Category: Interview

On June 18, Jerusalem Nights restaurant on Steinway a couple of blocks up from 30^th Ave was packed with people listening to readings in Arabic and English, for the event “Cairo Connections: One city, many voices.”  It was hosted by QUILL (“Queens in Love with Literature”).  The Middle Eastern décor was densely layered with stars and stripes banners, flags and shiny tinsel in preparation for the approaching Fourth of July holiday.

Towards the end of the event Rami Nuseir, Director of the American Mideast Leadership Network, thanked everyone for coming to this corner of Astoria that is often referred to as “little Egypt”.  His organization had found the venue for the event, one illustration of the many ways that it strengthens connections between people, languages and cultures.  A week later I met Rami for this interview at Grand Cafe on 30th Ave.

Rami, now 38, was born in Nazareth.  At seventeen he moved overseas, living in Belgium, London and San Diego before settling in New York.  “I hope that New York is my final destination,” he says.  “This is home for me.  When the plane lands at JFK I feel that I’m home.”

He still goes to Nazareth twice a year though, where his mother and other family members still live.  “I love my hometown.  It’s important to keep connected, not to disconnect.”

Before founding the American Mideast Leadership Network Rami, who is a lawyer, worked as Legal Counsel to non-profits.  The idea for his own organization took root soon after 9/11.  He was in Jordan, and a friend who worked at the US embassy invited him to give a lecture to a group of high school students about Arabs in America post 9/11.

“I realized how misinformed they were about us,” he says.  “The same way that general Mid-Western American society is misinformed about the Middle East.  A lot of people in the Middle East thought that Middle Easterners here in the USA were living in cages.  They thought that after 9/11 we were all being followed around at rifle-point by people who wanted to jail us.  I started thinking about how that could change.”

Rami had also seen that Middle Eastern youth in the US were feeling lost after 9/11 and needed support.  So he set up his non-profit to address those needs: to empower Middle Eastern youth living in the USA, and to promote understanding between people in the US and the Middle East.

One of American Mideast Leadership Network’s programs is called “Grassroots Diplomacy.”  In 2007, Rami took a group of US students to Syria, where they stayed with Syrian students.  “The idea is for people to learn first-hand, away from the influence of the media or politicians, or people who are partial, and let them see the reality for themselves,” he says.

He recently spent a year developing contacts in Libya to do a similar project there.  The group was all set to fly at the end of May but given the current conflict they have had to put the plan on hold.  Rami hopes that Libya emerges peaceful and able to rebuild, and that the project will still happen in the future.

In the meantime, he is taking a group of students to Nazareth in Galilee, in August.  “In the group there’s a white guy, a Colombian, an East Asian, a Pakistani, a white girl…I’m trying to show that America is not a homogeneous society,” Rami says.

“I’m proud to be taking students to my hometown.  That gives it a different feeling.  They’re going to have a blast but they’re also going to learn a lot.  The programs I build are educational so they’re not going to be wasting time, they do their homework.”

One of the purposes of the trip is to educate Americans about the Arab Muslim and Christian population in Israel.   Rami says: “The main misconception is that we don’t exist.  Many people do not know that there are Arabs living in Israel.  There are 1.4 million Arabs, of which 1.5% are Christian.”  (Rami is Christian).

He adds that educating Arab-Americans about the Palestinian population of Israel is important too.  “The moment they hear Israeli, they kind of shut down and want to hear nothing about it.”

Soon after he established the American Mideast Leadership Network the organization evolved to address other pressing needs in Astoria, beyond problems specific to youth.  The economic downturn meant that more than ever, recently-arrived immigrants needed help with finding jobs.  The organization helps people to do job searches, write resumes and manage finances, and it provides English lessons.  As Rami puts it, “things that can really put food on the table.”

He says that recent immigrants can have real trouble understanding the US job market.  “In the Middle East, you often get a job by calling up and saying ‘my uncle told me to call you, do you have a job for me?’  That’s changing now, but still most of the people who use our services have zero knowledge about how to job-hunt here in the US.

“We have to educate them on every step of the process: you look for a job, you send a letter and your resume, you go for an interview.”   He says that one of the most satisfying aspects of his work is when he finds someone a job.

Disappointment-management also comes into it.  Some of the people he helps have arrived with green cards that they obtained through the Green Card Lottery system.  “There’s a guy here who came from Morocco, where he was working for Mercedes and making good money,” says Rami.  “He was married and with a kid and very financially stable.  Then he won the green card lottery.   Suddenly ‘America’ controlled his way of thinking.  And so he and his family moved to the US.  He regrets it because now he’s working as a waiter somewhere.  We are trying to help him with work but there are the major challenges of language and navigating the system.”

Rami has to work hard to communicate the services that his non-profit provides, and convince people of why he wants to help.  “When I advise people on options for free health insurance, or offer a seminar that I don’t charge for, they say ‘why, why?’ and run away.  Look what’s happening in Egypt and elsewhere.  People lived under repression for much too long.”

Since November 2010, Rami had visited Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria.  Some friends joked with him that he had something to do with triggering the revolutions in those countries.  “I replied that I was privileged and lucky to visit those places just before the revolution.”   He says that there was an amazing spirit on Astoria’s Steinway Street when Mubarak was overthrown, along with some wishing among Egyptians that they could be in Egypt to experience it.

