Today as on every labor day, 30th Ave was closed to traffic. It was filled with stalls selling food and clothes, musicians performing, and children playing on inflatable fairground rides.
It was at a 30th Ave street fair back in 2008 that National Geographic’s “Genographic Project” collected DNA cheek-samples from passers by, and found traces of almost all the ethnic lineages on earth. An article about the findings quotes George Delis, a Greek immigrant and retired community manager: “Everybody talks about Astoria like it’s Greek. Well, it’s not Greek. It’s everything.”
“Boutique 92” – one of Louie’s Astoria murals from 1988: 38th Street and Broadway.
Louie “KR.ONE” Gasparro is an artist and former NYC subway train graffiti writer. He was one of twelve children born in Manhattan to Italian immigrants, and was raised in Astoria: he lived in Astoria from 1966 to 1996.
“I started writing graffiti very young in 1977, I was 11 years old,” says Louie. “Ever since I can remember I was always drawing, sketching, finger painting and reading comic books. So when I started to notice the cartoons and bubble lettering on trains I was immediately attracted to it.”
He adds: “Sketching the outline to executing it and seeing the result fly by while you are sitting in your homeroom class is really unforgettable.” There were challenges too, of course. “Going into a tunnel or train yard and doing a piece on a train that you liked and then walking out unscathed and not arrested were the biggest. Painting in the dark was a challenge for sure – that’s why I painted mostly in yards. In the daylight.”
Some of the cliques (subway writing groups) that Louie was a part of would meet up at the 30th Avenue subway station. He met with writers from IRT (Invading Rapid Transit) and TSS (The Super Squad). “There were guys with names like RCA (Reckless Car Artist), SN (Sick Nick), and KB (Krazy Boy) aka Savage 1. RCA and KB were the founders and presidents of these two Astoria based cliques.”
Subway graffiti was known as writing because, Louie says, “it was letter and name based. So we were writing. Writing for ourselves and each other.
“Subway era graffiti was totally competitive. Every writer would try and ‘burn’ the other with style or with quantity.” But there was also camaraderie. “Being a (graffiti) writer really transcended any and all social, economic, ethnic and racial boundaries. The art was the common denominator.”
Louie grew up always feeling safe in Astoria. “Everywhere I’d go I always knew someone. If I didn’t, they’d usually know someone in my family. It was a true neighborhood. Astoria Park and all the school yards were the social network. I still visit Astoria frequently because of the many great restaurants, and the Museum of the Moving Image, which I used to play in when it was an abandoned wreckage.”
In the mid 1980s, Louie was the first Astoria-based artist to be commissioned by the community and private businesses to do murals. “I’m really proud of those murals,” he says. And despite being a graffiti-writer on the trains he was a member of a community group called Graffiti Busters, helping identify what could be done for kids who were defacing property.
“I’d be sitting there with really long hair and a leather jacket explaining the psychological reasons why kids were writing their names on walls. I got used to being stared at really quickly.”
Louie is still an artist, and a musician: his band is called Servants Of The Crown -Keepers Of The Sign. And he recently published a book, “Don 1, The King From Queens– The Life and Photos Of a NYC Transit Graffiti Master” about the influential graffiti writer from the 70s Joe “Don 1” Palattella (also from Astoria). Louie says: “The book includes 200 never-seen-before photos of the old Astoria RR trains and the DON 1 tags and pieces (short for master-pieces) that adorned those trains.”
On why New York City saw the birth of the global street graffiti movement, Louie says: “When ‘Cornbread’ – a graffiti writer from Philadelphia – was noticed and TAKI 183 and Julio 204 took it to the next level in NYC and the whole metamorphosis from the more simplistic ‘single hits’ of graffiti signatures went to ‘bubble lettering’ and more elaborate ‘burners’ and ‘wild style’ the entire vocabulary of graffiti art was laid out on the NYC subways and streets – it was the invention of a modern art form.
“The evolution and style metamorphosis that happened in NYC from 1970 – 1980 is responsible for the global phenomena of graffiti writing and graffiti art. I always say that we needed to write and apparently so did the world.”
