This Francisco Reyes ll photo of a man washing his dog is one of hundreds that will be displayed in a photo exhibition by the collective Seis del Sur this spring.

Photo exhibit will feature insiders’ view of ’70s and ’80s South Bronx

A chance meeting at a photo exhibit at Hunter College’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies in 2010 led six South Bronx photographers who have shared a common vision of life in the neighborhood for over thirty years to join forces for the first time.

David Gonzalez, Angel Franco, Ricky Flores, Edwin Pagan, Francisco Reyes II, and Joseph Conzo Jr., whose black and white photos were featured at the Hunter exhibit, had spent the 1970s and 1980s documenting the area and its people. But although they had crossed paths while living in and photographing the South Bronx over the years, they had not had the chance to work together.

But when they met at Conzo’s exhibit, they realized they had been photographing some of the same places all along, just from different perspectives.

Flores noticed that one of Conzo’s photos featured a bodega he had photographed extensively during the ’80s.

Gonzalez, an award-winning writer for The New York Times, posted a photo on Facebook he had taken of a window in his childhood home on Beck Street. Flores responded by posting a photo he had taken of the same window, from a different angle.

Flores posted a photo of the building at 800 Fox Street in Longwood burning down. Coincidentally, it had been one of Conzo’s favorite hangouts.

Realizing the commonalities in their work, the men decided to pool their visions as photographers, and called their collective Seis del Sur, or Six From the South.

The name,” says Flores, “is a reference to the 6 train that runs through the community, and the fact we are six Boricua men from the South Bronx.”

Each brings his own distinct vision of the neighborhood to the group. Franco, the oldest of the six, spent his time off from work as a photojournalist in the ’70s following officers from the 46th Precinct, whose violent reputation led it to be labeled “The Alamo.” Today, with a police scanner in his car, Franco continues the work he began in the Fordham section of the borough, as a photographer for the Times.

In Angel Franco's photo, a boy sits in wait at the precinct.

Pagan, a filmmaker and cinematographer, and Flores, a photojournalist for The Journal News in Westchester, first met as teenagers, documenting one of the most turbulent periods in the borough’s history through their photos. Mostly self-taught, they each focused on documenting their surroundings, friends and family.

Pagan recalls sharing his prints with his mother while growing up.

My mom would ask ‘who’s that?’ and I would respond, ‘I don’t know,’” says Pagan, who was accustomed to taking his camera everywhere, though at the time he did not consider what he was doing an art form.

I was just excited and passionate about taking photos,” he explains.

Reyes, who lived in the South Bronx during the early ’70s while working there as a street photographer, taught photography at United Bronx Parents, the organization Conzo’s grandmother, community activist Evelina Antonetty, helped establish. Growing up, Conzo looked up to Reyes as a mentor. After 35 years of friendship, the men still take photographs together.

Conzo was a chubby kid with an Angela Davis afro who picked up his first camera at the age of nine. Early on in his career, he trained his lens on Latin music stars like Tito Puente and Charlie Palmieri, and later documented the birth of Hip Hop, taking the genre’s “baby pictures,” as Gonzalez dubbed them in a 2005 Times article he wrote about Conzo.

Like the rest of the Seis, Conzo took photos of his friends, family and surroundings, during a time when many photographers from elsewhere were sent to cover the South Bronx on assignment. For him, “the group’s pictures represent what they saw and felt, going beyond the urban blight that others tended to focus on.”

The group’s first show is slated for early summer, and has been two years in the making. One of the primary objectives, says Gonzalez, will be to try to dispel the negative light the South Bronx has been cast in over the years.

These pictures are our story, told from inside the neighborhood and our hearts,” says Gonzalez.

When Gonzalez returned to Longwood in 1979 after four years studying at Yale, he discovered that the landscape of his youth had been obliterated. To cope with the shock, he turned to his camera, to try to make sense of the changes.

Ultimately, I chose to take photos of life and people,” he said. “What distinguishes our work from that of so-called ‘parachute photographers,’ was that we focused on signs of life, as opposed to the rubble.”

The show will be held at the recently founded Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose and will feature a multimedia component, as well as a curriculum to engage young people from local schools. Michael Kamber, founder of the center and a colleague of Gonzalez’ at the Times, views the show as a homecoming and a chance to share the borough’s past with younger audiences.

City Councilwomen Maria del Carmen Arroyo and Melissa Mark-Viverito say 2000 FreshDirect truck trips per day would add to Mott Haven's existing environmental woes.

