Former convicts face many challenges after being released from prison. Click here to see Ana Toro’s multi-media report, which tells the stories of some former prisoners and profiles a transitional program aimed at bringing down high recidivism rates.

New Yorkers depend on immigrant businesses for many of the services they need and the goods they consume. But these entrepreneurs face many challenges – including language barriers, limited access to financing and a lack of understanding of the rules of doing business in the city.

Click here for Tanzina’s Vega’s multi-media report, and hear some immigrant entrepreneurs’ stories and listen to what the experts have to say about what can be done to help such businesses thrive.

The battle to redevelop Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal has been going on since the 1960’s. By then, the canal, once one of the state’s busiest waterways, had fallen largely into disuse. Many of the warehouses, factories and other industrial sites that lined the canal’s shores were abandoned.

Now, with residential real estate booming and the city’s population expanding, the area is on the verge of a new era of residential development. But as development plans go forward, every step requires a delicate balance of the city’s enormous need for housing, the environmental cleanup required on a century-old industrial waterway, and the ongoing needs of the businesses that remain in the area.

Click here for Matthew Sollars’ multi-media report.

Prices are up at the Green Farms Supermarket, a Polish foods specialty store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – and the weak dollar is to blame.

For customers in the heavily Polish neighborhood, getting a taste of much-misssed homeland delicacies is getting more expensive. Merchants, meanwhile, are ordering less goods and fear a dropoff in business. Sebastian Bednarski reports.

Poet William Blake once said, “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”

Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents gave fresh meaning to Blake’s words last week at a Community Board 1 meeting as they voiced concerns about trees that get planted by the city and aren’t maintained.

And trees whose roots grow under sidewalks and buckle them.

And trees whose branches fall, creating potential hazards for senior citizens.

These concerns, and more, were among the chorus of complaints residents voiced in reaction a city official’s presentation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s MillionTreesNYC initiative, under which 5,400 new trees would be planted in Brooklyn by next spring.

Not so fast, residents said.

“I understand that they want to put the trees in, but they have to maintain them,” said Marie Leanza, 65, who has waited two years for the city to remove the stump in front of her house.

The trees the city planted in front of Leanza’s home four years ago have lifted the sidewalk.

But CB 1, which has the fifth lowest number of trees planted among Brooklyn’s 18 districts – at 9,351, that’s only 54 percent of the available tree pits – needs more trees, said Eric Peterson, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation manager.

Peterson presented to CB 1 the initiative to plant one million trees across the city’s five boroughs over the next decade. This is particularly important for Brooklyn, which has which has less than the 10 percent of the city’s current 5.2 million trees.

Peterson emphasized how trees lower air temperatures, reduce air pollution, capture and store carbon emissions, save energy and help prevent storm water runoff. That’s on top of improved human health, increased property values and better quality of life. Peterson even put a price on how much a tree saves in costs to the city: $14.94.

The residents had more immediate concerns.

When Leanza called 311 to get the stump outside her home at 198 Powers Street removed, she was told the city didn’t have any money and she would have to wait.

“We have people on a seven-year list waiting for their tree to be pruned. You need to deal with tree pruning and stump removal before planting trees,” another resident told Peterson.

“Trees are a trip hazard,” said board member Del Teague.

Peterson acknowledged some problems with tree maintenance. Amonth ago there were 22 stumps still to be removed in the neighborhood, he said.

The city has 21.5 maintenance crews. But by 2010, it hopes to have 30 more.

There were those who responded positively to the mayor’s initiative at the meeting.

“Trees are good for the environment and make the area look a lot nicer. We need more trees in Brooklyn,” said board member Yenfiri Gomez.

“This city doesn’t have the best track record of thinking things through properly, but it’s doing OK with this,” said Heather Roslund, another board member.

A sense of urgency pulsed through a large meeting room at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in Chelsea last Wednesday night. Dozens of men of color were seated in a semi-circle to face a table at which six panelists sat, discussing issues facing gay men of color who are HIV positive.

The event was part of a discussion series sponsored by GMHC called Lives at Stake. This installment focused on black gay men and HIV in New York and around the world, and it was held in conjunction with World AIDS Day 2007, which was commemorated on Saturday.

The panelists took turns broaching difficult topics with a candidness that seemed much appreciated among the fervent crowd, who listened attentively to every word spoken.

Robert Miller, a black HIV-positive man who is on the faculty at the University at Albany, talked about spirituality and what it means for gay men, and how it can help them cope with an HIV-positive status. He said that spirituality helps people reconnect.

Efforts to turn the embattled Brigham Street lot in Sheepshead Bay into a green space began to bear fruit as the district’s first community-born park project got a crucial boost.

Read More

Daniel Wright got so tired of Riverdale’s lack of a Starbucks that he recruited one.

As a Riverdale real estate broker, Wright rarely went a workday without a potential client asking the same deflating question: “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?”

He e-mailed. He called. He pleaded.

Wright’s efforts paid off last month when the Bronx’s third Starbucks opened on Johnson Ave. and 235th St.

Read More

The city’s rising cost of real estate and gentrification have forced some well-known music clubs to go silent. The Bottom Line, Wetlands, Fez, Tonic, and Sine-e are now gone. Mo Pitkins is the music scene’s latest casualty. While venues come and go, bands are always able to find new places to play. And, from jazz to rumba to rock and roll, there’s always an audience in New York City. More »

Three young men followed 18-year-old Jesus Charriez and 21-year-old Luis Bermudez for several blocks, as they walked through Longwood on an October afternoon, the pair told police. The attackers yelled “faggot” and spit on the pair. Then, at 5 p.m. in front of a hair salon on the crowded corner of E. 163rd St. and Intervale Ave., they beat their victims, uninterrupted, for several minutes and stole a gold necklace and a cell phone.

