All posts by Paulina Librizzi

I'm not from Staten Island, because you must be born there to be a native, even if your parents went to Brooklyn for the delivery. My story is not that annoying. I spent the first few years of my life in the Bronx before I moved to Staten Island. After elementary school, I attended I.S. 187 for middle school. I then studied Art at F.H. LaGuardia H.S of Music Art, and Performing Arts. So, after years of dabbling in all sorts of visual and performing arts, I decided I needed to study chemistry. For fun.
General Discussion

East New York and New Affordable Housing

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Mayor DeBlasio is planning to build a new housing project in East New York. Although the neighborhood is not considerably affluent, I thought that the comments made by many of the residents were relevant to our discussions. In particular, the comment “New housing should not overwhelm the neighborhood’s character, one resident, Tommy Smiling, said as he stood outside a bodega on Pitkin Avenue. In swiftly gentrifying parts of Brooklyn like Clinton Hill, where Mr. Smiling’s son lives, “it’s all brownstones, and then you have this skyscraper,” he said. “I’m not into that. Four stories? O.K., that’s not bad.” ” was striking

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/nyregion/brooklynites-welcome-a-plan-for-more-affordable-housing.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

Assignment 4

Arthur Avenue: Cannolis and Other Tubular Objects

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While walking towards Arthur Avenue, the streets seem similar to parts of Spanish Harlem. The bodegas and shops share the same character. Some of the signs are even in Spanish. Then I hit the intersection of 187th St. and Arthur Avenue.

I cannot remember the last time I was here.

Quite the literal truth, considering I was about two and a half when my family moved to another borough. Still, whenever my father said, “I’m going to the Bronx tomorrow” at dinner, I knew he would bring back capers, pine nuts, and my favorite buttery green olives.

Arthur Avenue is a street in the Belmont section of the Bronx. It is home to a large concentration of Italian bakeries and specialty stores. The first one I stepped into was a place called Casa Della Mozzarella. On one side of the narrow store of there were pastas, canned specialties, and imported sweets. The other side of the shop was taken up mostly by a glass casing covering an array of olives, cheeses, and meats. Cheese, like bulbous stalactites, hung from the ceiling. According to the owner, this cheese is all made in house.

A woman was in the shop while I was there. She had an air of familiarity with the place, requesting “the usual” and asking if there was any of this or that. I asked her “What’s good here?” Her response: “This place is a gold mine.”

She goes there once a week for her meats, cheeses, and olives. It is about a ten minute walk from her apartment on 184th street. She’s been living in the same neighborhood for about 20 years, after moving to her current residence after college. “I’ve seen the neighborhood change, but this place hasn’t, and that’s all I care about.”

The next stop on my journey was to the Arthur Avenue Retail Market. When my father goes up to the Bronx to get olives, he goes to this market. Stepping inside, I clearly see why. The barrels of olives, dried tomatoes, dried mushrooms, and cured meats bring me back to the time I was in Rome. While in Rome, I stumbled upon an array of outdoor street merchants on my way back from the Pantheon, several of whom sold their wares in the same containers. However, Arthur Avenue’s market is indoors, which added a different dimension to the traditional open-air market. Meats and cheeses have a ceiling to hang from, unlike their old world predecessors. I spoke to the man behind the meat counter while in the Arthur Avenue market, the grandson of an Italian immigrant. “This market has been around since I can remember. People come and go, but everyone in the know, they know us. So we’re here to stay, you know.”

The Arthur Avenue Retail Market was created under Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City in the 1930’s. He decided to consolidate many of New York City’s pushcart vendors into several indoor markets. One was located in Belmont, home to many of the City’s Italian immigrants. This market, after opening in 1940, grew into the Arthur Avenue market. During the rougher days of the Bronx, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the market was not as profitable, but it was renovated in the eighties. It has been a constant fixture of the neighborhood for almost 75 years. The attitude of the vendors reflects that. Said the woman behind the counter of the pasticceria “I’ve only been working here three years, but I’ve been in the market my entire life.”

