Blue Pants, Santa Claus And Deuce

At the risk of going all Ken Burns gooey, it is safe to say that stickball is more than just a game — it is democracy itself:

Five longtime stickball players from the Bronx joined the likes of New York City greats Joe Torre, Willie Randolph, Rusty Torres, Arturo Lopez and Joe Pepitone when they were inducted this week into the Stickball Hall of Fame.

Before the athletes named above starred on baseball fields in the big leagues, these ballplayers took to the asphalt in their youth for games like “Box Ball,” “Throw it up, one swing” and “pitch it in, one bounce.” With a Spaldeen in hand and a stickball bat (sometimes their mother’s broom handle), many other kids across the city and in the Bronx first learned the concept of baseball from its urbanized counterpart.

Martin “Marty” Rogers, Fr. Frank Skelly, Patrick “Patsy” Viverito, Paul “Pauly” Saryian and the late Felix “Lenny” Santiago are five Bronxites who spent a good part of their youths playing stickball. And this week they were inducted into the Stickball Hall of Fame during its seventh annual ceremony on Friday, July 7 at the Museum of the City of New York. Their names will now be added to a plaque in the museum.

. . .

Rogers and Skelly are two alumni from Immaculate Conception School on 150th Street. Skelly, class of 1960 and now a Catholic priest, played stickball in “the Alley” on Brook Avenue near 149th Street and has served as pastor at St. Cecilia’s Church in El Barrio and at Immaculate Conception. Today he is director of the San Alfonso Retreat House in New Jersey.

Skelly reminisced: “Our firescape was one flight up and offered grandstand seats for all the block activity. But ‘going down’ and being part of it all was always more fun. The teenagers were known as the Alley Boys and wore monikers like Joey Brooklyn, Blue Pants, Santa Claus and Deuce. They seemed to have a God given right to the use of the fields of play. Very little equipment was needed for any of these games of stickball, and so it was an equal playing field where skills was the criterion for success.”

In the early 1960s, Santiago was part of a team called the Young Neptunes, from Forest Avenue and 156th Street. Before his passing, he played in the New York Emperors Stickball League in the Bronx.

[Emph. added so lazy Ken Burns only has to skim the good parts.]

See also: streetplay.com’s Stickball pages . . . stickball events are held throughout the year (that just went on the to-do list).

Who Cares How Romantic The Fish Is As Long As It’s Fresh?

The new version of the Fulton Fish Market is “hopelessly unromantic,” the fish tends to be fresher:

The forklifts that carry pallets of catfish, grouper, striped bass and other varieties of fresh fish and seafood used to run on gas. Now they run on batteries. The old market was outdoors, two blocks south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The new one is indoors and resembles not a market but an immense refrigerated warehouse, where the workers dress for winter year round, the décor is a brightly lit white-on-white and one of the closest landmarks is the Hunts Point Water Pollution Control Plant.

Yet these days, the mood in the New Fulton Fish Market is upbeat, as the three dozen wholesale seafood companies that moved into the 400,000-square-foot building last November adjust to life after South Street.

There is talk among the fish sellers of increased sales, smoother deliveries, fresher fish in the permanent 40-degree chill and happier customers. There is a marketing slogan (Fulton Fresh!) and a Web site (newfultonfishmarket.com), signs that fishmongering, an old-fashioned business that still operates on the faith of a handshake and the swing of a fish hook, has entered the 21st century. And, still, there are tales about the way it used to be, in the old market 13 miles away, the ramshackle home they traded for a windowless icebox that has proved to be good not for the soul, but good for the fish.

. . .

The market in Manhattan was a favorite of writers, artists and tourists, but the new site, in its out-of-the-way spot in the Bronx, is free of sightseers most days, though it is open to the public for a $5 visitor fee. It is a market for commerce, not romance, a place where it is easy to find boxes upon boxes of codfish from Maine, farm-raised striped bass from Texas and tuna from Brazil, but hard to find a seat to sit down.

. . .

Some of the market’s customers say they are more interested in the quality of the product than in the character of the building. Sandy Ingber, executive chef at Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Grand Central Terminal and a longtime fish market buyer, said he preferred the new place to the old because of the constant refrigeration and cleanliness. A 10-person maintenance crew cleans and sanitizes the building daily.

“You can lick off the floor there almost,” Mr. Ingber said.

Staten Island’s James Oddo Is The Biggest LL Cool J Fan In The Council

The City Council has approved funding for a hip-hop museum in the Bronx:

The City Council has quietly allocated $1.5 million in capital funding over the next two years that will serve as seed money for a hip-hop museum in the northeast section of the Bronx.

