The Phoenix NYU
A church music ministry for the moment
By Nicholas Gunn — The music inside the sanctuary of Church of the Advent Hope was a long way from the solitary organ and choir more typical of what’s been played at Seventh-day Adventist churches. “I’ve visited a lot of Adventist churches but the music often feels stuck in the past. No drums, no […]
Trauma as a tool to save lives
By Calvin Butts — When Natasha Christopher talks about her son’s murder, she’s matter-of-fact. “That destroyed my life,” she said. “No parent should ever be home asleep and receive a call that someone shot your son,” she added. “But it also gave me a voice.” On June 27, 2012, her 14-year-old son Akil had […]
Cadence’s vegan chefs reimagine soul food
By Jon David Regis — Executive chefs Haley Duren and Shenarri Freeman place themselves and their East Village restaurant in a camp of plant-based eaters that extends back to pre-enslavement West Africa and, in the United States, includes civil rights and nutrition activist Dick Gregory, who died in 2017, and Queen Afua, a holistic […]
Sidewalk fridges for the food-insecure
By Joel Mitchell — On an early summer afternoon, Asmeret Berhe-Lumax was doing what she often does at the nonprofit food pantry she founded five years ago: Unloading boxes of groceries from a truck and stocking them inside a see-through sidewalk refrigerator and the food crates beside it. “It’s a very simple and straightforward […]
Protesting NY Times’ LGBTQ coverage
By Gray Fuller — Standing on the sweltering sidewalk at the entrance to The New York Times, a group aggrieved by the paper’s coverage of transgender people spelled out their complaint: Gray Lady Lies Trans People Die. In the bottom corners of the white poster board bearing those words, two handprints were pressed in red […]
A life-saving, donated kidney
By Izzy Sy — Lying face up and side by side on separate operating room tables, Dr. Alex Hilario and his sister, Elizabeth Hilario, were nervous. They were anxious. A surgical team would extract a kidney from her body to place in his. Her brother’s kidney function had been diminishing for at least 20 […]
Lessons to lessen Black drownings
Photo by Steward Masweneng on Unsplash By Jaden DeGruy — When twentysomething social media strategist Paulana Lamonier was trying to figure out a side hustle, a conversation helped settle the question. “There was this young lady,” Lamonier said, recalling that small talk from several years ago. “She was, like, ‘Oh I can’t swim because my […]
Creating community at a drugstore
By Maurice Brown — As a stranger tore past the pharmacy’s shelves, she insisted that the staff behind the front counter answer one question: “Who here is Thomas?” “Oh, *^!$,” Thomas James thought as he braced for a scolding. But seconds later, he saw the woman’s eyes begin to pool with tears as she […]
South to North, chasing artistic dreams
By Corey Leathers Jr. — Eighteen months. That’s how long it took a transplant from South Carolina to go from being a broke college dropout to paying New York City rent with what he’s earned selling his rap records, designing clothes for his BoofNYC brand and walking the runway at New York Fashion Week. […]
Schooling youth in life and the game
By Bradmond Lee-Harewood — In 2005, Jamel Wright founded the Harlem Jets, hoping to create an opportunity for his son and other inner city children to grow and develop on and off the football field. “I wouldn’t have known it was 20 years if someone else hadn’t told me,” Wright said. “The work is just […]
Food banks helping more with less
By McGlauthon Fleming IV — Amid federal funding cuts to food banks, Xavier Mission in Manhattan has asked its neighbors for support, while East Flatbush Village in Brooklyn has been getting less and less food from umbrella organizations like City Harvest that serve food banks throughout the region. “In particular, we get food supplied by […]
Reopening in ‘26, a museum of hip-hop history
By Freddrell Green — As a native of the Boogie Down Bronx, Miles Marshall Lewis said he’s steeped in hip-hop music and culture. He knows how and why it was born and about its lingering impact after more than a half-century of international acclaim. “I saw hip-hop begin from outside my window,” said Lewis, an […]
Mental health for Black men
By Johnathan Hooker — Black men are among the least likely people to seek mental health counseling. Some Black therapists are trying to change that by tailoring their services to better attract Black males and hosting workshops just for them. In New York City, licensed clinical social worker Frederick Bush on June 11th kicks off […]