As I was ambling in and out of shops, I came to the conclusion that I would end up on a cannoli tour of the neighborhood. I purchased the pastry from four different bakeries, first from the pasticceria within the Arthur Avenue Market. “These are best eaten within the next two to three hours,” she cautioned after dusting them with powdered sugar.

The market is also home to a peculiar little stand that sells cigars. Behind a wooden counter, three people sit rolling tobacco in tobacco leaves. It is not all that common to find shops that specialize in making cigars here in New York, but the influence of The Godfather is strong here. I spoke to one of the people making cigars. He was from the Dominican Republic, and he learned how to make cigars before he came here. “People come here for cigars, because they know what we make is good,” he says. However, the stall in the Arthur Avenue Retail Market is not the only cigar shop on the block. I passed by Arthur Avenue Cigars on my trip down the street. Peering in the window I saw a much neater display of cigars, but I did not see anyone manually making cigars (and as a nonsmoker, I did not want to enter the shop).

I then went to another bakery. I asked about business, and whether or not it was competitive here. The girl behind the counter responded generally. “Yeah, it’s competitive, but we’ve been here about ten years.” I thought that was a little bit of a short lifetime for an Italian bakery in this neighborhood, but the girl just shrugged and went to the next customer.

I was not able to glean much from the third bakery I visited either. That particular shop doubled as a café, and was quite busy around noontime. I had to wait a while before my presence was acknowledged. However, I did overhear the conversation of three women in the bakery as they were ordering.

“Anything with chocolate or cream is good with me,” said one.

“Then you’d have the entire shop,” one of her companions responded.

They then dissolved into a conversation about the block. One woman was visiting from Wisconsin. She was excited to come and visit her sister in New York. The two women who were not visiting seemed excited to show her around their neighborhood. “Wait until you see the market,” said one of the women excitedly. “There are barrels brimming with goodies!”

Sweets and treats are not the only things the block has to offer.

“It’s communion season, so it’s a busy time of year for us” says the woman behind the back counter of Cerini Coffee and Gifts. The store specializes in coffee, coffee accessories, and ceramic gifts, and she is unpacking and packing boxes with carefully wrapped favors. “I have been working here about three years, but the owner was originally on 187th St for about 28 years. She’s been in business for almost 35 years now.” I asked her where the merchandise she’s carefully unpacking comes from.

“Well, a lot of the smaller favors come from China. Cheaper, you know? We still get a lot of our inventory from Italy too though.”

She spoke about how people appreciate the authenticity of the store. “We get people from as far away as Italy.”

It’s not the only place people come from far and wide to visit. While in the retail market, I spoke to the woman behind the counter of Mount Caramel Gourmet foods. In a thick accent, she says “We get tourists, but also locals too.” She was born a few blocks away, at the Mt. Caramel Church, and her sister lives in Pelham Bay Park. “Fewer people speak Italian, but business, it is good,” She says, when asked about changes in the neighborhood. “Outside of this block, people speak Spanish.”

In fact, according to the census bureau, the Hispanic population of Belmont has seen the most growth in the past ten years: a 16% change. Still, this Little Italy shows few signs of shrinkage and is proud of its legacy. For instance, a restaurant on the block had a painting of the Trinacria on the window. The Trinacria, the symbol of Sicily, is slightly strange looking. It has three legs bent into a triangle with the face of a woman in the center, framed by four snakes and a pair of wings. Seeing that symbol prominently displayed was impressive, and added to the authenticity of the neighborhood.

Another ethnic group that has recently become prominent in the Belmont area is the Albanian population. One of the last places I visited was a bakery called Gino’s. Interestingly enough, the store had Albanian articles in the upper corners of the wall behind the counter. However, the woman behind the bakery counter was an Italian immigrant. She said that she came over in the 1950s. I asked her about the bakery. She said she wasn’t the owner, and that she didn’t always work there. “I had worked my way through,” she told me in heavily accented English.

