The Yankees may get the attention, but softball fields like this one in Pelham Bay Park are where the real Bronx legends are made. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

As many older observers tell it, softball in the Bronx was most popular in the mid-1980s, when games could attract crowds of hundreds of people and wagers on various teams ranged up to $10,000 on a single contest.

One softball team had a particular penchant for taking that cash in those years: an aptly-named crew known as The Bandits. As their veteran players tell it, their team was so unstoppable that it had to travel to Brooklyn, Connecticut, or New Jersey to find a game. They once changed their team name to be admitted to a league that wouldn’t have accepted them otherwise, for fear they would trounce the competition.

Today most of the original Bandits are in their 50s. One is 65. But the guys can’t stay away from the diamond. The team reunited last year and is now in the midst of its second season this century, playing games every Saturday in the Bronx Stars league at Pelham Bay Park. The Bandits today are a combination of veterans from the squads of the 1980s and a handful of 20-something sluggers. While the younger guys man the outfield to do most of the legwork, the older players yell the loudest and seem to collectively hang on every pitch. For them, donning the grey-and-black jerseys on Saturdays is about a break from wives and girlfriends in favor of time with sons and old friends. It’s about taking pleasure in those non-stop insults and chuckling over a beer after the game ends on a sunny afternoon. And if they finish ahead of the 23 other teams in the league, so be it. They were division winners last year and lost in the playoffs to the eventual champions.

Yankee Stadium may get the most attention, but for many Bronxites the real baseball happens on fields like the ones where The Bandits play. Here are the characters that bring those fields alive.

The Survivor

Cheo Romero woke up with a hole in his throat, unable to breathe or talk, with surgical wounds on his neck and leg, scared, depressed, suicidal, a feeding tube poking out of his abdomen and an IV needle in his arm. That was February 2009, days after doctors had discovered a bulging tumor in Romero’s jaw. That was the beginning of the battle.

Cancer Survivor Cheo Romero has returned to the softball field, hoping to add another framed championship jersey to his collection. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Next came several months of an experimental treatment that combined radiation and chemotherapy. The former bodyguard and Bandits centerfielder spent drugged-up day after drugged-up day in the hospital, unable to go home because he couldn’t bear the pain.

Romero’s people were fixtures in the hospital room during those hard months: his ex-fiance and mother-in-law – both still close to him when the cancer was diagnosed – his son Rolando, and his softball teammates. Manager Edgar Aviles came to see him several times a week.

“Sometimes I’d go to sleep and I’d wake up and he’d be in the chair,” Romero remembered. “He used to tell guys, ‘I don’t think Cheo’s going to make it.’”

Making it wasn’t a sure thing. Doctors had warned Romero that the even if the emergency surgery needed to remove the tumor was effective, it could leave him eating out of a straw or through a feeding tube for the rest of his life. Few imagined he would play softball again.

But Romero had other ideas. He would surprise his nurses by disconnecting his own IV and feeding tube to walk around the hospital for exercise. He did pull-ups on the chain above his bed, startling other patients.

Romero, who is 51, hasn’t returned to work, but he lives for Saturdays. Now he not only chews some of his meals, but wraps up that feeding tube so it doesn’t impede his ability to pitch. He stays away from playing the outfield or running the bases, but he can still swing the bat. Best of all Romero’s cancer is in remission.

“I used to look out my window and cry,” Romero said. “Now I’m playing every game.”

The Manager

The Bandits's dugout is a rowdy place, but there's no question manager Edgar Aviles is the man in charge. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

When Edgar Aviles broke his ankle sliding into third base, his teammates thought of one thing: revenge.

The Bandits’ dugout was a dangerous place to be in the 1980s. The team, energized for softball games that, at that time, they played throughout the week, thrived on more than just verbal jibes. The guys were fans of the World Wrestling Federation and wouldn’t be shy to throw an elbow and catch a teammate off-guard.

As Bandits member Frankie Rodriguez remembers it, Edgar Aviles was among the most formidable wrestling opponents. But this time, as Aviles lay prone waiting for an ambulance, he couldn’t fight back. And with the rest of his body intact, it was open season for the rest of the Bandits.

“While he was laying on the floor, everybody was doing elbow drops on him, eye gouges, whatever it took just to get back at him,” Rodriguez recalled. As the ambulance pulled away, the team flagged it down. The paramedics stopped, “thinking they were going to give him something. The guy opens the door, and (a Bandits player) came and eye gouged him again. He left (for) the hospital in pain, but he was laughing, he was laughing the whole way.

“I mean it’s amazing, how you going to be there with a broken ankle and be able to laugh at things like that? That will tell you the kind of guy he is,” Rodriguez said.

It’s Aviles who keeps order amidst the trash-talking personalities in the dugout. After decades of strict managing (he once walked off with the player’s cash after it took a threat of forfeiting the game to get them to pay an umpire’s fee), he has earned their loyalty. The men on the team may call the shots at their day jobs, but everyone knows who sets the lineup on Saturday.

Edgar Aviles memorialized The Bandits on his left arm. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

“Today I showed up late,” said Gilbert Rivera, 55, on a recent morning in Pelham Bay Park. “He’s not going to start me.”

Aviles, whose son Mike is an infielder for the Kansas City Royals, says he’s more relaxed than in the Bandits’ earlier days. At 50, he’s stopped working as a customer service representative at a bank due to a heart condition. He looks forward to the games at the park to keep him occupied.

Today, “we come out to enjoy ourselves, goof around, talk about the old times,” Aviles said. “It’s not big deal if we win or not.”

Yet when Aviles talks about how the Bandits finished second-place in their division last year against a field of younger teams, it’s hard to miss a sense of satisfaction.

The Mummy

During the week, Milton Pacheco is, in his own words, “The Broker” of real estate in the Bronx. On Saturdays, he’s something else.

“They call me ‘The Mummy’ because it takes me about 45 minutes to get wrapped up. I gotta wrap up my ankles, wrap up my knees, wrap up my back,” Pacheco said while preparing to pitch on a recent Sunday. “Bunch of assholes, anyways,” he added with a smile.

Milton Pacheco, 65, is the oldest Bandits player. Teammates call him 'The Mummy.' (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Pacheco, who is 65, is regarded as the senior member of the Bandits squad. He remembers how the team used to have to travel outside the Bronx to find opponents. Once, the Bandits changed their team name so that they could be admitted to a league that wouldn’t have accepted them for fear that they would trounce the competition.

“We had a reputation, nobody wanted to play us,” he said. “Now we’re old and everybody wants to play us, but we’re still pretty good.”

The team’s competitive fire hasn’t subsided with age. Pacheco was tossed from a game in April after arguing balls and strikes from the pitcher’s mound. His replacement, Joe Capello, got berated for giving up too many walks. Said teammate Gilbert Rivera after the game: “he led their team in RBIs.”

Indeed, after the game is when the real fun starts. The guys sit on benches in the shade, sipping beer and hurling insults. They dissect the most recent game, pointing out that as older guys, they can’t make unforced mistakes. They discuss a team trip to Florida. Everyone is home. What’s better than sitting in the park talking baseball?

“Sometimes we don’t see each other for six, seven months. You’ll meet up again in April, hang out, have a little brew after the game, you know what I mean?” Pacheco said. “We spend the whole day here. You look forward to it.”

Said Rodriguez: “I do anything I can to be part of the team. I keep score, I coach the bases, just to be here. And there’s a lot of guys like that … It’s in your blood.

“They’re gonna bury me in the mound when I die,” he added, laughing. “That’s the way it is.”

“You have put our backs to the wall,” said Ethel Walsh. “We are living on fixed incomes that don’t go up.” Walsh has been retired for nearly 12 years. Reliant on Social Security benefits, she says the increase will take even more money out of her purse. Housing expenses increase by an average of 3 percent every year. The proposed increase in water rates would add much more to that rate.

With nothing but glasses of cool clear New York City drinking water as a distraction, Mehul Patel and Alan Moss listened intently and took notes. Both were appointed as voting members of the Water Board, and along with four other members, they will decide whether the increase will be implemented by the Department of Environmental Protection. The Water Board sets the water and sewer rates for the city.