A leader, far from his past troubles
By Westley Reaves Jr. — Malik McGhee started preparing last February for three days in June at a New York City networking conference for standout students from historically black colleges and universities. He hadn’t expected to be in that pool of students, handpicked by their business school deans. He’d gotten into trouble with the law […]
Vinyl record sales keep climbing
By Matthew Adams — Ask Discog’s marketing vice president why he collects vinyl records and he’ll give a fast reply: “The music … defines who it is that I am and the music that means something to me. I want to own it.” More customers buy music downloads and streaming music but the audience for […]
An aid group, mainly, for African immigrants
By Henry Fernandez Planes, buses and blistered feet. Those modes of transit brought two dozen West African immigrants to the United States and, then, one June day to Afrikana, a Harlem nonprofit that helps immigrants build their American lives. Afrikana’s waiting room is where Sweet Mama’s Soul Food used to be. Those looking for help […]
Riffing Bruno to rein in physician burnout
By Shemar Forbes A group of medical students dance, sing and rap their way through hallways, operating rooms and elsewhere inside Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Practice harm reduction … Choice in reproduction … It’s people not patients we treat … Future docs, we all see. We must grant patient autonomy. Priya Makam […]
Bookstore credits success to pandemic
By Marley Joseph Self-proclaimed visionaries Janifer Wilson and Kori Wilson, a mother-daughter duo, opened Sisters Uptown Bookstore in January 2000; however, they did not see success until after the pandemic began. They credit their survival during a period when many businesses closed, but the tally of independent bookstores such as Sisters continued to increase. According […]
“Rage” room helps the uptight unwind
By Brandon Henry She grabbed a baseball bat and used it to bust up a desktop computer and a flatscreen TV that had been propped against a brick wall. “I happen to prefer the glass. Today, it was the healthiest way to express my anger,” said the woman, referring to her objects of choice to […]
Young adults grapple with high living costs
By Salmoncain Smith-Shomade Tameka Pierre-Jean, a brand manager at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, has a master’s degree and five-plus years of marketing experience. But the 28-year-old Brooklyn native cannot afford to live on her own, given that the average rent on a 447 square-foot studio apartment, according to Apartment.com’s most recent data, was […]
Major events shape Gen Z views, protests
By Auzzy Byrdsell A month before Faith Andrews-Owens was born in 2001, terrorist hijackers steered airplanes into New York City’s Twin Towers. When she was 11, in February 2012, a self-described neighborhood watchman in Florida shot dead 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. In December of the same year, a gunman killed 20 kids and six adults at […]
Skaters roll out across NYC
By Niles Garrison Founded in 1996, Wednesday Night Skates‘ weekly rollout has skaters crowding streets and creating their own kind of traffic while dancing to music. “I travel with two JBL speakers but we have guys carrying around boomboxes while skating,” said Michael Grebinsky, a Wednesday Night Skate volunteer organizer. “We enjoy ourselves during our […]
Testing battery swap for delivery E-bikers
By Christian Thomas A six-month pilot program aims to ease the way for guys and gals who make deliveries to New Yorkers’ homes and offices via bicycle. PopWheels, a Brooklyn-based battery swap network, and bike repair workers from Spheara have partnered to outfit deliverers who travel by E-bikes with fully charged batteries from Swobbee. “We are […]
From going hungry to helping
By Jaden Perry When Elliott Carter was homeless and struggling with drug addiction, The Church of Saint Francis Xavier helped him turn his life around. “Xavier gave me a chance to sit down and eat and get my mind straight. All that chaos out there. I could be calm in here, and I could ask […]
A legendary Harlem spot for B-balling
By Cameron Adams A spot at 155th Street in Harlem is known as The Mecca, a place where legends have shown what they were made of. Officially, the New York City-owned space is Holecombe Rucker Park, founded in 1974. NBA stars such as Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have played on that court. […]