When Rami first came to New York he lived in Manhattan, but he was drawn to Astoria.  “I love the Greeks, the Latins, the Russians, the Brazilians.  In Manhattan, especially when you work there, it’s very robotic.  Here you can sit and chill and enjoy things, and walk from one place to another.”  Astoria, he says, it like a bottle of wine, getting better as it ages.

As well as activities in their offices – from the English classes and financial training, to a new program of Arabic classes, to hosting a group of Egyptian intellectuals who met on Twitter and gather there for discussions – American Mideast Leadership Network organizes events out and about in Astoria.  On the same day as the QUILL readings at Jerusalem Nights, they were holding  an Egyptian dancing event at the Queens public library on Broadway, and an education event at the library’s western Astoria branch.

In July last year, they organized an Arab Heritage Week Festival in 30^th Ave’s Athens Square with music, dancing and food vendors. Rami is planning to hold a similar festival this fall.  “We face a bit of resistance over the event, even from our community,” he says.  “There are people who have a conservative view of things, so putting together music and dance on the street isn’t very appropriate.

“My answer to them is ‘welcome to America.  The dancing is cultural, respectful.  Thank you for your opinion but Queens is the most diverse place in the United States – we need to celebrate our culture and heritage.’”

Rami says the network aims to be very clearly secular – welcoming everyone and not being influenced by one particular religion – and also to have no tolerance for racism.  Sometimes, he says, “our community can be divisive and territorial within itself.  You know, there’s a myth about the fact that we are all Arabs.  We are not.  We are 22 different nations, 22 different cultures.  We speak the same language but we are very different.”

 

At the far Western end of 30th Avenue, close to the East River and the Welling Court Mural Project, is Two Coves Community Garden.  A mesh fence encloses a triangular patch of land split up into 130 gardening plots.

Early last Sunday morning the garden was already bustling with activity.  I spoke with Two Coves member Lynne Serpe.  While we spoke, she was weeding and digging a new plot that had become available, getting it ready for its gardener.

“Two Coves was once a vacant lot,” she says, “with all the problems that come with that.  There was an idea to turn it into a park but then the money dried up.  Local people decided that well, if we turn it into a community garden the money won’t be a problem, because we maintain it.”

That was in 2006.  Lynne got involved in January 2008 when there were about 12 people gardening there.  By the end of that year there were 80.  Now, around 250 people use the garden.  Most of the plots have more than one gardener, and there is also a community plot for people who are on the waiting list or who don’t have enough time to look after a patch of their own.

A division of the Parks Department called Green Thumb licenses Two Coves.  The gardeners do not own their plots: they are encouraged to pay a membership fee of $20 per season, and expected to maintain their plot and do a couple of hours volunteer work each month.

“It’s an incredibly diverse garden,” says Lynne.  “In 2009, the last time we counted, there were 40 languages spoken here.  And if you walk around the garden – if you know something about different cultures and food – you can kind of guess which plot might belong to, for example, Bangladeshi gardeners, or Caribbean gardeners who may be growing callaloo, choy, things like that.”  The garden gets a lot of sun, which means a lot of different things can grow.

The gardeners can come and go whenever they please.   Some garden at unpredictable times; while I was there, two air stewards who Lynne rarely sees were gardening their plot.   Lynne said for that reason the parties and barbecues that Two Coves throws from time to time are an important way to bring all the gardeners together.

When the garden first started some of the plots were big.  But as more and more people have wanted to get involved they introduced a rule to standardize the plots at around 100ft each.  That may seem small, but “you can pack a lot in,” says Lynne.

Her plot proves the point.  This year, she has blueberries, strawberries, basil, thyme, oregano, lavender, rosemary, stevia, different types of lettuce (mizuna, green, red), carrots, eggplants, tomatoes, squash, beans and marigolds. [cont. below]

Lynne says that initially she came to gardening and green-living to save resources.  She was brought up in Long Island (her parents had grown up in Brooklyn before moving there), in a family with not a lot of money.  “Then I found that I really enjoyed gardening and getting my hands dirty.  I like eating the food that I grow.  And here in this garden in particular, I enjoy the community I’ve met, the friends that I’ve made.”

Lynne moved to Astoria in 1994 after graduating from college.  First she lived at 37th Street and 31st Avenue.  She works as an independent contractor on political campaigns, which sometimes takes her to different parts of the country or overseas for periods of time.  But she always comes back to Astoria, and always in the 31st, 30th Ave area.

She works in all kinds of ways to help make Astoria greener.  She co-founded the organization Triple R Events: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle that organizes environmental activities throughout the neighborhood.  And in 2009 she stood as a Green Party candidate for the NY City Council.

At the moment, Lynne is working with Queens Library, helping to spread gardening and living green with a “Greening Libraries” initiative.  As just one part of the project she and her colleagues have created three gardens at nearby libraries.

The Astoria Library on Astoria Boulevard and 14th has a Shakespeare garden, in which all of the plants appear somewhere in a work of Shakespeare.  The courtyard at the Steinway Library by Ditmars does not get a lot of sun, so  they have planted  a shade garden with root vegetables like carrots, turnips, beets and radishes.  And at the library in Woodside, which doesn’t have its own courtyard, they have partnered with the Parks Department to use a triangle across the street for a butterfly garden, full of  colorful flowers.

About 150 people are currently on the waiting list for the Two Coves Community Garden.  But the list does move.  Each year as people either move out of town or become too busy, plots become available.  Lynne is on the plot allocation committee which this year assigned plots to 30 new people.

