Author Archives: kp153956

Business Profile Proposal: Challenge Escape Rooms

Posted on by

I’ve decided to do a profile on Challenge Escape Rooms, a small business on Bell Boulevard, Bayside.

Challenge Escape Rooms opened on June 19 of this year. The only articles I’ve found about this business are articles in the Queens Courier and the Times Ledger, and both of them are simply articles about the business’ premise and the fact that it’s opening/open.

Challenge Escape Rooms is a company that provides an interactive game experience. The player, and up to nine companions, will be locked in a themed room for one hour and will have to use clues and work together to solve puzzles in order to escape. Participants can choose between two themes: “The Virus,” in which players have to find the cure for a deadly virus and escape a quarantined lab, and “The Unsolved Case,” in which players have to find documents vital to a criminal court case and escape before being caught. In honor of Halloween, “The Unsolved Case” has been replaced with “Killer Countdown”—in which players must escape a kidnapper—for the month of October.

I chose Challenge Escape Rooms because it’s very unique, as a business and in its location. Bell Boulevard is a commercial hub, but it’s primarily home to restaurants and traditional retail businesses. To my knowledge, Challenge Escape Rooms is the first business of its kind on the street, which I think will make it an interesting business to profile.

Posted on by

I certainly agree that “highlife-lowlife” describes Joseph Mitchell’s profiles of Joe Gould.

Gould, at times, seemed like a typical vagrant on the streets of New York–his eccentricity, relying on the support and charity of others, sleeping in flophouses (which seemed like they were some precursor to the city’s shelter system today). In this way, he fit the “lowlife” aspect. But he was definitely “highlife” as well, what with being published in magazines and attending writers’ circles (whether he was welcome there or not.) What’s more, he seemed to enjoy the life he was living, and that’s about as “highlife” as one can get.

I found it very hard to believe, at times, that what I was reading was a (presumably, mostly) true story about a real person. Mitchell’s style made it all seem just like a novel, a mini biography of a fantastical, fictional person. I did notice that the second profile was longer and included many more quotes from Gould himself, long quotes.

I was kind of daunted by Mitchell’s profiles, to be honest. I couldn’t imagine writing something so detailed, so long and involved. Overall, I thought it was very fine work.

Invisible Child comments

Posted on by

I very much enjoyed reading the Invisible Child piece.

I don’t think it mattered that Dasani’s last name was omitted; I can’t see how it would have made a difference to the story’s quality to include it. I think that it was better to omit it since she’s very young and already getting a lot of media exposure. Leaving out her last name was one way she could have some privacy.

The story was really long, it’s true, but I think the length was necessary in order to show the full depths of Dasani’s situation. A shorter piece wouldn’t have had time to fully explore how complex Dasani and her family’s lives were and paint an accurate picture of them as human beings doing the best they can to get by–even when “the best” isn’t something legal.

I’m not sure it mattered that the Times didn’t disclose how long the reporting took. I can’t think of any of the code of ethics that would require disclosing the time frame. I felt that reading the story made it clear or at least apparent that Andrea Elliott had followed Dasani for several months, since there’s a pretty obvious progression of time–for example, toward the beginning of the story, we see Dasani start school, and a little later on, a Christmas celebration is described. To me that implies that Elliott was with her for a long time.

I do agree that more time could have been devoted to the treatment of homeless people in New York City, but I also think that the story worked without it. It’s a profile of a girl and her family; had it been a series of profiles of several families or people, it would have been more imperative to include more information about homelessness.

I’m not so sure that Invisible Child was a caricature. I think that had it focused on child homelessness, relying on a single story wouldn’t have been a good idea. However, it was a story devoted to this one child, in this one situation. Certainly, it could be an example that speaks to a larger issue, but since it focused primarily on Dasani’s Homeless Life, it avoided being a caricature.

Backgrounder: Bayside

Posted on by

Area

Bayside is located in Queens District 11, which also includes parts of Auburndale, Douglaston, Hollis Hills, Little Neck, and Oakland Gardens. Altogether, District 11 is an area of about 9.4 square miles. Bayside is bordered by 26th Avenue, Francis Lewis Boulevard, and 48th Avenue. It is also bordered by the Little Neck Bay.

Demographics

At the time of the 2010 U.S. Census, the total population of Bayside was 43,808. Of that number, white non-Hispanics made up 46.9%, followed closely by Asian non-Hispanics at 37.3%. Residents of Hispanic origin made up 11.6% of the population, and black/African American residents made up just 2.6%.

Bayside’s racial make up changed radically between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Although there have been fewer than 1,000 non-Hispanic residents of two or more races since 2000, this group showed the most drastic population decrease, shrinking nearly 37% between 2000 and 2010. The white and African American populations also dropped significantly, decreasing by 21.9% and 15.3% respectively. In contrast, the Asian population nearly doubled during that time frame, experiencing a 48.6% population increase.

At 52%, Bayside’s female population is slightly larger than the male population, which is 48%.

