Spring Trends 2010

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The Luxury Hotel and the Homeless Shelter: Two Sides of Life in the East Village

The Bowery Hotel opened in 2007 on the Bowery, an avenue historically known as New York City’s ”skid row.” The rooms range from $425 to $1200 a night and have been home to A-list celebrities and socialites alike. The hotel is a symbol of the gentrification of the East Village.
Although The Bowery Hotel received a positive review in The New York Times travel section, one of the “cons” listed was “questionable neighbors.”
The “questionable neighbors” are the residents of Project Renewal, an all-male homeless shelter located directly next door to the luxury hotel.
“It’s strange bedfellows,” said Wayne Pete, a janitor at Project Renewal. “But that’s the pulse of the city. We all have to learn to co-exist. We have mosques next door to Jewish synagogues, blacks next to whites, poor people next to rich people.”
The shelter did not affect first-time Bowery Hotel guest Sarah Katz, 29, of San Diego, in the least. In fact she was completely unaware that it was even there. And even after learning of its existence, she claimed to feel no less safe than she did before.
“There’s a lot of service people at the hotel,” she said. “And they make you feel safe. Besides, I expect that in New York City you will find everything on every corner. It’s part of the culture of the city.”
Anthony, 26, a resident of the East Village, has been a doorman at the Bowery Hotel for two and a half years. He says that Katz is not alone in her ignorance of Project Renewal because many guests do not notice it, and even those who do, never express concern to him.
“A lot of people who stay here are in the entertainment industry,” he said. “So they’re in their own world and not concerned with who’s next door.”
But co-existing is not always easy. And for the residents of the East Village, this may present more of a problem than for the hotel guests, who are only in the neighborhood temporarily.
“Two years ago there was a surge of homeless people in the neighborhood and they were really prevalent on my block,” said Simone Frasier, 34, a five year resident of the East Village. “They would pass out in my vestibule and I don’t want that because it’s my home and I paid a lot of money for it. I want to feel safe there.”
Residents of Project Renewal are aware of how they are perceived by their neighbors.
“There’s a lot of residents in the neighborhood who are paying so much money to live here and they don’t want the shelter here,” said a resident of Project Renewal known as “Lover Boy.”
According to Cooper Square Community Housing Specialist, Brandon Kielbasa, the gentrification of the East Village has caused an increase in homelessness in the area.
“We have seen more people coming in for emergency housing because the gentrification is removing affordable housing every day” he said.
Kielbasa is exposed to the tensions of the neighborhood from both sides of the fence. He spends a lot of time fielding phone calls from unhappy tenants, such as Frasier, claiming that homeless people are sleeping in the vestibules of their buildings and making them feel unsafe.
But Frasier feels tremendous guilt at the dwindling resources available to the homeless in her neighborhood. She recently learned that the Salvation Army around the corner from her apartment, which also served as a group home, is closing and re-opening as a trendy sushi restaurant. She struggles with how things that benefit her often hurt those less fortunate in her neighborhood.
“It’s an inner conflict because it makes you feel really selfish,” she said. “The value of my property is going to increase while the value of these peoples’ lives is going to decrease.”
Frasier walks by the Bowery Hotel and Project Renewal nearly every morning on her way to work. She is always struck by the bizarre juxtaposition of the two.
“It makes me wonder how people can walk by and see this luxury hotel right next door to a place where people have nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said. “How is that okay? I think about it every time I walk by, and I walk by all the time.”
Although Anthony insists that guests are not warned about Project Renewal because there have never been any safety issues resulting from it’s being there, he acknowledges that sometimes guests do notice their neighbors.
“The guests that notice it know that there are people a lot less fortunate then them next door,” he said. “But they still don’t know exactly what the building is.”
Many residents of the East Village are not bothered by the homeless shelter in their neighborhood at all. In fact, many believe it is important that it remain in its place because it represents the history of the neighborhood.
“Traditionally, this is a place where poor people come,” Kielbasa said. There’s a socialization to homelessness here. The East Village has a reputation for being on the fringes of society. Even the police are more lenient than in other areas of the city.”
Karen McWharten, 52, vice president of the co-op board at 99 East 4th Street and a 12 year resident of the East Village, agrees.
“The homeless shelter is a part of the neighborhood,” she said. “I think it’s appropriate that there would be one here. It’s part of the history.”
Hubie, 55, of Harlem, has been living at Project Renewal for ten days. He lost his job two weeks ago and has been unable to find affordable housing any where in the city. He believes the guests at The Bowery Hotel are afraid that they will get robbed by residents at the shelter and acknowledges that sometimes they do.
Anthony remembers one specific incident when a hotel guest forgot his cell phone outside and it was picked up by one of the shelter’s residents a minute later.
“The guy never got his phone back, but his attitude was like ‘well, I left it there.’”
Pete insists that the some of the feelings of discomfort go both ways.
“During the day, everyone acts like nice citizens,” he said. “But come around here at night and you’ll see what really goes on. The people in the hotel are drunk by, what time is happy hour? 5 o’clock? And they’re crazy. So the drunk people at the hotel are afraid of the people at the shelter, and the people at the shelter are afraid of the drunk people at the hotel.”
Carlos Cooper, 40, has been in the shelter system in New York City for years. He likes Project Renewal on East 3rd Street and Bowery because he thinks the Residents Assistants and case workers really care about homeless people. However he does feel that at times, his next door neighbors are condescending.
“You get a lot of people next door that spend a lot of money to stay at the hotel and they don’t want us here,” he said. “They think we’re low-lives, but we’re human beings. We’re just trying to get on our feet.”
However, Cooper has had some positive interactions with the Bowery Hotel guests as well.
“I’ve sat outside and smoked a cigarette with Cameron Diaz, Lindsay Lohan, and Keanu Reeves,” he said. “Cameron Diaz, she’s a beautiful person.”

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.