Author Archives: TheForum
By Jeremiah Dobruck Three people were stabbed in the intersection of 39th Road and 52nd Street next to the Lawrence Virgillio Playground around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. A witness said a group of six to eight people was rowdily talking in the park when an argument broke out and escalated into a fight. Two males and one female were stabbed, police said. None was fatal. Witnesses said the female was stabbed in the stomach and looked like she was in her teens. … Continue reading
Construction will begin later this year in a Richmond Hill playground that will see a number of new additions added just in time for the summer season. Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) announced that London Planetree Playground, which is on Atlantic and 95th avenues between 88th and 89th streets in Richmond Hill, will get $1.7 million in funding from the City Council and the Queens Borough President. According to Ulrich and a spokesperson from the New York City Department of … Continue reading
Click here to flip through The Forum’s first Bridal Guide in its entirety. We’ve all heard the stories. Love at first sight. High school sweethearts reunited years later. They accidentally collided on the street and instantly knew. But seriously? Are people just making this stuff up, or does this happen to real people? How does any bride really know she’s found the one for her? Some brides know instantly. Others have to be convinced over years. Marisa Ricciardi knew Kevin … Continue reading
Click here to flip through The Forum’s first Bridal Guide in its entirety. Back in the day, the father-daughter dance at a wedding had a bit more concrete meaning than it does today. Then, the festivities would begin with the father leading his daughter out onto the dance floor. At some point in the intricate dance, the father would pass his daughter off to her new husband, who would dance her away. The pass symbolized the father’s acceptance of the … Continue reading
Calvin Covington was driving a bus full of sixth-graders home from Intermediate School 77 on Thursday afternoon in Ridgewood when he smelled smoke. He passed Eliot Avenue on Fresh Pond Road around 3:15 p.m. and dismissed the scent as coming from the gas station at the intersection. After another mile, he still smelled the smoke and then the acrid odor of wires burning. He pulled over as soon as he could at 74th Street and 58th Avenue in Maspeth and … Continue reading
When 81-year-old Eleanor Polgar was getting off the Q59 bus on Grand Avenue in Maspeth she stepped onto a sidewalk where several feet of curb was missing and inches-wide holes were torn out of it. “She almost fell in there. You get off the bus, the bus doors open and it’s right there,” her son, Richard Polgar said. “My mother almost broke her leg in there.” This was in 2010. Until last week, that sidewalk and curb sat unpatched despite … Continue reading
A man pulled up in his car and began masturbating while looking at a woman who was leaving her home in Maspeth on Valentine’s Day, police said. The 22-year-old victim told police that she was leaving her house near Grand Avenue and 58th Avenue to take a young child to day care. As she walked out at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 14, she noticed a four-door beige sedan stop on the street in front of her. The man inside … Continue reading
For most 6-year-olds, Christmas is a day to open presents and spend time with their families. Unfortunately for Colin Flood, his Christmas was spent in the hospital after learning that a flu he was battling turned out to be something much worse. On Dec. 23 of last year, Colin Flood was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a type of cancer that produces malignant white blood cells in the blood stream and bone marrow. Now Colin needs a bone marrow transplant … Continue reading
Community Board 6 announced their capital and expense budget for 2013 at their monthly meeting on Feb. 8, which aims at saving a local school program that could disappear at the end of the 2011-12 school year. Each year, the board must put together a list of 10 local items that they believe need additional funding for the 2013 fiscal year. The board submits this list to the state government. This year, the board put more funding for the Beacon … Continue reading
Community Board 9 could have at least two vacancies on their 50-member board thanks to the recent resignation of one member and the request for removal of another. The majority of the board members present at Tuesday’s monthly meeting at Kew Gardens Community Center voted 25-7 to recommend the removal of Rajinder Singh Bawa from the community board. According to Andrea Crawford, chairperson of Community Board 9, Bawa’s recommendation for removal came on the heels of Bawa missing several board … Continue reading
With subway trains zipping overhead at the corner of Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park, local legislators and transportation advocates last week shared their vision of what a reactivated train would bring to central Queens. In a joint press conference on Feb. 9, State Assemblymen Phil Goldfeder and Mike Miller joined others in calling for the rehabilitation of the currently defunct Rockaway Beach Rail Line in order to have trains actively connecting communities in central and southern Queens, as well as … Continue reading
It just sort of happened. That’s the way that Joseph DeCandia, Jr., of Howard Beach—recently honored as Man of the Year by the West Hamilton Beach Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Corps—described how he, then a 9-year-old kid growing up in Brooklyn, got involved working with his father, Joseph DeCandia, Sr., at Brooklyn’s Lenny’s Pizza in the 1960s. At the time, DeCandia, Jr., now 49, who would normally be riding his bicycle along 86th Street, stopped by one day at … Continue reading
Schools Rebuke plan to Replace Teachers: Bloomberg Wants to Close, Reopen Schools to get $58 Million
By Jeremiah Dobruck Updated below Grover Cleveland High School’s assistant principal Michelle Robertson bellowed at Mayor Michael Bloomberg. An immigrant from Barbados herself, she told the mayor about students in her English class who arrive not knowing how to speak the language—and a year later, pass the state’s English Reagents Exam. She yelled out how the largely immigrant population at her school in Ridgewood competes with specialized high schools in math and science contests. “We know our students are not … Continue reading
Renovations and an expansion of the Queens Library in Kew Gardens Hills are scheduled for November. Joanne King, director of communications for the Queens Library, said this week that the construction plans at the library, located at 72-33Vleigh Place, would be taking place in the fall, rather than in early spring, as originally scheduled. The library had initially planned to start renovations in the spring while opening a temporary library space on Main Street during the summer, with the fully … Continue reading
Shanna Spaulding, the woman who earned the nickname “Catwoman” after she robbed two Manhattan boutique stores donning a cat mask, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday, Feb.1. In December 2011, Spaulding, 29 and who was the lead singer in a death-metal band called Divine Infamy, was found guilty of three armed robberies that took place during the summer of 2010. She wore the cat mask during the two Manhattan robberies, one at a shoe store on Astor … Continue reading