Walsh says her bill has gone up every year, so much so that she doesn’t even look at it anymore. Her husband, James, refused to attend Thursday night. “He says this is a done deal,” Walsh said. Walsh thinks her testimony won’t really change the panelists minds, still she wanted to make sure the Water Board understood her anger. “Shame on you, shame on, shame on you,” Walsh shouted, jabbing her pointed finger at the panel.

Voting members of the water board, Mehul Patel and Alan Moss listen to residents complaints against the proposed water rate increase(Lynsey Chutel/The Bronx Ink)

“You are the group of guys who do the voting,” Tony Cannata said. “I’m asking you to really listen, to consider what people said.” As president of the Waterbury-La Sale Community Association, Cannata attended an earlier hearing in April and was skeptical that the voting members would pay attention to community needs.

Michael Vivian waved his bill at the panel. He received it on the same day he received the notice of the public hearing. With a water bill of $80.86 for his 47.32 cubic-foot water consumption, the increase will make his bill just under $90 a month in 2011.

Water rates are already high in the Bronx because homes are larger in the borough, according to the University Neighborhood Housing Program, a non-profit affiliated with Fordham University. The group surveyed 919 housing units in the mainland borough and found that the average water bill was $934.20 per unit per year. The average water bill in the city was just over $700 annually.

Johanna Kletter, financial director of the housing program, reminded the panelists that she had submitted alternative strategies to the DEP, with little feedback. “Two years ago we released a study calling for reform and asking the important question: Can NYC achieve affordable water rates, promote conservation and control capital costs” Kletter said at the hearing. “No, no, no has been the answer to this question for far too long.”

In a press release the Department of Environmental Protection said that the 12.9 percent increase was an improvement on the 14.3 percent increase that was projected in 2009. “Clearly it is hard on customers to pay more, especially during tough economic times,”  Cas Holloway, commissioner of environmental protection, said in the press release that first announced the proposed increase. “Still, we must continue to fund critical projects that protect our drinking water and effectively treat the 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater that New Yorkers produce every day. New York City’s water is safe, healthy and high in quality. Keeping it that way requires substantial investments.”

The DEP intends to complete three plants by 2011. The Croton Filtration Plant will cost households $33 a year, the Ultraviolet Disinfection Plant $18 a year and the Newtown Creek Treatment Plant $48 a year. As of 2011, these plants and other federally mandated investments, will account for $177 of the household water bill every year.

But many in the audience felt that the DEP was using the rate increases to raise its revenue. “Bluntly, water rates are now just one more revenue stream for the city’s general budget,” Frank Vernuccio Jr. said. “The board itself admits to a $194 million straight transfer of funds to the general city budget.”

Vernuccio argued that New York City had seen harsher economic climates and that a water rate increase was unnecessary because residents had already tightened their belts to save money. New Yorkers had decreased their daily water consumption from 200 gallons per capita in the 1990s to 155 gallons in 2001, Vernuccio said. Currently, he said, New Yorkers consume four gallons less than the national average. “New Yorkers have done all that was asked of them,” Vernuccio said amid applause from the audience.

This story was corrected to address the following errors and clarifications:
Cas Calloway is the commissioner of environmental protection, not the executive director. A water bill of  $80.86 would be about $90 with a 12.9 percent increase;  and the Water Board sets the water and sewer rates for the city.

“I cry, I pray, but it’s tough,” Addy said. Along with her business partner, Addy opened the store, less than a block away from the intersection of White Plains Avenue and 233rd Street, almost three years ago. She said her rent began at $2,080 and has increased to $2, 165. Hit hard by the economic recession, her business has suffered, and she has yet to record any gains from the store. In the last few weeks she said she has tried to negotiate, but  her landlord, has taken her to court instead.

“I called him, I pleaded with him to come down a little bit,” Addy said. “I said to him, ‘It’s not your fault nobody knew the economy would be like this.’ ” She said her debt to her landlord has climbed to more than $8,000, including costs of maintenance and taxes, which are divided among the five other store owners in this commercial building.

The landlord, Jeffrey Cohen, declined to comment. “That’s between myself and my tenant,” he said when asked about rent disputes with Addy.

Last week, City Councilman Robert Jackson introduced the Small Business Survival Bill, which if passed, would  give business owners like Addy the right of arbitration to more effectively negotiate their leases.

“Small businesses right now have no say whatsoever in the terms of their lease, so when the lease term comes up, the landlord has total say,” said Robert Bieder, chairperson of the Bronx Merchants Coalition and a member of the Coalition of Small Businesses. “Simply put:  It is the right to arbitration in the commercial lease renewal process,” Bieder said of the bill’s potential power.

Addy said she wished there had been such a program in place when she signed her five-year lease. Instead, she said, she took the word of her landlord, who ran the shop before her, and convinced her that she would be making a profit that would cover her expenses. With four rows of shelves cramped into just about 120 square feet, the narrow store stocks everything  from underwear to detergent and even traditional clothes from Addy’s native Ghana.

Addy said she had taken out more than $50,000 in loans to keep her business afloat. She works night shifts as a hospital nurse technician so that she can pay her debts.  “My pay was five hundred and forty-something dollars, ” she said of her most recent paycheck. “I took $500 to pay for the merchandise. I don’t have money in the bank. It’s about time we were helped, we put money into this economy.”

Cohen also declined to give his opinion on the new bill or what it might mean for his commercial properties.

Local activists are  already trying to mobilize small businesses to gather enough support for the bill. But this is not the first time the bill has been up for debate.  Last year, District 7 Councilman Robert Jackson brought it to the floor. By the end of  the City Council cycle in December, however, the bill had not been voted on and withered away in the political process.

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn argued that she could not support a bill that she felt was fundamentally illegal. Last year, Quinn said that forcing landlords to binding arbitration would encroach on their property rights, according to the Downtown Express. At the Bronx Chamber of Commerce’s monthly luncheon in early April, Quinn’s position had not changed. “I can’t say I’ll pass a bill that so many of our staff and our highest lawyers say cannot be legal,” Quinn said. Instead, Quinn said that the council was looking into alternative legislation to protect small businesses in the city.

Jackson said he believed that opposition from the mayor’s office and pressure from the real estate lobby prevented the bill from being passed last year, even though 34 out of 51 council members  supported the bill. “In the last cycle, when push came to shove, there were not enough votes to move it,” said Jackson. “There [was] a lot of pressures put on a lot of people.” This time Jackson intends to build support “from the ground up.”

Steve Null, a former business owner and activist for the Small Business Survival Bill, said the stalling was political. “Our attorney thinks it’s a red herring,” Null said. “It was a last-second move to stop the bill.”

Null said his attorneys had provided Speaker Quinn’s office with the necessary documentation to prove the legality of the bill. He said his calls for a forum to assess legal issues surrounding the measure were ignored.  “They stopped the bill because she does not want to regulate the landlords,” he said.

Some sources alleged that Speaker Quinn may have rejected the bill because it is in her own political benefit to maintain the real estate lobby of landlords. Speaker Quinn’s office responded to this  by reiterating her December 2009 position. “Council Member Jackson’s legislation before the council, while well intentioned, is not within the council’s power,”  Quinn’s office said in a written statement. The statement suggested alternative legislation that would create a unit within the City’s Small Business Services that would assist in lease negotiation.

In an effort to bring attention to the need for such a bill, the U.S.A Latin Chamber of Commerce surveyed 937 Latino-owned businesses in New York City from November 2008 to January 2009. More than half of all businesses surveyed, both professional services, such as attorney and accounting offices, and smaller “mom and pop stores,”  like corner bodegas and hardware stores, complained that their businesses ran the risk of closing because of high rents and operating costs.

Almost three quarters of the small business owners in the survey said they would have to cut back their workers’ hours because renting their storefronts was too expensive.

“The mom and pop stores are at the heart of those communities; they support your Little Leagues, they support your church groups,” said Bieder, who owns Westchester Plumbing Supply with his two younger brothers. “We need to help them stay in business. There are tenants that have been here for 40 or 50 years,” Bieder said. “Now there is a vacancy problem due to lease negotiations. We’re losing about 8,000 a year.”

For now Addy is determined to keep her store open. “It has become a burden on us, but we are going to pay him for five years,” she said.

