And Here, When The Light Goes Away, The Men Come Out To Play — “Pleasure In The Park”

The Queens Tribune makes it sound downright Victorian:

As the last few joggers and bikers make their way out of Forest Park, it is mostly silent. Dusk quickly fades to night and a new group of people begins to quietly make their presence known by the sound of their careful footsteps.

Along Forest Park Drive, between Metropolitan Avenue and Mayfair Road, the ample greenery and bush provide cover to keep people, and any secrets they hold, hidden from view. And here, when the light goes away, the men come out to play. Heading down the maze-like bicycle paths in the park, men of all colors, races, and sizes can be found standing along the way, in clusters or by themselves. The men are fully dressed, unthreatening and quiet. Some stand still and stare, others gesture with hand signals while others repeatedly walk by, trying to create eye contact.

After contact is made, and interest is reciprocated, the men disappear, usually in twos, but sometimes in threes or fours. Movement can be heard in the bushes. A closer look reveals men’s faces and their bare lower torsos, often in compromising positions. The deafening sounds of cars and horns from the road make their noises inaudible as the bushes keep them out of plain sight.

Other Queens public sex hotspots include: Cunningham Park.

Kinky-Haired Jews Across The City Looking For A Hero

Shawn Green comes at a time when the city’s Jewish community is searching for a role model:

Not that there’s any pressure on Shawn Green to succeed in New York, but when Mr. Green — power-hitting right fielder, two-time All-Star, Jew — took the field in a Mets uniform for the first time on Thursday, a fan named Corey Mintz held up a poster with Mr. Green’s photo on it.

“The messiah has arrived,” the poster read.

Jews are famed for their prowess in many fields, but have long been stereotyped, even by themselves, as being weak in athletics. There might not be a group on the planet with a more finely honed sense of physical inferiority.

So when a star ballplayer who happens to be Jewish comes to play in the New York area, a capital of Jewish culture, home to nearly two million Jews, it is cause for much rejoicing.

Americans, Jewish and otherwise, may not hold sports stars in the esteem they once did. Jews no longer feel quite the need to prove themselves as Americans by, for instance, excelling at sports.

But still the Jewish people hunger for a hometown hero to call their own.

. . .

And in the stands at Shea Stadium, Joshua Ostrovsky, a husky Manhattanite with a billowing Jewish afro and a gold Hebrew “chai” necklace outside his Dwight Gooden jersey, called Mr. Green a role model.

“There were many times in Little League that people said to me, ‘Ostrovsky, you are fat, you’re Jewish, you’ll never play baseball.'” said Mr. Ostrovsky, 24. “So I lost weight, and they still said, ‘You’ll never play baseball because you are Jewish.’ Shawn has been an inspiration to me.”

. . .

Mr. Green, for his part, seems happy to be in New York. “For me it’s an important thing, the Jewish community here,” he said Thursday. “I definitely want to be a part of it and am excited to be a part of it and hopefully I can make them proud.”

So far, so good. In his second at-bat Thursday, he lined a run-scoring single to left field and the place erupted.

“Ma-zel tov! Ma-zel tov!” Mr. Ostrovsky chanted to the rhythm of “Let’s Go Mets.”

Mr. Ostrovsky pulled at his mane of kinky hair.

“I haven’t been this proud of a Jew since my brother’s bar mitzvah,” he said.

Whosoever Believeth In Him Should Not Perish, But Be Forever 21

In my book, Jesus will always be Forever 21:

Forever 21, a popular chain of cheap-chic clothes with stores throughout New York, is literally spreading the Gospel with every sale. When customers leave the shopping emporium with bags full of red cocktail dresses and panties emblazoned with phrases like “Y is for Yummy,” few realize that they are also walking away with a bit of religion.

The owners of the company are devout Christians who print in small type on the bottom of the company’s iconic yellow shopping bags the words: “John 3:16.”

One of the most frequently referenced passages of the Bible, John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

New Yorkers differed about the message’s significance:

Shoppers interviewed this week said that they had no idea about the John 3:16 on the bottom of their shopping bags.

“Jesus wore clothes,” a 22-year-old from Brooklyn, Jason Schultz, said when informed about the phrase on his bag. He said it didn’t bother him that the company wanted to spread a religious message.

Not so for the rock guitarist Dani Neff, who was out shopping for a black sparkly halter-top to go with a pair of red high-heeled shoes.