And the archive of all the interviews on this website, “30th Ave – A Year in the Life of a Street”
More of Louie’s work:
KR.1 FOME 1 top to bottom whole car on the IRT # 2 train. Winter 82. Louie says: “Last piece I ever did on a NYC subway!”
PS 166 School Yard – Louie grew up and played in this school yard for many years. This is a commissioned piece of art for another PS 166 school yard alumni.
“Mahavishnu Orchestrated” – a pen and ink illustration “that basically sums up who I am”, says Louie. You have a massive drum set sitting atop a NYC subway with a “KAY-AR” burner on it.
“Style” – a pen and ink illustration
“KR.1 – Bus Buster” A top to bottom whole bus. “Giant letters on moving steel is a great memory enhancer!”
“Boutique 92” – one of Louie’s Astoria murals from 1988: 38th Street and Broadway.
KR. 1 Steinway Street T-Shirt
KR.1 Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Winter 1980.
Cover for “Don 1, The King From Queens” – Don 1 is on the cover, after an “insides” tagging mission. Bowery NYC 1976.
“Astoria is my second Alexandria” says Mohamed Khalil, the manager of Leli’s Bakery & Pastry Shop at 35-14 30th Avenue. Originally from Egypt, Mohamed has lived in Astoria for the past eleven years.
Leli’s opened in November 2012. It was founded by Emanuel Darmanin, known as “Leli”. Darmanin owns Melita Bakery based in the Bronx which sells bread and deserts wholesale to restaurants and hotels throughout the city. He decided to branch out with his first storefront café, and settled on Astoria.
“In the past five, six years there has been, let’s say, a revolution in business here,” says Mohamed. “I remember when 30th Avenue was too dark in the night. Barely after 9 o’clock, you didn’t hear no-body. If you had a pizza stop or something, it wasn’t a fancy one.” But then “the first big café opened, that was Avenue Café. They did a great business, and then came Grand Café, Flo Café, Mexi-BBQ…”
Leli’s Bakery followed suit. At first, they would open at eight in the morning, and close at nine pm. Now they open at seven, and at weekends stay open until eleven. All of the food is made on site – the metal bread machines can be glimpsed through the back of the café.
The owner Darmanin is from Malta, and Maltese products feature prominently in the bakery. There are mounds of savory Qassatat, that “TastoriaQueens” has reviewed in glowing terms, and pastizzi; small flaked-pastry snacks stuffed with ricotta cheese, beef, or spinach and feta cheese. “In Malta, those are like the equivalent of falafel,” says Mohamed. “Two of those will keep you going until you have your lunch or dinner.”
Then there are the sweets of course, of all shapes and sizes, from rainbow cookies to carrot cake. Birthday cakes form colorful lines behind the glass counter and baskets brimming with croissants and muffins surround the till. “To have a good product you have to do it from real ingredients”, says Mohamed. “You know, nothing fat free. That’s not what the boss is doing here. Even if he has some sort of recipe that’s for people who want low-fat foods…that will never happen because he mixes it his Maltese way.” Despite, that is, Darmanin being diabetic so unable to eat the delicacies his business creates.
Mohamed got to know Darmanin because a friend of his, also Egyptian, is married to one of Darmanin’s daughters. “What I found out about any Maltese who I met here,” says Mohamed, “is that they have a background in baking.” Mohamed finds the Maltese language easy to understand because “it’s about sixty percent Arabic. They got the language from Libya…and the baking from Italy,” he says. Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean, is in-between the two.
“Some people might like the feeling you get in a formal, expensive hotel,” says Mohamed. “That’s not what we are aiming for here.” No two chairs in Leli’s are the same, purposefully. While we spoke on a Sunday afternoon all the chairs were occupied, and customers were queuing up at the counter for goods. At the table next to us was Mohamed’s mother, over for a trip from Alexandria, knitting a child’s cardigan that she was hoping to complete by the end of the day. On the other side of us, a young couple focused on their i-pads.
There is no shortage of other bakeries along 30th Avenue. You “have to do a bit extra”, says Mohamed, to keep customers coming.
