On the Stroll

After 20 years of working on Wall Street, Chris Arnade walked away in 2012, disillusioned with the business. He kept walking, all the way to the Bronx, with a camera in his hand. In Hunts Point, he got to know and photograph the other humans of New York, the ones at the margins--prostitutes and drug addicts, living in poverty. Collected in a series called "Faces of Addiction," the images are both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Arnade has also photographed the pigeon keepers of New York, the people of Brownsville and East New York, the tricked-out bikes of New York, and much more, including the transgender sex workers of Jackson Heights, Queens. When we look to the Meatpacking District and wonder where did all those girls go -- they went here.


all photos by Chris Arnade

The following text is excerpted from an essay by Chris Arnade, from his flickr page:

At 4:00 am the 7 train over Roosevelt Avenue provides the rhythm for Jackson Heights, Queens. Each train spills out people from the late shift and fills with others going to the early shift.

The closing of the bars brings another rush: Drunken men to the sidewalks and hack cabs to the streets.

It is also the time the transsexuals start working, selling sex. They stand out: Tall, heavily made-up black and Hispanics dressed for show. They cluster about one intersection flirting with passing men and dodging the desperately drunk ones.

Their corner has two all-night bakeries where they rest. The young women working the bakeries know all of them; they have their drinks ready without the need to ask.



Jessica sits and sips her coffee. “Why 4:00 am? Because the men are so drunk they can kiss me and still pretend they are not gay.” Across from her is Claudia dabbing makeup on her face. “Hispanic men have to be all macho. Being gay is a no-no. This late, perhaps nobody will know, not their family. Even they can pretend.”

At the next table sit two men in dirty work-clothes eating plates of rice and meat.

None of the Johns say they are gay. “The men out here are in the closet or they don’t want to believe what they really like. They look for us to say they’re looking for a woman, but they know what it really is. There are more closeted gay people than we know.”

The transsexuals do not consider themselves gay. They are women who like men. “I am not gay. I am a woman. I just want what every other woman wants, a tall white handsome guy like you. Do me a favor, forget that camera and give me a big kiss, honey.”



They almost all come from very modest backgrounds and from places where homosexuality is not only shunned but a sin. They knew they were different early.

Desire, from Jamaica, knew when she was six. “My dad hated who I was. Jamaicans hate fags.” It took until the age of sixteen, when she went to jail and was happy for the attention of the other men that she was able to come out. “Guys started liking me in jail.”

Jessica from Puerto Rico had the same story. “I always knew I was different, from five. I did not want my penis. I wanted what the girls had. I came here because it’s better to be this way in New York than where I come from.”



Chris Arnade has since left New York City. He wrote an essay for The Awl about what he'll miss about Brooklyn. You can find his photos on Flickr.

Parkchester Mom and Pops

VANISHING

In the Parkchester section of the Bronx, an entire block of mom and pops -- run by dozens of small business people -- are about to vanish, thanks to one $15 million development deal. The Real Deal reported last month: "The buyers are planning to demolish all structures and will likely construct one large building on the site."


Google street view

Local resident Nicholas Farfan alerted me to the story and kindly supplied photos, quotes, and reports from just a few of the many business people who are being pushed out with little notice.


all photos by Nicholas Farfan

Delia Velovic has owned Leonard's Bake Shop for over 37 years.

"I'm not ready to move," she told Farfan. "I don't want to go somewhere else. This is where we started. We're an old-fashioned bakery. We can't compete."

She explained how her former landlord, Mr. Eisenberg, allowed the bakery to operate out of the back of the building after a car crashed into the storefront. He didn't even charge them rent during the repairs. But Mr. Eisenberg has since died and his heir decided to sell.



Glenn Velger owns Harmony Records, a shop that's been in business here since 1956.



Farfan asked him if he'll try selling records online once his brick-and-mortar business is demolished. Velger responded that he prefers to work and interact with his customers directly.



Velger's shelves are jam packed with vinyl treasures. "It's all about the search," he said.



Here's Alonzo Monroy, who runs the Shoe Repair shop. (On the sign outside, the name PETE'S remains as a ghost, but Pete is long gone.) The eviction letter he got last month came as a complete surprise.





And there's Stephen Asare and Joseph Assimor, employees of the Lady Afrique International Market, specializing in African and Caribbean products. A number of the businesses here cater to the African and Caribbean communities.



There are many more small businesses in this block-sized cluster of low-rise buildings -- pizza places, 99-cent joints, hair salons, a thrift shop, a gas station. The buildings may not be pretty to look at, but they provide space for people to make a living and have a home in this city, offering necessary things for everyday New Yorkers.

News 12 in the Bronx reported on this story last week. ZP Realty, who took over in April according to News 12, handed letters to all the business people last month, giving them only 30 days to vacate. That means 38 mom and pops must get out by June 30. Watch the heartbreaking video here.

Join #SaveNYC and tell the city: Enough is enough.


(The addresses are 1609 and 1623 Unionport Road, 1897 Gerlain Street, 1578-1592 White Plains Road and 1880 East Tremont Avenue.)

Kingsbridge in Chains

Reader Eric sends in the following report from Kingsbridge, around Broadway and 236th St.:

Since the Stella D'oro cookie factory was demolished, all these fancy chain-store shopping centers have been popping up, and slowly the little businesses are leaving.


