Ok, you Bronx residents, current or former New Yorkers..what's your take on this story.



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/bronx-economy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Two things

That location in the picture is not Hunts Point. I know that area very well, my parents live on 153rd street. This is about two to three blocks away from Lincoln Hospital.

I have read about these incubators coming to the Bronx, and I support and encourage more to come to the borough. As far as the perception of the Bronx is concerned, it does have a perception problem (particularly the South Bronx) along with a host of other classic urban issues like gangs, drugs, bad schools, pollution, etc.

BUT, the borough has been improving (albeit a bit slow). The South Bronx in particular has the highest rate of new real estate construction in all of NYC the past 2/3 yrs. Lots of new residential/green buildings not too far from the area in the picture have been sprouting up.

"Shoppers along Third Avenue in the Hub, a neighborhood that has been called the Times Square of the Bronx".

How far away is The Hub from Hunt's Point? Are they roughly the same demographically?

Being outside of NY when I hear Bronx I used to think of rap music, urban decay and Bugs Bunny. But interacting with some of the people here among other things showed me otherwise. Also that movie with Andy Garcia, "City Island" with a few others went a ways towards changing my perception anyway. Hopefully The Bronx will continue to make the same strides as any of the other areas.

They are roughly the same demographically, they are about 2.5 miles away or about 10 minutes by car. Not far at all.

I understand the rap music and urban decay, but what particular made you think of bugs bunny when thinking of the bronx?

I guess any place can improve depending on how you define that term. But hasn't the Bronx been in decline for decades and, actually, generations? If so, it will probably take decades for it to reach a threshhold where those who live there can state without equivocation that it has improved. I know thatthere are parts of Pittsburgh where I grew up that started deteriorating a long time ago and show no signs of improving.

The accent. I believe Mel Blanc said he combined a Bronx and Brooklyn accent for Bugs Bunny.

Gotcha, never heard of that.

The Nanny!

I would say the Bronx is in better footing (due to gentrification slowly coming into the area, new investments) than many other traditional struggling urban areas like Detroit, Baltimore, parts of DC,etc. Each area has its pluses and its minuses obviously.

I grew up in the Bronx. We spent the day at the Zoo and Arthur Avenue a few weeks ago and then I asked my husband to exit at my old neighborhood. I showed the girls where I went to kindergarten, the old library, my grandmother's house, the corner where my dad worked in a drug store for over 30 years and our old apartment building. They were all clean and well kept. It was sad to see the Avenue in such a decline. The movie theater, the luncheonette, my uncle's jewelry store, all were gone. The stores looked totally seedy, very sad.

The Bronx---like the rest of the outer boroughs---is a city within a city. And like any other city, there are good parts and parts that are run down.

It's true that the southwest Bronx has been run down for longer than I've been alive (and I'm almost 53), but as Dapper alluded to, there are some nice developments going up now. The area will almost certainly remain low income, but it's a start.

Now here's the thing: When people from outside of New York hear "The Bronx," they automatically think of the area below Yankee Stadium (the southwest portion of the borough), because that's what's usually depicted on television. But the rest of the borough is quite beautiful, with tree lined streets and everything.

The Throggs Neck zip code (10465), where I live, contains one of the lowest crime rates and has some of the highest property values in all of the outer boroughs. A two family split level house here averages well over $500,000. The subway doesn't come here, and there are very few apartment buildings, so the area is quite residential. Throggs Neck is pretty much to the Bronx what Howard Beach is to Queens. It's almost more like Long Island than the rest of the Bronx.

But there are other sections of the borough that are still nice as well. Pelham Bay is still very nice, and Castle Hill is still remarkably blue collar and as integrated as, say, Woodside in Queens. It's quite the "melting pot."

Unfortunately, it's true that some neighborhoods aren't what they used to be, but I think you'll find that in any city. I know you'll find that in every borough. Manhattan has Washington Heights. Queens has Hollis. Brooklyn has East New York. Even Staten Island has the Stapleton section, which, believe me, is not an area where you want your car to break down at night.

I think my point (or rant) is, you have to take the good with the bad.

We had friends who lived on Puritan Ave (Schylerville?). It was a nice neighborhood. The only drawback was they were in the landing path of Laguardia Airport.

My nephew went to the Maritime College, under the Throgs Neck Bridge. We visited him a few times. Nice location; nice neighborhood to drive through, but it flooded sometimes.

The Bronx Zoo is world class. That was a dad/daughter daytrip for a few years.

Oh, yeah, there's a baseball team that plays in the Bronx...their name escapes me.

Puritan Avenue is sandwiched in between Pelham Bay and Throggs Neck. Some realtors do call it Schuylerville, but none of the residents do. It's technically Pelham Bay, but some of them call it Throggs Neck.

I live right near the Maritime College, MC. As far as flooding, it depends on where you are. We're right on the Long Island Sound (Eastchester Bay). The waterfront is pretty much my backyard, and we've never had a drainage problem. But I have local friends who got hit pretty hard after last year's hurricane.