“That’s so freaky,” she said. “It kind of annoys me that I’m carrying this around without even knowing it.”

But the discreet placement — and the religious content — of the phrase could be a smart advertising move, according to Pamela Klein at Parsons The New School for Design.

“Religion is hot — it’s in the air. Madonna has a crucifixion in her current show and it’s cool to be interested in God these days,” Ms. Klein said.

Has there already been a Sunday Styles article about how religion is hot? Freelancers, sharpen your pencils!

The Post Is Saying What The Times Is Thinking

Foreign-born New Yorkers make up 37 percent of the city’s population, according to the latest census data:

Immigrants have continued to surge into metropolitan New York since 2000, according to census figures released today, and that increase, combined with high birth rates, has elevated the foreign-born and their children in New York City itself to fully 60 percent of the population. The rate of change was even more pronounced in the 24 suburban counties around the city, where a record 20 percent of the residents are now born abroad.

The figures, while showing that the city’s gains from immigration were not nearly as marked as they were in the 1990’s, are nonetheless striking in their detail and magnitude.

In the city, the number of people who identified themselves as Mexicans, here legally or not, soared 36 percent in five years, and not merely as a consequence of improved counting. More than half the residents of Queens and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one in three black residents in New York City was born abroad.

The trends are reported in the American Community Survey, a new annual version of the federal Census Bureau’s long-form questionnaire designed to capture the nation’s demographic profile in a more timely moving picture, rather than a once-a-decade snapshot.

Meanwhile, the Times buries the Post’s lede (note the descriptive word the paper uses in the URL for this story):

Among children younger than 15, white residents who are not Hispanic have become a minority in the metropolitan area, an indication that within just a few years the New York region will become the first large metropolitan area outside the South or West where non-Hispanic whites are a minority.

The Post, on the other hand, doesn’t bury the Post’s lede:

The number of whites in New York City has been shrinking the last five years, while the Asian and Hispanic populations have been climbing, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Then again, the Post’s headline is “Whites Decline In City” . . .

Other interesting or notable data:

New York ranks first in the proportion of men and women — 35.2 percent and 30.2 percent, respectively — who have never married. The median age for first marriages by women is highest in Connecticut, at 27.5, and for men in New York, at 29.3. New York State also has the lowest proportion of households composed of married couples, 45 percent. Barely half the children in the city, 53 percent, are being raised by a married couple.

As ever, within the borders of the city there were great differences. In Manhattan, where the number of black and Hispanic residents declined, married couples with children living at home made up about 10 percent of households, but the rate is 27 percent on Staten Island. In the Bronx, more than half the families with children are headed by women.

The census counted more American Indians, about 33,000, than in any other city. Chinese is spoken by more than 350,000 New Yorkers, Italian by 103,000, Yiddish by 77,000.

While the number of Puerto Ricans in the city declined slightly, they remain the largest group among Hispanics, with 787,000. Dominicans, who number 532,000 — the largest number among foreign-born — are catching up with Puerto Ricans. More city residents still identify their ancestry as Italian than any other group, but West Indians are closing.

Hoodoo Gurus Explain “Stop Snitching” Tongue

At least Stop Snitching T-shirts didn’t do any overt physical harm . . . like this pin-filled beef tongue:

The tongue, found in Central Park, may have been left over from a “hoodoo” spell designed to keep a witness from testifying in court, experts in the African-American form of folk magic told the Daily News yesterday.

“It’s a very old and popular spell used to silence people,” said Catherine Yronwode, 60, proprietor of the Lucky Mojo hoodoo-supply shop in Forestville, Calif. “It can be used in any case where there’s a witness that’s going to speak against you.”

The bizarre object was discovered after lawyer Martha Redding, 38, let her black Labrador, Milo, off his leash in the park Wednesday morning and then noticed the dog gnawing on a package wrapped in brown paper and ribbons.

When she pulled the package away, she saw it contained a beef tongue studded with straight pins and hat pins, some up to 3 inches long. Redding rushed the dog to veterinarian Andrew Kaplan, who induced vomiting to get the 31 needles Milo had ingested out of the dog’s stomach. Milo has recovered.

The vet said that several people called his office yesterday, telling him that the tongue sounded like part of a Santeria ritual.

A reporter from the Portland Tribune tipped The News to a similar case in January, when needle-studded cow tongues were found in an Oregon park. The names of undercover police officers scheduled to testify in a drug case were found written on papers imbedded inside.