Bronx News Roundup, Thursday, June 9

Weather: Outrageously hot. Because of the extremely temperatures and humidity today in the Bronx and the rest of the region, the National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory until 8 p.m. tonight as well as an air quality alert from 2 to 11 p.m. Stay inside, drink lots of water and if you can, spend some time chillin' in one of the city's 400-plus cooling centers. Click here to locate the center nearest you. Thankfully it is supposed to cool down slightly tomorrow and then temperatures should drop significantly this weekend.

Story of the Day: Shooter Takes Aim at Bronx Students, Hits 16-year-old in the Hip
This is the type of terrifying random-act-of-violence story that keeps parents up at night. Yesterday afternoon, a man stepped off a BX5 bus near the Rincon de Gautier Institute for Law and Public Policy on Story Avenue and opened fire. Fortunately, this didn't turn Columbine-esque. Though "several shots" were fired, only one bullet found a victim, a 16-year-old girl who was hit in the hip and is expected to survive. The scariest part of this is that the shooter remains on the loose as of this posting. One student who attends a nearby school summed it up best for the Daily News: "I don't understand how people can just start shooting at a pack of kids."

Quick Hits:
Speaking of random acts of violence in the Bronx, a Sarah Lawrence College professor who was visiting the Bronx Zoo with his wife and 19-month-old son was hit by a BB gun pellet after parking on Bronx Park South near Daly Avenue.

Okay, enough with the random violence. How about some housing policy? Bronx State Senator Gustavo Rivera says Democrats are pushing hard for stronger rent regulations as the current Emergency Tenant Protection Act is set to expire on July 15, just six days from now. (Note: The story wrongly says regulated apartment rent increases are set by the Rent Stabilization Association, which is lobbying and advocacy group that represents landlords. Rent increases are set by the Rent Guidelines Board.)

The New Jersey Nets are taking a hard look at Bronx hoops product Corey Fisher.

The retired cops of the 41st Precinct, which covers the Longwood-Hunts Point area and was known back in the day as "Fort Apache," will gather to reminisce about the good/bad old days tomorrow night.

Alright, here's a positive, even heroic, Bronx story. A Bronx court officer performed emergency CPR on a 2-year-old girl who had stopped breathing after suffering a seizure. His father told the Daily News: "You're talking about a guy who brought my daughter back to life. I don't know how to thank him. I didn't know we still had people like that out here."

Our favorite Bronx political gossip columnist Bob Kappstatter reports that Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera's campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to mail fraud after facing obstruction of justice charges and will spend six months in jail. Meanwhile, former Bronx State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr., had his trial on embezzlment charges moved to Oct. 17. It will be a busy month for legally-entangled Bronx pols. Councilman Larry Seabrook's corruption trial is set to begin Oct. 11.

Bronx rapper Fat Joe may have to change his moniker to Svelte Joe after noticeably slimming down for his latest music video, "Drop a Body," a track from his upcoming "The Darkside II" album. Maybe he should have renamed the song, "Drop a Body Weight." What's your secret Joe? Hopefully he's not trying to live up to his other nickname, "Joey Crack."

Bronx Sports Column: A Borough-Centric Tournament Breakdown

Bronx boy Kemba Walker has UConn dancing.

Today marks the beginning of the best four-day stretch in all of sports: the opening two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Nothing compares to the drama of the Big Dance. Every game -- there are 16 today, 16 more tomorrow and another 16 over the weekend -- is a dogfight. Every game contains potential for heroism and heartbreak. It's 18- to 22-year-old kids playing the biggest games of their lives. The quality isn't as high as you'll see in the NBA, but the desire and hustle and passion is immeasurably greater.

Let the Madness begin!

(For the record, I'll be rooting hard for my hometown Washington Huskies, a 7th seed, who face Georgia Friday night with a matchup against 2-seed North Carolina looming. I've also become an increasingly fanatic St. John's supporter. The Johnnies, led by Bronx-bred point guard Dwight Hardy, play a tough Gonzaga team in Denver tonight without senior DJ Kennedy, who blew out his knee during last week's Big East tournament. Final Four Picks: Ohio St., Pittsburgh, Purdue, Duke. Champion: Ohio St.)

Because this is a borough-centric blog, I'm going to highlight all the Bronxites playing in the tournament and break down their teams' prospects for advancement.

The Bronx Sports Column: Two Bronxites Named All Big East; Boys HS Tourney Update

We'll continue today with my twin winter sports obsessions: tracking Bronx point guards playing in the Big East and following the high school basketball playoffs. (Note: Looking for more on varsity girls swimming results? Boys gymnastics? Let me know via e-mail-- akratz@norwoodnews.org -- or by leaving a comment.)

