00:00:00 Henry
Hello, my name is Henry Mei and I am one of the six students working on the Voices of Jackson Heights project for Macaulay Seminar 2: the People of New York. So today I’ll be interviewing Sophia Paradis. Sophia, do you want to introduce yourself?
00:00:15 Sophia
Hello everyone, my name is Sophia Paradis. I am a Colombian and Dominican Latina. I am currently a student at Saint John’s University. Thank you for having me.
00:00:25 Henry
Yeah, of course. So, I think the first thing that I want to ask you Sophia is, how did you come to call Jackson Heights home?
00:00:34 Sophia
Well, as someone who was born and raised here in Jackson Heights, I’ve always found it to be sort of very special to me. Definitely a place I would call home. Though, my transition into calling it home was a bit different given my constant moving around as a child, and also me going to high school in the city.
00:00:57 Henry
Alright, how does Jackson Heights compare to the neighborhood you went to high school in? If you don’t mind sharing with us which neighborhood you went to high school to?
00:01:07 Sophia
I don’t mind. I went to high school near the Lincoln Center. Essentially my high school was obviously surrounded by a lot of art institutions, a lot of large buildings, and other high schools as well within the district. It was very much the cosmopolitan city that you would expect Manhattan to be. The concrete jungle, very little plant life anywhere to be honest which is in stark comparison to Jackson Heights, which on almost every block you see beautiful trees or some sort of garden of any kind. I guess overall the vibe of both places was very different. Whereas in Manhattan it’s very like Rush and Bush, keep going, don’t stop moving or else you’re going to get pushed over. There’s always the scent of either weed or cigar smoke because you know, it’s a school. Whereas here in Jackson Heights, the air, it’s a lot fresher and also just the general vibe of people in general. They’re more kinder here in Jackson Heights than you would expect near my old high school.
00:02:16 Henry
Could you explain more about your description of the people here being a bit kinder? What specifically do you mean by that?
00:02:22 Sophia
I guess what I mean by kinder, meaning that they’re more friendly, like they show friendly faces. Like when you go down the street and you see the lady who’s selling food outside, she would say, “hi, how are you?” and you would say, “hi, how are you?” back. Whereas in Manhattan everyone is so focused within their own little world that they don’t really see anything else, I guess you could say. Everyone is either on their cell phone, talking to someone or just you know in their own space, which is fine.
00:02:52 Henry
Yeah, yeah, I, I think I know what you’re talking about. I’m from Jackson Heights too, and so I would definitely say that there’s a very strong sense of community here. Would you agree with that?
00:03:05 Sophia
I would definitely agree with that. Like wherever you go, you will always meet at least a friendly face. Or if you’re looking for somewhere, you’re looking for directions, there’s always someone you can ask and they would be gladly to point you in the right direction. Or if you need recommendations on like food, on where to go to eat, then someone will definitely give you directions on that for sure.
00:03:29 Henry
Bouncing off of that, what is the sense of community like here in Jackson Heights for you?
00:03:34 Sophia
For me, I guess it’s very much that you can be anywhere in Jackson Heights and you’d still feel like home, I guess you could say. Because despite it being very diverse, there’s always some comfort in it. Like for example, whenever I’m going, whenever I’m coming back from school like I always know that the lady at the corner is always going to be there to sell her delicious tacos and fajitas. Like I know she’s going to. There’s always a comfort in knowing that there’s always something, a little part of your culture, a little part of home there in Jackson Heights to come back to. No matter where you are.
00:04:13 Henry
So there are a lot of different ethnic, racial and immigrant groups here in Jackson Heights. I think we’re very well known for that. Considering you told us that you are a Latina from D.R. and Colombia, could you tell us maybe a bit about what the Latino community in Jackson Heights is like from your perspective?
00:04:33 Sophia
From my perspective here in Jackson Heights, there’s a lot more Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Mexicans. Meaning the Mexicans are usually located within Junction Blvd and out towards the 100’s leading into Corona, while Colombians and Ecuadorians mainly sit around like the 90s and 80s here in the Jackson Heights community. Generally very welcoming, welcoming crowd. Definitely a good time, especially near the hair salons. Kudos to you, Josefina. In terms of Dominicans though, there aren’t too many around. From what I have personally seen, I’ve mostly seen them located in Washington Heights, which I consider a second home as well.
00:05:14 Henry
Washington Heights in Manhattan of course, right?
00:05:18 Sophia
Yes.
00:05:20 Henry
So how do you think the Latino community here in Jackson Heights relates or interacts with the other immigrant groups in the area?
