Suzanne in New York

The disturbing world of online personas...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:02:00 -0500

This is my meez. It's not me. It's my meez. It's an it, not a she.

I guess I haven't written in awhile...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 7 Nov 2007 10:22:00 -0500

...because we all know what happened in Myanmar. Kind of funny to see how excited I was about the Burmese monks in the post below. Makes me seem a little green and wide-eyed.

Since you might be reading this after seeing my name on a fabulous new blog, I just wanted to give a shout out to all my radio peeps out there. Aforementioned fabulous new blog is an experiment from the NYU Department of Journalism, which doesn't exactly have a radio program, but it does have some wicked new radio equipment in its new building, and lots of students who want to be the next Ira Glass. Some really passionate radio people are making things happen at NYU, with help from this guy, who's running an informal documentary radio club for us. Check it out. I should be posting a piece very soon.

Monks in Action: A Modern Example of Successful Nonviolent Tactics

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:33:00 -0400

Haven't written in a long, long time, but if there's anyone out there still reading this, I promise I'm going to start up again as I'm back in NYC.

For now, please click on this NY Times story of Myanmar monks stickin' it to the man:

Hundreds of Buddhist monks marched through rain-washed streets for the third day in Myanmar ’s main city yesterday, taking the lead in monthlong protests that the military junta has so far been powerless to contain.

Next radio piece

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Thu, 2 Aug 2007 12:26:00 -0400

This one aired yesterday...
http://kfai.org/node/4070

1st Radio Piece: E-Wase

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:49:00 -0400

Check out my first radio story, aired last week on KFAI Community Radio in the Twin Cities:

http://kfai.org/node/3960

It's a little raw, but it was a good experience putting something of this nature together. The parts where the background sound seem to cut off are spots where one of the tracks' audio levels were set too low. Oops...

So far, so good...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:04:00 -0400

I just started the new blog last week, and already it's getting more buzz than this one ever did... This is what one MSP blogger has to say:

7/25: And speaking of new blogs, METRO's got a hawt new blog, intern Suzanne Pekow's "The Newbie". Even though she's only posted a handful of times, Pekow's blogging frequency already surpasses everyone else on roll.

I also got e-mail from a local TV news personality and another popular local blogger. Keep the praise coming, people!

New Blog

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:22:00 -0400

I haven't written in awhile, so who knows if anyone's actually reading this... But for those few loyal hangers-on to the sporadically-written, occasionally interesting life and times of yours truly, you can find me again in a new location: check out my new METRO magazine blog.

In which I work for free for months on end

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:59:00 -0400

My home for the summer is METRO magazine, in Minneapolis. To read more about what I'm doing, visit our managing editor's blog, Meta-METRO, where each of the summer interns have posted a mini-bio. I asked if she wanted my professional head shot, but she declined.

(Note to self: no need to order those professional head shots just yet).

Web Wooing MySpace for seniors?

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:49:00 -0400

Check out an article I wrote for Thrive NYC, about two new web sites aimed at social networking for seniors : http://www.nyc-plus.com/nyc25/webwooingmyspace.html

Seniors Grand Central

Eons

Ouch!

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Thu, 10 May 2007 13:31:00 -0400

It hurts so bad when the NY Times steals my ideas...

The Incredible Flying Granny Nanny

Photographs by Michael Stravato for The New York times

THE HAND-OFF Angela Kim’s baby-sitting routine: On Tuesdays her husband, Augustine, drops her off at a Houston airport. She’s met at the curb in Dallas by her daughter, Andrea, and her son, Noah, 2. Then it’s off to the hospital where Andrea works, where Mrs. Kim takes the wheel. She heads for Noah’s preschool and after that, home for a nap. On Wednesday nights she makes the reverse commute.

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Published: May 10, 2007
ANGELA KIM spends two days a week baby-sitting for her 2-year-old grandson, Noah, while her daughter, Andrea, a doctor, works nine-hour hospital shifts.

Only Mrs. Kim, 57, lives in Houston and her daughter and grandson live in Dallas — 250 miles away.
This long-distance child care arrangement means that on Tuesdays Mrs. Kim wakes at 4:45 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas Love Airport, where her daughter and Noah pick her up at the curb.
At the hospital, her daughter hops out of the car to make her 8 a.m. shift and Mrs. Kim slips into the driver’s seat. Then she and Noah drive to his preschool, and after that, home, where Mrs. Kim fills her grandson’s next two days with brown rice, seaweed and Konglish, a mix of Korean and English.
On Wednesday night, Mrs. Kim does the trip in reverse, catching a 7:30 p.m. flight to the Houston airport, where her husband picks her up.
Terri P. Tepper of Barrington, Ill., made a similar trek every week for a year to help care for her granddaughter so that her daughter could pursue her career. Beginning in 2001, Ms. Tepper flew to New York on Sundays and returned to Chicago on Thursdays.
“It was cheaper than getting a nanny,” said Ms. Tepper, 64. The round-trip tickets, which her daughter paid for, cost between $190 and $230. “I actually saved them a lot of money,” Ms. Tepper said. Her daughter later made partner in her consulting firm.
Even at a time when grandparents are more involved than ever in the lives of their children and grandchildren, the efforts of Mrs. Kim and Ms. Tepper are extraordinary. But many grandparents these days are making extreme efforts to help their children bridge the work-life divide.
“To me, grandparents are like the family National Guard,” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who studies intergenerational issues. “They are ready to step in when there is a need, and as soon as that need is met, they are ready to leave active duty.”
see site for more of article

Super Grandparents to the Rescue!

