Uptown Radio

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NEWSCAST:

Secretary of State John Kerry warns North Korea against war threats.

US senators negotiating a new immigration law have reached a new agreement.

As the Senate gears up to debate expanding background checks for gun buyers.

CAMILO VARGAS REPORTS ON THE DAY’S TOP STORIES.

Students in the Osborne Association’s Green Career Center in the Bronx practice pitching themselves to potential employers in front of their class.

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HOST INTRO:

Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing a new statewide initiative that gives employers up to $2,400 for each formerly incarcerated person they hire. But first, they’ve got to get the job. Christie Thorne reports.

REPORTER:

We’ve all filled out job applications. You write down your name, your employment history, add a few reference contacts. And then you’re asked about your criminal history. Each year, about 700,000 people have to mark YES to that question. That’s the number of men and women leaving the U.S. prison system.

RONALD DAY: Often times it’s like, well, if that person has checked off on an application that he or she has been convicted of a crime, sometimes those applications get put in the garbage.

REPORTER:

Ronald Day is the Director of Workforce Development at the Osborne Association, a non-profit that offers practical skills and support for the formerly incarcerated.

RONALD DAY: What we want to do is try to level the playing field for individuals because we know that there’s a great deal of discrimination and a lot of stigma.

SOUND: Students chatting in class at The Osborne Association

REPORTER:

It’s a busy Monday morning at the Osborne Association’s headquarters on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. Fifteen grown men sit in a classroom staring at the front of the room.

SOUND: Teacher talking to students in the classroom

REPORTER:

They’ve all spent time in prison, but none intend on going back.

 SOUND: Student presents a pitch exercise

REPORTER:

Today they’re crafting one-minute pitches – written to sell themselves to potential employers.

SOUND: Student presents a pitch exercise (Continued)

REPORTER:

He’s fine practicing one on one, but when he reads in front of the class he stumbles. Disappointed in himself, he gest choked up. But he’s encouraged to keep going by the class, and he does.

SOUND: Students applaude

REPORTER:

Then comes the important part. Getting feedback from his classmates.

SOUND: Students critique pitch exercise

REPORTER:

After weeks of work on their resumes and practice interviewing, they’ll move on to technical skills, like plumbing and construction. When they make the transition in a few weeks, they’ll be come students of Alvin Banks.

ALVIN BANKS: I think it’s important to provide that inspiration or that template for people to see, like listen – there are opportunities out here and if you work hard enough you can be afforded them and life is not over.

REPORTER:

Banks knows what they’re going through first hand. He graduated from here about two years ago, after he struggled to find a job when he got home from prison.

ALVIN BANKS: I came home from the Federal system February 10th, 2011. I did approximately 10 years altogether.

REPORTER:

Ten years for fraud. The first thing Banks did when he got out was spend time with his four kids.

ALVIN BANKS: My youngest is 5. She was born while I was on Rikers and I actually was listening to her mother give birth on the phone. I made a decision the last time I was in prison to not come back.

REPORTER:

A big part of staying out? Finding a job.

ALVIN BANKS: I was promptly told that I was basically unemployable because of my record.

REPORTER:

And this is where a big problem lies for people that are trying to re-enter normal life. Ann Jacobs is the Director of the Prisoner Re-Entry institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

ANN JACOBS:It’s human that when we get discouraged, when we can’t think of the next thing to do and be hopeful about it that we revert to old patterns. I mean, I do think that’s the essence of recidivism.

REPORTER:

About 40 percent of people leaving prison will be back in the system within three years. That number is even bigger in New York City – as many as half will go back.

 ANN JACOBS:We should want to welcome them back to society and to have them have a stake in the larger whole.

REPORTER:

Another problem is that many people returning from prison are going back to places that aren’t equipped to support them. Jacobs says to tackle recidivism we also need to look at these communities. But Alvin Banks says his main goal is to keep them focused on the uphill battle ahead.