00:05:28 Sophia
I think it’s a fairly, fairly calm relationship they have with the other groups. Like there hasn’t, at least from my point of view, there hasn’t really been like a scuffle between the two of them. They coexist pretty peacefully. Some of course, as I mentioned before, they do concentrate themselves in particular areas and they do make their own cultural spaces there. But that by no means that like they’re separated. Like they do come to, they do come together eventually. You can clearly see this in like the schools that are in this community, in the parks that you see here, specifically Travers Park, you see kids playing together, regardless of what ethnic or cultural background they’re from. And also with businesses, they also make partnerships with different Colombian restaurants, do partnerships with other South Asian restaurants here as well.
00:06:20 Henry
Considering that you just brought up a lot of different places around the neighborhood, what would you say is your favorite, or most notable spot, or location in Jackson Heights?
00:06:32 Sophia
Hmm, that’s a difficult thing to say, only because I do like to travel a lot. I know, given Covid, it’s not incredibly easy to travel too often, especially since you don’t want to spread, you don’t want there to be like a spread. However, when I do get the opportunity to go outside and travel a little bit just for the sake of walking or getting some exercise in, I guess for me, there really isn’t much of a destination that I find to be my favorite. It’s more or less just traveling throughout the neighborhood and exploring the different places. But for the sake of the question, I guess I could say that my favorite place would probably be Northern Blvd, just walking down the avenues only because I like to see all the restaurants and all the people. I love seeing the cars coming back and forth only because sometimes one car would play the stereo and loud music; it’s nostalgic and I love that about that area as well.
00:07:33 Henry
What would you say is your favorite restaurant in Jackson Heights?
00:07:36 Sophia
Oof, the question of the day, that’s a really hard one. Oh my goodness, there’s so many good restaurants here in Jackson Heights, both that serve Latino cuisine and all different types. But I guess if I had to choose like my favorite restaurant, hmm, oh my goodness there’s so many. It would have to be Pollos a La Brasa, it’s the Pollos Mario place that’s right next to my house. They serve the best food, the best Colombian dishes I’ve ever had in my lifetime. It makes me miss, it honestly makes me miss Colombia and being there. They typically serve a lot of like traditional Colombian breakfast dishes, as well as like there’s the meats as well. I highly recommend checking it out.
00:08:29 Henry
You know, since we’re on the topic of food, you know, let me just shout out La Barranquilla on Junction Blvd in between I wanna say 34th Rd and 35th Ave. They’re a really good Colombian bakery, fantastic empanadas. You should go check them out, everyone listening wherever you may be.
00:08:46 Henry
So COVID-19 has affected the city quite tremendously, I would say. But for those of you listening who don’t know, COVID-19, at least in the beginning of the pandemic, so I would say March, April, and May of the year 2020, Jackson Heights really went through it. We were the epicenter within the epicenter. And so Sophia, I want your perspective on this. How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has affected specifically Jackson Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods, which could include Corona, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, maybe Woodside? What are your views on that?
00:09:27 Sophia
So the pandemic was definitely something that no one had actually anticipated coming over. Back in March when I first received the call from my school that we were going to go into a two week quarantine. It was something that I didn’t really understand at the time. I was like, “oh, we’re just going to be quarantined for two weeks”. Those two weeks ended up being two months and then obviously right now we’re currently within the year of Covid. In terms of Jackson Heights and how I think it has affected it, I would see it from 2 very different perspectives. One from a school standpoint and another from just general community.
00:10:04 Sophia
Starting with the community perspective from Jackson Heights. Almost all local businesses were at some point shut down. They had to boarder up their doors and their windows during the night time to prevent break throughs or to prevent robberies from occurring. Additionally, a lot of these local companies and local businesses had to be very inventive with the way that they were going to survive, especially since this was a time that insurance companies were not giving them enough coverage, especially given their losses at the time. Definitely, however, I will say this though, towards I would not say the end of the pandemic, but I would say towards the end of the worst of the pandemic. A lot of local students were actually helping out in constructing these outside dining halls for these restaurants to use in order to make up for their loss in revenue. This being the construction of outdoor dining, which was significant, especially in the Jackson Heights community and in Astoria, definitely. This allowed businesses to thrive, bringing customers, and also led sort of a new idea for businesses for the summer. I know that there was some talk among the local restaurants as of recently and they were going to be actually opening this outdoor dining idea for all summers to come. And I think it was also a very interesting way for students, specifically architecture students from the local schools and colleges to really come in and help their community by organizing and building these structures as well. So it was definitely a bonding moment there.