Bollella, the owner of Globus Cork, a flooring factory in the South Bronx, is cork’s biggest booster, and quick to recite a litany of its uses, from sandals to the space shuttle – it’s used as a heat shield in the rocket boosters, according to NASA. It’s also found in gaskets, baseball cores, platform shoes, shuttlecocks and bedding for pet lizards.

Seated on a stool, with long black hair, reading glasses, and a long-sleeve T-shirt, the heavyset 58-year-old entrepreneur looks more like an aging drummer than the cork impresario who heads “the premier U.S. manufacturer of colored cork tiles,” as his website proclaims. He sells cork in 38 colors, and judging by the paint cans strewn across his desk, is concocting more.

Bollella laid out his vision while burning through cigarettes wrapped with a cork-colored filter. As Bollella sees it, cork’s time has come.

Fifteen years ago, Ken Bollella wondered, why does cork tiling only come in beige? Bollella, who now heads a cork painting factory, says, "Nobody's ever done what I do." (Sam Fellman/The Bronx Ink)

Cork, in his estimation, may be the perfect material: light, durable, quiet under foot, resistant to insects and fire, good insulation, and easy on the feet. Bollella, who suffers from severe sciatica, said he can stand on it for hours. And it’s environmentally sustainable.

Cork comes from the bark of cork oak trees grown predominantly in Spain and Portugal. Wine corks are punched out of the bark, with the excess processed into cork sheets. Bollella once made a pilgrimage to a Portuguese forest and watched lumberjacks shear off the bark with axes. Afterward, he touched one of the skinned trees.

“It feels like elephant skin – amazing,” he said with a touch of reverence in his thick Bronxese.

Everything can be corked. Take the yoga mat – wouldn’t that be better with cork? Bollella rummaged behind some boxes and pulled out a large spool, spun with thin cork, the raw material for Korq Yoga and Pilates Mats, based in Brooklyn.

Music, not cork, was Bollella’s original muse. After growing up in Washington Heights, Bollella studied liberal arts at Manhattan Community College, but his main focus was rock guitar. When a rock career didn’t pan out after the better part of a decade, he learned carpentry – “Something had to pay the bills; rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t,” he said – and eventually wound up in flooring.

His cork odyssey began in 1995, when he owned a flooring shop in Manhattan, which sold cork tiles – brown, square, straight-edged and to his mind, boring. So he started dabbling with colors and designs in his apartment. By 2001, when he closed his store, he was ready to launch a colored-cork factory.

To drum up business for his launch, he fixed up his Manhattan apartment with a cork floor of brown mahogany (“Scotchwood,” as he named it) tiles in a herringbone layout, and hosted a wine and cheese party.

“I even got dressed in a suit. I hate suits,” Bollella said. Then the guests began to arrive. Many couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“People would stare at the floor and say, ‘That’s not cork!’” Bollella said. “Trust me, it’s cork,” he would reply.

At first, no one recognized colored cork. Especially not the competition. At that point, big manufacturers like the Portuguese company Amorim still sold cork tiles exclusively au naturel with a wax finish; in appearance, their products seemed unchanged since cork flooring was invented more than a century ago. So when Bollella’s colored tile hit the market in 2001, it baffled his competitors, who either saw him as a Young Turk or a small-time kook. They even mocked the name of his company – Globus, a combination of the words global and U.S., which Bollella dreamed up over a vodka martini.

“Nobody’s ever done what I do,” Bollella mused for a second, while recalling those heady days. “In the beginning, it’s like I’m sitting on top of a goldmine, without a pick or a shovel.”

Globus Cork opened in 2001, when he rented a large basement on East 136th Street in the Bronx, hired a salesperson, and then set to work. Bollella became a one-man cork tile assembly line, placing orders for processed cork from Portugal, then sawing, painting and shipping it to designers and home owners. He remembers working 105-hour weeks. To avoid the trek back to Manhattan on the really late nights, he’d set up an air mattress on the finishing counter – the floor was always off-limits, he explained, because of all the rats.

Those sacrifices are paying off as his company’s sales rise year after year. Even in 2009, amid a deep downturn in new construction and remodeling, Bollella said his sales grew by 12 percent. He sells his tiles for an average of $7.25 per square foot and expects to sell more than 250,000 square feet this year. Sales are on target so far, he said.

Most of his recent business is institutional. The government of Barbados bought 18,000 square feet of mahogany tiles for a courthouse and the housing authority in Little Rock, Arkansas is remodeling the hallways of a 12-story apartment building with tile, courtesy of stimulus money. While he’s processing the Arkansas order, Bollella is trying to win a contract to floor three galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But after each sample he’s sent, the museum has replied they want something “grayer.”

Globus Cork has grown over the past three years to occupy large swaths of three buildings. A recent tour of his mostly subterranean empire began at East 136th Street and ended at the loading dock on East 137th Street, spanning an entire block. His company now has three salespeople – one based in Missouri – and a production team of seven. That frees Bollella for chain-smoking and big thinking.

Haiti is his latest idea. After the devastating earthquake in January, the country needs to rebuild everything from government palaces to countless homes, requiring acres upon acres of new flooring. Bollella is avidly following the reconstruction effort, and pointed out that termites are a huge problem in the Caribbean. Of course, he added, “They don’t eat cork.”

Part of his success comes from seeing every situation or exchange as a possibility to push cork. When firefighters, heavy boots on and all, stepped into his cork-tiled office recently on a fire inspection, he asked them how the floor felt. Good, they replied.

Before the firefighters left, Bollella asked them a question that he’d long wondered about, “What’s the worst type of floor?”

One of the firefighters replied, “‘Vinyl – that stuff is nasty,’” Bollella recalled.

Bollella is now designing a new flooring scheme – red tiles with their ladder number inset in marigold – to retile their burnt kitchen floor.

From his vantage point, Bollella sees a flooring arms race mounting around the world. The latest threat is China, namely its bamboo – another environmentally friendly flooring material. Over the last few years, the bamboo trust has spent so much on advertising that “people know more about bamboo than cork,” Bollella said.

His epiphany came a few years ago, while watching the scene from “The Godfather” when the dons of the five warring families gather to air their grievances and leave resolved to bury the hatchet. That is exactly what the corkmongers need to get past all the “my cork is better than yours” infighting, he realized.

So Bollella founded the North American Cork Association three months ago. Although no other companies have contributed to the non-profit yet, Bollella has big plans: cork kiosks in bus stops, billboards, mention in a TV show like “Flip This House,” and ads “just to get people thinking about cork,” he said.

Already, Bollella has sold cork to clients in Canada, Hong Kong, Macau, the United Kingdom, Romania and Australia, where he hopes to open a factory in a few years – to “feed the Japanese market,” he said. So even with renewed competition and a slow economy, Bollella sees cork’s future as bright.

“It’s a perfect time for me. People are a little choosy and green isn’t going to go away,” he said.

“You can’t get greener than [expletive] cork.”

Thousands of workers and community activists marched to Wall Street on Thursday, bringing Main Street’s anger with bank bailouts to the doorstep of the country’s financial industry.

“We’re hoping to show that Americans are angry at the way the financial industry has abused its power,” said Jordan Estevao, an organizer for the National People’s Action network in an interview after the rally. People who oppose regulation of the banking industry, he said, “are on the wrong side of the fight.”

Estevao estimated they exceeded their goal of 5,000 people for the afternoon’s event. Protestors lined both sides of Broadway and some of the side streets, stretching from Chambers Street to City Hall.

One of the protestors, Eugene Hammond, 65, a resident of the Bronx, said he came out to express disgust after seeing the boarded up stores and scores of people out of work in the neighborhood while big banks got billions in bailout money.

“Working people have been screwed over enormously,” said Hammond, a retired government employee. “People have lost jobs, houses, futures.”

The Showdown on Wall Street was a joint effort of the NPA and union the AFL-CIO. The NPA brings together 25 community organizations from 16 states and has been organizing rallies against banks all over the country, most recently a protest by over 400 people in Kansas City.

