Republican National Convention: Day Four

WEDNESDAY, NEW YORK – Manhattanites may have escaped the
hullabaloo that is the Republican National Convention by opting for the
recreational playground of places like the Hamptons, but for the real
New Yorkers, those residents of its many diverse neighborhoods that are the
city’s lifeblood, it’s pretty much business as usual.

Bess Gaganas lives on the third floor of a four-story apartment in
Astoria, Queens, in the westernmost part of the borough, just minutes
from Manhattan. She has lived in the apartment for more than 50 years.

Two floors up the stairwell, a big, swinging door opens up to the roof,
a summer sanctuary known to generations of city kids as ‘tar beach.’
Shortly after 9 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, tar beach was a
crowded place.

‘When I heard the plane had crashed into the Twin Towers, I ran up to
the roof,’ Gaganas said. ‘I couldn’t see the second plane hitting the
tower, but you could see all the smoke.’
Five floors down, at street level, the sidewalks of Astoria are patched together,
a concrete jigsaw puzzle whose plates unintentionally mark different eras of renovation.
Many of the brick-faced apartment buildings still have black and yellow
signs that read ‘fallout shelter.’ Others sport fenced-in
areas, where patches of flowers and lawns that measure 2 feet by 4 feet
across are managed with all the care given to the sprawling rose gardens
of Yaddo.

The main shopping district is along Steinway Street, a long avenue
originally plotted by the piano-making Steinway family, which settled
here in the mid-19th century. Today, the street is a culinary fiesta of
Mexican and Brazilian, Chinese and Italian. The ‘haute cuisine of India’
sits on the street that is dotted with shamrock-bearing Irish pubs, and
dozens of cafes, grocery stores and travel agencies fly the blue and
white flags of Greece. Across the street, a man cradles a long glass
hookah pipe inside the Arab Community Center, which fits snugly between the
Al-Iman Mosque and the Egyptian Cafe.

In this neighborhood, they play stickball on pavemen, over sewers that serve as bases.
It is the birthplace of Tony Bennett and the place Whitey Ford learned to play baseball. And in the late days of summer, it is where you could still hear the voice of Frank Sinatra pouring through apartment house windows high above the streets.

Many of the visiting delegates are excited that California Govern-ator Arnold Schwarzenegger
is here, although Gaganas says doesn’t go in for ‘those kinds of pictures.’
She will stick, she says, with her records by Frank Sinatra.

Saratogian writer Thomas Dimopoulos is in New York City providing local
coverage of the Republican National Convention this week.