A vacant lot on Fourth Avenue that will be renovated in the coming months. Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

If all plans are finalized by the borough president, one of Brooklyn’s major thoroughfares will become unrecognizable in the coming years as it evolves from an accident-prone access road to a pedestrian-friendly commercial district.

A vision plan announced this summer calls for safety, beautification and commercial efforts to make Fourth Avenue more inviting. Long denigrated as the borough’s eye-sore and one of its most dangerous and congested traffic zones, the plan is intended to make the area comparable to Park Slope’s thriving Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

Josh Levy, chair of Park Slope Civic Council’s FORTH onFourth subcommittee, said the projects are also intended to correct problems arising from a 2003 rezoning law that resulted in residential buildings without ground-floor retail space.

“In 2003, there was a rezoning of a large swath of Fourth Avenue,” Levy said. “It allowed for large developments to occur. Starting in 2004, 2005, a lot of buildings went up … with disregard, reckless abandonment for the streets. Instead of getting retail at street level, interesting boutiques, cafes, stores, even professional offices — anything really — all we got were parking lots, empty walls, not anything that would grow the thoroughfare, encourage patronage.”

Carlo Scissura, the project task force chair for the borough president’s office, said the Fourth Avenue facelift will revive the district’s unique flare and unify the borough’s differing communities.

“It’s really such an important thoroughfare in Brooklyn,” Scissura said. “It brings [together] a group of diverse neighborhoods from downtown Brooklyn — from Park Slope, Sunset Park, Bushwick and Bay Ridge.”

Elected officials, community groups and task force committees are currently brainstorming potential courses of action. The ideas will be pooled together and passed on to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who will compose a more concrete development strategy by this summer then seek funding for the project from city agencies.

P.S. 133 is under construction, one of the many development projects part of a Fourth Avenue facelift. Maane Khatchatourian/The Brooklyn Ink

According to Levy, the development efforts will consist of planting trees, creating street-level retail space, addressing community-wide traffic and safety concerns and enhancing subway lines.

“It’s going to be a long-term project — eight to 12 years,” Levy said. “It’s not a quick fix to transform a boulevard.”

The first step is to plant a few thousand trees and planters up and down the street, especially from 39th to 15th Streets, Joan Botti, chair of Community Board Seven’s Fourth Avenue Task Force, said.

One Fourth Avenue beautification project, the reconstruction of the Ninth Street subway station, is already underway.

For the first time in 40 years, Levy said the subway’s east station house is being opened for retail space.

“It will become the nicest and most renovated subway station outside of Manhattan, with the exception of [the station on] Atlantic Avenue,” Levy said.

Botti said the Fourth Avenue venture was born out of an older Ninth Street station rehabilitation effort. Markowitz allocated $2 million to refurbish the shopping area in the subway station, prompting Park Slope’s Civic Council to conceive the idea of the beautification of Fourth Avenue.

Other measures include installing elevators and security cameras in the R subway stops lining the avenue as well as improving the train schedule, Botti said.

“One of the items that has been coming up constantly is the lack of service or the tardiness, I should put it that way, of the N and the R train,” she said. “That’s one of the goals of the transportation committee, this committee and the task force itself to [decrease] the time between the R train and the N. What do they say, ‘rarely for the R and never for the N’?”

While plant life will make the street more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing, the remodeled subway station with elevators will increase access for the elderly and handicapped and commercial businesses will promote economic growth, safety measures are developers’ primary concern. Proposals include increasing street signage, expanding medians between cross lights and alternating traffic patterns. Countdown timers were recently installed and traffic lanes reduced on Fourth Avenue.

Lifelong resident Duane Jackson attributed the increased development efforts to the other major construction initiative near Fourth Avenue — the Atlantic Yards project.

“The [Barclays Center] stadium has a lot to do with what’s happening,” Jackson said. “[The city] wants to make sure the area’s nicer to promote the stadium. That’s why I don’t understand the complaints, aside from being displaced. … I’m all for beautification.”

As Brooklyn neighborhoods become increasingly gentrified, concerns over displacement surround new development projects.

Local organizers said they would ensure that the area doesn’t turn into a sea of luxury high-rises that drive out lower income and rental tenants from the neighborhood.

Lopez declined to comment on the DOI report but defended Ridgewood Bushwick by saying the non-profit has had an outstanding track record for over thirty years.

Jason Brezler, a firefighter with Squad 252 in Brooklyn and a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, led combat troops in both Afghanistan’s Helmand Province and Fallujah, Iraq. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

On Sept. 11, 2001, Joshua Wiener was in the field with his Marine Corps regiment near California’s Yosemite Valley, where the men were training for wilderness warfare. While Wiener and his fellow Marines did not learn of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon until hours after they occurred, the events of that day would soon shape his life.