Tara Pappas of UFCW Local 342 (far left), with workers from Trade Fair meat department including Eunice Izquierdo (second from right) and Beatriz Gomez (far right)
Tara Pappas of UFCW Local 342 (far left), with workers from Trade Fair meat department including Eunice Izquierdo (second from right) and Beatriz Gomez (far right)
From last Wednesday, Trade Fair employees have been standing outside the supermarket on 30th Ave with placards and leaflets. They are among 100 employees of the meat departments at the nine Trade Fair locations throughout Queens who are holding an “unfair labor practices” strike.
Among them is Eunice Izquierdo. She has worked in the store’s meat department for 23 years. “When I started working here it was a relatively small business,” she says (translated from Spanish). “I saw him [the company’s owner Farid Jaber] buy the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, all of those stores I saw him buy. And also I’ve seen how the stores have grown in size, thanks to cheap labor.”
In November the workers’ contract came up for renewal. Their union says that in the proposed new contract the management wanted to freeze wages for meat department employees, make everyone part time instead of full-time, reduce healthcare benefits and stop paying extra rates for Sunday work.
“He wants to reduce our hours to 24 hours a week. How are we going to support our families on that?” says Eunice, who has three children – two in college and one in high school. “There have been three cuts. First we worked 48 hours a week, then 37. At the moment we have been working 34. Now he wants to cut it to 24 and change Sunday working to regular pay.”
She adds: “I like the work here. We have done our work with a lot of love. That is what hurts. Because we have worked here with our hearts. We have worked harder than we have been paid for. It’s not to say it’s a bad business. It’s a good business, well managed. But the owner – that’s to say the owner-owner of all the stores – says that he wants everyone to be part time. Who lives off part time?”
The workers are accompanied by representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, Local 342. According to the union, when rounds of negotiations over the new contract were not making any progress, the workers began to leaflet the customers on their off-the-clock-time. The management reacted to this by harassing them and putting up signs in the department that part-time meat workers were wanted, the union says.
Union representative David Rodriquez said: “The employees are just speaking out for their rights. They went to the community, spoke to the community, and he [Jaber] didn’t appreciate that, he would have preferred that they stay quiet. So he put up these signs saying that they needed help, in the meat department, when they don’t.”
When the strike began on Wednesday, workers offered to go back to work in the afternoon to continue bargaining. But management did not let them back, saying that they had been replaced with new staff, according to the union.
Beatriz Gomez is another of the workers on strike. She has worked in the meat department for 13 years. “What we are asking is to stay with what we had before,” she says. “I have a lot of faith that we are going to be able to go back, that we will get our jobs back. I am prepared to be here as long as it takes.”
Trade Fair headquarters declined to comment for this post. They referred to the banner posted on the outside walls of their supermarkets. It reads: “…We are in negotiation with the union and told them that we need to keep our costs competitive with other non-union stores in the neighborhood so we can provide you with top quality meat at fair, competitive prices. The disruptions to our business is their answer to us. Trade Fair will continue to do what is necessary to keep our costs competitive so that our prices remain competitive.” (full wording on the image below).
An interview on this website in November 2011 with two managers at the 30th Ave location, Mustafa Eid and Sabah Guessar. When asked if he would like to comment on the meat workers’ action, Mustafa said that for now only the management at Trade Fair headquarters is able to do that.
PS 5 kids when they were in 3rd grade - some of them are in the reunion photo below
PS 5 kids when they were in 3rd grade – some of them are in the reunion photo belowThe kids – at their reunion on September 20, 2012
In September a group of people in their early seventies met for lunch at an Astoria restaurant. Most had either attended Public School 5 or Junior High School 126 in the neighborhood together, back in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. There were 24 “kids” from those schools at the gathering, along with 16 spouses or friends. There were hugs and shouts of delight. Some had not seen each other for over fifty years. Since June 23, 1954 to be exact.
Alfred Holzman organized the reunion. His Slovakia-born parents had moved into 34-03 30th Avenue in 1944. They ran a store called Grand Paint Supply Company downstairs from their apartment, which is now Prime Design and Printing. In 1945 Alfred entered Public School 5.
