The Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose will host “Visualizing Criminal Justice,” a screening and panel discussion, with the Marshall Project. on Thurs., Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. “Jenny Carchman’s We Are Witnesses takes a deeper look at the faces behind the complex and highly-flawed criminal justice system.” More info here.
Tag Archives: Melrose
Melrose Mexican Food Focus
14 OctThe Mott Haven Herald, a great community newspaper produced by CUNY students (launched by Riverdale Press Pulitzer Prize winner Buddy Stein, a retired Hunter College and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism professor) highlights great Mexican restaurants in Melrose, the community east of the Grand Concourse, north of East 149th Street. The only one I’ve been to is the excellent low-key Xochimilco Family Restaurant. Looking forward to trying out the others reported on here.
Melrose Magnificence
4 AprI was in Melrose today. At the corner of East 160th Street and Elton Avenue is a glorious community garden, called the Rock Garden. Melrose is famous for its gardens, as so many took root following the arson and abandonment that leveled much of the neighborhood in the 1970s. Many have been replaced by new residential buildings but some stayed put. This garden took root in just the last few years though.
I took a few photos through the fence from the sidewalk. I know community gardens are open to, and for, the public, but I hadn’t been there before and didn’t feel comfortable walking in and snapping photos without checking in with someone. Well that happened when Jose Almodovar approached me and warmly encouraged me to come in. After taking some photos in the glorious sunshine of flowers and chickens and the playful structures built by some, I spoke a bit with Ralph Rivera, who has lived across the street from the garden for a few years. He helped build the shelter-like structures on the site and he told me about all the great activities that go on there: an Easter Egg hunt, a Halloween party, a domino league, trips to Six Flags for kids. He told me that Lillian Reyes and Carmen Martinez oversee the gardening activities. The garden is also home to hens that produce eggs.
Melrose has been undergoing a phenomenal transformation in recent years. There are many new residential buildings that will be followed by many more, but there’s also gorgeous architecture and open space that was protected by community activists who prevented the city’s plans to raze much of the community in the early 1990s. It’s an exciting urban planning experiment, shaped at the grassroots, that is still under way.
Speaking of Melrose, activist Ed Garcia Conde has a map on his welcome2melrose blog today indicating all the places in Melrose and the south Bronx where there are bike racks.
One of the lesser thought of means of getting to Melrose and the surrounding neighborhoods is via good ole fashioned sweat power – the bike. With its unparalleled access to Manhattan via FIVE bridges (Third, Willis, Madison Avenues, 145th Street and Macomb Dam Bridges) biking is one of the best options available to the community, employees and visitors alike. …
Enjoy the slideshow above, a first on Bronx Matters.
-Jordan Moss
Morning Matters 3/30/12
30 MarOK, we’re back with Morning Matters. Sorry to miss the last couple of days.
This photo by Ana Brigida is part of her exhibit on public housing conditions, opening tonight, at the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose.
The Bronx Documentary Center, also in Melrose, has an opening tonight for an important exhibit called, “How the Other Half (Still) Lives: Bloomberg’s Legacy?” by Ana Brigida about conditions in public housing.
Speaking of Melrose, Legal Services is developing a building on a vacant lot near the subway station in the neighborhood’s southern end on Brook Avenue and East 149th Street.
Have you read the incredibly intelligent conversation taking place on Gregory Lobo Jost’s post on the Times declaring gentrification taking root in south Bronx? I’ve been meaning to mention that this isn’t the first time the Times has weighed in on south Bronx gentrification. This piece by the same reporter, Joseph Berger, focused on the artists and professionals heading to the Clocktower and other buildings in Mott Haven. The appearance of arugula in supermarkets and cafes is also a harbinger of a new scene in that piece. Hey, does arugula mean Kingsbridge is gentrifying? The revamped Foodtown on Broadway and 231st has it as well as a section of specialty beers. Speaking of food and drink, the recent Berger article quotes a resident who found a fantastic Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood, Xochimilco. But that restaurant, which I happened to be at a few days before that article appeared, is in the heart of Melrose, a whole other neighborhood (which has its own incredible story of rebound that I plan to talk more about here) at least a mile and a half away from the Concourse and 160s. (Incidentally, I had the best chicken mole I think I ever had in my lifethere.)
Though teen violence is way up at Riker’s Island, the Bronx DA’s office rarely prosecutes, according to an article in The New York World. The DA’s office says it’s hard to prosecute when victims don’t cooperate but critics say that wouldn’t be case in the world outside of prison.
A popular middle school teacher, Justin Bravo, was killed while riding on his motorcyle in the tunnel on Mosholu Parkway underneath Jerome Avenue and the 4-train. This tragic accident was virtually steps away from where a pedestrian died in December. Norwood News posted the funeral arrangements.
Hunts Point Express documents local efforts to battle the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, including murals to educate youth on their rights at Rocking the Boat.
Bronx Matters 