Ridgewood Funeral Homes Adapt to New Populations
Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by Carolyn Phenicie in Immigration, Money and Economy
By Carolyn Phenicie
For nearly 50 years, the Woodhaven branch of the Walsh-LaBella funeral home served over 150 families annually. Now the funeral home has manages, on average, one burial a week.
With an influx of new immigrants and fewer longtime residents remaining in the neighborhood after retirement, Walsh-Labella has lost about two thirds of its business annually, and like many funeral homes in the area, is trying to figure out how to adjust.
“You have to change with the community,” said John McNamara, a mortician at Walsh-LaBella, which has been open since 1959
Once a neighborhood with predominately German, Italian and Irish residents, Ridgewood now has residents with mostly Polish, Eastern European and Hispanic backgrounds. “This neighborhood used to be all German and Irish,” McNamara said. “Now it’s got the League of Nations.”
Currently, the area is about one-third Polish and Eastern European, one-third Latino and one-third German, Italian and Irish, according to Monsignor Edward Scharfenberger of St. Matthias Parish in Ridgewood.
Fewer families are coming to Walsh-LaBella because the new Hispanic population tends to patronize funeral homes that are run by Hispanics or have a Spanish-speaking staff, McNamara said.
Regina T. Smith, who teaches a course in the sociology of funeral service at the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service, said people want to use a funeral home with employees that understand their culture.
The overall number of people dying in the neighborhood is also decreasing as people retire to other parts of the state or elsewhere in the United States. St. Matthias had five or six funerals a week in the 1970s, Monsignor Scharfenberger said in an interview. Now, the average is two per week.
The church will celebrate a funeral mass in any language the family requests, Monsignor Scharfenberger said. He estimated that for every 20 funerals held, two are in Polish and two or three are in Spanish. There are also four to six per year in German. Those services are usually requested by the families of older people who believe it’s more dignified for the decedent and not necessarily for the language needs of those attending the service, as those held in Polish or Spanish are.
Many families are no longer sending remains back to their home country, said Robert Taylor, a mortician at the Peter J. Geis Funeral Home.
“Years ago we used to ship more to Romania and Yugoslavia. People have become more Americanized [and] they realized they can’t visit the grave if they ship the body back to the old country,” he said. “Plus, the cost is prohibitive.”
The requirements to send remains to another country varies depending on where the remains are being sent, and the cost of shipping the remains depends on the weight of the remains and the destination. Families essentially pay for the services of a funeral director twice, though, because a licensed mortician is required to pick up the remains in the receiving country, Taylor said.
Some families have begun doing the opposite: bringing the remains of family members who have passed away overseas or elsewhere in the U.S. back to be buried in New York. Walsh-LaBella brings in five to 10 bodies a year from overseas, most from Italy, and about 15 from elsewhere in the U.S., mostly Florida, McNamara said.
The trends are not limited to traditional burials, either. Formal acceptance by the Catholic Church in the 1960s plus a growing acceptance by younger people has caused the number of cremations to increase, according to J.P. Di Troia, president of Fresh Pond Crematory.
The trend is not limited to Ridgewood. Recent influxes of immigrant and refugee populations from Burma, Europe and Africa have changed the funeral business in upstate New York, Stewart Williams, a mortician at the Dimbley, Friedel, Williams & Edmunds Funeral Homes in New Hartford, N.Y. said in an interview.
Language is often the biggest barrier.
“You’re needing to always find a translator and just be very patient with families,” he said.
Changes have affected funeral homes all around the country, too, according to Bob Biggins, a funeral director in Rockland, Mass. and spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association.
“It brings challenges to our members, but it also brings wonderful opportunities for them to continue to be beacons of service that our members have been for generations,” he said.
Designer Thrift Stores Help Those Most In Need
Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Radhika Gupta in Money and Economy
By Radhika Gupta
Known for attracting top designer merchandise and budget fashionistas, the Housing Works thrift store in Chelsea is filled most Tuesdays with shoppers armed with vouchers.
These shoppers are the homeless, the people who are HIV-positive, as well as the drug addicts, who are receiving social services, job training and health care services, all supported by Housing Works. They are the “certificate holders” who get to shop at the store with their vouchers.
They walk around the mid-century furniture scattered around the store, peer into the glass cases filled with designer sunglasses and funky costume jewelry before heading to the back where racks of designer clothing await them should they choose.
“People come in disheveled after living on the street and are just so thankful,” said Dana Cook, manager of the Housing Works on 17th Street in Chelsea, the first of 10 thrift shops that have positioned themselves as being a destination for both the fashion conscious and people in need. The certificate entitles the holder to a free product from the store. For some this may be his or her second pair of pants or the first-ever item of furniture for a previously homeless person, who has received accommodations through Housing Works.
The thrift division provides as much as 40% of the financing for its parent, Housing Works Inc, an organization dedicated to helping homeless and poor New Yorkers living with HIV or AIDS.