Income

According to the 2009-2013 ACS profile of Bayside, the median income of Bayside households is $76,289. Of the 16,048 househould surveyed, an 18.8% plurality were earning between $100,000 and $149,999 a year; a combined approximate of 30% earned between $50,000 and $99,999.

In comparison, the median income for all of New York City was $52,259, with a 15.7% plurality earning between $50,000 and $74,999.

Housing

According to the ACS, there are 16,860 housing units in Bayside. Of that number, 95.2% are occupied, with only 812 being vacant. Nearly 76% of those units were 1-unit attached or detached homes, or 2-unit homes.

65.4% of Bayside homes are occupied by the people who own them, while 34.6% are occupied by renters. The median rent in Bayside is $1,615, higher than the median rent for New York City, which is $1,200.

Education

Bayside is served by two high schools—Bayside High School and Benjamin N. Cardozo High School—and 11 elementary or middle schools.

The ACS shows that between 2009 and 2013, the vast majority of Bayside residents were enrolled in elementary school (37.2%), high school (21.3%), or college/graduate school (30.8%). The remaining 10.6% were in preschool or kindergarten. A comparison with all of New York City shows similar numbers.

88% of Bayside residents have completed at least high school, and 42.1% have at least a bachelors’ degree. Both numbers are higher than all of New York City; 79.8% of New York City residents completed high school or higher, while 34.5% completed a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Crime

Queens District 11 is patrolled by the 111th Police Precinct.

According to a police crime statistics report, there were a total of 881 major crimes committed in District 11 in 2014. 454 of those crimes fell under the category of grand larceny, while 219 were burglaries.

The crime rate has dropped by 42.3% since 2001, during which there were 1,528 crimes committed in District 11.

Transportation

Bayside is traversable through several bus lines, including the Q12, Q13, Q27, Q28, and the Q31. Although it lacks any subway stops, the Long Island Railroad has a station on Bell Boulevard, connecting it to Penn Station in Manhattan, parts of Queens, and Long Island.

The Cross Island Parkway and the Clearview Expressway also run through Bayside.

Community Leaders

Bayside is one of several neighborhoods served by Community 11. The board is located at 46-21 Little Neck Parkway, Little Neck, NY 11362. The community board chair is Christine L. Haider, and the district manager is Susan Seinfeld. Meetings are held the first Monday of every month at 7:30 pm.

 

Update, 12/14/2015:

While reporting on my stories, I learned two prominent facts about Bayside:

  • Its commercial hub, Bell Boulevard, is fairly diverse in terms of the types of businesses that can be found. The two most prominent types of businesses are retail-type shops–for example, clothing boutiques, a used bookstore, and two chain pharmacies–and establishments selling food in some form, whether as grocery products or as meals served at a restaurant. There are also a few professional services like accountants and medical services like chiropractors. While there’s plenty to do if one is looking to shop or dine, there’s not a lot to do by way of having fun as part of a night out. There’s a need on Bell Boulevard for entertainment options, which are so far being met only by Challenge Escape Rooms and the nearby movie theater.
  • Bayside schools, and District 26 schools at large, perform very well and are overcrowded as a result. The community recently shot down a proposal to build a new high school, so any efforts to address the overcrowding in the district will have to take a different form that doesn’t involve putting a school in Bayside. What those efforts will be remains to be seen, as nothing has been publicly proposed as of yet.

Neighborhood Faces: Robert Pozarycki

Posted on by

The person that I would like to profile is Robert Pozarycki, the editor-in-chief for the Queens Courier and the Courier Sun, two community newspapers which have their offices in Bayside. While I was an intern at the Queens Courier this summer, I worked for Robert—or Rob, as he’s known in the office—and I developed a professional and friendly relationship with him.

One thing that interested me about Rob is something he mentioned a few times during our chats, and that is the fact that he had gone to school to become a history teacher. I also recall him mentioning that he taught or worked in education for some time prior to becoming a reporter. The research I’ve done on him reveals that he’s been a journalist for more than a decade, and was promoted to editor-in-chief just earlier this year.

I think that Rob can provide interesting insight into the field of journalism. As someone who didn’t study for it in college and who originally had other career plans, I think Rob would be a good person to talk to in order to get an idea of what the challenges are of pursuing a career not related to one’s degree, and of what the challenges and rewards were for him when it came to journalism. What’s more, I believe he would be able to discuss how he’s seen Bayside evolve over the years, as he works in Bayside and has certainly been involved in reporting on it.

For a multimedia component, I can include clips of my interview with him, as I think that would give readers a better sense of what he’s like.

 

2 Jobs at Sugar Factory, and a Lump in the Throat

Posted on by
  1. Does the writer give us more than Robert Shelton’s personal history?

    While Yee primarily focuses on Shelton, she seems to be telling a brief history of Domino and of the processing plant through Shelton’s experience there. The piece tells the story not just of this one sugar refinery worker, but the story of the average sugar refinery worker as well. She also uses Shelton’s experience to tell a little bit of the history of the area around the Domino plant and how it’s changed in the past couple of decades.

