Talk Bronx New York

Bronx teen gets his wish: a summer job

After looking for a job for a year, Anthony Hunt landed a summer job with Ramon Falu’s employment firm.

There was something about Anthony Hunt that grabbed Ramon Falu’s attention.

Falu, the president of Bronx employment firm Pink Diamond Staffing Services, read a Your Money cover story this month about Anthony, a 17-year-old junior at Frederick Douglass Academy III Secondary School, who had spent a year looking for a job without getting an offer. But after reading about Anthony’s dedication, Falu, 69, tracked him down and offered him a summer job at his office in the Hub section of the Bronx. Anthony will work Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for $8 an hour.

His first day of filing, computer work and office maintenance is Tuesday.

“I felt welcome, I like the environment,” Anthony said of his employer. He added that the Your Money story on the tough job market for students prompted calls from several employers. “It’s kind of funny, ain’t it?” he said.

Falu said he was impressed by Anthony’s story and his determination. Experts recommend kids show the same kind of drive as they search for work.

Read more..

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Edgar Allen Poe’s home in the Bronx to be restored

Poe Cottage, the Bronx home of writer Edgar Allan Poe, will close this winter for restoration

A new, $3.2 million visitor center, seen in an artist’s conception, is slated to open in 2009.

There may not be ravens rapping at the door of Edgar Allan Poe’s final home in the Bronx.

But with a planned $250,000 fix-up and a new visitor center, thousands more tourists are expected to make the pilgrimage to Poe Cottage.

After two moves and years of being shaken by cars on the Grand Concourse and the nearby subway, the house of the famed poet and writer is in bad shape. Paint is peeling, the plaster is cracked and there are cobwebs on the rain-damaged windows.

Once restored, the house will have a fresh coat of paint, new green shutters, a ramp for the handicapped and, ideally, a projected increase of 6,000 tourists a year, said Kathleen McCauley, manager of the cottage in Poe Park, at the Concourse and Kingsbridge Road.

“It’s gone through a lot of transformations,” she said. “Poe would have liked that.”

The design of the new, $3.2 million, 2,000-square-foot visitor center was inspired by Poe’s poem, “The Raven.”

The slate shingles are meant to look like feathers, and the roof sweeps down like bird wings. The bathroom walls will have an abstract picture of Poe’s face.

Repairs and the visitor center are being funded by a combination of federal and city dollars and from donations to the Bronx Historical Society, which operates the facility. The city Parks Department owns it.

The visitor center is due to open in August 2009, while the cottage will be closed for repairs sometime this winter and reopened in 2010.

The cottage, where Poe spent the last years of his life and wrote “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “Eldorado,” now sees about 4,000 visitors annually.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This Article Was Submitted By a TalkBX Reader.

If You Would Like an Article Posted on TalkBX You Can Send The Article To

TalkBox AT TalkBX.Com or VIA Our Contact Page

A Onetime ‘Jungle’ Feels the Winds of the Past

THE crime occurred early on the morning of Wednesday, May 21. Mike Young, a handyman who is president of Padre Plaza community garden, arrived to find his saws, power drills, clippers and shovels — 24 items worth a total of $1,352, according to the list he keeps in his wallet — had been stolen.

Mr. Young discovered the theft when he was walking by the garden on his way to pick up his tools en route to a client’s house. A member of the garden called out to ask if he had left the shed open. Mr. Young said no but thought the question was odd. When he went to check, he saw to his dismay that the shed was empty.

Mr. Young is a stocky 46-year-old with a thin mustache and matching goatee who wears his work boots even on Sundays and spends much of his time maintaining the garden, a third of an acre at St. Ann’s Avenue and 139th Street in Mott Haven in the South Bronx.

During the night, someone had apparently broken into the garden’s aluminum shed, which was locked, and taken nearly everything inside.

“I sat down,” Mr. Young said the other day, ensconced beneath a canopy of redwoods, “and tears came to my eyes.”

The theft was an unsettling echo of the garden’s troubled past. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the surrounding area was plagued by problems, Padre Plaza was infested with drugs.

“It wasn’t a garden; it looked more like a jungle,” Mr. Young said. “There was one guy working in here, and his nickname was Flex. He had no ladders, no tools. He had a pair of scissors.”

One day last spring, Mr. Young offered to bring over his tools, and the two started working nights, cutting branches from overgrown plane trees, pruning unruly shrubs, trimming bamboo and pulling weeds, their work accompanied by the music of Marvin Gaye and KC and the Sunshine Band. Members of local nonprofit groups, along with residents and passers-by, started asking if they could help.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This Article Was Submitted By a TalkBX Reader.