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:42:00 -0400

By Suzanne Pekow

Mary Jo Carlson, of Hastings, Minn., breathlessly answers the phone on a recently afternoon. She's spent the afternoon chasing after her 1-1/2-year-old grandson, Flint, at the Milwaukee Zoo, and finally has a couple of minutes of downtime while Flint naps.

Mary Jo, 58, recently made the 5-½-hour drive from Hastings to Milwaukee, Wisc. to help her daughter, Dana. Dana is seven months pregnant with her second child and confined to strict bed rest to avoid the complications she had with her first pregnancy. "I don't know if I fit the title of Super-Grandma," Mary Jo says, laughing. "But I certainly get to visit a lot."

"A lot" is an understatement. Mary Jo had to retire her first minivan this year after putting 250,000 miles on it. The heavy mileage is due partly to her monthly visits down to Milwaukee, and partly to the time she spends carting around her other set of grandchildren; 85-year-old mother; and 96-year-old mother-in-law; all of whom live in the Hastings area.

It may sound like a lot of work for someone approaching the supposed ease of retirement age, but Mary Jo is part of a growing number of Baby Boomers to tackle the role of grandparent with newfound gusto. The generation that brought us the Super-Kmart and the Super Big Gulp has invented a new superlative: the Super-Grandparent. As the oldest Baby Boomers head in to their 60s, they're re-defining what it means to be a grandparent in America.

Though she'll never admit it, those who know her best would agree that the "Super Grandma" title is fitting for Mary Jo and her contemporaries. Like superheroes, these young grandparents seem to enjoy coming to the rescue of their adult children and families.

The moment last year Mary Jo got the call that her daughter had gone into labor two months early, she cancelled all of her own plans and revved up the minivan. Yet she says she still feels guilty for having to swap one important grandmotherly duty for another. It was her grandson Tristan's ninth birthday, and Mary Jo still regrets not having had enough time to properly ice his birthday cake. "I was going to do the penguins from ‘Madagascar’ [the animated film] in frosting," she recalls, "so I [quickly] ran to Wal-Mart and bought three little plastic penguins, frosted his cake, went over there to apologize to him and then took off."

As recently as a generation ago, grandparents were not expected to play as vital a role in their grandkids lives as they do today, according to Don Schmitz, director of St. Paul, Minn.-based Grandkids and Me, a nonprofit foundation. In 2000, Schmitz started a summer camp for grandparents and grandchildren to help both older and younger generations appreciate the value of intergenerational relationships.

“When I was 21,” Schmitz says, “my father was so glad to get rid of me and get me out of the house, because he felt his responsibilities were completed, and I don’t think that’s true today of parents.” Today, he says, it’s more typical for parents to invite their children back home at any age.

But not all grandparents today are as excited about their familial roles. In his recent book, The New Face of Grandparenting... Why Parents Need Their Own Parents, Schmitz describes three categories he claims each represent about a third of American grandparents. The first, the “Been There, Done That” grandparents, after raising their own kids, don’t want anything to do with their grandkids. The second group, the “Grandparents When Asked,” are willing to help when their kids ask for it, but do not volunteer to take care of the grandchildren. The third group, who he believes will eventually describe more of the population as more Baby Boomers reach grandparenting age, are the “Parents Forever,” or “Grandparents Forever.” “These are the people,” Schmitz explains, “that are saying [to their kids], ‘I love you. I love who you are. I love what you do. I loved you as my child, and I love your children just because I love you, and I’ll do everything I can to help you. Now, what can I do for you?’”

Kathy Lisberg and her husband, David, would certainly fall into Schmitz's “Parents Forever” category. After the Lisbergs’ daughter, son-in-law, and 18-month-old twin grandson and granddaughter left their native Chicago for Boston seven years ago, she and David "got this terrible, lonesome feeling," Kathy says. So Kathy, a 60-year-old retired homemaker still living in Chicago, was determined never to let more than two months go by without seeing her daughter, Amy, and family.

