“This is my first time coming on a Saturday and it happens to be after the… it’s really not after – we’re still in the pandemic, but I guess after mass vaccination, so I’m actually quite surprised to see how many people are here,” said Eric Johnson, 32, of Harlem  ”

 Johnson said he isn’t scared to be around a large group of people since he is vaccinated.

 “We’ve been risking it all for a while,” said Johnson. “I mean, you know, I’m not scared. I was vaccinated back in April. Nothing’s happened since then. I ride the trains. This is a little different for me though, I’ve never been in this type of crowd for quite some time, but I am hoping for the best. I think we’ll be alright.”

 Anna Delgado, 62, from Queens said she was a regular at the San Gennaro Feast. She also felt safe in the large group due to the vaccination rates in Little Italy. 

“Some people, they are aware of the pandemic,” said Delgago. “They use masks, but I think around 70 percent of the people over here, they already had the vaccination. That’s very good for New York.”

According to the CDC, 85.54 percent of Hudson Square, Little Italy, SoHo, and Tribeca are vaccinated. This is higher than Manhattan’s vaccination rate of 79.09 percent and New York City’s vaccination rate of 69.45 percent. The case and death rate for these neighborhoods are also lower than Manhattan’s as well as New York City’s.

 With hundreds of people unmasked in such close quarters, the feast does have the potential to  be a super spreader event as fully vaccinated people are still getting infected with Covid.  The vaccine card and mask mandates  are not required for outdoor events.

But the crowds who walked around eating cannolis and smoked sausages were not afraid and neither were the vendors hawking the food.

 “It doesn’t matter because we’re all outside, “ said Angelique Aquilino, 36, a pastry stand owner.  “We can do whatever we want to do, and everybody’s happy.”

Not every vendor was comfortable with the crowds.

Josephine Caso, sister of the owner of Cafe Napoli, checking her reflection in a window at the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Photo by Maggie Geiler

“I tell you I’m a little leery,” said Josephine Caso, 85, sister of the owner of Café Napoli. “Thank God that everybody’s healthy, [my family and I] all got our shots, we’re happy to be back.”

 Caso and her family handed out cannoli’s, almond-filled pastries, and zeppole to customers waiting in long lines, some for up to 45 minutes. With much of Little Italy’s income being dependent on tourism, the tight-knit community was hit hard by the pandemic, causing most restaurants to lay off staff members and some to deal with closing.

 “Forget it, forget it, it was a disaster,” said Caso “I’ll tell you the truth, I was scared. We had the place closed for a year and a half, nobody walked the streets. It was very hard.”

Business owners hoped the feast would be the boost neighborhood businesses would need.

“With the whole festival going on, hopefully it boosts everything back up, said Manuel Siguencia,37, the manager  at Il Cortilo restaurant. “All of Little Italy is packed… it’s so awesome.”

And the 11-day festival was exceeding their expectations.

 “We were afraid that it wouldn’t be like this coming back,” said Aquilino. “It’s like nothing ever happened. Like we just fell asleep and woke up and we’re back where we were. Everyone is back. This neighborhood needed this.”

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A blue Mexican wrestler mask swung in the breeze, gently knocking against a brightly painted sugar skull.

Daniel Valle laughed. “This one’s really solid,” he said.

He took the yellow and green skull down from the string that suspended it from the top of his tent. It was just papier mache, but it still produced an audible “thunk” when Valle rapped it on its head.

Valle had just finished setting up a tent full of his handmade masks at a Mexican Independence Day festival in East Harlem yesterday. For local businesses like Valle’s, the festival was about more than honoring the day that Mexico wrested out of Spain’s control over 200 years ago. It gave them the chance to work their missions — connecting with local communities and preserving the culture of their homelands.

“I’m trying to rescue all these Mexican gods,” Valle said, gesturing to his masks. Hanging next to the skull and the wrestler, or luchador, was a mask of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, and another luchador, this one silver.

