Mr. G Works to Help Ex-Offenders Succeed

By Sarah McNaughton on Jan 9th, 2012 , The Uptowner

On a rainy Wednesday night, six young ex-convicts sit in the basement of an East Harlem storefront, eating slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza. Except for the sounds of chewing, the room is silent, the young men shifting in their chairs and avoiding eye contact until Mark Goldsmith walks in, takes a seat beneath a poster of Muhammed Ali and begins his seminar: “How to be Successful in School and Work.”

Goldsmith, known here as Mr. G., introduces a hypothetical situation: “There’s a hot party in Brooklyn tonight, best-looking women in town, you’re on the guest list. I’ll pick you up outside Yankee stadium at 10:30,” Goldsmith says. The guys who have heard this one before smile; the ones who haven’t look at the floor.

“Now, you know what I have in my car. I don’t go anywhere without a weapon. Never. I don’t go anywhere without some drugs that I can sell,” he says. The guys chuckle. “But this is the hottest party of the year and you’re on the guest list. So are you coming with me or what?”

“Hell yeah,” says the youngest man.

Goldsmith groans. “You don’t want to miss the party, but you ain’t going in my car,” he says. “What happens if we go one block and I got a blinking light and the cop pulls us over? Guess what, we’re going to Rikers.”

Goldsmith later says he’s sick of hearing people complain about being unlucky or tricked into bad situations. “The idea that they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time is getting tiresome,” he says. “It’s bullshit.”

179-unit Harlem complex fetches $36M

Purchase of the five-building complex is the second for year-old Preservation Development Partners, which aims to buy and preserve affordable housing. A third deal is in contract.

By Amanda Fung @amandafung

Published: January 6, 2012 - 10:39 am

HARLEM—Betty Campbell-Adams opened an outpost of Lloyd's Carrot Cake, the business she owned with her late husband, on Second Avenue and 105th Street three years ago because she thought the area would provide a lot of foot traffic.

"It turned out to be a trying location," she said.

After the lease expired recently, Campbell-Adams moved the business to Lexington Avenue, between East 99th and East 100th streets, where business has improved dramatically.

"Lexington Avenue is a much better location because of the subway line and the bus line. The neighborhood is changing so rapidly. We are so optimistic about this location" said Campbell-Adams.

In fact, with restaurants serving everything from French and Mexican cuisine to burgers and "pitza," hip coffee cafes and a wine bar, a stretch of Lexington Avenue from East 99th to East 104th streets is quickly turning into one of El Barrio's most promising areas.

September 13, 2011

4 Council Members, Each With $1 Million, Will Let Public Decide How It’s Spent

By KATE TAYLOR

Four City Council members, intrigued by experiments begun in Brazil to let ordinary citizens determine how government uses tax dollars, say they plan to allow their constituents to decide how $4 million is spent next year.

Through a process known as participatory budgeting, constituents in each of the four Council districts will be enlisted to develop and choose among proposals for local capital projects like street repairs, new parks and public artworks. The money — $1 million in each district — will come out of the council members’ discretionary funds. (Among the city’s Council districts, discretionary funds range in size from $1.5 million to $6 million.)

Three Democrats, Brad Lander and Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, and Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan, and one Republican, Eric Ulrich of Queens, are taking part.

Participatory budgeting has been used for years in some Brazilian communities and is now being used in parts of Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, but the only parallel in the United States, council members say, is in Chicago. Alderman Joe Moore introduced participatory budgeting in his district in North Chicago two years ago; he said in a telephone interview that it was “easily the most popular initiative that I have ever undertaken” in 20 years on the Chicago City Council. The projects financed so far, he said, included a community garden, a dog park and murals under train underpasses.

"The Regional Plan Association today released a report commissioned by Manhattan Community Board 11 East Harlem/El Barrio which analyzed housing stock in the area. Overall the report shows unregulated housing is on the rise while public housing and rent-stabilized units still dominate the overall share of units available. The report recommends strategies to preserve rent regulated housing, including increasing community access to, and use of, housing data including warning systems for when units are about to be deregulated and creation of tenant associations to create their own listings of housing stock. The report also recommends exploring establishment of a community land trust which will preserve housing for future generations in the community."  - RPA, July 13, 2011

This entire report is attached below.

"Beyonce surprises local Boys & Girls Club at East Harlem Target store, dances on stage with fans"

         "It was the surprise of a lifetime for a group of local kids on Thursday, when superstar Beyonce appeared at an East Harlem Target store.

The 29-year-old singer, there to celebrate the store's one year anniversary with members of the Boys & Girls Club, joined an already-in-progress dance party.

As the young fans showed off their moves to Beyonce's new song, "Countdown," she suddenly walked out on stage.

After a group hug, the dancing resumed with the music star letting the kids have most of the spotlight."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/07/01/2011-07-01_beyonce_surprises_local_boys__girls_club_at_east_harlem_target_store_dances_on_s.html

New York Times
May 24, 2011, 7:00 am
"Keeping Billie Holiday Alive at the Cotton Club"
By Corey Kilgallon

   Around Harlem, Linda Hutchinson is much better known by her stage name, Billie Holiday Jr. — that’s Princess Billie to you.

Either name will do. Both are self-applied to correspond to her career as a singer of the music of Holiday, whose nickname was Lady Day.

When you first meet Ms. Hutchinson on East 125th Street in a nonperformance setting — as I did recently while chasing a crime story – all this Billie Holiday stuff is a bit puzzling. On the street, she is not exactly someone you would mistake for the jazz singer.

But when Ms. Hutchinson, 45, gets dressed up and does her hair up with a gardenia in it, there is a real resemblance, which only increases when she steps into the spotlight in front of a big band — as she does every week at the Cotton Club on West 125th Street.

Ms. Hutchinson sings for dancers and tourists at the swinging Monday night revues there. She also sits in at other jazz spots in Harlem, where Holiday began her singing career in the 1930s.

Billie Holiday died childless in 1959, but in regards to spiritual offspring, Ms. Hutchinson eagerly lays claim.

“Basically, I am the child she always dreamed of,” she said in the basement of the Cotton Club one Monday night as a band played upstairs and waiters whisked by with trays of food. “Lady wanted to have kids. She would have given up her whole career to have a child.”

She cited “God Bless the Child,” a trademark Holiday song with an anti-silver-spoon theme.