Kathy is grateful she can afford to fly to Boston several times a year, but doesn't consider herself a "Super-Grandma." "We're fortunate enough that we've been able to be there for the major things," Kathy says, like birthdays. But she and her husband lament not getting to participate in the more routine events like soccer games, sleepovers and piano recitals that have helped shape their relationship with their son's children who live in the Chicago area. She can’t be everything to everybody, and one of her primary responsibilities right now is taking care of her elderly parents — both in their 90s — who live down the street from her in Chicago. When she visits Boston or her daughter and family come to her, Kathy says the hardest part is that "everything is concentrated into a really short time."

Distance is one of several factors that are changing the role of grandparenting in the United States. In the past, people did not live as far away from their families. Schmitz’s own parents grew up in rural Minnesota less than a mile apart from each other, and their seven children stayed in the region as adults.

The strain of this kind of long-distance relationship prompted Gloria Spivak to make plans to move cross-country when she and her husband, Allan, retire in a few years. Gloria is 64 and owns a gift shop in Los Angeles. Her three adult children and two young granddaughters all live near each other in Brooklyn, N.Y. Like Kathy, Gloria does not like to let too much time go by without seeing her granddaughters. Whenever any of her children visit L.A., they are her top priority. “The business can run itself,” she says. “I feel very strongly that the time that I spend with the children will never be given back to me.”

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1930, the average life expectancy for American men and women was approximately age 60. Today, it’s almost 78. Schmitz believes that older adults have more responsibilities and are more valued today than in previous generations because they are healthier later in life. “People do not like sick people,” Schmitz claims. “When people turned 50, or 60, or 70 in the past, that meant that they were sick. They were dying, or they were about to die, so [younger people] never really respected them because they weren’t vital, whereas today, that’s totally opposite.”

Gloria’s daughter, Ellen Umansky, 37, considers her mother extremely vital as a grandparent. Ellen and her daughter, Lena, recently visited Gloria in L.A. Even though as a toddler, Lena is normally very attached to her mother, she instantly took to Gloria and didn’t notice when Mom walked away. “Within two hours,” Ellen says, “I basically turned into a doorstop. I just didn’t exist. It was like the greatest pleasure I’ve had in the 21 months since she’s been born.” Ellen occasionally hires sitters for Lena, but only when a grandparent is not available. “What’s so great with grandparents,” Ellen says, “is that it’s sort of win-win. It’s so clear to me that my mom really just wants to spend time with my daughter and my daughter and vice-versa. And then [my husband and I] get a break.”

Senior Gambling Addiction

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:07:00 -0400

Here's a piece I wrote last month, published on NYC IndyMedia:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/04/85467.html

An addendum to the flu mask op-ed...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Thu, 1 Mar 2007 22:03:00 -0500

It turns out fashionable flu masks are no laughing matter. The creators of Fashion Flu Masks are dead serious, so to speak, about their product:

Here at Fashion Flu Masks, we realize the world will be a sad, sad place when a pandemic flu strikes. When that time comes, there will be nothing wrong, or funny, about brightening the world up a bit by wearing a cool-looking Fashion Flu Mask. The process of making a Fashion Flu Mask works like this: We begin with a plain, white N95 approved mask (the only types of masks that the CDC recommends to ward off the bird flu). We then hand decorate each mask. All decorations and fabrics are glued to the mask with non-toxic adhesive, rather than sewn, so that the mask is not punctured or damaged.

"When" the pandemic flu strikes? These people wouldn't be trying to take advantage of a potential global health emergency or anything, would they? Even the most alarmist of the bird-flu experts doesn't talk like this. Still, I'll give FFM a little plug, because it is a great idea. Maybe I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first.

First Radio Piece

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:24:00 -0500

The following is a brief audio profile of George Frohlinde, whose magazine profile is published below.

Audio Profile of George Frohlinde

Op-Ed: Let's Make Flu Masks a Fashion Statement

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 14:51:00 -0500

By Suzanne Pekow
Originally Written: February 11, 2007

This has serious runway potential...

In his carefully researched, professionally authoritative op-ed published in the New York Times last October, Lawrence M. Wein, a Stanford Business School professor, concluded that all the U.S. government needs to do to prepare for a deadly flu pandemic is provide enough face masks for citizens to wear until the end of flu season.

In my carefully un-researched, amateur opinion, there is very little chance you could get an entire nation of egocentric, er, rugged individualists to constantly don pieces of paper on their faces unless the threat were very, very imminent. People rarely even cover their mouths when they cough in a crowded subway car.

There’s a scene in Adam Sandler’s 1995 film, Billy Madison, in which Billy (Sandler) convinces an entire third grade class that peeing one’s pants is cool in order to save one child (who has just had an accident) from embarrassment:

3rd Grader: Hey look everybody, Billy peed his pants.
Billy Madison: Of course I peed my pants, everyone my age pees their pants. It's the coolest. 3rd Grader: Really?
Billy Madison: YES. You ain't cool, unless you pee your pants.
3rd Grader: Hey look, Ernie peed his pants too. Alright!

