Wednesday, August 17, 2011

From Nepal to Ridgewood with love

From Crains:

“Ridgewood is going to be a Little Nepal,” said Shree Parajuli, president of the Ridgewood Nepalese Society.

They have a ways to go. So far, aside from the Gyawalis' nail salon and a few delis, Ridgewood boasts few Nepalese businesses—particularly eateries—that might act as magnets. But the society's members make up in energy what they lack in sheer numbers. For the past two years, they have held an annual blood drive and have organized events like street cleanings. But their largest project by far is the plan to erect a temple and cultural center in Ridgewood.

Last month, the society took a major step in that direction, signing a contract to buy a vacant 5,000-square-foot plot for $399,000. The scheduled closing date for the property—at 1647 Hancock St., a block from Myrtle Avenue and across the street from P.S. 75—is Oct. 25.

Construction of the Durga Temple and Nepalese Cultural Center, which will have a pagoda-style roof, should start early next year, according to Mr. Parajuli. With the help of Deen Bandhu Pokhrel, a Nepalese spiritual leader who visited New York for a week last summer, the society raised $537,000. The aim is to raise an additional $1 million to complete its project, a goal brought closer with every new Nepalese arrival in Ridgewood.

“The community has definitely grown a lot,” said Luna Ranjit, executive director of Adhikaar, a 6-year-old Nepalese nonprofit offering English-language classes and other services. While the most recent census counted only 6,000 Nepalese in the entire city, community leaders on the ground in southern Queens reckon that number is actually a between 20,000 and 30,000. More than three-quarters of them, according to survey conducted late last year by Adhikaar, arrived in the past decade. Ridgewood alone now boasts close to 1,900 Nepalese, according to Nepalese Society estimates.


Churches and synagogues closing? Hardly mentioned unless a media-savvy person pushes really hard to stop it.

Jews & Christians = bad
Everyone else = good

People from exotic lands coming here and building a temple? The local media will cream their jeans covering this one! Is this really Crain's type of material?

When Ringling Bros features elephants, they get called out for animal cruelty. When an Indian temple uses them in a special ceremony, the NY Times puts a video of it on their front page as a wonderful example of diversity.

The hypocrisy is enough to make you gag.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to see green cards

Joe said...

The PR's on that quiet street aint gonna put up with this shit let alone the Nepalese bells, chimes, gongs and horns.

I friend of mine owns a small 1920's house with a huge yard across the street from that lot. Low tax and cheap to heat in the winter. Shame if that gets ruined with this.

Anonymous said...

All these libs love diversity so much, yet they never seem to live among it, or if they do, not for long. Queens seems to have become a "Diversity Zoo", a chance for the "enlightened ones" to go on day trips and see the diverse, unwashed tweeded in their natural (or UN-natural?)habitats.

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the first comment that tries to call Crapper and his commenters out for "hating immigrants". But a savvy reader will understand that is NOT the topic of this post. The topic is how the media portrays immigrants as something exotic and therefore desirable while it ignores the everyday problems of people who were born here. I guess the natives are supposed to shrivel up and die to make way for trustafarians or diversity.

Anonymous said...

Craper, he photo for your story features the flag of Tibet, not Nepal. Get your exotic countries right.

FlushingRepresenter said...

Jews = bad?

WHAT CITY DO YOU LIVE IN? Maybe in Missouri this may hold true or Tennesse but jews in this city are highly revered and have relatively unlimited power in regards to New York City.

Did you pay your kosher tax yet?

First one to call me an anti-semite gets a penny!

Anonymous said...

WHAT CITY DO YOU LIVE IN? Maybe in Missouri this may hold true or Tennesse but jews in this city are highly revered and have relatively unlimited power in regards to New York City.
----------------------------------
Are you saying they control the media and the banks? You can't say that, it is a PC no no.

Anonymous said...

Seems the word got to Nepal about the consequences of over-staying a tourist or student visa. New York City's, New York State's, and the fed's bag of free goodies beats the harsh life and poverty of Tibet and Nepal.

So come on over, we're picking up your tab.

Anonymous said...

I always said that if John Rocker worded his 7 train rant a little differently, he could have pretty much said the same exact thing about the same exact people on the 7 train, and it would have read like one of these cutsey, feel good fantasy land articles about our VIBRANT! DIVERSE! cesspool.

Queens Crapper said...

Apologies for the mistaken flag. I actually got that photo from an article about Nepalese so they got it wrong, too.

