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…)
A controversial Williamsburg bar that has run up thousands of dollars in fines is about to be sold to a new owner who is vowing to clean up the joint’s act.
Geoffrey Weber plans to turn Triple Crown into a quieter bar called the Brooklyn Cafe, according to the soon-to-be-former owners and community board officials.
“He promised us he will run a bar that you’ll want to take your parents to,” said Mieszho Kalita, the chair of Community Board 1’s public safety committee.
In the city that never stops developing, day laborers have become a growing cause for tension between unions and the contractors who employ the jornaleros (day laborers).
As major unions hold on to traditional regulations, contractors working on low-rise sites — routinely non-union jobs — have increasingly sought out workers willing to accept cheaper pay and no benefits.
“Right now a lot of non-union contractors take advantage of the available labor,” said Louis Coletti, president of the BTEA (Buildings Trade Employers’ Association), which represents 1,500 union contractors around the city. “They offer workers $10 to $15 an hour with no training, they leave them on the worksites, and a lot of laborers never even get paid when the job’s done.”
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An old vacant gym at a Williamsburg middle-school has been transformed into a dazzling yellow-and-blue wing.
“It’s bright and when I see it, it makes me happy,” said wide-eyed eighth-grader Briona Slayton at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Ten Eyck Upper School’s “Grade Eight Institute” on October 17.
Volunteers raced against the clock to collect, identify and count as many living things as they could find in 24 hours at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge recently.
The 250 nature enthusiasts — ages 2 to 81 — hiked the 9,000-acre grounds armed with butterfly nets and binoculars as part of the park’s first BioBlitz, organized by Queens College and the Jamaica Bay Institute.
The tally: 665 species, including birds, mammals, insects and fish.
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Almost every day for the past 28 years, Arthur Wood has hoisted himself to the upper stories of his Clinton Hill home to hammer, paint, and weld an unfinished dream he calls Broken Angel. Although he wears his own hard hat, he has never labored at a construction site or adhered to blueprints.
 TV REPORT: Former St. John’s standout Sharif Fordham’s hopes for an NBA career died after an injury and a brush with the law that put him behind bars. Khadijah Cole reports on how Fordham pieced his life back together – and is living another kind of hoops dream by helping teens at a youth center. |
First generation immigrants tend to cling to their culture by speaking the language, preparing special dishes and maintaining other traditions.
But how do second and third generations hang on to their heritage?
Many Americans are researching their lineage through a raft of genealogical services on the Internet.
But for Puerto Ricans in the United States, tracing the family tree presents unique challenges.
As descendants of African, Spanish, and Taino Indian cultures they must sift through family folklore and legions of documents to understand their identity.
On a recent Sunday afternoon East Harlem, about 30 people attended a workshop sponsored by the Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York to help Puerto Ricans and other Latinos trace their ancestry.
After serving 24 years in Congress, newly retired Rep. Major Owens is determined to keep making news. Owen plans to launch his own newspaper, called Dollar News, within the next few weeks. The paper, which in keeping with its name will cost $1, will tackle financial and social issues, the 70-year-old former Brooklyn lawmaker said.