This example might seem like a stretch, but there is a connection here: we need face masks and other forms of hygienic disease prevention to become cool. When Americans think something is in fashion, there’s no telling what they’ll do to get their hands on it. Remember Beanie Babies? And the Jennifer Anniston “Friends” haircut of circa 1995? And more recently, the frenzy over the Playstation III, when people were literally shooting each other to get the newest video game system as soon as it hit the market?

Public health organizations need to head straight to the fashion moguls of this country to get those little paper-and-elastic contraptions on the cover of every magazine. That’s the way any major style trend makes its way into the country’s fashion vernacular. First the runway, then your local WalMart. I can see it now: Paris Hilton would have matching diamond-studded facemasks for her and her rat -- I mean, dog -- Tinker Bell. And professional sports teams would have their regulation-sized masks sponsored by Nike in matching team colors.

Then there'd be American Flag face masks. Camouflage facemasks. Masks with “What would Jesus Do?” printed in pink and black with tiny rhinestones highlighting the letters. Somebody would eventually get clever and create a mask with the image of a smiling mouth across the muzzle.

Once the facemask is ubiquitous, no one will think it’s strange to wear it when the big flu hits.

I say “when” and not “if” merely because Wein seems convinced that it’s only a matter of time before a deadly influenza strain emerges to challenge our country’s level of infectious disease preparedness. His opening sentence warns, “pandemic influenza is probably the world’s most serious near-term public health threat.”

Wein suggests that wearing facemasks, not frequent hand washing, is our country’s best line of defense against spreading the virus. That’s probably a good thing, considering we can barely convince people to wash their hands after they go to the bathroom. It would be near impossible to get everybody to lather up every time they sneezed.

The only problem with the masks, according to Wein, is that people won’t wear them consistently. I think they will -- if we can make the masks the must-have item of the season. If we can get designer facemasks on Amazon.com “Top Ten” gift lists, and get gossip magazines to photograph celebrities wearing them when they go out for their morning coffee, we might be able to convince the public that hygiene is hot.

And once that happens, look out influenza. We’ll have style on our side.

ADDENDUM: Perhaps someone already beat me to the punch:

Courtesy of BigTwig

"Sometimes you have to sacrifice a queen for a pawn."

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:25:00 -0500

By Suzanne Pekow
February 9, 2007

The Village Chess Shop on Thompson St. during the blackout of 2003. Borrowed from the Village Chess Shop site.

Though he has faced many conflicts in his life, the one played out on a chess board is the only one that still makes George Frohlinde’s heart race. As a 7-year-old in a little town in pre-World War II Germany, Frohlinde wasn’t allowed to play outside with other boys due to his severe asthma. So his father introduced him to chess. “It occupied the mind,” he says. “It was a mental activity which I could do without getting short of breath.”

Today, at 79, Frohlinde still plays nearly every day at the Village Chess Shop, which he opened with his late wife in 1972, in New York’s Greenwich Village. Though he sold the shop in 2003 to his nephew, Frohlinde is a regular fixture among the diverse group of masterminds and rabble rousers at his old shop on Thompson Street.

On any given day, the shop is abuzz with activity. Baskets of chess pieces and well-loved chessboards are evenly spaced on two rows of 14 formica-topped tables that dominate the space inside the shop. Players of all ages and all walks of life sit and stand, playing and watching, alternately yelling and concentrating like mad as they face each other in passionate games. Many play “blitz,” the timed game enjoyed by hustlers in nearby Washington Square Park, where players race against a stop-clock set to the side of the board that they slap after every move. Others play conventional chess, without a timer.

The shop’s only rules are written in chalk on a blackboard on the wall farthest from the door:
· “Be kind”
· “$1.00 per hour”
· “$3.00 to watch” (this one is never enforced);
· “No taking back moves”
· “$3.00 per profanity”

Above the constant click-clack of the chess pieces, Frohlinde’s gravelly voice is sometimes difficult to understand. He has a friendly, yellow-toothed smile, thick, square glasses, and a soft German accent. But his most distinguishing feature is the shoulder-length, fine gray hair he wears loose beneath a stocking cap. Frohlinde hasn’t had a haircut since his wife, Ruth Nash, died in 2000. Nash was a German Jew who fled to New York in 1939 with her family just three weeks before the start of World War II.

When Frohlinde talks about her, it’s clear from his melancholy smile her absence left a void in the septuagenarian’s life. “She was the spirit of the shop,” he says. “She was not interested in the game, she was interested in the people.” When they opened the shop together, the couple had no employees. He would sell the chess sets — which he ordered from suppliers on credit and eventually paid off — and she would engage the customers, who came to play the game for 15 cents an hour. Frohlinde recalls taking only one day off the entire first year, but according to longtime regulars, it was Nash who really ran the show.

“She was the strong one…and a pillar in his life,” says an 85-year-old Village Chess Shop fixture who identifies himself only as “The Doctor.” No one at the shop, not even Frohlinde, knows the Doctor’s real name, and no one really cares. The Doctor, a Jewish Hungarian by birth, felt a kinship for Nash. According to him, she represented the kind of old world-European genteel he says Americans don’t understand.