Wiener, 32, went on to serve two tours in Iraq as a gunnery sergeant in the infantry. He became a New York City firefighter in 2005. This year, he joined Squad 252 in Bushwick, which on 9/11 responded at 9 a.m. to the fifth alarm at the World Trade Center. Six of its members died there.

“When you go to Marine Corps boot camp, they teach you history,” said Wiener. “The connection between 9/11 and now is how I feel about the Marines in World War I or Korea. If you know where your tradition comes from, you are more likely to defend or honor it.”

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Wiener and several other members of Squad 252 have an outlook shaped as much by fighting wars as by fighting fires. For them, and a generation of firefighters like them, the Sept. 11 attacks and the two wars that ensued blend together to inform their experience of that day.

Squad 252 is one of seven companies that make up the Fire Department’s special operations command. Special operations units respond to fires and other emergencies that demand technical proficiency. If someone working on the exterior of a building falls and hangs from his safety line, or the earth collapses on an underground electrical worker, or hazardous chemicals spill, Squad 252 responds if the incident has occurred in Brooklyn’s eastern half. Special operations units also rescue other firefighters, which makes such units a fire department for the fire department. “There’s nothing a squad can’t do,” said Lieutenant John Ceriello, who joined Squad 252 in 2007.

Sean Goodridge, a firefighter with Squad 252 and a Staff Sgt. in the U.S. Army National Guard, led soldiers on door-to-door raids in Balad, Iraq. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

Special operations units suffered significant losses on 9/11. While about two percent of city firefighters that day belonged to special operations companies, 96 of the 343 firefighters who died at the World Trade Center worked in special operations.

At lunch on a recent August afternoon, six members of Squad 252 talked over pizza that they picked up in Queens on their way back from a run. Samson, a 76-pound, black-and-white mixed-breed dog that lives at the firehouse, padded around the kitchen.

Jason Brezler, 32, recalled that he always wanted to be a New York City firefighter. Growing up in Baltimore, one of Brezler’s favorite books was “Fireman Jim,” which depicts a typical shift for a fireman who drove a ladder-rescue truck for Ladder 3 in Manhattan. Brezler keeps a copy of the book in his locker. “Why play for the Orioles, when you can play for the Yankees?” said Brezler, a third generation firefighter.

Brezler graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2000 and began active duty in the Marines Corp. On 9/11, he was training with his fellow Marines in North Carolina when they learned of the attacks. “We’re like the class of 1940, which spent most of its service in World War II,” said Brezler.

In the fall of 2001, Brezler and his platoon were sent to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they built cells that would house prisoners suspected of being members of Al Qaeda. Brezler later led Marine combat troops in Fallujah, Iraq and Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, and ascended to the rank of major.

For Brezler, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 reminds him of more than just the lives lost at Ground Zero. One of his best friends, a former journalist and U.S. Senate staffer who joined the Marine Corps in 2003 at age 34, was killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan two years ago last month. “Firefighters talk about how many they lost that day,” said Brezler. “I think about how many I’ve lost since 9/11.”

To Brezler, firefighting and war fighting correlate closely. He has created a leadership training program for firefighters that teaches tactical discipline, operational decision-making, and other combat concepts for use in a firefighting setting. “The bottom line is that there are a lot of similarities,” said Brezler. “They include fluidity, chaos and pervasive uncertainty.”

The similarities also include looking out for the guy next to you. “You don’t even have to like the guy or be best friends,” said Brezler. “You may not be invited to his wedding, or be his child’s godparent, but you trust in his level of proficiency and willingness to put his life on the line for you.”

Wiener wanted to join Squad 252 since attending the fire academy, where he first saw the squad’s emblem, which features a bald eagle against an azure background. In its beak, the eagle holds a banner that reads “In squad we trust.”

The motto resonates with Wiener. “Some people want to join the Marine Corps or the Fire Department for grandiose ideas like serving your country, honor, courage and commitment,” said Wiener. “Then when it comes down to it, those things go out the window and you end up fighting for survival, pretty much for the people around you.”

Squad 252 began as Engine 52 of the Brooklyn Fire Department in 1897. It joined the New York City Fire Department a year later, when the borough became part of the city. Since its inception, the company has operated continuously from a landmarked Flemish Revival style building that has a facade of brick and red sandstone.

