Rare Bookstore, Skyline Books, Closes Doors After 20 Years
DAILY NEWS, published 3 February, 2010
Say goodbye to yet another dusty, musty piece of vanishing Manhattan.
All that’s now left of Skyline Books is a sign in the window reading “End of an Era. Thanks for 20 Great Years.”
That’s how long Robert Warren’s used book store at 13 W. 18th St. lasted - a kind of hole-in- the-wall home to a universe of rare books, from first editions of Beat Generation classics like “The Dharma Bums,” to pornographic Italian comics to an autographed copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office.”
But last Saturday, Warren, 55, bid the neighborhood farewell. He says he can’t afford to renew the lease, which increased by more than 50%.
“The evils are three,” he said, combing through a copy of an $8,000 first edition of “Les Americans” by Robert Frank. “The big book chains, Amazon.com and online auctions like eBay.”
For years, the Bronx native collected books, scouting for them at fairs and estate sales.
Warren says Skyline Books was his life, its employees his family, among them his “fiancée,” Linda, a 12-year-old, 15-pound gray tabby cat fond of jumping the shelves.
“Linda is the manager in command,” said human store manager Christopher Cosgrove. “She is cold with dogs but super-friendly with customers.”
“You know why I come here?” asked Joseph Jesselli, a reporter for thesmokinggun.com, a couple of days before the closing. “For the creaking floor, the dust, the feeling of a book in your hands.”
Others would show up just to meet other bibliophiles.
“This place was a communion between people who love books and history,” said Jennifer Parkhurst, a former English teacher who was flipping through “First Selected Poems” by William Packard, whom she called a friend.
Last week, Warren was walking around his racks, reshuffling travel guides and philosophy pamphlets, making sure they were not trashed by customers.
“For them, they are just books,” he said, picking up a children’s tale, “Horseshoe Tree” by Lucy Daniels and stroking it. “But I know them one by one.”
Warren plans to donate most of his collection - about 10,000 books valued at $75,000 - to New Alternatives, a nonprofit that works with homeless kids. Warren says he wants to share his treasure trove with younger generations.
For himself, Warren will only keep a bright red poster, a Republican banner from the Spanish Civil War, which he plans to put in his living room. Many customers had inquired about buying the poster, but were rebuffed by the steep asking price - $10,000. That’s a joke, because it’s actually not for sale.
“Sometimes there are things that have no price,” Warren said. “Like this shop; it was my baby.”
Karina Ioffee contributed reporting and editing
Remittances a pittance: Ecuador feels pain of U.S. economic ills
DAILY NEWS, published 23 June, 2009
Rosa Martinez used to stroll to the local money transfer office in Corona every week to send $200 to her family in Cuenca,Ecuador.
She still goes to the Delgado Travel office, but not to send money. Instead, it is she who collects a little cash from those family members in Cuenca.
“My husband used to earn $140 a day working three, four days a week as a construction worker,” said Martinez, 48. “Now he gets $80 a day and works two, maximum three days a week.”
The economic downturn has battered the nation in recent months, but it also has deeply affected countries like Ecuador, where a recently improved standard of living has devolved with less money flowing from immigrants working in the U.S.
“I hope that God fixes this mess,” Martinez said. “If not, we’ll have to go back to Cuenca.”
Hector Delgado, president of Delgado Travel, which has 70 offices in Ecuador and 29 in New York, began seeing a decrease in money transfers last fall.
“At the beginning, it was a slight reduction of 5% in October,” he said. “But then we went up to 9%, 15%, up to 22% in February.”
Data released recently by the Central Bank of Ecuador confirms the trend: Remittances decreased by 8.6% in 2008. They amounted to $3.1 million in 2007, dwindled to about $2.8 million last year and are continuing to fall.
In Queens, the struggle of Ecuadoran immigrants can be seen at “la parada,” or “the stop,” a stretch on 69th St. and 37th Ave. between a small grassy park dotted with yellow tulips and a basketball court.
Day laborers like Enrique Cunas arrive at 6 a.m. and wait for pickup trucks to pull over. Men swarm the truck when the driver yells, “I got jobs!”
The workers rely on a patchwork of jobs to feed families 3,000 miles away and fuel their dreams of building Swiss chalet-style houses to enjoy when they go back to Ecuador. But these days, most hardly make enough money to keep their beds in cramped apartments.
“I have six kids in Ecuador,” said Cunas, a builder from Naranjito, a village of 13,000 in Guayas. “When I speak to my wife and my kids, I ask them to understand that the situation is kind of difficult here. It really is.”
By 4 p.m., workers who haven’t found a job for the day start kicking a soccer ball around in the basketball court.
“At least we can have some fun playing ball,” said José Morales, 22, a construction worker.
Meanwhile, the workers’ dream homes in Ecuador sit only half-built, a sign of tough times on two continents.
“Farmers who have family in the [U.S.] were quickly building big houses in the outskirts of the town,”Nadia Balden, owner of Mayo restaurant in Cuenca, said in a phone interview. “Now, you see their lambs and cows lazily walking around the building sites.”
Nick Loomis contributed reporting
From Baghdad via Bronx
DAILY NEWS, published 22 March, 2009
Alaa Majeed begins her day before dawn, going online in her Bronx apartment to read Sunni, Shiite and Kurd newspapers.
