Talk Bronx New York

East Bronx City Councilman Jimmy Vacca may be stepping up in that august body.

He is now chairman of the Council’s committee on fire and criminal justice services, but our City Hall consigliere Frank Lombardi tells us the powers that be are pushing to give the hardworking Jimmy the plum job of chairman of the transportation committee.

After finance and land use, it’s the third most powerful committee, drawing heavy media attention.

John Liu leveraged his chairmanship of it to help propel him into the controller’s seat.

Giving Jimmy the committee would give him a chance to take on the MTA, add muscle to the Bronx delegation and help position him for possible higher office - maybe borough president, should Ruben Diaz Jr. decide to step down to run for some citywide office (mayor?) in 2013 when Jimmy’s term expires.

Jimmy was unavailable for comment. Read more..

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Head coach Davina Arroyo led her Broncos squad to their first-ever conference title.

Semifinals Box Score - Kingsborough/Bronx

NEW YORK - Sandra Izaguirre was named Most Valuable Player of the 2008 City University of New York Athletic Conference Community College Women’s Volleyball Championships Monday night at Borough of Manhattan Community College, as she lifted the second-seeded Bronx Community College Broncos to their first-ever conference title with a 3-1 victory (16-25, 25-18, 25-23, 25-21) over the host and top-seeded Panthers.

Joining Izaguirre (seven kills, eight aces in finals) on the all-tournament team were here two teammates, Rocheska Alcantara and Vanessa Brown; BMCC’s Carreen Dowkins; Hostos’ Shianny Martinez; and Kingsborough’s Anastajia Kilina.

Bronx advanced to the finals by toppling Kingsborough by a 3-1 count, while BMCC exacted revenge from the 2007 title match by toppling defending champion and fourth-seeded Hostos, 3-1.

In the final match, BMCC jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first set before the Broncos knotted the frame at 6-all behind three-straight aces by Izaguirre. The teams stayed close midway through the set, before the Panthers ripped off an 11-3 spurt to secure a 1-0 lead in the match; Dowkins and Austria Maldonado (eight kills, five digs) each put down three kills for the hosts during the stretch. Read more..

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Bronx Community College’s new building is intended to match the campus’s original structures. (Robert A.M. Stern Architects image)

Bronx Community College of the City University of New York will break ground Tuesday for a 98,000-square-foot academic building and library by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. The new structure, expected to cost $102-million, is intended to match the college’s other classical-revival buildings, designed by Stanford White more than 100 years ago. Read more..

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The trickle-down effect of plunging stock markets around the world probably means more people will be headed to Bronx Community College to meet Blanche Kellawon.

Kellawon, director of BCC’s Adult Education and Training program, also runs the college’s Displaced Homemakers Program.

The 26-year-old program, created by the New York State Labor Department, helps people - most of them women, many of them single mothers or women who lost their homes or former lifestyles due to divorce, a death in the family, or some other unforeseen circumstance - get education and training so they can find jobs.

“We provide computer training, job readiness activities like résumé writing and cover letter writing, and counseling support,” Kellawon said. “We offer this to anyone who was displaced from their job.”

People like Angela Da Leon, 42, who spoke no English when she immigrated to the Bronx from the Dominican Republic in 1995.

Da Leon - who has two daughters, Ivia Arsola, 19, and Aeyde Arsola, 10 - said that though she found a job at a Washington Heights travel agency, she quickly found her limited English skills meant limited employment.

“I could only help people in Spanish,” she said.

Da Leon was referred to Bronx Community’s BEGIN language program, which teaches English as Second Language, by a city Human Resources Administration counselor in 2006.

Once she completed BEGIN, Da Leon began training with Displaced Homemakers, where she got computer training.

Da Leon was one of several students in the Displaced Homemakers Program who passed an H&R Block tax preparation test, and now works for them as a tax preparer.

She also has continued her studies at Bronx Community, enrolling last summer to seek a degree in radiology.

The program’s affiliation with BCC gives students “the opportunity to be in several programs at the same time,” she said. “They can work toward a General Education Diploma [GED], get training and do job searches.”

Da Leon’s training helped her choose radiology as a career. Read more..

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Erotic artwork bares ‘SoBro’ culture clash

“Hyde Park ” (2008) by South Bronx artist Emily Stedman. Ms. Stedman’s paintings were exhibited at Bruckner Bar and Grilll in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx. The paintings were subsequently removed following local opposition to their erotic nature.

Some creative types streaming across the Harlem River in search of the city’s “next” neighborhood are starting to find their new home to still be more South Bronx than “SoBro.”

At least that’s artist Emily Stedman’s conclusion after her show, “Erotic Watercolors,” was pulled off a neighborhood gallery’s walls when patrons at adjacent restaurant deemed it offensive.

“I expected it to be an anything goes, sky’s-the-limit, open kind of place,” said Stedman, 59, who left her loft in TriBeCa for Mott Haven in December after tiring of hearing people at gallery openings talk more about real estate prices than art on the walls.

“I’ve been in New York a long time and there’s always a neighborhood where people move to — a Williamsburg or a Long Island City, and it seemed like Mott Haven was going to be the next place. I don’t know if that is still going to happen.”

Her show features soft watercolors of couples or threesomes in various states of embrace. The opening earlier this month at the Bruckner Gallery attracted dozens of art patrons.

But the owner of the Bruckner Bar and Grill, a hip new dining spot which owns the gallery, ordered the show to come down after some of the neighborhood old guard — who rented out the space for golden wedding anniversaries and the like — considered the paintings pornographic.

“A lot of young people have moved here, but you still have a lot of old timers coming in for parties or what not,” said Alex Abeles, the bar’s owner. “We didn’t want to take it down but you could see that it collided with the ideas of people.”

Stedman, who has shown at the Brooklyn Museum and at galleries in Chelsea, said she was shocked that the show was closed, and added that it was hard to imagine something like it happening in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

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