Bagli’s recent piece about Stuyvesant Town relates to Fox’s story in that both discuss important social issues. Previously, housing was an issue of race and now it has evolved into a struggle of economic class that determines who lives there. Bagli targets the conflict of income within different socioeconomic classes while Fox focuses on a housing complex’s history and her grandparent’s activism to allow black families to live there. Traditionally, Stuyvesant Town was an area that housed World War II veterans and now its function for the next 20 years is still to provide and preserve affordable housing to middle class families. It no longer is a place where discrimination is prevalent or where significant tax breaks and financial support is given to veterans. It’s a high-profile complex with rents of $4,200 or more, which is a lot for middle-income families to afford. In both pieces, the issue of eviction is mentioned to show residents had a hard time fitting in and staying in the area.
Monthly Archives: November 2015
Black and white
History repeats itself. The apartment complex was built by MetLife after World War II for war vets, keeping rents low. Now it is there to continue serving the middle-class. The recent coverage talks about preserving it and selling it so that I will remain affordable for its residents. It also relates, in 2006 when MetLife sold the property, rents were raised and tenants where evicted. In Amy fox’ story, there was a time where people where being evicted and it was the tenants versus the landlord.
Battle in Black and White
The more recent story relates to Fox’s piece in that they are both covering similar issues in the same apartment complex. In Fox’s piece, she focuses on MetLife’s reluctancy to integrate the StuyTown apartments and the battle that ensued from residents who were in support of the integration. In the more recent piece, Bagli speaks of those apartments and the changes that would force out the middle-class for higher prices. The battles are similar in that they reflect a major social issue: integration of the apartments in the 1950s and the reservation of affordable housing today. Fox also mentions the current issues at StuyTown in her piece.
Small-Business Pitch
I want to report on the laundromat as the small-business in my neighborhood because the laundromat business is well-supported in inner-city neighborhoods, and a necessity for many residents who don’t have one at home. It would be interesting to explore how their business thrives in the neighborhood because it is not as popular in the Manhattan area. With the plethora of laundromats in the area, I want to dive into how this specific laundromat separates itself from other businesses and how it maintains a consistent client-base that helps generate revenue. Known as one of the four businesses that exists in all inner-city neighborhoods (liquor stores, fast-food, cash-checkings and laundromats), i feel that this business has the most to offer and would generate a lot more responses than the other three businesses, while allowing me to explore why the business is important to the neighborhood.
Supernova Outshines the Competition
She enters her shop everyday at noon, by unlocking the steel door located in the middle of the building’s brick façade. As she opens the door, the sound of bubbling water from the fish tank fills her ears. The koi fish in the tank mimic the Japanese style drawings pinned to the wall in the nearby work station. She takes a seat behind the desk and gets ready. It’s time to tattoo.
Andreana Verona opened Supernova in 2004. Since then, her business has become one of the most successful tattoo shops in Astoria, New York. The success of the shop came from long working hours, good craftsmanship and luck, according to Verona.
Verona moved to New York from Puerto Rico 17 years ago after being offered a job at a local shop when she was in town for a tattoo convention. “I met my future New York boss… and he offered for me to come work in one of his shops.” After September 11, he decided to close his shop, located on 28th Avenue and 25th Street. Verona and her then partner decided to re-open the business under a different name.
“[The transition] was pretty smooth because it was already an old and established shop.” Verona recalls re-opening the old shop under a different name. “I think finding a name for a business is the most difficult thing to do.” After being shown prints of how supernovas form, Verona found the inspiration for the name of her shop. “Not being American, I didn’t feel like having a complete American or English name.” She felt the word supernova was neutral with a Latin feel. “I thought maybe it could be cool.”
For Verona, becoming a neighborhood establishment came easily. “I was always there and people liked what I was doing. It was pretty smooth sailing,” she says. She worked twelve hour days, five days a week, to ensure the success of her business. Supernova was one of three tattoo shops opened in that area at the time and starting off was easy, especially since the clientele from the previous shop followed her there. “That is how I established it,” she says. [I] never even did advertising.” Verona pays for a Yelp page and has features in the local Boro Magazine to promote the shop, but does not go further than that. As for social media “I am…not that active. I always forget. I should use it more,” she explains.
Most of Supernova’s clients, like Julie Pasture, are referred to the tattoo shop through word of mouth. “I heard [about Supernova] through a friend of mine,” Pasture says. “She went to get a tattoo there once and recommended it when I asked her.” Although she did not receive a tattoo from Verona, Pasture was very pleased with the work former Supernova tattooist, Leo Bulldog, had done. “Their work is great. The tattoo is done well,” she says of her tattoo. “They have amazing artists. It’s well worth the price of the tattoo.” Pasture’s tattoo on her ankle cost her $125.