On Thursday, many of the protestors came from New York City and upstate New York, and others from surrounding states, such as Connecticut, Massachusetts and Wyoming. A number also came from Brooklyn and the Bronx, linked to organizations such as Brooklyn Congregations United, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and Make the Road, as well as local unions and public schools. Members of the Brooklyn-based mock protests group Billionaires for Wealthcare were also in attendance in fake pearls and suits.

The protestors convened in the late afternoon for speeches by religious leaders, union officials and ordinary people affected by banking practices and foreclosures.

“The poor person is poor because the rich person is rich,” said Rabbi Ellen Lippman, of Cholot Elaiyanu synagogue in Brooklyn. “I see those who have been seeking work for months.”

The loudest cheers were reserved for AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who led the crowd in a chant challenging bankers to “fix the mess that you made.”

After the speeches, and just in time for the five o’clock rush hour in the Financial District, the protestors made their way down Broadway towards Wall Street. They filled the barricaded streets for blocks, issuing calls for “real jobs now.” Workers in suits emerged the Chase Bank building, but brushed past the crowd with eyes averted. Other passersby stopped to give the protestors the thumbs up sign.

“We’re spending billions for nothing,” said another protestor, Justyn Brown, 29, an Iraq war veteran who lives in Brooklyn. “Obama should be spending the money he’s spending on the war on veterans. No one is taking care of their well-being.”

Another veteran agreed, “Bank bailouts are like leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said William J. Gilson, 74, because we’re giving them the money to make the same mistakes again.

Many echoed his calls for more regulation, citing the financial regulation bill currently before Congress.

“We’re sick of greed,” said Buzz Roddy, 50, a resident of the Bronx and member of the Actors’ Equity union. “[Greed] has become institutional in America. It’s time for the government to step up and regulate the way things are.”

The next march will take place in Washington in May.. Estevao calls it the “showdown on K. Street.”

“We want to show it’s about people,” he said, “Not fat cat lobbyists.”

Sen. Pedro Espada gives a thumbs up while posing next to his son, Pedro G. Espada. (Photo: Facebook.com)

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed another lawsuit against state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada and his son, Pedro G. Espada, charging them with “creating a sham job training program that cheated workers and shortchanged state coffers.” This lawsuit is the second filed against the elder Espada by the attorney general in just over a week. On April 20, Cuomo charged Espada with using a Bronx-based non-profit health care company as his own “personal piggybank.” Espada responded to Cuomo’s latest attack against him by challenging the attorney general to a debate.

Cuomo’s suit accuses the Espadas of using a for-profit management company to “siphon” taxpayer money from the Soundview health clinic. Soundview awarded Espada Management Co., which is run by Pedro G. Espada, a nearly $400,000 annual contract to do janitorial work. According to Cuomo, workers from Espada Management Co. were “mischaracterized … as trainees” and “paid a fraction of the wages mandated by law.” Cuomo said some of the janitors employed by Espada Management Co. made “less than $70 per week, or the equivalent of under $1.70 per hour.” The attorney general said this arrangement allowed the Espadas to “minimize costs and maximize profits at Espada Management.”

Thursday afternoon, Senator Espada posted a status update to his Facebook page inviting Cuomo to “debate his baseless allegations at any forum.”

Pedro G. Espada also took to Facebook Thursday to discuss the attorney general’s suit. The younger Espada posted an update of his own this afternoon saying that he “just gave my first and only interview to NY 1.” Soon after, when someone posted a comment asking what was said in the interview, Pedro G. Espada wrote that he told the television station, “The truth and nothing but the truth so help me GOD.” As of this writing, both Espadas and the attorney general’s office have not responded to requests to comment on this story.

On Thursday afternoon at the Soundview Health Center on White Plains Road, children gathered for an anti-obesity event where they displayed mounds of sugar and dramatically poured out hundreds of soda cans.

“This is heartbreaking,” cried a tall sixth-grader clutching a can of orange soda. “They told us not to open it, but I really want to drink one,” said another.

The youngsters’ reluctance to pour the soft drinks into a storm drain in the clinic’s parking lot mirrored the hesitation of the adults to comment on the Espada scandal.

Inside, the waiting room was packed with patients. David Collymore, medical director of the Soundview Healthcare Network, sat in his small office surrounded by papers. On the wall hung a plaque from Senator Espada honoring Collymore for his dedication to quality health care for the local community. Collymore said the day’s anti-obesity event was “a clear indication that we will not let the negative press of the past week prevent the hospital or its staff from serving its patients.” When asked if he thought Espada’s business practices were draining resources from the Soundview health programs, Collymore said, “absolutely not.”

Additional reporting by Astrid Baez.

What used to be a vacant asphalt lot at P.S. 47 a year ago is a vibrant playground today. With play equipment, game tables, a basketball field, a running track, trees and benches, children at 1794 East 172nd St. have a new place to play.

The elementary school students moved around from one game to another.

“I’m already exhausted,” 9-year-old Chasedy Balager said. “It’s so much fun.”

But this is not just a playground. For about 20 students at P.S. 47 who designed the space it is a dream realized.

Last year, the school worked to build the $750,000 project with the Trust for Public Land and the New York City’s PlaNYC initiative, a comprehensive sustainability plan for the city’s future. School children age 8 to 10 took part in the design, budget and construction of the playground.

“They made decisions throughout the project,” said Thomas Guarneiri, P.S. 47 principal. “This is their park.”

For three months, once a week, the staff of the Trust for Public Land worked with students by integrating the design process with classroom learning and after-school programs. The result is one that will provide 1,200 children with a fun and safe place to play.

Besides applying design techniques and taking decisions to fit the allocated budget, the process was challenging and rewarding.

“I’m very proud of it,” said Maria Molina, 10, who helped design the turf field. “I never imagined it to be like this,” she said. “They made it possible.”

Video by Shreeya Sinha

Javier Baez, a 17-year-old boxer from the World Class Boxing Gym in Soundview, walked into the Theater at Madison Square Garden shrouded in darkness for his bout with 19-year-old Luis Cruz. His trainer, Luis Olmo, stood behind him while coach Ron Gibson massaged his shoulders as he waited for the announcer to call his name.

Having won the 2009 Metropolitan Championships in the 132-pound novice division and beaten two worthy opponents at the Golden Gloves this year, Baez had arrived at the tournament finals.

Javier Baez prays in the corner as his rival, Luis Cruz, warms up in the ring. (Mamta Badkar/The Bronx Ink)

The annual tournament tests young boxing hopefuls around the city, yet no one at South Bronx Prep knew about Baez’s fight — the high school senior intentionally kept it quiet to avoid inviting trouble. “They might want to fight,” he said. Waleska Roldan, the wife of his trainer, suggested another reason. “He’s very reserved,” she said of Baez. “He comes in, says hello, changes and gets to work.”

Baez is uncommonly mature for a teenager. “I don’t really wanna be like anybody else,” he said, admitting he has no idols. At the gym, it is hard to hear him over the ricocheting speed bag and the buzzer that sounds every three minutes keeping the boxers rotating through their warm-ups. While other kids earn reprimands from Roldan, Baez keeps at the bags, rotating through them. He exhales heavily every time he makes contact, occasionally scrutinizing himself in the mirror to ensure his stance is right, that he’s pivoting and hitting the bags the right way.

“He serves as a mentor for the younger kids here,” Roldan said. One of them, Ivan, gushed about jogging with Baez, being in the dressing room with him and helping him wrap his gloves at his last fight. “I look up to him. I call him my brother,” he said, before turning to Baez. “I call you brother, don’t I?” Baez nodded and returned to his bag.

Watching him closely at the gym was his grandmother, Marguerita Fuentes. She has a heart condition and underwent surgery when Baez’s older brother, Jaime Stewart, won the Golden Gloves. “I like that he’s in here boxing and not out in the street,” she said, sitting in her usual ringside spot wearing a blue Yankees bomber jacket.

Fuentes acts as Baez’s driving force. “I want to win my fight for my grandmother,” he said. “She’s asking me to win. I can’t let her down.”

Baez is part of the “Adopt a Boxer” program at the gym and his membership and training fee is sponsored by Roldan. He used to train at Betances Boxers in The Bronx before it closed down, while Olmo, who put his savings into World Class Boxing Gym, used to work for the New York City Housing Authority teaching young people at the community center how to box until he was let go in February 2009. With a number of Police Athletic League boxing programs shutting down and the fire at Morris Park Boxing Club, the Bronx community was in need of boxing gyms for amateurs.

