Under-the-Radar Cultural Icons are Honored at City’s Lore’s 11th Annual People’s Hall of Fame

NEW YORK – City Lore, New York City’s oldest organization devoted to the preservation of urban folk culture, honored seven of New York’s under-the-radar cultural icons today in their 11th annual People’s Hall of Fame ceremony.
The event was held at the Museum of the City of New York and included speeches by and about the honorees, as well as food from various cultures and a bhangra dance lesson in honor of one of the recipients, Rekha Malhotra.
Malhotra, aka “DJ Rekha,” has been hosting a monthly New York City dance party, “Basement Bhangra,” for the past ten years, where attendees dance to music which is a fusion of traditional South Asian melodies, Jamaican rhythms, and hip-hop beats.
“As an Urban Studies major from Queens College, this is the highest honor I could receive,” said Malhotra who is a Flushing, Queens native.
Another native New Yorker being honored was Gerald Menditto, otherwise known as “Mr. Cyclone.” Born and raised in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, Menditto has been the manager of the historic Cyclone roller-coaster for over 30 years.
A self-proclaimed “carney kid,” Menditto began working in Astroland as an electrician in the mid 1970’s and now oversees a crew that operates, inspects, and maintains the 82-year-old landmark.
Menditto’s daughters, Andrea and Nicole, are extremely proud of their father and proud to be from Coney Island, where they say people have a different sense of humor than anywhere else. Although they have both relocated - Andrea to Staten Island and Nicole to New Jersey - they both feel strong ties to the historic theme park.
“No matter where you go, you’ll always meet someone that’s like ‘oh my god, you’re from Coney Island? Your dad runs the Cyclone?’” Nicole said. “I feel that my father’s a famous person.”
Menditto is certainly famous today. Apart from his family members, many people from the Coney Island community have come to see him receive the giant bronze subway token which City Lore calls a ‘token of appreciation.’
Tricia Vita, the Administrative Director of the Coney Island History Project, works directly beneath the Cyclone. She travelled all the way up to 103rd Street and 5th Avenue from Greenwich Village today to watch one of the theme park’s managers be acknowledged.
“Gerry is a great choice because Coney Island is undergoing so much re-development,” said Vita. “The Cyclone is a landmark so it’s not endangered yet, but if Astroland isn’t revitalized to attract more tourists, it could become endangered.”
Vita was excited to meet Menditto’s family and took many photos of the honoree posing with his daughters and granddaughter.
One honoree who is particularly under-the-radar is Dionisio Lind. Lind rings the carillon bells at New York City’s historic Riverside Church, the site of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous anti-Vietnam War sermon and Jackie Robinson’s funeral.
Born in Spanish Harlem in 1931, Lind began his long career as a carillonneur at 18 when his childhood church, St. Martin’s, commissioned the manufacture of a 42-bell Dutch carillon, the only one in the city at the time. Lind and two other men were asked to man the ropes of the larger bells and this marked the beginning of his life-long interest in sound.
He studied piano and became a studio sound producer after graduating from high school. And at the age of 31, Lind’s church paid for him to study at the Royal Carillon School in Belgium, the world’s first carillon school.
Today, Lind handles the largest and heaviest carillon bell ever cast, “the Bourbon,” which sounds the hours from the highest tower of Riverside Church. In fact, it is so high up that Lind is the only person who has been in the bell tower for years.
Caitlin Van Dusen, a 34-year-old blog writer for City Lore who interviewed and wrote an entry on Lind says she is “thrilled” that he was chosen for the People’s Hall of Fame.
“I think he’s making a huge contribution to New York,” Van Dusen said. “It’s under-appreciated because you don’t see him. He’s not a public figure.”
This makes Lind a perfect candidate for City’s Lore’s People’s Hall of Fame because they are not interested in honoring public figures. They are interested in finding unseen New Yorkers who keep the urban culture of the city alive and thriving and bringing them into the limelight to be acknowledged and applauded by the community they serve.

