I traveled to Staten Island today for the first time. My partner, Evan Wexler, and I are setting the groundwork for a documentary we will be shooting about members of the Tea Party movement on the island. We took the ferry from the tip of Manhattan.
Now, after seven months, I’ve set foot in all five boroughs.
Categories: Journalism · Photos · Staten Island
Tagged: Connor Boals, Staten Island, Staten Island Ferry, Statue of Liberty
I got a call just before midnight last night. It was CJ, with whom I have been spending lots of time for my master’s project on pit bulls in New York City. His oldest (and dearest) of his two dogs, Snow, had been peeing a lot and he had just passed it off as a UTI. However, he had just received news from a vet that in fact it was something much worse. Snow had Pyometra, a bad infection in her uterus, and the vets gave her two days to live unless she had surgery. The Manhattan vet he was visiting estimated $2000 for the surgery. CJ knew he could do better so he found a vet in Queens where he could get the same surgery for nearly half the price.
I met him and Snow up in Harlem around 11:30 a.m. Thursday and we hopped in the car and zipped over to Queens.
At the vet, Snow and CJ waited patiently. She didn’t give off the impression of a dog who was two days away from death, but she did do a lot of whining and squirming while we waited for her turn in the examination room.
Much of the argument I am trying to present in my piece on pit bulls is that they are treated almost as a minority. People fear them and hate them without ever really trying to understand them as a breed. It was quite refreshing to see CJ conversing openly with the two other couples about their dogs in the waiting room. They all had much smaller dogs, but it was clear that everyone in the room was speaking the same language: the language of passionate, concerned pet owners.
Questions like “What is she in for?” and “What about your dog, what is he here for?” were thrown around.
They joked about spaying and neutering and their apprehensions, projecting their human fears of their own castration onto their beloved pets. The surgery Snow was facing was essentially a glorified spaying. Her uterus would have to be removed in order to take care of the infection.
After much waiting, Snow got up on the table. She wasn’t too keen on having her swollen and painful private parts probed and put up a bit of a fight by growling and thrashing. Her metal chain and long nails on the metal exam table sounded like hail on a tin roof as she struggled to get down and away from the vet’s probing hands.
The vet very quickly and methodically produced a leather muzzle from the drawer for her to wear as a precaution. CJ and another veterinary technician held her tight. Snow leaned into CJ’s embrace, as if hoping to bury herself in his thick black leather jacket to escape from the uncomfortable probing.
A quick x-ray showed her uterus was in bad shape, and her spine was a bit arthritic from giving birth to puppies.
The uterus is the dark mass near the right half of the x-ray.
CJ haggled a bit with the vet to get the bare minimum of services rendered to get Snow healthy again. Then, he told Snow he’d be back first thing in the morning on Saturday to pick her up.
CJ dropped me off at home. I ran out to the 110th Street station to snap a quick stock shot of the subway for my latest Covering Education blog post.
I’m covering transportation and safety issues for the course and the post was about a new report released by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy that projected MTA fare hikes to be at least 15 percent to make up for their $400 million budget gap. Last month, they voted to phase out free and discounted MetroCards for the city’s public school students. The report calculated that this hike would cost a working family of four with two school aged children an extra $2300 a year in transportation costs.
For a simple blog post, I spent entirely too much time on an accompanying infographic on the history of MTA fare hikes. I’m pretty proud of it though.
I only took the subway up to 116th St. Then, I walked back down to my apartment. Since I had my camera, I figured I’d finally take the picture I’d seen countless tourists take before on my daily walk to and from school. This is Tom’s Restaurant. Probably best known as “the Seinfeld Restaurant.” Although, the diner scenes were shot on a set, they used this shot of the actual Tom’s Restaurant in the show.
Look familiar?
The restaurant is also the inspiration for the song “Tom’s Diner,” which was released in 1981 by Suzanne Vega.
My personal favorite, and probably a bit more familiar is the 1990 remix by British group DNA.
I caught a cool glimpse of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as I turned to cross the street to head back home.
I finished the day off glued to my computer, working on various projects. The computer work was only broken by a nice run in Central Park. I listened to the first episode of the new Freakonomics podcast. I’m a fan and it will fit nicely into my running repertoire.
I like busy days. I never seem to get through everything i’m supposed to, but I always go to bed feeling complete.
Categories: Education · Journalism · Manhattan · Music · Photos · Queens · Upper West Side
Tagged: Connor Boals, pyometra, Seinfeld, Suzanne Vega, Tom's Diner, Tom's Restaurant
I had a good Saturday. Very busy.
Slept in. Went for a run.
Met up with Fred. Biked to Central Park. They had a rail jam going on.
Fred indulged in some swag.
This woman was grooving to the tunes supplied by the Red Bull mobile sound system.
She had moves.
Next, we cruised to 125th St. in Harlem. First, I had to stop off at the heated bathrooms of the Lake House. Fred held my bike.
Went to Dr. Jay’s. Fred scored some cheap threads. An old, probably homeless, man pooped his pants in the store and got chased out. The ensuing chaos made for quite a scene. Back outside I snapped a shot of the Apollo before we left.
I wolfed down a torta at Taqueria y Fonda with Fred. We parted ways and I cruised to the Animal Care and Control shelter on 110th between 1st and 2nd Ave. I met up with Evelyne Cumps, a volunteer who runs the Compassion program at the shelter. She and the other volunteers walk the dogs in the shelter, many of whose fates aren’t very promising.
