outside their Bronx pharmacy
As of last week, Akuoko said, her business was able to handle only about half of its prior customer base because her computer was trashed and she has to track orders by hand.
Some regulars have transferred to other pharmacies, but most of the local seniors are staying with the Grand Concourse store.
“We’re planning to come back as much as possible for our community,” Akuoko said.
She is struggling, though, to gather all the information her insurer requires.
‘They Need Grants’
That is a common theme among many of the owners still trying to figure out how to obtain government aid, hobbled by bureaucratic obstacles and confusing layers of paperwork.
Besides de Blasio’s emergency $10,000 grants, the state Department of Financial Services promised to pressure insurance companies to expedite claims, and the federal Small Business Administration offered low-interest loans of up to $250,000.
Diaz notes that many of the owners didn’t have insurance for theft, and the SBA requires an immaculate credit history — a tough sell for owners who’d already run up credit card debt while struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The borough president had been promoting taxpayer-subsidized low-interest loans to small businesses before the looting and had 60 applications pending. So far, only a handful of businesses hurt by the looters have signed up.
“Obviously, they need grants,” he said.
Diaz cited the case of Bronx Optical Center, which lost more than $170,000 to looters.
‘Don’t Know Where to Begin’
On June 1, Bronx Optical’s owner, Jessica Betancourt, 38, got a call around 11 p.m. from one of her employees who lives in the neighborhood letting her know there was looting going on along Fordham Road, a few blocks north of her store.
From her home in New Jersey, Betancourt began monitoring security cameras running inside the store.
When she observed people trying to smash through the store’s metal gate, Betancourt and her husband drove into the city.
There, they say, they encountered cops from the 46th Precinct. They asked police to stay while they retrieved what they could from the store, but officers said they had to go to respond to looting elsewhere.
Betancourt and her husband, left alone on the street, decided it was too dangerous to stay and returned home. At 3:14 a.m. on June 2, she watched the security camera as five men broke through the metal gate, smashed glass cases and overturned display boxes of eyeglass frames.
The aftermath of looting at the Bronx Optical Center in early June.
The thieves were fast and organized, fleeing before police arrived. Later that morning, Betancourt returned to find her shop trashed. The thieves had used a crowbar to pry open a safe and removed $13,000. Her losses totaled $171,843.
De Blasio arrived later that day at her demolished store with a gaggle of TV cameras in tow.
“He said to me, ‘I’m going to help you,’” Betancourt recalled. “Two days later he announced grants of up to $10,000. I got really mad. It’s an offense to me.”
Betancourt, who just got the application for the grant Thursday, two weeks after de Blasio announced the “emergency” program, said, “This is b.s..”
Bronx Optical Center owner Jessica Betancourt
“I’ve put my life at risk. I’ve done this to serve my community and this is how we get treated. Like I say, The Bronx is a forgotten place. We’re not Macy’s. We’re hardworking individuals.”
“Mentally, I’m not okay,” she added. “I’m sitting here, I don’t know where to begin.”
THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.
On Thursday evening, Bronxites Rafael Peña and Alexandra Haridopoplos were walking into Van Cortlandt Park when they stumbled upon a terrifying scene and symbol of hate.
Three nooses were left hanging from trees inside the park’s entrance near 242nd Street on the West side of the park.
According to Gothamist, a third witness reported the incident to the 50th Precinct but Peña and said they didn’t seem to take the incident seriously nor did they even bother filing a police report. A spokesperson for the NYPD claimed it was a rope to hold a piñata in an area popular with locals for parties.
But coming to that conclusion without an actual investigation is disturbing given the fact that a Black Bronx man was found dead hanging from a tree in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan.
Image of noose at Van Cortlandt Park provided to Gothamist.
And he isn’t the only one found dead hanging with a noose around his neck as several Black men across the country have also been found dead hanging from trees.
All have been ruled suicides so far but according to people who knew the victims, it doesn’t add up. Demands are growing every day to fully investigate these incidents as hate crimes given the vile history of lynching Blacks in this country.
What’s even more troubling is that earlier this month, in the same park, a backpack belonging to an ex-marine was found containing AR-15 assault rifle along with ammunition. The ex-marine, Nicholas Bingman of nearby Mount Vernon, was found to have troubling messages on his phone including one that said “kill all enemies.”
But he was eventually released on a $300,000 bail.
This isn’t surprising to anyone living in The Bronx especially those of us familiar with that area. Two years ago there were flyers put up at the edge of Van Cortlandt Park calling white supremacists to march through Woodlawn to defend their heritage and show of strength against what the flyer called an, “invasion of Black thugs into the neighborhood.”
So given the racist history of the area, we’re not gonna just sit back and accept the NYPD’S lazy response that this noose was from a party. We demand a full investigation connecting these dots because they are connected.
Please note: A previous version of this article stated that the nooses were found in the East side of the park on the Woodlawn side and has been since corrected to the west side of the park. Our original source article at Gothamist was incorrect.
On June 19, 1960 The Bronx’s premiere amusement park opened its doors in the northeast section of the borough.
Before Co-op City, the world’s largest cooperative development that over 50,000 residents call home was built, there was Freedomland.
