Henry Steinway is the great-grandson of the Steinway & Sons founder and the last family member to lead the firm. Although he’s 92 and retired, Steinway still spends most mornings at the Steinway piano showroom on W. 57th Street in Manhattan.

What was it like growing up in the Steinway family?

I was one of six children. My mother was a Yankee. We were raised in the American Yankee manner. When I got out of college, 1937, it was the Depression. Then I said, “Should I try the piano business?” My old man said, “Sure.” So, I tried it.

I’m the inheritor, I can continue the tradition I guess. I have five children – some tried the business and didn’t like it. Now they are all over the country. So we sold it to CBS.

Can you talk about your family’s immigrant experience?

I don’t see myself as an immigrant. I was raised by a Yankee mother in an upper class New York way. I went to private schools, went to Harvard. I never thought of myself as “German-American,” which I suppose I am.

In 1937, when I started, there were still many workers of German origin. Then the Italians came in. Roman Catholic Germans and Italians married so we had many issues at that time, then of course the Greeks moved into Astoria and now it’s the League of Nations out there.

Has Steinway employed a lot of immigrants over the years?

Lots of South Americans recently, but I can’t tell you from where. They work their way up gradually. Some are foreman and supervisors. Now it’s a pretty general group representing New York and Queens. I think I heard Queens is one of the most diverse areas — various types, Thai and Korean. So it’s a very international community.

Do you think Steinway provides immigrants with opportunity to live the American Dream?

They do and they always have. I remember years ago when someone would die and there was a local funeral home that was used by a lot of the workers. I would attend some of these wakes. You’d see this guy who was a worker in the plant and his two sons who were lawyers. I mean the upward mobility.

We do have a few father-to-son relationships still. The family name Drasche has three generations there. The most recent one started his own business fixing up pianos somewhere out in Queens. So it has always been a very interesting community.

How has it changed?

The employees naturally move off the island. That’s why we have that big parking lot. I remember we built that years ago. We’d study the license plates to see who lives where and by then about half of them had moved off the island. About 20 years ago.

In the old days, the Steinway Street trolley — which [was] one of the last in New York —
went across the Queensboro Bridge. I used to take it…. There was a track and I could get on there and go across the bridge to Steinway Street where the factory is. So that was the great means of transit for all the local people.

We were raised in Manhattan. My trips were to the Steinway mansion mostly. It was a lovely estate. About the early 20s, I couldn’t have been more than six, seven years old, they decided to sell it and my father was designated to clean out the stuff that was there so we’d sometimes go out and I remember playing around on the then-expansive grounds. Now it’s all wire fence and all that stuff. We didn’t have any close connection to Astoria other than that. I’m the last guy that’s intimately connected with the business.

Does that make you sad?

No. It’s the normal American story. And a very good story. The guy comes over here with an idea. The family runs it. Then I sold it to CBS in ’72 and I haven’t regretted it for a minute even though CBS was going through all kinds of changes. So it’s a rather unique thing and I think it’s an American thing to be proud of because it’s gone through this typical American history of a family that was able to carry it on for a period of time, and then they put it in the hands, ultimately, of professional investors. And that’s the way to go. I’m happy with it.

A Bronx-based fast-food franchise has steadily risen over the last two decades, its growth tied to West Indian immigration to New York.

Golden Krust, a Jamaican-style restaurant and bakery, has filled a niche by providing inexpensive and familiar food for Caribbean immigrants – and it’s customer base is now expanding to non-West Indians.

“It’s the only franchise that really sells Caribbean food,” said Annette Runcie, who owns a Golden Krust franchise in Queens Village. “I think there was a big demand, especially in New York City, and it was just a perfect thing to do.”

She added, “Most Caribbean folks get home-cooked meals every day, there’s really not much fast food for them to eat.”

Going Mainstream

Still, the company has been able to expand to non-Caribbean neighborhoods as well as beyond New York.

The Caribbean population was critical for the growth of the company, said Golden Krust President and CEO Lowell Hawthorne. “I know we have gotten that base and have been successful in it,” he said. “It helps to propel the organization to the mainstream market.”

Hawthorne, a Jamaican immigrant, opened the first Golden Krust bakery in the Bronx with his family in 1989. Three years later, there were 17 Golden Krust stores. Now there are more than 115 spread across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Maryland.

Yet Golden Krust thrives most in areas like eastern Queens, which has one of the most concentrated populations of West Indians in the city. More than a fifth of the immigrant population came from Jamaica, and a large bulk of the rest originated in Haiti, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, according to the 2000 census.

In Community Board 13 alone, there are five Golden Krust restaurants.

“The company’s going to consistently grow its brand in our core market, which is basically the large Caribbean community, which are in a couple of new states,” said Hawthorne. “We’re going to expand from our market to the mainstream market. The company plans to open about 30 to 40 stores per year.”

Runcie, who was born in Jamaica, credits her store’s success to heavy amounts of foot traffic and a nearby bus stop. She said while most of her customers are Caribbean, her restaurant attracts a strong mix of other ethnicities.

Fast Food Friendly

“If you locate in a certain area where people are, you have a clientele already, that is No. 1, that’s key,” said Vera Weekes, education director of the Immigration Center at Medgar Evers College.

Jamaican food lends itself well to fast food, said Ramin Ganeshram, Caribbean food expert and strategist for Iconoculture, which studies consumer trends. Beef patties are cheap and can be eaten with one hand, which makes them both portable and convenient.

“On a more cultural level, you can say anything that’s a street food in the country of origin has a very good chance of becoming a fast food in the United States,” she said. “Street food is the fast food of the rest of the world.”

And non-West Indians are catching on. “We are gaining acceptance from pretty much all markets right now,” said Golden Krust spokeswoman Candice Richards. “North Americans are just gravitating towards West Indian cuisine as they become more familiar with the Islands through their vacations and just interacting with the many West Indians that live in New York and the United States.”

