YANKEE STADIUM HOSTING BIG-TIME FOOTBALL GAMES
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The Bronx baseball cathedral is fast becoming a gridiron temple, with big-time football finding a home at Yankee Stadium.
Two Brooklyn high schools battled there Tuesday night, with Abraham Lincoln grinding out a win in the PSAL Championship Division title game against Erasmus Hall, and the house that George Steinbrenner built will host its second college football bowl game on Dec. 30.
BRONX BUILDING CLEANERS STAND FIRM IN CONTACT TALKS
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
More than 22,000 office building cleaners and maintenance workers - including about 4,000 Bronx residents - are at loggerheads with Manhattan landlords over wages and benefits.
The landlords claim they need to cut costs, due to the bad economy. The two sides last negotiated a contract in late 2007, at the height of the real estate boom.
But the workers - members of Service Employees International Union 32BJ - voted last week to approve a strike if they don’t get a favorable new contract by Jan 1.
POLICE ARREST FIVE PEOPLE TO BREAK UP OCCUPY THE BRONX RALLY
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The national wave of Occupy crackdowns swept through the South Bronx Saturday, as police arrested five people and broke up an Occupy the Bronx rally at the site of a community garden razed by the city.
Four activists and a freelance journalist were handcuffed on the sidewalk outside a vacant lot at Southern Blvd. and Union Ave. in Mott Haven, formerly the Morning Glory Community Garden.
They were the first Occupy the Bronx activists arrested since the movement formed in October.
BRONX ACTIVISTS WIN RIGHT TO SEE CITY RECORDS ON SHELTER
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The scales of justice may once again be tipping toward the Bronx, with local activists scoring another court victory against the city Department of Homeless Services.
An appellate division judge has ruled that the agency must cough up records related to the controversial siting of a 38-unit homeless shelter in 2009 on St. Peter’s Ave. in Westchester Square.
LAST INDEPENDENT IN THE BRONX, BOOKS IN THE HOOD, WILL CLOSE
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
There won’t be any more Books in the Hood.
The Bronx’s last independent bookstore and the only bookstore in the South Bronx, Books in the Hood, is closing this month due to financial problems.
“It really hurts,” said Mark Naison, a Fordham University professor and frequent customer.
“There are bookstores going out of business in the Village and the upper West Side too, so you can’t blame the neighborhood. But Books in the Hood has been a true community institution.”
TEENAGE BOY FATALLY SHOT BY BUS MADMAN SHEPHERDED NABE KIDS
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The mother of the teenage boy killed by her ex-con boyfriend minutes before he shot up a Queens bus said Saturday there had been no signs of trouble.
“It was out of the blue,” Sheena Tucker said of Friday’s shocking violence.
“I didn’t know he had a gun,” she said of boyfriend Damel Burton, the suspect charged with killing a second man on the Q111 bus. The pair are parents of a 9-year-old son.
GARDENERS RECRUIT OCCUPY THE BRONX MOVEMENT TO PROTEST RAZING
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
Furious community gardeners have enlisted the Occupy the Bronx movement to protest the city closing and bulldozing an urban farm in the South Bronx.
The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development razed and padlocked the Morning Glory Community Garden on Oct. 31, citing plans to build affordable housing.
MORE AND MORE BIG-BOX RETAIL DEVELOPMENT PLANNED FOR BRONX
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
Runners and cyclists are warring over renovations planned for a beloved Bronx nature trail.
The 1.5-mile Putnam Trail in Van Cortlandt Park is slated for $2.4 million in renovations
by the city Parks Department
to widen and pave the rugged dirt path, changes the agency claims will benefit cyclists, wheelchair users and people with strollers.
But members of the Save the Putnam Trail campaign argue the project will ruin the bucolic atmosphere of the leafy byway.
HERO BRONX FIREFIGHTERS HONORED BY COUNCILMAN JAMES VACCA
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The Finest saluted The Bravest on Monday, honoring a trio of heroic Bronx firefighters who chased down and corralled a suspected thief over the weekend.
NYPD Deputy Inspector Kevin Nicholson of the 49th Precinct and City Councilman James Vacca thanked the speedy smokeeaters at their firehouse on White Plains Road in Van Nest.
1,200 NEEDY FLOCK TO YANKEE STADIUM FOR FOOD VOUCHER GIVEAWAY
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN (NYDN)
The line began to form before sunrise, stretching halfway around Yankee Stadium. By daybreak there were thousands of people waiting in the cold - not baseball fans, just mothers and fathers with hungry mouths to feed this Thanksgiving.
The New York Yankees and food wholesaler White Rose doled out 1,200 supermarket vouchers worth $25 last Thursday, turning away scores of latecomers.
