A new gourmet supermarket is planned in Melrose.

Owner says shoppers will pay more, but will eat healthier

An entrepreneur is set to bring a gourmet market to Melrose, hoping to take a bite out of fast food culture with healthier alternatives.

Developer DeVon Prioleau says the Fresca Gourmet Market he is planning to open in the new Boricua Village complex on E. 161^st St. and Third Ave. will help provide the community with the same access to high-quality food more affluent parts of the city have long enjoyed.

“The Bronx can ill afford another liquor store or sneaker store,” Prioleau said.  “I want to give people other options.”

Prioleau, 29, said the  supermarket will be “reminiscent of a Fifth Avenue store rather than a Third Avenue deli.”

In 2008 the Department of City Planning conducted a citywide “Supermarket Shortage” study, in which it identified the South Bronx as one of four underserved high-density population centers severely lacking in fresh food venues. Over a quarter of all adults said they don’t eat any fruits or vegetables on any given day, according to a follow-up study released in November.

That report – called “FoodWorks” and issued by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn – cited the lack of healthy options, coupled with rising prices for nutritious foods and steadily low prices for unhealthy alternatives, as factors contributing to soaring rates of diabetes and other diseases caused by poor eating habits.

The report recommends increasing financial and zoning incentives for grocery stores that open in underserved communities, as part of the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) project.

Over 13 percent of South Bronx residents suffered from diabetes in 2009, and 70 percent of its adults were considered overweight or obese, according to a report released by the city’s Department of Health. But according to a report issued that same year by the Bronx District Public Health Office, 40 percent of respondents said it was difficult to find fresh and affordable produce in the area.

May May Leung, who teaches public health at Hunter College, said chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity can be reduced by making nutritious food affordable and easily accessible for the city’s lower-income residents.

“Modifying the environment is an important component” to help people change their eating habits, she said.

Prioleau, a Bronx native, says he saw a business opportunity in his “untapped and unexposed” home borough, combined with financial incentives for increasing the availability of fresh, nutritious food through the FRESH program.

He says he has secured nearly a million dollars already, through loans from private sources, as well as from the city.

The young entrepreneur says South Bronx residents regularly put up with “ghetto fabulous supermarkets with bread that’s a day old and food that’s expiring,” and adds that while the neighborhood will benefit from higher-quality food, he has no choice but to pass higher costs on to customers. He said prices will be 50 cents to a dollar per item higher than what local shoppers are accustomed to paying.

Mercy Cruz, 41, has lived in the neighborhood for 22 years.  “Food here is spoiled and old.  It’s just not good,” she said.   Cruz would welcome the new supermarket in Melrose, but said she worried low-income families “might have a problem with higher prices,” then added, “sometimes you have to pay a little extra to get better quality.”

Raymond Arias, 50, who has been selling fruits and vegetables from a nearby stand for the last five years, doesn’t think his small operation will be impacted by the new gourmet market. “Maybe I can go work for them,” he said, laughing.

Prioleau says he is going through the certification process so the market can accept food stamps, and added the store will carry over 4,000 products that reflect the tastes of the area’s diverse ethnic groups. In addition, he says other services, such as cooking classes, will be offered.

Fresca Gourmet Market is slated to open its doors later this year,  and Prioleau would like to see three more stores open in the next five years.

“The wheels are in motion,” he said.

The Kingsbridge Armory awaits a developer. Photo by Karsten Moran/The Riverdale Press

The battle to require businesses that receive city subsidies to pay their workers a living wage began with a bang when Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. led a fight to reject the creation of a shopping mall at the Kingsbridge Armory if retail workers weren’t paid enough to make ends meet in this most expensive of cities.

The battle has ended with a whimper.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn has gutted the bill sponsored by Bronx Council members Oliver Koppell and Annabel Palma. Developers to whom taxpayers give $1 million or more will be required to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour. Their tenants, however, can continue to pay $7.25.

So when the Kingsbridge Armory is redeveloped, those who work there will be stuck with the same low wage as before. And citywide, according to Quinn, no more than 500 workers will be helped by the new law.

In the time-honored manner of politicians, Quinn and the proponents of the measure that would have extended a decent wage to retail workers are hailing this travesty as a compromise.