Although the story of the Italian Immigrant is usually set during the turn of the twentieth century in new york city, the conversation with the woman in Gino’s bakery proved to me that the tale has not yet ended. Although fewer Italian immigrants come to the city annually, the proximity to authentic tastes of the old country and rents that are around $600 per month per person make the Belmont area quite attractive. Although the language has faded away, it is still an easy place for an immigrant to make home.

General Discussion

The First Hundred Days: Mayoral Style

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Many of us voted in the recent mayoral election. The New York Times gathered data from independent surveyors and posted the results in a web based info-graphic. The results can be broken down by ethnicity (though not very well),  borough of residence (which naturally does not include Staten Island), and gender. Some gaps in this info-graphic lead me to believe it is insufficient as a political gauge, but a few of the questions asked were relevant to previous discussions. 

Story Pitches

Possible Story

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For the public facing project, I would like to interview two of my friends from high school. They are both in the drama department, a sophomore and a junior. I plan to ask them about what their dreams are and the steps they can take to achieve them. I’d also like to ask them how they think being in New York will affect their ability to reach for the proverbial stars.

General Discussion

Macaulay Arts Night!

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Hi everyone!

Every year, Macaulay hosts an Arts Night to showcase student talent. Do you have any talent? If so, consider submitting to Arts Night! 

Arts Night 2014_18_24

Artwork can either be dropped off at the Macaulay Building, or given to one of the campus curators. Please be sure to label it with your name, campus, and the works title. Sasha Whittaker and I are campus curators. 

General Discussion

Crisis in Crimea

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Just a general question. How do we think the seemingly imminent violence in Russia and Ukraine will affect New York City? It seems that Russia has annexation in mind (in fact, Putin stated outright that annexation is his goal) so will we see a mass migration of people out of the Crimean area?

Personally, I think it is likely to happen. I cannot, however, guess how many will come to New York.

Assignment 3

A Flesh Eating Disease

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“You have a Flesh Eating Disease!”

That is what my middle school friend Mary said to the B16 bus driver one day as we boarded after school. She repeated it to nearly everyone on the bus. I distinctly recall her saying it to a very stoic Asian youth, who would not move a single muscle while she practically yelled it in his ear, and watching an Italian-looking catholic school kid, in his sweater vest and collared shirt, struggle to keep from laughing.

The bus drove down Fort Hamilton Parkway. The group of middle schoolers who invaded that bus every weekday at about 2:30 boarded right at the end of Sunset Park, a neighborhood I knew as Brooklyn Chinatown. I loved going to the shops on Eighth Avenue. I would go with my mother to the small general shops for origami paper and to the bakeries for treats that I had no proper name for. The neighborhood existed a few blocks northwest of where I picked up the bus. I was still too young to journey there on my own, so my escapades came when my mother escorted me.

The bus passed by two adjacent grocery stores. One was the Chinese grocery store where my mother would buy fresh fish, far better than much of what we had access to on Staten Island. I only went in there once or twice, and I recall marveling at the strange foods not available in the Key Food a mile away from my house. The other one, Three Guys From Brooklyn, sold cheap produce and good Middle Eastern breads; I liked the really flat pitas and the Turkish Pide Bread. It also sold dates, something my mother would put in oatmeal much to my annoyance.

Bay Ridge, where my mother works, had a large Middle Eastern population. She loved to shop at the Middle Eastern grocery stores, especially for staples like olive oil, something every Italian American family has in their house. She loved the fact that a gallon of olive oil cost only thirteen bucks. It was seventeen dollars minimum at Pastosa’s, the Italian goods store on Staten Island that all the people who never leave seem to worship. I personally find a disturbingly low level of quality and variety in their olives, especially after my mother started buying olives from the Middle Eastern stores in Bay Ridge.

“Not in service? What the #@&$?”

It happened. We’d be waiting, a large group of us, for at least half an hour, and a bus would pass us blaring that sign. That particular phrase was first hollered by a guy a year above me, and it caught on. Whenever we had the dire misfortune of an out of service bus, a chorus would spring up and we would be in pieces. Middle schoolers happen to find expletives quite hilarious.