The Big Bronx:
Boogie Down ballers Dwight Hardy (St. John's) and Kemba Walker (UConn) made the All-Big East first team, with fellow Bronxite Corey Fisher (Villanova) earning a spot on the second team.

A few weeks ago, I opined that Hardy, a high-scoring guard from John F. Kennedy high school, deserved a mention in the "Best Bronx Point Guard" conversation after torching Walker's UConn squad. Still, I put him in third place on the list, behind Walker (1) and Fisher (2). It's still hard to put Hardy above Walker, but he's definitely surpassed Fisher in recent weeks. While Fisher's Villanova squad has faded, Hardy's St. John's team is streaking into the postseason. 

Here are the season averages of the Bronx's best:
--Walker: 23.1 points per game, 4.3 assists per game, 5.2 rebounds per game, 1.8 steals per game
--Hardy: 17.9 ppg, 1.9 apg, 3 rpg, 1.4 spg
--Fisher: 15.5 ppg, 4.8 apg, 2.8 rpg, 1.5 spg

Bonus points to Hardy, who is averaging nearly 24 points per contest over his last 11 games, for getting the best of the head-to-head battles. Hardy put up 33 vs. Walker's UConn team and 34 vs. Fisher's Villanova squad -- both St. John's wins. Walker's heating up of late, but is only averaging 21 over his last 11. Fisher's averaged a little more than 15 over his last 11.  Fisher gets a bump for being the best passer of the trio, while Walker's 5-plus rebounds per game is remarkable considering he's 6-foot-1, 172 pounds.

We'll see how the Big East and NCAA tournaments to shake out before making a final call on this.

High School Hoops Playoffs Update (how the Bronx teams are doing):

The Bronx Sports Column: Who's the Bronx's Best Point Guard? Dwight Hardy Makes His Case

Dwight Hardy, welcome to the conversation. (More on Hardy in this Bronxnet video above.)

Before this season, the question of who is the best current Bronx-bred point guard came down to two names: Villanova University senior Corey Fisher and Kemba Walker, a junior at the University of Connecticut.

After a highly productive three-year run mostly coming off the bench for Nova, Fisher, who attended New Jersey hoops powerhouse St. Patrick's Catholic School, etched his name in NYC street ball lore over the summer when he dropped 105 points in a summer league game.

A highly-touted McDonald's All-American out of Manhattan's Rice High School, Walker started the season in flames for the unranked Huskies, torching ranked foes Michigan St. and Kentucky during a preseason tournament and single-handedly putting UConn back on the national map.

Both play for top 10 teams and are worthy heirs to the point guard throne held in the past by Bronx legends like Rod Strickland and Kenny Satterfield. Both are more like so-called combo scoring guards than classic pass-first versions like Strickland, a Truman High alum who starred in the NBA.

But on Thursday night, JFK grad Dwight Hardy, the starting point guard for a resurgent St. John's team, forced his way into the conversation. On a nationally-televised ESPN game, Hardy outplayed Walker in Madison Square Garden on his way to 33 points. His performance carried the Red Storm to a convincing 89-72 victory and put St. John's in a position to possibly earn a NCAA tournament birth.

In the aftermath, Hardy told the Daily News: "I was just in a zone. When I'm in a zone, I just kind of black out. . . . The basket just keeps getting bigger and bigger."

Bronx News Roundup, Nov. 26

We hope everyone had a happy, and delicious, Thanksgiving! Here are some Bronx news headlines from the past few days:

Students from P.S. 51 on Jerome Avenue watched a live re-enactment of the first Thanksgiving dinner, transmitted via webcast from Plymouth, MA, and broadcast across the country. Bronx student Stephen Molina told ABC he learned "that the pilgrims didn't have any refrigerators," back then.

While our Thanksgiving predecessors were able to break bread in peace (even without a fridge!) a poll released this week says the majority of New Yorkers would refuse to share a turkey dinner with Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He's the least welcomed in the Bronx, where 60 percent of those asked said they wouldn't share a meal with the mayor.

Shoppers across the city are hitting the stores today in hopes of some Black Friday bargains, as the holiday shopping season officially kicks off.

While overall crime in the city is down this year, the number of violent crimes--muggings, rapes and murders-- is up. Nearly half of the robberies that took place in the city this year happened in the Bronx.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal offer different profiles of Corey Fisher, the Bronx native who's now a star player for Villanova's basketball team. As a teenager, Fisher once scored a stunning 105 points in a single game, according to the Journal. The Times contrasts Fisher to his infamous great-uncle of the same name, a Harlem crime boss during the 1970s. 

