Someone needs a video editor

Oh Costa, why did you include a shot of a graffiti covered Greek club in your video as something positive?

Greek Orthodox School expanding in Whitestone

From the Times Ledger:

Community Board 7 approved an expansion of a Whitestone Greek Orthodox church’s school at a meeting Monday night by a vote of 35-1.

Dozens of parents and educators flooded the meeting to voice their support for the proposal, which will more than double the size of the existing Holy Cross of Whitestone school from 5,870 square feet to a 14,201-square-foot building.

“My son has seen his parents, his teachers and community coming together to not only build his school, but also his future,” said Dina Skokos, a Holy Cross parent whose son is in the first-grade. “I know that will have a profound impact on the boy he is today and the man he will be tomorrow.”

Holy Cross, located at 150-05 12th Ave., first opened as a nursery and daycare center in 2002 and became a school with a kindergarten class in 2008. The school, which has had to bring in trailers to accommodate its growing student population, now offers third-grade classes and is going to add fourth-grade in the fall.

The proposed enlargement will enable the school, which currently has 180 students, to add a fifth-grade and to grow its capacity to 250 students.

No one spoke out in opposition to the expansion at the meeting, but Kim Cody, a CB 7 member and president of the Greater Whitestone Taxpayers Civic Association, quietly voted against it.

Cody, who lives near the school, said in an interview later that he had concerns about traffic in the area, as there is also a preschool on the same corner called Qsac Preschool, in addition to a number of public and private facilities, such as the Whitestone Academy and the Whitestone Community Volunteer Ambulance Service.

Introducing the Melrose Ballroom

There's a building going up in Astoria called the Melrose Ballroom at 36-08 33rd Street.

Their website advertises it as coming in early 2013, but apparently they're a bit behind schedule.

Here's what the finished product will look like. Hooray for chartreuse!

Just for fun, I decided to see what was there before this new building. Oh, I'm sorry, according to the permits, this is not a new building. There was only supposed to be "INTERIOR DEMOLITION AT FIRST FLOOR, MEZZANINE, AND SECOND FLOOR."

Yeah, okay. They DID get caught, BTW.

The final result will be this.

"Miraculous Greek singers" are scheduled to perform here starting mid-November. Why, you may ask?

Continued hysteria over Greek Nazis

From the NY Times:

The evidence was elusive: late last month, a professional Web site suddenly appeared, showing the party’s swastikalike logo set against a dark Manhattan skyline and calling on the city’s Greek diaspora to donate food and clothing to a charity drive to benefit struggling poor people in Greece. There were pictures on the site: one was of a group of men with their backs turned to the camera, wearing black T-shirts reading, in Greek, “Golden Dawn New York.”

Although the site went down within days of its emergence — targeted, it was reported, by Anonymous, the hackers’ group — it provoked sufficient outrage that local politicians, doing what they do, rallied at a news conference to condemn the right-wing party, and a grass-roots protest movement sprang up in an effort to oppose it.

The problem was — and, indeed, still is — that almost nothing is known about the party’s actual presence in the neighborhood. Does Golden Dawn really have an office in Astoria, the center of the city’s Greek community? That is not clear. What are its goals? Also unclear. Is its membership significant or minimal? No one knows for sure.

...a phone call in search of some specifics to Peter F. Vallone Jr., the local city councilman, produced an e-mail from a spokesman saying that Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, who represents Astoria, knew more about the group. While trying to be helpful, Ms. Simotas said, “I only know a little — and it’s all secondhand.”

What if they do? You can't legislate against free speech. The pols in this town, and everywhere, for that matter, LOVE to play on people's fears. We have Latin gangs, neo-Nazi skinheads, Black Panthers, Al Qaeda, the City Council, etc. in this town. So what is the big deal about adding fascist Greeks to the mix?

Greek neo-Nazis moving into Queens

Don't normally post politician press releases, but this one is a doozy...

"Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr, Assembly Member Aravella Simotas, community and religious leaders today rallied at a press conference to protest Greek Neo-Nazi Party Golden Dawn’s expansion into New York City. Golden Dawn announced in late September that they would be opening up a headquarters in New York, and there have been reports of activity and sightings of their hateful literature around Astoria, Queens, home to one of the biggest Greek communities in the country.