The duty board for the 6 p.m.-to-9 a.m. tour at Squad 252 on Sept. 10, 2001. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

On an inside wall near the firehouse door, a blackboard lists the firefighters on duty for the 6 p.m.-to-9 a.m. tour that began on Sept. 10, 2001 and ended in disaster the next morning. Lieutenant Timothy Higgins was the officer on duty. Below his name are the names of firefighters Pete Langone, Pat Lyons, Tarel Coleman, Kevin Prior and Tom Kuveikis.

Coleman had recruited Sean Goodridge, 43, to join Squad 252. They met as teammates on the Fire Department football team. Coleman played cornerback. Goodridge played running back. Lyons played quarterback.

Goodridge was born in Trinidad and raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where he now lives with his wife and their four children. After high school he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and later served as a tank commander in the first Gulf War. He joined the Fire Department in 1995.

On 9/11, Goodridge was in the second week of a two-week vacation when a friend called his cell phone and told him about the attacks. Goodridge ran into a laundromat, where he watched on television as the second plane hit the towers. He rushed home, and then to Engine 234 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where he worked at the time.

Goodridge and the other members of his company grabbed their gear and boarded a city bus, which took them to the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge. There they massed with firefighters from other companies as they watched pedestrians stream across the bridge out of Lower Manhattan. “It was hard to describe the look on their faces,” Goodridge recalled. “It’s like being in a dream and you don’t believe you’re dreaming.”

Eventually, Goodridge and his company crossed the Manhattan Bridge and made their way to the World Trade Center site. There they spent most of the day putting out fire at the Deutsche Bank building, which later was dismantled completely.

Firefighters Joseph Drury, left, and Jason Brezler of Squad 252 inspect equipment on Aug. 22, 2011. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

The 105th Infantry Army National Guard unit in which Goodridge still serves labored at Ground Zero as well. Goodridge later learned that his fellow reservists were looking for him amid the wreckage. “It was reassuring to know they were thinking about me,” recalled Goodridge.

In 2003, Goodridge deployed to Iraq, where for nearly two years he served as a staff sergeant assigned to the city of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. There Goodridge, who had switched from tank fighting to infantry, led a squad of eight soldiers on door-to-door raids. “It had its moments,” recalled Goodridge, who lost one soldier under his command to enemy fire.

Goodridge also sees parallels in the camaraderie that both firefighters and combat troops develop. “You don’t want to let down the guy next to you,” said Goodridge. “You both want to go home.”

Last year, Goodridge spent several weeks in Thailand, where he and other U.S. soldiers taught their Thai counterparts how to operate in areas infested with improvised explosive devices. “A lot of my friends say I’m an adrenaline junkie,” said Goodridge, who commutes to work on a Honda sport motorcycle.

Goodridge says that if Coleman were alive, Goodridge would like him to know how good he feels to be part of Squad 252. “It’s an honor to be part of this company because of the sacrifice he made,” said Goodridge. “That pretty much goes with all these guys.”

Luis Ramos works in the Himrod Wilson Community Garden in August. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

Luis A. Ramos, 46, who lives next door, started clearing the lot two years ago. “When I came to this lot, it was full of weeds this high,” said Ramos, who is five feet five, holding his hand at shoulder level.

While Bushwick has other community gardens built on formerly vacant lots, the fledgling Himrod Wilson garden may be the newest. But what’s invisible amid the greenery – and most distinctive about the plot – is the before and after of Ramos’s life. The garden showcases his journey from addiction to activism as much as it does the tomato plants that by August spill over the tops of their supporting stakes.

Miriam Gonzalez, a neighbor who has lived on the block for 13 years, says that Ramos restored what had been an abandoned corner. “We used to chase rats away that came scurrying out of that lot,” Gonzalez recalled.

Ramos hauled away garbage and cut brush. He built a compost bin, fashioned a cistern out of a blue barrel, replenished much of the soil, and erected the plywood frames that surround each bed. Just outside the garden, Ramos installed a low wooden fence around three young pin oaks. He painted the fence celeste green.

Rafael Garcia, who has worked at the glass business across Wilson Avenue for 23 years, said that before Ramos came along the city cleaned the lot once every year. “We think the guy is doing a wonderful job,” said Garcia.

Ramos grew up in Bushwick in a family of four boys and two girls. He liked science, and was among the first students to graduate from the city’s Philippa Schuyler Middle School for the Gifted and Talented. Though Ramos dropped out of automotive-repair school after he was unable to afford a new tool each month, he later earned a G.E.D.

In 1988, Ramos lived with a girlfriend and their infant daughter in the Ridgewood section of Queens. He worked mostly as a messenger or store clerk, with a new job every five or six weeks. While he used cocaine, marijuana and alcohol out of boredom, he also started to smoke phencyclidine, better known as PCP or angel dust.