But the Housing Works thrift shops have never been your typical secondhand shop. It is selective in what it resells, how it merchandises, retailing only new or gently used high-end products donated by shoppers and fashion designers. Recent donations included a piano, an 18th-century desk from the singer Harry Belafonte and a 500-piece collection of Yves Saint Laurent clothing.
At a time when shoppers are skittish and major retail chains are reporting dismal sales figures, thrift stores operated by Housing Works are expanding. The nonprofit organization has just opened a new outlet in trendy Soho, taking the total up to 10 stores, with three openings in the last year. With celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker extolling the virtues of the thrift stores on YouTube and models donating their last-season Prada dresses, this store has made thrift chic and fun among the Manhattan party crowd.
“Sales are way up since last year and we are easily meeting our budget,” said Cook.
When the economy goes down, thrift stores do well but Housing Works, unlike other thrift stores like the Salvation Army or the Red Cross, is riding the trend better than most. In fact, the store promotes itself more as a fashion destination with tempting, stylized window displays, artfully arranged vignettes and a cool factor that attracts movie stars and celebrity interior decorators. Combine this with prices marked down to 20% of the original value and you have an unbeatable combination of innovative philanthropism.
The first store started in Chelsea and was the size of a small corridor and large pieces of furniture had to be sold from the street outside the store. Today the store occupies a 4000-square-foot sprawling space.
Richard Vorisek, the president, joined the company 18 months ago after working for Ralph Lauren, the high-end fashion designer for the last five years as vice president and has twenty years of corporate retail experience under his belt. In his new role, Vorisek has introduced an aggressive online sales site and is pushing for increased partnerships and donations from big-name fashion designers such as Marc Jacobs.
His actions, helped by recession-conscious fashionistas, are paying off. This year, sales of apparel and furniture at Housing Works have increased by 10 percent over last year to $12.5 million and are forecasted to increase by 20 percent next year.
Vorisek, who took a 70 percent salary cut when he joined Housing Works, says that the entire premise of the charitable store and the organization is one of payback to society and of second chances and forgiveness.
But by playing to the nuances of a fashion-conscious market, abundant celebrity endorsements and regular monthly events featuring artists and creative designers, thrift chic is adding to the bottom line of countless homeless, faceless New Yorkers.
“The sale of this Art Deco-style sofa for $200 will provide food for one person for four weeks,” said Connall McMenamin, 78, who has been volunteering at the Chelsea store for 10 years.
More than half the workforce at the thrift stores are volunteers, while some work for minimum wage. McMenamin joined when he lost two close friends to AIDS in 1996. In fact at Housing Works, one quarter of all employees are formerly homeless people living with AIDS and HIV, many of whom have struggled with chronic mental illness or chemical dependence, making finding employment an almost impossible proposition.
“They are some of our best employees,” said Cook.
Cook, who worked for many community organizations before joining Housing Works a year ago, says that although some days the workload makes her want to scream, she believes that Housing Works has a clear mission and that their income-generating policies will never overpower the goals of the nonprofit.
When something is working a new word appears for it. Philanthrocapitalism is a new term coined by management guru Don Tapscott, for organizations such as Housing Works that are using business and management skills to make social programs more successful.
An increase in sales has created one problem for the nonprofit, though. Donations have decreased and people are using sites such as eBay to get better prices for their items. The organization is exploring ways to get corporations and individuals to increase its donations.
McMenamin however had an exciting day last week.
“One lady came in to drop six pair of designer shoes, nearly new. And I served Marisa Tomei, the actress, although I didn’t know who she was,” he said, with a chuckle.
Some people come in which just the clothes on their backs, commented McMenamin and go out clad as fashion models wearing designer clothing.
A Pit Stop for Cabbies Under Threat By A Bike Lane
Posted on 13. Dec, 2009 by Radhika Gupta in Money and Economy
By Radhika Gupta
The Heart of Punjab stands out among the trendy boutiques of Ninth Avenue because of its cafeteria-like appearance and its simple food offerings. No white table clothes here or fancy, polished cement floors. The customers, too, are different.
Whether it’s the 7 a.m. rush to get a cup of tea or the end-of-shift set at four in the afternoon, 90 percent of the customers crowding the deli’s laminated counters are Indian and Pakistani taxi drivers.
A New York City cab driver in the early 1990s, Mohinder Gill opened the Heart of Punjab after an accident forced him to give up his cab. He conceived the idea while driving and realizing there were no places in Manhattan where cabbies could get cheap home-style Indian food or take a quick bathroom break.
He said he chose to open in Chelsea because the rent was reasonable, at $2,500 per month, and there was ample parking nearby, a must for customers who must park before they eat. From 1992 and until 2007, Gill’s nose for the needs of his fellow cab drivers proved to be right on target. The deli used to serve about 500 customers a day.
But in the last two years Gill has seen his profit fall by 70 percent, mainly because a bike lane, added to the avenue in front of his deli, has forced cab drivers to park elsewhere or not at all.
“Taxi drivers don’t like to park far from where they’re going” says Ranjit Singh, a cab driver, as he stands sipping his tea at Gill’s counter.
