This building located on 1025 Atlantic Avenue, bookends Classon and Atlantic Avenues at the northeastern-most intersection.
Not too many years ago, it was a forgotten low-rise hulk. There was a tall marquee of Sherita the cat beckoning landlords to purchase fuel because “the price is right!”
Now as part of one of the fastest gentrifying areas of New York City, 1025 stands out as highly desirable and visible prime property, and Sherita is fading fast.
Roger Leveille Jr. rents space at the 1025 Atlantic Avenue location for his R and R Auto Works and Collision. He rents from Robert Thomas, a man who was formerly a tenant of 1025, then owned by Mr. Roger Leveille Sr.
When Roger Jr. learned of the plight of Rita Gray, who is fighting to regain the 5,000 square corner building on Fulton at the Bedford/Fulton intersection, he called Our Time Press. The circumstances of his father, he says, are similar to Ms. Gray’s. He goes no further than that, but will say that his father never signed a document that eventually would give property rights to Mr. Thomas..
Roger Jr. is urging property owners to keep vigilant so that others may not have such a huge corner on the market. Senior died several years after his property was taken away maintaining to the end that he had never signed anything over to anyone.
Roger is in court on a separate real estate matter with landlord Thomas, the same person who reportedly also owns Ms. Gray’s property. But in the case of Roger Jr., it is about Mr. Thomas resisting signing a lease for Mr. Leveille — for a portion of the space in the property where the auto body specialist first apprenticed with his dad.
Citi Bike’s new map is showing expansion of its wheel print by installing 80 bike-sharing stations in areas you thought you’d never see them – at least for now. That includes thousands of bikes and hundreds of docks into North Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, available to credit card holders.
And some folks are wondering if this announcement portends the future of the last stronghold for the African-American presence in Central Brooklyn.
“Will it go the way of Clinton Hill and other neighborhoods?” said property owner A. MacKenzie, who first observed the “neighborhood changing” about 10 years ago, prior to Citi Bike, when she observed bikers zooming east down DeKalb Avenue, past the Eleanor Roosevelt Houses.
“They zoomed back and forth, mostly late at night, or after work hours. I remember thinking, ‘There goes the neighborhood’, meaning new people would be moving in soon – people that don’t know about struggle, strife or how the mortgage would be paid.”
By the time Citi Bike came to New York streets in 2013, MacKenzie notes that bike riders “of all nationalities on all kinds of bikes” were hiking east down DeKalb Avenue past the Eleanor Roosevelt projects to Bushwick.
There’s no question in MacKenzie’s mind about where the neighborhood’s heading, but recent efforts by unscrupulous realtors to “goad” her into selling her property raised another question.
Is it a coincidence that Citi Bike stations will be on blocks in North Bed-Stuy where luxury housing is planned for development, in development or already developed – like at Tompkins and Halsey? Does the positioning of these stations near NYCHA houses mean that displacement of her neighbors is part of the “unseen” plan? Or is all of this a response to Clinton Hill and Fort Greene NIMBYers publicizing complaints about Citi Bike stations ruining the appearance of their landmarked and prettier districts?
“It’s all of the above,” she told us.
But like the residents of Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, residents in North Bed-Stuy were not adequately informed about the new stations. So here’s a partial list of the sites of the new installations and a map that details where these planned stations will be located. Our Time Press invites you to post your thoughts on our website at www.ourtimeathome.com.
Partial List of Locations for Planned CitiBike stations:
Part II of Three Parts
By Bernice Elizabeth Green
Several people walked away from security jobs this week at 406 Tompkins Avenue, moved by stories or memories of families, friends or neighbors turned out into the streets: displaced. Not a pretty picture, and apparently they didn’t want to stand around and watch Mr. Jimmy Leary of Jimmy’s Candy Store being forced to leave his storefront enterprise of 41 years.
Mr. Leary’s youngest daughter Deborah Ann Leary (“Ann”), says she learned over the years from her father that taking care of business requires deep personal investment. And, for Ann, it also means speaking truth to power, loud and clear with determination.
So she exhibited tremendous cool under the pressure of the past six weeks, since her Dad was locked out of his store on May 27th, with SheShe, his cat, locked inside, even as she admonished, “Please, don’t get me started!”
This week the landlord’s representatives have unlocked the store for the purpose of Mr. Jimmy, Ann, their family members and supporters taking whatever they own from the rental. The family has taken careful inventory, and reported, yesterday, that “considerable merchandise and cash money are missing.”
With the fire and fierceness of all the great community leaders that ever walked Tompkins Avenue, Ann is as determined to get to the root of this matter as intently and determined as the man who made the mistake last week of attempting to tape record her conversations. She was not feeling to good about that, and there are other things not to feel good about:
The stark headlines of The Daily News, The New York Post, Enquirer and other papers with May 26 and May 27th dates, the keys to the property dangling unnoticed on a chain and blending into the woodwork, or the smell from open cat food cans, trash strewn about in a backroom where the cat apparently lived alone for weeks, reportedly fed by the building’s owners.
