Cohen to Stay Put, Dems Nominate Three to Bronx Supreme Court

There will not be a special election for the 11th Council District. At least, not this year. The Bronx Democratic Party nominated three candidates to the Bronx Supreme Court at a judicial convention on Aug. 8. None of the nominees were Councilman Andrew Cohen, delaying the long-anticipated campaign to succeed the term-limited councilman for at least another year and squashing theories of party orchestration. Instead, Bronx Democrats nominated Bahaati Pitt and John Higgit to two open seats and re-nominated Wilma Guzman to the seat she’s held since 2006. Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed Higgit to the New York State Court of


Read More

Jerome Gun Hill BID Merchant Spotlight: Mosholu Optical

Mosholu Optical has been a neighborhood fixture in the Jerome Gun Hill Business Improvement District (BID) since it first opened in 1948. Originally owned by Dr. Irwin Kaskawits, Mosholu Optical has been serving patients and shoppers in the Norwood community for over 70 years. Ed Greenspan, the current owner, has been a part of the business since 1968 when he began working for Dr. Kaskawits. Ed first got his start in the optical business at the original location of Moscot eyewear in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, now one of the oldest businesses in New York City. By 1985 Ed took


Read More

From Column to Masterpiece For Jerome Gun Hill BID Column

 NEIGHBORHOOD ARTIST LADY K Fever puts the finishing touches on a newly restored column that’s been transformed into an art installation at the southwest corner of Jerome Avenue and East Gun Hill Road. The Jerome Gun Hill Business Improvement District commissioned the work, a total of four columns, within the commercial district’s borders as a way of sprucing it up with help from Councilman Andrew Cohen and ArtBridge. Photo courtesy Maria Estevez  

Latest Edition of the Norwood News is Out!

Dear Fellow Readers, The year’s  sixteenth edition of the Norwood News is out with plenty of interesting community news stories to read and share. We have 28 pages packed full of news from this corner of the Bronx, capturing a good chunk of it. And as usual, we’ll start with page one! For our front-page story, we dive into the issue of loud partying at Van Cortlandt Park. Residents are so upset that after logging 165 noise complaints this year that were not heard, they penned and signed a letter of complaint to elected officials.  Inside the cover you’ll find


Read More

Fighting Pediatric Asthma With a Personal Touch in the Bronx

A new asthma-free Bronx program aims, within five years, to reduce asthma-related emergency room visits by 50 percent and asthma-related hospitalizations by 30 percent among children aged 5 to 17 at three of the Bronx’s public hospitals – North Central Bronx (NCBH), Jacobi, and Lincoln hospitals, which collectively serve about one third of all Bronx kids with asthma, a borough hardest hit by asthma.  Each year, approximately 20,000 children in New York City end up in the emergency department or are hospitalized due to asthma. About 40 percent of these children live in the Bronx with black and Latino communities


Read More

Residents Take Demands for a Quieter Van Cortlandt Park to Cohen

Picnics and yoga? Forget about it. It’s more like an open-air rave each weekend at the Gun Hill Meadow inside Van Cortlandt Park, which stretches along West Gun Hill Road and Jerome Avenue. After years of filing 311 noise complaints, residents at Knox Place, Gates Place, DeKalb Avenue, and West Mosholu Parkway say the late-night open-air sprees have gotten progressively worse each year, and are already untenable as the summer surpasses its halfway mark. After 165 noise complaints were logged for the area this year alone, the majority between June and July, 98 residents penned and signed a formal letter


Read More

Financial Focus: The Price for Peace 

Peace, obviously, is a very subjective term. This will be based on your own individual thoughts. Tranquility for one may be silence and/or scary for another. But your “peace” will be at a price! After all, we do live in a capitalist society, right? But again, based on your own definition, it does not have to cost too much. Peace for me, for example, started in the early 1990s, just graduating college and starting on Wall Street as an investment analyst. During those years, there were many early days and late nights. After 15-hour days, I wanted to be in


Read More

Inquiring Photographer: Borough-Based Jails

This week we asked readers their thoughts on the city’s proposal to build borough based jails, including one in Mott Haven, as a way of closing Rikers Island. The plan was recently rejected by the Bronx Borough President. Why would they put a jail in the boroughs? Where will it be located? If they put the jail here or anywhere else, how will the relationship be between the jail and the residents? I wonder how it will impact the community and its children; for me that’s a problem. They bring the prisoners to the courts? I didn’t know that. I


Read More

Out & About: BAE Free Concerts

Editor’s Pick  BAE Free Concerts  Bronx Arts Ensemble presents two free West African Drumming and Dance shows on July 21 at 4 p.m. in the McGinley Ballroom of Fordham University, 441 E. Fordham Rd. Also scheduled is Oldies, Pop, and R&B Favorites, July 28 at 2 p.m. in the Van Cortlandt House Museum. For more information, visit bronxartsensemble.org. Onstage Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. presents Sunday summer concerts at Orchard Beach at the main stage at section 9, subject to change, including Raulín Rosendo on July 28. For more information, call (718) 590-8989. The Botanical Garden offers a variety


Read More