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Bronx Community Board meetings

* COMMUNITY BOARD 1 (Melrose, Mott Haven) meets at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 31, at Lincoln Hospital, Conference Room 6, 234 Morris Ave., E. 149th St. Call (718) 585-7117.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 2 (Longwood, Hunts Point) meets at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 30, 941 Hoe Ave., Community Room. Call (718) 328-9125.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 4 (Highbridge, Mount Eden and Concourse) meets at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 22, at Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Murray Cohen Auditorium, 1650 Grand Concourse. Call (718) 299-0800.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 5 (Morris Heights, Bathgate, Fordham, and Mount Hope) meets at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 23, at South Bronx Job Corp - Auditorium, 1771 Andrews Ave. Call (718) 364-2030.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 9 (Soundview, Clason Point, Parkchester, Bruckner and Harding Park) meets at 7p.m., Thursday, Jan. 17, at CB9 Office, 1967 Turnbull Ave. Call (718) 823-3034.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 10 (Throgs Neck, City Island, Pelham Bay, Co-op City, Zerega, Westchester Square, Country Club and Edgewater) meets at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 17, at Villa Barone Restaurant, 3289 Westchester Ave. Call (718) 892-1161.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 11 (Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Laconia and Van Nest) will not meet in January. Call (718) 892-6262.

  * COMMUNITY BOARD 12 (Wakefield, Williamsbridge, Woodlawn, Eastchester and Baychester) meets at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 24, at CB12 office, 4101 White Plains Rd. Call (718) 881-4455.

SOURCE: NYDailyNews.com

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 Shoppers look for bargains outside stores in new business improvement district along Southern Blvd. in Longwood.

Southern Blvd Gets BID To Help Residents & Businesses Living

A major shopping strip in the South Bronx has become the city’s newest business improvement district - joining such BIDs as Times Square and downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Street.

On New Year’s Eve, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law a plan by business and property owners in the Southern Blvd. area of Longwood that will increase their property taxes to pay for additional sanitation services, security, graffiti removal, marketing and Christmas lights.

Owners in the new district, which runs from 163rd St. and Hunts Point Ave. to Westchester Ave., also hope to create a parking lot to both raise money and make shopping more convenient, and to add extra lighting on the streets, which will allow businesses to stay open later.

They hope the improvements will attract new and bigger retailers, reduce crime in the area, and make it a more pleasant place to shop.

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 Kenneth Alston is one of the stars of the show ‘Three Mo Tenors’ at the Shubert Theatre on 42nd St.

Bronxite Kenneth Alston Makes Broadway With His Tunes 

Bronx native Kenneth Alston grew up with the bass-thumping beats of rap music resonating throughout his Soundview neighborhood, but he preferred gospel, rhythm and blues, and opera.

“As I kid, I always walked around singing,” said Alston, 30. “I’d enter talent contests at school, and while everyone else was rapping, I sang James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Bill Withers. I guess my peers didn’t like my song choices, because I’d get beat up after school, and one time I was thrown into a garbage can.”

No longer a target for bullies, the countertenor can now be found onstage at the Little Shubert Theatre on 42nd St. in Manhattan as one of the lead singers in “Three Mo Tenors.”

The three classically trained operatic tenors sing a musical repertoire of opera, gospel, show tunes, jazz, soul and new school.

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Remembering Father Bill, of St. Athanasius Church on Tiffany St.

Hundreds of people streamed in and out of St. Athanasius Church on Tiffany St. one day last week, filing past the thin figure in the coffin at the altar of the 100-year-old, red brick church, the focal point of a bustling neighborhood, dwarfed on all sides by apartment buildings and a pristine nursing-home complex. Across the street are tidy, ranch-style houses.

They were paying respects to the Rev. William Smith, better known as Father Bill Smith, whose church had once stood desolate, towering over rubble and vacant lots in the South Bronx’s darkest days.

Now all the buildings full of people stand as tributes to Smith.

He died last week at 74 years old, after a long illness that weakened but didn’t stop him from serving the people of his beloved South Bronx, whose remarkable recovery Smith had a large hand in.

He was ordained in 1959, and shortly after was assigned to St. John Chrysostom Church on E. 167th St., when the area was still a solid working-class neighborhood.

“He married my wife and me in 1968,” said Luis Burgos, 63, standing in the plaza outside St. Athanasius after he paid respects to Smith, with his granddaughter in tow.

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 Mary Fountain, a resident of 1520 Sedgwick in the Bronx is fighting to keep the building affordable to tenants. 1520 Sedgwick is credited as the birthplace of hip hop

Residents Fighting To Save Hip-Hop Birthplace

A new beat may be coming to the Bronx building where hip-hop was born.

Residents of 1520 Sedgwick Ave., the place where in the mid-1970s a young D.J. later known as Kool Herc started spinning records at parties in the basement recreation room, are announcing today their plan to buy the building — for only a few thousands dollars per apartment — from private interests, and keep it affordable.

“It’s like Graceland or the Grand Ole Opry, it’s the birthplace, where it all started from,” Herc said. “It’s a piece of the American dream and we just want to preserve it.”

The Morris Heights building is a designated affordable-housing Mitchell-Lama property, but last year BSR Management, the property’s owner, announced plans to sell the 100-unit complex to Mark Karasick, a private equity investor. Long-time residents immediately feared that they would be pushed out in favor of high-end renters. Read more..

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