Mark-Viverito, Arroyo demand an audit on Harlem River Yards

Two members of the New York City Council want the State Department of Transportation to reconsider the lease of the land where FreshDirect is planning to build its new headquarters.

Melissa Mark-Viverito and Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who represent Mott Haven, have called for a moratorium on all new development in the Harlem River Yards until an audit is conducted on the impact of heavy industrial use of the land on the surrounding neighborhood.

Mark-Viverito and Arroyo sent a letter to DOT commissioner Joan McDonald on May 3, urging the agency to take into account the harmful impact FreshDirect’s 2,000 truck trips per day would have on a neighborhood already heavily burdened with polluting industries. 

The letter asks for the agency to re-examine the lease of the state-owned property to the Galesi Group, a real estate firm doing business locally as Harlem River Yard Ventures Inc. Mark-Viverito and Arroyo say the firm has violated the spirit of the lease by renting parcels to “an array of manufacturing and waste processing facilities that place a disproportionate impact of diesel truck traffic running in and through the South Bronx.”

There are four waste transfer stations on the narrow waterfront strip, which contribute to the area’s sky-high asthma rates, leading the council members to conclude “the tenant is using the property in a manner that is inconsistent with the terms of the lease.”

Since the Galesi Group signed the 99-year lease with the city in 1991, the area adjacent to the Harlem River Yards has been rezoned to allow for increased residential use, and to help bolster local businesses, the council members say.

“Adding insult to injury,” the letter says, “Harlem River Yard Ventures collects approximately $500,000 per month in rent from its subleases while paying only $43,000 per month in rent to DOT for the entire 94 acres.”

Mark-Viverito and Arroyo concluded by suggesting the DOT declare a default on the property and collaborate with state authorities to consider , “taking full account of the socio-economic makeup of the neighborhood and the disproportionate impact” on area residents.

Opponents of the FreshDirect deal, in which the city and state have authorized $130 million in subsidies to help the online grocer move from Queens to Port Morris, hailed the effort. Mott Haven community leader Mychal Johnson echoed the letter, saying, “This is a budding residential area with new developments and loft conversions; it is not an industrial wasteland.” He added, “We need open space and waterfront access and real economic development.”

South Bronx Unite, the umbrella organization that is coordinating opposition to the FreshDirect deal, also applauded the council members’ effort. The organization, which has been holding demonstrations in Manhattan calling for a boycott of FreshDirect (which does not serve most of the Bronx), is also seeking to show that local residents want access to the South Bronx waterfront. It is asking residents to fill out this survey.

Students from International High School learned about compost by doing at Brook Park. File photo by Urban Transformers

Friends of Brook Park is assembling a South Bronx Green Team Collaborative to build a new compost system in Brook Park on East 141st Street and Brook Avenue.

Students between 13 and 19 years old who live or go to school in the 10454 or 10455 zip codes are eligible for the summer jobs, which pay $8 an hour.

Applicants must have good communications skills and be punctual. Each intern will be responsible for sharing his or her experience as a members of the South Bronx Green Team Collaborative with at least one classroom in the South Bronx.

Participants must be available on six consecutive weekends for four hours a day beginning in mid-May.

An application form, due by May 10, can be obtained by sending an email to urbantransformers [at] gmail [dot] com, or an application may be mailed to Friends of Brook Park, PO Box 801 Bronx NY 10454, and should include contact information. Applicants should include a two-paragraph statement about why they are interested in participating in this project.

The parent or guardian of those selected for an interview will have to sign a permission and waiver form.

A project of Friends of Brook Park and the Urban Transformers, the collaborative is financed by grants from Citizens Committee for New York and Department of Youth and Community Development, thanks to funds from City Council members Maria del Carmen Arroyo and Melissa Mark Viverito.

Residents learn about recycling, conservation at annual festival

For the fifth straight year, Bronxites gathered at St. Mary’s Park to celebrate Earth Fest, sharing ideas for innovative ways to green the planet.

Representatives from businesses, community organizations, and city agencies combined on April 21st to promote environmental initiatives, through information kiosks, activities for kids and assorted giveaways at Mott Haven’s biggest park.

Julia Wilson, 6, circled a flagpole several times while trying to decide where to tie a bright orange ribbon, to give flight to a sail made of recycled materials. She settled on a spot she could reach at the bottom of the pole.

“Recycling means cleaning the earth and not leaving garbage around,” she said, standing back to admire the plastic bags and ribbons tethered to it that blew in the wind.