The school was at 30-11 29th Street, just off 30th Avenue. The site is still a school – PS 234 – but the PS 5 building is no longer there: in 1967 an eight year-old boy playing with a match in a student clothing closet triggered a fire that burned the building to the ground.
Alfred and his classmates were devoted to one of their teachers, Mrs. Evelyn R. Benton. She had recently started teaching at the school after serving with the US navy during World War II as a “WAVE” (an acronym for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). Many years later, in 2005, Alfred decided to get a small group of “Mrs. Benton’s kids” back together again for a reunion.
Since that initial gathering in South Florida the group has mushroomed as Alfred has been able to track down more and more of their classmates. Many live within New York State or New Jersey. Some though had flown in for the Astoria reunion from Florida and were making the occasion into a vacation. One woman arrived a little late having driven for seven hours straight from Vermont.
The reunion bubbled with reminiscences and summaries of lifetimes. How to update someone on the last fifty years of your life? It tended to boil down to love, work and health. There may be big differences between the specific paths Mrs. Benton’s pupils took but those basic ingredients, in various formulations, are there.
Among the group is an actress, an artist who taught at Fashion Institute of Technology, and a wall-street investor-turned marine-turned firefighter who also played the bugle in a band during the half-times of New York Giants games. One of the guests had married his childhood sweetheart. Another was there with his second wife. Alfred married his wife Lucy when he was in his fifties.
Clyde Locke, one of the guests, remembers the mix of origins of the kids along his block and still has the accents to prove it. He can switch effortlessly from Irish- to Scottish- to English- to German- to Italian-accented English. He says arriving at college where most kids had grown up in rural American towns was a culture shock – their experience having been so different from his city life. Frank went on to be an ophthalmologist in Astoria and the Director of eye surgery at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. He fixed two detached retinas for one of his PS 5 kindergarten classmates, Rosemarri Roth, who stood up at the reunion to thank him.
While Astoria was mixed when Mrs Benton’s kids were young, most of its residents were of European origins. As Alfred described it, “we all came from working class immigrant families, whether Hungarian, German, Slovak, Greek, or Italian-American.”
The guests brought photos and mementos. Among them was a faded PS 5 banking book. Each student contributed to his or her student bank account every Monday morning. It could be a dime, a quarter, even a dollar, whatever their parents could afford at the time. At the end of sixth grade when they graduated from PS 5, the children received a regular bank book. In that way they learned to save.
The best memories though didn’t need a prop. Evelyn Strang (raised on 30th Street between Newtown Avenue and Astoria Boulevard) and Frank Jankech (31st Avenue and 32nd Street) reminisced about a date they had gone on when they were young. It was Evelyn’s first time going to a Broadway show. She recalls her mother telling her to dress up nice and wear gloves. “I remember you were always smiling, always happy,” she said of Frank.
Miss Anna E. Burns, the PS 5 long-time principal, cropped up in the conversations. The girls at the school liked her, the boys loathed her. One recalled his delight at discovering how to open a high window in the corridor followed by the dread of sensing her approaching behind him.
There were also insights into how 30th Avenue has changed. Near where Key Foods supermarket is now located there was a grand mansion: Evelyn’s father tended the gardens there. Most of the Avenue consisted of small shops, like now, but very few of the shops from the time have survived. On practically every corner there was a pharmacy: from 29th Street to Steinway there were seven.
Off the Avenue, kids would take over whole blocks with street games, like stick ball for which they used manhole covers and auto fenders as bases. And many remembered the jubilant street parties on V-J day in Spring 1945, when they were impressionable five year-olds.
Guests were given a questionnaire that they browsed during the meal, with questions about PS 5 and the neighborhood. Some had specific answers. “An important invention was made in Astoria in a garage on 37th Street, what was it?” (Answer: xerography, i.e. a dry photocopy, which soon became the essence of the Xerox corporation).
Other questions began with “Do you remember…?”. For example, “Do you remember ‘inspection’ each week?” (when the class had to stand in a row and have their hands and fingernails inspected for cleanliness and display their handkerchiefs). And: “Do you remember the basement lunch room (can you smell the tomato soup) ?”
