Entrepreneur Spotlight: Michelle Cruz

(Michelle Cruz, left, promotes her East Harlem Café, serving coffee at an outdoor poetry event in El Barrio last summer.)

Michelle Cruz Creates Business and Cultural Space at East Harlem Café

Michelle Cruz’s East Harlem Café, with special Spanish Harlem coffee blends, holds back the tide of change and brings a taste of Latino coffee back home to the barrio.

East Harlem Café has found a home at 104th street and Lexington Avenue, a storefront Cruz is renting in NYC's El Barrio. The new café opens Friday, June 6, with an opening event planned for 2 p.m. that day.

"The idea originated because I love cafes, listening to Jazz, reading a book and hanging out," said Cruz, who grew up in El Barrio and wants to run a café that feels like home.

She knows about brewing and serving a good cup of coffee. She has spent her lifetime studying the cozy quality of a café where patrons can drink coffee from fresh roasted beans, hear Miles Davis, read and enjoy an element of culture in her café. And, she wants to bring her own vision of a café to her beloved El Barrio.

“What makes a good cup of coffee?” Cruz asked.

She responded, “Quality beans and friendly service…I’ve gone to almost every café in the city to get the vibe and get
the feeling of how I like to be treated and how I like to feel.”

Old grinds that sit on a shelf for too long, she said, make for a bitter cup of Joe.




Cruz has always wanted to her own business and a café is the perfect fit. Cruz has developed a business plan, lined up
funding and selected coffee vendors.

“The most important thing is to know how to run a business financially,” said Cruz who studied business
and accounting and graduated from Hostos and Baruch colleges. “We’re not only about serving coffee, but we’re about serving culture as well."

The community aspect is an important part of her business. That's why Cruz and her best friend Grace have showed glimpses of the future East Harlem Café for the past year at various community activities in East Harlem, giving customers friendly and professional service and a warm Latino home style feeling for every coffee cup they serve.

“I want a place where people meet up before events, socialize,” Cruz said. “When I’ve visited casitas, I like that whole idea of family. I want to create a third place. You know how they say the home is the first place, work is the second place and I want to create a third place where the community can feel ownership.” -- Robert Waddell


For more information, visit http://www.eastharlem-cafe.com/


(Photos courtesy of Michelle Cruz)

The Nuyorican Theatre Blues

Commentary

Lack of theatre venues in El Barrio limit Nuyorican playwrights
By Eugene Rodriguez

A few months ago, I finally became a published and produced Puerto Rican playwright. This came after many years of rejections and of completely and deliberately being ignored! And that, my friend, gives me the Blues!

I was lucky enough to find an Internet company interested in publishing my work. After jumping through many hoops, I now have a book to sell. Called “A Mambo Duet,” it contains two of my musical plays that were produced to critical acclaim in Off Broadway theatres, “Mambo Louie & The Dancing Machine,” (The first Mambo musical produced in an Off-Broadway Theatre) and “The Mambo Café,” (a delightful bar play). And, I am willing to bet that you have not even heard of either play. And, that gives me the Blues!

As a respected Nuyorican playwright, I have been called to judge playwriting contests. Here’s how they go: Usually, they use five or six judges. Each of us gets 10- 12 plays to critique a year. I get six plays that are bad works, three that are fine stage plays, and three extraordinary works of art. In the end, only one play is produced. The others might never go beyond this stage. And, that gives me the Blues!

For a Nuyorican playwright to be produced in the theater capital of the world is an uphill battle.

What annoys me is that three of New York City’s finest theatres that are located in El Barrio are underutilized. Even though East Harlem is home to one of, if not the largest Nuyorican communities in the world, arrogant city policies remain inaccessible to Nuyorican theatre artists. Producers who can afford to pay the rent for our theatres don’t want to produce in them, and the Nuyorican artists, who want to produce in our theatres, simply cannot afford to rent them. Therefore, I, like many Nuyorican playwrights, have no theatre to showcase my work. And, that gives me the Blues!


The three underutilized theatres represent a tremendous community asset that should be used to fuel a cultural renaissance in El Barrio, which I call ELBA. Programming these Nuyorican theatres with Nuyorican plays in the Nuyorican cultural capitol of the world is not only good cultural sense. It also makes good business.

Theatre is known to pump money into the local economy. That’s why the city did everything it could to support Broadway after 9/11. So, if a theatre company could produce a show in a local theatre, it, in essence, would provide a public service to the local business community and to the overall city economy.

Because of outdated, intolerant policies, which insist that these theatres must make a profit for the city, the three ELBA theatres remain dark. That leaves ELBA without the economic boost and Nuyorican artists without local theatres to showcase their work.

Meanwhile, I stand on the unemployment line! And that my friend, if you’re any kind of Nuyorican, should give you the Blues!

In the Mailbox

I came across your very interesting blog while I was searching the internet for how to move to Puerto Rico. I know this question is not directly related to your blog, but do you know anyone who would know how to ship household goods and car to move to
Puerto Rico from New York? I'm trying to find an alternative to moving companies (too expensive), but I am not connected to the Puerto Rican community. (I'm relatively new in the area and I live in southern Westchester Co., NY) Any leads would be useful. Many thanks!

