We love The Bronx, the much maligned borough of New York City.
I dare even say that Bronx pride surpasses that of other boroughs.
We have so much to be proud of throughout our history giving birth to so many movers and shakers, artists, music genres, and that’s not even touching upon our beautiful, natural resources.
A French Huguenot family, the Lorillards, settled in the area which is now known as Allerton as well as parts of the New York Botanical Garden back in the late 1700s. The family became extremely successful in the tobacco industry and their company would eventually give rise to Lorillard Inc, which makes Newport, Kent, and other cigarettes.
By 1840 they had built what is now known as The Snuff Mill at NYBG which according to the New York Times, “…tobacco was ground into smokeless, powdery form called snuff, which could be flavored and inhaled.”
“The first plant that changed my life was a tomato,” says Karen Washington, a black urban farmer in the Bronx. “It was the one fruit that I used to hate.” But after watching one that she’d grown shift in hue from green to yellow to red and taking a bite of it, she was instantly hooked. “When I tasted that tomato, when it was red and it was ripe, and I picked it off the vine, [it]…changed my world because I never tasted anything so good, so sweet. I wanted to grow everything.”
For a quarter century, all manner of trees and flowers, fruits and vegetables, have thrived across abandoned lots in the Bronx because of Washington. Deemed “the queen of urban farming,” she’s an African-American woman who’s dedicated her life to greening New York City’s poorest borough. Since 1985, Washington has assisted dozens of neighborhoods build their own community gardens, taught workshops on farming and promoted racial diversity in agriculture.”
Back on a cold Saturday evening in January of 2013, thousands of people returned home to the South Bronx at the Bronx Documentary Center for Seis del Sur’s first exhibition, ‘Dispatches From Home by Six Nuyorican Photographers which took us through an emotional photographic and multimedia journey into our darkest past—yet vibrant and full of life.
This Friday, October 23rd at 6:30PM at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, the collective returns with their third exhibition which not only brings back the original from 2013 but combines it with more contemporary work focusing on barrios throughout ‘Latino America’.
Back in July, the Kennedy Center announced that Rita Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico and moved with her family to The Bronx when she was 6, will be one of this year’s recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors which is given to those in the performing arts that have greatly contributed to American culture.
Moreno is no stranger to awards having been the 3rd artist to receive the coveted EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards and the first Latino to do so back in 1977, the same year Helen Hayes became the 2nd artist and first female in achieving the same.
Last year when we first got wind that The New York Botanical Garden was planning a Frida Kahlo exhibition we knew it was going to be big—but never imagined how big.
When we wrote about the show coming, a full year before it was scheduled to open, tens of thousands of people flooded our servers and shared our posts in excitement that this was happening and that it was happening in The Bronx.
Third generation Bronxite, Antoinette Legnini, and Fordham University student who lives in Belmont in the shadows of the university has these heartfelt words to say which have resonated with many other students online:
“I have never felt like more of a stranger in my own home on Arthur Ave than when I started going to Fordham.
The disconnect between students on campus with people who have been living in this community for years is so great that local Bronx residents are referred to as the (now derogatory term) “locals” – who are assumed to be predominantly Black or Latino. But even with my discomfort on campus – I’m still a white student and have never felt personally discriminated against because I’m not assumed to be from the Bronx.
Tonight at the Andrew Freedman Home from 6pm to 9pm ‘La Lucha II DOM & HTI: Visions of Tomorrow, One Island’ opens up and continues the conversation it began earlier this year on the complex relationship between two countries that have similar shared histories and an island: Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Photographer Ricky Flores, born and raised in The Bronx during our most tumultuous times had a front row seat to what was happening—along with his camera.
Ricky’s work from those times are not just of the devastation that happened but the humanity that was present and how alive the areas were with people, culture, and art despite all of that.
Decades later and the advent of the internet into the mainstream, his photography was available to the larger audience of the web and this is where 8 years ago 2 graffiti artists from Brazil, Ananda Nahu and Izalog, became so enthralled and connected to the images that they began to use them as templates for creating beautiful murals in Brazil.
Last Thursday an event was held at Port Morris Distillery with The Bronx Brewery, Ruben Diaz Jr, FreshDirect, Marlene Cintron, Executive Director of the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation to celebrate the newly formed business partnership between PMD and FreshDirect.
Our borough president began tweeting and even sent out a press release as a victory of sorts in the many attempts his administration has attempted to divide our communities on the issue of FreshDirect coming to The Bronx.
The Bronx is full of activists and people who are always doing things for our beautiful borough, always giving back.
But there’s one special woman who does so much without much fanfare, and oftentimes goes unnoticed by many since fame or fortune isn’t her endgame.
It’s about leaving The Bronx, our beautiful borough, a better place than we inherited it from our previous generation so that future generations can live safely, in an environmentally sound Bronx.
That woman is Nilka Martell.
Daniel Lanzilotta, grew up in the Woodlawn/Wakefield area of the North Bronx and ended up on a journey that took him across the country and eventually across the Atlantic to France where he spends half his time.
For years, Daniel has been collecting garbage that washes upon the shores of France—and even our own Bronx River and our borough’s shores and turns these items that are destroying our ecosystem into beautiful sculptures.
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