A new report released this week says the demand for food in the Bronx has increased this year by 74 percent, while stimulus funding upped the amount of money for food stamps in the city by $458 million.

Merchants around 161st Street say business is still in the slumps since the new Yankee Stadium opened a few years ago.

Local bodega owners are still buying untaxed cigarettes from illegal vendors for their cheaper prices, despite the city's efforts to crack down on the trade.

Ongoing inspections of the dilapidated and now-infamous Bronx Milbank properties found 1,200 new violations in the 10 apartment buildings, according to HPD--that's in addition to the 3,577 open violations that were already on file.

A Bronx sanitation company says celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey owes them $25,000, the bill for several months of garbage removal at Ramsey's Manhattan restaurant The London.

A pregnant woman is suing the NYPD for what she claims was a false arrest and three days spent in jail. Stephanie Badillo, 19, was arrested in Tremont earlier this month in what police said was a drug bust; she was kept at the 48th Precinct station before later being released because of insufficient evidence.

Community Board 11, which includes Bronxdale, Pelham and Morris Park,  is looking for a new district manager. 

Two buildings in Riverdale--Cambridge Mews on Cambridge Avenue and the unfinished Tulfan Terrace on Oxford Avenue--were built by developers with ties to the mob.

Note: start a discussion about any of these stories, or anything else on your mind, in our readers' forum.

Bronx News Roundup, Aug 26

Great story in the Times today about a hoarder in Bedford Park whose apartment had turned into a literal sea of stuff. The photos are amazing. Recently, Part of the Solution (POTS), the soup kitchen and multi-service organization on Webster Avenue in Bedford Park, enlisted a company that specializes in extreme hoarder cases to help make the apartment habitable again.

Testimony began in the trial against the four men accused of plotting to blow up two Riverdale synagogues, with an FBI agent saying he paid a confidential informant nearly $100,000 a year to help him catch local would-be terrorists. Defense lawyers say the FBI and the informant came up with the plot and entrapped the four defendants.

NY1's Dean Meminger takes a look at Freedomland, the Bronx amusement park that was located in the space now the Bay Plaza mall in Co-op City. It only lasted five seasons in early 1960s, but was the biggest amusement park in the world when it was built, according to borough historian Lloyd Ultan.

BoogieDowner has details on the new and improved dog run at Williamsbridge Oval Park. (The bloggers, who live in the building where Pedro Espada owns a condo that he claims is his primary residence, also say they recently received a hypocritical robo-call from Espada.)

If Espada is re-elected in the 33rd District this fall, a group of women state senate candidates and incumbents say they will not vote for him as majority leader.

The Bronx DA's office has bed bugs.

Bronx-bred hoop star Corey Fisher, fresh off a 105-point outburst in a summer league game, is ready to take on more of scoring load during his senior season at Villanova.

Bronx News Roundup, Aug. 16

This past weekend in the Bronx began where the previous weekend left off -- with violence.

Just after midnight on Friday night, a car pulled up to a group of teenagers in Williamsbridge on Fenton Avenue and opened fire, killing 16-year-old Tashawn Bromfield of Connecticut. Tashawn was in town visiting his father. No one else was injured. Police said Tashawn was not the intended target and that it may have been the result of a gang initiation. More from NY1.

A few hours later, at about 7:15 Saturday morning, more tragedy struck the borough as 19-year-old Kevin Mejia was killed after falling from the roof of a six-story apartment building on University Avenue. Police are treating Mejia's death as an accident, saying the teenager lost his footing. It's unclear what he was doing on the roof of an apartment building blocks away from his own.

On Friday afternoon, a battery exploded at the Longwood Ave. 6-Train station.

Bedbugs are thriving in all the five boroughs, a new poll suggests.

Pedro Espada Jr. may benefit from a crowded 33rd Senate District race this fall.

Scholars worry that the writings of a legendary Yiddish author, Chaim Grade, will be trashed by Bronx bureaucrats. The Bronx Public Administration took the writings after Grade's widow, who lived in the Amalgamated Houses, died in May and left no will.

Now, in some more inspiring, sports-related news, Bronx native and Villanova senior guard Corey Fisher set what appears to be a new street basketball record when he dropped 105 points during a summer league game at Watson Gleason Playground. Former NYC hoops star Howard Garfinkel called Fisher a "pathological scorer."

A team of Bronx high school all-stars beat their Brooklyn counterparts in the Nike World Basketball Festival's Battle of the Boroughs. The Boogie Down takes on either Queens or Manhattan next weekend for the championship.

NBC reports on the Bronx's wildly successful Rocking the Boat youth program.

Here's some more coverage of Justice Sotomayor's visit to Lehman College on Saturday. NY1.