Merchandise and stuff carelessly jammed in and piled to the ceiling in a corner separated by an apparent sheetrock wall from a soiled toilet.
The loneliness of the remaining one aluminum can of Pepsi in the commercial glass-front refrigerator that previously was stocked with cold drinks on May 27th when her father was forced to leave the premises.
At around 11:00am yesterday, nearly 20 hours after a building collapsed at Fulton and Tompkins during a demolition effort, it was reported, there was another roar and those walking by Jimmy’s Candy Store on Tompkins at 406 or standing nearby, heard it. Ann “got started” with all of the depth and breadth of a Sojourner, the fight of a Joan of Arc, the toughness of Venus and Serena.
“In a situation like this anything can set you off,” Ann said, “but for me it really was about the death of a business, the demolishing of a dream; it was the sleepless nights worrying and sweating and thinking about how it all was not fair: the bad paperwork, the court documents made out to the wrong names, the insults and the disrespect.
“It was about my entire family caught up in this mess, and still trying to do the right thing. Here we are working hard to make a deadline, packing up my father’s dream, in there taking down the monument that my father built and putting it in boxes.
“Do you know what it’s like to watch someone build a dream, and then you help dismantle it. It’s not right!”
To Ann, it’s more than a matter of not-right and wrong; it’s about who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, and how the definitions are flip-flopping as rapidly as the community appears to be changing.
Deborah Ann Leary (leſt) with friend at worksite
“So,” she began in a measured tone that rose in volume with every statement, “They evict my family illegally, but they are right!??? “They come cut off the locks without a marshal and place new ones on so my father can’t get in. And they are right?!!??? “They lock up a cat up for six weeks! And they are right!??? “They reword all their text messages! And they are right!??? “A permit on a strip of property says the work is for one address, 420 Tompkins, but it represents a whole strip of land, with other properties including the Veterinarian Clinic housed in the building that the hardworking lady vet wants to keep and not sell. And that’s right!??? “They knock in the roof of the veterinarian’s building ( a block from 406). And they say they are right!? “They close down streets to tear down or to build up their property. They reroute cars and places where people walk to get to work and come back home, and THEY are right!!!? “They can get a Stop Work Order, and keep on working. And they are right!!!? “They can get to the community through the court system, and no one asks them any questions. And they are right!!!? “They can afford to hide behind the name of a corporation, they don’t face up – even though there are errors in the paperwork. And they are right!!!? “‘Laughable is how they described my situation in a text. Is my father laughable? My father is a taxpaying citizen! He pays his taxes! He has good credit! He never owed anybody anything. He votes every year. They call this laughable! And they are right??
“They tell me I’m wrong, but I know I’m right. I’m just getting started!”
Last Saturday, Ann was invited to speak to members of a Jefferson Avenue Block Association– just to “explain what was going on.”
When she revealed details of her father’s plight, it was as if the floodgates opened. Most everyone there had a personal story or knew of someone who had — as Ann describes it — “an interesting situation.”
Last Friday at a press conference called for and led by Ann’s cousin, popular community leader Sharonnie Perry, the poignant comments from New York State Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, Ms. Perry, and other community advocates hit home and is working to break the silence: if you got to sell, sell high. If you can sell low, sell to those who respect you.
“And if you rent, and you’re disrespected, know your rights and speak out. The problem,” says Ann, “is fear. I don’t understand why so many people are so afraid to speak up and admit to what’s happening on their blocks and in their homes?”
NYS Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, flanked by community advocates at a media event coordinated by Sharonnie Perry, far leſt , encouraged community residents to break the silence about their real estate and housing challenges. (Credit: BGreen)
At Ms. Perry’s conference, about forty or more people, mostly community residents, formed the core of a larger, more diverse body, bringing the number of actual conference participants to a couple of hundred.
“Drivers honked their horns, people yelled out of the windows of city buses, cars, and all kinds of trucks. Even a sanitation truck. They were white people and black people. They raised their fists in the air. They yelled out, ‘It’s about time, it’s about time.’ And ‘Keep it up! Keep it up!’ Some people came up to me and asked ‘How can I join your organization?’ Others asked questions about the signs held by our young people.”
Ms. Helen Legette, a longtime elder friend of the Learys lives on the 406 block. Ms. Helen sends up prayers and offers the gentle spiritual consolations Ann needs. Ann purchases Ms. Helen’s groceries and drives her to the polls when it’s voting time. Yesterday, Ann returned the wheelchair that was stored at Mr. Jimmy’s Candy Store for Ms. Legette.