If You Would Like an Article Posted on TalkBX You Can Send The Article To

TalkBox AT TalkBX.Com or VIA Our Contact Page

A Friendly Bustle, With Oases Nearby

IT was either the Bronx or Queens.

Jason Velez, 32, a financial adviser, and his girlfriend, RoseAnn Monterroso, 28, a consignment shop manager, had decided to move in together. He owned a one-bedroom in Bedford Park and worked nearby in Belmont. She owned a one-bedroom in Jackson Heights and commuted to Midtown.

They looked in Queens but decided they would get more for their money in Bedford Park — whose proximity to public transportation and major highways provides easy commuting to both Manhattan and Westchester.

“There’s the Bronx stigma,” said Mr. Velez, who grew up in Parkchester. “I thought it would be hard to convince her, but the more she saw, she started liking it.”

She sold her place, he sold his, and they bought a two-bedroom in his co-op on East 201st Street for $178,000. They plan to redo the bath and closets with a custom job, not prefab units.

“We’ll take the extra money,” Mr. Velez said, “and instead of buying something we don’t like, we’ll create something we do like.”

But Bedford Park is about more than affordability to Mr. Velez. It’s about friendliness. For instance three weeks ago his broker, David Abreu, who lives next door, visited a Manhattan comedy club to witness what Mr. Velez had billed as his first foray into stand-up. (In fact, Mr. Velez is no comedian: halfway through his “set,” he pulled Ms. Monterroso onstage, dropped to one knee and proposed. She said yes.)

Once heavily Irish and Jewish, Bedford Park in the 2000 census was 58 percent Hispanic, 17 percent white, 13 percent black and 7 percent Asian. There is a large mix of new arrivals, among them Guyanese, Albanian and Vietnamese. A Korean commercial strip occupies a block of East 204th Street.

John Dhauraj, a Guyanese immigrant who has owned a three-bedroom house on East 203rd Street for 19 years, was chatting one recent afternoon with a neighbor, Cholelle Miranda, who grew up locally and rents a place in a six-story brick apartment house two doors down. Their block is typical: tree-lined and backing up to the woodsy Mosholu Parkway, with early 20th-century single-family and multifamily houses sandwiched in among apartment buildings.

“This block is still a community,” Ms. Miranda said, and Mr. Dhauraj added, “We look out for each other.”

Like many in this middle-class area, both feel pinched by the economy.

“Let me put it to you this way,” said Mr. Dhauraj, 63, who used to work in building maintenance. “Since I retired, I got to look at the pennies. When I was working, I never looked at pennies.”

Fortunately, Mr. Dhauraj bought before the wave of subprime lending. The Bronx is the seventh-ranked county in the nation for foreclosure-related decreases in home values, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

But several factors insulate Bedford Park. Rental apartment buildings, which constitute a majority of housing here, are mostly immune. Typical homeowners have lived in their homes for a long time, so are less susceptible to the recent proliferation of risky loans.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This Article Was Submitted By a TalkBX Reader.

If You Would Like an Article Posted on TalkBX You Can Send The Article To

TalkBox AT TalkBX.Com or VIA Our Contact Page

HEAT’S ON BX. POL FOR FIRE FUNDS

A nonprofit group with ties to Bronx City Councilman Larry Seabrook received more than $300,000 in city money to improve firefighter diversity - a program that did little beyond burn cash, sources said.

The “Firefighter Advocacy Program” - run by the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corp. - was supposed to “produce up to 25 members of the NY Fire Department each year,” increase “the number of minority applicants and firefighters” and provide “information and services . . . [for] minority recruitment,” according to the organization’s proposal.

In 2006 the group received $310,000 for the effort - with $205,000 earmarked for staff salaries.

Two years later, the FDNY says its only contact with the group was a request to provide free posters and recruitment materials - which it was asked to leave in Seabrook’s office.

A source affiliated with the group said it did print recruitment materials and do community outreach, but steered most applicants into already established training programs run by the Vulcans, the FDNY’s association of black firefighters, and John Jay College. The group also gave about $15,000 to the Vulcans for study materials.

But it’s unclear where the bulk of the $310,000 went - the group’s proposal shows it filled two of 12 funded positions. One was an administrative assistant. The other was the $25,000 “executive director” position, which went to Gloria Jones-Grant - who reportedly already receives a $71,000 salary from the Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corp.

The proposal also included $42,000 for rent - even though Northeast Bronx said it would work out of its existing offices.

Seabrook has long been linked to the organization, once located in the same building as his office. In March, the city froze his request for $912,000 to the obscure Bronx African American Chamber of Commerce, also in that building.

Jones-Grant and Seabrook did not return multiple calls for comment.

SOURCE

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post