Olmo opened the gym Aug. 1 with a ring and a few punching bags. There were no mats or mirrors at first, but equipment started to follow after he received donations and grants awarded by Assemblyman Marcos Crispo and State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr. The gym has a family feel to it, and Roldan said she felt sick watching Baez fight describing it as her “mother hen syndrome.” She looked over at Fuentes and laughed, asking her to bring in her pills for the actual match. “I’m proud as his sponsor,” Roldan said. “He has so much on his plate at such a young age. He’s doing it very gracefully.”

Roldan said she checked her boxers’ report cards, didn’t let them cuss, made sure they dressed appropriately and was pleased to see them help out in keeping up the gym. “We close at 9 and they’re still sitting here,” she said. “It’s like a safe haven for them. I’d rather them be sitting here than be out on the street getting into trouble.”

She recognized that this is a tough neighborhood and wanted “Javi,” as she calls Baez, to win because it would keep the other young boxers training hard. But she could not attend his match at Madison Square Garden because she had to pick her daughter up from dance practice.

“When I fight, I only think about winning,” Baez said during a training session, without a trace of arrogance. Even at 17 he has a quiet determination about him.

At the Garden, it was hard to tell if Baez was nervous beneath his head gear. His eyes seemed focused on the ring. He climbed in, did a quick round kneeling at the corner and crossing himself, threw a few uppercuts into the air and retired to his corner.

After the opening bell, Baez threw a jab at Cruz and missed. He dodged one punch and then ducked to deliver a blow to the stomach. The fighters remained at arms length for most of the fight, but Cruz seemed to be landing more punches. Baez received penalties for ducking and holding before referee Jihad Abdul Aziz stopped the match.

Javier Baez holds Luis Cruz during the final at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. The hold got him a warning in a match that was eventually stopped. (Mamta Badkar/The Bronx Ink)

“He kept ducking low and after the warning he ducked again,” Aziz said. “They train hard to get here and the last thing I want to do as a referee is stop a match. I am disappointed he didn’t follow the rules because he has experience.”

The dream was over for this year, but Baez said he planned to continue boxing at the World Class Boxing Gym because he didn’t want to leave his trainers. He wants to box until he is 28, and he is applying to study business at colleges in New York.

“It’s also because of his grandmother,” Roldan said. “It’s hard to go to college and not have your family there.”

Additional filming by Dan Fastenberg

See what patients at one of the Soundview clinics had to say:

Attorney general Andrew Cuomo’s lawsuit charges Espada with “siphoning” $14 million from Comprehensive Community Development Corporation, also known as “Soundview,” a company that provides low cost health care services to patients in the Bronx from five locations. Espada founded the company in 1978. He is currently Soundview’s president and chief executive officer.

Nineteen current and former Soundview employees are also named in the lawsuit including seven of Espada’s family members. Cuomo’s lawsuit alleges Espada and his relatives received vacations and lavish compensation packages through Soundview. The senator’s contract with the company included a $9 million severance bonus. Espada is also accused of using his corporate credit card for campaign expenses and personal expenses including $20,000 bills at two sushi restaurants.

Espada was elected to represent the 33rd District in 2008. In order to serve in the Senate, he is required to live within the district. Espada’s benefits at Soundview included $2,500 monthly housing allowance for a co-op apartment at 325 E 201st St. in the Bronx. During the two years Espada has maintained his apartment in Bedford Park, various residents of the building have spoken to news outlets claiming he does not live there. In the past, Espada’s response to these allegations has been that he divides his time between his home in the Bronx and his office in Albany.

Espada is also listed in the public phone directory as a resident of 115 Beechwood Road, a leafy cul-de-sac in Mamaroneck, with his wife, Connie, and their children. The home is located near the two sushi restaurants, Toyo Sushi and Red Plum, where Espada allegedly used his Soundview credit card to purchase meals. Peter Chen, the owner of both restaurants, said the Espadas visited Red Plum “probably once a week” and ordered takeout from Toyo Sushi “three or four times a month.” Though he said he couldn’t recall if they had a favorite dish, Chen said the Espadas were “average tippers.”

In 2004, Sandra Love and three other Soundview officials plead guilty to charges that they diverted money from Soundview to Espada’s political campaign. Espada and Love were previously acquitted on similar charges in 2000. According to Cuomo’s lawsuit, all four Soundview staffers who were convicted of criminal charges were retained by the company and two of them were named to the company’s Compliance Committee. Love’s son, Jerry Love Jr., was hired by Espada in 2009. Love Jr. is named in the current lawsuit.

Records show that the senator’s political action committee, Espada for the People, paid $1,265.82 to Soundview in December 2007. The senator did not respond to messages left at his offices in Albany and East Fordham Road as well as calls made to his addresses in the Bronx and Mamaroneck asking for an explanation of these charges to Soundview and the attorney general’s allegations of misconduct. An intern at Espada’s Bainbridge office said he had “no idea” where the senator was and that he last saw him in Bainbridge “a couple weeks ago.”

But Espada did appear on NY1’s “Inside City Hall” show on Thursday to defend himself against the charges. He said there was no intention for him to receive the $9 million severance bonus and that the case was “politically motivated.” Espada stated he has no plans to resign from the senate while he fights the lawsuit. On Friday morning, he continued his counter attack on MyFoxNY.com. “This is a witch hunt by the prince of darkness himself,” he said, referring to Cuomo.

Lourdes Espada, the senator’s daughter-in-law, is also named in the attorney general’s suit although her husband, Pedro Gautier Espada, is not named. One of the allegations against the senator is that Soundview awarded a $400,000 yearly janitorial contract to a management company run by his son. On Wednesday night, Gautier Espada posted a message on his Facebook profile that said: “Who ever thinks that the liberties and freedoms we enjoy as Americans are free has never paid and must walk through life with blinders on. The truth is, those principles that our union uses as it’s foundation are very expensive. They have been paid for in blood. sacrifice, sweat and tears. Today I keep my head up knowing that someway I have paid a small price in maintaining the very principles of our existence.”

The note has since been deleted. Gautier Espada has not responded by e-mail requests seeking further comment on this story.

*The 33rd District includes the neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Kingsbridge Heights, Bedford Park, Van Cortlandt Village, University Heights, Fordham, Tremont, East Tremont, Norwood and Mount Hope.

]]> http://bronxink.org/2010/04/23/7246-for-pedro-espada-accusations-swirl-as-patients-wait-and-watch/feed/ 0 http://bronxink.org/2010/04/22/7254-fordham-shortstop-kownacki-enjoying-instant-celebrity/ http://bronxink.org/2010/04/22/7254-fordham-shortstop-kownacki-enjoying-instant-celebrity/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:12:06 +0000 Ian Thomson http://bronxink.org/?p=7254

Tuesday evening was shaping up to be just another night at the ballpark for Brian Kownacki, Fordham University’s 20-year-old shortstop. Fordham, limping into its match against Iona College with a 12-22 record, trailed 9-3 at the bottom of the eighth inning, but a miraculous turn of events saw the Rams win 12-9 and Kownacki transformed into an overnight Internet phenomenon.

“I was just thinking about scoring a run,” Kownacki said. “It was a one-time thing. I’d never thought about it until I got to five feet away from the catcher.”

Kownacki, blocked from home plate by Iona catcher James Beck, improvised by leaping over the head of his befuddled opponent to score the game’s final run — a play that was caught on video by school officials and quickly spread worldwide.

“I knew the sports information director had sent it to ESPN. I thought it might get into the top plays,” said Kownacki, a native of Woodbridge, Conn., who is in his sophomore year of a business administration degree. “I woke up to 20 missed phone calls saying I had interviews on ESPN and that it had made No. 1.”

Kownacki’s life has since been turned upside down by a barrage of media requests. “It’s all a big blur right now,” he said this afternoon before boarding the team’s bus ahead of a flight to Ohio. “I’ve done 11 or 12 interviews. It’s really fun.” CBS’s “Early Show” awaits his arrival in Dayton, where the Rams play a three-game series this weekend.