Borough President Diaz’s statements saluting the deal and the revival of talks to develop the armory expose him as an empty suit.

And Speaker Quinn’s measure re-emphasizes how powerless rank-and-file members of the body she heads are. Like Diaz, all they can do is fall into line and issue face-saving press releases.

Hard-working New Yorkers can’t make ends meet. They need food stamps and the help of food pantries.

Small wonder that those who are seriously concerned with the growing inequality in our city stand aloof from conventional politics, and would rather occupy Wall Street than support the occupants of City Hall.

This editorial reflects the opinion of The Hunts Point Express, Mott Haven Herald, Norwood News and The Riverdale Press, and appears in all four publications.

Photo by Evan Buxbaum Two young fighters sparred at John's Boxing Gym, which is coming to the end of a long run on Westchester Ave.

Urban renewal threatens a gritty Westchester Ave. gym to move…or close

Facing eviction, the owner of an iconic South Bronx boxing gym is vowing to fight on.

Located on the ground floor of a shabby former post office building across the street from an overgrown field, John’s Boxing Gym – known for years as Jerome’s Gym – has been a fixture on Westchester Avenue for the past three decades.

John Gjini, 35, took over the dilapidated “Jerome’s” seven years ago and rechristened it “John’s” after his now 13-year-old son. But even after producing two champion professional fighters in the last five years and serving as a safe sparring space for aspiring amateurs in the community, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development served Gjini notice that he must shutter the gym within 30 days.

“We’re taking it one day at a time,” Gjini said. “It hurts, but I’m going to make it.”

Gjini has appealed to the City Council for help to secure grants to fund the relocation and keep the gym’s programs running. City Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The HPD said the city-owned building needs to go because its location has been “designated an urban renewal site,” according to press officer Juliet Morris. The project, to be called Triangle Plaza, includes two buildings with a planned charter school, supermarket and restaurants.

Morris said the HPD was “working with the boxing gym and have advised them that they may have additional time,” as long as Gjini agrees to leave by a designated date.

“I can’t wait for months,” Gjini said. “It’s time to move on and be thankful the gym has been here for 30 years.”

Stevins Bujaj, 21, has been training at John’s for five or six years and is a two-time New York Golden Gloves winner. He credited the gym and the “beautiful sport of boxing” for keeping him out of trouble in his youth and said John’s has continued to help “take kids off the street.”

“Kids love the sport,” he said. “It’s a great gym and it feels like home.”

Stepping inside John’s is like being transported into a gritty boxing film. Two 500-square-foot rings rise above worn hardwood floors, while punching bags of varying size and disrepair drop from the moulded ceiling tiles high above. On any given evening the thuds and thumps from fighters punctuate quick commands bellowed by their grizzled supervisors. There is a distinct musky odor within the gym that can only stem from generations of sweaty pugilists and their well-used equipment.

John’s is unapologetically old school. Victor Valle, 61, has been working with young fighters for 42 years. He said the gym is a good place to keep an eye out for the next burgeoning boxer with a “burning desire.”

Pictures of past champions and accolades adorn the walls – including large posters of Joseph “King Kong” Agbeko and Joshua “The Hitter” Clottey, former bantamweight and welterweight titleholders respectively. Both men originally hail from Ghana, but both have found a home at John’s for their training.

Another of John’s rising stars to find a home at the gym is 20-year-old Nisa Rodriguez. She lives three blocks away and has been training at John’s Boxing Gym for upwards of three hours per day, five days a week, for the last six years.

“It’s where I get down to practice my profession,” she said with a grin. “The gym has an aura. You want to train and compete here.”

Rodriguez has won three of the last four state Golden Gloves championships and earned the national title in 2011. She took a year off after her second tournament to have a son, Emerson, now two-years-old. Rodriguez said the gym has been “like a family” and nowadays even her son helps with her training, forcing Rodriguez into a sweat as she chased the toddler around.

“I’ve grown up here,” Rodriguez said. “My favorite bag is in the corner. It’d be a little buzz kill if they move, I hope it’s not far.”

Gjini doesn’t pull any punches about the predicament. “It’s like a fight,” he said.

“Even if you lose once and learn, you don’t really lose,” Gjini said as he scanned fighters of all ages, shapes and skill spar throughout the institution he helped maintain. “When I make it, it will all be worth it. Believe me.”