It is somewhat unusual that Nash fell for Frohlinde, considering his upbringing. He was a non-Jew in Nazi Germany. For a long time after World War II, many Jews resented Germans. “To all those who lost their loved ones, anything German was taboo,” says the Doctor. In truth, not a day that goes by that Frohlinde doesn’t think about the war. In high school, he was forced to join Hitler Youth and was nearly recruited by the SS. Though he claims to have resisted indoctrination into the Nazi ideology, like most Germans at the time, Frohlinde says he essentially turned a blind eye to the murderous regime. And this still haunts him. “It never leaves you. It’s your life, you know?” he says.

He has written several plays, mostly in German, mostly for his own catharsis. In 1994, Frohlinde wrote a play entitled, “The Third Testament.” It hasn’t yet been performed or published, but Frohlinde doesn’t seem to mind. It’s a minimalist drama about former German soldiers trying to reconcile their participation in the war. In many ways, Frohlinde says, the play is his way of dealing with his own feelings of guilt about the horrors of his country’s past. “This guilt will choke us all,” says Null, a character in the play. “I saw the ruins. Now walls are rebuilt and our souls lie broken under the stones, freezing and wild.” Null is the character with whom Frohlinde says he most closely identifies — a man who can’t seem to forgive himself for his father’s crimes.

Frohlinde’s own father ran an airplane factory in Wismar, a city on Germany’s Baltic coast, during World War II. Because of his high profile job, Frohlinde’s father was a member of the Nazi party. According to Frohlinde, he didn’t really ascribe to the party’s beliefs. “When the war broke out, he said, ‘This is the end of Germany,’” says Frohlinde. “So he knew it, but he went along.” At the war’s end, Frohlinde made sure he and his father left when Russian troops invaded. Wismar was on the border between what would become East and West Germany, and Frohlinde was afraid the Russians would arrest his father. Father and son sought refuge in nearby Hamburg, where Frohlinde worked as a cabinet maker and studied social work at Hamburg University.

Unfortunately for Frohlinde, the end of the war was not the end of conflict. At the university, he says, his fellow students treated him like an outcast because he hadn’t participated in the war. He caught wind of several rumors circulating among his classmates. Behind his back, they called him a Communist, a homosexual, even a Jew — none of which was true. “I was always thinking independently,” he says. “Everyone was always in the rat race and I always protested against things which I thought were not right. And the Germans don’t trust the independent thinker.” When he went to New York in the mid-1950s to visit a friend, Frohlinde was ecstatic to find a place where original thinking was celebrated.

“The first day I came to New York,” Frohlinde says, “I said to myself, ‘I always imagined a city like this. I never knew it existed. ‘Here I’ll stay.’”

Bikes and Squirrels

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Fri, 1 Dec 2006 22:27:00 -0500

On pleasant days, Emey Hoffman sits in a nylon folding chair outside of his bike shop, feeding peanuts to a plump grey squirrel named Elliot. Hoffmann is sixty-three and tends to wear over-sized navy blue cotton t-shirts that hang loosely over his Santa Claus belly, long black Bermuda shorts and black leather sneakers with black socks pulled just above the ankles. Last year, he built a tiny wooden “condo” for Elliot and mounted it on a ledge above the shop’s front window, underneath the hand-painted blue and bright yellow sign that reads “Busy Bee East Village Bikes.”

Elliot (named for Elliot Ness) was a scraggly, sickly animal when he came into Hoffmann’s life about a year ago, appearing with a pack of healthy squirrels that the bike shop owner regularly fed. When Hoffmann threw peanuts to the pack, the bigger animals jostled little Elliot away. “He was skinny, scrawny, patches of hair missing,” Hoffmann recalled. “I didn’t even know if he was going to make it.” But Hoffmann gave Elliot special attention and soon he was on the mend and eating from Hoffmann’s hand. Now he lives in his little wooden home when he’s not scampering around the neighborhood. He comes into the shop occasionally, but can’t venture too far inside because bikes rule the roost at Busy Bee.

On a recent afternoon, one could barely bring a single bike inside the 22- by 60-foot shop because the place was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bikes. Used bikes, new bikes, and bikes in various states of disrepair were parked handlebar-to-handlebar on two levels of racks that flanked the western wall from the front of the store to the back. Metal wheels and rubber tires hung in three long rows from the black ceiling. On the dust-laden, uneven floorboards were bikes and bike parts, jammed several rows deep from the back wall to the front counter, in no discernable order. Hoffmann or one of his young mechanics would have had to tear the store apart to get to the bikes near the back wall, because there was no path through this metal-and-rubber jungle.

