Budget retailers like Target and H&M have been teaming with high-end designers to create affordable fashions. Payless Shoe Source is the latest to jump on the trend, featuring ready-to-wear brands like Abaete, Alice and Olivia.
The side of a building on 125th Street and Broadway has become a focal point of AIDS awareness in Harlem. Until March, two huge billboards on the building combined to declare, “We’re not taking it lying down!”— the tagline of an ad campaign by The Women’s Institute at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The posters were replaced by twin ads for the “HIV stops with me” effort sponsored by the state and city health departments.
The messages and their prime Harlem placement come at a time when African-American women are the group with the highest rate of HIV infection in the city — and the nation.
Farmers in the Midwest have more than doubled their profits since 2005 by selling grains like corn and soybeans, thanks to the country’s biofuel craze.
But Northeast farmers, who primarily raise livestock, have ended up on the wrong side of the tipping scale.
The agricultural shift is having a direct impact at New York City’s Greenmarkets, where farmers are struggling to keep prices down as their fuel and feed costs skyrocket.
Many blame high food prices in the U.S. on the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which called for the amount of biofuels produced in the country to almost double in six years.
The price of corn, the main ingredient of ethanol, soared. Wheat and soybean farmers devoted some of their acreage to corn. In response, the price for those crops also rose.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, soybeans prices have more than doubled, and corn and wheat prices have tripled.
At the same time, gasoline and diesel fuel prices have risen by about 30% and 50%, respectively, since 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Meanwhile, farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket are holding their breath - and trying to hold their prices steady.
Kaiser Wilhelm started it all.
Wilhelm was the hamster Jessica Wells found crossing Broadway during a walk home nearly three years ago. “I had been shoe shopping that day, which was really lucky,” said Wells, 30. “So I took the shoes outside and put the box on the sidewalk.”
Wilhelm walked straight into the box and the New York Hamster House was born. Local shelters do not accept hamsters, inspiring Wells begin taking them in.
Run out of her one-bedroom apartment in Inwood, Wells currently houses 22 hamsters and other small animals. Cages are neatly lined up against the overflowing bookshelves in the living room.
For a room with so many animals living in it, it was surprising quiet on a recent Sunday. This all changes come nightfall — the cacophony of the hamsters squeaking, running on their wheels and shredding cardboard boxes can regularly be heard. “I had to move my DVD player into the bedroom because it got so loud in here,” Wells said.
Before Kaiser Wilhelm, Wells had never owned or taken care of a hamster before. “A lot of it is trial and error,” she said, crediting hamster discussion groups online and comments hamster aficionados post on her blog for much of her knowledge.
“I’ve learned a lot. The good thing is that I don’t pretend that I know everything,” added Wells, who estimates she has taken care of more than 400 hamsters since 2005.
Wells does not charge a fee to adopt, though occasionally families will donate when they take their adoptees home. She said she spends $150 to $500 a month on supplies.
Currently, New York Hamster House is not officially a nonprofit operation, though Wells is working to change that. “Right now I’m just a girl with a lot of hamsters,” she said.
It’s far from the national pasttime. But netball, an English-born sport played by 20 million people worldwide, is gaining a foothold in New York.
The Manhattan International Netball Club, which practices in a Chelsea gym, recently played in a national tournament in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
The team members are largely expatriates from England and some of the 70 other countries where netball is played. While women have historically played the non-contact sport, that is changing. The Bronx has its own men’s team.
Bizarro Basketball
To the uninitiated, netball looks like bizarro basketball meets Ultimate Frisbee.
The court is slightly larger than a basketball court, and there are baskets but no backboards. Players can’t dribble, either – it’s a passers’ game. And while each position is zoned, players shadow their counterparts up and down the court. A defender must leave three feet of space once an opposing team member catches a pass.
Netball has long been a mainstay of the Commonwealth Games, and there’s a push to make it an Olympic event.