Julie Pasture’s tattoo, done by artist Leo Bulldog at Supernova.
Supernova charges a minimum of $80 for a tattoo. The minimum a shop charges usually covers the cost of the new needle they will use. For smaller tattoos, such as Pasture’s, the artist will determine a price based on the location of the tattoo, as well as the size and intricacy of the tattoo.
For larger pieces, customers pay $200 an hour. On average, Verona’s larger pieces are completed in three to four hours.
Currently, Supernova only has one artist other than Verona, a tattooist named Andre. “I am encountering problems now,” Verona voiced. “It’s not easy to be a boss. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean [they] can do whatever…they want.” Being a female tattooist posed difficulties for Verona as she tried to establish herself. “Being a woman, it takes a lot of patience and thick skin.” She states that many of the men she worked with would make sexual advances towards her during her time working with her, and it has made it hard for her to find artists to work for her.
Tattooing is considered to be a male dominated trade, making it difficult for women to succeed. “While there are many more women working in and running shops than there were even 20 years ago,” Margot Mifflin, author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, says “It can still be hard for them to get equal treatment in terms of promotion or respect, and some feel uncomfortable at conventions because of the overt sexism on display there.” Verona’s experiences mimic those of other female tattooists over the years.
Despite these stereotypes of female tattooists, Verona is able to run a successful tattoo shop with loyal clientele but getting new clients proves challenging. “There are a lot of shops opening up, some good, most of them are really bad and we have a lot less work here.” She does not let competition stifle her. “I try not to look at what other people do because it can ignite problems.”
Supernova was recently named one of the best tattoo shops in New York City by CBS. Verona makes sure she hires artists that are all experts in their perspective style of tattooing, giving the shop more of a variety to please clients. “I try to always have artists here who wont step on each other’s toes,” She said. “What I do is more realistic and black and gray, and I like geometric I like details and dot work. Andre likes more Japanese, more traditional Americana, old school.”
(Neighborhood Faces) An Immigrant Who Never Intended to Stay
He came to New York City believing the streets were paved with gold and opportunity waited for all.
The year was 1950. He stepped off the train from Baltimore and looked around at the bustle of the crowded train station—he had finally made it to New York. He walked through the station towards an employee, and in broken English, he asked for directions to Coney Island. The uniformed man scoffed, looking down at the 16-year-old Italian boy. To get to Coney Island, he chuckled, you to get to New York first. The boy gave him a puzzled glance.
Salvatore Feola, thought this was New York. He followed the man’s pointed finger and saw a sign reading “Newark Pennsylvania Station.” The boy grudgingly walked back to the platform to await his train.
He never intended to move to America. One untimely decision changed his life.
Feola was one of 12,454 Italians to immigrate to America in 1950, but he didn’t have the same intentions as many of his counterparts in search of a new life.
Feola’s first moments in America, originally settling in Coney Island, were wrought with challenges to assimilate.
“It was lousy,” Feola said, raising his arms up and shrugging.
“I was working on the boat inside the kitchen helping the chef,” Feola said.
He worked on a container ship that made multiple trips between Italy and America, docking in Norfolk, Virginia.
Salvatore Feola in his Astoria Apartment
Immigration officers interviewed the crew, granting shore-leave, a pass allowing crew members to venture onto dry land, instead of staying aboard the ship, to a few of the workers.
“They come on the boat and ask if you would like to live in America. I say no, I want to go home to my mother in Italy. So they give me pass to leave the boat for a few hours,” said Feola.
He stepped ashore with a friend from the ship and walked around town for a few hours. When they arrived at the dock, they saw the ship had already departed; they were stuck in America.
After an exhausting bus ride to Baltimore, a train ride to Newark, a second train ride to New York City and a subway ride to Coney Island, Feola made it to his friend’s house, where he slept on a dirty, bare mattress.
“He was a stinking drunk. The place smelled,” he recalled.
Soon after, he moved in with his uncle in Corona, Queens. Feola struggled to find a job. “Nobody will hire you with no working papers and not speaking English,” Feola said. He eventually found work at the former Silvercup Bread Company, now a movie studio in Queens.
Feola spent years living in small houses, sharing a room with five or six other Italian immigrants. He wanted nothing more than to go home to his family, but going back on his own was not something he would do easily.