Photo by Patricia Rey Mallén. Alfredo Diego in his soon-to-close Coquí Mexicano.

Cherished neighborhood eatery set to close due to mounting debt

In his now desolated restaurant, Alfredo Diego had trouble holding back tears. He hugged the soccer ball signed by Spanish team captain Iker Casillas and smiled sadly.

 “If anything, I can say that the captain of the world soccer champions came to my restaurant. One of my dreams come true,” he said. “It is all I have left now. Memories.”

 Coquí Mexicano, Diego’s beloved restaurant in Melrose, is closing its doors. Diego and his partner, Danisha Nazario, both owners of Coquí, can no longer meet the debts from the Health Department, overdue bills and rent. They have decided to put an end to what had become the meet-up center in the neighborhood since they opened three years ago.

 “We will see what happens,” said Diego, 41. Last October, he had a hearing about the rent and got an extra month to try to obtain the $7,310 he owes, or vacate.

 A week later, Diego and his attorneys had a second hearing. This time, they obtained a reduction on the fine Coquí received last June from the Health Department which cited presence of mice and improper vermin isolation, among other violations. Out of the initial $4,500, he will pay $1,800. The Department of Health refused to comment.

 Last August, Diego’s restaurant license expired, and because of the overdue fines he has not been able to renew it. “So I closed, some two months ago,” Diego said. “If I can’t cook, there’s no point in staying open.”

 Diego has decided to put the restaurant on the market, and he is looking for potential buyers. “My girlfriend has given up, now it is only me fighting,” he said. “It might not be enough.” The initial price is $60,000, but he hopes he will get a better offer.

 “Maybe a miracle will happen”, said Diego. “Like it happened to the Spanish team in the World Cup,” he added with a laugh.

 Diego and Nazario got a miracle in April 2010, when they received their first eviction threat from the landlord, and the neighborhood rose in their defense. Congressman José Serrano, a self-proclaimed fan of Coquí Mexicano and Diego’s personal friend, was among the over 300 neighbors who signed a petition on the restaurant’s behalf. Bronx Defenders’ assistant Agnes Rodriguez organized a fundraiser that eventually led to saving the restaurant.

 “Coquí Mexicano is not a business, it is a community entity,” wrote Melrose neighbor Isabella Moreno in the April 2010 petition.

 “I could only wish more businesses became as involved in their communities as Coquí is,” said Lisa Apolonio.

 “With its wholesome food and grassroots endeavors, Coquí Mexicano serves but one purpose and that is to enhance the community,” wrote another fan, Wanda Molina.

 This time around, not even the love of the community has been enough to save Coquí Mexicano. The gas and water services have already been cut off because of the unpaid bills, and the bookings phone number no longer works.

 “I have been taking my tours here for years, and they loved it” said City Tour’s guide Hector Correa. “It is such a shame.” Antonio Vilchín, owner of Mexicocina in 149^th St, agrees. “I hope they make it work,” he said.

 “I don’t want to close,” said Diego, looking over the photographs on the wall, which include one of President Obama and another with the Spanish team captain. “This is my dream, my first love. And you know what it’s like with first loves, it’s hard to let go.”

 What Diego is not letting go of, at least for now, is hope. He has been offered a job as a cook in the nearby restaurant The Rib Bar & Grill, which he is considering taking. And he has not ruled out opening another business in the future.

 “This is just the first game,” he said with a sad smile. “It is not over yet.”

Mohammed Nabiye, the manager of African Movies Mall in Melrose, standing next to his latest batch of DVDs.

In the African-born community of the South Bronx, names like George Clooney, Woody Allen or “Seinfeld” might pass completely unnoticed.

A visit from actor Funke Akindele or a screening of “Living in Bondage”, on the other hand, might cause a small revolution.

Those are two of the biggest names in Nollywood, the successful $200 million dollar Nigerian movie industry, the third largest in the world. But don’t try to locate their movies in Blockbuster. For many outlets around the county, African Movies Mall, a sprawling storefront and warehouse in Melrose, is the place to go.