Locally, Matthias Wilkie, president of the USA Netball Association, hopes to expand the game beyond the expatriate community, by bringing it to schools.
CD sales continue to plummet. Digital downloads are rapidly climbing. And an old musical format is steadily making a comeback.
Audiophiles in search of that warm, grainy sound are getting into the vinyl groove again.
Last year, 990,000 records were sold — a 15 percent increase from 2006, according to the Nielsen SoundScan.
Brooklynphono, a small mom-and-pop vinyl record manufacturing company in Sunset Park, is profiting from this nostalgic musical resurgence. In 2001, husband-and-wife team Thomas Bernich and Fern Vernon-Bernich established a plant on 42nd Street where they press vinyl for independent artists and New York City-based record labels for $1 a record.
For many teens, the prom is one of the most important dates in the high school calendar. However, the excitement is often tainted by financial worries. With costs often running in excess of $1,000, the prom is a big deal in more ways than one.
While some high school seniors are fortunate enough to afford the splurge, many don’t have the money.
That’s where Operation Fairy Dust comes in. Now in its sixth year, the program is designed to help selected young women offset prom costs by providing free gowns.
A ‘Big Impression’
“[It's] the last year that everyone will know you as that person, in your last dress,” said Saavedra Jantugh, 18, of The New School for Arts and Science, in the Bronx. “It’s a very big impression you got to make.”
Saavedra chose a long black dress with a gem-encrusted neckline that she hoped to make shorter.
Not having the perfect dress often means opting out of the prom.
“Sometimes if you don’t have a dress you don’t even want to go to the prom,” said D’Asia Greathouse, 18, of Catherine McAuley High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. “You know the other girls are going to be dressed really elegant and nice.”
60-Minute Scramble
Desha Hagler, 18, also a student at Catherine McAuley, said she had no idea what she would have done had she not been given the opportunity to shop for free at the give-away.
While some girls spend months shopping for the perfect prom dress, Operation Fairydust participants have about 60 minutes.
Most were confident they’d recognize”the one” when they saw it.
“I was looking for a simple dress with a back that showed,” said Ismalis, 18, a Manhattan Occupational Training Center student who decided on a sleek red frock with thin straps. “I just wanted to look pretty.”
In March, Guillermo Montero, a cabbie for more than 30 years, bought his first hybrid taxi.
Montero’s Toyota Camry is now among the 1,020 hybrid cabs in New York City — about eight percent of the medallion fleet. Since making the switch, Montero said he saves at least $30 a day on gas.
“The car is the only answer to the price of gas these days,” said Montero, a 67-year-old Cuban immigrant.
As gas prices rise at a record pace and environmental concerns mount, this city is making efforts to reduce the gas consumption of its 13,150 taxis. By 2012, cabs will have to get at least 30 miles per gallon city driving. The requirement is expected to convert the entire fleet to hybrid over the next few years.
“That would be a great idea,” said Montero.
Montero’s Camry hybrid, one of about 30 such cabs, is a rare bird on the road. Montero said he responds with the same answer whenever asked about his car, “[It's] the best buy for your buck.”
With gas prices at a record high and environmental awareness growing, bike use is on the rise in the city. Since 2000, the number of riders has increased 75 percent, according to the city Department of Transportation.
Some new businesses are popping up to help meet the demand. Meet the self-proclaimed “Drug Dealer of Bikes” — a bus driver whose side business is also in transportation. Meanwhile, the folks at Recycle a Bicycle in the East Village are taking donated bikes, fixing and selling them, with profits going toward the group’s education programs.
The city’s tortilla makers are in trouble: Their profits are as flat as their product.
In Brooklyn, where a cluster of factories on the Bushwick-East Williamsburg border form what’s known as the Tortilla Triangle, owners say high sales aren’t enough to help them keep up with rising food and fuel prices.
“We are trying to survive, but it is very hard to continue working when the profit is very small,” said Erasmo Ponce of TortillerÃa Chinantla on Grand St.
