When Facing Left, It Is The Omote Manji, Representing Love And Mercy

Idiots! Backwards-writing swastika-painting idiots:

If you’re gonna hate, at least get it right.

A vandal described by cops as “some knucklehead” put Nazi swastikas on a Bronx Jewish center early yesterday — spray-painting them backward.

But the vandalism was enough to bring out a delegation of religious leaders and local elected officials to denounce the act and speak against religious intolerance.

Police were investigating the incident at the Pelham Parkway Jewish Center, where the vandal, described a teenager by an eyewitness who saw the crime from an apartment window, spray-painted three large swastikas — backward — on the side wall of the center, at 900 Pelham Parkway South and Muliner Ave.

The Police Department bias unit has been called into the case, police said.

“These knuckleheads don’t even know how to do it right, much less understand what something like this stands for,” said a police source.

It was the second time in a year that the center has been vandalized with swastikas.

(Title swiped from here.)

SoBro Forecast: Intermittent Gays Followed By A Thirty Percent Chance Of Fierce Gentrification In Coming Years

Gay City News profiles the Bronx neighborhood becoming known as “SoBro”:

Recently hyped across the New York City press as the new real estate investment hotspot, the South Bronx section now dubbed SoBro has already turned into solid gay territory. The Bruckner Bar & Grill on Bruckner Boulevard, a new gay-managed spot, has begun to attract a growing local, mixed clientele of artists and students, who use it day and night as their kitchen, living room, and lounge.

Trai La Trash, the popular drag-queen artist performing at swank Chelsea venues such as XL and Splash, has just moved into her new 1,700 square foot loft only steps away from the Bruckner Bar. Her decision last October to move from her convenient locale on Christopher Street is something about which she has no regrets.

“I knew no one in the Bronx,” she said. “But that didn’t matter to me, because the only criteria I have for an area is if it’s a great place for a Christmas tree and whether I can get up in drag, go out to my car, and not get murdered.”

SoBro met both criteria.

And it’s not just gays but also Europeans playing gay music:

While chatting with Gay City News at the Bruckner Bar, Trash made new friends, among them young, gay visual artist Matthew Burcaw who recently moved into a loft in her building.

“I saw a lot of rainbow flags around, so I thought I’d move here,” Burcaw jokingly commented. He said he “suspected” there were at least “three or four” gay people living in the building.

“That’s not counting the European guy who plays some very loud, gay music,” he added.

The Bronx Is Up And The Deep Pockets Are Down(town)

The Daily News crunches the numbers and discovers that Bronx residents sue the city at a rate higher than residents in the other four boroughs. There must be a lot of potholes up there:

Bronx residents seem to love to sue the city, according to a newly released report.

Not that the litigious residents of the other four boroughs are slackers in filing claims against city agencies for causing personal injuries or property damage, according to the report by city Controller William Thompson.

The multitude of suits against the city cost taxpayers $575.6 million in fiscal 2004, and an additional $523 million for fiscal 2005, which ended June 30.

The bulk of that dough was spent on settlements and on court judgments for personal injury and property damage claims.

. . .

The Bronx – with 1.3 million residents as of the 2000 census, filed more personal injury claims per capita than any other borough, based on the report.

The Bronx’s ratio of personal injury claims was 226 per 100,000 residents.

The cause for personal injury claims run the gamut from sidewalk slip-and-falls to medical malpractice and accidents with city vehicles.

Bronxites collected $147.8 million in personal injury payouts for 795 claims resolved in fiscal 2004.

. . .

Manhattan had the second-highest ratio of personal injury claims – 210 per 100,000 residents. Its claimants collected $136.2 million for 683 claims and filed 3,233 new claims.

Queens is the least litigious borough, with a ratio of 114 per 100,000 residents.

The Bronx Cheers, “Michelin Visite Le Bronx! Incroyable!”

Although I’m happy for their success, it pains me to hear Bronx Borough President Aldolfo Carrion embrasse le cul de Michelin so much. The Bronx is better than that:

Le Bronx est dans la maison! Which otherwise means, The Bronx is in the house!

That familiar cheer went up this week as two borough restaurants wound up on the recommended list of the debut edition of “Michelin Guide New York City 2006.”

While they didn’t earn any coveted Michelin stars, Roberto’s Restaurant in Belmont and the Riverdale Garden were the only borough bistros to shine in the new guide, which arrives in stores today.

. . .

The new borough accolade comes as the recently released Zagat’s 2006 New York City dining guide doubled the number of recommended Bronx restaurants from 12 in last year’s guide to 25.

“First Zagat’s – now the Michelin Guide. More good news for restaurants in the Bronx!” crowed – or maybe coq a vined – Borough President Adolfo Carrion. “The critics have spoken, the people have spoken – the Bronx is THE place to get a great meal.”

Carrion noted the borough has “hundreds of places to eat that will satisfy anyone’s taste. Whether it’s Italian, Puerto Rican, Irish, Kosher, great steakhouses or Dominican food – we have it all. Come to the Bronx, have a fantastic meal, stroll around our neighborhoods and see firsthand the exciting renaissance that’s happening in the borough.”

Bronx restaurateurs (so many good French words — why quit now!?) deserve all the accolades (ooh — again!) in the world, but have some dignity, man! You don’t have to kowtow to these effete French elites! (And, just to be clear, someone else called them that, not me!)

SoBro!

Hipsters colonizing the South Bronx:

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

Yes, it’s the very South Bronx that had a reputation for grinding poverty, rampant arson, runaway crime and as the starting point of Tom Wolfe’s race-relations nightmare, “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which chronicles what happens to a Master of the Universe driving with his mistress in his Mercedes-Benz on a creepy Bruckner Boulevard.

Well, Bruckner and the blocks nearby now boast two tidy bars that a Master of the Universe would feel more than comfortable patronizing, including one, the Bruckner Bar and Grill, that offers pear and arugula salad.

There are a dozen antique shops, at least one new lively art gallery, Haven Arts, to join three older ones, and a cafe partly owned by a resourceful Dominican immigrant that sells bourgeois bohemian delights like croissants and veggie wraps.

The bad news is that gentrification may price out longtime residents, the good news, however, is that White Europeans now walk comfortably there:

As he has been doing for 16 years, Angel Villalona, a Dominican immigrant, still sells papayas, coconuts and mangoes from the side of a truck, as well as batidas – fruit milkshakes that he prepares by yanking the cord on his sidewalk generator, which feeds electricity to an Osterizer blender. But now one of his customers is as likely to be a sculptor who has just moved from Williamsburg as a longtime resident like Charles Bachelor, a truck driver who immigrated from Antigua.

“White Europeans used to be afraid to walk in this neighborhood,” Mr. Bachelor said. “Now they walk comfortably.”