The Golden Dawn party, an extremist right-wing party in Greece, recently made inroads this past August in Greek elections, winning 18 of Greek Parliament’s 300. The party leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, has denied that German Nazis used gas chambers to systematically kill Jews, and the party has been accused by Human Rights Watch of inciting violence against immigrants in Greece.

“I am standing here today with a broad coalition of Greek and Jewish leadership, and with members of the greater Astoria community, to send a clear message to the Golden Dawn party that is trying to make inroads in New York City,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. “You are not welcome in this community, this city, or this country. Your hatred and bigotry will fall on deaf ears in Queens, the most diverse county in America, where people of every race, creed and nationality live side by side in harmony.”

State Senator Michael Gianaris said, “The painful lessons of our own history have taught us that extremism and intolerance beget violence, oppression and suffering. I stand with Greek-American leadership like the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, who have made clear that extremist and divisive groups like Golden Dawn are not welcome in our community. There is no place more inappropriate for a group like this than western Queens, which celebrates its diversity and openness to all peoples.”

Assembly Member Aravella Simotas said, “New York City, and Astoria in particular, are models of diversity and tolerance. There is no room for any kind of hate group to promote an anti-immigrant agenda in our city, especially here in the heart of our community,” Simotas said. “I immigrated to this country from Greece with my parents 33 years ago, and we were welcomed in Astoria with open arms by the generations of immigrants that came before us. This is what we in Astoria stand for as a community – not hatred and violence against immigrants, women and those who may be different from us.”

“While we vigorously defend freedom of speech, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, together with all freedom-loving New Yorkers, are deeply offended by the presence here in Queens, the most diverse borough in the most diverse city in the world, of this xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic movement. Their ideology is rejected by the Greek community here in Queens and we will continue to work with our local ethnic and faith partners to combat all forms of racism and intolerance,” said Alan S. Jaffe, President of Jewish Community Relations Council of New York."

Church bingo scam

From WABC:

Three people have been charged in a church bingo scam that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said.

"The defendants are accused of duping the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America into allowing them to run a bingo hall whose profits were supposed to go to specific charitable causes," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. "Instead of doing God's work, however, the defendants are alleged to have lined their own pockets with hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to the charities."

Spiros Moshopoulos, 62, of Little Neck, Queens; Tommy Skiada, 49, of Astoria, Queens; and Daniella Radulescu, 46, of Astoria, Queens are facing numerous charges of larceny, money laundering and illegal gambling in connection with the scam. Moshopoulos' corporation, Spimos Enterprises Inc. in Jackson Heights, is also named in the 714-count indictment.

They are accused of operating a licensed bingo hall and using licensed charitable organizations as a front to steal approximately $830,000 between January 2007 and February 2010.

The bingo hall was located at 82-18 Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights. The games were allegedly operated in the name of various inactive charities under the umbrella of the Romanian Orthodox Church of Sts. Constantine & Helen, located at 25-27 23rd Street, which is under the direct canonical supervision of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Prosecutors said they obtained the licenses illegally and used the charities as a front to siphon monies from the gaming for their own profit. Bingo games were allegedly conducted daily at the location by people posing as members of various charities.

The science of winterizing a fig tree

From the NY Times:

As long as there have been immigrants from Greece and Italy in Astoria, there have been fig trees — they dot virtually every block from Ditmars Boulevard to 36th Avenue, between the East River and Steinway Street, in the neighborhood’s southern European quadrangle. The trees are native to the Mediterranean region, where winters are decidedly milder than in New York, but the fig trees of Astoria, like true New Yorkers, have proved resilient.

The immigrants planted fig tree roots they had smuggled from the places they left behind, and then cared for the trees as if they were part of the family, carefully wrapping them in the winter to protect them from the cold.

From November until maybe April, the trees look like hastily made packages of plastic and duct tape, and while they were once a common sight, they are a rare find these days: people have grown too old, too busy or too tired to carry on the tradition.

From a scientific perspective, covering a fig tree in the winter has more to do with protecting it from changes in temperature, which can be more harmful than the cold itself, said Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at the New York Botanical Garden. Rainwater can seep into a tree’s roots and cells, and if the water freezes, it can rupture the tree’s vascular connections and potentially kill it, he said.

There are two ways to protect a fig tree from winter weather. One is to bury the tree branches, a strenuous days-long process that requires slowly bending the trunk. The other is to wrap it and perhaps place a garbage can on top of the tree for extra protection. It is the more popular and easier method, but can still be time-consuming.