Street Style: Fur!

This semester I will be working with Claire Glass, another NYU student, to produce a series of audio slide shows called Street Style for the Local East Village. The series is based on "On the Street"by Bill Cunningham of the New York Times and will be running on the blog every other Friday, so keep checking in for new styles seen around the East Village!


http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/street-style-fur-fashions/

PEP announces school closings despite public protest

Nearly 2,000 students, parents and teachers filled the auditorium of Fort Greene Technical High School in Brooklyn on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011 to protest school closings by the Panel on Education Policy. In the last week, the panel has decided to close 23 schools it has deemed "failing" based on annual progress reports and graduation rates. (Rachel Ohm/NYU).

NEW YORK- More than 1,000 people walked out after protesting school closings during the Panel on Education Policy meeting Thursday night at Fort Greene Technical High School in Brooklyn. After more than six hours of public testimony, the panel voted to close 13 schools in a decision that followed the closing of 10 schools earlier in the week.

      “Black must go,” the public chanted, expressing their disapproval of Chancellor Cathleen Black, who appeared to be grimacing from her far away seat on stage. Her appointment in November has since faced criticism and lawsuits concerned with her lack of education credentials.


     The crowd held signs and blew whistles, rang bells and crowded the aisles of the auditorium. The mascot from Jamaica High School, a beaver, showed up to lead the crowd of angry parents, teachers and students holding signs that read “Stop Racist School Closings” and “Bolder Faster Change.”


      Listen: Audio clip of protestors at Thursday's Education Policy Panel meeting

     Charm Rhoomes is PTA President and mother of an 11th grader at Jamaica High School, one of the schools that PEP decided to close. In the 2009-2010 school year, Jamaica had a four-year graduation rate of 50 percent, below the citywide average of 63 percent. Rhoomes said she is “totally amazed at the lack of resources being provided to the students at Jamaica high school.” She came to the meeting with a list of 29 classes and programs that have been canceled at Jamaica since last fall. These included the engineering program, which was the reason her son decided to apply to Jamaica, and the Gateway (honors) program. 

     She says her son has studied hard and last fall qualified to take an Advanced Placement math class. On Wednesday he went to class and was informed that the teacher had been sent to another school and the class would no longer be taught at Jamaica. 

     “These students were basically told that after working hard for the last three years, they can’t have this class anymore,” she said. “Why is this happening?”

     Earlier in the week, PEP announced plans to close Metropolitan Corporate Academy in Brooklyn, a school founded in cooperation with investors from Goldman Sachs in 1992. Devonte Escoffery, student body president at Metropolitan Corporate, explained that once a school starts to phase-out enrollment drops. Since resources are allotted based on enrollment, resources decline when a school is in the phase-out process-- even if there are still students there. 

     “The D.O.E. cut off enrollment for eighth graders, so we only have 20 ninth graders,” he said. “The less students we have, the less money. We don’t have a gym, we don’t have an auditorium and our students don’t even have enough room to eat lunch.”


 Listen: Rap performed by students from Metropolitan Corporate Academy to protest closing

     Alan Cole, Jamaica track coach and retired physical education teacher, said that in addition to a lack of resources Jamaica has seen a disproportionately high influx of troubled students in recent years. 

     “In my classes I had students who were truants and who had disciplinary problems,” he said. “Every time I asked them where they lived, it was nowhere near the school.” 


      He said that in one year the school received 36 students from Riker’s Island juvenile detention facility.

     “Stop sending kids who don’t live anywhere near the school,” he said. “We will take our share of undereducated kids but don’t send them all here.” 

     
     In 2009 the panel voted to close 19 schools, including Jamaica, but a New York State court ruled that the decisions were illegal after lawsuits were brought forth by the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP. The decision meant that the city had to start the process over again and include more pubic input. Speakers are cut off after two minutes and yet PEP meetings now stretch long into the night as parents, teachers and students line up at microphones.  

     “It really pains me to see these schools closing,” said Dmytro Fedkowskyj, Queens representative to the Educational Policy Panel. “There will be close to 2,000 students in these schools in the next three years and we will demand success in these proposed phase-out schools.” 

Village landmark takes on new identity as a tea shop

Please check out my first post on the New York Times Local East Village Blog:
http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/an-overhaul-at-an-iconic-address/

By Rachel Ohm/ NYU.

Also got a shout out on GrubStreet at New York magazine: http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2011/02/will_they_call_it_physical_gra.html

Celebrity chef sells vegetables to school kids

Sophia Arnau, 9, tries tri-colored salad at P.S. 63 on Wednesday, January 26, 2011. The tri-colored salad is a new menu item at New York City public schools and comes from a recipe by celebrity chef Ellie Kreiger. By Rachel Ohm/ NYU.