The ‘Real Deal’

Golden Krust’s fast-food environment helps, Ganeshram said. “If you go into a place and see a light board of food and photos and there are trays,” she said, people understand that “it’s a comfortable environment to try something new.”

At Golden Krust, you get full meals. “You get the real deal,” Weekes said.

“The real deal” is anything from the festival, a fried corn fritter about a half a foot long, to the oxtail stew. Customers can find the super salty and peppery ackee with salt fish, a dish that resembles scrambled eggs but is made with ackee, a highly poisonous fruit that takes special care to harvest just right.

Golden Krust also offers basic fare like spicy (and non spicy) beef patties, curried goat, stew chicken, ginger-infused ice tea and an array of West Indian colas.

“It is very good, instead of the fast food, hamburgers and stuff like that, I think this is more appropriate,” said Margery Baptist, who immigrated from Haiti and stopped off at the Queens Village Golden Krust one recent day. “If one parent can’t cook the rice, beans and vegetables, at least they can pick it up, they have it here, instead of the fried food.”

Even non-West Indians appreciate Golden Krust’s homemade taste. “It’s hard to find a restaurant that serves this kind of food,” Long Islander Angel Figueroa said outside the Golden Krust on 8th Ave. in Midtown. “When you have it here and it taste like homemade, you got a winner,” he said about his favorite item, oxtail, which he said he first tried at a Jamaican party.

Though Ganeshram believes Golden Krust may hit America the way of Chipotle, the popular Mexican food franchise, did, she does not see it branching out worldwide.

“The taste literally for American things is why Burger King and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut have become globalized, it’s not the food itself,” she said. “If you look at with that logic I don’t think something like Golden Krust will become global because it doesn’t represent something American — it represents the Caribbean.”

Before Father James K. Cunningham relocated to Far Rockaway in 2001 he barely spoke Spanish and had served a predominantly white congregation in his six years of priesthood.

Now the 39-year-old pastor, known as Father Jim, leads a multi-ethnic parish at Saint Mary Star of the Sea with a growing number of families from South and Central America and the Caribbean.

And he celebrates Mass in Spanish as well as English.

“When they first sent me here I thought they made a mistake,” Cunningham said with a laugh as he sat inside the 88-year-old rectory. “You usually had to be 25 years a priest and I was only six years ordained at the time. But I guess they figured I could adapt – that adaptability was one of my strengths.”

New Flags Wave

Saint Mary embodies the sea of cultural and economic changes that have occurred on the Queens Peninsula since the early 1970s. As the bulk of second- and third-generation Irish, Germans and Italians packed up and left over the past four decades, a growing number of Hispanics and Caribbeans have made Far Rockaway their home.

Today, the most recent immigrant groups – including Guatemalans, Mexicans and Guyanese – make up more than 70 percent of the 1,400-member congregation.

During a recent Mass, as Cunningham alternated between English and Spanish, more than a dozen children lined up to receive their First Holy Communion. Flags representing 37 different countries lined the inside of the church.

“The parish has had two or three turnovers since I’ve been a member,” said Josephine Kelly, 81, who moved to Far Rockaway from Buffalo in 1964. “Each turnover has caused a bit of an exodus among older members.”

And as those new members came in, so did new customs: from clapping and cheering to outward displays of affection among families.

New Economic Pressures

“Back when it was predominantly white and European families the most you would hear was an occasional whisper,” Kelly added. “Now during services people tend to be a lot more expressive. You’ll often see a son put his arm around his father without giving it a second thought.”

While new groups appeared, old money faded.

“Far Rockaway has faced the classic phenomena,” said Joseph Barden, executive director of Margert Community Corp., a neighborhood preservation group dedicated to helping struggling homeowners in the area. “In the 1970s there was a lot of white flight followed by a high concentration of poverty and a growth in public housing. Those forces plus immigration drove the original people who used to live here out. The problem for the church has been that most of the new immigrants don’t have the same economic base.”

One of the most apparent cultural and economic shifts can be seen in the fall off of donations to the church.

“A lot of the churches in South America and the Caribbean are supported by their governments,” Cunningham said. “In the United States, that’s not the case and people aren’t as accustomed to tithing. A lot of the new members put a few dollars in the basket a week and think that’s enough of a donation. As a result, it’s become hard to pay bills when our collection is good, but still not good enough.”

Raul Hernandez, a 33-year-old construction worker who came from Mexico with his wife and two children, is part of the newest wave of immigrants to join the church. While some of the congregation members see a link between their parish’s financial struggles and the growing proportion of immigrants, Hernandez links it to external forces.

“Today things are really difficult,” he said. “The economy is really bad. Before maybe I could give $10 a week, now it’s $5.”

A Joyous Day

Jason Fernandez, 7, was one of the first children in line to receive communion. After Mass, his mother, Maria, shed tears of joy while the rest of her family waited to take pictures with Cunningham.

“When I have, I give, and it’s from the heart,” she said. “Without the church and without God, I don’t think we could survive in this country.”

The city is cracking down on folks who swipe recyclables left on curbsides, increasing fines to $2,000 from $100, putting more sanitation officers on the streets and impounding vehicles used in thefts.

Still, scrap metal theft goes on — particularly in Brooklyn, home to the Sixth Street Iron & Metal recycling plant.

Artist Dread Scott’s latest exhibition tackles politically charged topics, including Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq, with such frank images as a black baby doll, face down in a tank of water, and five shallow graves.

But he’s drawn the most fire for his depiction of police brutality in the form of shooting-range silhouettes abutting motorized police batons striking a coffin.

The piece, titled, “The Blue Wall of Violence,” is featured his “Welcome to America” exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.

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