“To think that this was an abandoned lot.  And now it’s this beautiful oasis in the middle of Astoria,” says Lynne.  A lot of children come to the garden with their families.  “It’s fun watching them play here, learn how to water, and pick their first fresh strawberry.”

 

The Ahmad family owns TaxIntel (formerly Abacus One) on 30^th Ave between 33^rd and 34^th Streets.  When you go into the store you are likely to find at least one member of the family: there’s Shimin the mother, Nadia (21), Nadeem (18) and Nafees (7).

Until last year, there would always be Qazi, who founded the business.  He died in 2010 from cancer, and his absence is strongly felt.  In some way his presence continues to be felt too, through the influence he had on family members and customers.  Shimin says, “Everything we do is inspired by things that he taught us.  And every moment we miss him.”

I only met Qazi once, when he did my 2009 tax return.  Yet I remember the encounter well – his calmness, friendly smile, and conversation.  Shimin says that he had that effect on people: even the shortest encounter left an impression.

Qazi and Shimin, both from Sylhet in North Eastern Bangladesh, came to New York in the 1980s.  They first lived in Manhattan and moved to Astoria in 1995.  Qazi worked as an accountant and cost controller.  Soon after the September 2001 attacks, the firm he was working for closed.  He spent some time looking for a new job but didn’t find a good one – and decided it was time to do his own thing.

He had already been helping people to prepare their tax returns from his home, so that was the logical focus for the business.  He called the business Abacus One for the accounting connection and also, he mentioned when we met, because it meant the name appeared at the top of a telephone directory.  Later on Qazi renamed the business TaxIntel.  “He would always think ahead to what we needed to be doing next,” says Shimin.  “He would research a lot before making a decision.”

When he first started the business, Qazi rented space in Printing Plus further up 30^th Ave, then moved into his own space at the current location.   Word of mouth meant he quickly built up a customer-base.  About half of the clientele are Bengali-speaking, the other half reflect the mix that is Astoria.

One day, a student asked him if she could borrow his computer for a while, and he agreed.  Then she suggested he make one computer available for customers to use.   “After that we had two, then three, then five computers,” says Shimin.   The store now doubles up as a service center providing internet access, printing, copying and faxing.

“You never know what people are going to need until people walk through the door,” says Nadia.  “We’ve done wedding reception invitations, business cards, resumes…”  Sometimes people come with impossible requests, like a customer who wanted color added to a printed document when the original was only in black and white.

Anila Karki is a long-time family friend, originally from Nepal, who works with the internet/printing side of the business.  She says, “helping customers and having small talk with them is what I enjoy most.”  Often customers think that she’s Spanish-speaking and start talking away in Spanish.

The Ahmads have known a lot of the nearby store owners for a long time.  “When we need a man to help us with something,” says Anila, we go running round to the fabric stop next door.”

Nadia adds: “Our customers and neighbors definitely take care of us more than we could ever hope for.  We’ve been lucky to have gotten such support from everyone around 30^th Avenue, especially dealing with this past year.”

Nadia is studying English at New York University (and she writes a blog in her spare time).  Nadeem, who wasn’t around when I did this interview, is going to be studying mechanical engineering at CCNY starting this fall.  They both help out in the store, especially during tax season.  During that time, Nadia says, “I run out of class and then I run onto the train, and then run off the train to come and help here.

“When I was a kid I used to think ‘oh, accounting is boring’.  And well, it is a little bit boring!  But when I started helping Dad and Mom with it, you realize that it’s a lot more about people too.  It’s not just the numbers.  You never know when someone walks in the door what their story is.  You get a new story with every customer.”

Like Nadia does, Qazi enjoyed literature and writing.  “It’s a side of my Dad that we take for granted and forget that others may not be aware of,” she says.  He read and wrote a lot.  When he was younger, he wrote poems and short stories in Bengali.  Then after he came to New York he wrote articles for local Bengali newspapers, as well as poems for small publications.

Nadia says: “I always remember, especially when I was around three or four, seeing him lie on his stomach on the bed after he came home from work, with a legal yellow draft pad and paper, working on something.  Years went by though, and he had less and less time for writing, but continued to spend time on his other love – taking care of his family.

“And of course, on his work and taking care of his customers!  He worked so hard with my Mom to come up to this level with the business.  We’ve all been able to enjoy a good life because of his vision and determination.”

Halim is the owner of Harissa café on 30th Ave between 34th and 35th Streets.   He set Harissa up nine months ago.  In it, he has invested experience gained from his life so far – in particular lessons learned from the people around him.

As a boy in Algiers he used to help out in his family’s kitchenware store.  His grandfather started the store, then it was taken over by his father and then his brother.

One summer, the rest of Halim’s family went for a month to their place in the countryside, leaving the teenage Halim and a cousin in the city.  Halim had the keys to the store.  They decided to open it up.  By the time his father returned the store was almost empty. “We knew how to sell, but not how to buy,” says Halim.  “My father said ‘what happened here?!’ but at the same time he was kind of happy.”

Halim says that customers’ hard-bargaining in Algiers meant that he never had a difficult time working with people in  New York City.  “I had had tougher experience before.  That’s how you learn.”

Halim moved to New York when he was 24.  First he lived in Corona, where the one person he knew in the city lived.  He quickly found work as a bus boy at Periyali Greek restaurant in Manhattan.  He moved into a studio in Astoria to be closer to work – it was winter and the commute from Corona felt cold and long.

