Fortune Tellers Talking Money, Not Love
Posted on 22. Apr, 2009 by Damiano Beltrami in Business & Economics, Offbeat
Eileen Rivera, a 24-year-old receptionist from Long Island, is a longtime believer in fortune telling. But lately she has changed her questions.
“My focus used to be 90 per cent love and relationships and 10 per cent economical,” Rivera said. “Now it’s about 20 per cent love and relationships and 80 per cent economical.”
Rivera’s fortuneteller Karin Marcello, 29, also from Long Island, says that this switch in interest from love to money is a growing trend among her eclectic clientele, which includes top managers, cashiers and lap dancers. (more…)
Here's What's Baking in Hell's Kitchen
Posted on 21. Apr, 2009 by Marcella Veneziale in Arts & Culture, Travel
Hell’s Kitchen, once one of New York’s most rough-and-tumble neighborhoods, now has more high-rise condominiums than dive bars. But some things never change.
The Poseidon Bakery on 9th Avenue near West 44th Street has been a neighborhood fixture for more than 85 years. The Greek pastry shop is like an extension of the owner’s kitchen. Lili Fable, who runs the bakery with her son Paul, called her family “quintessential shopkeepers” because she still lives upstairs with her husband Anthony. Even Paul lives in the building with his wife and children. (more…)
Mr. K, The Recess Man
Posted on 20. Apr, 2009 by Maria Clark in Profiles
By Maria Clark
It is lunchtime recess at P.S. 50 in Harlem. A kid in a blue sweatshirt practices his karate kicks on anyone who comes close. Kids throw basketballs at each other and occasionally at the hoop. A boy sends a large rubber ball flying, almost hitting Keith Jones in the head.
“Yo, my dude, you just kick that ball?” Jones, 23, asked the boy. “You know my name? It’s Mr. K. You going to apologize?”
A Hazy Haven (Hack, Hack) of Legal Smoking
Posted on 20. Apr, 2009 by Lois DeSocio in Offbeat, Travel
By Lois DeSocio
When people hang out at Hudson Bar and Books in Manhattan, they’re not flipping pages—they’re flicking ashes. It’s a place where the non-smokers are milling around outside the front door as they decide if a face-full of tobacco smoke is worth a step inside a place where smokers rule.
“Is this legal?” a passerby yells from the street outside the front door of this Greenwich Village cigar bar on a recent Saturday evening.
Six years after Mayor Bloomberg’s statewide anti-smoking law took effect, the patrons of Hudson Bar and Books puff away in a perpetual haze of toxic smoke. It’s one of a handful of cigar bars left in Manhattan under a “grandfather” clause that protected cigar bars that opened before December 31, 2001.
The Pit Bull Whisperer
Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by Linnea Covington in Profiles
Jon Bozak looked tough in his black work boots, short cropped hair, stern jaw and tattooed, muscled arms as he walked two pit bulls down a quiet street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
But when one dog excitedly licked Bozak’s hand and the other nuzzled his side, the image dissolved and Bozak appeared to a passersby like the doting dog owner he is.
An AIDS Nurse Takes Her Knowledge to Africa
Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by Collin Orcutt in Profiles
Maura Porricolo and the other mentors set the chairs up in a circle at St. Mary’s hospital in Durban, South Africa. Then, they spoke to and interacted with the 35 students who sat in them, students one step away from becoming “sisters,” the South African term for a nurse. The topic: disclosure.
Disclosure is the term for someone publicly declaring they have HIV. Porricolo and the sisters-to-be practiced with role-playing exercises about how to help their patients through such a monumental step in an area stricken by the AIDs virus.