Both Charriez and Bermudez ended up in the hospital with minor injuries. The police on the scene classified the crime as a robbery, with no mention of the anti-gay slurs that marked the incident.

The attack highlighted anti-gay feelings in the Bronx, where many gays hide their orientation out of fear. Although Bronx Borough President Aldolfo Carrion and U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano have condemned the incident, gay leaders called on more Bronx politicians to speak out against intolerance.

The attack changed the way Charriez views the neighborhood where he and Bermudez volunteer as a peer counselors at the Hispanic AIDS Forum, just a few blocks from where the assault took place.

“I call it my safe zone,” Charriez said. Since the attack, though, he has a hard time sleeping, and says it will be “a little bit difficult” to go out in the area.

Violent attacks are just one symptom of widespread anti-gay attitudes in the borough, Bronx gays say.

Alberto Antomnarchi, a 43-year-old Bronxite, has lived in all of New York’s boroughs except Staten Island, and he identified the Bronx as being particularly homophobic and closeted.

In the black or Puerto Rican community, being gay means “you lose your family; you lose respect in the community,” said Antomnarchi, who is Puerto Rican.

Family support is an issue for Mosey Diaz as well. “Even in my family, they make fun of the LGBT,” Diaz said, using the term for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Diaz, who is 18 and a lifelong Bronx resident, worked for the Bronx Community Pride Center at a gay pride rally in Barretto Point Park.

“‘Oh, I like what you’re doing here,’” a man said to her, reading her “Bronx Pride” sign. “When he found out that it was LGBT,” Diaz said, “he was like, ‘That’s disgusting. I didn’t come here for that.’”

Still, Diaz said progress is being made in the Bronx: “It’s hostile, but the times have changed. It’s getting better.”

Diaz, who describes herself as “out” but not “open,” said that younger LGBT Bronx residents are increasingly willing to stop hiding their sexual orientation.

Reverend James Dusenbury is the pastor of In the Life Ministries, an interdenominational church on Commerce Avenue near Westchester Square that caters to LGBT parishioners. He agreed that coming out in the Bronx can be dangerous.

“Most people feel their safety is at risk, so they’ve got to live a closeted lifestyle,” Dusenbury said. “The only reason why I’m so openly gay is I want people to see I’m a regular person.”

The last time he reached out to another Bronx church, Dusenbury said, “They were not happy to hear from me.” Members of a neighboring church have called his church “the faggot church.”

As more gays live more openly in the Bronx, they’ll face increased aggression from straights, gay leaders believe.

“You will probably see an increase in homophobic language, in aggressive and sometimes violent behavior towards gay people,” said Heriberto Sanchez Soto, the executive director of the Hispanic AIDS Forum in New York.

When violence does occur, it often goes unreported by the victims, Soto said. Convincing victims to come forward is a challenge for gay advocates and leaders.

The Bronx’s rate of reported hate-crimes is almost three times lower than in the rest of the city. According to the NYPD hate crimes unit. Since January 1, 2006, only five anti-gay hate crimes were reported in the Bronx compared with 91 anti-gay hate crimes in the rest of New York.

Soto said that hate crimes go unreported more often in the Bronx because violence is seen as a normal part of life in the borough.

“It’s like New York City in the 70’s. We were all accustomed to all the violence, to the garbage in the streets,” Soto said. “‘Hey, this is New York City.’ Well, no, this should not be New York City; it should be better than this.”

Gay leaders also say that some politicians and members of the clergy share responsibility for widespread anti-gay sentiment.

“There is no tolerance in the borough for LGBT people,” said Lisa Winters, executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center, an advocacy organization and gathering place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents.

“We’ve begun to change that, but we have lots of work to do,” she continued. “We need our friends in the pulpit and elected and appointed officials to join with us in that effort. It’s embarrassing for the Bronx. The Bronx should be ashamed of itself.”

Winters named state Senator Ruben Diaz as one politician who could do more. Diaz opposes gay marriage, sued in an effort to prevent the city from financing a school for gay students, and tried to prevent the Gay Games from coming to New York, saying they could spread AIDS.

“He’s been very hateful and spiteful towards the LGBT in the Bronx,” Winters said. “He’s whipped people into frenzies.”

Diaz said that he is not anti-gay, and condemned the attack on Charriez and Bermudez, which he said he had not heard of.

“We need to protect people from hate crimes,” Diaz said. “I believe that anyone who does something like that should be subject to the maximum weight of the law. The police should spend any resource to go after them.”

After issuing his statement condemning the attack, Serrano said in an interview, “I don’t do any of this because it’s politically sound. On the contrary, some people think the politically sound thing to do is keep away.”

The congressman said his constituents understand that gays deserve to be able to walk down the street without being “picked on for their sexual orientation,” but added, “The problem is that so many elected officials get nervous about having to explain it, and so they’d rather not get involved. The biggest crime you can commit is the crime of silence.”

For their part, Charriez and Bermudez have refused to be silent.

They convinced police to reclassify their case as a hate crime after the initial police report made no mention of the slurs or the spitting. They also spoke out at a press conference held by the Hispanic AIDS Forum, which led to coverage on the evening news. Their experience has been reported by newspapers in Detroit and Nashville, putting a face on the debate over federal hate crime laws.

They say they spoke out for their own sake, but not just for themselves.

“We want to spread the word and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone,” Charriez said.