The atmosphere at the reunion ranged from lighthearted to emotional. As Alfred said when he addressed the group: “It’s just a kick, a great feeling, to see someone again.”
*************************************
I am very grateful to Alfred Holzman for inviting me to join this reunion.
For more on how 30th Avenue was in the past, see: the interview with Bob Singleton of the Greater Astoria Historical Society; a conversation with a group of Astoria old-timers at Corner Delights café; and the post about 30th Avenue’s former ice cream parlors.
Alfred Holzman’s parents outside their store Grand Paint Supply Company at 34-03 30th Avenue, just before they retiredAnd 34-03 30th Avenue today: Prime Design and Printing
Frank and Jennifer Greco and their son Robert in Astoria Coins and Collectibles, 21-06 30th Ave
Frank and Jennifer Greco and their son Robert in Astoria Coins and Collectibles, 21-06 30th Ave
First up, a note from Jennifer Greco about the shop:
Astoria Coins and Collectibles is a place where collectors meet each other whether during working hours or on Saturdays, to discuss coins of interest, the market trends, or just stop by to say “Hello”. The highlight of the store has always been the display cases, and whatever wall hangings we have on display at the moment, and the comradely conversations. Frank Greco believes that these displays are not only of interest to our devoted customers, but even travelers find interest in the museum-like experience of seeing a small bit of history hanging on our walls and in our cases. Our unique coin shop is an interesting visit for people of all ages.
Interview
Frank and Jennifer Greco have run Astoria Coins and Collectibles on 30th Avenue since 1975. It was a coin shop before then too. Jennifer’s family owned the building, and the store first opened when she was around eight years old. “I used to come in all the time with my Dad,” she says. “I grew to love the shop and the idea of collecting coins…I guess it is in my blood now.”
She was fifteen when she met Frank. They were both working at Key Food supermarket, at the time located not on 30th Ave as it is now but on 31st Street, between 21st Avenue and Ditmars. Frank left Key Food after the couple had their children, as he was working really long hours. He got a job with Air Canada at JFK airport and began working in the coin shop as well on Saturdays. Then when he was laid off, he made the coin shop his full time vocation. Their two sons and daughter are now grown up: the middle son, Robert, works in the coin store too.
“It’s the whole thing,” Frank says, on why he is passionate about working with coins. “It’s a history lesson, really. For example you start thinking about the movies, and John Wayne when he used to go into a bar with a silver dollar and get a whole bottle and a meal, and maybe even a woman and still get change!”
The store focuses on US coins, but also sells coins from many other countries. Frank says that there used to be more coin shops, particularly in Manhattan. But given the increasing rents and rise of the internet there are far fewer now. He himself does a lot of business on the internet, while also sourcing coins from customers who bring them in, dealers who go from store to store, and shows.
The display cases that run the length of the store are crammed with clearly-labeled coins, each of which conveys a story. Recently among them were a coin commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 address at Cooper Union before he became President, and a more recent coin marking the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in the UK.
The store also used to sell baseball cards and comic books, a hit with kids from the local boys club. They still provide a bright patchwork on the walls, along with cabinets of coins, hanging bills, and a superhero mural. But, Frank says, “It just got out of hand, got crazy. I’d be selling baseball cards for a dollar a piece and then all of a sudden they came out with the high-end cards for $10 a piece. Same thing with the comics. But kids don’t have ten dollars. So I just stopped it.”
The store provides an income tax service too. It predates the coin business, in that Jennifer’s father had a real estate office next door which also did income tax. Frank says: “At that time we would get the paper with the carbon copy in the middle and if you made a mistake you would rip it up and have to do another one. When I got started, all I remember is ‘Do it over! Do it over!”.
Astoria Coins and Collectibles is a place to hang out as much as a store. “My eldest son always says that we should turn on a video here, because of the people who come in and just talk,” Jennifer says. “Usually it starts about coins, about the economy, but then it becomes anything.”
