Bronx
Yoga Breaking Barriers in the Bronx
Jack D'Isidoro |
The perception is that yoga is for middle-class white women—and statistics indicate that’s the reality, too. But both are changing in one Bronx neighborhood.
Health and Environment
As Biking Booms, Questions of Race, Class & Access
Chris Giblin |
Some say there are too few bike lanes in low-income areas. But bike paths that do exist in those neighborhoods can stir resentment. How divided are Brooklynites when they get on two wheels?
Education
Boxing Programs In Fight For Their Lives
Isabella Moschen |
Despite their traditional appeal as a way to get tough kids off the street, youth boxing programs are struggling to survive as foundations favor programs whose success is easier to measure.
Bronx
Divinely Inspired, a Youth Basketball League Takes on the Bronx's Devoe Park
Bronx News Network |
A new hoops league that preaches Christian values plays at Devoe Park every Saturday. (Photo by Adi Talwar)Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the latest edition of the Norwood News, out on streets now. Shane Barker, a 16-year-old University Heights resident, does not usually use Devoe Park, the triangular and hilly green space that sits on the corner of Fordham Road and University Avenue and is just blocks from his home.“Me and my brother don’t come down here because there’s troublemakers,” he says.But today is different. It’s a gorgeous, sunny Saturday morning and Shane, sporting cornrows and the wispy beginnings of facial hair, is one of 70 kids participating in a newly-formed basketball program created by a Bronx-based group called the New York City Christian Athletic League.Aided by word of mouth and an infusion of funding from local Councilman Fernando Cabrera, the hoops program is flourishing in a park that has become synonomous with trouble.The league’s founder, Edwin Santiago, and his “right-hand man,” Frank Abarca, both attend Bronx Household of Faith, an evangelical Christian church that meets at PS 15/291 on Andrews Avenue in University Heights.In 2005, Santiago, who lives in Soundview and works part-time at Horace Mann, started a men’s softball league that has grown to the point where it now includes 10 other city churches. He wanted to expand the league to include youth leagues, but only recently decided to take “a leap of faith” and go for it.