00:11:49 Sophia
And in terms of education, it was definitely very difficult. Because a lot of schools were forced to transfer onto an online platform, unfortunately a lot of teachers and administrators were not prepared for. I know in my personal experience a lot of teachers of mine had to quickly learn how to use Zoom and WebEx, because they had never used these tools in their teaching before. However, we were able to do it and we were able to go through it somehow. There were definitely challenges along the way, but we did pull through.
00:12:30 Henry
Yeah, and I think it’s great that you brought up education because I would think it’s safe to say that a lot of the students here in Jackson Heights are ESL students. And even though online learning, or primarily online learning at least, is difficult for a lot of different types of people, when you have a language barrier and when you have other issues that intersect with being a largely immigrant community, a largely non-white community, there are these things that really compound and make for an even tougher situation. So I definitely think Jackson Heights was affected in that regard.
00:13:19 Henry
But I wanna talk a bit more about the open restaurants program because it was a part of a bigger city-wide scheme to kind of take away road space that is primarily used for cars and automobiles. And I would say the sister program to the open restaurants program would be open streets; and 34th Ave is probably one of the most well-known open streets in the city. And personally speaking, I’ve seen some mixed opinions on the open street. I’ll reserve my opinion for another time ’cause this isn’t about me. But Sophia, I wanna ask you, what are your opinions on the 34th Ave open street?
00:14:07 Sophia
Gladly, although I do want to refer back to a point that you made about ESL. As someone who is currently doing teaching observations, I can tell you from firsthand experience that it has been very difficult for these students. Because the way that ESL is taught, it’s more of an in-person interaction and it’s more personalized to that specific student. So to not have that input, that personal touch to it, and also not to mention the technology aspect as well. These kids may not have access to Wi-Fi, they may not have access to computers. I believe during the COVID pandemic this was actually very evident nationwide. There were stories about kids going to local drive-thrus over fast food restaurants just to get Wi-Fi for attending courses. So that’s something that was also happening here in Jackson Heights as well, in terms of online instruction.
00:15:04 Sophia
But going back to the business project and also to 34th Ave with it being open. I do see both the downside and the upside. I will first address the upside of this new sort of project. I do believe that the that whole area being open is actually very beneficial in terms of community-building and to encourage exercise, because ever since that road has been open there has been an increase in individuals going out. There has been an increase in individuals taking part of physical activities such as biking, walking, jogging, and at some point dancing. And third, it has provided other institutions, more specifically gyms, any sort of personalized trainers, from any outside sources and other dance studios to come in and teach lessons on that road as well in the morning. So there’s also that added benefit to that to increase wellness as well, physical and mental wellness as well.
00:16:09 Sophia
On the downside though, there is the issue of parking space and also where, I know that the road closes around 8:00, where is the boundary between the cars coming in and trying to park, and what are the rules there? Because there’s also a safety concern as well, because when cars are coming in and people are still allowed to be on that road, there may be some conflict there. And this is also a concern that bikers have as well.
00:16:39 Henry
How do you think these concerns can be addressed going forward, considering that the city has announced not long ago that the open streets program, and 34th Ave specifically will be permanent? How would you like to see the current iteration of the open street be changed to address these concerns?
00:16:58 Sophia
I feel like those who are within the area of that roadblock should be informed about the hours that it is open and also obviously other residents as well. And sort of a guideline for what should be expected of that. We don’t want any littering; we don’t want any rude language or whatnot. Just establishing community guidelines. But also just establishing sort of like etiquette, car etiquette I guess you can call it, because for one thing you don’t want there to be an accident occurring especially during hours or even a little bit beforehand. So I think just having a consensus of what they should look like structure-wise is definitely one way to go, in terms of this project. And second, I guess organization of all kinds is important as well.
00:17:50 Henry
What do you mean by organizations? Do you mean programming, such as cultural programming?
00:17:57 Sophia
I do believe that there is an opportunity for this project to increase sort of visibility for a lot of the nonprofit organizations that do exist here in Jackson Heights, for them to organize certain events, certain campaigns. I remember during the Black Lives Matter movement there was such a thing going on near Travers Park, where there was sort of a circle, where everyone was going to have open conversations about race, about privilege and about what was currently going on and how could we do, what could we do. Not just as individuals, but as a community. What can we do to sort of spread this awareness and also be mindful of our own habits, as well, in regards to race.
00:18:43 Henry
Yeah, race is something that Jackson Heights has had a tricky history with, to say the least. For those of you listening wherever you may be who don’t know, Jackson Heights used to be a very segregated WASP, and by that I mean white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, only neighborhood and it’s slowly integrated from there. How do you feel about this history of neighborhood segregation?