By Rachel Ohm
       NEW YORK- Children at Public School 63 filled their lunch trays with spinach salad, fat free chocolate milk, whole wheat pasta and a tri-color vegetable salad on Wednesday.

  According to teachers on lunch duty, the room was unusually quiet as they sat down to try a new vegetable they had been talking and learning about in class for two weeks - cauliflower. 

The tri-color vegetable salad, which includes cauliflower as well as broccoli and roast red pepper, comes from a recipe by celebrity chef Ellie Krieger, host of the Food Network show "A Healthy Appetite.”  It is a new addition to the public school lunch menu and was introduced and prepared by Krieger at Public School (P.S.) 63 in the East Village on Wednesday.

"Childhood obesity is a real problem across the country and across the city of New York," said Kimberly Kessler, New York City Food Policy Coordinator. "We need to recognize that nutrition can make a real difference."

Ellie Krieger, registered dietician and host of the Food Network's "A Healthy Appetite," prepares tri-color salad at P.S. 63 on Wednesday, January 26, 2011. "It's really simple," she said. "The chefs in New York City schools have a lot of kids to prep for and this is doable." By Rachel Ohm/ NYU. 

 In 2010 the Department of Education teamed up with schools all over the city to sponsor wellness committees, organizations made up of parents, teachers and staff interested in improving the quality and wholesomeness of foods in school cafeterias.
      Krieger, who is a registered dietician as well as professional chef, helped Michelle Obama lead the "Healthy Kids" Fair at the White House in 2010, and has since become involved in New York City public schools as the head of a wellness committee at Public School (P.S.) 75, where her daughter is a student. 

Because children are notoriously picky eaters many schools, such as P.S. 63 and P.S.75, and their wellness committees have taken initiatives to introduce the idea of healthy eating in the classroom as well as in the cafeteria. 

Ellie Krieger's tri-color vegetable salad contains broccoli, cauliflower and roasted red pepper tossed with olive oil and fresh basil. It was introduced as part of the menu at New York City public schools on Wednesday, January 26, 2011. By Rachel Ohm/ NYU. 

 Sophia Arnau, 9, a fourth-grader at P.S.63 says she only likes carrots and salad, but always tries new vegetables “because they’re healthy.” 

Getting kids to see trying new foods as an adventure is part of what Krieger calls “vegetable marketing,” an idea that she has put into practice through a vegetable tasting program at P.S. 75. 

“So many billions of dollars are spent marketing foods to children that are bad for them, but this is our opportunity to market foods to kids that are good for them,” she said. 

About two weeks before cauliflower was introduced on the menu at P.S. 75, the Wellness Committee entered the classroom, encouraging kids to touch and feel the vegetable and starting conversations about how different families prepare cauliflower and where it is grown. 

The next week they organized a taste test, in which different colored types of cauliflower were served in tasting cups at lunch. 

“When we finally cooked the cauliflower, the kids were so excited,” said Krieger. “They were like, ‘We get to taste cauliflower!’ Some tasted it and didn’t like it, and that’s fine. They just need to try new things and it was so great to see these kids excited about it.” 

The final step in vegetable marketing is communication with parents, which Krieger says can be achieved by sending fliers home with kids and encouraging parents to cook vegetables at home. 

Annalee Sinclair, PTA secretary and a parent of a fifth-grader at P.S. 63, says healthy eating habits start at home and many children have never tasted some vegetables. 

Children at P.S.63 in the East Village section of Manhattan are served lunch on Wednesday, January 26, 2011.  The menu included Mediterranean roast chicken, whole wheat pasta and tri-color vegetable salad, a new item. By Rachel Ohm/ NYU.

 “We need to prepare kids, to give them a sense of awareness and of being involved with the food," she said. "For so long it was just food on a tray and they had no relationship to it.”
     Since P.S. 63 started a wellness committee last spring Sinclair says she has seen the amount of food wasted decrease and has also noticed that more children are eating vegetables. 
     She said her son really likes vegetables, as long as they are not "boring," and says she puts lemon and spices on them at home. 
     Juan Blasencia, a second-grader, agreed that spices make vegetables more appealing. 
     "I really like the pasta because it's good. It's salty and spicy," he said. "I'm going to try the vegetables." 
     