Anonymous said...

Tru dat about the elephants in the Hindu ceremonies. Where do they get them from? They probably rent them from Ringling Brothers, because who else is taming elephants these days?

Auntie Invasion said...

Amazing how people come from third world countries and before their plane hits the runway have rent stabilized apartments & lotsa government benefits.
started noticing the influx of Nepalis into Sunnyside BEFORE the state of emergency in 2006. nine months later my lovely Nepali neighbor popped out a jackpot baby. right on schedule.

what local organization is buying a building such as the one mentioned? can I move into the premises?

I need decent housing. Unlike those with the favored refugee status I don't have a phalanx of social workers finding me a place to live or squeezing the system for every known government benefit.

This is how Americans are becoming second class citizens in our own country. send them all back to Nepal.

Anonymous said...

Immigration needs to be tied to the unemployment rate. As bad as things are in the US right now, it's nuts to be bringing in so many people legally.
We should also tie it to the illegal immigration rate. Get control of our borders before bringing anyone else.

georgetheatheist said...

The No. 7 = The John Rocker Line.

georgetheatheist said...

"Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing... The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?" - John Rocker, Sports Illustrated, January 2000

Anonymous said...

What is wrong with you folks? Ridgewood is full of immigrants, Polish to Ecuadorean and back to Italian and German. These Nepalese aren't bothering anyone... hell, I live in Ridgewood and hadn't even noticed their presence until reading this article. Most immigrants in Ridgewood are pretty quiet folks who keep to themselves and work hard... which is more than you can say about a lot of the NYC-born thugs I encounter.

Joe said...

Ha ha, how times have changed George .
You can now walk 3 blocks and not hear anybody speaking English. And this is going on in RIDGEWOOD let alone the John Rocker Express.
I cant sell my house !!

Speaking of Ridgewood they have free Polish Porn at the Ridgewood library. Its part of the free multicultural program and allowed. No books there just computers, translators and baby sitting rooms (for the kids).
The next person that tells me "Change is good" or "Embrace diversity" I kicking right in the ass !!
The media is so fulla sh*t, they see these 3rd & 4th worlder's the same as politicians.
I worked at NBC it was pure hell. Its parent company General Electric was more interested in selling 30 million washing machines to a certain group of "immigrants" (the short ones with the 3+ kids) A memo was sent out saying using the 2 words "illegal and Immigrant" together was banned along with disclosing an arrested persons country of origin on news reporting.

The starving TV, movie & cartoon industry is pandering the same way. The "New" Spiderman who's character is "Miles Morales" a Mestizo and gay immigrant.

-Joe
nra.org

Anonymous said...

"Ridgewood is full of immigrants, Polish to Ecuadorean and back to Italian and German."

You're right - where are the articles about their cultures, churches and traditions?

Anonymous said...

This is how Americans are becoming second class citizens in our own country. send them all back to Nepal.
---

Most NYers don't talk like this and since Archie Bunker is our answer to Step n Fetchit anyone talking like that in this blog would be treated the same fashion as cornpone and chitlins and eyerolling would be treated on a blog in Harlem.

With suspicion 'white boy'!

That being said, we know why these people are here: the blood of immigrants fills the coffers of good old Tweeding Tammany.

And as long as you send 'em back to office they will bring 'em to your backyard.

End of discussion.

Anonymous said...

PR vs Slavs/Polish vs Nepalese.

Who wins???

Anonymous said...

Anon No. 7:

Rupert Murdoch is Jewish?

Anonymous said...

FlushingRepresenter:

If I had a penny for every time someone like you makes an anti-semitic statement here, I'd be one of the "Rich Jews" that Anon. No. 7 goes on about.

Anonymous said...

"'Ridgewood is full of immigrants, Polish to Ecuadorean and back to Italian and German.'

You're right - where are the articles about their cultures, churches and traditions?"

Most articles I ever read about Ridgewood are about the Poles and their growing numbers, actually, and the NY Times profiled Gottscheer Hall, one of the last German strongholds, a while ago, plus a story on one of the Pork Stores. This is the first story I have ever seen about Nepalese.

The Puerto Ricans and South Americans don't get a ton of press, no; that is probably because they are more highly concentrated in other neighborhoods.

Anonymous said...

They profiled Gotscheer Hall and a pork store? Oh well then that's covering the German culture!

I haven't seen any articles about Poles in Ridgewood, and in fact Romanians outnumber Poles.

