CUNY Interactive Journalism

by Brooks Newkirk

The resources for seniors in Gowanus, a community in Brooklyn, are dwindling. The number of places they can turn to for assistance with housing, healthcare and basic necessities such as food, are declining. Already this year, one senior center and two health clinics have closed. Seniors are slowly becoming yet another causality of the economic recession.

But for seniors in need living in Gowanus, there is a ray of hope⎯ Blanca Morocho-Ramirez, coordinator of the Raices Wyckoff Senior Center.

Morocho-Ramirez is operating the center, which feeds hundreds of seniors a week and provides them with recreational and educational activities, on a shoestring budget and a small staff. In a single day, she could serve as the counselor, secretary, bookkeeper, and activities coordinator. She does whatever is necessary to keep the center afloat.

For Morocho-Ramirez, being the head of the senior center is more than a job. It’s a way for her to help those who are most in need.
Part 1-Ms. Ramirez Interview by bnnewkirk

She sympathizes with the economic struggles that her seniors go through, and she lets them know on a consistent basis that she is there for them.
Part 2-Ms. Ramirez Interview by bnnewkirk

But, she says helping them is not a simple task. The City’s budget cuts have put tight restrains on the number of seniors the center can feed each day⎯ a maximum of 40 for breakfast and 65 for lunch. With so many seniors in need, she says it is tough and any help people could give would be greatly appreciated.
Part 3-Ms. Ramirez Interview by bnnewkirk

Jason Mohr is a young man who has had his troubles with substance abuse. He has spent seven of the last twelve months behind bars and has lost a lot in the process. After learning some valuable lessons, Jason is attempting to put the pieces back together. But although he recognizes that alcohol is doing him no good, quitting drinking is out of the question. He claims he has cut back on how much he drinks, but for an alcoholic, any amount is too much. Now, as he attempts to stay out of trouble and avoid going back to jail a third time, Jason must weigh the risks against the consequences as he attempts to clean up his life while still enjoying a few drinks every now and then.

After receiving his second DUI in early 2009, Jason was sentenced to three months in prison. Here, we find out how one poor decision ended up leading to a chain of life changing events.

Part 1 by daniel.prendergast

After being sentenced to three months in prison, Jason talks about the shock of being sentenced and making the best of his time on the inside. In December 2009, Jason was released from prison but failed to learn anything from the experience. During the first four months of 2010 Jason immediately fell back into his old routine of drinking heavily and hanging out with the same people who enabled his drinking problem. While things were going relatively well for a while, Jason was caught drinking by his parole officer and sentenced to four more months in jail for violating parole. He lost everything he had gained after his first stint in jail. And although serving the second sentence was a little easier, Jason claims he’s learned his lesson and is trying to put the pieces back together a second time.

Part 2 by daniel.prendergast

Here, we find out what Jason is doing differently the second time around. He has stopped hanging out with the people who enable his extreme drinking and we find out about the difficulty he has had cutting certain people out of his life.

Part 3 by daniel.prendergast

Even though things are going well for Jason after being in jail two times, we learn that he has not been able to completely let go of the one thing that has caused most of his problems – alcohol. In this clip, I interview Jason at a bar he frequents and we find out that he has no plans to quit drinking despite the problems it has caused him. Alcohol provides him some form of social comfort that allows him to have fun with and enjoy the company of others.

Part 4 by daniel.prendergast

A quirky high school cross country tradition is the team t-shirt, which boasts a quote, virtue or slogan to serve as its unofficial motto. Much like the personalities of the athletes who wear them, these shirts run the gamut of uniqueness, ranging from inspiring to intimidating to silly to personal.

Dozens of these shirts were on display last weekend in the Bronx at Van Cortlandt Park. It was the 38th running of the Manhattan Invitational, the world’s largest single-day cross country meet, which featured 300 teams from more than a dozen states in 40 races.

Here’s just a sampling of the t-shirt mottos I saw, complete with an explanation from the coaches and runners who wore them: (more…)

Friday night, the weekend is finally here, you are planning to have a good time with your friends. You meet somewhere in the town, open the door of a bar or a restaurant… And a noisy sound of music and crowd assails your ears. At this point, the only solutions to communicate with your friends are either to shout at their face, to make silly signs to mime what you cannot say, or to laugh loudly, pretending that you understood what was just said. The night is going to be long…

Here are three reasons why music should definitely not be loud in bars and restaurants of New York:

1-    Bars and restaurants are made to drink and speak (sometimes loudly, depending on the degree of alcoholization of the group), not to have to endure the same annoyances than during the week. According to the New York City Environmental Protection, “Noise complaints continue to be the number one quality of life issue for New York City residents”. To report any kind of noise annoyance in your neighborhood, the 311 can be useful, even for barking dogs.