That was 1989, and Halim has lived in Astoria ever since.  “I love it here,” he says.  You don’t feel like an immigrant.  Because everybody is.”

He soon started working as a waiter at another restaurant owned by the same owner, Il Cantinori on 10th Street between Broadway and University Place, and stayed there for ten years.  One of the main lessons he took from those years is that “it is all about serving high quality food, and being consistent with it.  I remember a guy saying that he had had the same pasta dish 15 years previously and that it still tasted the same.”

He also observed the art of talking with customers.  He would stand impatiently waiting to take an order, behind the owner who was busy recounting stories to the diners.  He is amused to find himself doing the same in Harissa – getting into long conversations with clientele.

“You feel who wants to talk and who doesn’t.  You have a sense of ‘oh this person is tired, this one is working on the computer’, so I’ll leave them in peace…But I can tell when they want to take a break and might want to talk.”

After the ten years at Il Cantinori Halim felt it was time for a change.  He went into a partnership to set up a restaurant in the city but the plans fell through.  “So I decided to just give up the restaurant business,” he says.  He became a limo driver.

He enjoyed the reliable schedule and the free time that he had in-between drives.  A book he read twice during that period, and that he relates to his own life, was Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

His most regular clients were an actor and actress couple.  “I was not so much their driver, more like a friend.  They’d invite me into the places they went, like to join them for a drink.  I liked that connection.  It reminded me that it doesn’t matter who you are, we’re all people.

“We always had something to talk about and I learned a lot from them.  But at the same time every time I would drive them back to the restaurant to eat it felt strange waiting outside in the car.”

The restaurant business hadn’t let go its hold of him.  At one point he was on the verge of opening a café on Vernon Boulevard, with a longtime friend.  The plan was for the café to double-up as an antiques store, in which customers could buy the furniture they ate at.

At the very last minute, the project and the friendship fell through.  “It would take three years to tell the full story!” says Halim, “But when you loose everything, [he had put money into the venture], it’s a shock.”

For a while, he drove taxi cabs.  “That was more interesting because you meet the real New York.  The inside.  I talked with my passengers, and over time I forgot what happened.”

Then an opportunity came up to open up a restaurant on 30th Ave, and Halim took it.  Third time lucky.  Before it opened, he and the chef were sitting on the floor in the empty store space having some lunch – Halim had a can of Harissa, the spicy North African sauce, in his hand and that is now the café got its name.

Harissa is the kind of place where people like to linger.  The starting point is the coffee, served from a counter at the front.  But people often go on to order food – felafel salad, lamb tagine, grilled chicken sandwiches – most of it made from ingredients bought that day from the shops nearby.

“When people go someplace to eat they want to take a break,” says Halim.  “And often they want to talk.  Especially in New York…everything is individual things, people do things by themselves.   Even at the supermarket you don’t have to talk to somebody, you can cash up by yourself.  A café is a break from that.”

Halim says that the clientele in Harissa is mainly young, and arty – people who recognize elements of East Village and Williamsburg cafés there.   The décor is dark wood and pale walls hung with mirrors and unobtrusive pictures.  On one, is a photograph of his grandfather who set up the store in Algiers.  Sometimes, Halim swaps items from one side of the room to another – a technique that his brother used in their store to give regular customers a sense of surprise and change.

Halim spends up to 18 hours a day working at Harissa.   “It’s different, working for people, you want to go home at the end of a day.  But for me, this is home.”

[Picture of Miss Jones to come]

A few times a week you can find Miss Jones (Jacquie Jones) in the booth at the 30th Ave subway station.  She has worked for the MTA for 14 years.

Miss Jones says: “Working at 30th Ave is like working for the UN.  You’re an interpreter, therapist, GPS system.  You work with the disabled, the mentally ill, the lost, the hurt, I mean you name it I probably did it.  Some days it’s hard to get started, but when I get there it is always an adventure.”

Miss Jones was born and brought up in Jamaica, Queens, in a “house full of strong women.”  Her father died when she was two.  She and her sister were brought up by her mother, grandmother and aunt.  In the summers when there was no school, she accompanied her mother to her job working as a housekeeper in Long Island.  “Getting on the Long Island Rail Road and going to my mother’s job with her was how I got my people skills,” Miss Jones says.

In 1989, Miss Jones moved to Astoria with her daughter.  “I had put in an application for public housing and was accepted.  I had a son in 1993.  I took the MTA test and got the job with them in 1997.  I was a single parent by then.  I enjoyed living there, on my own.  I don’t know why they call it the projects when it’s an apartment like any other.

“But still, I always wanted to go back to Jamaica.”  In 1999 she married, and did move back to Jamaica.  She’s now divorced but still lives there with her son and her mother.

Miss Jones works in many different subway stations.  Staff rotate depending on whether they want to work mornings, afternoons or nights.  She has worked on the 7, the L and the J trains, and likes to move around.

The crowd that comes through the 30th Ave station is diverse.  “You get all kinds of people at any time of the day or night.  That’s what happens when we’re a 24 hour system.”  She says that the moments she enjoys most about her work is when she does something for someone that is appreciated.

One of the hardest parts of the job is, “when the machines break down or don’t have enough change.  The credit card people are always mad with us like it’s our fault.”

She also says that there is more aggression by passengers towards the station staff than there used to be.  “It gets more every time the fare goes up.  Or if they put in the paper how we got a raise, and the public think we don’t do anything.  It comes from us following the rules and trying to do our jobs, and from people wanting to have their way.”