It’s that certain level of maturity that allowed my friends and I such entertainment in Leif Ericson Park, a mere three blocks away from the bus stop. I would see younger children playing on the sailing ship slide, in its bright yellow glory as I looked out of the window of the B16. On half days, I would go with my friends and we would dare each other to sit in the chair of doom. It was a slightly tilted chair that spun. We would push each other around as fast as we could, and see who emerged the least dizzy, or who begged for mercy first. People sold balloons and cotton candy from pushcarts. In the early summer there were ices and ice cream in those same pushcarts. We truly did not need any more sugar, but we occasionally bought cotton candy anyway.

I always wondered why that park was named for an Icelandic explorer. There never seemed to be a significant Icelandic population in that neighborhood, or in any neighborhood in New York for that matter.

I never knew the name of the other park the bus passed by on its route. It was across the street from a church. I recall a Catholic school next door to the church, but I do not remember the name. I do, however, remember the kids who got on the bus near the school, all of whom wore blue uniforms. I had a certain sense of superiority; I had figured, based on my childhood experiences, that public school was superior to Catholic school. My image of catholic schools was not improved by the stories my mother and her coworkers told about the abusive nuns of the fifties and sixties. I never spoke to the kids, nor did anyone else in the little group that took the B16 from my happily public middle school.

Going back to Staten Island at the end of the day was almost depressing. There was nowhere to walk. There was no pocket neighborhood that had a distinct culture. There was, however, something much stranger.

The house I grew up in is a hundred and ten years old. Walls did not exist when my family moved in. It has a categorization that is something along the lines of Colonial Victorian. Three floors for four people, four birds, and a dog. My mom believes it to be a mansion, and it is certainly very fancy. Almost all of the houses on my block are similar in external lavishness.

Then, if I crossed the street after the Unitarian church at the corner, heading towards New York Harbor, it became a series of apartment blocks. A junkyard separated the last “nice” house from the apartments. At the other end of my block, after making a left turn, there was an assisted living center across the street from a block of two family houses. They existed in such sharp contrast with my own block, but I never really noticed until I was much older. I learned to ride a bike in the parking lot of the senior citizen center. I love running to the mailbox in front of the two family houses. The pavement was very good, and there was just enough of a hill to make me feel as if I was flying.

My preference is definitely for Brooklyn. At first, I thought I favored Brooklyn because it was not homogeneous, or because the pockets of culture were close together. In reality, there was almost less contrast in Brooklyn than in my Staten Island neighborhood. The neighborhoods were composed of immigrants, so there was an identical immigrant energy from one neighborhood to the other. The two blocks on Staten Island were almost too different. It was almost uncomfortable.

Or maybe I just miss the carefree days on the bus, with memorable things like flesh eating diseases.

General Discussion

Repeated History

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Walking back to 116th and Lexington after LuLu LoLo’s speech, I had an interesting conversation with Carl and Andrew. I was able to sympathize with many of LuLu’s stories, having heard similar stories about childhood communities from my parents, but those stories were newer to them. They both have parents who are immigrants, rather than parents who are the grandchildren of immigrants. We came to the conclusion that they will be the ones telling these stories, the stories of the shops and restaurants of their neighborhoods.

The intra-city migration of different groups is what makes New York City so extraordinary. The nostalgia for the drives the stories that are passed down generationally, and the migration of peoples allows for the parallelism of the city’s history. Soon we will be telling the stories about how our childhood neighborhoods have changed.

[Note: Much of this prediction is supported by several of the readings]

Assignment 2

Becoming Addicted to the Ellis Island Database

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I was born in New York. My parents were born in New York. My grandparents, all four of them, were born in New York. My family’s immigration story goes all the way back to my great-grandparents, all of whom came during the immigration wave of the early 20th century.