2-    Sometime, music they play is really bad. Two minutes of Lady Gaga can turn out in torture if we HAVE to listen to it. Really.

3-    Asking the waiters to order become very challenging.

4-    Loud music cut conversation. After 30 minutes of communication attempts, people get fed up with speaking for them selves. So they shut up. And everybody look into their glass of bear, pretending to enjoy the music.

We’ve all been there before. You’re standing on the corner of a busy avenue, drenched from head to toe in that luke-warm, New York City rain, desperately waiving your hand around as though you were an eager student who knew the answer to the question a teacher asked. Except that you’re just trying to hail a cab instead. And while there are numerous, potential saviors – various highlight yellow cabs spread out all over the street, not a single ‘available’ light sign is on. All the cabs are full. And there you are, wondering if you will ever get home within the next half an hour, as you slowly catch a cold.

There are many things that are downright pesky on a rainy day in New York City. And while every New Yorker has been inevitably affected by the occasional downpour of rain, there are ways to avoid having bad rainy days, and start enjoying them instead. Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Issue: You are walking to work during a torrential downpour, trying to keep your things dry under your tiny, $5 umbrella, when a careless New Yorker walks passed you with an umbrella five times their size, hitting everything and everyone in its path.

Solution: Save yourself from any more pokes in the eye, and hit up a store nearby where you can get dry and entertain yourself for a little while, until the rain lets up.

2. Issue: You wore inappropriate shoes that day, thinking that the weather would continue to be dry and sunny. Instead, your feet are so soaked from the rain you make tiny squeaky noises every time you take a step, and you can’t really feel your toes anymore!

Solution: Take your shoes off and run through the streets barefoot. Or hit up a discount shoe store to invest in some warm, comfortable rain boots. That way, you can do some serious puddle sloshing for fun.

3. Issue: You are stuck at home with nothing to do, and you wish you were able to get out of the house and get active.

Solution: Then do just that, and hit up a few bookstores or museums to pass the time. Nothing makes a rainy go by faster than curling up with a book.

4. Issue: You have somehow ended up in Park Slope, and you are caught in a sudden, relentless storm.

Solution: Stop by Tarzian Hardware store and other merchants in the area to pick up a free umbrella, part of a community program for the neighborhood. You can stay dry throughout the day, and when you’re done, just return it from where you picked it up!

5. Issue: It’s been raining for days, and you are stuck in a rut, or perhaps the lack of sunshine has triggered a small case of seasonal affective disorder.

Solution: Realize that the variance in weather is just a natural part of life, and there is always a lighter way of looking at things that at first seem so dreary.

By Brooks Newkirk

Kids are adorable, there’s no denying that. Just check out this trailer from the movie “Babies” for proof. But, and this is a big BUT, they can also be annoying and crazy as hell. Just look at this viral video of a two-year-old chain smoking. Now that’s crazy.

You can run into pesky children terrorizing innocent people with unnecessary crying and temper tantrums anywhere, from the train to the sidewalks to the mall. So what are you to do, if you’re trapped in a tight spot, like a plane, with a terrible toddler? You can’t yell at the parent for letting their kid run around like a damn fool, and you definitely can’t discipline the child, so follow these tips to help you cope:

Tip #1: Tune them out. One of the best tricks for dealing with a terrible child is to ignore them. Just put on your iPod, close your eyes and pretend you’re on a tropical island somewhere. If your iPod earpiece isn’t enough to drown out their high-pitched squeals, try these earphones from Dr. Dre.

Tip #2: Stare the parents down. This tip can be a little awkward, but if the parents aren’t doing anything to quite their child, stare at them and sigh loudly. Hopefully this will cause them to do something to get their kid to quite down. On the flip side, they could get pissed and want to fight you. If that’s the case, be prepared by taking boxing classes at Trinity Boxing Club in Manhattan.

Tip#3: Be Patience. Just try to be patient. Children tend to act out because they’re frustrated, angry or just tired. WebMD says kids throw temper tantrums because they don’t know how to express themselves. So just relax, they’re not you’re children and you don’t have to take them home.

For most New Yorkers, dealing with pests is an almost daily occurrence. The city’s 311 call center has been hit with so many bed bug complaints that the bed bugs eventually made an appearance there! But unfortunately, there are certain kinds of pests that you can’t get rid of with a little bit of Raid. More specifically, the MTA and its planned-but-somehow-missable service changes are a different kind of city pest altogether.