00:19:14 Sophia
I mean, definitely Jackson Heights has seen a tremendous change when it comes to its demographics. It, as you mentioned before, it did go, it did come from being this, specifically white neighborhood to now being a diverse globe that it is today. Of course there are still individuals who represent themselves as white. However, I wouldn’t describe them as white American, I would describe them as white European, just to make the distinction. And also just the more, I just feel like Jackson Heights has definitely diversified itself over the years significantly. I know as of recently there, well not really recently, but in the recent years there has been an integration of both more Asians coming into the community, specifically Eastern Asian, and also Black people are coming into communities such as Junction Blvd and Corona.
00:20:12 Henry
Well the area around Junction Blvd and Corona itself have been historically Black areas for a long time actually. Yeah, it has. So, have you noticed any more, how do I put this, have you seen any more increase in Black people elsewhere in the neighborhood? Or would you say it’s only contained in those specific areas closer to Corona?
00:20:41 Sophia
I wouldn’t say they were only contained there. However, what I have been seeing is an increase of them being around this particular neighborhood in Jackson Heights.
00:20:52 Henry
So yeah, that’s pretty interesting. Racial segregation is definitely one of the biggest issues that Jackson Heights has faced, both historically and its effects still bleeding into Jackson Heights as it is today. Along those lines, or maybe not, depending on what your opinions or views may be Sophia, what would you say is the biggest issue Jackson Heights is facing today?
00:21:21 Sophia
I think the biggest challenge definitely in Jackson Heights would definitely be in regards to real estate. More specifically, in two different aspects, one revolving around small, locally owned businesses and the second one being in terms of living spaces. This would be referring to housing and to apartment buildings because typically, certain groups are going to be favored more than others in regards to their application, regardless of their application actually or even their qualifications. For instance, and if I may be so bold, someone who may be of European descent will be favored in a certain application for a certain home or apartment complex than someone of a minority group, such as a Latina, despite having similar qualifications on both applications.
00:22:14 Sophia
In terms of small business owners, as noted here in Jackson Heights, there have been many changes revolving around commercialism. As one can clearly see it in Jackson Heights, 82nd St, a lot of the major shopping areas are revolving around major brands such as Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, just to name a few. These stores took over from the local stores that were initially there by other minority leading businesses that used to flourish until after 2008. Uh, which was truly sad, because then you see sort of this, dare I say whitening of the neighborhood where everyone is sort of conditioned in some way or form to dress more, I guess you could say standard is the word for it. Versus just like embracing one’s own identity through fashion, I guess you could say.
00:23:20 Henry
Hmm. Yeah that, yeah it’s troubling to see and to hear about. You know, going off of that, you and I have talked about this a little bit before off the record. But would you want to expand on maybe some of the negative effects, or maybe even hostility that you faced from the neighborhoods newer, whiter residents?
00:23:47 Sophia
Definitely I can express that because as being Latina, I am viewed in multiple different lights depending on where I am and what space I occupy. So there’s always going to be this sort of double consciousness. Especially since I am the proud daughter of two immigrant parents. I learned a lot about my culture and I am proud to be Latina. But that pride is not often, I cannot often display that pride in white-affiliated spaces because it will be considered, you know, unproper, or in my case it was considered ghetto. So yeah, it was. And the reason why I bring up clothing stores is because clothing does have a connection with culture. That’s the way you express yourself openly, and that’s how you let people know who you are and what you represent. So to have these stores here that basically took over and sort of set this sort of, dare I say white standard of clothing or a certain style of clothing that’s more conservative, that’s more lenient towards those ideals. It kind of takes away from the authenticity that used to be there.
00:25:01 Henry
Alright, yeah, I’m really sorry to hear that and thank you for sharing Sophia. So the neighborhood is definitely changing, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse, I think is a fair way to put it. So to end, I want to ask you, Sophia. How do you see Jackson Heights in, let’s say, 15 years? What do you want it to look like?
00:25:27 Sophia
In 15 years I would want Jackson Heights to be a more, a more active community in terms of getting awareness out on mental health, on sex workers, and allowing the youth of today to really join in those causes. Because as we all know, Gen Z, our generation is very politically active now and I think that’s important and that should be kept up throughout this neighborhood as well. Having more youth organizations run by youths in this neighborhood would also be a wonderful change that I would embrace as well. And also, just you know, continuing to support these small businesses that are currently, you know, struggling during this pandemic and are currently trying to recover from their losses that they experienced during the beginning of the pandemic. So that’s something to keep in mind for the future. That’s sort of my thought on it. And just to be more, I guess green as you could put it. Just to continue its gardening efforts as well.
00:26:26 Henry
Yes, thank you so much for spending some time with me today Sophia and for sharing your thoughts.
00:26:32 Sophia
Of course, thank you for having me.
