Brooklyn

Bay Ridge, John Travolta, Allegretti, and Me

Posted by Joseph Tacopino

Saturday-Night-Fever_John-Travolta_white-suit-train.bmp-1The 1977 film Saturday Night Fever immortalized the working class Italian-Americans of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The movie not only made an impact on bell bottoms, and disco culture but came to symbolize the middle class outer borough experience in New York City.

The scrappy, foul-mouthed, sexpot played by John Travolta was the uncanny personification of both alpha-male and arrogant jackoff at the same exact time.

Another Italian from Bay Ridge is Michael Allegretti, one of Congressman Mike McMahon’s potential Republican opponents in the 2010 election.

Though demographics have changed in Bay Ridge, the area has been unmistakably linked to the borough of Staten Island ever since the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964.

I myself was born in Bay Ridge in 1979, around the same time that the Bee Gees coaxed John Travolta onto the dance floor.

I moved to Staten Island with my parents as a small child and it seems that a large percentage of the neighborhood came with us.

While population has exploded in all of Staten Island’s three community districts (especially the southern portion) the population for Bay Ridge and its neighboring Dyker Heights decreased by 7 percent in the ’80s, according to census figures.

Census figures also show that Staten Island in 64 percent Italian-American: John Travolta with receding hairline, a tracksuit, and three kids in grade school.

Still, the association with their former Bay Rige neighborrhood runs deep, deeper perhaps than the one with the boot-shaped penninsula their ancestors emigrated from. Islanders speak with a reverence for the RR Train and Woolworth’s as if it were their home country.

The truly off-the-boat Italians came to this country in turn-of the-century (last century), so these Italian-Americans are three, or four, generations removed.

Where does that leave Mike Allegretti in the 13th District? Bay Ridge native, Richmond county transplant, son of a successful small businessman, and, most importantly, Italian.

I’d say he’s right at home.

For Undercounted Communities, A Census Cheetah – Politically and Fashionably!

Posted by David Montalvo

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She is not a politician of pantsuits or tweed skirts.

Those are for lions, already all-powerful to many and who travel in large packs, like Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

But it’s not for a second-term congresswoman.

Instead, from behind a cherry blossom in Brooklyn’s concrete jungle, a swifter, more energetic, and just as fiercely competitive cat appears – the cheetah.

Donning an animal-print trench coat, sharp Christian Dior eyewear and blood red lipstick, Rep. Yvette Clarke made two points Saturday:

  1. Not only does she have style, it’s edgy and frankly it works for her!
  2. And, invoking her inner cheetah, she is on the hunt for constituents slow to return their census forms.

“I believe democracy is not a spectator sport,” told Clarke to a crowd outside a post office in Crown Heights, encouraging them to fill out and mail 2010 Census forms.

IMG_3021Most, if not all, present were Caribbean and African Americans, though Clarke said the post office at Nostrand Avenue and Empire Boulevard was an important location for this initiative.

“This is the nexus where lots of immigrants come,” she told The NYC Delegation. “It’s a hard-to-count district.”

Though national outreach efforts seem to focus on Spanish-speaking communities, they are a small group in this district.

But, said Clarke, there is a high “concentration of African Americans,” another low turnout group.

Indeed, nationally almost 70% of census forms have been returned, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared with 51% for all of Brooklyn. Here in Crown Heights and East Flatbush, which have some of the highest black and Caribbean populations in this district, have the lowest return rate so far – as low as 34%.

But across Prospect Park in Park Slope and Cobble Hill, where there’s a larger white population, there’s a much higher return rate for Clarke’s district and for Brooklyn – a percentage closer to the national average.

Clarke said even this number is low for white Americans in her district, though she doesn’t attribute it to antigovernment sentiment, as one report recently indicated.

“This is one exercise that is immune to antigovernment,” she said.

In fact, Census workers said they see feelings of fear toward the government, not feelings against it.

Yvette Mendes, a census outreach worker at Clarke’s event, said Crown Heights and East Flatbush have a “high immigrant community,” so she believed this was a logical location for such an event.

Mendes said such communities might worry about their immigration status and possible deportation, so they don’t participate in the census, even though “they’re secure, they’re confidential,” she said.

Projecting through a megaphone, Clarke told the crowd of about 30-or-so people that by not being counted, they are turning money away for the community, like schools and hospitals, and they are telling Washington: “We don’t need your assistance. Send that check somewhere else.”

IMG_3024She told The NYC Delegation that being accounted for in the census is like an ATM transaction: If we don’t deposit population numbers, we can’t withdraw the federal funds we need.

And, seeing as this is her first national census as a member of the House of Representatives, this leopard-clad congresswoman appears ready to fight for those funds for her district.

“I’m a competitive congresswoman,” she added.