Picture this: You get up early one weekend and run through your daily routine, catching the train in order to make a doctor’s appointment in the next 30 minutes. You sit down in your seat and distractedly open up your kindle, or power up your i-pod for the next few moments… until, with a horror, it slowly dawns on you: Why is the train stopping at Essex instead of Broadway-Lafayette? Whereupon the mad dash to get off on the next stop and get to the correct train line ensues. Sound familiar to anyone?

Perhaps this is why the MTA decided to give their service change notice signs a makeover. The endless stream of complaints about the confusing posters have resulted in the debut of a completely new design, which the MTA hopes is an improvement from the old posters. The new service change signs include transit information about the train concerned as well as its connecting lines, making changing trains a little clearer to straphangers. Although our blogging buddies at 2nd Ave. Sagas are happier with the new signs, other ideas on the notorious MTA posters have been pitched in the past.

In a more humorous attempt to display the frustrations of working New Yorkers towards the MTA, the Working Families Party created satirical “service change” posters that graced subway stations around the city in March. Although city transit officials didn’t see the humor in these posters, 77% of readers who took a NYDailyNews poll did. Ironically, this was not the only time that MTA poster designs were used as a means to advance satirical messages.

In April, graphic designer Jason Shelowitz, 30, chose to use the MTA-style service change posters to send out messages to a different kind of pest: New Yorkers themselves. Hopefully between the new service change posters and the etiquette slap on the wrist, we can all be polite to each other while we ride the subway, even if we end up going to Flushing when we meant to go to Red Hook.

First published: September 12, 2010

New York subway commutes are complicated and tedious with perpetual construction and inconvenient delays. The last thing commuters need are pests who make matters worse by demonstrating poor subway etiquette.

In the spirit of artist Jayshells’ subway posters, four regular commuters share their stories and offer their advice to pesky subway riders with poor etiquette. Let’s take their cautionary tales as lessons on how we should all behave.

Lesson 1: Stand Up For a Pregnant Woman

Jackie by daniel.prendergast

Lesson 2: Don’t Crowd the Pole

Stuart by daniel.prendergast

Lesson 3: Stay Home if You’re Sick

An by daniel.prendergast

Lesson 4: No Showboating

Daniel by daniel.prendergast

The MTA budget cuts and track repairs have affected commuters all over the city. Normal schedules are disrupted and lines are either cancelled or re-routed. Results range from over crowding on platforms and lengthened trips.

Four New Yorkers share their experiences of riding the subway in their daily routines.

Tuan Nguyen, age 29, from Manhattan NY. Regularly takes: 1 train.
1010 by caclaudiaacevedo

Ichi Vazquez, age 22, from Brooklyn NY. Regularly takes: A and C trains.
Ichi by caclaudiaacevedo

Chase Lindsay Rosen, age 22 from Manhattan NY. Regularly takes: B and D trains.
chase by caclaudiaacevedo

Claudia Acevedo, age 22 from Queens NY. Regularly takes: R and M trains.
Claudia by caclaudiaacevedo

In France, when subways don’t run, it is usually because of strikes. But here in New York, travelers fear something even worst: The weekly subway maintenance. This weekend was no exception to the rule. A survey by the the Permanent Citizens Advisory Comittee to the MTA in 2010 acknowledged that “periodic weekend subway service changes are a major source of anxiety for New York City Transit riders”.

So here is the question: How to enjoy a weekend party in the city that never sleeps when we can’t rely on the subway?

First solution, to be informed. We have to be fair and admit that at least, MTA tries his best to inform users. Every Friday, you should therefore check the Planned Service Changes tab of the MTA website. For people who really want to be informed on live of the traffic, MTA is on Facebook and Twitter. And if you can’t stand MTA anymore at the point that the simple idea of going to their website gives you pimples, check transitblogger.com.

Then, there is still the solution of taking the taxi. Sometimes, it is ten times faster than the subway and not that expensive, provided that you share the costs with your friends. But you be aware of their rates, because it tend to be extensible for inexperienced people.

Another idea could come from Paris, where bike sharing has been a great success for three years now, despite the cost of maintenance. They are useful in any kind of situation : French ride Velib’ to avoid subway strikes , New Yorkers could use it to avoid Subway maintenance. This solution could be possible pretty soon.

Last tip: If none of these solutions fit you, you can still go back home by walk. Good luck.