ALVIN BANKS:I tell the participants that we have to be more diligent, we have to work harder. We have to get up earlier, we have to be smarter, we have to be more resilient than the average person because of our background.

REPORTER:

And the strategy behind Governor Cuomo’s Work for Success program is to help ex-prisoners help themselves. Because lowering recidivism is ultimately good for everyone. Christie Thorne, Columbia Radio News.

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HOST INTRO:

Come November, the biggest race in the city will be for mayor. And it’s likely to bring many voters out. Brooklyn’s voters will choose a district attorney. Two candidates in the race say now is a great time to challenge the incumbent of 23 years: Charles Hynes. Matthew Vann reports.

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HOST INTRO:

On this day six years ago Anthony Weiner was a 6th term congressman and early favorite for the 2013 mayor’s race. But his political career collapsed after he accidentally tweeted a racy photo of himself and act that exposed his history of sexting to women he was not married to. He resigned from congress in June of 2011 and he stayed out of public eye since then. But now he is making his comeback. This week he was featured on the cover of New York Times magazine with Huma Abedin and he admitted he is thinking about getting back into the mayoral race. Max Rosenthal speaks to Colin Campbell from The New York Observer about the story.

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HOST INTRO:

Early next year,The Tonight Show will be coming back to the city where it all began more than 50 years ago: New York. The city’s comedians are already getting excited that this move could be their big break. Tony Maglio reports.

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HOST INTRO:

After years of fighting for equality on the mat, female wrestlers at public high schools
across New York City are now in a league of their own. Jessica Gould reports …

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HOST INTRO:

Nearly half a year has passed since Hurricane Sandy hit the Tristate area. Immediately after the storm, the federal government offered housing relief to home owners whose properties were damaged. They were allowed to stop making mortgage payments for ninety days, so they could focus on repairing their homes. In January, the federal government extended that program, known as forbearance, for another ninety days. With that extension about to expire, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donavan announced a one-year extension. But it may not help all home owners affected by the storm. Anna Goldenberg reports.

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HOST INTRO:

City Council Speaker and Mayoral candidate,Christine Quinn announced her plans to improve the city’s transportation system. Quinn laid out some ambitious goals. And as Tenzin Shakya reports the first step will require new legislation.

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HOST INTRO:

Neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Downtown Brooklyn have gotten pretty high-end. And new residents are hungry for upscale amenities — especially grocery stores. Emily Jones reports that developers are experimenting with some old …and some new ideas for markets to satisfy these new tastes.

sound: low market buzz/chatter

REPORTER:

As you enter Brooklyn Harvest Market, heaps of fresh fruits and veggies give way to an olive bar and a fridge case of cheeses from around the world. Farther in sit gourmet cakes, fresh fish on ice, and a butcher counter. Jessica Baker stands in front of a glass display case. The food looks delicious: grilled corn on the cob, butternut squash salad, Korean sesame tofu. Baker wants to order some for a party.

Baker: I’m having an event on Saturday… (fade under)

She splits her time between L-A and Williamsburg. When she’s here, she lives with her sister in Edge Condominiums, just upstairs from this grocery store.

Baker: This is the place where I want to be sure to get my fresh, healthy nutritious food from.

The few other markets in the area might be cheaper, but Baker says they don’t feel as nice.

Baker: There’s another place to get groceries, but I don’t think it offers as high a nutritional content, let’s just say, or variety anyway. And it’s a little further down as well.

This blend of convenience and fresh produce, along with plenty of local goods, is exactly what the Edge condo developers wanted in their building — because it’s what the people moving in want. Robert Greenstone is the building’s retail leasing agent.

Greenstone: You’ll see that the people who are buying apartments at a thousand dollars a square foot really can afford better merchandise, better food, better clothing, better services, and they actually demand it.

More than just good food, Greenstone thinks the residents of Edge and other luxury buildings want a great experience — otherwise they could just order online from Fresh Direct. That’s why the store opted for inviting displays and plans to offer outdoor seating come summer.