How does she deal with that aggression?  “I silently pray!  And I say bread and butter, and/or count to 10!  You have to be professional.”

She says MTA workers’ jobs have become all the more challenging because a lot of booths have been removed, so passengers often get to a station and find no-one there to help.  She hopes the MTA does not get rid of all station agents.  “No matter what, people still like the human factor.”

The day I did this interview (May 15) was a special one for me, because it was my son Jack’s first birthday.  Festivities over, I set out with Jack asleep in the papoose to find somebody to interview for this website.

On one of the benches beside Athens Square Park I found Nancy Vinson talking with a group of friends.   Nancy has lived in the neighborhood for almost 30 years.  Our conversation was accompanied by the sound of children in the playground behind us, always so busy at weekends.

Nancy worked in sales in the shoe department in Saks Fifth Avenue and is now retired.  She’s happy to be retired after working for many years.  But she enjoyed the job for the people that she met.

Occasionally, a celebrity would come through the department – once she saw the actor Jackie Gleason.  Usually though, they sent their personal shoppers who would try on the shoes in a special room and then send them off to a nearby hotel room or apartment.

Nancy’s parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico and made their living working in factories.  She had her own kids and brought them up in the Bronx, “many moons ago”, she says.  When her kids had grown up and left home she moved to Astoria.  “I wanted to get away from a neighborhood that didn’t feel safe to me.   I told my mother I just can’t stay here.

“Somebody told me about Astoria.  An empty apartment came up on 29^th Street so I thought I’d take it.  I’m still there!  And sure, I’m going to stay, where else am I going to go?  As long as I can climb up the five flights.  Then we’ll see what happens.”

Nancy goes to a local senior center where there’s music, dancing and bingo, and she volunteers there as well.  She goes to church nearby.  She has always felt safe in Astoria.  The main change has been the new businesses that have opened up, including Trade Fair supermarket opposite Athens Square Park, and many restaurants.   Astoria has all that she needs. “You rarely need to get on the train to Manhattan.  I hang out here,” she says.

Melissa Rivera lives in one of the yellow brick railroad apartment buildings off 30^th Avenue, west of Steinway.  Most of the rooms in the apartment are put to uses you would expect: a kitchen, a living room, her six-year-old son Juan’s bedroom.  Another, though, is the soapmaking room.  Full of tubs, mixing machines, and bottles, that’s where she makes soap in the evenings, after she finishes her day job working in child welfare in Manhattan.

“I needed to create some space so I could make products.  It’s hard if you keep your ingredients in one room and do your mixing and cooking in another room.   So I figured it’s part of what you have to do, to make it happen.”  Having given up her bedroom to have space for soapmaking, she sleeps wherever she falls asleep.

Living and working in Astoria

Melissa’s mom was born to Puerto Rican-immigrant parents in the apartments that used to be where the Lincoln Center is now.  When the Lincoln Center was built the family was re-housed in Queensbridge, where her mother spent the rest of her childhood.  Her father came to New York from Puerto Rico.  Melissa was born in Astoria, and has lived here for most of her life other than a spell in Manhattan.

Sometimes, she is nostalgic for how Astoria was when she was a child.  “I miss the houses.  Over here on 37^th Street going towards 31^st Avenue, you used to have these gorgeous Victorian houses, with the wrap-around porches.  They’re all gone.”

And she says that while Astoria is still very family-oriented, there is something about the old families.  “Round here was very Greek and Italian.  You had all the grandmas wearing black…I’m an old soul so I think that’s what it is, I like the old stuff.”

As a child she worked full-time outside of school in places along Steinway Street.  Her first job was selling popcorn and tickets at the old movie theater, in the building which is is now New York Sports Club and Duane Reade.  “Actually I was working there illegally at first because I was thirteen, and you can only get your working papers at fourteen,” she says.

She also worked in New York & Company clothing store, a couple of supermarkets, and at a bridal store.  She enjoyed seeing all the brides coming in for their fitting.  “I would think oooo, that’s the dress I want for my wedding.  Of course, when I got married, I wore nothing like what I thought I would wear!”

Working with kids

After college, Melissa got a job as a social worker in a girl’s group home.   “I was lucky, I found my passion really quick,” she says.

Now she does not work directly with the kids, but trains the staff who do.  “It’s really about teaching them how to like teenagers.  Teaching them how to work with them…Sometimes I miss working with the kids, but I’m aware I’m not as young as I used to be!”  (She’s 39).  Her current position and supportive boss also give her some flexibility to run her soap-making business alongside: Naturally Good Soaps.

Making soap

Melissa started becoming interested in green living in 2003.  She began to research essential oils, realized she could use them to make her own products, and found her way into soapmaking.

“The process of making soap is pretty cool,” she says.  “I think like a baker, coming up with recipes, and wanting to experiment with new stuff.”  She uses five main ingredients: olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, shea butter and cocoa butter.  Those she mixes together with essential oils for the aroma, with herbs for the color, and with lye that kick-starts the process of “saponifying” – turning the ingredients into soap.

“It’s like making a cake.  Then you scoop it out and put it in the mould.  Perfect!”

Like in all industries, soapmakers like to have the best equipment to do their work.  In her soap-room is a new wooden soap-drying wrack, made by a carpenter friend who had recently been made redundant.  (Once in its mould, the soap takes four to six weeks to dry – Melissa used to dot them around the apartment on cookie wracks).