“There’s a lot to learn here,” said Levell Peterkin, 40, who was visiting family in the area. “I was over there and talked to Con Ed, who told me you can change all the light bulbs in your house to these things,” he said, holding up a compact fluorescent light bulb. “I could cut my electricity bill by 40 percent.”

With bright green papers in hand, festival-goers like Peterkin strolled from one table to another listening to vendors peddle their wares. The product vendors stamped the papers, allowing participants to collect prizes based on the number of stamps they’d accumulated.

“It’s fun and free, but you have to work to get the free stuff,” said Rachel Amar, the event’s founder. “It’s a way to incentivize green behavior.”

A crowd swarmed the table that was covered with prizes for most of the afternoon. One volunteer yelled, “Hardcover books, three points. Softcover books, two points. All brand new books, come and get them.” Other prizes included t-shirts, healthy snacks and bottles of lotion.

Nearby, a group of kids played a round of Recycling Olympics, the newest addition to Earth Fest. They competed in a recycling toss, where they had to decide whether an item of garbage went in a blue plastics bin, a green paper pin or a black trash bin.

After playing the game, Natasha Perez, 8, reflected on what she learned.

“Plastic should not go in the paper, because later you can’t recycle,” she said.Across from the games, Jayla Garris, 11, stood on stage singing her rendition of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” as part of the youth talent show that featured spoken-word and musical and dance performances. She said it was her first time at Earth Fest.

“It’s nice of people to throw an event because people don’t usually celebrate the Earth,” she said.

Anna Vincenty, a long-time neighborhood activist who worked for many years for housing advocacy group Nos Quedamos and now works as Congressman Jose E. Serrano’s community liaison, was honored with a 2012 GetGreen Environmental Leadership award.

“There is nothing more important than making sure that today you take advantage of everything that you’re learning,” said Vincenty. “We’ve got to make sure we leave our children and our grandchildren a better place than what we found.”

Superhero Global Man Eco-Avenger also accepted an award for promoting green education to children.

“One of the things I want everybody in this community to understand is we believe in you,” he said. “We are committed to making sure the Bronx gets cleaner and cleaner.”

Sin City on Park Ave. in Mott Haven has been the site of violence and car break-ins, police say.

Strip club violence
Police from the 40th Precinct are keeping close watch on Sin City. The strip club on Park Ave., tucked between a taxi garage on one side and Metro North tracks and a sprawling community garden on the other, has been the site of multiple incidents of violence and theft in recent months.

There have been 14 reported incidents since Jan. 1st directly related to the club, and numerous overnight car break-ins in the vicinity police suspect may also be the handiwork of club patrons. Of those arrested, many have had prior convictions for drug dealing and other felonies, police say.

“The clientele that’s coming to the location is the worst of the worst,” said Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, commanding officer of the 4oth Precinct, who says he deploys officers needed in other parts of Mott Haven and Melrose to patrol Park Ave. late nights to contend with the problems brought on by Sin City’s customers.

On Feb. 28th, a man left the club after a dispute with management, retrieved a 9 mm handgun from his car and returned to the bar to settle the score. Although no shots were fired, the suspect and another man took off running before police caught and arrested both men.

On March 23rd, Lincoln Hospital staff notified police a patient was being treated for a gunshot wound. Police later found he and another hospital patient receiving treatment had both been shot while clubbing at Sin City that night.

“Mott Haven does not need this,” said McCormack.

Two homicides
On April 15 at 5:15 a.m., Terrence Martin, 26, was found dead in front of 285 E. 156th St. with a bullet wound to the back of the head. No arrests have been made.

On April 16, a 16 year-old boy was beaten to death in front of 700 Morris Ave. and later pronounced dead from multiple injuries. There have been no arrests made in the case.

Cell phone snatchings
On April 18th and 19th, three cellphone thefts were reported on the corner of Lincoln Ave. and 138th St. A young man in his late teens grabbed the devices out of victim’s hands in all three incidences, one on a bus, another at the bus stop and one on the street corner.

Crime by numbers
Of the seven major categories police use to gauge crime in the city, robberies and grand larcenies have shot up over the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period last year. Robberies have increased by roughly 23 percent, from 88 to 108, while grand larcenies have risen from 60 last year to 74 this year.

However, rapes, burglaries and car theft are way down over the same period. There were 58 burglaries reported over the first four months of 2011, compared with 40 over the same period this year, while car thefts tumbled from 34 this time last year to just 20 so far this year.