Greenstone: You actually wanted to eat, as opposed to just pick up merchandise that you needed.

Other developers are looking to a model from the past. Instead of adding grocery stores, some are trying to recreate the street markets of New York’s earliest days, when vendors set up shop daily to offer produce and homemade goods.

Feltman: I think that New York misses that experience.

Julie Feltman is the Market Director for Urban Spaces, which has tried to revive the idea with multi-vendor markets like Madison Square Eats and the holiday markets at Union Square and Columbus Circle.

Feltman: It ties the community together. You can showcase locally-made goods, you can bring unique gifts and unique products into one spot that isn’t really like over-commercialized.

The flagship project of Urban Spaces was DeKalb Market in Downtown Brooklyn. Old shipping containers housed the stores of local food and retail vendors. Now, a luxury apartment building called City Point is going up at the site. But retail developer Paul Travis wants to preserve the feel of DeKalb.

Travis: I thought really the best thing about DeKalb Market was that people in the neighborhood actually started to use it as a place to hang out. They felt it was their space.

The ground floor of City Point will feature a market hall with small food vendors, restaurants, and a grocery. It’s a model that works in major cities like Barcelona and New Delhi. Travis hopes the multivendor setting will recapture that community feel.

Travis: We’re not looking for chains. We’re not looking for stuff that you can find anywhere else. This is really to find local, unique food vendors who really want to do something downtown.

Feltman is a little skeptical that a big development can recreate the excitement of eclectic local markets.

Feltman: I think there’s something really charming in an outdoor market that doesn’t have a lot of barriers to entry that features a lot of different things. I think when you bring it onto that industrial level it might lose a little bit of its charm.

Still, she’s excited to see so many people trying. City Point and several other developments have multivendor markets in the works. Between those corporate efforts and ongoing community markets, Feltman hopes the model can really take hold.

I’m Emily Jones, Columbia Radio News.

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HOST INTRO:

WikiLeaks has announced its latest release of information. It’s a collection of more than a million State Department files from the 1970s. WikiLeaks calls it the “Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy,” or Plus D.  Sonia Paul spoke with Jeff Stein. He’s a national security reporter and founder of the blog SpyTalk. He says this new collection of documents marks a new direction for Wikileaks.

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HOST INTRO:

For commentator Stephanie Kuo, family is everything.  Two years ago, she and her sister found a way to get even closer by honoring their father.

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NEWSCAST:

A drug ring operating in Manhattan gets busted.

Thomas Pendergast named as new CEO of the MTA by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

New York City Fleet Week cancelled due to Sequestration budget cuts.

Christie Thorne reports on the days news headlines.

REPORTER:

For Columbia Radio News in New York, I’m Christie Thorne.

–

A drug ring operating from the Lower East Side was busted today for selling millions of dollars of cocaine. 30 people involved in a street gang were charged with drug trafficking across the city.

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Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that Thomas Pendergast will be the next CEO of the MTA. In his weekly address on WOR radio, Mayor Bloomberg responded to Christine Quinn’s hopes that the city will take more control over the transit system. He says that the plan is a good idea in theory, but that it seems unlikely.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: The problem is that the state has this big organization, they would never give up power I don’t think, and the state funds a lot of it. Almost all subway lines in the city will undergo service changes this weekend due to maintenance.

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Senator Chuck Schumer and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced plans to help people impacted by Hurricane Sandy. The expanded efforts will allow homeowners to suspend their mortgage payments for up to 12 months while they repair their homes.

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Police have released surveillance video of a man that attacked a 68-year-old woman in her East Harlem apartment building on Monday.The attack happened on Columbus Avenue near 102nd Street when the suspect tried to steal the woman’s purse and punched her in the face. The victim is in stable condition.Police believe the suspect is in his early 20s. He was last seen wearing an orange baseball cap and blue and white hooded jacket.

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New York City Fleet Week has been cancelled because of sequestration budget cuts.The event welcomes New Yorkers to meet members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. It has been an annual tradition at New York Harbor every year since 1984.