The funding came at the behest of a City Council member, Larry Seabrook, who is closely allied with a nonprofit group in his district that is planning a community center and housing development at the corner of 212th Street and White Plains Road. The museum would be part of the project.

Mr. Seabrook said he envisions the museum as a forum to educate future generations about the hip-hop movement as it began on the streets of the Bronx in the 1970s, long before the genre became linked with turf wars and lyrics that advocated violence against women. “We’re not talking about gangster rap,” Mr. Seabrook said. “We’re talking about hip-hop.”

While the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., announced plans earlier this year for a permanent hip-hop exhibition, the project in the Bronx is believed to be the first museum dedicated to the movement.

. . .

Other lawmakers criticized the use of public funds for a hip-hop museum. “I’m the biggest LL Cool J fan in the council, but this is not a proper use of taxpayer money,” the council’s Republican leader, James Oddo of Staten Island, said. He added that he supported a hip-hop museum, but only as a private venture. “If this is such a great idea, then it sells itself,” he said.

. . .

Despite the start-up cash from the city, a hip-hop museum in the Bronx still faces a number of obstacles. Early plans call for the museum to occupy one or two floors of a multi-purpose center being built by the nonprofit Northeast Bronx Redevelopment Corporation. The group is hoping to combine several floors of low- to moderate-income housing with a gymnasium, a small theater, a recording studio, and the museum.

The project is planned for the site of an abandoned transfer station that the group acquired from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority this spring. The corporation has also received more than $1 million in state funding to clean up the site, which Mr. Seabrook said could take up to two years.

When Fireworks Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Fireworks

A look at the illicit firework trade in the Bronx:

Pyrotechnics peddlers are hawking fireworks in broad daylight on a Bronx street corner, despite a citywide crackdown leading up to the Fourth of July.

“Whenever you’re looking for fireworks, just go to the beauty salon – my mom owns it,” one pusher known only as Paulie assured a customer in Hunts Point last week.

The peddler keeps his arsenal of explosives — everything from sparklers to rockets to M-88 munitions — at his house nearby, located just a block from the Ladder 48/Engine 94 firehouse and a Bronx charter elementary school.

“I can get you anything you want,” he bragged.

Paulie eagerly sold one customer $23 worth of fireworks — a dazzling array that included eight M-88s, the slightly smaller versions of the notorious M-80 explosives; four 10-pack Howling Wolf Rockets; one 12-pack of Howling Wolf Pack Bottle Rockets; one 10-pack of Jumping Jacks; two six-packs of Morning Glory sparklers; and three “lady fingers.”

He tossed in a $2 MoonBeam Missile rocket.

Paulie said that for $150, he could sell the customer a deluxe boxed package that “will put on a good show for at least an hour — your kids will love it.”

The illegal sales take place in plain sight — and kids in the area actually steer customers to Paulie, who hawks his wares while sporting knockoff designer sunglasses and a Jesus tattoo on his forearm.

He apparently works with a teen middleman, who keeps his own, much-smaller supply of fireworks for sale — and keeps an eye out for the cops.

For Some Reason The Bronx Tourism Council Passed On Promoting This Particular Cultural Institution

Come visit the Bronx’s cheery-sounding Illegal Gun Museum of Death:

It seems to be a disturbing trend these days, but more and more, while crime continues to be touted as going down, a great number of children are becoming the victims of illegal gun violence. And as Mayor Michael Bloomberg fights for gun control, one community organization is using shock tactics to get its message across.

The Illegal Gun Campaign Committee, a sub-committee of the Patterson Volunteer Committee, held a press conference to unveil the newly established Illegal Gun Museum of Death on Saturday, June 1, at the Mott Haven Reformed Church, at 350 E. 146 th Street.

“We simply must attract all the attention that we can to keep these illegal handgun murders in the spotlight until it is eliminated,” said Wallace Hasan, president of the PVC executive board. “The White House and Congress must give these illegal handgun murders the attention it deserves. If the murders of our children, particularly the recent tragedies of two- and three-year-olds, does not make this situation a priority to them, what will?”

Hasan took photos and any news stories about illegal gun deaths, ranging from a tragic fatal shooting that killed a child this Easter to another incident where a stray bullet struck and killed a girl near a local Bronx barbershop, among others, and blew them up to poster size before mounting them on boards and displaying them outside the church for those passing by to see.

The hope is that residents will be shocked and appalled by what they see that they will take action themselves and join the fight to make a difference, similar to how recent shock tactics involving cancer patients on anti-smoking ads have pushed people to quit smoking.