Mr. Barry, who’s been a friend over years, selling daily newspapers for Mr. Jimmy is out of a job, he says. But he’s sticking around for his friend, Mr. Jimmy.
It is Mr. Jimmy’s wish that a grocer friend purchase some of the goods that Jimmy won’t need anymore: masking tape, rope, batteries. Ann found a 1966 Jet Magazine, and a tattered 1937 newspaper comic strip and the NY Daily News’ November 1963 headline announcing the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Of course, she’s keeping those items.
“Every peppermint ball, every penny cookie, every Mary Jane, every flashlight, every Dream Book cost my dad money. Everything in this store costs,” she said. So of course an inquiry from an outsider about Mr. Jimmy’s two old-fashioned 1950’s phone booths just fueled Ann’s “getting started” flame; how could anyone think her Dad, a businessman, would part with gifts of such value. Dalton Taylor, owner of The Victorian antiques emporium, will store them until Mr. Jimmy wants to sell or finds his own a space for them.
Ann reports that workers hired to “secure” the building instead opted for having the personal security that comes from peace of mind: “almost every last one of them threw up their hands and waved good bye. ‘I’m outta here!”
Yesterday afternoon, a woman came to the site, and told her son, he wasn’t working security for the property owners. (He had just gotten the job). “She was real mad. She said, ‘Hell no! Not Mr. Jimmy’s store. My son won’t be working here tomorrow.’” (Our Time Press spied three new security officers at their posts at about 6p, yesterday. Ann, a retired Corrections Officer, commented that just about everyone needs a job, “these days.”)
As we go to press, it was reported that tomorrow (17) is the last day the building’s owners’ representatives are allowing the Learys access to the storefront to clear out their possessions. It was also reported by Ms. Perry that she will return to continue the process of her unique and working brand of community intervention in these real estate matters.
Mr. Jimmy described to us his initial impression when the doors to his store were opened to the light, to fresh air and to his entrance: something had changed; “it was like walking into a death chamber.”
Both Ann and Mr. Jimmy are grateful for the community support, and overall they feel blessed. Meanwhile, Ann is determined to right this situation for her father, and she is seeking some compensation.
“I can’t be afraid, and I don’t understand people who are. Right now: I. Am. Mad. As. Hell!”
Then she asks, again, with well-chosen words that in their simplicity aptly describe the current state of affairs of gentrification’s intense imbalanced socio-economic side: “How can you dare to think that Your Wrong is right and My Right is wrong?”
For more information on the journey of Deborah Ann Leary and Mr. Jimmy Leary and for information on how you can join the Leary family’s legal team, contact: Ms. Perry at 718-637-7812.
IN PHOTO (L-R) Tao Qin, Vice Secretary General of CAA; Liu Dawei, exhibition curator and President of CAA and artist-curator Ma Xinle show Gov. Paterson the award-winning “ Scenery on Bridge” by He Hongzhou, which depicts famed Chinese artists in Paris during the 1920s. PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Mason
Part of the splendor of the 12th China National Exhibition of Fine Arts is told in numbers. Out of 24,000 submissions of art work, mostly paintings, 576 works were nominated or received awards. Sixty-five of those works are on display at Bonhams on Madison Avenue for a weeklong stay. This is the first time the fabulous exhibit has visited the U.S.
“It was brought to New York City because of the city’s importance to world culture and its diverse communities,” said Tao Qin, a noted art critic and Secretary General of the China Arts Association. “The artists represented here are just a sample of the many artists in China who express themselves in a variety of forms and concepts.”
Most of the paintings are six feet by six feet, with an array of colorful landscapes, traditional misty watercolors, stylized portraits, and fantastic modern interpretations. Scattered among the paintings are a few sculptures and three-dimensional pieces. There is one very engaging painting by Liu Xiaodong that reprises Michelangelo’s God reaching out to Adam, though in this instance the object being touched is a cell phone.
African American visitors will be drawn to a huge black and white charcoal-like rendering of children by Sun Daichan. One of the painters on the panel during the press conference Wednesday afternoon was Jin Rui and he discussed his work “The Battlefield,” in which a beautiful girl stands in stark contrast to mutilated bodies.
“The work employs line brush work and heavy-color technique and Chinese fresco,” said Riu, who was born in Beijing in 1973. He is currently an assistant professor of Chinese Painting under the China Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Like the other panelists, he said he hopes the tour will give viewers some understanding and appreciation of the extent and artistic range of Chinese Artists.
When asked if some artists were not selected because of their political perspectives, Liu Dawei, Vice Chairman of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, said “no one is ruled out because of their politics.”
With so many submissions, individual states begin the trimming down process, Dawei explained. “Then it’s left for the final committee to determine which are chosen to be part of the tour.”
