Talk Bronx New York

Bronx Hospitality, Unnoticed by the Tourist Guides

The folks who published AAA’s 2008 New York tour book had a hard time recommending any hotels in the Bronx. They could only find one, in fact, a rather bland-looking building a mile north of Yankee Stadium by a service road to the Major Deegan Expressway

Hey, the hotel fared better than restaurants, since the automobile club’s guide does not list a single place to eat in the Bronx. As far as the guide goes, Arthur Avenue, Morris Park Avenue or City Island do not exist.

This 45-room Howard Johnson is the only hotel listed for the Bronx in AAA’s 2008 New York tour book.

It is an odd distinction for that lone hotel, a Howard Johnson of no particular architectural distinction. And given the borough’s long battles against hot sheet motels that rent rooms by the hour, a casual observer might assume this place was no different.

But it is a real hotel catering to real tourists. One day last week, the parking lot was filled with cars from out of state, most belonging to guests who had come to see the Yankees play Cleveland. Retirees from Oklahoma and families from upstate New York eagerly hauled suitcases upstairs as they prepared to change into baseball jerseys and take in a game.

Chadd Morris and Brandon Bebout had driven eight hours from Cleveland to score game tickets. They asked a local police officer for the nearest hotel and were directed to the HoJo.

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Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion greets New York Army National Guardsmen. 

Bronx Dominican Heritage Celebration 

In case no one has noticed, Dominicans are the fastest-growing ethnic community in the Bronx.

And with gentrification pushing into the Dominican-American stronghold in upper Manhattan, large numbers of the Caribbean island natives who’ve made New York their home continue to cross into the Bronx.

The 2000 census showed 133,000 foreign-born and American-born Dominicans living in the Bronx. In 2005, more than 200,000 Dominicans called the borough home. Although the next census is in 2010, the federal American Community Survey shows Dominicans making the largest population gains in the borough of any immigrant group.

Last Wednesday night, a number of the borough’s Dominicans gathered in the Rotunda at the Bronx County Building to hold a Bronx Dominican Heritage Celebration as part of Dominican Heritage Month, with colorful dancing and singing and, of course, a few speeches about Dominican pride and accomplishment.

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  The Bronx of the ’70s and ’80s was depicted in “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” a best-selling novel by Tom Wolfe.

  Tom Wolfe in 1987.

 Changes in the city in recent decades are illustrated by views of Hewitt Place in the Bronx around 1979, top, and today.

No Longer the City of ‘Bonfire’ in Flames 

Twenty years ago, the acid-penned journalist Tom Wolfe unleashed his first novel, “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Skewering everyone from self-absorbed Wall Street millionaires to hucksterish street politicians, the sprawling satire painted a picture of a New York declining inexorably into racial conflict, crime and greed.

The novel tapped, to electrifying effect, a vein of anxiety that defined 1980s New York. From the moment it was published in November 1987, new episodes in the drama of the metropolis seemed to unfold like chapters in Mr. Wolfe’s story.

Four white youths from Howard Beach, Queens, were already on trial for beating a black man who fled to his death in traffic on the Belt Parkway.

That same month, a black teenager named Tawana Brawley, who was found smeared with feces in a garbage bag, said she had been assaulted by white men with badges, sparking a prosecution that later collapsed when it was determined that she had fabricated the story.

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