Very Rococo

Video, pictures, flash and text by Roisin O’Connor-McGinn

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For many American teens, prom is one of the most important dates in the high school calendar. However, the excitement is often tainted by financial worries. With costs often running in excess of $1000, prom is a big deal in more ways than one.

While some girls are fortunate enough to be able to justify the splurge, there are just as many who don’t have the same resources.

That’s where Operation Fairy Dust comes in. Now in its 6th year, the program is designed to help High School seniors offset the cost of prom — and one of the most important elements of prom is, of course, the gown.

“[It’s] the last year that everyone will know you as that person, in your last dress,” said Saavedra Jantugh, 18, from The New School for Arts and Science, Bronx. “It’s a very big impression you got to make.” Saavedra chose a long black dress with a gem-encrusted neckline that she hoped to alternate to make shorter.

Not having the perfect dress often means opting out of prom.“Sometimes if you don’t have a dress you don’t even want to go to the prom,” said D’Asia Greathouse, 18, from Catherine McAuley High School in East Flatbush. “You know the other girls are going to be dressed really elegant and nice.”

Desha Hagler, 18, also a student at Catherine McAuley, said she had no idea what she would have done had she not been given the opportunity to shop for free at the give-away.

While some girls spend months shopping for the perfect Prom dress – Operation Fairydust girls will have about 60 minutes. Regardless of time or budget there is one thing that all girls are looking for in a prom dress – the X-factor.

Most were confident they’d recognize “the one” when they saw it.

“I was looking for a simple dress with a back that showed,” said Ismalis, 18, a student at Manhattan Occupational Training Center, who decided on a sleek red frock with thin straps. “I just wanted to look pretty.”

Expenses or just plain expensive? Click the Image to View a breakdown of prom costs

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The following is a draft of my East Village Other project. Still some polishing to do, but this is what I got so far…

Special thanks to Luke Deming for his photos of John Wilcock

Images from The East Village Other from the collection of John Shupe

Music by Jefferson Airplane, “Saturday Afternoon”

By Lakshmi Gandhi, Roisin O’Connor-McGinn and Dana L. Oliver
Dressed in white with their bats in hand, Aviation High School’s inaugural cricket team prepare for a match against DeWitt Clinton High in Flushing Meadow Park. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Jamaican Patois, and Guyanese Creole fill the air as warm-ups begin.

In April, New York City became the first school district in the United States to introduce cricket as a varsity sport. The game is one of the most enduring legacies of the British Empire and the city’s 16 high school teams are primarily made up of students of South Asian and Caribbean descent. The young athletes see playing the game as a continuation of the cultural traditions their parents instilled in them.

“Cricket, it’s from my native country,” said Vik Singh, Aviation High School team’s student manager, who is of Guyanese descent. “My dad played. And basically everybody before him played cricket, so it’s good to know that I am also playing cricket.”

Widely accepted as the world’s second most popular sport after soccer, cricket is unfamiliar to many Americans. In New York City’s West Indian and South Asian communities, however, the game continues to be a treasured export from back home. Ozone Park and Richmond Hill bars advertise televised matches in their windows and many residents sign up for satellite television just to follow their favorite teams.

After observing immigrants playing the game in the outer boroughs, Eric Goldstein, the chief executive for School Support Services of the Public School Athletic League, was convinced there was an interest in the sport among high schoolers.

“The people who are playing are either recent immigrants or first generation Americans from immigrant families where cricket was very much part of the sporting culture of where they come from,” said Goldstein. “What we wanted to do is to embrace that — that’s what New York, America, is all about — it’s all about immigration and embracing change and welcoming the new groups.”

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With his left leg pointed forward and arms flung out at his sides, Alexander Hamilton, looks to be in motion. But for the next few months at least, the bronze statue will be imprisoned behind the mesh fence that surrounds the site of his historic home.

In June, for the second time in its lifetime, Hamilton Grange will be wrenched from its current site in Harlem, jacked up 40 feet, lifted over neighboring St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and on to Convent Avenue. The 206-year-old building will be transported in one piece the few hundred yards down 141st Street to St. Nicholas Park, and transplanted on to a new site – which happens to be the last remaining pastoral acre of Hamilton’s estate.

The National Park Service estimates the process will take about two weeks. That’s if they can resolve a two-year dispute with community board members over which direction the building will face.

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First-time businesswoman Doris Wade looked around her South Harlem neighborhood two years ago and saw a need: services for pets.

“I did a little research and discovered there was a need for a little boutique like this,” she said.

Her shop, “Posh Paws,” is one of four pet-services businesses that have opened within three blocks on Frederick Douglas Boulevard in the last two years. The newest is “Harlem Hound,” a dog walking and cat-sitting service debuted this month (April) – servicing Harlem, Morningside Heights and Inwood.

“I’ve worked for [animal care] services before. They would never go beyond 101st Street,” said Oliver Rhee, the entrepreneur behind Harlem Hound. “It was as if there was an imaginary line that you just didn’t cross.”

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