Eventually, Ramos discovered crack cocaine and his drug habit intensified. “Crack is very psychological and intensely sexual,” recalled Ramos. “When I thought about getting high, I would throw up first.”

Ramos, who has known since childhood that he is gay, moved out in 1991 and started to live more openly as a gay man. He met a man who later became his partner. Together they marched in the first pride parade in Queens in 1992, and attended the gay march on Washington, D.C. a year later.

But the stability did not last. Ramos started smoking crack again. “From there, I was off the hook,” said Ramos. He also started seeing someone else, slept wherever he could, and worked on and off as a messenger. “I worked to get high,” said Ramos, who also steered other users to crack. “To get a piece of rock or a toke of the pipe, you help other users find where the stuff is.”

One day in 1993, Ramos steered two men to a spot where he knew they could score. The men gave Ramos a $20 bill to buy them eight “two for fives,” the small bags in which crack was commonly sold. Ramos purchased the bags and gave them to the men, who gave Ramos two. Ramos went behind a building to smoke them when two police officers approached. The two men for whom Ramos had purchased the cocaine were undercover agents.

Ramos was arrested and charged in State Supreme Court in Queens with the criminal sale of a controlled substance, which carried a mandatory sentence of six to 12 years. Though Ramos had several prior arrests for trespassing and minor assault, those cases had all ended in dismissals.

In 1994, a jury convicted Ramos of the criminal sale charge. Ramos was shuttled among several prisons across the state before serving four years at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County.

Luis Ramos tends one of the Himrod Wilson Community Garden's four plots. (Photo: Brian Browdie/The Brooklyn Ink)

Following his release in 2000, Ramos worked at a copy shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and later at another document business on Broad Street. But by 2006, years of substance abuse had extracted their toll on Ramos’ body and left him unable to lift reams of paper, a task his work demanded. He now gets by on disability income and Medicaid.

When Ramos’ mother, with whom he lived following his release, moved to a new apartment in 2007, Ramos lived with friends and in homeless shelters before finally finding an apartment of his own. Homelessness spurred Ramos to ask questions about how to obtain city services. “That’s when I really became an advocate,” he said.

Today, Ramos’ apartment is part garden tool shed, part political war room. From a computer at his kitchen table, Ramos produces videos in support of varied causes, including the successful push for same-sex marriage in New York State and a second mayoral bid by William Thompson, the former City Controller who lost a close race to incumbent Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2009.

Ramos reserves most of his energy, however, for the Himrod Wilson garden. “I’ve had a life full of starting stuff and never completing it,” said Ramos, who has a trim moustache and olive skin. “I’m 46 years old, and in the past two years I’ve done something for the community.”

The neighborhood has responded in kind. The glass business and a pizza parlor next door donate wood. Neighbors donate packets of seeds. “Once a guy just pulled up in his truck and gave us a rose,” said Lauren Roche, 24, who moved to Himrod Street last fall and met Ramos on her way home from work. “Luis was playing funk music and working in a flower bed, and I just asked him if I could rent a plot.”

Roche and Ramos haul in their own water to supplement whatever the cistern collects. “It makes you appreciate what it takes,” Roche said. “Luis is super handy, and he doesn’t stop.”

In July, Ramos recruited six boys from the neighborhood to help him remove dead trees and other debris from a basketball court that adjoins the garden. They carried out 12 bags of trash, including bicycle rims, wheels and a saddle, which they set aside for kids who might need them.

Ramos says he hopes his experience can guide people younger than him. “I have Jesus advice, because I’ve been on that cross,” he said. “I try to prevent others from bearing that cross because all that drugs do for you is death.” Ramos wonders what his daughter, now 25, and two sons, ages 24 and 23, will think about their father’s life. He talks with them occasionally.

On the sidewalk outside the garden, Ramos sweeps debris into a pile for pickup. He plans to stay up all night to see who’s been leaving it there. Ramos also has asked the city to install a trash can on the corner and to post signs that warn people to curb their dogs.

While Ramos says he doesn’t have regrets, his past compels him. After someone left broken plastic bags of rotting garbage that neighbors crossed the street to avoid, Ramos donned latex gloves, dragged the trash to the corner, and washed the sidewalk with Pine-Sol detergent. “The garden is an accomplishment I did,” said Ramos. “The trash reflects on me. It’s an embarrassment.”

From his upstate prison window, Ramos saw fields of morning glories, the purple flowers that open during the day and close at night. He planted them in the Himrod Wilson garden. Ramos says he cries sometimes when he sees them.