Next month, Ruben Diaz Jr. will celebrate the achievement of Fat Joe, the rap star who wrote these lyrics:

I never seen an ass like that
no I never seen seen an ass so fat (tat, tat, tat)
I’mma beat it til tomorrow
And all I keep telling her is “shut up bitch, swallow”
Your legs is shaking
I won’t hurt you
Now you can be the star of that new commercial

That’s about as much of Fat Joe’s rap “Porn Star” as we can bear to publish, but if you have the stomach, you can read the rest. He’s selling it as a ringtone, here.

Says the Borough President, Fat Joe “has been an outstanding citizen and a role model to countless Bronxites,” who “has positively represented the Bronx and throughout his music career has helped keep the Bronx on the ‘musical map,’ becoming one of our very own homegrown success stories.”

The rapper, who grew up poor in the South Bronx, has made himself a major commercial success with songs like “Porn Star.” But do they “positively represent” the borough you live in? Do you find them a source of pride?

Are you proud of lyrics that demean women, treating them as little more that inflatable dummies for the rapper’s masturbatory pleasure? Should our borough president be?

In Hunts Point and Mott Haven residents are begging the state to stop licensing strip clubs because they bring prostitution and violence to their neighborhoods. The borough president says he supports those efforts. Yet he salutes an artist who helps foster the very attitudes he says he deplores.

Our borough can offer better, and deserves better.

A crowd of applicants for subsidized apartments began forming before dawn on April 17th on E. 163rd St. Photo by Joe Hirsch

Nearly 200 wait for hours for a shot at a place to live

Police from the 41st Precinct were called to the main office of a housing complex on East 163rd Street on April 17th to disperse an angry crowd seeking to apply for apartments in several Section-8 subsidized buildings in Longwood.

In a sign of the demand for an affordable apartment, many in the line of about 200 that stretched for more than a block between Kelly and Tiffany Streets had arrived at PRC Management’s office during the night to secure a spot near the front of the line. Some cradled wailing babies, while others sat in fold-up chairs they’d brought to brave the long wait.

But when the doors opened at 9 a.m., a staff member told the applicants standing at the front of the line that there were no applications. Instead, they were instructed to send self-addressed stamped envelopes so the company could put them on a waiting list to be considered when an apartment becomes vacant in one of the roughly 400- federally-subsidized units in the eight buildings along E. 163rd and Simpson streets.

Terrence and Selena Brown came to claim their spot at the head of the line at 1:30 a.m. in front of the office doors so they wouldn’t miss their chance to apply when the office opened eight hours later.

“We’re in a shelter, trying to get help,” said Selena Brown, 36. Brown explained that she, her husband and two teenage children were forced to leave their Gerard Avenue apartment in February and move to a shelter in Soundview when the city’s Work Advantage program was slashed. The monthly check they used to receive from that program supplemented their low-wage jobs, helping them pay the rent.

“That’s why we’re number one in line,” said Terrence Brown, 41, who works in maintenance in Manhattan’s West Village. “They just told us you’ve got to beat the crowd.”

Leopole Roberts, 65, said that he had seen a mob of people in front of the building the day before while riding in the back of a car. When he got out to inquire, people told him he would have to come early to get an application.

“There are four people living in a one-bedroom apartment that’s broken into rooms. There’s too many traffic. I can’t live like that,” said Roberts, adding he showed up at 4 a.m. to “beat the hundreds.”

Tempers rose when word fanned through the crowd that there were no applications available. Some tried forcibly to gain access to the building’s main office, and shouted obscenities at staff and a local housing activist who tried to relay the company’s instructions. Security guards kept the crowd out of the office until two police officers arrived and told the group to leave.

David Gartenlaub of PRC Management’s main office in Westchester explained that the company’s local staff had handed out applications the previous day but then, too, some in the long line had become belligerent, so the staff decided to have prospective tenants send requests for applications in the mail instead of getting them in person.

Gartenlaub said a false rumor circulated among the crowd that vouchers for Section-8 housing would be given out, causing many to return to the central office on the 17th, although some applicants insisted PRC staff had sown the confusion by promising to hand out applications the following day.

“I’ve been here since 2:30 this morning,” said Jessica Hernandez, who lives in a shelter in Mott Haven and said she was told by staff while waiting on line Monday to return Tuesday. “I just want them to honor what they said.”

Michael Nowlin, the general manager of the 163d Street complex, said that although there are no apartments currently available, the first 500 applicants will be put on a waiting list.

“One of the things we don’t want to do is have people on the waiting list for 10 years,” he said, explaining that the company’s decision to cap the applicant pool at 500 is due to the sharp increase in the need for subsidized housing. “The demand is so overwhelming,” he added.