Most cab drivers work a nine-hour shift and take three, 30-minute breaks. Each break costs them around $30. If they park far away, they waste time walking to the cafe or the restaurant.
Three months ago, the city completed its goal of installing 420 miles of bike lanes in all five boroughs, doubling the number of bike lanes miles of three years ago.
While most bikers are happy with the additional lanes, the move has generated disapproval from merchants in areas where these lanes have sprung up. Their complaint is that they were not consulted about the process. Mayor Bloomberg, who has taken a very activist approach towards enforcing bike lanes all over the city, has said that every lane was approved by the relevant community board.
But Community Board 4 Chairman John Weiss has come under criticism from merchants and local businesses for unilaterally enforcing the bike lane on Ninth and Eighth avenues.
“I came to work one morning and heard the drill machines,” said Gill about the construction for the bike lane.
Few businesses in Manhattan, a city of walkers, are as dependant on drivers as The Heart of Punjab. According to a survey by the Taxi and Limousine Commission of New York in 2005, the last year in which numbers were compiled, South Asian immigrants make up about 38 percent of taxi drivers in the city (14 percent from Pakistan, 14 percent from Bangladesh and 10 percent from India).
When the deli opened in 1992, Gill’s wife would cook all the food, while Gill advertised the deli at airport pick up points. The first week his wife made a special corn bread available in most north Indian villages. She had made 60 loaves of the bread for one day, but Gill sold out in three hours. Encouraged, Gill started adding more items to the menu. Indian sweets and biscuits and most importantly, Indian tea or Chai, soon followed. A foamy, milky, cardamom infused preparation, the Indian chai is the fuel for most Indian workers everywhere in the world.
Over the years, the deli has become not only a rest stop in a grueling day for this class of immigrant workers, but also a place to meet old friends from the homeland.
The Heart of Punjab stands between an expensive pet store on its left and a charcuterie on its right. A stack of Indian newspapers lie in its store window and the entire space is dominated by a large steel display counter where steaming curries and snacks are kept warm. Two Indian men stand behind the counters, stirring the containers and expeditiously putting together the rice with curry combinations for customers. There is no seating area; customers mostly eat standing up at a long plank of wood on the wall opposite the steel counter. There are shelves above the plank which hold various video tapes of recent Indian movies.
Rajinder Kumar, a cab driver, has been eating at the Heart of Punjab for 15 years, virtually from the day Gill opened.
“It’s a beloved institution for me,” he said.
He said he senses Gill’s troubles and hopes that he won’t have to close the shop.
At 60 years of age with two daughters in college, Gill is a worried man.
“I don’t know how to do anything else” he said, as he rearranged the ketchup bottles on the long counter.
Because a meal is $5, Gill needs to sell at least 80 meals a day just to break even. He could raise prices but then he risks losing his most loyal clientele. Gill is not giving up just yet but his eyes look tired as his anxious face is reflected on the glass front of the counter that he wipes clean.
For One Night, Fans Catch a Free Pass at Yankee Stadium
Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by Ryan Hatch in Bronx, Money and Economy, Sports, Uncategorized
With one swing of the bat, Alex Rodriguez choked the life out of one stadium and propelled another into a state of euphoria.
“Go, go, go!” Sree Xaiver screamed as she watched A-Rod’s ball ricochet off the left-field fence and Johnny Damon raced home. “Yes! Yes! Go, score!”
He did score.
And the Yankees won moments later, sending the crowd at Yankee Stadium into a frenzy and the Philadelphia Phillies’ park into a dead zone as the boys in pinstripes won Game 4 108 miles down the New Jersey Turnpike in Philadelphia.
Seated along row 14 in section 111, Xavier, 30, and several thousand fans watched as the New York Yankees took one step closer to becoming world champions for the 27th time after a 7-4 comeback win over the Phillies. Game 4 of the World Series was played in Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Sunday night, but fans in New York were invited to come, free of charge, and watch the game at Yankee Stadium on the 6,000-square-foot Jumbotron behind the center-field fence.
“This is great, we never could have afforded to come up here if they hadn’t done this,” said Xavier, who brought her 9-year-old daughter to the game after walking in Sunday’s NYC marathon.
A Brooklyn native, Xavier said it was her first time in the “House that George Built,” which opened its doors earlier this season. A group of four behind her also said it was their first time inside the new stadium. All claimed it was due to the skyrocket ticket prices for not just the playoffs, but most of the regular season. As of Monday evening, the cheapest ticket price on StubHub for Game 6 at the stadium was $420.50 to sit in the upper deck levels. The most expensive were $20,000 to sit right by the dugout. The same seats occupied by Xavier and others in section 110 (field-level down the right field foul line) are listed at $1,100 for Wednesday night’s game.
The high price of tickets to Yankee Stadium has been an issue since the stadium opened in April. Single-game ticket prices for seats directly behind home plate were listed at $2,500. By early May, the Yankees cut those tickets in half to $1,250 due to widespread outrage from fans, but the team continued to suffer a public relations hit when nationally televised games showed still-empty seats despite the “discount.” It resulted in a boycott by many season-ticket holders, which gave way to more Kate Hudsons and Jay-Z’s filling the stadium’s best seats.