Hoffmann explained that there was a method to this madness, that they were in the process of reorganizing to accommodate the end-of-season influx of used bicycles. Most of the used bikes Busy Bee sells arrive at the shop in pieces and have to be repaired before they are in riding condition. Hoffmann and his staff clear away the clutter by fixing up each bike, one by one, from the front of the mass before selling it or storing it in the basement. On this particular day, the abundance of “stuff” in the shop was overwhelming.

The following day, progress had been made. The shop was airier, with enough space for customers to bring at least two bikes inside at a time.

He doesn’t advertise, he refuses to train his mechanics, and he thinks that too much business is a bad thing. He is something of an anomaly in an industry where customers routinely shell out thousands of dollars for high-end racing bikes, and in a city where spandex-clad, amateur Lance Armstrongs can be found speeding through the streets and park lanes at any time of day or night. Hoffman caters to cyclists like these, but knows that most people just need reliable bicycles to get around town or to get some low-key recreation. Rejecting the credo, “the customer is always right,” he only sells people what he thinks they need, even if it is not consistent with what they want.

“I’m not a yes-man. I don’t believe in it,” Hoffmann said. “And any professional that ‘yesses’ a customer—he’s a liar, because he knows ten times more than they do.” For example, Hoffmann often recommends that bike commuters buy used bicycles instead of new ones, because they cost less and tend to be less attractive to thieves.

A master bike mechanic, Hoffmann has been working in the industry since he apprenticed at a Manhattan bike shop as a teenager in the 1950s. He was born and raised in Lower Manhattan, which is clear when he opens up his mouth, his accent reminiscent of one of the Jets from West Side Story. “I ride every day,” he said. “Rain, shine or snow, it don’t matter.” His bike of choice is a Legnano—“an old, professional Italian bike converted into three speeds,” he explained. “That’s all I need for New York City. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s better than 99 percent of the bikes that come into the store.”

Busy Bee is a cash-only enterprise, without a computer in sight, and with a single rotary phone into whose mouthpiece Hoffman clips, almost begrudgingly, “bike shop!” when it rings. (Like a true curmudgeon, his initially terse manner of speech when addressing a stranger softens after he lets down his defenses). The lack of advertising, the draconian cash register, the impenetrable mountain of machinery, and the I’ll-sell-you-only-what-you-need-and-you’ll-like-it attitude are factors that might dissuade customers who expect to be flattered by a salesman in a pristine, roomy showroom. But Hoffmann does not want those kinds of customers.

If he has learned anything in his nearly fifty years in the industry, it’s that honesty and quality service ensure loyal customers. “If someone buys a new or used bike,” Hoffmann said, “we want them to come back several times over the next month for little free checkups here to make sure there’s not going to be problems later. Once you’ve got the customer’s money and you’re still telling them to come back for freebies, that gets out and they tell their friends.”

This golden-rule strategy has worked “all my life,” Hoffmann said. Over the years, he has owned seven shops in the New York area, never concurrently. It is not always financial success or failure that drives him to close up shop and move to another part of town. About four years ago, Hoffmann closed his previous store, Emey’s Bike Shop on East 17th Street, where “business was good,” he said. He opened up Busy Bee with a partner because he wanted to have more time for what he calls “my calling”—designing advanced defense weapons that he plans to sell to companies that work with the U.S. military. Hoffmann’s crystal-blue eyes light up when he discusses his “inventions,” and it is clear that he could talk endlessly about designing armor for Humvees in Iraq. This fascination with advanced weaponry seems uncharacteristic for a man who spends his days befriending squirrels and his evenings with a wife, two grown children, and four dachshunds. But Hoffmann’s hobby—which he believes will prove lucrative once he sells his plans—is for him a chance to “use my imagination,” he said.

Hoffmann brushes off talk of money. He wouldn’t reveal the exact amount of Busy Bee’s rent, but admits that it’s “not cheap” in the East Village. Yet his bike expertise is so vast that “whenever I move into a neighborhood, it won’t take long before customers are loyal to me,” he said. In the dead of winter, even the most loyal customers don’t frequent the shop as much as during the warmer months, but Busy Bee always brings in enough business to pay the rent on time.

Every so often, a young bike fanatic comes in asking to work for Hoffmann without pay, just to learn his mechanical skills, the way he did as a teenage apprentice. But he refuses to train anyone anymore, because “I don’t want that many people working for me,” he said. He likes to get to know his customers, and believes that “If I’m not there, it doesn’t count,” which could be why he spends seven days a week, 10 hours a day at the store, in the company of a couple young mechanics, a cheerful squirrel, and lots and lots of bikes. Sitting on his nylon chair, sipping coffee from a worn red Starbucks thermos, surrounded by these works of machinery, Hoffmann was in his element, and took a moment to wax poetic. “I believe bikes almost have souls,” he said. “they each have their own personalities.”

Busy Bee Bikes's cheerful exterior (photo courtesy of author)

Revisiting an old story

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:11:00 -0500

For those of you who remember the Burlesque story, I have edited several times and reposted it here

Let me know what you think!