It started nearly 10 years ago, in a low-key, 200-square-foot shop on 165^th St, near the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Today, African Movies Mall occupies two locations on 165^th St, and they state proudly that they are the largest seller of African movies in New York City.

“People want to be around what they know,” said the store’s manager, Mohammed Nabiye. “Entering the store is like being back in Africa. The stories are ours, the names are ours.”

Owner Rabiu Mohammed, from Ghana, quickly found his niche in the African population of the Bronx when he opened the store in early 2002. Since then, African Movies Mall has expanded in correlation to its audience. The number of African-born Bronxites shot up more than two thirds, from 36,500 to 61,000, between 2000 and 2010, according to the American Community Survey.

That same year, African Movies Mall acquired a second location two numbers down the street. The once family-operated business slowly expanded its staff to 17 people who currently work there. Mohammed stepped down from managing the shop to focus more on scouting the African movie scene, leaving the day-to-day management in Nabiye’s hands.

Nabiye, who sported his country’s football jersey and flashed a never ending pearly-white smile, said he used to work in the movie industry back in Ghana.

“Working in a movie store just fits me,” said Nabiye, 31, who arrived in New York from Ghana in 2006 and started managing African Movies Mall a year later. “I am comfortable here,” he said. “Movies are what I know.”

Boxes pile up from floor to ceiling in the two locations on 165^th St, ready to ship. Each contains a hundred DVDs, adding up to a total of around 300,000 in inventory. There is a room dedicated to one-on-one sales, where customers flip through the glossy covers with titles like “Passion of the Soul” and “Chasing Hope” printed in bright colors.

Most of the movies come from Ghana, Burkina Faso and, of course, Nigeria, the third most prolific film industry in the world, after the US and India. However, customers arrived from all corners of the continent. Eko, from Mali, has been a regular for years: “I come looking for the stories I understand, the ones that speak to me,” he said.

Mama Queenie, another Ghanaian who owns the African Queen Beauty Supply shop in the north Bronx, buys around $3,000 worth of DVDs per week to sell in her store.

“I sell movies because I love movies,” she said in a telephone interview. “Sometimes I am up until 3 a.m. watching them.”

But lately, African stories are reaching other communities within the South Bronx. Manuel, from Puerto Rico, stumbled upon the store and could not resist the urge to see what was on offer. He finally took home “Beyonce,” a Ghanaian love story that is the best selling movie in the store.

“I have never watched an African movie,” he said in Spanish while pondering over three different DVDs. “I am curious. It looks so different from what I usually watch,”

Nabiye said the business has also expanded the business off-shore, shipping to the Caribbean, Australia or the UK.

“Our titles might be different, but the themes – loss, fear, love – go beyond borders,” he said. “They are universal.”

Photo by Sarah Pizon Daniel "Kuwait" Adjei (left) and Greg M. Akologo

For West African residents in the South Bronx, Kuwait is not just a Middle Eastern country. “Kuwait” is a Ghanaian immigrant whose Morrisania-based business has become the conduit back to their nations of origin.

Kuwait Shipping & Packaging , which specializes in transporting items to West African countries, has made it possible for immigrants to ship raw construction materials along with American consumer goods back to their homelands. As the owner of one of the oldest companies in the area that ships goods to West Africa, “Kuwait” has made a name for himself.

“I’m a popular guy. Everyone knows me around here. If you ask a bus driver to take you to ‘Kuwait,’ he’ll bring you to my shop,” he said.

Kuwait, whose real name is Daniel Adjei, used to be a welder in Ghana. After he returned home following an unsuccessful attempt at finding work in the Middle East in the early 1980s, his friends nicknamed him “Kuwait.”

Adjei moved to the United States twenty-eight years ago and received citizenship under President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program for undocumented immigrants, then began working for his uncle’s company in the South Bronx, which bought damaged cars at auctions and shipped them to West Africa via a third-party shipping company.

“I realized we could start organizing our own business and shipping the cars ourselves,” he said. Over the years, Adjei has seen his customer base expand because he offered personal business shipping experience, he said. “People know me and feel I’m putting my heart in it.”

“I do business with respect and dignity,” he said. “That’s a guarantee.”

Now, Kuwait ships not only cars but also a wide variety of goods such as marble, metals, refrigerators and toilet paper to West Africa.