“When he delivered it I wanted to hug him I was so elated.  He couldn’t really understand it.  I was like ‘no, trust me, this is a soapmaker’s dream”.  The way you feel about the Yankees is the way I feel about this.”

She currently sells her soap products to friends, colleagues, people who follow her on social networking sites, as well as to one wholesale client, a wholefood store in Shelter Island.

Melissa says that soapmakers are on the whole a friendly and supportive bunch.   She knows others in New York, South Carolina, California, Ohio…with whom she shares ideas and advice.  Most are women, though there are a few men.  The men tend to be into the chemistry of soapmaking – and they tend to be married to a soapmaker!

Melissa is clear about her goal for the future.  It combines her passions for Astoria, soap-making and social work.   “I’m very clear that I don’t want a retail location.  My dream is to have a nice little spot in Long Island City or Astoria right by the water – I love the water – where I can produce my stuff.

“I could hire some local people.  And I would really like to have some kind of internship program for young people.  Over the summer they would learn how to make soap, and how to run a small business – the shipping and packaging, calling clients, all those things.”

No doubt some would leave inspired to set up small businesses of their own.

Panayiotis Menikou is the President of EuroMarket (slogan “Fine European Foods).  It is on 31st Street under the subway tracks, half a block south of the 30th Ave station.  When he is not dealing with orders in his office he can often be seen outside the front of the store, talking with friends and neighbors as the trains rumble overhead.

Panayiotis was born in northern Cyprus.   He was fourteen when Turkey invaded the island in 1974.  “They came from the North towards the South,” he says.  “My father put us in a tractor and we drove south to save ourselves.

“I told him I wanted to  take the radio.  I had our big radio all ready to go.  He said ‘oh no, leave it here, you’re going to break it.’  We thought we would only leave for one day or two days and go back.

“So that’s how my father found himself out on the street with his wife and five kids (I have two brothers and two sisters).  The people from my community were spread out across different parts of southern Cyprus.”

Panayiotis worked hard through high school and then went into the army for compulsory military service.  He was wondering what to do on leaving the army when some friends who had gone to study in the US encouraged him to join them.  They helped him enroll in Queens College to learn English, and in 1980 he moved here.  He later brought one of his brothers, and then the other brother, and then his sisters to the US to study as well.

While he was studying, Panayiotis opened up “Cyprus  Deli” on 30th Avenue.  His siblings all returned to Cyprus at various points, but he stayed on.  He had the idea for EuroMarket because a lot of his European customers started asking if he could stock products from their countries in the deli – he realized there was a need for a European supermarket in the neighborhood.  One day he was walking down 31st Street and passed a pool hall that had been closed for two years: he decided that would be his location.

EuroMarket sells food from all over Eastern Europe: from Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Poland, and Greece…”Slowly-slowly we will sell everything!” Panayiotis says.

It also stocks over sells over 700 varieties of beer.  “Cyprus Deli became well-known for its beer.  We were the first around here to stock the German and Belgian beers.  So when I started this store, I thought we must keep selling beers from all over the world.”  His own favorite is Duvel from Belgium for its strong, full flavor.

Panayiotis says it was hard getting the business going at the beginning.  Its location just off 30th Avenue means that people do not stumble across it – they have to know it is there.   But things are getting better now: he has more and more products, more and more customers.

One of Panayiotis’ staff opens the store at eight in the morning, and he arrives at nine thirty or ten.  Then he works through until midnight, seven days a week.  “I’m single,” says Panayiotis, “my business takes my life!”

Panayiotis has lived in the neighborhood for 31 years and has no plans to move unless one day he returns to Cyprus.  “I like it because it feels like you’re in Europe, because of the people, the cafés.  Everything I need is close to my house.  And the city is only 10 or 15 minutes away.”

Once or twice a year he goes to Cyprus to see his family.  “Cyprus is beautiful,” he says.  “There  is a lot of tourism, and the economy is strong.”

The “green line” between the north and south of the island was opened in 2003 so residents from either side can now cross over.  “My brothers went to see my house.  But I didn’t go.  I don’t feel like going.  You know, there are Turkish people living inside your house, and you have to ask for permission to go.  This is ridiculous.  We have a lot of land there that today would be worth a lot of money.  It’s near Famagusta, one of the best beaches.

“My father had passed away in 1991.  I think all this heavy stuff happening to him, it was bad for him.  So my brothers went.  And they took my sister who was thirteen months old when she left.   They showed her where she was born, and where she made her first steps.”

Aravella Simotas, 32, is the New York State Assemblymember for district 36.  Her district covers all of Astoria (30^th Ave included) and some of Long Island City.

She describes her job as “legislating in Albany for the people of Astoria.  My constituency – who I consider my bosses – live here in my district.  My job entails going to Albany and ensuring that their interests are accounted for, and that I advocate for them.”

Simotas came to Astoria with her parents from Greece when she was six months old.  She has been involved in community work here since high school, and when the seat became available in 2010 she was a natural candidate.

Not that she had established it as a career goal.  “Albany seats in New York City are like a cheap one-bedroom on the Upper East Side.  It doesn’t happen!  Or if it does happen, it doesn’t happen often at all,” she says.

But last year the senator who represented Astoria and its neighboring districts like Woodside and Ravenswood – George Onorato –  retired.  District 36 Assemblymember Michael Gianaris ran for and got the New York State Senate seat, leaving his former Assembly seat open.

Simotas is the first Greek-American woman in the Assembly.