In 1970, principal owner George Steinbrenner bought the team and took out an $800,000 loan to cover all operating expenses when outfield tickets cost only $1. He wanted to brand a globally recognized team.
It worked.
Fast forward 40 years to 2010, when purchasing season tickets for a family of four behind the dugout will end up costing $405,000, slightly half of what Steinbrenner paid for the entire organization in 1970.
On Sunday night, Bronx Bomber fans who might not earn $820,000 in a lifetime had a chance to enjoy a game and enjoy seats that will probably elude them the rest of their lives.
“We are the real fans in here tonight,” Teede Williams, 32, said while drinking a $10 Bud Light on the concourse behind section 111. “Most people in here probably can’t afford the prices to get into actual games. But these are the real fans. You can tell they’re the ones who really care.”
Only the field-level sections of the stadium were open to the public — foul pole to foul pole on the lower level. Each seat in the different sections are generously padded, a feature of only the first level.
Jim Ross, senior vice president of business development for the Yankees, said management decided to open the stadium to foment some “camaraderie among the fans and let them watch the game on our spectacular screen.” He declined to speak on why the prices were so high, but said that $1,250 and $1,500 tickets have sold well.
Other Yankee officials in the ticket office could not give an exact head count on Monday since no tickets were electronically swiped when people walked though the gates.
Ironbound Residents Revive Ballantine Brewery Redevelopment
Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Christian Yarnell in Money and Economy
A view of what was once the main brewery building and parking lot from St. Charles Street. Ferry Street runs to the left of the building. Click here to see a map of the area.
Hottest Tickets in Town
Posted on 22. Nov, 2009 by Ryan Hatch in Money and Economy, Sports
By Ryan Hatch
Standing under the elevated subway platform outside Yankee Stadium on East 161st street and River Avenue in the Bronx, two middle-aged men in shiny blue jackets wait for the No. 4 train to arrive and dispense another wave of eager baseball fans.
In hopes of finding people arriving to the game without tickets, the guys each take one more sip of coffee as a new crowd departs the train and descends down the metal steps.
“Who needs tickets, right here, who needs tickets, I got four together, four together,” one of the men says in a loud voice as he walks upstream on River Avenue through jackets and sweatshirts of dark blue and white. “Any seat you want, anywhere in the stadium I got, I got.”
Well, not exactly. They don’t have every seat in the house. They only have about a dozen, really. But tonight for Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the Angels and Yankees, those 12 tickets for seats at Yankee Stadium are some of the hottest in town. Hot enough, in fact, to possibly fetch upwards of a couple thousand dollars in all.
“I’m hoping for three,” Mingo, 43, says, referring to the goal of making $3,000. “Any less and it’ll be a bad night.”
Mingo and his pal and co-worker “E” (“E” for excellence, he says), both of whom declined to give last or full names in fear of legal action from police, came up empty with the latest group even after wading into the crowd on River Avenue. They returned to their post under the subway and waited for the next crowd to cascade down the steps seven minutes later. Again, no luck.
“It’s still early,” Mingo, 43, donning a Yankees jacket, black gloves and faded jeans, says as he comes back to his perch near the McDonalds rail. “Give it some time. It’s still early. It’s still early.”
It is still early. The clock above the bridge on 161st street reads 4:32 p.m. This gives the guys roughly three more hours of business before their commodity becomes fruitless. First pitch is scheduled for 7:57 p.m. EST.
“Just have to keep moving around, never stand in one spot too long,” Mingo says, as he blows warm air into his clenched fist.
It’s seen as a dying art, this pay-to-play haggling of tickets outside sporting events. More commonly known as “scalpers,” the brokers trying to sell tickets right before an event have watched their business shrink over the years as fans have begun flocking to the Internet to buy tickets.
“They’ve hurt us,” E says of the online brokers. “There’s no doubt about that. Fans are skeptical of us because some people come out here selling fake tickets and ruin our reputation. A few bad apples spoil the bunch.”
So far, StubHub.com stands as the biggest bully the scalpers continue to fight. The site works as a marketplace for people wanting to sell tickets to concerts, sports and theatre, taking a 25 percent commission (10 from the buyer, 15 from the seller) on each transaction.
According to Quantcast.com, a site that monitors web traffic, StubHub had about 2.3 million unique visitors in September 2009. 53 percent of the users were male and nearly three-quarters were between the ages of 18-49. In January of 2007, Ebay purchased StubHub for $285 million at a time when the company had a profit margin of about $10 million with $400 million in annual sales. It’s safe to assume much of that $400 million used to belong to scalpers.
An advantage buyers have on StubHub is a protection guarantee that assures each ticket is real with the chance at a refund if found to be counterfeit. It’s also better equipped to gobble tickets the very second they’re available to the public, automatically purchasing them online. It freezes out scalpers who must wait at the stadium box office for actual, physical tickets and then stand at least 1,000 feet away from the box office to sell. Scalping tickets is legal in 38 states, including New York.