Among the impressive paintings is “Scenery on Bridge,” by He Hongzhou. It realistically depicts three pioneering Chinese painters in Paris in the 1920s by the river Seine. The painting, with the subjects almost statute-like, received the Gold Prize.
Many of the works reflect the dramatic changes that have occurred in China, particularly over the last 65 years, symbolized by the number of paintings in the exhibit.
Ma Xinle, one of the panelists and an acclaimed artist, said that the weeklong stay at Bonhams, July 9-17 is short in order to accommodate the other stops on the tour as it visits four continents.
“This is a rich and impressive collection and I think it captures China’s contemporary image as well as the distant past,” said Fannie Lau Lawren, event planner for the NY exhibition, who at times served as an interpreter.
But no interpreters are needed for visitors; the art more than speaks for itself and you can discover this in the remaining days at Bonhams, 580 Madison Avenue, weekdays 9am to 5pm, through July 17, and open to the public free.
Graca Machal, one of the world’s most respected leaders, embraces human rights activist and cultural icon Harry Belafonte, at My Image Studios in Harlem
In Nelson Mandela’s first public appearance in the United States in June 1990, he stopped in Bedford-Stuyvesant at Boys & Girls H.S. to address an audience of young people and national and community leaders.
In Graca Machel’s first public appearance in the United States since the death of her husband, Madiba, she guided a panel discussion last Friday, May 15 in Harlem on the subject of “Women and Youth: Driving Development in Southern Africa.” It was taped for future broadcast by BET News for world audiences at MadibaHarlem at MIST, co-host of the event with Shared Interest, a leading New York-based nonprofit social investment fund.
Both leaders had one simple message: that the power to change the world for the better is in the hands of the people. But at MadibaHarlem last Friday, the former First Lady of Mozambique and of South Africa said something more: “It is essential: Women must take center stage in (global) politics.”
Let’s not be simplistic…,” she said. We all must acknowledge the past (slavery and apartheid) “and how deep it was, how far it can go,” but “all of us in a serene way, must ask what do we do to heal.”
Her message touched on the delicate issue of lack of opportunity for the grassroots involving land grab, lack of opportunity for business development, unsafe conditions for the powerless, lack of participation in the political process.
It reminded us of the missions of the African Union 2015 which states that “Africa is seen by foreign interests as the last great frontier for investment in large-scale, land-based agriculture and tourism ventures. But the appetite for acquisition is pushing vulnerable communities off their land, with authorities often taking the side of investors over local people.”
Graca Machel is urged that “we must reimagine our future, reimagine the dream then mobilize the best in ourselves to link hands to effect change and build opportunities.”
She announced that she is personally concentrating her efforts on economic empowerment of African women. “We have to sow seeds of transformation so young women (and children) will have a different start than us, and won’t have to face what we did.”
She noted that despite its challenges and its problems, “South Africa has one of the best Constitutions in the world”, one that underscores Madiba’s wish that “never again will one person oppress another.”
She admitted that despite some progress in South Africa, as in other parts of the world, “The economic condition has not changed enough. Opportunities have not been gained. People are coming from other nations and getting jobs in South Africa.”
“We have common problems within different contexts, alluding to the similarities between Africa and the U.S. histories:” For instance, “millions of girls have not been able to realize their dreams fully.. We must use the same strategies (to overcome). We have a common history; we can have a common future.”
In her belief that women of the world should take the lead in politics to make the world better for all, she said, in relationship to the state of world affairs, “Are we dealing with the soul, the wounds from other generations?”
And on a special message to the United States, as represented by the diverse audience that applauded her every reference to empowering the vulnerable, she offered an appreciation. “I know when Madiba passed, it was a personal loss for many of you.”
She noted that “his body couldn’t take it anymore. But his spirit was as strong as ever” knowing that the people supporting him and understanding his reimagined dreams.
About Graca Machel:
Graça Machel is an internationally renowned advocate for women’s and children’s rights. In 1997, she was made a British dame for her humanitarian work. She is the widow of both former South African President Nelson Mandela and Mozambican President Samora Machel. Her lifetime of humanitarian work ranges from her impact as Mozambique’s Minister of Education and Culture to the stewardship of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. Today, her own foundation, The Graca Machel Trust, works to eliminate gender inequality, uphold the rights of children, and empower women and their communities in Southern Africa and beyond.
About Shared Interest
The organization is helping women and youth in Southern Africa transform their communities, countries and regions, from small businesses and farms to townships and cities. Shared has 2.2 million beneficiaries who are entrepreneurs in Southern Africa.
About MadibaHarlem at MIST
The Harlem-based entertainment complex, led by the vision of owner Carlton Brown, “has a mission to be a space that advocates the visibility of culture, politics, education and economics of the African Diaspora.”