Karen

Politics

Featured story: Puerto Ricans Help Pick Nominee They Can't Vote for in November

From San Juan's streets to muddy backroads that skirt Puerto Rico's coastal farmland, backers of U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are wooing voters with dueling salsa and reggaeton tunes, thousands of flags and placards, and convoys of loudspeaker trucks and honking cars.
The tight Democratic race has made voters in this U.S. commonwealth more passionate -- and relevant -- than they have been in decades. The contest casts a spotlight on the question that's festered at the center of Puerto Rican politics for years -- U.S. statehood, independence or status quo? -- even as it cuts across the debate by uniting normally warring partisans.
For more go to,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080520/pl_bloomberg/ao0mp6ntt_h8_1

La Perla

La Perla
Originally uploaded by Rigglord.

La Perla in 1980 (Photo by Ricky Flores)

Free Registry

MediaNoche presents Diógenes Ballester's

Free Registry: Encounter, Mythology and Reality, an online preamble to his exhibition of the same title at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Visitors to this new media gallery in NYC's El Barrio will be able to see a projection of the Slave Registry of the Village of Ponce in Puerto Rico, a 19th Century text cataloguing African men, women and children as property to be sold on the auction block. The registry lists some of the ancestors of Puerto Ricans (white and black) by name and provides an eery entrance into a world that legitimized the sale of human beings.

The exhibition in El Barrio runs until June 19. The artist talk is planned for Wednesday, June 18, 6 p.m. Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Friday, 3 – 7 p.m., and by appointment.

As a counterpoint to the Slave Registry, the artist has created the Free Registry, allowing visitors to share in the historical process. According to Ballester, "We experience the slave trade as a specific, local event in our country's history, but it is and has always been a global phenomenon, affecting many people in different parts of the world."

Visitors to MediaNoche gallery can browse through the pages of the Slave Registry and comment in the Free Registry online at www.diogenes-ballester.com and www.freeregistry.blogspot.com.

Here's what one visitor to the free registry wrote about Ballester's exhibit:

"This exhibition is both powerful and hurtful reminding us of the inhumanity that enslavement has had in our history. It provides a historical context for understanding the continued destructive legacy of racism, discrimination and injustice. This important exhibition that connects us internationally allows us to examine how going forward we must actively work against injustice, racism and discrimination. Thank you Diogenes, Judy and Medianoche for helping us understand our history and define our future work." -- Marta Moreno Vega, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, NYC

Meanwhile, from June 5 – Sept. 7, el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in Santurce presents:

Free Registry: Encounter, Mythology and Reality, an exhibition that challenges the visitor to rethink the official story. Through traditional and new media, Ballester interprets aspects of the African Diaspora in Puerto Rico. Encaustic drawings and paintings, sculptures and multimedia installations engage the visitor in an historical dialectic of personal discovery.


ABOUT THE ARTIST:

DIÓGENES BALLESTER is a visual artist working in different media. His work explores oral history, memory, mythology, ritual, and cultural identity along a transnational spectrum. Ballester has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2006, he presented two concurrent exhibitions at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City and the Museum of the History of Ponce in Puerto Rico. Cultural objects and historical artifacts from Ponce and Spanish Harlem were appropriated and reframed in the museums and together with painting, drawing and new media provided a way of accessing the past and re-interpreting the present in a transcaribbean dialogue.

For more information, call MediaNoche at 212.828.0401 or visit http://www.medianoche.us

In the Mailbox

Saludos Clarisel, encontré su blog a traves de puertoblogs.com y me pareció tremendo. Soy un boricua residente de NJ. Yo también disfruto de la escritura y la pongo en practica para un blog que he llamado Corillo Gainesviliano, que entre otras cosas, trata el tema de la diáspora boricua. Comparto con usted el link y le deseo mucho éxito con Puerto Rico Sun Communications.

http://www.corillogainesviliano.com/blog

Wilfredo

Editor's Note: This link will be available to Puerto Rico Sun readers under our "resource list" section.

The Bronx Says: 'Que Viva Puerto Rico'

Despite today's rain, the Bronx celebrated its Puerto Rican Day Parade along the Grand Concourse. For more photos of parade, which this year marked its 20th anniversary, visit my photo page at www.flickr.com/photos/clarisel. !Que Viva!

Batutera en la Noche Puertorriqueña

Batutera en la Noche Puertorriqueña
Originally uploaded by roxy_olgui_09.

Community Calendar

Afrolatin@ Forum presents
Black Latino Lineages and Linkages: Historical Ties that Bind
Saturday, May 17, 1 to 4 p.m.
Schomburg Center, 135th Street & Malcolm X Blvd., Harlem
Public conversation on the historical and cultural connections between New York's African American and Caribbean communities with particular attention to the AfroLatino/a experience. This event is co-hosted by Schomburg Center & El Museo del Barrio.