The Bronx has so much to offer - City Island, The Bronx Zoo (I've been to numerous zoos, and it's the best I've ever seen), Botanical Gardens (stunning), Arthur Avenue (the REAL Little Italy, plus Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a gorgeous church), Fordham University (one of the best colleges and my dad's alma mater), and, as MC coyly pointed out, Yankee Stadium. I know that's just the tip of the iceberg, but it's all there and it's all wonderful.

I'm not trying to pass off the Bronx as some sort of paradise, but it has a heck of a lot going for it.

Mine too, Babe. Class of 1981 .

The Bronx deserves a comeback. Robert Moses practically destroyed most of the southwest Bronx with the Cross Bronx Expressway, which displaced 60,000 stable, hard-working Irish, Jewish and Italian working-class families.

Bastard did a number on Brooklyn too, as I remember .

Moses was a horrible man, TB.

If you haven't read it, I can't recommend this book enough: http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker-Robert-Moses/dp/0394480767

I guess you didn't know my dad? He was class of '42! He worked at the Rexall on the corner of 233rd and White Plains Road for over 30 years. My Uncle Bob owned the Benjamin's Jewelers and their friend Sal owned the luncheonette on the corner of White Plains Road and 234th, and my dad used to eat lunch there almost every day.

Throggsneck has always been an 'okay' area. Until you hit the housing projects of course. The poster that described it as being similar to Howard Beach is right on. A pretty accurate comparison. One thing, like Howard Beach, the residents have that automatic suspicion of anyone they don't recognize who doesn't live in the area. Or at least they used to. Maybe they mellowed since then...

JIGGS

Welcome aboard, Jiggs. That was my post that compared Throggs Neck to Howard Beach.

As far as Throggs Neckers go, we don't count the Randall-Balcom housing projects because they're so far off the beaten path. Their closest neighbors are interred at Saint Raymonds Cemetery .

A great book. At one point, Moses chaired or had seats on a dozen state and city agencies involved with capital projects--none of them elected positions. Under him, the Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the Port of New York Authority had quasi-government powers (eminent domain, full faith and credit of New York State for bond issuance) without any accountability to the electorate. If he'd had his way, his "Lower New York Expressway" would have destroyed Greenwich Village and Chinatown. Thank goodness good people opposed him and were successful.

God, can you imagine?

Today Greenwich Village contains 2 of 5 most expensive zip codes in the United States, which is remarkable in itself because when I was growing up the place was generally affordable. Sure, there were always "starving" actors and artists in the area, but today the place is Hollywood East. No one living there today is a starving anything.

And I'll tell you, as a cranky old New Yorker, I liked Greenwich Village AND Times Square better the way they were. All the character is gone .

Last night I saw a promo for a show about cars (I think) out of the Bronx. Much of the promo shpowed guys yelling and fighting. That's not bound to change any attitudes about the Bronx.

Hey the famous pizzaboy! I heard of you. They got a whole thread in the Sit down over there down there over you. Did you know that?

Those projects you mention was all Meldisch Bros. product up and down. Some really bad times in the 70s & 80s...

JIGGS

Times Square not so much for me. It was a fuckin' cess pool and quite honestly I don't miss that shit at all.

But the village. The village has been done messed up by the realtors and developers and trump and kardashian and the whatevers. There used to be a pretty cool loft scene down there that has been completely wiped out. I wasn't into the whol e beatnick scene, but man, you could score the best drugs at the village gate.

Memories...

Yeah, someone told me they were accusing me of being some guy named Maggio, so I popped in to try to put a stop to it. But that guy Cigars won't let it go. It's a great site as far as knowledgeable posters go, but I'm not crazy about all of the insults and racial hate that gets tossed around. Just my two cents.


Joey Meldish is a few years older than me, but I knew him pretty well. No one misses that guy, I'll tell you that much.

The Bronx zoo is great, I must have been there over 20 different times in my life. Growing up it was one of the few places that local schools would take kids (along with the circus) because it was always free on Wednesday and its very close proximity (plus the kids were bad and it was viewed as a punishment lol). Great place.

Clearly a bonus for growing up in the Bronx.

When I was a kid in Brooklyn's public schools, the teacher would apply in September to the Transit Authority to grant a free pass to take the class via subway to the Brooklyn Museum. It'd take months for the pass to get to the teacher. Geez, what a bore! If the pass came through in winter, the building would be so overheated that the kids had to tie their coats to their waists, constantly dropping them. If in late spring or early summer, every kid's salami sandwich stank up the subway car and the museum.

The only saving grace: the nude statues. Breasts and genitals were rubbed shiny by countless generations of kids who grabbed them when teacher wasn't looking.

Even the kids from Brownsville?

Because my dad worked a lot of weekends, his day off would often be Wednesday. When it was, he would always take me to the zoo. That was back when the big cats were in the cat house. I always loved the tigers, still do. Anyway, he convinced me that one tiger (fairly famous one named Dakkar) regularly recognized me, and that it was "my" tiger. He'd tell me Dakkar was looking right at me, that he knew it was me!

Some of my fondest childhood memories are from that zoo.