In the dark, quiet hours, as the journalist sips Iraqi coffee from a Yankees mug, her thoughts drift back to Baghdad.
“I miss the smell of the streets of Baghdad, the honking of the cars,” Majeed said. “Iraq is in my veins.”
But as the sun rises over the Grand Concourse, Majeed’s new world comes to life, a new world far different from the world she left - actually fled - behind.
She slips into the subway without checking to see if someone is following her. She sits on the train and opens her laptop, knowing she is safe and can work on her story.
Majeed wonders: Will the editor be interested in an explosion that killed 50 people in a Baghdad market? Will he say that the story is weak because more than 100 people died yesterday?
Her doubts are only a piece of the daily puzzle that she must solve as a freelance reporter for United Press International, Public Broadcasting Service and The Washington Times newspaper.
Majeed, 35, arrived in the United States in December 2006, and quickly realized that many of her American neighbors were more concerned with football than sectarian violence in Iraq.
Some American editors were not particularly enthusiastic, either.
“In May 2007 I pitched a story about a family of Iraqi refugees in Jordan,” said Majeed. “The editor said that they had run a story already the year before.”
Majeed is also frustrated because she would like to report inside her own country, rather than from 6,000 miles away.
“Sitting in my comfortable room here in the Bronx and writing about Iraq doesn’t feel like reporting to me,” she said. “I want to talk to people, see their faces.”
But in Iraq, Majeed and her family were in danger. Iraqi journalists who worked for Western news organizations were targeted by the militia – and female journalists like Majeed were in particular danger.
“In summer 2005, after interviewing people outside Abu Ghraib prison, a stranger followed me,” she said, recalling just one of many close calls. “I was thinking ‘Oh my God, he wants to kidnap me.’ Luckily my driver picked me up just in time.”
Majeed made it to New York, where she also serves as International Reporter in Residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
But Majeed knows she is one of the lucky ones. Other Iraqi journalists who risked their lives for Western media outlets have seen visa applications fails due to bureaucratic glitches. And if they do get here, reality is often disillusioning. In Iraq, they were indispensable reporters. In America they are just freelancers willing to share sad stories.
In the afternoon, she picks up her two children, Yousef, 1o, and Mohammed, 8, at school. Their father sent them from Baghdad in January, reuniting them with their mother after three years apart.
“They saw blood and dead teachers in the street, neighbors kidnapped,” Majeed said sadly.
She still want to return to Iraq “when the situation like stabilizes.”
“I wold love to report what it’s happening behind the scenes. What is the real situation for women and children? Is there water? Is there electricity? What is going to happen to all these widows and orphans?”
“It is a story that needs to be told.”
Sharing Business Space to Boost Income
DAILY NEWS, published 22 December, 2008
It’s a Saturday afternoon at the Great American Laundromat in the East Tremont section of the Bronx, where Hawa Sidibe has spent the better part of her day.
But she’s not impatiently awaiting the rinse cycle — she’s busy braiding a woman’s hair into neat rows in a makeshift salon the size of a walk-in closet.
Brushes and a hair dryer fill modest shelf space, as do items for sale: socks, gold-colored belts, knockoff designer bags and DVDs of African movies.
“An outside store is expensive for me, that’s why I have it inside a Laundromat,” said Sidibe, a 26-year-old immigrant from Mali.
At a time when the profit margins of countless small businesses are shrinking, shops-within-a-shop like Sidibe’s are multiplying throughout the city.
“It’s a great way for young companies to get started,” said Cliff Schorer, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. “Going forward, we are going to see a lot of this.”
To offset his expenses, Laundromat owner Peter Sternhas been subletting part of his space, on Southern Blvd. near the Bronx Zoo, for five years, first bringing in a woman selling beauty products, then a tax preparer.
“Usually people spend more than two hours in a Laundromat, so the more services the customers get in that time, the better competitive advantage the shop has,” Stern said. “Hawa helps me by paying rent, but the main thing is I want to keep my customers happy.”
Jessica Rivera was one customer who loved the idea of multi-tasking. “Hawa braids my hair, my kids do their homework, my clothes get dry,” she said.
Splitting space can make for close quarters, but also can help entrepreneurs get started.
Ricardo Torres, an immigrant from Colombia, saw a For Rent sign several months ago on the window of a shop on Roosevelt Ave. in Jackson Heights,Queens. The location was prime, right near the subway.
Two businesses were already inside: a cell phone vendor and a photo developer. Torres opened a money-wiring business.
“The rent is cheaper here than if we’d have our own space, and we’d rather be smaller than waste money,” said Eduardo Maña, the manager of Torres’ business, Transmilenio Cargo. “It’s all about maximizing resources and minimizing costs.”
Whether such arrangements are legal depends on lease terms and the types of businesses. Whether they’ll be successful is another matter, since many are not natural partners.
Last year, Mamadou Diallo asked Zach Toolsee, owner of Toolsee Laundrymat onWestchesterAve. in the Bronx Riversection of the borough, if he could rent a portion of his space. Diallo, a recent immigrant from Guinea who also drives a taxi at night, wanted to set up a shop selling items like Chinese slippers, Yankee caps and bandanas.
Toolsee, facing $4,000 monthly rent and a $2,000 monthly water bill, among other charges, agreed for $1,000. A year later, both complain that business is slow.
“My dream is to start a business outside of a Laundromat,” Diallo said.