Talk Bronx New York

Diego Medina’s plywood sculpture ‘Aurora’ has remained free of graffiti and other vandalism during the six months it has been in front of the Bronx River Art Center in West Farms Square.

       Six months, and counting.

It has been that long, and the plywood sculpture in front of the Bronx River Art Center in West Farms Square miraculously has remained graffiti-free.

While storefronts and subway trains around it have been defaced with all manner of tags and symbols, nothing has appeared on the unpainted sculpture.

“It’s pretty amazing. I think it’s great,” said Jose Ruiz, the 34-year-old gallery director and curator for the Bronx River Art Center.

“I never could have imagined that it would last this long without being tagged,” he said. “We felt that the community was changing and so we felt it would be respected, but it was an unknown. We took a risk to do it and it has paid off.”

The 14-foot, multifaceted sculpture, titled “Aurora,” is a tagger’s dream.

It has six unpainted, interlocking geometric shapes and was inspired by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1930 poem, “La Aurora de Nueva York” (Dawn in New York).

It was formally unveiled to the public in July and will remain on display in the square until June.

Even a sign that the city Department of Transportation placed in front of the sculpture stating its participation in the project didn’t last.

Although the sign was bolted to the ground, someone made off with it about a week after it was placed. Read more..

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Habitat for Humanity helps install a green roof on the Fox-Leggett Co-op Apartments in the South Bronx.

Habitat for Humanity is breaking new ground - unveiling its first-ever “green roof” in the South Bronx on Wednesday.

The 2,400-square-foot carpet of flowering sedum plants atop the Fox-Leggett Co-op Apartments will insulate the building from the summer sun and absorb an inch of rainfall.

“Green roofs save money and are healthier,” said Josh Lockwood, executive director of Habitat for Humanity/New York City.

“These are such critical elements for low-income families, especially in the Bronx, which has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the five boroughs.”

Barbara Vargas, who is buying a three-bedroom Habitat apartment for herself and her two kids, spent the morning placing sedums in 4 inches of shale on top of asphalt and a root barrier made of rigid board.

“You can hang out with friends up here,” said Vargas, 41, who now lives in the West Farms section of the Bronx. “It will give them something to talk about.”

Eleven volunteers from Delta Air Lines helped on the green roof installation, and the airline is kicking in $120,000 to sponsor one Habitat apartment. Read more..

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An engraving of the opening race at Jerome Park on June 8, 1868. For 135 years, New York City has been dutifully paying 7 percent annual interest on bonds which financed construction of a road to the park, now a reservoir in The Bronx. On March 1, the owner of one of them is entitled to come forward and collect its face value: $1,000Anyone who has failed to keep track of a winning lottery ticket for all of 12 months may want to consider the efforts of 39 bondholders who have been safekeeping valuable, tissue-thin, New York City securities since shortly after the Civil War.

Next month, one of the bonds, issued in 1868 and thought to be one of the oldest active municipal bonds in the country, will come due. And the city stands ready to retire the debt incurred when Winston Churchill’s grandfather came up with the idea of building a road to one of the nation’s first racetracks, which he had opened in what is now the Bronx.

For 135 years, New York City has been dutifully paying 7 percent annual interest on the bonds, which financed construction of the road. On March 1, the owner of one of them is entitled to come forward and collect its face value: $1,000. Read more..

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At Busy South Bronx Pool, an Unlikely Team Keeps the Peace

Crotona Pool’s manager, Kevin Walker, calls everyone out of the water at the end of the morning session. The Bronx pool has up to 1,400 visitors a day.

James Harrigan, 21, an ex-gang member who is one of a group of young pool volunteers, raised a flag he made.

He is known by the name tattooed on his left arm: Scorpio. He favors diamond earrings and designer sunglasses. He takes pills to control his angry outbursts, and sometimes carries a pistol, a .22 or a .45, depending on his mood.

On this day, on the street outside the Crotona Pool in the Bronx, where hundreds of children wait to get inside, he wears the earrings and sunglasses, but does not have a gun.

“Don’t move!” he shouts when a boy in navy trunks tries to tiptoe to the front of the line of sugar-fueled children, some wrapped in SpongeBob SquarePants towels, others wearing neon flip-flops. The boy gets back in line.

Scorpio, who is known by this name, is Terrance Carpenter, 26. He is one of a dozen or so young men who volunteer unofficially each week at the pool, which sits amid an area long fractured by hostilities among gangs like the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings. Some of the volunteers are gang members, but others have turned their backs on crime.

Crotona Pool was one of several huge public pools to open in 1936 in New York. Built by Robert Moses with financing from the Works Progress Administration, they were heralded as some of the most remarkable public recreational facilities ever constructed in the United States.

But the pool, like the park it abuts, went into steep decline starting in the 1960s, as middle-class residents fled the surrounding neighborhoods — Morrisania, Crotona, East Tremont, West Farms — and poverty and violence took hold. Today the area has come far from its worst days, thanks in part to a citywide decline in crime and in part to the efforts of residents. The young volunteers, some of whom have contributed to their neighborhood’s violence, now seek to help keep the peace, at least in the neutral zone of the pool.

The volunteers have no enforcement powers; their duties are not clearly defined. But at the enormous pool full of excited — sometimes overexcited — children and teenagers, they provide extra ears and eyes for the officials charged with maintaining order. When the children violate the no-diving rule, they scold them. When horseplay gets too rowdy, they tone it down. When they see loiterers looking for trouble on the streets outside the pool, they swagger over to ward them off.

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