The scene seemed straight out of a Japanese comic book: a young maiden swathed in a kimono stood demurely under a row of blossoming cherry trees, her long hair flecked with pink petals. Next to her, a samurai warrior wielded a wooden sword.

But this was no manga page: The setting was Brooklyn.

“I’m playing Naminé from Kingdom Hearts!” declared college student Michelle Folvar, 19, as she strolled the Brooklyn Botanic Garden recently.

Folvar is not a performer or movie extra – she’s a dedicated “cosplayer.”

Read More

Pet owners seeking eco-friendly products are gladly spending green to go green at Crazy for Animals.

“People love their animals and they don’t want to give them something that’s going to harm them,” said Joan Stack, 51, a Queens native and pet lover who opened the store, Crazy for Animals, in the Shops at Atlas Park.

Read More

Joe Regina was walking through Westchester Square, touting the new merchants association and a much-needed city program to clean up the streets, when a passing teen dropped a soda can on the sidewalk.

Regina stopped midstride and hollered after the kid: “You do that at home?” The teen shot back, “Yeah, I do!”

Regina picked up the can, looking for the trash. “See what I mean?” he asked.

As secretary-treasurer of the new Westchester Square Merchants’ Association, Regina, who works at Quick Care Frame Repair, well knows the challenges facing the once-thriving northeast Bronx shopping district. But he and other local businesspeople are banking on the neighborhood’s resurgence, placing their hopes in their organization - and a new city program called Clean Streets.

Read More

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.

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.

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.

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 Tortillería Chinantla on Grand St.

Read More

Workers at an Associated supermarket in Bushwick are pushing for the backpay they’ve been awarded after years of collecting illegally low wages. The current owner says store’s former owner is responsible for the bill.

Meanwhile, an advocacy group called Make the Road by Walking is calling for a boycott of the supermarket – and is trying to help workers unionize.