Madea, the cat at the center of Garrett's conviction. Photo Courtesy of The Daily News

By Kim Chakanetsa

Her name was Madea and when her photo first appeared on the overhead projector in a Brooklyn courtroom, she looked like an ordinary eight-pound house cat. 
The second photo, however, told a different story – it showed bruises so bad she had to be put to sleep. She made her appearance at the trial of the man accused of beating her. And on Tuesday, a Brooklyn jury found Lordtyshon Garrett guilty of aggravated animal cruelty.

The trial began with the Assistant District Attorney Ayanna Blake telling the jury about the close relationship between Madea and her owner of six years, Debra Bender. She told of their morning routine, during which the grey-blue feline would follow Bender as she prepared for work. In the evening Madea would await Bender’s return by the door.

Bender’s relationship with her son-in-law, Garrett, who was at the time living with her, was less straightforward. The Daily News reported that in the leadup to Madea’s death, the pair had fought after Bender had told Garrett to get a job and move out. On the morning of October 12, 2009, Bender left for work, leaving her 19-year old son Aziz, who has cerebral palsy, at home with his home health aid, Sharon Williams, as well as with Garrett. The details of what took place that day formed the basis of the trial.

Williams testified that during the course of the day Madea was hurt, Garrett disappeared into the back of the house. She said she heard the shower running. When Madea reappeared she was wet.  Aziz, who also took the stand, noted that Madea had appeared frightened around Garrett that afternoon.

When Bender returned home that evening Madea was nowhere to be found. Accounts differ as to where she was eventually found. Blake told the jurors that Madea was found in Garrett’s bedroom.  Aziz testified that Madea was carried into his bedroom by Garrett’s wife, who is also named Debra. Both accounts agree on this point: Madea was unwell – she was struggling to breathe.

Aziz told the jury that when Bender left for work the next day she told him to watch the cat. By then Madea’s condition had worsened; she had difficult walking and her breathing was becoming increasingly shallow. Dr. Naomi Ueda, the veterinarian who attended to Madea that night, explained to the court that Madea not only had bruising on her abdomen, chest and face but she was also suffering from a collapsed lung. A decision was made to put her down.

Garrett’s lawyer, Susan Morris seized on that decision. When Ueda took to the witness stand Morris questioned her with a quiet tenacity.

“How much does it cost to euthanize?”

“$60.”

“How much does it cost to go to a 24-hour hospital?”

Morris let the question hang in their air, suggesting that the decision to euthanize was influenced by financial constraints. The defense also seized on life in the Bushwick household which was described by Morris as “chaotic”, a busy place with people coming and going. Throughout the trial Morris asserted that there was no evidence to suggest that Garrett had caused the injuries to the cat.

DNA said otherwise. At the center of the prosecution’s case was a broken umbrella borrowed from Aziz by Garrett a few days before the incident, which was found to contain Madea’s teeth marks and DNA.  A piece of the broken umbrella was found in Madea’s cat litter. The prosecution also highlighted remarks allegedly made by Garrett after the incident. According to Aziz’s testimony, Garrett told him: “I got her good.” Aziz also testified about what he described as Garrett’s nonchalant attitude towards Madea’s death. “Who cares its just a cat.”

Throughout the trial which was devoid of spectators, Garrett sat quietly, conferring regularly with his lawyer. Dressed smartly, Garrett had perhaps wisely left off the big fur hat that he had worn in earlier court appearances, in a much-remarked upon act of sartorial defiance. Garrett told the Daily News that the cat’s death had received more attention than the death of his brother on June 14, 2009 in a Brooklyn street robbery.

Madea’s death indeed generated a vast amount of coverage in the papers and online. “Scumbag,” “kitty-killer” and “heartless punk” were some of the tamer insults lobbied at Garrett in comment sections online.  An equal volume of disgust was directed at Angelo Monderoy, a 20-year old Brooklyn man whose trial was also being heard in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Monderoy was found guilty on March 8, of setting fire to his superintendent’s cat out of boredom. Meanwhile, in Bushwick, a 19-year old girl was charged with aggravated cruelty on March 8, following the death of a hamster nine months earlier.

Garrett now awaits sentencing. He faces up to four years for aggravated animal cruelty.

Gabriela Alvarado brushes her daughter Giselle Florez' hair before a parent ambassador meeting at Bushwick Impact. (Joe Proudman/The Brooklyn Ink)

Five years ago Gabriela Alvarado was in New York on vacation. She had just left her job in Puebla, Mexico, after the company she was working for changed owners.

She felt her life was due for a change after spending the previous 10 years engulfed in her career. She felt she really didn’t have much to show for it.  So her cousin, who was living in Brooklyn, told her to come visit, take some time to get her life in perspective.