I knew very little about my mother’s side of the family. My maternal grandmother, when reminiscing about her late husband, would speak of his tastes. He did not care as much for Italian food the way my grandmother did. “He was always a meat and potatoes guy.” So my mother never heard the stories of her ancestors that I did when I’d badger my parents about where I was from. After a little quality time with Ellis Island’s passenger search database, I found some interesting things about my mother’s family. My mother’s father’s father came to New York in 1920 at about age 19 on a ship called the Italia. According to the ship’s manifest, Rosario Venezia went to stay with his brother Salvatore in Brooklyn, Stone Avenue to be specific. He was from a place in Italy called Sant’Angelo, across the peninsula from Rome. He married a woman named Angelina, probably while he was in America. It was more difficult to find information about her on the database. I do not know her maiden name, and neither does my mother. I do know that my mother’s maternal grandparents, Rosario and Catherine, came from Sicily. I do not know if they were married before they came, or when they came. With any member of my mother’s family, I do not know why they came, though it was probably the generic “start a better life” reason that brought so many huddling masses to America.

My father’s family’s story I know quite well. I’d come home from school to find him pouring over grainy printouts of manifests of ships that his parents and grandparents came over on. He had the stiff black and white photos of my grandfather as a boy, my great-grandparents towering over him and his siblings. My father’s paternal grandfather was called Santo, and he lived in Petralia Soprana (Upper Petralia) until coming to America in 1904 at 23 years of age. He stayed with his brother in Lower Manhattan. My father’s paternal grandmother was a relative of Santo, first cousins. Lucia emigrated from Italy when she was fourteen. She traveled with her father Leonardo and her younger brother Damiano. She came over simply to marry Santo. She traveled with several people with the last name Librizzi, many of whom put their next address as a place on Mulberry Street.

And now for the Mafia story.

The old family story goes that Santo owed the Black Hand (I often wonder whether it is the same gang responsible for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand) some money. They put my paternal grandfather, Leonardo, and his brother, Victor, on a hit list. They would either be kidnapped or killed. My father’s family had settled in Rockaway, but left when Leonardo and Victor were very young, one and three respectively. Santo is found on another manifest, dating from 1910, and one dating from May 1912. Lucia and the two boys, listed as three and five, are found on a manifest dating from October of 1912. This evidence adds credibility to the Mafia Story, but not all is known.

In comparison, I know little about my father’s maternal grandparents, but I know that they emigrated around the same time from Naples. Ludovico was my father’s maternal grandfather, and he was born around 1890. It is possible that he came over around 1909, but the Ellis Island workers probably mistook him for a Luigi based on what I was able to find in the database.

Is it any wonder my dad spent so much time looking up this information? Finding that sort of information brings elation. I did not know my great grandfather on my maternal grandfather’s side was from somewhere north of Naples. I had previously thought that all of my ancestors were from the southern part of the peninsula if they were not from Sicily.

This is my relationship with the immigration story of my family. It is a treasure hunt, a puzzle, and a story still waiting to be written and told.

Assignment 1

Sabrina Kostusiak: A Migrant’s Story

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Steve Earle was half right when he described New York City as a “City of Immigrants” in his song by the same title. There exists another subset of people who move into the city and contribute to its culture: the migrants.

Migrants come for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes they are here to stay with family, some come to work, and are some come because they are big fish in small ponds. A place like New York City, with its plethora of cultures and languages, is a dream for many of these big fish, prompting them to say goodbye to their small town, pack their bags, and head for The Big Apple. Take, for example, Sabrina Kostusiak. She was born in Connecticut and raised in Buffalo.  Most of her family lives in Buffalo. Her earliest ancestors came to the United States from Poland, Ukraine, and Ireland before the turn of the 20th century; her earliest family photo is from 1882. They settled in Buffalo and stayed there.

Sabrina moved to NYC to study as a Macaulay Honors student at The City College of New York and has no regrets for her decision. “I always wanted to live in New York City” she said, a dream that prompted her to apply to the prestigious scholarship program. “I knew I needed to be in The City.”