West African culture has powerful ties to family. While a majority of African men have moved to America looking for better income, they still seek to build their dream house – a symbol of success – back home, explained Adjei.

“People might live like crap here, but back home, they’re building mansions. With Africa’s cheap labor, it’s easy,” he said.

Other local members of the Ghanaian diaspora echo this sentiment.  “This country has a lot to offer,” said Marc Anthony, owner of an adjacent auto repair shop. “With a positive mindset and hard working, you can get where you have to,” he said.

Over the last 20 years, Adjei’s growing shipping business reflects the remarkable growth of the South Bronx’ West African population, especially among Ghanaians and Nigerians. According to the 2007 Census Bureau American Survey, the Bronx’s sub-Saharan African population has ballooned from 12,063 in 1990 to 36,361 in 2000, to 54,932 in 2007.

Yet, as the population of West African immigrants increased, Adjei saw his profits fall as Nigerians started to open their own shipping companies. The 2008 financial crisis didn’t help either. While Adjei used to ship four 40-foot containers per week, he now only ships one or two.

Adjei still manages to make ends meet and tries to do some good, too. He hired Greg M. Akologo, a deaf man from Ghana who struggled to secure paperwork and a job. He regularly donates money to African humanitarian organizations and ships abandoned goods he finds on the streets– like bikes, computers and mattresses– to Ghana, because he knows that they will be well received.

Although Daniel “Kuwait” Adjei may be thousands of miles away, he hasn’t “forgotten the problems of my country,” he said. “If I can still make a difference, then God is going to bless me.”

Photo by Matthew J. Perlman. Padre Plaza at E. 139th St. and St. Ann's Ave offers fresh veggies in exchange for coupons from the Dept of Health on Wednesdays.

A  Department of Health program called New Bucks will provide Mott Haven residents with fresh produce,  free milk and cooking demonstrations.

Farmer’s Markets are accepting coupons worth $2 each for fresh produce and milk. Two local markets are participating in the city’s Health Bucks program, the Mott Haven Farmer’s Market at 139th St. and St. Ann’s Ave, which is open to the public on Wednesdays from 9 a.m. -5 p.m., and the Lincoln Hospital Greenmarket at the corner of 149th St. and Morris Ave Tuesdays and Fridays between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Both markets accept food stamps.

Residents can get coupons by contacting the Bronx’ main Dept of Health office at 718-466-9178.

For a full list of locations across the Bronx, click on http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/healthbucks_bronx.pdf.

For every $5 customers spend using SNAP / EBT at participating markets, they will receive an additional health buck coupon, at farmer’s markets where food stamps are accepted.

This oil painting, courtesy of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation, depicts an auto parts yard on the corner of Hunts Point Ave and Randall Ave from the late 1980s..

Emilio Sanchez made his first trek down Hunts Point’s Food Center Drive in 1988, when he was 67, to an art gallery in the caverns of the Krasdale Foods complex where his art was being shown.

His friend Sig Balka, general attorney for Krasdale and art connoisseur, was showing Sanchez’s work in the gallery he runs, a hidden art enclave across from the Hunts Point Meat Market.

Passing through the urban landscape of the commercial and industrial district, Sanchez was struck by what he saw.

Over the next few years, he returned often, camera in hand, to snap photos that would become the basis for nearly a hundred works, a Caribbean-flavored catalogue of South Bronx commerce. He captured the industrial drab of the neighborhood in a bright and idyllic way, revealing life behind the dingy walls.

Now, some of his works are being shown in an exhibition called Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Eight pieces will be on display until September, when the full show opens.

In all, 27 oils, watercolors, and drawings, as well as photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, will be shown. The architectural portraits portray commercial and industrial buildings with clean lines, harsh shadows, and stark perspective.

“He was inspired by the area,” said Balka, who had become friends with Sanchez through mutual artistic interests. “And he felt related to the people of a similar Hispanic origin.”

Hunts Point was not the artist’s only South Bronx stomping ground. Some of his paintings also reflect his interest in Mott Haven. One painting depicts a deli at the corner of Lincoln Ave and 136^th St. The green awning shown in the piece is long gone, as are the former owners, where a bodega now stands.