“It’s tough, man,” Mingo, says. “But we’re still working it. We’ll be okay.”
Inside the McDonalds sits Charlie Powell, a 57-year-old Vietnam vet who’s taking a break from the dropping temperatures by drinking coffee and having a hamburger.
“Nobody’s buying anything today,” Powell says. “Look at this stuff. They sell it for four times this much at the stadium but I can’t give it away.”
Holding several boxes of Yankee apparel including wool hats, wooden bats and over-sized foam fingers, Powell, a native of the Bronx, has resorted to selling merchandise instead of tickets due to the rapidly changing business environment for scalpers outside of stadiums.
“I used to sell tickets but it just ain’t what it used to be,” he says. “In ten years, I doubt we (scalpers) even exist anymore.”
An hour passes as the restaurant becomes busier with dozens of people seeking shelter from the harrowing wind and light rain.
Outside, the clock reads just before six.
“Okay, it’s time to move,” Powell said, finishing his Big Mac and zipping up his jacket. “Somebody’s gotta pay my electricity bill.”
MTA tries to squeeze in more commuters
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Siddharth Philip in Living, Metro, Money and Economy
By Siddharth Philip
How does the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City intend to manage the problem of fitting more commuters into already cramped subway cars? Simple – it just gets rid of the seats.
At the end of November, the transit authority will introduce a pilot project that eliminates seating in some subway cars during rush hours so that more people can fit by standing. Officials say removing some of the seats will increase capacity by 18 percent.
The project will comprise a single train with four modified cars, and six regular ones. According to Deirdre Parker, a spokesperson for New York City Transit, these cars will feature flip up seats that will be locked during rush hours, to increase standing room in the trains. After the rush hours, workers will unlock the seats and return them to their normal positions.
Ishan Singh, 26, an investment banker who commutes between the Upper East Side and Wall Street on the 4 train, said he felt that this was a step in the right direction.
“Every morning, the crush loads on the train ensure that I have to wait for at least three trains to pass to even get a toehold in the subway,” Singh said. “Thanks to the overcrowded trains, I have to leave home almost an hour early just so that I’m not late for work.”
Sarah Stewart, a receptionist at a law firm in the Lower East Side who lives in Brooklyn said that she didn’t mind commuting standing all the way from her home in Williamsburg to her workplace as long as it ensures she gets to work on time. Sipping her coffee and reading email on her Blackberry, Stewart waited for a V train at Delancey Street, having transferred from the J train.
While Singh will have to wait a while for his journey on the seatless train, Stewart might get a chance to decide after a ride on the seatless compartment. Parker of NYC Transit said that the train with seatless cars will be piloted on the lettered lines (A, B, C, D, E, J, L and M).
Not everyone is pleased about this new development. John Richard, 75, who commutes between the Upper West Side and Chelsea, said he felt the move would make commuting difficult for the elderly, disabled and pregnant women. “As it is, we have to deal with stations that haven’t yet been equipped with elevators,” he said. “Now they want us to stand all the way? What do we pay taxes for? Is it to make our public transit even less accessible?”
He said that he was not going to start riding the Access-A-Ride bus, the special transit service run by NYC transit for disabled and elderly people who cannot access the subway or buses.
Gene Russianoff, the staff attorney and chief spokesperson of the Straphangers Alliance, a public transport advocacy group, said that he doesn’t agree with the project.
“I absolutely hate it,” he said. “I understand that lots of lines are running far beyond their capacity, but this isn’t the way to go.”
Russianoff said the idea of having to stand the entire ride from Brooklyn, for example, was revolting. “We’ve been lobbying for longer trains, and an upgrade of the signaling system to a modern, computerized system. The manual system that is presently in use limits the number of trains that can run in a given span of time.”
Russianoff said that his organization is raising questions about the pilot project but will wait for a reaction from the public before jumping to any conclusions.
“The long-distance riders will suffer while the winners will be short-haul riders who only travel a few stops.”
Parker of NYC Transit said that since only four out of 10 cars would be seatless, those who want to sit can make their way to the other six cars. Richard, on the other hand, said he felt that this will increase the pressure on the other six cars as everyone will try and get a seat.
Both Russianoff and Parker said, however, it was hasty to jump to conclusions until the train, which is still being assembled at an MTA workshop, rolls onto the track and the pilot project begins.
“Let’s wait for the train before passing judgment,” said Parker.
Homebrewing on the Rise in New York City
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Living, Money and Economy
By Jeannette Neumann
Josh Fields’ beer money started drying up last year when profits from his art studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where he paints and sculpts, began to dwindle.
Determined not to curtail his taste for good beer, he pulled some cavernous kettles and kegs out of storage, and returned to brewing beer at a friend’s loft in Williamsburg.
Fields, 30, and his friend, Jon Conner, 39, a fellow artist, first experimented with homebrewing six years earlier, but only made brews from time to time. It was not until last February that they returned to the craft seriously and found themselves among a growing trend of New York City beer enthusiasts discovering the thrill of raising a toast with their own stout or lager.