Tuesday wasn’t the first time that Kownacki’s acrobatics have gained notice — he was featured in a Sports Illustrated photo spread earlier this year. But his latest dazzling maneuver has pushed unheralded Fordham firmly into the spotlight. Diana Mackie, a communications student who works part time in the sports office, said the school deserves the attention. “We have excellent sports programs here, and it’s about time we were recognized,” she said.

Mark Stevens, the team’s hitting coach, said he is surprised by the reaction but delighted by the exposure that Kownacki and the program are receiving. “It was an amazing play. He’s a very athletic kid,” Stevens said. “I think he needs an agent.”

The resulting media circus could be a distraction for the team, but Head Coach Nick Restaino is confident that his shortstop will not be affected. “Brian is the last guy that’s ever going to look for attention,” Restaino said. “He’s very grounded. I think he’ll handle it well.”

Restaino admitted that he had never seen anything like Kownacki’s leap in 18 years of coaching, but his reaction was straight out of the coaching manual. “He did a great job getting the run scored and that’s what really matters,” he said.

Any lingering thoughts that Kownacki might get carried away were quickly deflated by a sobering reaction from his family. “I talked to my parents,” Kownacki said. “They said it was a very nice play, but very dangerous and I shouldn’t try it again.”

Fast Bus Slow Business from on Vimeo.

Journalist Michael Horowitz has been covering Co-op City since 1974. (Speri/BronxInk)

City News, the community paper he almost single-handedly authors every week, goes to print on Wednesday nights. On Thursday mornings, the 64-year-old Manhattan-raised Riverdale resident has plenty of time to discuss his passionate dislike for President Obama, health care reform and the “left-wing ideologue idiots” opposing calls for the privatization of Co-op City, the world’s largest cooperative housing development.

“Co-op City can use the capitalist system to its own advantage,” said Horowitz, who describes himself as a former leftist grown realistic. “Now that I’m in my 60s I have questions about everything.”

Horowitz arrived at Co-op City when he was 28, a naïve journalist responding to an ad in the paper, he said. His first story – about teargas guns sold in the mail to Co-op City residents – was followed by thousands more, an average of 15 stories he untiringly pounds out every week.

With the exception of a break from 1987 to 1998, during which he covered a different community in Brooklyn, Horowitz has been Co-op City’s one-man journalist, chasing one management scandal after another and writing about everything from rent strikes to charter schools, to the recurring problem of mold in many of the cooperative’s 15,372 housing units.

“Journalists spend too much time covering the seediest part of life, things we can’t do anything about,” said Horowitz, who makes it a point to use his journalism as a tool to instill action.

Horowitz passionately endorses calls for the privatization of Co-op City, despises the management’s bureaucracy, and thinks Obama’s “socialism” is going to the destroy the country. And when it comes to these or any of the many issues he feels strongly about, Horowitz admittedly blurs the line between reportage and commentary. Though he pens both news pieces and op-ed columns in his paper, the two often read similarly and his feisty voice and wholehearted dedication to Co-op City seep through all copy.

“Community journalism is kind of a cross between being objective and doing advocacy,” Horowitz said. “However we are less phony about it than The New York Times is.”

His readers have learned to tell the difference.

“Sometimes he’s objective and sometimes he editorializes,” said Al Shapiro, a Co-op City board member who has known Horowitz for more than 20 years.

“Sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I disagree,” Shapiro said, referring to the question of privatization of the co-op as an example. “I interact with him on a professional level but I consider him a friend.”

Horowitz turns to advocacy, he says, to attempt to reverse the general indifference that over the years has taken over Co-op City. The cooperative was founded in 1951 by the United Housing Foundation, a trust of politically involved soft-good unions who believed that workers needed more than just jobs but also a place to live. A largely Jewish community well into the ’80s, Co-op City is home today to a black majority, a large Hispanic population and an aging white one, a lower- to middle-income working community of 50,000.

While most residents work outside the 35-building compound, Co-op City remains somewhat of an insulated community from the rest of the Bronx and while faltering, Co-op City pride is not dead, Horowitz said.

“But there is a tremendous amount of apathy,” he added.

Reflective of national trends, the paper’s readership has declined over the years and though the front page still carries the 35-cent price for which the weekly originally sold, 16,000 copies of the City News have been distributed free of charge for more than 20 years and are paid for by ads.

“I think they read it, but there’s a problem with people reading things in general,” said Horowitz, who also teaches writing classes at Mercy College in the Bronx.

“I think our country is going down, the culture has been dumbed down,” he added.

Horowitz keeps years of old issues of City News stacked in his office. (Speri/BronxInk)

Horowitz, who is married to Housing Court Judge Arlene Hahn, has two sons, one studying Chinese acupuncture in Arizona and the other a molecular biology professor in Indiana. When the latter recently won a prestigious fellowship, Horowitz turned from reporter to proud father and ran two stories about his son in City News.

His relationship with Co-op City, too, resembles that of a father and Horowitz, who criticizes current residents and administrators alike, also talks of the community with the affection of someone who has spent most of his life writing about this 320-acre corner of America.

“I have a love/hate relationship with this place,” Horowitz said, adding that he is not interested in living here but would consider investing in an apartment for his sons if the cooperative ever privatizes. His smile, however, shows only love.

Life in the co-op frustrates him daily, he says, from the close-mindedness of those suspicious of any proposed change to the endless fights with management “who think that if we put enough roadblocks on the way to solving them, all problems will simply go away.”

Horowitz has plenty of unpleasant stories to share. Not long ago he walked to his office, a slightly rundown space in the underground level of a local mall, to find feces in front of the glass door.

“That doesn’t happen when people care about a place,” Horowitz said, denying that the incident was intended as an attack but noting instead that when the community center closes at 10 p.m. so do the public restrooms.

“People in this country need ownership in order to care,” he drew as a lesson from the episode, reinforcing once again his call for privatization and his attack on the president. “If Obama thinks he’s going to change this, he’s mistaken.”

But like a loving father, Horowitz also speaks proudly of Co-op City’s achievements, like the power plant the cooperative’s residents have dreamed about for years, which is slated to open in weeks and will generate enough electricity to provide for the community as well as to export.

“One of the big customers of Co-op City is going to be Con-Edison, which is kind of ironic,” Horowitz said. “The savings in income will be probably between two and three million dollars a month.”
To Horowitz, Co-op City is both unique and a cross-section of humanity. His stories are populated with many of the housing development’s characters, the louder their dissent and the more eccentric their stories, the more space Horowitz dedicates to them in his writing.

One of them is Frank Belcher, who has been a “pain” for Co-op City’s management and a protagonist of Horowitz’s stories for many of the personal battles he fought, against everything from sex-offenders living in the development when they are usually excluded from public housing to the mold and humidity in his apartment.

“Michael is doing the people a service,” said Belcher, who regularly sends Horowitz letters to publish in the paper. “People call him about problems, they seek his help, everyone knows him.”

Belcher said there is a second newspaper in the community, run by the management, but praises City News for its fairness.

“Michael’s paper is the only voice people in the community really have. Management have their own paper, but they won’t print complaints, they won’t print anything negative, Michael Horowitz will” he said. “I wish we had a couple more people like Michael Horowitz here in Co-op City.”

Belcher also praised Horowitz’s for staying on top of issues in the community in a way management does not.

“In 2007 we had 19 registered sex offenders living here illegally,” Belcher said about one of his favorite issues. “Since Michael has been writing about this subject the number went down to four.”

Belcher and Horowitz are equally passionate people and the sympathy is reciprocal.

“He’s been in the paper for the past three weeks,” Horowitz said of Belcher, the way an author would talk of a favorite character in a book.

And for Horowitz, a book on Co-op City may just be the next step.

“I know more about this than anything else,” he said. “This is a fascinating place.”

Morton is one of thousands of New Yorkers who are at risk of losing their homes since the city announced, late in 2009, that it would terminate its Section 8 voucher program, a federal assistance program for low-income families that subsidizes housing in the private market. On Thursday, she was one of a handful of women with similar stories, taking their plight to a public hearing with New York Senators Daniel Squadron, Pedro Espada and Tom Duane. Thursday was the third hearing since the vouchers termination was announced, but the first to involve state officials.

