Harry, a broker at Senator Realty, was horrified when he walked into the two-story house occupied by Queens resident, Anne Perez and two other families

“Nothing was up to code when we got the apartment,” Harry said. “The previous owner had divided a one-family house into three apartments. They’d taken the boiler out of the basement and put three of them in the kitchens, next to the stoves. They could have blown up the whole block.”

Foreclosures on multi-family homes have risen in Queens. Without landlords, renters have been forced to live without basic utilities for weeks.

Washington Mutual, the mortgage owner, foreclosed on the property August 23rd. Senator Realty bought the building three weeks later, but during the transaction, Perez and the other family had gone without gas, electricity or water.

Perez’ situation has become a common one in Jamaica, Queens. A survey compiled by New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein has shown that property owners have filed foreclosures on more than 800 properties from July 2006 to July 2007. More than half of these properties had been designed for multi-family use.

Florence Fisher, co-op president and chairman of Queens Community Board 8’s Building and Housing Committee said that builders had not prepared for a plateau in the housing market.

“They came in to make a profit,” she said. “They hacked these apartments out of single-family homes thinking that they could make a profit on the side.”

“They weren’t in this to be landlords,” Fisher said.

Foreclosed properties, sold below market rate, have been acquired by companies like Senator Realty. But brokers have discovered that tenants are unwilling to move despite the lack of services.

“This is New York and prices keep going up,” said Fisher. “ People stay in the apartments because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

But concerns among real estate investors have centered on the need to make a profit.

Harry, who refused to give his name due to the sensitivity of this topic, has tried to bring Perez’s building up to code but she and her neighbors have to move first.

They have not made any attempts to leave their apartments.

“It’s a nightmare,” Harry said. “This has nothing to do with sub-prime: we’re trying to do right by these people.”

Though Fisher has fielded calls from angry renters anxious for services usually taken for granted, city housing spokesman, Seth Donlin, downplayed the foreclosures’ effect on renters.

“We’re sensitive to how this affects homeowners,” he said. “But the truth is that renters don’t really lose anything.”

Donlin has not met Perez, a woman who has lived in an unsafe apartment and may ultimately be evicted in order to bring the property up to code. He has never met the woman who may lose her home.

Highland Avenue reeked of red curries, sugar-crusted gulab jamun desserts and frosted Asian fruit drinks called lassis served in shallow white styrofoam cups but by three in the afternoon, the smell of 99 proof whiskey had sunk into the street in front of the Highland Irish Inn.

A pair of pockmarked doors marred by years of fights, angry outbursts and layers of brown paint separated a population of turban-clad, sari-wearing, Bengali-speaking immigrants from the four elderly African-Americans who have created a time capsule of 1970’s New York in blackface.

“We ain’t Irish, baby” laughed Anna Marie Scott, the Highland Irish Inn’s bartender. “The owner and his kids are, but that’s it.”

Two elderly couples sipped bourbon under a washed-out photo of owner Marty Brown as the sun began to set. Brown, an Irish immigrant, has owned the bar for decades. He has become almost invisible there except for his photograph.

“He comes in from 6am to 8am and then he’s gone,” Scott said.
“He’s a really nice guy and you don’t find too many nice Irishmen, you know what I mean?”

An older African-American man everyone called Eddie, cocked his hat and stared at a glass of Jim Beam through the web of his fingers. He had just played the lottery and lost

“I would have had five thousand dollars if it’d come up straight,” he complained to no one in particular. “Five thousand’s not a lot but it sure would’ve made me feel good.”

The heavily made-up woman who sat next to him sipped a vodka tonic careful not to waste a drop. She avoided eye contact with Eddie and chose to stare at the flat screen television across the bar where Steve Martin’s “The Jerk” played in silence.

“Hey Eddie,” croaked a man seated near the leaky sink in the back of the bar. “You ever heard of the bird of paradise?”

The woman watching television stopped to look back at the man. Ice melted and clinked in her glass.

The man got up from his barstool and took a swig of brown liquid before he placed his hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“It means that all good things will come to you in life,” he said. “I
I hope you get all the best in life, man.”

He and Eddie shared a silent smile before the door swung open and rattled the photos, white balloons and tinsel that passed for Christmas decorations. An African-American man in paint-covered jeans too short for his long legs pulled a hand through his massive gray afro.

As he walked to the back of the bar, Anna-Marie began yelling.

“No, man! No!”

Everyone seated at the bar froze with shock.

“You need to get out, now!” she wailed.

The afro-man stopped in his tracks looking confused.

“Can’t I just use the bathroom?” he asked.

The man who spoke about the “bird of paradise” raised a gold-ringed hand and gestured to the door.

“The lady said that you have to leave,” he said. “Now go.”

The man with the afro lingered for a moment before he turned to leave. The little crowd laughed as the door slammed shut.