Anonymous said...

Yea it's pretty crazy to me that hispanic folks do not receive any press in the neighborhood even though they are by far the largest demographic... Rough estimates based on the 2010 census...

47% Hispanic
40% White
10% Asian
3% Black

On top of that, it seems as if the Polish folk do not have the same numbers in Ridgewood as they used to about 5 years ago (yet they are the only group aside from this article that are acknowledged in this neighborhood... It seems that now the biggest group of people moving into this area are nepalese, chinese and mexicans... As for me, I don't mind the diversity as long as it doesn't bring along 3rd world problems with it... And from what I see from this neighborhood, it doesn't seem to be spiraling into chaos anyitme soon... While I don't advocate the problems that do take place within this neighborhood I think alot of people simply like to complain and don't realize how things were when the demographics even suited their liking...

Look at the crime rates in Ridgewood in 1990 when Ridgewood was about 70% White 25% Hispanic 5% everything else... Problems were much more pervasive back then...

It seems as if everyone wishes we can go back to the old times when the irish, italians and germans dominated NYC neighborhoods but as any history book can tell you, things were much worse back then than they were now even with all this added diversity so it's kinda dumb to say that adding diversity to a neighborhood breeds problems...

Anonymous said...

Kind of a simplistic, misguided look at Ridgewood's demographic history and crime, dontcha think?

Crime was high all over the country in 1990 because of the crack epidemic.

"Diversity" doesn't save neighborhoods as popularly believed. Better policing does. And many new populations are able to get away with committing underground crimes because of their insular nature.

Anonymous said...

Crime is not worse. Quality of life? HORRIBLE. People in Ridgewood and other "diverse" areas get to listen to ghetto music at all hours, the streets are filthy, people throw chicken bones out their front windows into the front yards where rats and raccoons pick on them, the parks are flooded "birthday parties" for illegals where they leave all their trash behind, unlicensed vending trucks double park on the street and they cook with vats of oil out on the sidewalk, they inhabit basements which taxes the infrastructure and their offspring overcrowd the schools. Somehow, these problems didn't exist when the population was mostly German.

Anonymous said...

Somehow, these problems didn't exist when the population was mostly German.

----------------------

Here here!

When my street was mostly german, people swept the sidewalk daily, houses were maintained and repaired the second there was a problem, gardens look picturesque.... Now with the "mixed bag" of diversity, we have paved over lawns, McCrap with rusty balconies, and ten cars to a household (because there are 12 people in there).

It really sunk to a low.

Anonymous said...

"This is how Americans are becoming second class citizens in our own country. send them all back to Nepal."

Once again the QC comment boards are afire with good old fashioned anti-immigrant hate.

I don't know where one gets this idea that the Nepali immigrants coming to this city are armed with a "phalanx of social workers" to aid them in housing and work. Most new immigrants are working their asses off in various low paying jobs (many while taken classes as well) in order to get some sort of better opportunities later on. This is a fundamental right.

Immigrants made this city and they will continue to thrive here. Don't blame institutional failures on easy (and misguided) targets.

-ACS

ps - And Crapper used the correct flag.

Anonymous said...

In bayside,the green front lawns have been concreted to accommodate their cars and commercial vans. the front balconies are used to hang their wash (15-20 pieces).

there are five names on the mail box?an absentee asian landlord ,who rents to asians and has been fined for illegal conversions. note the plural in CONVERSIONS.

a vice squad raid in the past cleaned out the prostitution.

go to meetings at queens boro c.c. and listen to the local jihadists rant and rave.

recently an asian group (neighbor) was busted for involvement in the L.I. knock off products scam . they were using their garage and basement for storeage.

just a quiet local 1to 2 family block ,in n.e.queens ????

Sanctuary City and it's government leaders suck.

Anonymous said...

Stop fighting it. All of us minorities and weirdos are taking over and there is nothing you can do about it. So sit right back in your easy chair and go back to singing "Those were the days".

Anonymous said...

'Stop fighting it. All of us minorities and weirdos are taking over and there is nothing you can do about it. So sit right back in your easy chair and go back to singing "Those were the days".'

That's fine. But don't cry when your 'nabes become little Guadalajara or little Africa because you won't have anyone to blame but yourself. I'm sure you will be the first one clamoring to leave your "multi-cultural" utopia for the suburbs, just like every other "progressive," when things become a little less convenient.