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Mario Batali’s West Village eatery, Babbo, is in jeopardy of losing its zoning license. The Community Board rejected Batali’s renewal request for a 10-year extension. The much-loved restaurant is technically placed in a residential zone. And Batali is facing some backlash from his neighbors on Waverly Place.

–

It’s 42 degrees with scattered showers here in New York City.

For Columbia Radio News, I’m Christie Thorne

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HOST INTRO:

Masterpieces can fetch millions of dollars at arthouse auctions. So if you’re about to buy a Van Gogh or Monet, you probably want to be absolutely sure it’s the real thing. And as Katherine Jacobsen reports, computer analysis is changing the way that art experts can detect a fake.

Photograph by Richard Corman of Madonna and a group of boys in the Lower East Side, 1982. The photo is part of a series on display at the Times Square W Hotel until May 12

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HOST INTRO: As a pop icon, Madonna is known for being, well, revealing. Now a new photo exhibit gives fans some additional insight into the star.  Alexandra Hall has the details.

ALEXANDRA HALL: Black and white portraits of Madonna are all over the lobby of the W Hotel in Times Square. In one, she’s on a rooftop with a group of scowling, school-aged boys in tough, cut-off jeans. She’s the only one smiling, holding a boom box with one hand behind her head. In another, she lies on a rock in jeans and studded belts. Photographer Richard Corman shot the photos of Madonna at her Lower East Side apartment in 1982- and they’ve never been shown. Jody is a journalist from Australia staying at the W hotel with her children. Looking at the photos, what stands out to her most is Madonna’s trend-setting style.

JODY: The armbands and the bangles, the hair with the tie, the makeup, um and the torn jeans. You know, so it was just that look.

HALL: Her young son Amon stands nearby.

AMON: From looking at these pictures, I think she kind of looks like almost wild and out there.

HALL: Like a good wild?

AMON: Yeah, different to today’s wild.

HALL: Looking at the photographs, Jody notices a difference between pop artists in the 1980’s and now.

JODY: Especially looking at these photos, you know, it came from Madonna. It didn’t seem to be that somebody else found her and made her into something else that she wasn’t already.

HALL: Jason Knowles and Pedro Vabuena are also in the lobby. Knowles says that Madonna was ahead of her time.

JASON KNOWLES: She was very cutting edge. What she was singing about and all that was what other people were thinking but she was actually doing what other people were thinking.

HALL: What was she singing about?

KNOWLES: (whisper) Sex! And provocativeness and freedom.

HALL: The two reminisce about the first time they saw her.

KNOWLES: He and I saw Madonna in concert back in 1981 or 2 at a place called Club Illusions in Hialeah, Florida.

PEDRO VABUENA: It was pretty awesome to see her like that because it was before she was famous, it was a small nightclub, it cost 5 dollars to get in.

HALL: Jody Britt is the head of photographer relations and sales at Rock Paper Photo- that’s the group that’s curating the show. She says that the photographer Richard Corman and Madonna met purely by luck.

BRITT: His mother was a casting director. She was casting a film for martin Scorsese- a remake of Cinderella, and Madonna had come in as one of the potential actresses. And Richard’s mother said, you need to shoot this girl.

HALL: She didn’t end up acting in the film. Their photo shoot was one year before Madonna released her first, self-titled album- the one that made her famous. Pedro Vabuena says the photos remind him of what he likes about music from that time.

VABUENA: If you listened to the lyrics that they had back then, it had more meaning and it had something to it.

HALL: The photos will be on display at the Times Square W Hotel lobby until May 12.

Alexandra Hall, Columbia Radio News.

(TIME 2:58)

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HOST INTRO:

Jazz almost seems like a prehistoric form of music, especially for twenty-somethings. But Commentator Lance Dixon discovered he had been a fan since childhood. He just didn’t realize it.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen brings us the news at 4:00 p.m.