“He’s strung out on that crack,” Anna-Marie said pouring Eddie a drink. “The last time I let him use the bathroom he just messed it up so bad that now I only let my friends and people I know use it,” she said winking to the foursome at the bar.

Just then, the song “Tell It Like It Is” came on the jukebox.
The man with the ringed fingers reached out to the woman next to them. He held her close as they danced slow.

Traffic along Union Turnpike, which cut Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hills into two, virtually indistinguishable neighborhoods buzzed quietly while shop owners and passersby baked in the afternoon sunlight. With less than a week before the November 6th elections, the North and South sides of the turnpike, lined by Chinese restaurants, take-out sushi joints, storefront tax services and liquor stores were as they had always been: colorless; bland; and now, strangely devoid of red, white and blue posters riddled with the stars, stripes, perfectly-coiffed hairdos and capped teeth that have become hallmarks of the American political campaign.

Even hoary political warhorses seemed ambivalent about an election in which Republicans are challenging four Democratic incumbents for judgeships in both the 4th Municipal Court and the 11th Judicial District of the State Supreme Court
“This is an off year,” said Phillip Ragusa, Chairman of the Queens County Republican Party.

Ragusa and the Queens County Republican Party have decided to let the elections ride. Instead of actively campaigning for the judicial candidates, Ragusa threw a party to bring more of the area’s 15,870 Asian Americans into the Republican fold.

The event, which drew over 300 people including Republican Senator Frank Padavan and raised more than $30,000 for the party, introduced Queens’ overwhelmingly democratic Asian-American community to rising stars among the Republican set, among them, District Leader Peter Koo and Carolyn Chen Ming, a prominent organizer in the borough’s GOP.

“We’ve had a strong relationship with all members of the Asian-American community for years,” said Senator Padavan. “They voted for me and I’m a Republican.”

John Wang, executive director of the Asian-American Business Development Center doubted the truth of Senator Padavan’s statements.

“I’m not sure about the number of Asian-Americans participating in the Republican committee,” Wang said. “But in any event, there are still more Asian-American democrats in Queens than Republicans.”

More than 63 percent of registered voters in Queens were listed as Democrats in the last United States Census. Only 14.3 percent self-identified as Republicans.

A party foot soldier, Ragusa said that Asian-Americans in Queens have the same values as Republicans and, when faced with a choice, would support the party’s platform: lower taxes; less government involvement; family values; and good schools. Together with Peter Koo, Carolyn Chen Meng and party stalwart Meilin Tan, formerly vice-president of the Queens County Republican Party, Ragusa planned to organize outreach to Asian-Americans in Queens. Regrettably, Koo has been out of the country for the last few weeks; Chen Meng has been unavailable by phone; and he has not spoken to Tan since he supported Peter Koo against her in the last District Leader election.

Undaunted, Ragusa has arranged to speak at a Republican
Fundraiser in Flushing tomorrow night where he’ll try to
Build financial support for candidates in the 2008 and 2009 elections.

“We’ve got two seats in the Senate and we’re trying to get a third,” he said.

Tryst in Central Park

Tourists Make Last Trip to NYC

Looking for A Fare

Street of Memories

Tryst in Central Park

Jews and muslims around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan but this week, the New York Department of Education has shut down the school system in recognition of both.

The city’s public relations machine faces a cultural stigma against muslims. Some New Yorkers are still angry that Muslim terrorists took down the World Trade Center, plunging NY into a never-ending wake without the booze. A group calling themselves Stop the Madrassa protested against the opening of the Kahlil Gibran International Academy last month and activists clamored for the removal of principal-designate Dhabah Almontaser after she voiced her support of the slogan “Intifadeh NYC” on girls’ tee-shirts.

Now, the Department of Education is recognizing Ramadan as a holiday on par with Rosh Hashanah. Where did that come from?

More than a quarter of the world’s 1 billion muslims live in New York City. An estimated 600,000 work and worship in the city. Many send their children to public schools.

Though muslim students make up about 12 percent of the city’s 1.1 million public school students, the city has traditionally avoided closing schools to commemorate the holiest days in the Islamic calendar: Ramadan, which marks the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca and the revelation of the Quran; Eid-Ul-Fitr at the end of Ramadan; and Eid-Ul-Adha, the “festival of sacrifice” in which muslims remember how the biblical patriarch Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac for God.

The city acommodates students of Jewish and Catholic backgrounds, but muslim students have to make a special request to celebrate their holidays. Many muslim students who take the days off risk falling behind on homework and exams.

Like Jewish holidays, Ramadan floats through the seasons because of the lunar calendar. Sometimes Ramadan is celebrated in January as it did the last time I was in the Middle East, fat and happy while my guide fasted. This year it comes just after faithful Jews around the world rang in 5769 of the Jewish calendar.

Muslim groups continue to make a case for religious equality in city schools, but Joe Klein, Chancellor of the New York Department of Education, remains silent on the subject.

For today, the kids are free to celebrate as they will. Politics aside, everyone loves a holiday.