Community Members Fight Against Consolidation of Legal Services

NEW YORK: Community members from north and east Brooklyn gathered outside 350 Broadway today in protest of the consolidation of Legal Services of NYC, one of New York’s largest civil legal associations.
The consolidation would remove the company’s outer-borough branches from their current locations and centralize everything in Manhattan. One of these branches, Brooklyn Corporation A, would be removed from its Williamsburg location where it specializes in neighborhood-oriented services to low-income communities in and around the area.
“Disabled and old people can’t travel so far to get a lawyer,” said Maria Alvarado, 28, of Bushwick. “It’s not fair.”
Many North Brooklyn community leaders as well as the community members themselves are critical of the consolidation plan. They fear that the underserved communities that Brooklyn A serves will not continue to receive the support they currently enjoy if there are no specialized branches within their communities. Many attorneys at Brooklyn A share these feelings.
“Consolidation will take services out of the community and take the interaction between the office and the community away,” said Joanne Koslorsky, an attorney for Brooklyn A. “We at Brooklyn A do not want to be consolidated, and the community doesn’t want us to be either. We don’t want the central office model.”
Legal Services insists “the central office model” will only make services for low-income clients and community organizations more efficient. Many attorneys in their outer-borough offices disagree.
“If you take a legal office out of a community, it’s harder for the people of that community to get help,” said Julie Chartloff, an attorney for Brooklyn A. “These communities have been hit so hard during these times and this will make it even harder on them - our office is very in touch with the community.”
This connection between the office and the clients it serves is exactly what both attorneys and community members feel will be lost in the shuffle if consolidation occurs. Many community members come from low-income, single-parent homes. Many speak almost no English. All are worried that their needs will no longer be a priority if their branch of Legal Services is removed.
“If you believe in legal services for the poor, this will create another bar for them,” Chartloff said.
Consolidation is currently still under discussion within Legal Services and will be voted on at the corporation’s December board meeting.
Many Brooklyn A attorneys are unhappy about the merge, not only because of the repercussions for the clients, but also for themselves. Many started working for Legal Services because they bought into the company’s original philosophy which favored community-based legal services with separate neighborhood branches designed to service different communities. Now, they do not want to be a part of what Legal Services is calling “the Brooklyn Planning Process,” which would completely eliminate this model, making the whole corporation into one law firm.
“This is really a philosophical battle that has tremendous implications for community services.” Koslorsky said.

In Plea for Reform, Immigrants Call on President and God

NEW YORK – When the New York Hispanic Clergy Coalition hosted a vigil in Battery Park today, patrons were lighting candles for Obama, not God.
Coalition members and their supporters are calling for Obama to institute a new law that would prevent deportation of illegal immigrants whose children are US citizens. They believe it is unfair to split up families and prevent parents from staying in the country and working towards citizenship.
Many religious figures were in attendance at the vigil. Among them was Reverend Franklin Simpson, pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in the Bronx.
“The Lord put President Obama in the place he is in today to protect the immigrants of this nation,” declared Simpson to thunderous applause.
The vigil was held in response to increased policing of immigration laws. Attendees wished to urge politicians to loosen up on penalizing employers for hiring illegal immigrants and stop cities and counties from giving police the power to enforce such acts.
The coalition, whose members include Pentecostal clergy and local politicians, has been outspoken about immigration reform in recent weeks. State Senator Ruben Diaz, who is the coalition’s president, accused President Obama of not making immigration rights a priority.
“When Obama was a candidate, he promised he would solve the problem of immigration,” Diaz said. “What’s taking him so long? He said the problem was that the Republicans were in charge. Now the Democrats are in charge. So what’s the problem? We’re here to tell the government to stop the nonsense.”
Reverend Simpson, 65, of the Bronx, is pastor of the Second Eternal Refuge Church in the Bronx. Also a psychiatrist, he asserts that the anger children feel when their parents are deported will translate into more severe problems in adulthood if our laws won’t protect them.
“If you leave children here with no parents, they will have anger towards their country and they will have no direction in life,” he said. “Twenty years down the line, this can be very detrimental for this nation.”
The issue of families being torn apart on the basis of illegal citizenship was the most prevalent issue of the day.
Carmen Ramos, 39, of the Bronx, is an avid supporter of the New York Hispanic Clergy Coalition. She nodded her head vigorously in agreement with the speeches at the vigil and yells out hardy “amens” at the end of all the sermons.
“Separating families just because they’re not legal – that’s the worst thing you can do,” she said. “Those children are going to go into foster care, and do you think they’ll be treated right?”
Ramos thinks that parents who are illegal immigrants and have children who are citizens of the US should be granted automatic citizenship themselves.
Reverend Agustin Quiles, 62, of Coney Island, is pastor of Iglesia Pentecostal de Sesucristo in Brooklyn and also a member of the coalition.
“We are asking the government to give immigrants some kind of relief from persecution, discrimination, and the splitting up of families,” he said. “We are telling our politicians to do the best thing for families. Not all illegal immigrants are criminals. Some of them are hard-working people who pay taxes.”
Many attendees feel disenchanted with Obama, who they thought was more pro-immigrant when running for president than he has actually proved to be since elected.
“We don’t want him [Obama] to forget about immigration reform,” Reverend Simpson said. “Lord, remind him! Go inside his mind and remind him that he, as an immigrant, has to remember his promise to other immigrants, in the name of Jesus.”
If any one in the crowd noticed the Reverend Simpson’s blunder, they kept it to themselves. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawai and is therefore not an immigrant.