She planned on staying for three months, but in mid-September a week before she was planning to leave, Alvarado attended a party for Mexican Independence Day. As she sat in one room, she began to listen to a conversation in the next room. A family member was asking a man if he cared if a woman made more than him. He said no. That’s really all Alvarado needed to know.

“At this time, at this party, I listened,” she said. “I never saw him. I only listened.”

Alvarado said at that moment she felt it—love. The only way she can explain falling for a man she hadn’t even seen, she says is that she just knew he was the man for her after he answered the question the right way.  She cancelled her flight back home. A few months later she and that same man were living together. Five years later, they’re married, with a soon-to-be three-year-old daughter.

When she fell in love, Gabriela Alvarado became a part of Bushwick’s burgeoning immigrant population. In 2008, nearly 38 percent of the neighborhood’s population was foreign born, according to State of the City’s Housing & Neighborhoods 2009 neighborhood profile. That means there are roughly 50,000 people in Bushwick who at one time were new to this country and, like Gabriela Alvarado, needed to learn to adjust to life in place far different than the one they left behind.

For Alvarado the transition to America was rough, but manageable, first the language, “I was a student of English in my country, but it’s not the same when you practice or listen,” she said. “Even now it’s sometimes difficult.”

But the hardest things for her were adjusting to the culture of the U.S. New York, she says, is less friendly, than Mexico, a reality that even today still makes the transition difficult. Going to the deli on the corner, or the grocery store or even just walking down the block people are just more cold than she was once used to, she says.

“I felt strange because for me it was the first time that I separated from my family,” she says. Alvarado was in a new home, “where I found different customs and lifestyles.”

Alvarado’s story is similar to that of the 50,000 immigrants in Brooklyn, all new to the country and facing similar issues with language and customs. Some, like Alvarado, have children. She says with children the pressure to provide and be successful in America becomes greater. “The most important thing for women with babies is to get an opportunity for a job, get an opportunity for health care for babies” she said.

One day, in 2009, Alvarado stopped by Bushwick Impact on Central Avenue. She doesn’t remember why she stopped in, but it eventually led to her transitioning from a person that just needed help to a person who was offering it through volunteering for Impact’s Parent Ambassador program.

Bushwick Impact in its fifth year, which is a hub for resources offered by the city and aimed at helping families with young children. Impact’s staff works with families to connect them with the various services available, such as food stamps and daycare, immigration or workshops on financial literacy. They don’t really complete any of that sort of social work in-house, but get families and people in touch with people and organizations that do. They’re a liaison to the community.

Impact does host several programs. Local artist hold classes for children and musicians stop in and play a few songs. The organization works with parents to improve their English not by holding classes, but by giving them a chance to practice by holding hour-long conversations. They also have a table outside their offices, with clothes for those who need them.

Bushwick Impact was launched in 2005 by the Agenda for Children of Tomorrow (ACT), which is a publicly and privately funded organization focused on serving children across the city. Impact was created to focus in on Bushwick and work with families of young children to get them connected with various resources.

Impact’s flagship community effort the past two years has been its Parent Ambassador program, in which it dispatches unpaid volunteers across the neighborhood to let new parents with young children know about what Impact does. Its most recent campaign sent out 12 women who, like Alvarado, at one time received help from Bushwick Impact, mostly with childcare, and were familiar with their services. They receive five weeks of training in public speaking, child development and financial literacy.

“They take the skills and go out into the community and engage parents,” said Nishanna Ramoutar, who works for Bushwick Impact. “When they’re out in the community, they don’t need to do any special outreach, they can be in the grocery store shopping for their own groceries.”

Simply due to the demographic makeup of Bushwick, most families Impact serves tend to be Spanish speaking and immigrants, just like the dozen women that serve as parent ambassadors. Impact feels that the community that it serves will be much more responsive to people that have been in or are in similar situations. The parent ambassadors target mothers of young children, using the fact that they themselves are parents as an icebreaker and a way to tell them about Impact’s services.

For immigrants with young families, “Shopping is hard. Paying your bills is hard. How do you find a job?” said Ramoutar. “There is this barrier between the services with the city. If they hear it from a mom they’re going to listen.

Immigrant life, Ramoutar explained, can be isolating: You don’t know the language. You don’t know many people. And if you’re here illegally – and two-thirds of those foreign born in Bushwick are according to Raul Rubio with the Family Services Network when he presented that figure to Community Board 4 on July 16, 2009 – you’re afraid to stand out because of your status. And if you have children, that experience becomes even more isolating.

“It helps our moms feel connected,” said Silvia Cruz, a parent advocate at Bushwick Impact. “In our population there is a lot of isolation. Having children is isolating and even more so being an immigrant is isolating.”