“My rent is $900 a month and my social security is $873,” Morton said, barely holding her tears.

Had the vouchers program not been canceled, she would have had to pay $241 and the rest would have been subsidized by the state. Though Medicaid and food stamps cover many of her other expenses, Morton said she can’t make ends meet. She went to the hearing wearing an “I Love The Bronx” T-shirt, accompanied by her elderly mother and Legal Aid lawyer.

Lachonnz Morton does not want to leave the South Bronx, her home for the past 33 years. (Speri/Bronx Ink)

“My rent is more than my check, what am I supposed to do?” Morton told the legislators.

Morton said she was forced to quit her job in a nursing home for health reasons. She spent years waiting for her Section 8 applications to be approved then years fighting a legal battle against her landlord, who she said refused to take the vouchers even though the law mandates it.

Already $7,000 in debt on her rent, Morton had finally won her battle with her landlord when on December 30, 2009, she received a letter from the New York City Housing Authority notifying her that money had run out and the vouchers she held in her hands were no longer valid. If the program were to start again, she could reapply, she was told.

Morton accumulated debt in the years she spent applying for the vouchers and then trying to convince her landlord to take them. She says her landlord wants her out because he could earn much more from the rent-controlled apartment if she moved out.

“I’m not denying that I owe, I just don’t have it,” she said, adding that all her savings won’t amount to more than $1,500. The vouchers would have helped turn things around, she said.  Morton is still trying to grasp the bitter irony of her situation having lost a hard-fought battle at the end.

“Do you know how long it took me?” she said.

Some 2,589 families who already held vouchers were immediately affected and many of them are at risk of joining the lines of New Yorkers without a home, speakers said.

“I know a girl in the Bronx who had just moved into an apartment and immediately had to move out,” Morton added.

More than  8,000 more families who would have been eligible for the vouchers could also lose out, as the New York City Housing Authority announced it is not processing any new applications. The vouchers were especially aimed at  helping the elderly and the disabled, and they were often the only opportunity for women victims of domestic violence to move out of abusive homes.

The state senators were sympathetic to the tenants, calling the termination of the vouchers an unacceptable shortcoming by government officials.

“The fiscal crisis is not a reason to fail people,” said Bronx-raised Senator Espada.

New York Senator Pedro Espada (right) listened to testimony and called for "creative solutions" to the housing crisis. (Speri/Bronx Ink)

The senators questioned representatives of the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) and  criticized them for what they said was a slow and inefficient response to the fiscal crisis. However, OTDA officials pointed to the city as holding the  ultimate responsibility for the outcome.

“Every time we lose a housing program it’s a struggle for all of us,” OTDA Deputy Commissioner Russell Sykes said, admitting to some shortcomings on the part of his office but generally eluding questions.

“I have no idea if you care or not, all I know is what you haven’t done,” Squadron responded, calling the OTDA “evasive” in its responses and stressing that the hearing was not meant to be a stage for finger pointing between agencies but to try and work together to find a solution.

“Your government has made a promise to you and then it has taken it away,” Squadron then told the women who had shared their stories. “We will do all we can to make good on that promise.”

The program is currently $46 million short, though some suggest that resources could be more efficiently reallocated from other housing programs.

“This is not acceptable in the richest state, in the richest country in the world,” said Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society, who spoke at the hearing and advised on a number of possible solutions.

Goldiner also criticized the New York City Housing Authority for its failure to intervene in the issue and invited the present elected officials to exercise their leverage at the city level.

Morton says that without Legal Aid and her family’s support, she would have been homeless. She remains skeptical as no specific promises came from the meeting.

“They are talking a good game, but I need answers,” Morton said. “They are saying they are sorry but that’s not solving my problem.”

Morton said she lives  in fear of being evicted. Though she said her family is supportive, she doesn’t want to impose on her daughter, who is married with a child.

“I’m scared to go anywhere else, this is all I know,” she says of the place she has called home for two thirds of her life. “I’m just waiting for that knock on my door.”

Cuban Salsa singer Pepito Gomez performs at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. (Dan Fastenberg / The Bronx Ink)

The Grand Concourse in the Bronx may have been modeled on the Champs d’Elysees in Paris, but for the first Friday of every month, it will be evoking the spirit of Havana’s famous Malecon.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, located in the Concourse section of the Bronx, has begun its “First Fridays” program, during which the 33,000-square-foot space will be used to showcase Cuban culture. Last Friday’s inaugural event was scheduled to coincide with the city’s 11th annual Havana Film Festival, planned to begin in Manhattan on Friday, April 16.

“In these hard economic times, it’s important to have a space for people to come together and relax on a Friday night,” said Ariel Fernandez, a Cuban-American and the program’s curator. “And also, we can show off a type of culture that’s not normally seen.”

On April 9, the season’s First Friday program kicked off, with a screening of two Cuban independent films, 20 Años and Homo Erectus, a question and answer segment with Homo Erectus producer Alejandro Gonzalez and a musical performance by Pepito Gomez and his sextet. More than 250 people were in attendance.

Communist Cuba has come a long way since its earliest days in the 1960s, when the Castro regime rounded up homosexuals and sent them into labor camps, persecuting them for a behavior Havana deemed a deviant offshoot of capitalism.

Fidel Castro himself began speaking out against homophobia as early as 1979, and sex change operations have since been included in the nation’s health care program.

Gender-bending was at the heart of the First Friday’s feature presentation, Homo Erectus.

“Because of what’s going on in both the United States and in Cuba, it was a good moment to do a gay film,” said Gonzales, producer of Homo Erectus.

The 44-minute feature film, which was shot over a four-day period in the eastern Las Tunas province, follows two lovers, and their star-crossed romance. The catch, however, is that the protagonist, Benito, is a man discovering his latent desire to be a woman, as he falls for a transsexual going in the opposite direction. Hilarity naturally ensues amid a light-hearted Cuban environment far removed from the sturm and drang of Cuba’s half-century old political saga.

“I am a Cuban-American, and I am so grateful for this type of programming; it showed us the human side of Cuba, and that’s why I came,” said Carmela Fernandez, who went on to call herself a born and raised “Jersey Girl.”

New Jersey and Southern Florida have long been the primary homes of  the post-revolution Cuban diaspora. But among another tier of locales preferred by Cubans leaving communist Cuba have been New York neighborhoods like Astoria, Washington Heights and the South Bronx. Cubans living in the South Bronx include Cuban Link, who settled in Morrisania section of the Bronx after departing Cuba in 1980.

According to the last census, the Cuban population for the entire borough of the Bronx stood at roughly 9,000, making it the sixth largest of the 19 tracked Latin populations in New York’s northernmost borough, after Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Mexicans.

This year’s First Friday schedule, the fourth annual such offering, comes at a pivotal time in  U.S.-Cuban relations with Fidel Castro approaching his final twilight, and a more open administration in Washington under Barack Obama.

“At this crucial diplomatic moment, what we can do is display Cuban artists, who wouldn’t have been able to come before Obama,” said First Fridays curator Fernandez.

“We need to show what a normal Cuba is all about,” Fernandez went on, referring to Pepito Gomez, whose sextet performed directly after the world premieres of the two films. Gomez defected to New Jersey in 2008.

His booming Cuban salsa – aka Timba – singing swept the audience off their feet, sending them into a trance of dancing as if the Bronx Museum of Arts was situated along the Caribbean Sea, and not near the Harlem River.

And for the event organizer, any geographical boundaries within the Latin communities are checked at the U.S. Customs airport gate.

“We didn’t worry about the interest in Cuban-specific culture at the Bronx Musuem of Arts,” said Fernandez. “It’s a Latin thing. All Latin Americans come together around here.”

At dawn the only person outside Yankee Stadium besides the street sweepers was one Chris McCably who waited for the ticket windows to open. He was from, of all places, Boston.

Freddy Schuman, 85, greets Claudio Beltran, 64, outside the Yankee's home opener against the Los Angeles Angels, Tuesday afternoon. (Alec Johnson/The Bronx Ink)

McCably, who co-owns a towing company, had left his home to catch a New York-bound bus at 1 a.m. By 5:20 he was in the city, and soon afterwards had planted himself on a bench between Gates Four and Six.