Buffalo is the second largest city in New York State, but with a population of just under 260,000, it cannot compare to the size of New York City, with a population of over eight million. Everyone knew everyone in her town, and most people stayed in the same place their entire lives.

Sabrina did not live like that. She wanted to live her life at a faster pace than her neighbors and to experience more than what her white homogenous town had to offer. “Everybody dresses the same [in Buffalo]” she noted. She applied to Macaulay Honors College and was more than delighted by her acceptance and the opportunity to become a New Yorker.

And what an experience she had. Her first ever visit to New York City was last April, to visit City College on an accepted students day. The first thing she saw was Santa and Mrs. Claus on the subway. Where but New York? “That was really my first impression of the city,” she recalls.

She is not the first or only person in her family to live here, however. Her father attended college in New York City in the eighties. New York was a very different place then, and his experience was much more negative than Sabrina’s. She tells the story of how her father and grandmother accidently took the A train instead of the C train and wound up at 125th Street. The first person they met looked at them and said: “You don’t belong here”. At that time, the city was known for violence and crime. This was off-putting to Sabrina’s father, and his view of Harlem contrasts sharply with Sabrina’s modern experience.

Sabrina loves the city, in spite of her father’s apprehension. She noticed the difference right away, as well as the changes in herself. “It’s easier to connect with people here”. People also live at a pace in sync with how Sabrina wants to live her life.  However, she also recognizes that she was different from the natives of her new home.

You can tell that Sabrina is from upstate by the way she talks. “Someone pointed that out to me on the first day,” though she never thought that she had an accent. It’s subtle, but noticeable to those who grew up here. Although she sounds different, the some people in New York sound different to her. She also felt at a disadvantage during the early part of her experience here. “I didn’t know the names of the neighborhoods.” But growing up outside of the city made her more curious and more willing to visit places that define New York, such as Central Park. “I know of some people who have never been to Central Park” she claims. “It’s surprising. You don’t know how great the city unless you move here”.

She is still in the process of integrating herself into the city. “I’ve learned the names of most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan, and some of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn,” she announced proudly. Her ultimate goal is to take full advantage of the culture and resources around her. She feels the change in herself.

Though still connected with her family, Sabrina does not think they can become new Yorkers by listening to her stories. Despite the common language, there are incredibly stark differences in culture. “You have to live here to understand.” She sums up.

The difference is incredible. New York, with its speed, density, and variety never leaves Sabrina bored. She feels the difference most strongly when she is back in Buffalo. “Buffalo is more like a community,” she describes, but the momentum is not there. To her, Buffalo is missing the action she desires.

There is no language barrier for migrants as there usually is for immigrants. It enables a person like Sabrina to make New York City their home. However, statistical data shows that migrants into the city are generally fewer than migrants out of the city, probably because of the expense. This does not faze Sabrina, because she feels she is living her dream.

She describes her journey into New York City with an indescribable amount of awe. She takes the train from Buffalo to Penn Station. On her way there, at a point along the Hudson, the river turns to bring the city into view. She could barely communicate the memory of her emotions, but her excitement was clear. “Afterwards you go underground, and then you’re in Penn Station.” She says, the memory of the excitement and joy prominent on her face.

New York City is everything Sabrina ever dreamed it would be. She plans to stay here for a good long part of her life. She is in love with the city, and has been for a long time.

People, both immigrants and migrants, come to the city for and the energy and dynamic affects them all. In the best cases, as in the case of Sabrina, a migrant finds a perfect fit, someplace they can and will happily adopt as their home.

Student Introductions

Paulina Librizzi

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Hello!

My name is Paulina Librizzi. I am a New Yorker, born and raised in the city. I like to think that I am incredibly close with my heritage as an Italian-American, but I realize I am so much further from my heritage than most because the initial immigrants came over about a century ago. It sometimes seems bourgeois to speak of my heritage because  connection to the actual culture has been diluted over the years. I cling to it still because I believe in stories. Stories make the wheels of New York City turn, because we each have something unique and interesting to share.

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This is my picture from a few months ago.