Childhood, and “immigrant values”

Simotas says that Astoria has always been a growing community of immigrants.  “It’s a place where middle class people have come to raise their families and look for the American dream.”

Her own story is an example of this.  Her parents arrived from Greece “with two suitcases in their hands”.  Their family (the parents, Aravella and her brother) lived in a one-bedroom apartment.  Simotas’ father worked in a delicatessen, then bought the delicatessen, and eventually bought his own home in the neighborhood.

Simotas went to elementary school at PS17 on 30^th Ave.  Then she attended Junior High School 126 and William C. Bryant High School, both also in Astoria.  She also took classes at St. Demetrios, the largest Greek-American school in the US, which is two blocks below the 30^th Ave subway station.

“My parents always instilled in me that you should know your culture and your roots.  So five days a week after normal school I went to Greek school!  That’s what a lot of children of Greek immigrant parents did.  And they still do.  Even the second generation.

“Growing up you don’t want to go to two schools, have no time to play with your friends or watch television, all the things kids usually do.  It was about 20 years later that I truly appreciated the fact that my parents did that.”

They encouraged her to excel in English school too.  “If I got a ninety-five on a test and not a hundred my mom would sit there and ask why I didn’t get a hundred!  She knew I had the capacity and she wanted me to live up to it.  My parents’ mentality was, ‘we come here and we worked very hard to give you guys opportunities.’  A typical American story.”

Simotas says she particularly appreciates what she calls the “immigrant values” that her parents instilled in her.  “Those are values of a very hard work-ethic, of always keeping your word, and always giving back to your community.”

While in college at Fordham University Simotas worked with New York City Council, in their Office of Oversight and Investigations.  She examined issues like how the MTA was spending taxpayers’ money, and the sale of lottery tickets to underage minors.  It gave her a taste of how government can change things.

Then while at Fordham Law School she served as the local district representative for former city council member Peter Vallone Senior, and went on to run his son’s campaign in 2001.  After leaving law school, she worked for a while in the federal court system before becoming a commercial litigator – all the while remaining a member of Queens Community Planning Board 1 and serving on other local boards.

Challenges of being a new – and a female – Assemblymember

Simotas says she faces two particular challenges as a New York State Assemblymember.  She’s new, in an institution in which many hold their seats for years and years.  And she’s a woman – currently only 23% of the legislature (i.e. Senate and Assembly) are women.

The gender in-balance has a lot to do with the tough schedule, Simotas says.  From January through June she has to be in Albany for three days a week – four in March during the budget period.  Then for the remaining days, including the weekends, she’s working in Astoria and attending community events.    Her working days often extend to two or three in the morning.

“It’s a similar situation to the field of law.  When many of my female colleagues reached a certain level and were either ready to have a family or to have a second child, they just didn’t think that there was a way to balance it all.  Sometimes people also convince themselves they can’t do it.  You have to make your own set of rules and you have to make it work for you.”

Simotas has been married for six years, and while she does not yet have children, she hopes to someday, and to find a way to strike that balance.

As a new Assemblymember, a big challenge is learning the unwritten rules.  “To actually understand how to get something done, you’re not going to read it in any rulebook.  You have to develop relationships and learn how to move something through the Assembly.”

Simotas says her colleagues’ advice has been a crucial help so far, in navigating the Assembly and in managing to get her first bill through within 12 weeks of having started work (a change to civil law that cuts red tape for litigants who want to discontinue their lawsuit).

“The leadership in the Assembly, and particularly the women, have been so generous with their time and sharing their institutional knowledge.  You would think there might be some kind of rivalry but absolutely not.  I haven’t felt it at all.”  She also receives advice from Senator Gianaris (her predecessor), whom she considers her mentor.

As well as guidance within the legislature Simotas has support at home.  Of her husband John Katsanos she says, “he has been tremendous – the most supportive person in the world.  Everyone asks me how my husband’s taking it and I say, ‘ honestly, he gets more  excited about it than I do!’  I get home and just don’t want to talk about Albany, but he is so engaged.   That’s the key to it.”

Advocating for Astoria’s small businesses

One of Simotas’ big causes is Astoria’s small businesses.  “They are the backbone of our local economy,” she says.  “They employ many of our residents and they add so much revenue to New York State.”  She’s all the more motivated to support them by the fact that her parents are former small business owners.

Yet they face a lot of challenges.   To give an example, Astoria’s many restaurants and cafés are often slapped with fines by the health department for not complying with new regulations that have been drawn up just the day before.

“I’ve patronized the same restaurants since I was a kid,” says Simotas.  “There’s a pizza store, Grand Avenue Pizza, on 30^th Ave and 35^th Street.  It’s one of my favorite establishments.  The owner told me that the Department of Health fined him $ 1400 because he was displaying pizza with meat outside of a refrigerator.  It was a brand new regulation that came out.”

The fine ended up costing the owner an additional $10,000.  He bought the refrigerator from the first vendor he could find because he was worried about complying as soon as possible, and also had to pay to get alterations made in the restaurant to get it installed.

“Of course, the department has to regulate these issues,” Simotas says.  “They should be protecting our health.  But it’s unfair to fine somebody on a new regulation and not give them time to comply.  They gave him no notice.”

She has written a bill that would prevent the Department of Health from enforcing a new regulation for 60 days, and would also give the businesses written notice of new regulations.

Another important issue for Simotas is protecting tenants.  “There are a lot of tenants here, and many things have happened in the past few years that are not fair to them.”  The law is currently biased towards landlords and she wants to help change that.