Sanchez was born in Cuba in 1921, and received his primary education in boarding schools around the United States. In 1944 he came to the city to study at the Art Students League, and stayed until his death in 1999.

“This period in the late eighties he seems to have devoted to the Bronx,” said Ann Koll, executive director of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation in Manhattan. The foundation donated a selection of works to the museum earlier this year.

“I love the educational value of his work,” said Sergio Bessa, program director at the Bronx Museum. “It’s simple, clean, and dramatic.”

Bessa plans to bring students from South Bronx schools to the exhibition later this year.

A video by artist Laura Napier showing some of the buildings Sanchez portrayed in his paintings, along with an interpretation of his works, will also be shown.

“You can see that Sanchez reconstructs the buildings,” said Napier. “He didn’t just paint the photos.”

To supplement the artwork, teens from the museum’s summer youth program are producing audio podcasts of interviews they conducted with people from Hunts Point.

“It’s nice to see his interpretation of the Bronx,” said Elliott Harris, 15, a participant in the youth program. “It’s not the way the media portrays it.”

Alfred Rivera, who moved to Hunts Point with his family when he was three in 1945, remembers when the triangular building on the corner of Hunts Point Avenue and Faile Street was a pickle factory. “I remember stealing one or two when we’d pass by as kids,” he said.

Rivera, who bought the building in 1971 for $25,000, opened the liquor store seen on the corner in Sanchez’s painting. “I’d recognize it in a heartbeat,” he said. “That’s my color, I picked the red because I thought it’d attract attention.”

Tony Serrano works across the street from the yellow-walled Auto Parts yard depicted by one of Sanchez’s paintings. The yard is still there, on Hunts Point and Randall Avenues, but the wall is no longer yellow.

“I was here when it was the worst,” said Serrano, looking at a print of the painting and thinking back on his 40 years in Hunts Point. “I need to see this, it makes me proud to still be here,” he said.

“It really jumps at you,” said Trudy Sanchez, a Hunts Point resident who came to the neighborhood in 1957. “I love the vibrant colors, the brightness,” she said, leaning over the counter of MOgridder’s BBQ truck, where she works.

“His work encompassed his spirit,” said Balka. “It was flamboyant but restrained.”

“It’s an industrial setting viewed through an optimistic lens,” said Bessa. “Not the color pallet you expect.

Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. joined postal workers at a rally against proposed cuts at the main Bronx post office on 149th Street.

The Melcourt post office at 754 Melrose Ave is on a hit list, released by the Postal Service on July 26. The local post office is one of 17 Bronx post offices slated for closing, more than in any other borough in the city.

All told, as many as 3,700 post offices nationwide could be shuttered, said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe in a statement accompanying the offices to be abandoned. Other local offices that could be shuttered include the Morrisania PO on E. 167^th Street. and the Hunts Point office on Manida Street.

The postmaster said the aim was to close “facilities that suffer from ‘insufficient customer demand’ or where customers have other options for buying stamps and postal services.”

The Internet is to blame for the postal service’s troubles, Donahoe told Congress in May.

As customers turn increasingly to email and texting, the postal service has hemorrhaged money. It lost $2.6 billion in the first six months of this fiscal year, Donahoe said in testimony to a Senate subcommittee. Total mail fell 3 percent and first class mail 6.6 percent, he said. At that rate, he continued, the postal service would be unable to pay what it owes the federal government when its debt falls due on Sept. 30.

In March, Rep. Jose Serrano wrote to Donahoe protesting against cuts, and saying, “Our Bronx community is being asked to bear a disproportionate burden of your intended cost-cutting.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. added his voice following the release of the list of 17 Bronx post offices facing elimination. “The Bronx cannot afford such a considerable loss of both jobs and commercial activity,” he said, “and the federal government must seriously reconsider enacting any post office closure plan that would have a serious negative impact on Bronx communities.”

Artist Sean Paul Gallegos displays a mask he made from thrown-away sneakers at the From the Bronx website launch, held at New York Graphic Studios. (Photo by Stuart White)

Mott Haven studio offers a showcase for emerging artists

Why’s there no love for the Bronx?

That question struck Bronxite Paul Ramirez when he graduated from college and realized he had no positive images of his home to show outsiders.

“There are only two boroughs with character,” he said–“Brooklyn and the Bronx. So why are we getting stepped on right now?”