“It seems like it’s really blowing up,” said Fields, as he served a dry stout from a “kegerator,” a refrigerator he and Conner built to hold three, five-gallon kegs of their brew. This batch was dubbed Micky Rourke because it’s “been around the block and has a punch,” Fields said with a laugh.
They brew enough, they said, for their own enjoyment and for friends, as well. While a six-pack at the corner bodega sells for around $10, a pint of their homebrew costs 30 to 40 cents to make.
“When you realize you can do it yourself, for less money, that’s a pretty appealing idea,” Fields said.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the two artists were presiding over a beer tasting for 23 visitors and a handful of friends in Conner’s loft as part of the week-long, second-annual NY Craft Beer Week, which offered lectures, tours and competitions – one of a growing number of activities throughout the city promoting micro- and homebrews.
Josh Bernstein, 31, a freelance writer for New York magazine and Time Out New York, led the group on the seven-hour stroll to the homes of four brewers in Bay Ridge, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill and Williamsburg. He leads tours throughout the year.
The exact number of homebrewers in New York is difficult to estimate, Bernstein said, since the drink is for domestic consumption only. Gary Glass, director of the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colorado, estimates that 2,400 of the 750,000 homebrewers in the U.S. live in New York City, based on membership in his organization. Danielle Cefaro, 25, and her husband Benjamin Stutz, 32, said they believe the number of homebrewers is nearly seven times that figure. The two former chefs opened Brooklyn Home Brew in Sunset Park at the end of July, one of only two specialty stores in New York selling brew ingredients and equipment.
Most enthusiasts said brewing beer at home is unlikely to become a common practice in New York City, where many apartments are not spacious enough to house equipment or store the beer while it ferments.
“Space is what kills beers in New York,” Bernstein said.
Also, cities like Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco have a stronger tradition of micro- and homebrewing. That means there are more stores that sell equipment and ingredients and more homebrewing clubs, making it an accessible hobby to pursue, Glass said.
Regardless, most agree homebrewing has continued to grow exponentially since it started catching on in New York City less than five years ago.
Home concoctions are nothing new of course – the brewing of alcohol flourished at home during Prohibition.
But these modern day moonshiners aren’t brewing in their bathtubs.
A homebrewing kit can cost anywhere from $70 to nearly $500, depending on the materials, which could include a kettle, ale yeast, floating thermometer, funnel and a hydrometer. Tips and tribulations are shared on online forums that continue to pop up, guiding the brewer through an all-day process that includes crushing the grain, steeping and boiling the ingredients, quickly cooling the unfermented beer in a cold-water bath in the sink, straining the concoction into a large fermentation bottle and adding yeast. Then the brew is left to sit for anywhere from two weeks to six months depending on the kind of beer.
Fields and Conner even invested $20 in a computer program to measure the alcohol content of their beer. Mickey Rourke measures 4.95 percent.
“What they’re showing is a great appreciation for craft beer,” said Ben Hudson, a marketer for The Brooklyn Brewery, which has grown into one of the most successful microbreweries in the city since it opened in Williamsburg in 1996. “Tastes are continuing to change, with people expecting flavor in their beer instead of yellow, watery fizz.”
Hudson said he has seen an increase in homebrewers at The Brooklyn Brewery’s weekly happy hours and tours over the past few years. Many share with him their dream of opening a brewery, he said, following in the footsteps of The Brooklyn Brewery’s co-founder and president, Steve Hindy, who got his start homebrewing while working as a Middle East correspondent with the Associated Press in Beirut in the 1980s. Hindy’s brewery now produces over 90,000 barrels of beer a year.
In addition to technology and equipment, an underlying philosophy appears to unite these 21st century anti-teetotalers, one that takes a page from the slow food movement catalyzing the boom in farmers markets over the past decade: Make what you can yourself or buy it local.
At the third stop on Saturday’s homebrewers tour, 38-year-old electrician Paul Kaye served up his Belgian whit, a Helles, a porter and a milk stout in his Clinton Hill backyard garden, carpeted with basil, lemon mint, oregano, tomatoes and zucchini.
“With homebrewing, from the beginning to the end, you know exactly what goes into it,” Kaye said. “It fits in with the whole concept of eat and buy locally.”
Conner’s 4,500 square foot apartment is also his sculpture studio, where he cut and assembled the latticed wood crates to store his bottled beer.
Cefaro said most of her customers at Brooklyn Home Brew are 25- to 35-year-old males who share an artisanal approach to life, whether it’s canning their vegetables or making ice cream from scratch. Many live in Brooklyn.
“They’re carrying on a very fine tradition” of small-scale brewing, explained Matt Levy on a recent Sunday bike tour exploring Brooklyn’s history as a stronghold for German brewers at the turn of the last century, also part of NY Craft Beer Week.
Levy considers the recent surge in domestic beer making a resurgence, especially in Brooklyn, where the smell of malt and yeast used to hang over the cobblestone streets, replaced decades ago by the smell of fresh fruit sold in the sun, weekend laundry and last-days-of-summer barbecues.