All photos by Eric Bell: BJ's and T Mobile

The Bronx Ale House moved into the neighborhood a few years ago. With great food, craft/local beers, it's the classic first wave of change in the neighborhood, the one really nice restaurant in an otherwise kind of rundown area.

Riverdale Crossing is the shopping complex with all chain stores going in. There's been scaffolding up there for quite some time. Before that, there were just some bodega-type stores.


Bank of America

Just south of that, Broadway Carpet just recently closed up. Don't know if their lease wasn't renewed, or if this building is going to become part of the Riverdale Crossing complex. They were a warehouse/wholesale carpet dealer. I was able to carpet my apartment with really nice carpet from leftovers from one of their commercial jobs for very cheap.

Just south of this is the Bridge Tavern, a little dive bar, connected to the Police Precinct block. I can see that vanishing soon.

Across the street is Loehmann's which is currently being demolished. There's a sign up that it will soon become a storage place and some other shops.


Loehmann's demolished

Back on the west side of Broadway you have Stack's Tavern, which looked nice at one point on Forgotten NY, but now looks abandoned. The Tavern sits on an unusually large plot of land. I had a real estate attorney friend of mine do some investigating and he found out that it was just sold in September. I was surprised to find out that Mr. Stack actually owned the land and he sold it to a development company (Broadway Development LLC) for over 3 million dollars. Solid retirement money. So I imagine that will soon become a new shopping complex.


Stack's Tavern, closed

Keep traveling south on Broadway and you have Garden Gourmet, a very good local supermarket that just tripled in size. And a new fancy-looking lounge, which claims to be the sexiest. I don't know how sexy you can be at the end of a dead-end street next to 87, Staples, and batting cages.

The rest of Broadway until you get down to 230th Street is what you'd expect from Kingsbridge under an elevated train. A lot of discount stores and restaurants. Until you see the ugliest shopping center that's been built in history. I call it Grey.

This building looks like a prison. It's uninviting, there's only one small entrance, and it's only filled with chain stores. Soon they're adding a Starbucks, because we can never have enough of those and I guess people were getting tired of the Dunkin Donuts across the street.

A Bronx Morning

Ubu.com found this amazing artifact of old New York. Made in 1931, it shows 11 minutes of life on a Bronx street.

From the text:  

"A Bronx Morning is a 1931 avant-garde film by American filmmaker Jay Leyda (1910–1988). Described as 'city symphony,' the eleven-minute European style film recorded a Bronx street in New York City before it is crowded with traffic... In 2004, A Bronx Morning was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.'"



Visit Ubu to view the film.

Bronx Gentrification

This past weekend, the Bronx Documentary Center organized and hosted the first annual Bronx Gentrification Conference. From past experiences at similar events, I expected a small crowd, but the place was packed to the rafters (turned away at the door, people stood outside in the cold to listen). From past experiences at similar events, I expected a docile group, but the people were angry, passionate, and desperate to be heard.



First, the panel made their opening remarks. It was, unfortunately, an all-white panel, made up mostly of people who worked in preservation and development. One man, an employee of HPD, talked about how his organization hasn't done much to bring in luxury development, but "we're pushing," because "we believe in economic diversity," and that the local community boards have been "demanding higher quality retail...national chains that best serve everyone in the community." The audience began to groan. But when he said, "If the definition of gentrification is about displacement, then, so far, gentrification hasn't happened in the South Bronx," one audience member shouted, "That's the stupidest statement I've ever heard!"

And we were off.

A mix of races and classes, the audience was a diverse group of concerned citizens from the Bronx and all over the city. People wanted to be included in the discussion, to organize, to get involved. One woman told the panel, "There's tons of us out here that you refuse to meet with because you don't like what we say and it makes you sweat." Young people asked what they can do to build community and provide political education to teens. A man from the East Village talked about the invasion of chains there, and asked why local community boards in the Bronx would want them. Audience members shouted answers: "Because they don't live here!" and "They don't know any better!"

Some people talked about wanting the benefits of gentrification without the displacement. One local woman who wanted to shop locally asked for ways to educate the mom-and-pops on how to do better business--for example, to sell fresh instead of rotten vegetables--and to "strengthen them so they can withstand a wave of gentrification." One working-class man bemoaned the loss of "a nice jazz cafe" that shuttered due to hiked rent and was replaced by, not an upscale business, but a pawn shop. "We want a nice cafe," he shouted. To which another man responded, "You put a nice cafe in my neighborhood, it's getting a brick through the window!"


photo: Bronx Documentary Center

People told stories about their decades in the South Bronx, growing up in public housing, rescuing abandoned buildings, surviving, going to college, coming back. They talked about their fear of being priced out--and their fear of "SoBro" becoming the next new East Harlem.

The demographics of East Harlem and the South Bronx, explained the moderator, were the same until just four or five years ago. Now they're completely different. If you go there today, he said, "you'll think you're in Paris."

While some believe the Bronx will be the last to gentrify, it's never too soon to get organized. As Michael Kamber, founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, told the Daily News, “the Bronx is in a unique position because there has not been widespread gentrification. It hasn’t really happened on a large scale, and we want to be ahead of the conversation.”