I Don’t Know If The Panhandler Who Refuses My Pennies Also Has A Blog But He Definitely Should Link To This One

Don’t show those griping cab drivers this heartwarming story:

There’s no such thing as a bad penny in Barbara Humphrey’s mind.

The Staten Island mom is obsessed with collecting change she finds on the street and blogging about it — and it’s paying off.

With the help of her husband, an Army sergeant, and their two daughters, Humphrey has saved more than $1,000 in three years.

“We find it everywhere,” said Humphrey, who started keeping track of her small-change scores three years ago while waiting for a college class to start.

“I saw a nickel and two pennies on the ground,” she said.

“I thought, ‘Let me start a little blog about finding change.’ So that first day I found seven cents. The next day I found a dime. Then my husband started finding quarters here and there.”

Some Of My Best Presidents Are Black

Residents of Rosebank in Staten Island insist that the neighborhood is no longer racist:

When Moe Wilson was growing up in Stapleton in the early 1980s, he and his friends wouldn’t venture far into Rosebank, or, as some of the locals called it, “No n — — – Land.”

A tree carving, the “n word” with a line through it, served as a warning in the scrub around the train tracks, not far from what is now the Waldbaums on Tompkins and Lynhurst avenues.

“You couldn’t go past so you didn’t take a chance,” Wilson said, notwithstanding his adolescent sorties past the neighborhood boundary. He was beaten up and hit with sticks, he remembered. “You had white families living in Stapleton, but there were no blacks living over there.”

He added, “It made me feel bad, of course, but that was how it was.”

Times have changed since then, but the Election night hate spree allegedly carried out by a group of young men who nicknamed themselves the “Rosebank Krew” has brought back the specter of the bad old days.

. . .

Rosebank residents approached yesterday were similarly keen to disown the teens, many of them emphatically pointing out that only one technically lives within the confines of the neighborhood.

Although federal authorities allege they kept a “makeshift outdoor clubhouse” in Rosebank, only one of the four, 18-year-old Bryan Garaventa, hails from the neighborhood, on Maryland Avenue. He already has pleaded guilty to federal charges, and is awaiting sentencing.

Two others, Ralph Nicoletti and Michael Contreras, both 18, live in Fort Wadsworth — Nicoletti on Wadsworth Avenue and Contreras on Judith Court. And the fourth, 21-year-old Brian Carranza, lives on Simonson Place in Port Richmond.

“They’re from Fort Wadsworth. They’re not even from Rosebank, and there’s the Spanish kid from Port Richmond,” said one lifelong Rosebank resident, somewhat inaccurately, as he stood in what he called the “heart of Rosebank” at the corner of Tompkins and Virginia avenues, near the Rosebank Boys Social Club and across the street from the Rosebank Deli.

“But everybody wants to look down on Rosebank,” he said.

The fortysomething man, wearing a thick, gold cross on a chain around his neck and jangling a key chain decorated with a plastic Italian flag, would not give his name because “people from the neighborhood, they don’t do that, there’s a code.”

Even so, he was eager to speak his mind: “Rosebank has changed. You can walk up and down the block and everywhere you will see blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Indians,” he said gesturing at the apartment above the social club and saying an African-American family lives there. “It used to be, out of respect, nobody came into our neighborhood and we didn’t go into their neighborhood. Now my son goes to a Catholic school in Stapleton, and you know who comes to my home to play? Black kids. You’ve got to go with the times. They change. I think Obama is good for the country.”

“Free Brain Scans To Be Offered In Mall Parking Lot”

Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical, but the last time I was offered a free brain scan in the mall parking lot, it turned out rather badly:

Free brain screenings will be available in the Staten Island Mall parking lot, New Springville, on weekdays beginning Monday, through Jan. 26.

The screenings, provided by The Road to Early Detection, a project of the Brain Tumor Foundation, will be conducted in the “Bobby Murcer Mobile MRI Unit” — named in honor of the late former New York Yankee, who died last year of brain cancer — on the Richmond Avenue side of the parking lot.

Today Would Have Been Stephen Baltz’s 60th Birthday

That is, had Baltz lived on beyond a miraculous 26 hours after initially surviving the 1960 United Airlines-TWA plane crash over Staten Island and Brooklyn:

On Dec. 16, 1960, 11-year-old Stephen Lambert Baltz became the sole survivor of the horrific midair crash of a United Airlines jet and a TWA plane over Staten Island near Miller Army Field.

Millions of today’s baby boomers and their parents prayed and hoped against hope that the boy from Wilmette, Ill., would survive.

But despite the best efforts of 10 doctors, he succumbed to his injuries after 26 hours.

Had he lived, Stephen Baltz would be celebrating his 60th birthday today, Jan. 9, 2009.

. . .

Surviving the crash was Stephen’s 65 cents found in his clothing or wallet; his father put the coins in a charity box at the hospital. The fire-tinged collection of four dimes and five nickels remains in a memorial plaque displayed to this day at Methodist Hospital.

A $1,000 anonymous donation from an elderly lady and $38 from a chaplain on duty at the hospital on Dec. 17 were combined with other donations to begin funding a pediatrics section at Methodist to honor Stephen’s memory.

The article catches up with some of the remaining family — his sister and brother — as well as one of the nurses on duty. (Advance, use permalinks! This is an interesting story!)

De Facto Secession

Or at least involuntary isolation:

When the cash toll at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge rose from $9 to $10 last March, many Staten Island drivers thought they had seen it all.

But the sticker shock of the sawbuck pales in comparison to a toll hike as high as — get this — $14.

That’s how much the round-trip toll could conceivably cost as part of the MTA’s proposed package of fare and toll hikes.

The authority outlined a variety of options yesterday meant to achieve a projected revenue increase of up to 23 percent, to plug a $1.2 billion budget gap.

Nothing is set in stone; rather, the proposed changes, including a $6.25 express bus fare, a $2.50 or $3 local bus or subway fare and severe service cuts, reflect the outside threshold of pain.

Of the $14 toll threat, MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin said, “Is it a possibility? It’s there, but it’s in the upper range. I don’t know where we’ll be in the end.”