“I’m a Red Sox fan,” he said, “and I just wanted to experience an opening day and see them get the rings.”

So began the ritual that has taken place every spring since 1923: It was opening day for baseball in the Bronx.

By 7 a.m., McCably stopped chortling about his employees hard at work back in Boston to take note of the fact that he was still the only man on line. “I cannot believe it is this quiet,” he said, before adding the requisite Red Sox fan’s dig. ”In Boston a line would be wrapped around the building for tickets. I’m going to break down and buy a Yankees hat, just as a remembrance. But I won’t put it on my head.”

Soon, a teenage boy walked past and said he usually sells candy inside but because he didn’t have to work today he was hoping to get a ticket and actually watch the game without having to hawk snacks.

By 8 a.m. the Yankee Stadium support staff, numbering more than 2,000, began to assemble on the River Avenue side of the stadium. A line stretched the entire length of the building and cooks, cleaners and merchandise sales people shivered on the gray morning as they waited to go through metal detectors on their way to work. The delay, one said, was a result of everyone being issued new identification cards for the new season.

The Number 4 train rumbled overhead and the back-up beepers of a crew of forklifts echoed across the empty plaza. One deposited boxes packed with t-shirts, baseballs, pennants, pens, refrigerator magnets at a white tent near Gate Six.

The Yankee’s manager, Joe Girardi, zipped into the players’ entrance at 8:25. A few moments later the street sweepers made their last pass. A black Bentley Continental GT with smoked windows and black rims rolled in a few moments later. Joba Chaimberlain rolled down the window and gave a fan a fist bump.

Nearby, Tony Dipitero, who looked as if he had been attending Yankee games since the days of Babe Ruth and who keeps score of every  game in a 99-cent spiral notebook chatted with a friend. Dipitero comes to about 60 games a year and usually gets tickets from cops or other people in the neighborhood who recognize him.

“I’ve got my book and my radio,” he said. “If I don’t get tickets maybe I’ll go sit in the bar and listen to the game.”

Derek Jeter arrived at 8:40 and the line of fans and stadium employees was four hundred deep. Jeter drove a shiny black Ford SUV He slowed down long enough to tip a Starbucks coffee cup towards those on line. From behind the tinted glass, it appeared to be a Venti.

“That’s got to be a record for him,” said Dipitero. “Write that down. He’s early today.”

Then, he told his friend, “There’s a guy from Boston waiting for tickets over there. He might get one.”

Over the next half-hour the remaining players arrived in sports cars, SUVs and pick-up trucks with mud flaps. Some drove themselves; some had drivers and others were dropped off by their wives or girlfriends.

Meanwhile, Paulette Williams was waiting to start work on her first day as a cashier. She is training to be a drug counselor and took the stadium job to make some extra money. “This is exciting,” she said. “I love the Yankees.”

Nearby stood Ray Basques, who had traveled from Minnesota for the opener. He is 60 and has been a Yankee fan since he was 10. “Life begins when the season starts,” he said. He held up a disposable camera. “I’m trying to get some pictures of the players.”

Around the corner at the ticket window things were still quiet. It was 9:30 and four men who’d been waiting on line had their tickets. They were not entirely pleased. “I was planning on paying $50,” said John Bruno of New Paltz who has been to some 20 opening days. “But $100, that’s ok. I’m in there.”

By 10 a.m. the smell of lighter fluid permeated the air around a parking garage on River Avenue. Tailgating fans had arrived and were spread thin across the upper level. Some barbecued. A father and son played Wiffle Ball. A group of girls played beer pong on the back of a BMW. A man from New Jersey admitted he was playing hookie from work and wouldn’t give his name.

Patrons filled the Dugout on River Avenue by 11:00 a.m. (Michael Ratliff / Bronx Ink)

Meanwhile the crowd was building on the stadium plaza in anticipation for the 11 a.m. gate opening. Swarms of men, women and children, many dressed for a warmer day, mingled and munched on street food as they waited.

Claudio Beltran, 64, wearing a ten-gallon blue straw hat posed for pictures with fans alongside the famed Freddy Schuman, 85, better known by his nickname, Freddy Sez, Freddy held onto his trademark shamrock-painted frying pan as a pack of people took their turns hitting it with a metal spoon for good luck.

At last the gates opened, six hours after Chris McCably had arrived. Fans in blue hats swarmed inside, moving like a school of tightly-packed sardines.

Tony Dipitero was nowhere to be found. He was last seen chatting up a police officer. “Hey Charlie, what’s up?” he had said Dipitero, adding “That’s the cop that hooks me up with tickets.”

(Slide show: Michael Ratliff and Alec Johnson for Bronx Ink)

(Homepage Photo: Michael Ratliff / Bronx Ink)

The gymnasium in the Church of the Visitation annex building at the southwestern corner of Van Cortlandt Park reverberated to the sounds of balls bouncing on its tiled floor, sneakers screeching against the gleaming surface and the wheezing of 13 energetic young women desperately trying to catch their breath. Pennants draped from the rafters commemorated the parish basketball team’s championships, but the hoops were firmly tucked away into storage on this night at the end of March. There were no free throws or slam dunks at this training session.

Having been rained out of their regular training field in Van Cortlandt Park, the players from the Fermanagh Ladies’ Gaelic football team were diligently going through their practice drills in preparation for the New York Ladies’ Gaelic Athletics Association season. The sport, largely unknown outside of Ireland, has seen fluctuating participation rates in New York, stretching back for more than 80 years, depending on the cycles of Irish immigration. Numbers are low in the current economic climate — only five women’s teams will compete for this year’s silverware — but The Bronx’s Irish community is taking steps to ensure that the game continues to thrive over 3,000 miles from its origins.

Gaelic football is thought to be one of the world’s oldest sports. According to a study by Jaime Oregan from Elon University in North Carolina, historical references to a form of the game being played in Ireland date to the 14^th century. The modern game is best explained as a hybrid of soccer and rugby. Teams of 15 players play on a rectangular field with a round ball. The aim is to kick or strike the ball with the hand past a goalkeeper into a soccer-type goal for three points, or between posts rising above the goal for one point. Players cannot carry the ball in their hands for more than four steps without either bouncing it or dropping it to the foot and kicking it back into their grasp. The team scoring the most points at the end of two 30-minute halves wins the game.

Mary Murphy, a prominent member of the New York Ladies GAA board of officers, arrived to observe the girls as they practiced their kicking and hand-passing. She is familiar with the challenges of keeping the sport alive among New York’s Irish community, having been active in founding the women’s organization in 1991. “We didn’t have cell phones then, and we didn’t have computers,” she said. “So we stood at a corner candy store in Riverdale with fliers.” Before long there were enough participants to form a cluster of teams, largely named after the counties of Ireland, who have fought for the annual league championship every year since 1992.

Ms. Murphy, the daughter of Irish parents, was born in the Bronx in 1962 and grew up living near Fordham Road. “It used to be a big Irish neighborhood, from there all the way up to Woodlawn,” she said. “But then, one by one, the neighborhoods changed.” Today, Woodlawn remains as one of the last bastions of true Irishness in the city, and it serves as the base for most of Fermanagh’s team.

With the young native Irish population dwindling, the New York GAA launched the Gaelic 4 Girls organization in 2003 to promote the sport among the next generation, whether they be of Irish-American heritage or otherwise. There are now six youth teams from Under-8s to Under-18s who have competed against similar programs from Boston, Philadelphia, Ottawa, Chicago and San Francisco. Gaelic 4 Girls is host to summer training camps as well as arranging annual trips to Ireland where the New York girls can test their skills in competition against Irish teams. Results have been encouraging so far with a number of teams reaching the semifinals and finals of tournaments.

The investment in the next generation is also beginning to pay off in the ladies’ league. Of the 13 Fermanagh players training that night, Ms. Murphy said eight were American-born.

By the middle of the summer, the make-up of the Fermanagh team will be slanted toward native Irish girls as college students cross the Atlantic for work experience or to visit friends and family members. But thanks to the efforts of Ms. Murphy and her fellow board members, ladies’ Gaelic football in New York looks to be in a healthy state with or without another influx of Irish immigrants.