Because of her previous experience working as a safety coordinator in a factory in Mexico, Alvarado said she fit right in as a parent ambassador, chatting with people and passing on knowledge.

“I like to work with people,” she says. “In this case it wasn’t difficult for me.”

For example, this past Veterans Day in mid-November, Alvarado says that one morning while running errands, she stopped in the park in Bushwick with her daughter, who didn’t have school because of the holiday. While there she struck up a conversation with a woman who has a daughter similar in age to hers. They make small talk and eventually Alvarado told her about Impact and how it can help. It was a brief conversation, she says, and just like that, she was on her way. This is how the ambassadors work most of the time.

Cruz said the original goal was for the 12 women to sign up 250 families to come in and talk with Impact. But the women excelled that goal, signing up 382 families since May.

“It shows how important these mothers are in this community,” said Ramoutar.

On one October morning at Bushwick Impact’s Central Avenue office, 10 kids ran around while 15 parents squeezed into the back of the shoe-box shaped building for a meeting on financial literacy, which was being held in Spanish. All were women, except for the man who’d been sent by his wife because she couldn’t make it. This was a small slice of the results of the parent ambassador’s work over the summer and fall. From now until late spring, Impact will be holding classes such as this and working with those 382 families that were recruited. Then, come May the parent ambassadors will go out again. But in all reality, Ramoutar said, the women have become leaders, and are always pointing people towards Impact for assistance, and like Alvarado in the Park on Veteran’s Day, will continue even when they don’t have to.

The “Pimp My Piragua” project, built by artist Miguel Luciano. The piece is a public art project that was commissioned by the Queens Museum of Art in 2008. (Amaris Castillo/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Amaris Castillo

The floor beneath Miguel Luciano is covered with dried paint blotches.  Behind him are rows of clear plastic containers filled with brushes, pins, and other materials.  Dressed in a grey t-shirt and jeans, the Bushwick-based artist appears comfortable in his studio.  He spends a lot of time here.

Luciano’s love for art stems from childhood, when he first formed romantic ideas about creating work that can spur social change.  Now 38, Luciano’s work has been displayed internationally in countries such as France, Slovenia, and Russia.  Through his artwork, Luciano has examined colonialism, consumerism, and the relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, where he was born.

However – his most recent work focuses on community-interaction.

“I very much like the idea of democratizing the experience of art by making it accessible – by showing them in non-traditional art spaces,” he says.

By non-traditional, Luciano means streets, the insides of bodegas, and the gum-spotted sidewalks of New York City.  These pieces of artwork include a kiddie ride, vending machine, and an ice treat vending cart.

The vending cart is currently in the middle of Luciano’s studio.  No one can miss it – it is large and painted in a rich orange, with smooth rounded edges around its speakers.  Neon lights are installed underneath and there are flat-screen monitors along its sides.  It is pushed by a bike and its twisted handles are mounted onto the cart, with side-view mirrors.

It is one of Luciano’s most beloved pieces.

Cleverly dubbed “Pimp My Piragua”, the piece is a public art project that was commissioned by the Queens Museum of Art in 2008.  “Piragua” is the Puerto Rican term for the treat, which is made by scraped ice that is placed in a cup and filled with flavored syrup.

Piragua carts were one of the first Latino start-up businesses, according to Luciano.  “It was an easy business to create – a homemade cart, some ice, some syrups,” he says.

Tall bottles filled with different colored liquids fill the hollow circles on top of Luciano’s piragua cart.  In the middle is a large rectangular space on which a large block of ice is placed.

The project, which Luciano built himself over several months, was inspired by Bushwick, where he has lived for the past nine years.  Luciano says piragueros – owners of piragua carts – are somewhat of an endangered species.  “You don’t see as many of them as you used to,” he says.

In Bushwick, however, Luciano says there are still plenty in the summer.

The “Pimp My Piragua” project is meant to be community-interactive.  The vending cart was on display as a mixed media sculptural project in the Queens Museum of Art, but Luciano would pedal it into the Corona neighborhood of Queens.  He turns heads and pedestrians eagerly buy his piraguas.

“When he’s parked there, people are looking at those videos and they’re asking him questions,” says Juan Sánchez, an artist and professor of art at Hunter College who has known Luciano for several years.

Sánchez, who has had artwork displayed in museums such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, has observed Luciano interact with the community through his art.  He calls Luciano an educator and provocateur because his artwork fuels discussion.

“The point is that that project [“Pimp My Piragua”], among his other works, is about initiating that kind of dialogue and that kind of discourse,” Sánchez says.