Semester final

Here is my final story for the semester, a news article about smoking within the LGBT community. It has been published on Pavement Pieces:
http://pavementpieces.com/lgbt-community-smoking-more-than-straights-study-shows/

Lizzard Kisses

Here is a story I wrote profiling Lizzard Kisses, a Bed-Stuy band, last month. I still haven't gotten the edits on it, but I figured I would put it up. I haven't written as many stories lately because I am busy working on my semester final, which is a reporting trip to Philadelphia. I will be covering public housing in Philly and am traveling there next week, hopefully to interview a family in a low-income unit. Here is the Lizzard Kisses story, with pictures:

Sleeping In and Staying Up: Lizard Kisses on The Band and Their New EP

By Rachel Ohm

There is a lot of space in Marc Merza’s room. A solitary bookshelf stands opposite a desk and a mattress on the ground. There is barely anything on the walls, cast in a baby blue light from a single bulb attached to the ceiling and reflecting the faded paint. 

However, the extra space seems to disappear when the guitar comes off the wall, the microphone moves to a stand in the center of the floor and Cory Siegler sings.

Marc and Cory record and write from the sparsely decorated apartment that they share with six other people, where the few items besides furniture include headphones that hang on the wall; the reel-to-reel machine in the corner and an envelope of Polaroid’s on the bed stand. The bookshelf contains folders filled with Cory’s drawings and album cover designs.

The Bed-Stuy duo, which goes by the name Lizard Kisses, just finished their first EP, a compilation of ethereal soul music mostly written and recorded on a three-week long stay in Vermont in October. At home in New York they talk about the origins of Lizard Kisses and the making of “Sleeping In.” 

“We started Lizard Kisses just because we thought it was a lot of fun,” said Marc. “We wanted to do something together and collaborate on this and we had a blast doing it.”

The couple met at the Guggenheim Museum last spring, where she worked in the gift shop and he sold audio guides. 

    Their first date was to a show he was playing with his band Inoculus. 

    Since then, they have been writing and recording their own music. 

    “We started dating and music naturally came out of it,” said Cory, a self-described visual artist who graduated from Pratt in 2008 with a degree in fine arts. “I never really did music before. It’s kind of a new thing.”

    Aside from elementary school chorus, Cory, who grew up in Yonkers, says she never sang but always had a musical family. She has aunts and uncles who sing and a grandmother who plays the flute, but it wasn’t until recently that she discovered her own voice.

    “I do more visual arts, but when me and Marc started dating this past spring I noticed that he’s always playing his guitar or ukulele,” she said, sipping green tea from a Zabar’s mug. 

    Marc, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, plays in two bands. He came to New York two years ago on the heels of a friend who worked at a record store with him in Berkley. 

    “I probably went to my first show when I was 11 or 12,” says Marc. “My sister brought me to a pop-punk show. We saw New Found Glory and I think Reel Big Fish. My sister was dating a guy at the time who was really into skateboarding and he gave me this CD by this band called Homegrown.”

    He says he started reading the inside covers of CD’s to learn about new bands. He watched music videos to teach himself the bass. He got involved in promotion for local bands and would hand out fliers and merchandise when he was still in high school. 

    “As I got older there was a transition where I started writing my own music and playing shows,” he says. “I always really loved bass and that was the first instrument I picked up. I learned mainly by listening to songs and playing by ear. I don’t know much about theory or chords or anything like that.”

Lizard Kisses does a fair amount of experimenting on their 9 song EP, introducing different instruments to mix up the sound. 

The short album includes a tambourine, toy instruments from Chinatown and “this bamboo Chinese flute recorder thing,” found on Canal Street. In Vermont they also recorded sounds like cars driving by and crickets. 

Usually Marc writes a melody for guitar and Cory will add the lyrics after. She 

sings and he plays guitar or bass. 

One exception is the first song they wrote- “Where the Living Room is Fine,” 

which didn’t make it on to the EP. The song was originally recorded in Cory’s living room in her old apartment, which had a piano.  

“Basically that song is just about the living room,” said Cory. “It was the first song I ever wrote and Marc told me to just write words. I didn’t know what to write about and he said write about anything.”

“I had this really pretty guitar line, but I’m not that great of a singer,” said Marc. “I brought it to Cory because I really love her voice. It was kinda by accident. It was an organic thing.”

What followed was a three-week road trip to West Woodsboro, Vt. in October, where Cory’s parents have a summer home. They brought Marc’s guitars, their own amplifiers, two microphones, a computer and the toy instruments. They recorded everything on the Mac program GarageBand. 

The EP includes 4 songs and 5 other pieces that the duo describes as more “experimental- they have these long interludes of instrumental.” The title, “Sleeping In,” derives from the mornings spent lying in bed followed by staying up all night to write and record. 

    Lizard Kisses are now working on artwork to go along with the EP. They have a collection of Polaroid photos from Vermont that they plan to use as artwork for the inside cover of the album. 