With a hopeful lilt to his voice, Levy ended his bike tour with a toast: “To Brooklyn and breweries.”
A Battle to Define Sunset Park: Zoning Changes Spark Lawsuit
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Immigration, Money and Economy, Politics and Government
By Jeannette Neumann
For more than two decades, Ruben Sosa has worked as a community organizer in Sunset Park, helping the neighborhood’s many low-income residents access affordable housing and find help for domestic violence.
Now, Sosa, 54, said he is facing his biggest challenge to protect Sunset Park’s residents: the city’s plan to change the zoning for 128 blocks in the neighborhood by allowing more commercial development and larger buildings along the avenues.
The City Council recently voted 42-2 in favor of the plan, which supporters say protects the low-rise, residential character of the neighborhood by setting height limits on buildings along the side streets, but that opponents fear will accelerate gentrification, displacing low-income residents.
“They’re going to push the rest of us out – the working class people,” said Sosa, community outreach director for the Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors.
Many of the buildings affected by the changes in zoning are rent-stabilized. If developers tear them down and replace them with more expensive condos, Sosa and others fear it will leave fewer options for Sunset Park’s low-income residents.
“It’s not that people are against rezoning, but they want rezoning to protect them, rather than kick them out,” said Bethany Li of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
But a spokesman for City Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez said she voted in favor of the rezoning for her district precisely to protect working-class people.
“Displacement will be kept at a minimum,” said Mike Schweingsburg, communications director for Councilwoman Gonzalez.
A study by the Department of City Planning says the proposed rezoning won’t trigger major new developments like luxury condos that could price people out of Sunset Park.
But Sosa and a handful of other Sunset Park residents, community organizations and churches say it will, and they are suing the city for moving forward with the rezoning after what they say was an incomplete study of the impact of the plan on the neighborhood. If they win the lawsuit, a judge will grant an injunction against the zoning changes.
“We firmly believe it’s a flawed rezoning plan and the city should have at least disclosed all the flaws,” said Rachel Hannaford, 31, a lawyer with South Brooklyn Legal Services representing the plaintiffs. Hannaford and Li filed the lawsuit on Oct. 2.
The rezoning plan is now in legal limbo, awaiting the next hearing on Nov. 16 in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
A decision could take months, leaving the battle to define Sunset Park unsettled.
Sunset Park residents realized the impact zoning has on their community two-and-a-half years ago when a developer tried to construct a 12-story building on a street of two-story houses. Uproar from residents concerned the building would change the look and feel of their street stymied the developer, but legally he could have moved forward with construction since there were no height restrictions. The incident spurred Sunset Park residents and political figures to push for rezoning, Schweingsburg said.
Now, proposed zoning changes place a four- to five-story height limit on narrow residential side streets – a plan that has received wide support.
But if the city places height restrictions on one section of a neighborhood, it typically allows bigger buildings elsewhere – part of a tradeoff to maintain a neighborhood’s character while accommodating a burgeoning population citywide, explained Paula Crespo, a planner at the Pratt Center for Community Development.
The proposed zoning changes also allow a height increase to 80 feet along 4th and 7th Avenues, two heavy traffic corridors running the length of Sunset Park.
That height increase could create greater incentives for developers to demolish existing buildings and construct their own, Crespo said, because they can earn more money adding square footage.
That could be a threat to the more than 1,000 rent-regulated housing units along 4th and 7th Aves.
As of 2007, the income of one in five families in Sunset Park was below the poverty level, according to the most recent estimate by the American Community Survey, an ongoing project of the U.S. Census Bureau. The neighborhood is home to the city’s largest Mexican population and the third largest Chinatown after Flushing and Manhattan.
More recent poverty figures aren’t available, but the number of people at the weekly food pantry at Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church has quadrupled in the past few months to nearly 400, as the economy continues to shed jobs, said Reverend Hector Laporta, 53. He said he has spoken out against the rezoning at Sunday sermons because he believes the changes will encourage developers to demolish lower-income housing and construct luxury condos.
Jeremy Laufer, district manager for Community Board 7, said the rezoning could actually help alleviate the housing shortage since it provides incentives for developers to construct larger buildings if they include moderately priced homes – part of the city’s inclusionary housing program.
Opponents counter that because the incentives are optional, few developers will opt to include low-income housing.
Councilman Charles Barron was one of the two councilmembers to vote against the zoning changes. Rezonings have triggered gentrification in his own district, he said, which includes parts of East New York, Brownsville, East Flatbush and Canarsie.
“It seems that Bloomberg and others are still promoting development for the affluent rather than the lower income communities,” Barron said of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The city is in danger – black and Latino communities and low-income communities are in danger of gentrification.”
The effect of the zoning changes depend largely on the market, said Crespo. Now, few developers are eager to spend the money to demolish a building and put up a luxury condo.
But as the economy improves, incentives for developers to build in Sunset Park could increase, she said.
“If there’s a demand for housing in Sunset Park combined with a robust market, you will probably see some bigger buildings on 4th and 7th Avenues,” Crespo said.