Luciano’s Coqui Kiddie Ride is another piece that serves as both a sculpture and a community-interactive piece.  The coin-operated kiddie ride plays ambient sounds of the coqui, a tropical tree frog and a symbol of Puerto Rico.  Luciano has allowed the kiddie rides to be placed outside bodegas throughout Bushwick and East Harlem for periods of time.  He says he looks at projects that can have a life directly in the community that don’t have to exist in a gallery or museum but can actually exist in the public realm.

Last month, Luciano was featured on an episode of “Art Through Time: A Global View,” a 13-part PBS series that examines the themes of art created around the world through time.  The artist was featured in the first episode, titled “Converging Cultures.”

In El Museo del Barrio, an art museum located in East Harlem, one of Luciano’s paintings is currently on display.  Titled “Pelea de Gallos” (Cockfight), the painting pits the rooster of the Kellogg’s brand against the mascot of a local Puerto Rican chicken brand named Pollo Picú. Both are bleeding from an apparent fight.  The painting, which became part of El Museo del Barrio’s permanent collection after the museum purchased it in 2004, is a representation of the complex relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S.

Rocio Aranda, associate curator at El Museo del Barrio, has shown Luciano’s painting during exhibition tours.  She said the way Luciano carries the image makes it more accessible to people.

“Using those kinds of images that people recognize is always a positive thing because then people see the discussion and argument that’s being made in a more familiar way,” she says.

“Pelea de Gallos” will be on display at El Museo del Barrio through Dec. 12.

“Platano Pride”, a photo from Luciano’s series titled Pure Plantainum, is currently on display in the Museum of Art and Design.  The series centers on actual plantains that are covered in platinum.  Plantains, for many Puerto Ricans and people of the Caribbean, symbolize both national pride and references to race and class, often in a negative light.

Sánchez said Luciano’s work represents an artist of conscious, conviction, and one who’s committed to society in a very real and artistic way.

“It goes beyond what the art says – beyond the rhetoric of what the artist says about his work,” he says.  “He’s actually doing it.”

The city has paid the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizen’s Council between $112,000 and $157,000 in rent for years, the Post. The Council is run by Lopez’s campaign treasurer and his girlfriend .The property was already given to the Council, however, making rent unnecessary, according to a city official looking in to the matter.

The news represents the latest news in a string of revelations linking political favors and Lopez’s financial dealings, the Post reports.

Ray Cross is just setting up as I walk into the Loom. He quickly slips his blue ink-stained apron over his head. He’s wearing a black shirt with a blue design he printed years ago. He is a tall young guy and thin, with brown hair that is covered by a green army cap leaning slightly to the right.

Hanging on the walls around him are designs of bikes, a zombie George Washington and a massive ship among patterns of various shapes and lines. Screens lean in a pile against the wall below the first president.

Cross is set up near the bathrooms in the Loom, a local shopping center on Flushing Avenue that houses several storefronts including a general store, handmade clothing, jeweler and moped repair shop. The shop is named the Loom because it was once a textile factory. Every first Friday the stores stay open late, offering discounts, deals and artists such as Cross. There was even a tattoo artist at Friday’s event.

Before you notice that he is done setting up, Cross is already printing onto already printed shirts, overlaying a large design over older ones of bikes and patterns. Cross is the type of person who likes to stay busy. He says the shirts he is covering up are close to being rags, but he is giving them a second life. They feature several patterns and soon are taped onto the Loom’s decorative silver wall.

As he pours black ink onto the pink screen he talks about his studio, which is a couple blocks off the Jefferson Street L train. He runs Bushwick Print Lab and has been around the area for the better part of the decade.

He checks to make sure he’s on a level spot on the table and continues to talk as he prepares to print, never really stopping, but slowing down right before he spreads the ink along the screen and onto the shirt. A crowd begins to form around his table. For five bucks they can spice up an old hoodie or shirt.

A young women says, “I came to get screen printed.”

An older women responds, “Oh, did you read about it online too?”

The young women nods in agreement while holding her black sweater, waiting for Cross.

He changes screens. He does so with such familiarity that he does not miss a beat scrubbing the screen when his wife calls.

Cross says the process is fairly easy. “You’re pretty much pushing ink through a hole,” he says. The fun part of the night is the people he chats with as he prints.

The first guest has her tan sweater printed with bicycles. Cross offers to use hypercolor ink, which changes colors with heat. He shows his business card that uses the same ink and runs a blow dryer across it, causing part of it to disappear. She is impressed. Cross says it’s the same ink Coors Light uses on their cold-activated cans. The woman is sold.

She can’t just stop at one though and purchases a printed blouse off the wall.