Through Section-8, the federal government’s Department of Housing and Urban Development pays private building owners up to  30 percent of tenants’ rents, making up for the portion low-income renters cannot afford to pay.

Those wishing to apply should send a self-addressed, stamped envelope no later than April 27th to: PRC Management LLC, 955 E. 163rd St., Bronx, NY, 10459.

The buildings included in the complex are 975, 985, 995 and 1000 Simpson St., 1075 and 1083 Longfellow Ave, 1076 Faile Ave. and 1240 Westchester Ave.

Kellie Terry-Sepulveda of The Point CDC, protesting the mayor's waste-to-energy plans in Manhattan on April 9th. Photo by Adi Talwar/City Limits

Advocates say trash would be burned in poor neighborhoods

Bronx community groups took to the streets of Manhattan on April 9th to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plans to test new garbage disposal technology they fear will end up hurting the South Bronx.

Representatives from The Point CDC, Nos Quedamos, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice and other community organizations teamed up outside the city’s Economic Development Corporation headquarters downtown to voice their concern over the mayor’s plans to to sign contracts with private businesses to convert trash into energy in newly built incinerators.

The opponents say the incinerators needed for the conversion process would almost certainly be built in industrially-zoned neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Port Morris, adding to existing pollution problems.

“At the end of the day, we know where this is going to end up,” said Kellie Terry-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point CDC. “We’re against anything that will further burden the neighborhoods.”

Terry-Sepulveda and other opponents say the technology risks creating more problems than it may solve, by polluting the air in areas around the plant.

“They’re not looking at the science of this,” she said.

Terry-Sepulveda pointed out the example of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company, which opened in Hunts Point in 1994 and blanketed the area with foul odors that sickened residents for over a decade before closing last year. The plant converted sewage sludge into fertilizer pellets that were later shipped to citrus farms in other states. Although the process was promoted as environmentally friendly because it recycled sludge rather than burying it in landfills, residents and environmentalists condemned it because of its harmful local impact.

Boosters of the new thermal processing technology say it burns cleaner than outdated garbage incinerators, but some environmental advocates disagree, and say it will negatively impact the health of nearby residents as badly as the old trash burning methods.

According to the New York Public Interest Research Group, a liberal advocacy organization, studies show the new incinerator technologies emit comparable levels of toxic emissions” to conventional incinerators, and that they also emit “particulate matter contributing to heart & respiratory disease.”

NYPIRG went on to say in a statement that there have been “malfunctions, explosions and shutdowns” in the implementation of the technology in other countries, including Germany, and that “experimenting with these new technologies in a densely populated area such as New York City is unnecessary and risky.”

“Given NYC’s zoning laws, most of the locations where an incinerator could be sited in NYC are in, or adjacent, to low-income communities of color that are already disproportionately burdened by pollution,” the statement warned.

The Bronx Museum no longer charges admission, and has "adopted" 40 Bronx schools, most of which have no arts program, offering children like these from PS 73 a chance to learn. Photo courtesy of the Bronx Museum

That’s where museums and exhibit spaces come in, and, fortunately, the Bronx is leading the way by offering first-class work at a price all can afford—free.

In much of the city the cost of looking at pictures and sculpture is too high for families of modest means. Admission to the Museum of Modern Art would run a family of four $78, plus subway fare. The Metropolitan Museum is free to public school students, but parents who want to accompany their youngsters are asked to fork over $25 apiece. Even to visit the Museo El Barrio–steward of the Latino and Caribbean culture so important to residents of the South Bronx–costs adults $5 and students $3–$16 for that family of four.

But last month, the Bronx Museum dropped its $5 admission charge, saying it had “chosen to focus on increasing access to the museum.” Now visitors can take in Emilio Sanchez’s paintings of buildings in Hunts Point at no cost, and cheer exhibits devoted to baseball in the Bronx, from Melrose’s Club Cubano Interamericano, to Little League teams from Hunts Point, Crotona, Riverdale and Van Nest, to the Yankees.

Across the Grand Concourse from the museum, the non-profit arts organization No Longer Empty has taken over the Andrew Freedman Home to mount an exciting exhibit of work by 32 artists devoted to our borough’s past and future.

In just a short time, the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose has become an important venue for free photography exhibits, and, of course, the Bronx Council on the Arts Bronx Culture Trolley clangs its way to artists’ studios and galleries on the first Wednesday evening of every month—free.

Unlike the Department of Education, these institutions recognize that imagination is not a privilege of the wealthy. They are tearing down the barriers that keep so many New Yorkers from experiencing their city’s artistic treasure.