This is Baby. Baby was listed as “questionable.” Evelyn said she liked the dogs who need work. She walked her around the corridors of the shelter, stopping to give her pieces of meatloaf she bakes herself at home for the dogs.
This was the second visit to the shelter for my pit bulls story. The first visit, I only saw the dogs up for adoption. There were 18 of them that day. Only two didn’t have any pit bull in them. Person after person came in looking for a small dog to adopt. Nobody wanted a pit. Tonight, I got to go back into the shelter where the dogs are held that haven’t been put on the adoption list yet. More of the same. If I had to guess, it was 95 percent pit bulls and pit bull mixes.
After that, I headed to Brooklyn Bowl where Hot Chip played a DJ set. I don’t have any pictures. There were a lot of hipsters there.
Categories: Brooklyn · Journalism · Manhattan · Photos
Tagged: Connor Boals, Dr. Jays, Harlem, Photos
My assignment was to travel from Coney Island to Times Square, document it and produce a 60-second clip of the journey.
I hadn’t been to Coney Island, so I was excited for the opportunity to see that part of the city. It’s a place that is both eerie and wholly intriguing. Now that it’s winter and the attractions are closed, it has a real post-apocalyptic ghost town feel. Vibrant colors and wide open natural light made it great for filming.
I chose to bike there, because I figured everyone else in my class would take the subway. It was a 30-mile ride to get there that took me down the west side bike path, across Canal Street, over the Manhattan Bridge, down Flatbush Ave to Prospect Park then all the way down Mcdonald Ave. until I made it to the Boardwalk. (Geography nerds, see map below).
Categories: Brooklyn · Humor · Journalism · Manhattan · Multimedia
Tagged: Biking, Brooklyn, Columbia University Journalism School, Coney Island, Connor Boals, Cycling, F Train, Gravesend, Times Square
I’m starting a new course this semester called “Covering Education.” It’s focused on reporting on the New York City public school system. My professor, LynNell Hancock, has partnered all of her students with an embed school that has someone on the inside who is willing to serve as a sort of liaison inside the school. I paid a visit to my embed school, Aspirations Diploma Plus High School, in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn today. I thought I’d share a little of my experience:
I walk through the door of Aspirations High School and into the open lobby. The fluorescent lighting bounces off the clean white linoleum floors and freshly painted white walls with blue trim.
It feels like a hospital.
“Um, excuse me, sir?” A voice barks at me from my periphery. It’s ripe with sass.
I haven’t set foot in the school for thirty seconds, and I’ve already blown the security checkpoint.
Oops.
The nice uniformed security guard takes my ID, lazily fills out a log book and makes me sign my name. I ask her for directions and she vaguely points me to the end of the hall. She snaps her gum loudly at me as if to signify I am someone else’s responsbility now. I turn right down the hall. To the left, in the other half of the building, is another high school, the EBC School. This is a new concept to me. I have always gone to schools that had their own building. Thus, a school is a physical entity defined by its building. Now, I am in one building that houses two schools.
Two minutes in and my mind is already blown.
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Categories: Brooklyn · Education · Journalism · Writing
Tagged: Connor Boals
This is Snow and Layla. Snow, the white one, is a nine-year-old pit bull. Layla, her daughter, is five. I’ve been hanging out with Layla and Snow a lot this week for my master’s project which is a piece on pit bulls in New York City and how they are such a polarizing dog, loved by some and feared by others, here in the city.
The dogs live in the Grant Houses in Harlem with their owner CJ. I came along with CJ and his friend, Jay, while they took the dogs out for some exercise in Morningside Park. It was a balmy 45 degree day in the middle of January (no complaints here) and the dogs were enjoying the sunshine.
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Categories: Journalism · Manhattan · Photos
Tagged: Connor Boals, Grant Houses, Harlem, Master's Project, NYCHA, pit bulls, pitbulls
I rode my bike down to the Haitian embassy at Madison Avenue and 39th Street tonight to catch a prayer vigil held by Reverend Al Sharpton for the victims and survivors of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti late Tuesday afternoon.
In attendance were Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, New York Governor David Paterson, US Senator Kristen Gillibrand and a slew of New York City politicians.
They all spoke of the devastation and pledged aid in the form of money, political will and prayer.
Categories: Journalism · Manhattan · Photos
Tagged: Al Sharpton, Connor Boals, David Paterson, Earthquake, Haiti, Jesse Jackson, Kristen Gillibrand, Red Cross
Things are quickly wrapping up here at J-school. It’s pretty incredible to think that I’m already halfway done.
One of the bigger projects I produced this semester was for my Digital Media Newsroom course. My partner Alex and I produced a story package that involved text, video and audio slideshow components about the pest control industry in New York City and how it has been affected by the recession and the boom in bedbugs.
For my video, keep reading after the jump or go straight to the Digital Media Newsroom site.
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Categories: Journalism · Manhattan · Multimedia · Photos · Queens
Tagged: Connor Boals, Bedbugs, Magic Pest Control, Ralph Hernandez-Maestre, Digital Media Newsroom
This is Evelyn Rivera and Eddie Marrero, two former workers at the Stella D’Oro cookie factory. They were gracious enough to let me into their homes for one of my final features for my RW1 course.
My new feature story for The Bronx Ink about Eddie and Evelyn and their fellow Stella D’Oro workers who are now out of a job due to the closing of their cookie factory that had existed in the Bronx for 78 years is up now. Read it here.
Categories: Journalism · Kingsbridge · RW1 · The Bronx
Tagged: Kingsbridge, The Bronx, RW1, Connor Boals, Journalism, Stella D'Oro, The Bronx Ink
