From its opening sequence, Lin Manuel Miranda’s new film “In the Heights” (adapted from the stage musical of the same name) spells out its Disney-ish conceit for the audience. “Once upon a time in a far-away land called Nueva York,” his lead character Usnavi, played by Anthony Ramos, assures a group of small children seated […]
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Okay let’s get this straight. Last week Obama free-styled on the White House lawn, apparently said he had the Oscar López Rivera matter “on his desk,” then took off for Havana, where he watched a baseball game and then on to Argentina to throw down with some tango dancers. Prominent members of the Puerto Rican/diaspora […]
Read moreMade it over to the last day of viewing for Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,” the now-famous (or infamous) installation at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The night before I overheard a heated discussion about it at the Blitz the Ambassador show at the Brooklyn Museum, and of course, it had been a buzz […]
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Spike Lee’s now-famous rant against gentrification is a mixed blessing. As an extremely high profile New York voice, Lee commands headlines and brings even more visibility to an increasingly hot topic. But his unfortunate characterization as a racial lightning rod, as well as the contradictions raised by his own profiting from the New York real […]
Read moreBill de Blasio’s victory in the mayoral election tonight may seem like a triumph of progressivism and a rejection of outgoing Mayor Bloomberg’s Wall Street agenda, but it is clearly an accident, and it remains to be seen what lies in New York’s future. It’s got to be more than a big red sign that […]
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For some reason the New York Daily News mobile app went with this story about last night’s City Council forum on affordable housing, sponsored by East Harlem Preservation and JustPublics@365, as its lead this morning. The headline, “Ugly Council Debate Paints Melissa Mark-Viverito as a Gentrifier” seems designed to stir up some shock-value interest on another sleepy summer […]
Read moreI’m a little late on this but the cheery Times “Living In” section appears to have glommed off Whose Barrio doc I co-created as well as channeling Times story I wrote referring to James De La Vega’s painting about the shifting borderline between El Barrio and Upper East through Obama autobiography. Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/realestate/east-harlem-living-in-more-small-dogs-and-big-home-prices.html?hpw Whose Barrio […]
Read moreSomewhere on 6th Street in the mid-1980s a siren dressed in white played me a scratchy tape of “Cookie Puss”; she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and sensed that someday everyone would hear that crazy noise she could claim as her own. She had a baby bump from a local Rastaman […]
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ED MORALES 