“I didn’t want to go back with no money. I leave here with less than what I came with. I was ashamed.” The only feasible way home was deportation.
“Every week the immigration officers came to the house with the picture of the guy [they were looking for] and I would go get him and tell him the officer was there.”
Every time the door bell rang, Feola would hope it would be for him but it never was. “I always go to the room and put my pants on and get my stuff and the officer look at me and say ‘what’re you doing, we’re not here for you.’ I kept waiting but it was never for me.”
Feola, desperate and longing for home, traveled to the INS office to turn himself in. He told the officers that he had been living in New York illegally, but to no avail.
“They give me a piece of paper and they tell me to go home and when the officers come for me to give to them.” They never came.
His oldest daughter, Ginny, said Feola always struggled in New York. “It was never easy for him here. He was homesick, didn’t speak English. He was just a kid at the time. The years of work really took a toll on him.”
After years struggling in America, trying to get deported Feola found his reason to stay: his wife, Mary. She lived across the street from him and shortly after meeting, they married. “I moved in with Mary and her aunt Kate, who helped me to pay the bills.” Salvatore was now a citizen of the United States.
Feola bounced from job to job to help make ends meet. Because of the difficulties he faced in attaining a full-time, steady job, he decided to open his own business. Using the money he saved from his previous jobs, a small bank loan and an offer from the seller of a small store and two-story private house, he moved his family to Astoria and opened “Sal’s Pizza.”
“The guy who owned it liked me was selling his house with a store, he offered it to me for only $15,000 upfront and I could pay the rest to him little each month.” With that, Feola was a business and home owner, and the family moved to Astoria.
The “Sal’s Pizza” sign is still mounted outside of the store. The new store owners leave it mounted out of respect for the former business.
His other daughter, Cathy, remembers her father working hard to provide for the family. “It was apparent he was never very happy living in America. He would always talk about how things were in Italy. We all knew he wanted to go back.” Cathy says she and her siblings were the only thing keeping Feola in America. He didn’t want to leave the family he had here.
“The house took a long time to pay off but it was worth it. I am still here. I have a place to live here. I own something,” Feola says. After living in Astoria for 41 years, he achieved the American dream. He had a business, a house, and a family, but it still wasn’t home. He still longed for Italy. “It will always be my home. If I could go back in time, I would not get off that ship.” Since then, Feola has traveled back to Italy to visit his siblings, but always returns back to New York, where his children and granddaughter reside.
Stuyvesant Town Post
The recent story sort of summarizes Fox’s piece in order to inform the reader of the historical issues of Stuyvesant town. Although the recent story and Fox’s story are told from different perspectives, the arc of their stories appear to be similar. The recent story is informing the reader of the challenges and future goals of Stuyvesant town and Fox’s story informed the reader of the issues faced back then in order to get it where it is today. However both stories focused on the same goal, telling the struggle of keeping Stuyvesant town a home for the middle class and ending the stories off with the solution.
Protected: Conflict story prosposal of Bensonhurst Brooklyn
Battle in Black and White (Class Question)
Recently, the NYT ran a story with the headline, “Stuyvesant To be Near Deal to Preserve Middle Class Housing.” See link below
Amy Fox’s story on Stuyvesant Town focuses on another theme–its history.
How is the recent story related to the Fox’s piece?
Conflict Proposal
Englewood’s town center is known for its small retail shops and lively restaurants. On weekdays, the streets are busy with bumper to bumper traffic and customers spending money in their favorite boutiques. But on Sundays, the streets are empty with minimal car traffic and residents. All retail stores such as clothing, furniture, or appliances are closed, only allowing residents to go to the local grocery and liquor store, restaurants, or CVS Pharmacy. This restriction on opening retail stores on Sunday is called the Blue Law. The law was initiated in 1693 with its purpose to create a day of rest or worship for residents. Bergen County is one of the few counties in New Jersey to keep this law and not have it repealed. The Blue Law has created a conflict with mixed feelings amongst residents. This issue has many sides as it pleases some residents while others despise the restriction it imposes on their lives. I would need to talk to residents, business owners, and the community board to receive a broad range of opinions. Are residents upset they can’t shop on Sundays? Do they seek the peace and quiet that is not attainable during the week because of constant car traffic? What do most residents do on Sundays if they can’t go to town and shop? Are business owners heavily affected? Would opening on Sundays bring in higher sales? These questions need to be touched upon in order to understand how the Blue Law affects Englewood residents.