Talk Bronx New York

The area around Bathgate Avenue and 174th Street is an industrial park, a contradictory term for a place that has more concrete-covered factory floors than grassy fields. Yet the term is quite fitting, actually, in another way: This ordinary corner of Bronx blue-collar life was once home to Studs Terkel, who earned fame by writing about people who were utterly devoid of it.

Mr. Terkel, who died last week in his adopted home, Chicago, was born in the Bronx in 1912 and, according to the 1920 census, lived with his family at 1721 Bathgate Avenue, just south of 174th. He did not mention Bathgate in his last memoir, referring only to Clinton Avenue, a few blocks to the east, in a few pages, before shifting his memories to Chicago.

He once said the best interview question was the gentlest: And then what happened? Read more..

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SOUTH BRONX, N.Y. - At Validus Preparatory Academy, a new public high school in the poorest congressional district in America, students have kept journals since the early primaries, created election art, studied opinion polls in math classes, designed brochures on the issues, read memoirs by the candidates and even delivered speeches in their stead. And after the principal dashed around to plumbing supply stores for enough PVC pipe to build a voting booth, they got a chance to punch their own electronic ballots in a national mock election for students.

Being so steeped in the presidential race, the students at this predominantly African-American and Hispanic school on Bathgate Avenue are a little on edge about the outcome. They say they are excited about the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama could become the first black person elected president of the United States. (In the mock election results so far, 88 percent of Validus students chose Obama.) But many also admit to some nervousness that it won’t happen. And even if he does win, they’re crossing their fingers that he’ll be up to the job.

“If Obama doesn’t win, it’s a big disappointment,” said Dorian Whyte, 18, who moved to New York City from Jamaica. “And I think if he does win, also, it can be a disappointment, if he doesn’t deliver.”

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Photo source: The Gothamist

Ever since Taja, 10, joined the Keltic Dreams, the Irish dance troupe that is the unlikely pride of her Bronx elementary school, she has been so consumed by high kicks, heel clicks and treble hop backs that she practices “on the street, at the bus stop, sometimes at the train station, in the living room, on the bus when I’m standing up and there’s no seats.”

Oh, and also in class. In class? That’s right, with her fingers, she explained, demonstrating the way her index finger acts as the left foot and her middle finger as the right.

“I look at the teacher,” Taja chirped, her eyes gleaming mischievously behind wire-rimmed glasses, “and do it at the same time.”

With a student body that is 71 percent Hispanic and 27 percent black, Public School 59 does not seem an obvious home for a thriving Irish dance troupe. And when Caroline Duggan first arrived from Dublin at age 23 to try her hand as a New York City public school music teacher, it wasn’t. Many of her students had never heard of Ireland. Why, they wanted to know, did she talk funny?

Then, to stave off homesickness, Ms. Duggan hung a “Riverdance” poster in her fifth-floor classroom, and one thing led to another. The children pointed to a long-haired dancer on the poster and asked if it was her. No, she laughed, but I could show you a few steps. The impromptu lesson grew into a wildly popular after-school program and, for the first time last year, a trip to Ireland that still inspires dreamy looks among those lucky enough to go.

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4 Life Terms 4 The Bronx Hitman

MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that CYRIL SMITH, a/k/a “Nicholas Smith,” a/k/a “Nicholas Wright,” a/k/a “Mark Nicholas Smith,” a/k/a “Zero,” was sentenced on Friday afternoon in Manhattan federal court to four consecutive terms of life imprisonment for distributing narcotics and committing three separate contract murders in the Bronx between 1998 and 2000.

SMITH, 31, was convicted on May 30, 2007, following a two-week trial before United States District Judge DENISE L. COTE. Specifically, the jury found SMITH guilty of the murder of JAMAL KITT, on July 5, 1998; the murder of TERRENCE CELESTINE, on July 30, 1998; and the murder of SANFORD Malone, on February 14, 2000. SMITH was also convicted of three counts related to his distribution of “crack” cocaine and other drugs between 1998 and
2005. According to the evidence at trial:

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