Cory, who has a background in drawing and print making, has designed a cover 

with geometric designs and the name “Lizard Kisses.”

  The songs are available to download for free on Lizard Kisses’ Bandcamp site, and they are making plans to take their music live, searching for a backup vocalist and a second guitarist. 

For now though, they are content writing music and playing in the upstairs room of their apartment.   

“Lizard Kisses is something we started because it was fun,” said Marc. “We want our music to be accessible to as many people as possible.”   

Photos: 

Lizzard Kisses 
Cory Siegler, 24, of the duo Lizzard Kisses, sings "Old Friend," a song she wrote about lost acquaintances. Cory and Marc Merza, 22, pictured here on the guitar, write and record their own music from their Brooklyn apartment.  

Waiting for the right note 

Marc Merza, 22, one-half of the musical duo Lizard Kisses, strums his acoustic guitar on Nov. 1, 2010. His eyes are on Cory Siegler, his girlfriend and band mate, as she sings the song "Old Friend," written and recorded by the two in their Brooklyn apartment. 

Big Apple Tweed Ride

After moving to the East Village, I returned to Brooklyn today to cover the Big Apple Tweed Ride, a bicycling and social event that encourages participants to ride vintage bicycles and dress in 1920's era British cycling costumes. The clothing was FANTASTIC. I went to the post-ride brunch, which was held at Flatbush Farms in Park Slope. Below are my photos- this was a photos-only assignment- the pictures tell the story. I only handed in three to be graded, but I had a hard time choosing so I decided to put the rest up here. I would definitely consider participating in next year's Tweed Ride, it was a lot of fun! I've included the captions on the photos I submitted for class, and brief descriptions next to the others. Last week we learned PhotoShop in class, so I used it to enhance a few of these...

Post-bike beer and brunch 
Tristan Henry-Wilson, 29, or Brooklyn, drinks a beer in the outdoor courtyard of Flatbush Farms in Park Slope, Brooklyn on Sunday, Nov.21, 2010 following the Big Apple Tweed Ride. The Tweed Ride is an organized group bicycle following a route from Prospect Park to Park Slope. Participants rode vintage bicycles and wore encouraged to wear tweed and vintage outfits in the style of the Tweed Run, an event held in London annually since 2009 that celebrates British cycling culture. By Rachel Ohm.

Dana Colomer, 39, of Weehawken, N.J. enjoys a cocktail after brunch at Flatbush Farms in Park Slope after the Tweed Ride.

Victorian cyclist after brunch
Dana Colomer, 39, of Weehawken, N.J. dons a hat from Ireland at the Big Apple Tweed Ride in Brooklyn on Sunday, Nov.21, 2010. Colomer, who rode with her husband, Carlos, said that although she is not a regular cyclist, she was inspired to participate in the cycling and social event after reading about the Tweed Ride, an organized group bicycle ride that takes place in London every year and was first held in Brooklyn last May. Participants were encouraged to dress in vintage clothing and afterwards enjoyed brunch and live music at Flatbush Farms in Park Slope, Brooklyn. By Rachel Ohm.

Vintage bicycles stand outside Flatbush Farms in Park Slope, Brooklyn while riders enjoy brunch at Flatbush Farms.

Stacey Cueros, 39, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, won the "Most Ravishing Lady" award for her vintage accessories.

Victorian photographer
A woman wearing a 1920's cloche hat, lace gloves and pearl bracelets takes a picture as awards are presented for the best fashions at the Big Apple Tweed Ride in Park Slope, Brooklyn on Sunday, Nov.21, 2010. In the background event organizer Ouigi Theodore, 33, of Brooklyn, reads the awards and the cellist for the Dixieland Band the Scandinavian 1/2 Breeds holds her instrument in a moment of silence. Participants in the group bicycle ride enjoyed music, brunch and vintage fashions at Flatbush Farms after the ride. By Rachel Ohm.

Most ravishing lady 
Stacey Cuevas, 37, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, enjoys brunch at Flatbush Farms in Brooklyn moments before winning an award for the best accessory worn by a female rider at the Big Apple Tweed Ride in Brooklyn on Sunday, Nov.21, 2010. The Tweed Ride is an annual biking and social event that celebrates bicycling and Victorian fashion. Participants were encouraged to dress in Victorian attire and many rode vintage bicycles on the ride from Prospect Park to Flatbush Farms in Park Slope, where brunch and beverages were served. Cuevas was wearing her great-grandmother's watch, costume bracelets and pearl earrings and a locket her father gave her mother in 1975 with a picture of them in it. By Rachel Ohm.