One of the first bills Simotas authored was to ban toxic toys in daycare centers.  While she was campaigning last summer she visited a daycare center and noticed that while half the markers the kids were using were labeled “non-toxic”, the other half were not.  She says she was surprised that there wasn’t already a law preventing daycare centers from using toxic toys.

Driving time

The camaraderie with other Assemblymembers, and setting herself clear goals to get bills passed are two aspects of Simotas’ job that she most enjoys.

She least enjoys waking up on a Monday morning and having to drive 155 miles to Albany.  “Especially when you get onto the throughway and there’s traffic!  I’m used to utilizing every minute of my day.  So the fact I have to be sitting in my car so long driving is hard.”

Not surprisingly, Simotas has found productive ways to use that time too.  She listens to books on tape.  She has set up hands-free calling in her car so that she can take calls.  And she records her notes and listens back to them during the drive.

Changing the system

As well as working the system to get bills passed, Simotas is also working to change how the system in Albany works.  She’s a member of the committee that steers the direction of the Assembly and proposes reforms, and says it was a real honor as a freshman to be put on that committee.

“Something we know we need to be doing is making the Assembly more accessible to the public.  Making it more open.  There’s a huge need for that.”

Dr Yokaira Espiritu-Santo is a podiatrist at Astoria Advanced Footcare on 30^th Ave.  (Her patients call her Dr Santo for short).  While I interviewed her, she was skillfully treating my feet.

She came to the US with her family when she was two, from the Dominican Republic, and was brought up in New Jersey.  She studied medicine at Rutgers University.  Then she did her four years podiatry training in Manhattan and her residency in New York Hospital Queens, in Flushing.

Dr Santo says that she does not know the origin of the name “Yokaira.”  “A lot of the patients ask me,” she says. “I suppose I should look it up, but really I don’t want to know.  It’s my name, it’s me.”

She decided to become a podiatrist because when she was young she had chronic in-growing toenails.  After many fruitless trips to her eighty-year-old pediatrician she finally saw a podiatrist, who solved the problem.

“Cured would be the wrong word,” she says, “because there’s never an actual cure for anything, you bring things under control.  But he stopped the in-growing toenails recurring.

“I was so grateful and happy that I could wear my sandals and my open toe shoes, and paint my nails.  I had wanted to be a pediatrician.  But that changed my mind and I became a podiatrist.”

Working on 30^th Ave

Dr Hans, who heads up the practice, trained Dr Santo during her residency and invited her to join him when she finished training.  They split their week between offices in Manhattan, Sunnyside, and Astoria.

“In the Manhattan office,” says Dr Santo, “everyone wants the quick fix.  They have the mentality of ‘fix me as soon as possible, I’m on my lunch-break, or I just got out of work and want to get home.’”  She says people are in less of a hurry in the Astoria office. On 30^th Avenue, they treat more elderly people, and patients make their appointments for days that they have off work.

“Everyone that comes through this office seems to be happy,” she says.  “Everybody has a different story.  Everybody comes from different walks of life.   I see one patient, who then brings their mom or their father or their girlfriend.  It turns into a family event here at times.  I might treat a whole family in one day.

“I appreciate the fact that they trust me and that they refer other people to come here.  That’s pretty cool.”

Talking to the patients is one aspect of her work that Dr Santo really enjoys.  She also likes the fact that they leave the office feeling better than when they came in.

She and Dr Hans treat a whole range of foot problems: heel pain, occasional surgeries on bunions or hammer toes, and preventative care for diabetic patients, so that they won’t have to lose their feet in the future due to poor circulation or infections.

They treat ankle sprains and fractures, often caused by running.   And if a patient is wearing shoes that aggravate their problem, they let them know.  “For runners we usually recommend New Balance sneakers because they come a little bit wider and they have better arch support.”

Tough schedule

Dr Santo lives with her partner in New Jersey, having moved there after nine years living in Manhattan and then Queens.  She spends two to three hours a day commuting through traffic.  “That’s killing me!” she says.  But despite that she still would not want to move back into the city.

Once at the office she spends 12 hours there and treats between 20-30 patients.  The hardest part is the paperwork.  For each patient she sees, there are 10-15 minutes of paperwork, up to 30 minutes if the patient is new.   She takes a lot of the paperwork to finish at home.

Dr Santo takes a short lunch break but usually spends it in the office and has food delivered from one of the 30^th Ave. restaurants.

Once a month, she and a girlfriend who works in the hospital meet on a Monday night for supper at the Indian restaurant, Ghandi.   “I love that place.  Even if it means eating late – and sometimes waiting around on my own for her if she finishes after me – I make it happen, at least once a month.”

What’s next

“I definitely want three kids, and I have to start soon!” says Dr Santo.  “I want two girls and a boy.  I already have their names and everything.”

Career-wise, Dr Santo says that in the future she would like to have her own practice: “It would have state-of-the-art everything.  And lots of rooms.  I would work there three times a week, and do surgery one day a week.  I might join a residency program where I could train other people to become podiatrists, do teaching lectures here and there.

“Perhaps some trauma work too.  But the problem with trauma is that you always have to be on call with your pager next to your hip.  So I’d probably just do trauma call once or twice a month.  That’s my ideal.  Oh and I’d dictate all of my charts instead of handwriting them. (laughs).”

How does Dr Santo plan to make this happen? “It will take some time, and a lot of energy.”