Rather than throw up his hands, Ramirez—along with other Mott Haven entrepreneurs—is setting out to change that.

Headquartered in a nondescript building in the shadow of the Major Deegan Expressway, New York Graphic Studios is indistinguishable from the buildings around it.

Inside, however, owner Jamie Jones is offering gallery space to local artists, partnering with media companies and community activists, and building bridges to local government in hopes of turning her business into a shared community space that will elevate the visibility of South Bronx arts and artists, and eventually, the borough itself.

Also under the studio’s roof is Ramirez’ Mainland Media, a business that helps promote Bronx pride. Their recently launched online store, called From the Bronx, sells Bronx-born merchandise ranging from mugs and t-shirts to prints from Bronx photographers and posters of artwork by Bronx landscape painter Daniel Hauben.

Formed by Paul Ramirez’ brother Anthony and his friend John Martin, Mainland Media’s From the Bronx Facebook page has over 80,000 fans.

According to Paul Ramirez, “We’re going to break 100,000 by the end of May.”

Jones recently converted the lobby of her screen-printing and graphic design firm into a brick-and-mortar From the Bronx store, selling the same goods as the website.

“We hope to achieve maximum exposure for the artists and the borough, and not just the artists, but changing the face of the borough as a whole,” said Ramirez. “We want people to look in and not just see the Bronx is burning.”

To that end, Jones also uses her space to showcase local artists like Sean Paul Gallegos, who says the city at large doesn’t associate the Bronx with art.

“They see it as graffiti and hip-hop,” he said. “They don’t even know there’s a Bronx Museum of the Arts.”

To overcome those perceptions, he struck an innovative deal: he would work one day a week at New York Graphic Studios in exchange for the opportunity to showcase his work there.

“Definitely a win-win situation,” said Gallegos of the work-exchange. “Moving forward without money: that’s key for me.”

Recently Gallegos’ work was featured by blogger and hip-hop figure Set Free.

“If it wasn’t for Jamie, if it wasn’t for Paul Ramirez, I would’ve never met this guy,” Gallegos said.

According to Gallegos, the relationship between himself, Mainland Media and New York Graphic Studios has been mutually beneficial.

“Collaboratively, everyone who’s in that space has brought clients to one another,” he said, stressing the importance of Bronxites helping Bronxites. “It’s us helping one another grow within the Bronx.”

Keeping it in the Bronx is part of what New York Graphic Studios is about. When Jones first opened her screen-printing business, she saw Bronx businesses and artists exporting their printing jobs as far away as Florida because of the popular perception that no one in the Bronx had the ability to do quality printing. Now, however, that perception is changing.

“I get sought out for advice and help,” said Jones. “That’s always a good feeling, because that was the goal. People are finding out that we’re more than screen printing.”

Another goal is raising the visibility of Bronx artists.

“There are a lot of talented artists that I consider hidden because they’re behind these commercial buildings,” said Jones, gesturing to the industrial spaces surrounding her 135th Street offices.

This month, Jones plans to unveil her own artistic venture: a line of t-shirts she designed called Addic’tus Addicere, which deals with the theme of addiction in unexpected ways. She hopes the line’s success translates into success for everyone involved.

“The goal is to pay the bills so we can keep the space going,” she said.

Like Mainland Media, Jones hopes to utilize partnerships among artists to improve the neighborhood at large. She plans to open a permanent gallery at her studio, and envisions future neighborhood beautification projects.

Mainland Media has already spearheaded one such project. They built relationships with local government and collaborated with muralists Tats Cru on an “open-air museum,” on 163rd Street. They are currently planning another mural project in Mott Haven.

Jones also shares space with Michael Brady of Brady & Company, a governmental relations agency. Brady is helping New York Graphic Studios build permanent partnerships with the borough president and nearby community boards in the hopes of expanding the studio’s impact.

Brady says he believes Jones—who spent two and a half years choosing her associates—has assembled the right crew to make the studio a community asset.

“There are very few businesses that have come from the South Bronx, stayed in the South Bronx and really taught the community to take care of itself,” Brady said. “That’s really at the heart of community organization.”

A version of this story appeared in the June/July issue of the Mott Haven Herald.