More money in less time: Workers’ cooperative in Sunset Park helps immigrants weather economic downturn
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Health and Environment, Immigration, Money and Economy
By Jeannette Neumann
Alicia Chavez used to work 48 hours a week at a Sunset Park baking factory, shuttling hundreds of loaves an hour from oven to cooling rack during her 5 pm to 1.30 am shift. She earned $350 a week for herself and family – two adolescent boys and her husband, who still works there.
Two years later, she earns slightly more money in less than half the time.
Chavez, 34, is president of Si Se Puede! We Can Do It! Inc., an all female workers’ cooperative based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The 23 members provide housecleaning services to more than 400 regular clients.
“Now, I’m a business woman,” Chavez said. “Before, everyday was the same. I was like a machine at my old job. Now, I see everything differently. I have a better salary and more job security.”
Like all workers’ cooperatives, We Can Do It is owned and controlled by the workers. Twenty of the women are from Mexico, two are from the Dominican Republic, and one is from Bangladesh. Although there is a hierarchy, including president and treasurer, for instance, there is no board of directors, meaning decision-making is democratic; Chavez refers to all of the women in the housecleaning cooperative as “directoras.”
Employees at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, a 30-year-old community service nonprofit, were instrumental in starting the co-op and continue to act as consultants for the women, helping to organize monthly meetings. Potential and regular clients call the Center directly to hire the women. The nonprofit recently started two other workers’ co-ops, one for babysitting and one for house repairs, called We Can Fix It.
Since We Can Do It opened in August 2006, the women’s wages have increased from $8 to more than $20 an hour. Chavez and the other women attribute part of that increase to a monthly marketing campaign, often held in neighboring Park Slope, aimed at attracting clients who prefer to pay workers directly, rather than a middleman, as it is customary in many housecleaning agencies.
Wages and quality of life – greater pay for fewer hours worked, for example – often do increase over time in workers’ co-ops since the members set the priorities for their business, said Lynn Pitman, associate outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives in Madison.
That makes cooperatives especially attractive in a downturn, said Jim Jenkins, director of communications at the National Cooperative Business Association in Washington, DC.
“Historically, when there’s an economic or social crisis, people tend to turn to co-ops as a way to move beyond their current situation,” Jenkins wrote in an email. “As more and more consumers grow skeptical of big business, they tend to look for business models with more integrity, transparency and value – cooperatives are the often the model they tend to trust.”
But Pitman cautioned that a workers’ cooperative is still susceptible to the challenges all businesses face.
“If the members say ‘we really want to pay our workers this amount of money,’ but there’s not a demand for those services – it doesn’t matter if you’re a co-op or not,” she said. “You have to deal with what the market is demanding.”
Chavez said she has seen the demand from her 20 regular clients dip only slightly amid the downturn.
“I haven’t experienced the recession,” Chavez said.
Two other coop members, Margarita Pavon, 31, and Daniela Salazar, 27, said they have received fewer calls from clients since January. Despite the ebb in workflow, they said they feel lucky to have a job, as friends and family struggle to find employment.
As of 2007, the income of one in five families in Sunset Park was below the poverty level, according to the most recent estimate by the American Community Survey, an ongoing project of the U.S. Census Bureau. In neighboring Park Slope and Red Hook, the poverty rate was a little less than one in ten families during the same period.
Current data documenting the impact of the economic downturn on Sunset Park’s low-income residents isn’t available yet, but there is evidence that many are scrambling to secure a salary.
Migdalia Garcia, 40, said nearly 200 people sit down every week in the unemployment office where she works on 4th Avenue to fill out paperwork, hoping to qualify for one of the 25 jobs available at any given time. About 9 in 10 are men, most from Mexico, she said. Sunset Park is home to the city’s largest Mexican population, according to the 2000 census.
“Three years ago, it used to be that there were more jobs than people looking for them,” Garcia said. “Now, it’s completely the contrary.”
Pavon said that since she joined the co-op in February 2008 she’s worked fewer hours for a better salary. But most importantly, she said, there’s more time for the things that really matter to her.
An aunt used to pick up her two children, America, 8, and Alan, 12, from school at 3pm because Pavon was always working.
“They didn’t like that,” said Pavon, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose at her daughter, America, who nodded her head in agreement.
Now, Pavon walks America and Alan home.
“I decide my time,” Pavon said. “I’m my own boss.”
In September, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington, DC invited the 23 women to their annual conference, highlighting We Can Do It as an example of Latino entrepreneurs who have started a successful “green” business. For health and environmental reasons, the women encourage their clients to use organic cleaning products – such as baking soda and vinegar. About 70 percent of their clients use organic products now, Pavon said.
The recognition has reminded the women of the importance of their work, Chavez said.
“Before, I felt like I didn’t have a life here or there,” she said, referring to her native Mexico. “I hadn’t done anything important in my life and I felt like I was in limbo.”
Now, she said, she has a purpose.
“Working at the co-op, our children have less probability of ending up in the street because we’re home more,” Chavez said. “We’re helping the environment and our community.”
