Pitch for Winston Story:
Winston Prep School is a middle school and high school that caters to the needs of learning disabled kids. This ranges from students with ADD and dyslexia to more severe disabilities.
- While Winston is a private school, more than 95% of its students are on some sort of scholarship.
- Since the economic downfall, it has become harder for parents to pay for their children’s tuition.
- Not only has this been a problem, but also the board of education has been fighting with Winston about who should be eligible for scholarships and how much they should get.
I want to write about, and maybe even make a video about how families pay for Winston and the fight they are having with the NYC Board of ED.
- I will do this by talking with deans and faculty members at the school, someone on the board of Winston, maybe a student, and try to contact someone at the Board of ED.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Brooklyn Community Board 6: An Exercise in Why People Get Mugged
"With a population of 104,054 residents (2000 Census figure), Brooklyn Community Board 6 is comprised of the following neighborhoods: Carroll Gardens/South Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Columbia Street District, Gowanus, Park Slope and Red Hook." - Community Board 6
What these neighborhood have in common is gentrification peeking over their shoulder, or do they?
A Walk Down Memory Lane.
It’s evening rush hour. The cold, mucky floors of the Union Square subway station, namely the Brooklyn and Queens bound platforms, are packed. And the demographic represented is strikingly young. For as the L train approaches and leaves the station at full speed, it takes with it a great deal of the very backbone of what used to be the East Village: the poets, musicians, artists, the eccentrically dressed and shamelessly un-bathed. If you are looking for Bohemia, and were mislead (left anywhere in Manhattan) it’d be your best bet to follow the parade of young adults and descend with the masses into the series of tubes. But beware–– there's no telling where you'll end up. For as the ghost of a village past has had to begrudgingly relocate, young professionals and students have turned to all nooks, crannies, and corners of the outer boroughs.
“When I lived in the East Village it was actually gritty. It was just us hippies,” remembers Andy Zelenak, a 59-year-old New Jersey resident. Andy rented a one-bedroom apartment on 7th street between First and Second Avenue for the latter half of the 1960’s. Upon an inquiry as to what his rent was he eagerly shouts in response, “Seventy Bucks! Seriously.”
Once upon a peace pipe, Lower Manhattan, namely the village, was a hippie haven. Nowadays the hippie’s prefer to be called “-sters,” wear significantly darker, slightly tighter clothes, and have a less obvious musical genre. They also can’t seem to be able, or want, to live in the land that their stylistically innovative ancestors built.
Andy, like many other past inhabitants of now multi-million dollar apartment buildings fondly recalls when lower Manhattan was dirt cheap, the “awesome” live music was cheaper, and there was no such thing as a SoHo. And as we continue our conversation, it becomes more and more evident. The off-color, the odd, and the unruly aggregate suffered a huge loss as their Manhattan Mecca swiftly succumbed to an upheaval. Though a few places in the Village still retain their grit, others uphold a façade that is sterile to say the least. The youth of NY isn’t sold on the East Village. Not that they could afford it even if they were…
“The Fillmore East was great, man. All kinds of rock ‘n’ roll, everyone played there, Jimi Hendrix, Janis, The Doors, you name it. It was 8 dollars to go for a night. Imagine that," Andy sighed. Then, he almost instantly came back to reality,"You can’t get a beer for 8 dollars in Manhattan anymore.”
Monday, February 8, 2010
Over Thirty Years in District 12: One Woman's Story
Yafa Zalanov, 78, has lived on the corner of Beverly Road and Ocean Parkway for the past thirty-two years. In the fall of 1978 she left her hometown, Baku, Azerbaijan, with her six children and husband. They found a cozy two bedroom apartment on the first floor of a fine building at $280 a month (now over $1000). During all her time in America, Yafa has not learned English; she only knows her cultural dialect, Juhuro. Her daughter-in-law, Larissa, 46, explains, “She knows very little, things like, ‘How are you?’ and ‘I love you.’”
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