  2. Describe the narrative of this profile, the arc of the story.

    The profile begins in the present, with a description of the last days of the refinery, and then shifts into the past in order to tell Shelton’s story and the history of the refinery. The profile then returns to the present, explaining why Shelton is at the sugar refinery for the last time, and at the same time, it catches both his personal story and the refinery’s story up to the present.

  3. What do you think of the lead?

    I think the lead is excellent. It made me want to know why he’d never seen the sugar house floor, but it also filled me with mental images of an immense amount of sugar that I almost couldn’t comprehend. Overall, I thought pretty highly of it.

  4. Where is the nut graf?

    The nutgraf is in the second and third paragraphs on the second page, explaining why Shelton is back at the refinery and explaining what’s going to be going on there.

  5. What about the author’s point-of-view?

    The author seems fairly positive about Shelton’s experience, and seems as though she, too, is wistful and sad about the closing of the refinery and the hauling away of “A Subtlety.” The whole piece has a “faded glory” or “nothing can last forever” feel to it.

(A Little More Than) 250 Words on Bayside

Posted on by

The neighborhood I want to work in is Bayside, Queens. I grew up in Bayside, though I haven’t lived there in about eight years.

The person I have in mind for the profile piece is Robert Pozarycki, the editor in chief at the Queens Courier, which has one of its offices on Bell Boulevard. He was my direct supervisor while I interned at the Courier over the summer, and I built up a good professional relationship with him.

As for the business profile, I have three different ideas. One place I’d like to profile is an organic supermarket that opened recently called Big Green Apple Market; though small, it has a surprisingly wide range of products that seem more typical of a Whole Foods than a neighborhood grocery. The second business is called Challenge Escape Rooms, where visitors are locked in a themed room for an hour and have to solve puzzles and find clues in order to escape. It stands out because there’s nothing remotely like it among the other shops and restaurants. Finally, the third business I’d be interested in profiling is VIPizza, a pizzeria that I’ve been going to since I was a little kid. I know that it’s been there for quite some time, so it seems like an almost-permanent fixture of Bell Boulevard.

Finally, I have to admit I’m not wholly certain about what kind of conflicts are currently ongoing in Bayside. However, I can think of a few areas where they might exist. One area I could look at is real estate—who is buying property in Bayside, and for what purpose? What impact is it having on people already living there? Another is business in a broad sense—are there any conflicts that have come up as the result of the opening or closing of any businesses? Who is opening businesses in Bayside? Who do they serve and what kind of services do they offer?

I’m not limiting myself to these two ideas, of course, but they’re what I have in mind for now.

Queens Tourists response

Posted on by

I’ll be honest and say, while I enjoyed this article (and recognized the name of one of the people on the tourism panel described in the first paragraph), I don’t think the style it was written in stood out as something fantastic. In fact, I think the piece had several flaws.

For one, there’s several places where vague terms or phrases are used. Semple mentions in the second paragraph that the “celebrity of the event” was an advertising executive from Lonely Planet, but he fails to actually name that executive. That’s not exactly information that has to be kept secret, is it? He’s also vague on where, when, and for what purpose the panel on tourism was taking place, and who “the audience” was. There is at least one spot where he is unclear in what he means–on the bottom of the fifth page he makes reference to “the travel guide company” but doesn’t name it. Does he mean Lonely Planet? If so, it’s not immediately obvious; before page five, he refers to LP by name twice on page one and that’s it. Readers who aren’t familiar with LP might get confused.
Finally, he makes reference to “Queens enthusiasts” but fails to really specify what he means–are they residents? People in the tourism industry? News reporters and journalists? Who exactly are the Queens enthusiasts who promote “the array of cultural institutions?”

That last point feeds into an issue with sourcing. The most important and most relevant quotes, in my opinion, came from three people, all of whom work for NYC & Company. Of those quotes, most seemed to come from Mr. MacKay, or at least that was my impression. From the journalism classes I’ve taken so far, I’ve learned that for a topic this broad,  it’s not good to only have one or two sources. NYC & Company certainly would be an important source for this sort of story, but I feel that he should’ve spoken to at least one other tourism agency, and especially one devoted solely to Queens.

Finally, some of the quotes didn’t seem important. The very first quote in the article adds absolutely nothing to the story because Semple didn’t identify the LP executive, didn’t explain what made him so important that he “should’ve been carried into the room,” and doesn’t mention him again in the article.

The references to aluminum siding seem really off the mark as well, but I don’t know if that’s because I don’t understand them. Either way, I don’t see how MacKay’s quote about the Woody Allen film are relevant to the story. Surely there was a more fitting quote he could’ve used? Maybe something about the various industrial zones in the borough or a quote about the “inadequate public transportation” he mentions?

I feel that the ending, at least, sums up what the article tried to convey: Queens is growing in popularity, but still has a way to go before it’s as well known or visited as Brooklyn or Manhattan. I also thought that in terms of facts, the article was pretty thorough in covering growth in the tourism and hotel industries, and I felt it did justice to the sights Queens has to offer.

Overall, I think this article, while not being entirely terrible, is severely lacking.