Gay/Lesbian Bookstores Victims of Acceptance
Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Caroline Linton in Arts & Culture, Business & Economics, News Features
Back in 1967, Craig Rodwell could find only 25 books that could be considered gay and lesbian literature. But he put them on a shelf in Greenwich Village and opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop – the first and best-known gay and lesbian bookstore in America.
Many gay and lesbian bookstores followed, all over the country, as the movement grew in the following years. Many of those bookstores have closed recently, however, including the Oscar Wilde. Many see the disappearance of the stores as a sign of success growing out of the wider acceptance of gays and lesbians throughout society. They don’t need their own special bookstores any more because so many general bookstores carry gay and lesbian books.
New York Cemeteries Face Grave Shortages
Posted on 26. May, 2009 by Robert Voris in Business & Economics, News Features
By Robert Voris
You are going to die. Of the more than 8 million people now alive in New York City, all will be dead, eventually. That’s a lot of bodies: 44 million feet of cadaver when laid end to end, assuming average height. And in New York City, where space is always at a premium, there’s not enough earth to grant them all eternal rest.
Want Fries With That? Adults Taking Teens' Jobs
Posted on 19. May, 2009 by Rachel Geizhals in Business & Economics, News Features
Working the counter at the neighborhood ice cream shop is not the most sophisticated or glamorous of jobs, and it’s one teenagers usually take. But early this year – for the first time in his five years as the manager of a Carvel’s ice cream shop – William Betancourt was fielding calls from grownups begging for a job that pays $7.15 an hour.
In the past, adults called from employment centers looking to place high school kids in Betancourt’s store. Now, they’re calling for themselves – and they’re desperate for income. “They were like, ‘Do you have anything?’” said Betancourt, who manages a Carvel’s in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens in New York City. “They just wanted to work.”
City Hospitals Moving Away from the Poor
Posted on 16. May, 2009 by Loren Bonner in Business & Economics, News Features
The 200 people gathered in a conference room at the Intercontinental Hotel on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland talked until late afternoon about the problems the city’s uninsured face when accessing care. But the meeting didn’t include only medical representatives from Cleveland’s four health systems. Eighty people in attendance were uninsured. Since they were the very people being hurt by the system, health professionals figured it was about time the uninsured have a voice in discussions about how to improve health care.
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…)