Election Section

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Tue, 7 Nov 2006 22:53:00 -0500

I got to the polls before 7 a.m. today. But I was not there to vote. I was there to interview aging poll workers.

Check out my and my classmates' work:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/election2006

It was supposed to be a crime story

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 1 Nov 2006 09:41:00 -0500

Prof. W. assigned a crime story, but the police wouldn't talk to me. So this is what came of the assignment. It has not been edited yet, but I thought I'd post it since nothing original has gone up in awhile.

In the parking lots of the LaGuardia Houses, a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side, posters featuring a black and white photograph of an anonymous man talking on the telephone were mounted on parking signs. The posters read, “You don’t have to reveal your identity to help solve a violent crime.” And then below, in smaller print, “Crime doesn’t pay. Crime Stoppers does. Up to $2000.”

Crime Stoppers, a program sponsored by the New York City Police Department to encourage citizens to report criminal activity, puts up signs like these directly after a crime has occurred. According to Detective Polesovsky, of the NYPD Crime Stoppers tip hotline, residents usually tear the signs down soon after they go up. The signs in the parking lots of the LaGuardia Houses appeared brand new and untouched.

On Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006, two men were shot in the courtyard here. The only details disclosed by the police were that one man was shot in the back around 9:40 P.M., and was found about a block away at the East Broadway F train subway station; the other was found in the courtyard; one was 58; both were taken to area hospitals with non-life threatening wounds; and no arrests were initially made.

Ethan Rouen, crime reporter for the New York Daily News who was sent to the scene the night of the shooting, said in an email, “I don’t know much about LaGuardia, but my impression was that this is not a rare occurrence. It is one of the nastier housing projects, which is odd because it’s so close to 1 PP (1 Police Plaza, NYPD headquarters).”

It might seem, based on the scanty details and the lack of witnesses coming forward, that violent crime is a regular occurrence in the LaGuardia Houses. The New York City Housing Authority development was constructed in 1957 and named for former mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who founded the public housing agency during his time in office. The complex consists of three brick buildings joined by vast courtyards and bordered by Rutgers and Montgomery Streets to the East and West, and by Madison and Cherry Streets to the North and South, respectively.

Yet the development does not appear “nasty” to the casual daytime observer. On a recent Friday afternoon, neighbors chatted on benches lining gravel-covered walkways between the towering residences, and teenagers played basketball and handball on the LaGuardia courts.

According to Jessica Thomas, president of the LaGuardia Tenants’ Association and 40-year LaGuardia resident, “people are very neighborhood-oriented…They look out for each other.” Thomas said she got some calls after the shooting, but not many, and that in general, people felt safe.

The feeling of safety is no accident. There are several security measures in place to help protect residents. For one, police officers are regularly on site, thanks to a close partnership between the Tenants’ Association and Police Service Area 4, a branch of the NYPD that covers New York City housing developments.

Plus, as part of a Housing and Urban Development regulation, the Tenants’ Association must organize a nightly tenant patrol, where residents sit in the lobbies of each building from 6 to 9 P.M. each night and monitor who goes in and out.

Thomas also noted that since the city installed two outdoor security cameras (each building already has several indoor cameras), “It’s been really quiet” in the development, and they expect to receive seven more outdoor cameras within the next year.

The shooting occurred outside in the courtyard, not far from the security cameras’ range. Why did the cameras’ presence not deter the shooter(s)? Thomas believes that the two men simply did not care.

Still, this recent violent incident is not enough to frighten Thomas, who fondly reminisced about growing up in the projects in an era when people frequently left their doors unlocked. She and her friends would often show up for meals at each others’ apartments, and their mothers never seemed to be fazed by the surprise dinner guests.

The atmosphere is less trusting these days, and Thomas said she could have left a long time ago, but enjoys the diversity of the LaGuardia Houses. The ten-year wait list to get into LaGuardia is evidence enough that it is a place where residents are inclined to stay put and work to prevent crime, rather than flee to escape it. “If it was high, high crime, I wouldn’t be here,” Thomas explained. “I don’t feel afraid.”

© 2006 by Suzanne

I'm published

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:47:00 -0400

I guess most people don't make a big deal about the first thing they publish, but I'm not most people. One might think this is lame, especially since I wasn't paid...but there's finally something of mine in published form out there for the world to see (something besides this blog, of course). I feel a little Mary Tyler Moore-ish saying that, but maybe naïvite will become my "thing." Maybe the my midwestern-gal-meets-the-big-city is such an old cliché that it's time has come again...

But I digress. I wrote a backgrounder for Max Schorr, editor-in-chief and publisher of Good magazine, who came to speak at the NYU Department of Journalism on October 25th.

This piece was supposed to go up on the BULLPEN web site before Schorr spoke so people could be lured in by my excellent prose. However, there was a glitch in the process and it went up several days after the fact.

Not to worry, though. I'll be writing a recap of the lecture and that, too, will hopefully be on the BULLPEN homepage next week some time. So I've got that going for me...

