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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.

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Spierman, an affable and enthusiastic man in his 60s, who is an adjunct professor of music literature at Hunter College, started the Bronx Opera Company with a group of friends in the fall of 1967. Their intention, he said, was to gather music lovers together and give their neighbors in the borough a bit of culture through performances at community centers. They did that—and more. This Sunday, at a Riverdale fund-raising gala, what has become a cultural institution in the borough will celebrate its 40th anniversary.

“We were all musical devotees and basically had an idea that there was not a huge amount of cultural activity around the borough,” Spierman said, as No. 4 trains came and went outside the window behind him. “The object was to put on an opera or two and to have a good time.”

With an initial investment of $400, Spierman and his friends launched their pioneering 1967-1968 season with a performance of Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” on Nov. 24, 1967. Today, as the company prepares for its 40th May season, it relies on an annual budget of $270,000 to provide for a staff of about 120 that includes an orchestra, a chorus, set designers and stage hands.

“It’s peanuts for an opera,” said Spierman, who takes no salary for his work as the company’s artistic director. “I bet the Metropolitan Opera’s Con Edison bill is bigger than our budget.

“There is a certain insanity in doing this. Opera is a phenomenon that involves all of the arts if you think about it.”

Because opera requires so much—an orchestra, performers, sets and more—it’s difficult, Spierman said, when certain funding streams, be they public or private, dry up. Losing 25 percent of the company’s budget is almost insurmountable, he said, because he would have to make the difficult choice of deciding what to cut back. While Spierman said he could chose to make cuts to some of the company’s educational outreach programs, he said he would hate to do so because he’s committed to teaching people about opera.

“It is by nature a more expensive venture and takes a great amount of coordination,” Spierman said, explaining that about 40 percent of the company’s budget comes from corporate donors, foundations and contributions from individuals. Another 40 percent comes from the city and the state, but in these uncertain economic times, he worries that it may become increasingly difficult for the company to survive and thrive.

“What we don’t have is that huge funder who is extremely affluent,” Spierman said. “We have no one we can call and say, ‘We’re $50,000 short. Can you help us out?’”

Still, through the generosity of private donations and the continued support from state and city government, Spierman said, the Bronx Opera is able to mount at least two opera performances each year. The season begins in January with what Spierman calls “more obscure” opera performances and continues in May with more traditional pieces. Read more..

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26-Year-Old Man Is Killed in the Bronx

A 26-year-old man was fatally shot yesterday on a Bronx street by men who drove up in a car, pulled a handgun out of the trunk and shot him in the back, the police said.

The victim, whom the police did not identify, was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where he was pronounced dead, the police said.

The shooting occurred shortly after 6 p.m. on Marion Avenue near Poe Park in the Bedford Park neighborhood. The police said that a black car with three or four people inside stopped where the man was standing.

Two of the men left the car and opened the trunk, and one of them removed what the police described as a black and silver handgun. The police said they did not recover a weapon.

The men approached the victim, shot him, then fled in the black car, the police said.

SOURCE: NYTimes.com

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