COMMENTARY

Submit Your Letter
to the Editor

Naughty Janet Jackson; her breast exposed, for all to see. 

Her ploy was to further her personal agenda and possibly even eclipse her brother’s notoriety. Her actions will be investigated by a commission: "The Janet Jackson Boob-gate". 

Notorious George W. Bush; his hoax exposed, for all to see. 

His ploy was to get America to rectify his daddy’s war by instituting his own. His actions will also be investigated by a commission: "The George W. Bush Boob-Gate".

I wonder if Janet will be allowed to choose her own "Independent" commission as has George W.? 

What’s good for the Boob should also be good for the Boober. 

Open Letter To The Community

As the executive director of The Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC), I am writing this letter in gratitude for the support you – the community – have given to APAC The Presbyterian Church of Astoria has graciously hosted and encouraged us since inception.

Local businesses have donated services and materials, legislators such as Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. and Assemblypersons Margaret Markey and Michael Gianaris, local organizations such as the Astoria/LIC Kiwanis Club and the UCCA have dug into budgets and made calls to provide funding via grants and other means, actors and technicians have donated their talents and thousands of hours and local residents and audience members have mailed in contributions ranging from $10 to $500. I want to thank you all.

It is not an easy endeavor to create a cultural venue and funding remains a constant struggle. The hours are long with no salaries attached, but we have been given the wonderful opportunity of creating reality from a dream. A dream of creating a "Civic Theater." This is a new term meant to convey our desire to be for and of the community.

As you may have read in the press, APAC is looking for a permanent home. Our rapid growth, and increased demand for more services from the community, has led us to seek a facility where daytime occupancy is possible. We are still looking. Currently we share the church’s gymnasium with the All Children Childcare, a wonderful daycare provider who occupies the space each week day until 6:30 p.m.

Once we find and move into a new space, APAC looks forward to being able to expand services by offering continued professional productions including musical and non-musical theater, children’s theater and original works, after-school programming, programs for seniors, support for other performing arts organizations by creating a consortium of resources and providing a space to perform and rehearse.

Letters and donations can be sent to Susan Scannell, APAC, 31-60 33rd St., Suite B-9, Long Island City, NY 11106.

Again, thank you to the most wonderful community in Queens.

I just heard that Councilwoman Yvette Clark and the New York City Council are passing a law that requires all public bathrooms to have double the amount of female toilets than male toilets and urinals combined.

Although I appreciate the fact that women will get more toilets, I know the real victims of bathroom discrimination are men and boys. Men and boys have to use urinals that provide very little privacy.

In schools and other public places, the urinals in the boys’ bathroom are visible to people outside the bathroom. Young boys have to use the bathroom in an environment that would make a dog bashful. They might as well replace the urinals in the boys’ bathroom with fire hydrants and put a sign on the door that says "Dogs."

As if this weren’t bad enough, female teachers constantly invade the privacy of boys by entering the boys’ bathroom and seeing the boys going to the bathroom in front of them. This is a form of child abuse that rivals the Catholic Church child molestation scandal. Prisoners have more privacy than boys do in school.

I urge all parents to ask their sons if they are victims of this horrendous form of child abuse. All parents should contact their child’s teachers, principals and their elected officials and demand an end to this child abuse.

You can send email to members of the New York City Council at: feedback@council.nyc.ny.us, the email for the Board of Education is:emscgen@mail.nysed.gov and you can fax the Mayor at (212) 788-2460 or email him at http://nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

With all the various problems our nation is reeling from, how can anyone be so blind as to propose amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens? These people violated our laws and are now causing severe drains to our health care systems, social services, schools and police.

Every day throughout the United States many of these people are engaged in all forms of illegal activities. Some of them are organized into very violent gangs that murder, rape and assault our citizens. To grant these people amnesty is absolutely insane. They don’t belong here and we don’t need them.

Let’s round them up and send them back to where they came from. Let’s protect our borders and only allow legal immigrants into our nation.

Several major developments occurring over the past few weeks have been very troubling to many residents of northeast Queens in both the 19th and 20th Council Districts.

Councilperson John Liu has been very busy messing up areas not only within his own political turf, but has been making deals in other neighborhoods as well, without their consent, much less the elected officials who represent them.

Within Liu’s own 20th District, unbridled speculative development continues to run unchecked. Important cultural, historic and architectural sites go unprotected and are threatened with demolition.

Low-density neighborhoods that are zoned incorrectly are ignored and continue to have incompatible, dense development. Several individual sites stand out:

The Bowne Street Community Church – Councilperson Liu was against historic landmark designation of this elegant 1892 Church when the ministers (and not the congregation) proposed to tear it down and replace it with a 22-story apartment building. Under pressure from thousands of residents and the Church congregation, Liu partially reversed his position, supporting the designation of the church structure.

However, Liu does not support including the entire site as a landmark, which would allow yet another overly large, undistinguished (at best) apartment building in downtown Flushing on the existing parking lot. Including the parking lot in the landmarked area will not stop its development; however, it will allow the Landmarks Preservation Commission to regulate any new development so that it will not overwhelm the historic church.

The former Queens County Savings Bank – Councilperson Liu stated in a recent article that "he has mixed feelings about the potential demolition of Queens County Savings Bank. That is a building that’s part of the Flushing landscape for decades," Liu said. "On the other hand, the Queens County Savings Bank decided to leave us so that doesn’t leave a lot of choice as to what to do with the building."

He went on to say that F&T Development and Wellington Chen, the owner and consultant for that building as well as the moribund Flushing Mall, had "grand visions" for downtown Flushing and that he "applauded anybody who has some kind of vision." Some kind of vision? There have been many people with some kind of vision – Robert Moses springs to mind – who didn’t always see the forest for the trees.

The former RKO Keith’s Theater – Speaking of "some kind of vision": Two decades of contention and criminal neglect and destruction of this once grand movie palace have led to a proposal for yet another glass and steel structure, not unlike former deputy Borough President Larry Gresser’s and convicted felon Tommy Huang’s original proposals from the mid-1980s, by Boymelgreen Developers, the current owner.

The protection of the small landmarked portion of the building interior (the ticket lobby and grand foyer) will create visual curiosity at best. Councilperson Liu’s insistence on the placement of a senior center at one of the busiest – and dangerous – intersections in Queens during the 2003 election cycle is at best misleading. Any community facility space incorporated into the structure can give the developers a floor area bonus and parking reduction, which is significant for the most important site in Flushing. Further protection and incorporation of the existing building is necessary to truly do justice in a redevelopment project at a place that for two decades has had very little justice at all. A public hearing about the future of the Keith’s will be held at CB 7 on Monday, Feb. 23, 2004.

Paul Graziano,
Flushing

Letters with this symbol were received by e-mail and signed with the name indicated.

 

Got A Beef? WRITE THE TRIB! 174-15 Horace Harding Expressway Fresh Meadows, NY 11365  Or you can e-mail the Trib at news@queenstribune.com We reserve the right to edit for length.