A significant change they are seeing the neighborhood is the construction of new, expensive apartment buildings. “I see a yuppie generation coming in,” says Jennifer. “For the older generation – I can speak from my mom’s point of view because she was also born and raised in Astoria – she hates it. She says they’re killing Astoria, I guess killing the country feeling of it, that she had growing up around 18th Street.”
Frank adds: “I grew up in Long Island City, down by Vernon Boulevard and 40th, where the Pepsi plant was. When I grew up there it was just factories. Now it’s Manhattan just coming right over the river. And they’re going to do that along the waterfront here, too. It’s just a matter of time.”
He says that properties are being overpaid for. He cites the example of an apartment block on 21st Street where “they purchased five or six houses for $1.2 million. Most people who live there paid like $8-10,000 for their houses. If you get an offer for $1.2 million, you’re like ‘ok I’m out of here!’”
The coin store will no doubt though remain a community fixture for many years to come. Jennifer recently returned to work there after retiring from her work in education. “It’s invigorating,” she says. “Especially having been in a classroom, a school, where you know there’s a lot of action, I never realized what I was missing all those years!”
Jennifer, Frank, and their dog TrudyBaseball cards and comic books on the store wall
Gus Prentzas in his store Pavilion Florals at 30th Ave and 32nd Street
Gus Prentzas in his store Pavilion Florals at 30th Ave and 32nd Street
Gus Prentzas worked in a flower store while he was a politics and international relations student at college. Then at the age of 22 he bought his own flower store in Astoria, on 29th and Ditmars. Other than a short period out, he has stayed in the flower business, while keeping politically active through his involvement with local organizations. He was NYC’s youngest ever school board member, and is currently Co-Chair of Community Board 1 (which covers Astoria), for example.
Pavilion Florals on 30th Ave was founded in 1974, and Gus bought it 15 years ago. Its previous owner’s partner ran a radio station which was popular with the Greek entertainment industry. Greek singers and entertainers would stop by the shop when they were in New York.
The store is still a community mainstay. “Half my day is spent helping people out in the community,” Gus says, on issues ranging from traffic problems, to overcrowding in schools or in the nearby Mount Sinai Queens hospital. “It’s not the hospital’s fault,” he says, “just its limited resources”.
His philosophy is that he does not have customers, but friends. He adds, “As a florist, you deal with people on a very personal level. It could be a baby’s birth, a wedding, or a time of sadness and sympathy like a funeral. You’re there in the happy and the sad times in their life.”
One of the challenges in his industry is the fluctuations in the prices of the products he buys, among them flowers of course. The largest exporters of flowers are Holland, Colombia and Ecuador. “If you’re buying from Holland,” says Prentzas, “you’re dealing with the Euro, so as the Euro goes up the prices of flowers goes up. Or, for example, if there are a lot of floods in Ecuador or Colombia around Valentines Day, farms get flooded out, there’s a shortage of roses, and that forces us to sell for higher.”
It’s not just the flowers. The plastic for wrapping them has gone up 500 percent over the last five years. And recently flower stores have confronted a shortage in helium for the first time. “You’ll probably be shocked to find people having to charge $4 to blow up a balloon soon,” he says.
If someone from outside the neighborhood was visiting 30th Avenue, Gus would tell them, “just take a stroll about 10 blocks and you’ll see the diversity. There will be an element of something that you are going to find attractive, or something that connects with you that will draw you to this community.”
Here is the interview from this time last year, with mailman Benny Banker. Watch this space for new interviews. Initially this was intended to be a year-long project. But there are plenty more stories to tell and people to read them, so I’ll be starting interviewing again in September 2012. Annabel. (p.s. the archive of all interviews so far is here).
Benny Banker delivering mail along 30th Ave
Benny (Virendra) Banker has been delivering mail along 30th Avenue for over 13 years. “My area covers most of this heart part of Astoria,” he says. “It’s a nice residential area. There’s Astoria General Hospital which is now Mount Sinai, so there are a lot of doctors around here.” Benny is also a singer of Hindi devotional songs and other forms of Indian classical music.