Freedomland /Image Courtesy of Thomas X Casey
Built in the marshlands and coastal area along the Hutchinson River, Freedomland was a short lived amusement park with America as its theme.
It billed itself as the world’s largest entertainment center before changing that to world’s largest outdoor family entertainment center but regardless of what it called itself, some say it was doomed from the day it opened its doors on June 19, 1960.
From lawsuits due to accidents and conspiracy theories that it was never meant to last long and just simply serve as a test that the marshlands could sustain large structures that would pave the way for Co-op City’s construction, the park closed its doors in 1964 and demolished.
During its short life, millions of visitors enjoyed this fabled theme park now buried deep in our history and the memories of Bronxites who went there.
It wasn’t until two and a half years after Lincoln emancipated enslaved Blacks in America that the news was heard in Galveston, Texas.
That day, June 19, 1865, has been forever known as ‘Juneteenth’ and more recently as Freedom Day, the day that Blacks were finally free.
But in the 155 years since that day, Blacks in America are still struggling to find true equality. Hundreds of years of systemic and institutional racism has continued to keep that dream away.
In The Bronx, we have seen it played out through the disinvestment of our communities by government agencies, redlining by banks, dumping of polluting industries in low-income and predominantly BIPOC communities and the resulting health crisis.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, our borough became the epicenter with the highest rates of infection as well as highest rates of mortality due to the coronavirus. And in within the Black community, the impact has been particularly devastating with a significantly higher mortality rate.
From The Bronx African American History Project
On Juneteenth we remember the thousands of Black women that came to the old Lincoln Hospital to study and become nurses, many who came not just from around the country but from the Caribbean and even Africa.
We remember the resiliency of that community spirit that is The Bronx way that helped rebuild our borough from the ashes.
Take a look at the video below on Fordham’s Bronx African-American History Project which recorded the oral histories of hundreds of Black Bronxites between 2002 and 2018 giving a unique insight into the past. After the video follow the link to the archives so you can read or listen to the histories for yourself.
To listen or read some of the hundreds of oral histories, you can go to the digital archive here. You can learn about Robert Nesbitt who was born in 1924 and was in the Tuskegee Airmen Unit or Ms. Genevieve Smith-Brown who was born in 1937 and was a fierce activist and president of the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes.
You can also learn about our beloved late, Morgan Powell, a friend and fighter for environmental justice and a fierce local historian.
Photo of Morgan Powell via his Facebook Page / Photo By Charles Vasser
The archive is a beautiful window to the many unsung heroes of our beloved Bronx and Black Americans that should be celebrated every day not just in February or on Juneteenth.
They are the the people we should be teaching our children in school in history classrooms.
One of America’s Great Streets, Arthur Avenue and the heart of New York City’s REAL Little Italy, is seeking to close off the legendary road to vehicular traffic so that its many restaurants can safely practice social distancing by way of outdoor dining.
As we quickly approach phase 2 reopening in New York City after being shut down for almost three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, outdoor dining is one of the ways listed that restaurants can reopen to patrons.
To that end, the Belmont Business Improvement District is working to fast track approval of closing off the street in Little Italy to help the many struggling restaurants which have been forced to quickly adapt to the new coronavirus social distancing reality.
If approved, Arthur Avenue will be closed to vehicular traffic on weekends from 5pm to 11pm creating an outdoor dining experience.
The proposal is to only close the avenue on weekends from 5pm to 11pm which would also allow restaurants to remain open later than usual.
If successful, The Bronx will then have a slice of Italy with an open piazza outdoor dining type of environment even if only for a few days a week.
“Everyone stays open later, it becomes like an event,” he said.
Franz (Frank Franz, Belmont BID treasurer) anticipates these weekend exclusive street closures to happen roughly between 5 to 11 p.m., potentially including Friday nights as well.
Also, aside from the business lunch crowd on weekdays, it’s over the weekend when the iconic Bronx street sees a majority of its ravished diners, according to Franz.
While many of the plan’s other details remain in the oven, Franz noted that tents, coverings, and heating elements for colder months are all being looked into for the restaurant corridor.
This is a no brainer and we sincerely hope that DOT, city agencies, and local elected officials make this happen.
It should also be noted that there would be 15 foot wide space left open for emergency vehicles to get through.
We don’t have enough places to eat outdoors and what better place to do it than in New York City’s REAL Little Italy?
Last night on America’s Got Talent the W.A.F.F.L.E Crew, a Bronx-based dance group, not only got a standing ovation from the crowd but also from the judges including Simon Cowell.
Members of W.A.F.F.L.E Crew, which stands for We Are Family For Life Entertainment, come from different parts of the city and utilized dancing in the streets and subways not just as an outlet but as a way to survive.
Many in the crew described how they used dance to escape high crime and shootings in their neighborhoods that took the lives of their loved ones. Then they realized that through their dancing, they were able to help with the bills at home.
Screenshot from last night’s episode.
After their audition on America’s Got Talent and the standing ovation, Simon Cowell just slapped the golden buzzer which can be only used once per season of the hit show.
By pressing the buzzer, Simon changed the course of these young Black men’s lives by sending them straight to the live final show of competition overriding any other judge’s decisions.
He went on to say that not only was this his favorite audition so far but it’s what he’s been waiting for all season despite not being a fan of dance numbers.