Read Backgrounder: Max Schorr

Sip on this...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:13:00 -0400

I swore I didn't want this to become a blog that simply comments on news stories, but I had to post this link when I saw the title "How Microbrew Can Save the World." While I'm putting together my next story, read this ingtriguing article from alternet on the sustainability of microbreweries.

Walking the Line

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:29:00 -0400

I have to choose a final research paper topic for my U.S., Latin America, and the Media class. The Immigration debate has been on my mind a lot lately, largely due to the stories popping up about anti-immigration groups like the Minutemen and others (the Southern Poverty Law Center has a good listing of these fringe groups). Think what you will about the border fence, but much of the rhetoric behind some of these vigilante organizations is alarmingly hateful.

Well I'm checking out a new magazine whose founder I may be interviewing next week, and one of the stories in the inaugural issue is about the Border Film Project. A three-person team comprised of a Rhodes Scholar, a filmmaker and a Wall Street analyst gave disposable cameras to people on both sides of the fence and asked them to photograph their worlds. I'm oversimplifying, but read the article or visit the project's web site to find out more.

I don't know if I'm going to try to tackle Immigration in a 2,000-word article, but this project could help narrow it down a little by giving some very unique perspectives.

Don't let these guys bite...

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:22:00 -0400

This is the list of the most emailed stories on nytimes.com right now. Check out number 5. Everyone who has interacted with me in the last several months knows that I am psycho about bedbugs. I will not buy used furniture (or take it off the street) after hearing a story about bedbugs on NPR a couple of months ago. It's an epidemic, folks. I told you I'm not crazy!

Preschool Puberty, and a Search for the Causes

Married and Single Parents Spending More Time With Children, Study Finds

Skills Gap Hurts Technology Boom in India

Op-Ed Contributor: Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?

Everything You Need to Know About Bedbugs but Were Afraid to Ask

The Way We Live Now: The Vegetable-Industrial Complex

Scientist at Work: Shing-Tung Yau: The Emperor of Math

Books of The Times: Obama’s Foursquare Politics, With a Dab of Dijon

Affordable San Francisco

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered

Minor Neuroses

suzannepekow@gmail.com (Suzanne Pekow) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:53:00 -0400

I was at home this afternoon getting ready to go meet a classmate when I heard “Oh my God!” from the other room. My roommate saw a breaking news headline on the Internet and immediately flipped on the TV. By now, everyone and my mother has heard of the small plane that crashed into a high-rise apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, killing Yankees pitcher, Cory Lidle. At the time, it was breaking news.

I sat there in front of the TV set, “antennae up,” as Prof. W. is fond of saying, riveted by the news unfolding just uptown. My first instinct was to head up there and see what I could see. But self-doubt set in before I could get my act together. Who would I talk to? Would anybody take me seriously? How would I get official facts and figures? In reality I knew the answers to these silly questions, but I still let something stop me from heading out the door.

It doesn’t make sense: why should I, an aspiring reporter, be so freaked out by talking to people? I know I’m not the only one going through this. Everybody in my class speaks of similar fears, and we’re told by veteran news people that it gets easier the more you do it. It’s usually a relief talking to sources once I get past the initial hesitation. But there’s so much hesitation that I often block myself from getting what I need on the scene.

If you can’t imagine what this feels like, think about the first time you called a boy or girl you were interested in. It’s that level of butterflies, every time I pick up the phone to call someone for information, or approach somebody for an interview. Will he or she be home when I call? What if they don’t have anything to say? What if they think I’m heinous? Okay, that last one was more something I would think back in college—I mean, high school—I mean middle school, calling a boy.

What’s really the worst that could happen? That’s what I’m supposed to think to myself. Who the hell cares what people think? I’m getting a story, I’ve got noble intentions, and I’m damn cute. But somehow, I’ve got this paranoid-telemarketer complex, like I’m some big intrusion into people’s lives in the middle of dinner.

I certainly don’t mean to make light of today’s plane crash, because it’s very sad but I just wanted to give you a little glimpse into the neurotic mind of a newbie reporter/student. Thank God the country wasn’t relying on me to get the story.

The moronic part of the whole thing is that when I got back from my meeting, there was this email waiting for me from Prof. W.:

Dear Reporters,

I just learned that a small aircraft has crashed into a residential building at 524 East 72d St.
The crash occurred at about 2:45, news reports say.

If any of you are free and want the practice of doing either a news story or a sidebar story, this is a great opportunity, if you are able and willing.

Please contact me immediately at _________, if you are interested.

Professor W.

I felt awesome after that. I was definitely free (the classmate I was meeting would have understood if I had to cancel). I was able and willing. But Fraidy-Cat Suzanne didn’t want to go. Next time, I’ll have to stuff Fraidy-Cat Suzanne in the closet and Bold News-Getter Suzanne will be free to go to the scene.

Image borrowed respectfully from fotosearch