He lives in Queens Village, in Eastern Queens. It takes him one and a half hours by train to get to Astoria. But he makes it no matter what. “On the day when there was the biggest snowstorm I woke up at four in the morning, I walked to the subway station and I took a train and I made it here by eight o’ clock. I managed to work, while 80% of people didn’t make it to their work that day.”
He adds: “When people see us in the snow and the rain they feel really sorry about us. But if you talk about counting the full year of 365 days we hardly have those heat waves and those mountains of the snow or the rain. Hardly I would say ten days in the year. This job may look like its hard but I think it is not that bad. To be honest, the difficult and the easy thing about the job is just your mindset.”
Benny says that he loves his job “because it’s a service for the people. I feel good seeing old people – when they wait for me and then they see me they become so happy. If I am off a while, when I’m back everybody feels like a family member came back after a long time. This job is also my lifesaver, because it gives me compulsory exercise everyday.”
Benny was born in Gujarat, India. He came to New York City in his late teens, went back to Gujarat in 1977 when he got married, and returned to New York with his wife. His three children are now grown up: one son is a pediatrician in Houston, one is a gastro-intestinal doctor in Stonybrook, and his daughter is in business management.
Benny crams a lot into his spare time. He singsbhajan sandhyas (devotionals) and light classical Indian music in various languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, performing at events in New York and also other parts of the US. (You can listen to him singing here).
When Benny first started working for the US Postal Service he was working in Brooklyn and living in Woodside. That commute was very long: he applied for a transfer, and within six months his choice of the Long Island City area came up. One of the main changes in the area that has affected him has been the increase in large new buildings with many apartments. “That creates a parking problem mainly. Before we used to find parking any time – now we have to struggle for it.”
Before, he says, there was a lot more first class mail. “Now there is more junk mail, though even that is decreasing.” He hastens to add that mail is not dwindling entirely. “People still have to mail things like lawyers documents. People still need a hard copy.”
The US Postal Service is currently in financial trouble and is planning to make major cuts, including by closing post offices. One of the four in Queens on a list for potential closure is the Grand Post Office on 30th Ave between 45 and 46th Streets – over 1000 people have reportedly signed a petition to keep it open [see update in comments below]. Benny keeps things in perspective though. “Like every other business the post office is in the midst of hardship but personally I don’t think there’s a serious problem. People do need to mail a letter. Every business has a right to save the money and they are trying, but what I see in a big city like New York, downsizing will be almost impossible.
“What I say, is think positive you’re going to get positive. If you think negative, you’re inviting the negative.”
In 2011 I interviewed Jon Ellis and Georgina Young Ellis about the Welling Court Mural project. Last weekend artists painted new murals, coinciding with Welling Court’s annual block party. Walk to the far Western end of 30th Ave to check them out. And get a glimpse of some of them here:
Athens Square on 30th Ave is currently closed off to the sidewalk by a tall fence while some construction work is done. It can still be accessed, via two gates round the side on 30th Street. But it is amazing how the fence changes the whole feeling of the square. One of its most effective features is the fact that it is so open to the sidewalk, so that the wide sidewalk and the square merge into one another. Let’s hope that it is not closed off for long.
Athens Square epitomizes what I call an “open geography of the street”: an environment that facilitates interaction between people. There are its benches and tables with chess boards marked on them where elderly people can while away hours right next to passers by. There are two playgrounds for older and for younger kids, the open area where community events are held (and when free from events, kids kick footballs), and the basketball courts at the back. Urban observers and writers like Jane Jacobs and William H Whyte (of the “Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”, the film of which is here) have emphasized how important this easy-mixing of people who use a space in different ways is to the smooth functioning of a neighborhood.
When kids skateboarding throughout the open area in Athens Square began to annoy other users, they weren’t just banned from the park with no place else to go. The Community Board manager at the time George Delis asked them what they would think of having a big skatepark built in Astoria Park. The park went ahead and now it is used by hundreds of skateboarders each day. Boarders Philip Sparta and Wallace de Olivera who I interviewed for this blog said they use the new Skatepark all the time. Yet significantly, they still come by Athens Square to see their friends on the basketball courts.