Valle’s work is expensive, but it’s intricate, too. One mask can take months to finish, and each is handmade entirely by him. The sugar skull goes for $800. Valle’s work usually hangs in restaurants and galleries, but he came to the festival today to make contact with local communities.

“This is the only chance I get to talk to the people, to see what they like,” he said.

People milled in and out of Valle’s tent, sipping ice cold horchata, a sweet Mexican rice drink. It was only 80 degrees out, but the humidity made it feel hotter.

“Es un dia para celebrar,” or, “It’s a day to celebrate,” said festival-goer Rodrigo Cano as he perused the vendors lining the streets, many of them selling handmade goods like Valle’s. Cano came to the United States from Mexico six years ago, but he still peppers his speech with Spanish phrases.

Like the business owners around him, Cano celebrates Mexican Independence day as a means of staying connected to his culture.

“It’s to don’t forget our tradition, where we come from, especially when you are outside your country,” he said.

Local shopowner Carmelo Reyes stands with his drink cart at a Mexican Independence Day festival in East Harlem yesterday. Photo by Amy Zahn

Just across the street from Valle’s tent is the small, locally owned Agave Deli and Grocery. Owner and longtime East Harlem resident Carmelo Reyes ladled sweet beverages into plastic cups before handing them to customers. Aguas frescas, light fruit drinks, are his specialty — jamaica, horchata and mangonada, a drink made with mango and lime. He learned to make these refreshments working in a restaurant in the 1980s.

Reyes stopped ladling horchata to talk.

“Some people don’t have papers,” he said. He opened El Agave on 116th Street in East Harlem to serve the largely Hispanic community in the area. “They’re afraid to come out on the streets because they think they’re going to deport them.” He hopes events like the Independence Day festival help people feel more comfortable in their communities.

Valle chatted with fellow vendor Antonio Rojas during a lull in business. Much like Valle, Rojas came to the festival to show his handmade art and to do his part to keep traditional Mexican culture alive with figures inspired by Mayan, Aztec and Toltec culture.

“It’s to try to make alive our past, our ancestors,” he said. “It’s important because with the passing of the years, a lot of stuff has been lost.” Rojas makes a mold for each piece, which can take over a month to complete.

“Every single one of them has a different meaning,” he said, showing off intricately carved Aztec and Mayan calendars. The calendars laid next to skulls and a Pyramid of Kukulkan, a well-known landmark from Chichen Itza in the Mexican state of Yucatan.

Just feet away sat Valle and his masks.

“Don’t let it die, all this culture,” Valle said.

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The eve of the 15th anniversary of 9/11 was a festive day in Chinatown.

Visitors and residents ate free Chinese food and watched traditional Chinese performances at the 3rd Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in Chinatown. Local Business owners showcased they work in booths. Even five years ago this activity would be unheard of in this immigrant neighborhood, just east of ground zero.

“It is a long journey to recover from what we have experienced over the past 15 years, but we are trying,” said Wellington Z. Chen, the executive director for Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, who helped organize the festival

He said the festival was developed to raise public awareness about the business and culture within Chinatown.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Chinatown suffered an economic depression. Census data of 2012 indicated a 9% loss of population in and local businesses experienced a 50% – 70% loss in monthly revenue in the three-month after the attacks.

Today, 15 years later, Chinatown business leaders remembered what happened on that day and the impact it had on their livelihood.

“It was a tragedy,” said Hua Li, 60, the president of United Fujianese of American. His wife, who used to work in the 1 World Trade Center, is a 9/11 survivor.

“She should have been there working on the 93rd floor, but luckily, when the flight crashed into the building she was on the ground,” Li said. “Many of her colleagues and a close friend of ours passed away. It’s very hard for all of us to remember that day.”

Following the attacks, Chinatown was hit by martial law aimed at keeping neighbors safe, but the cost was steep for businesses.

Dust and smoke were in the air. No trucks were allowed on Canal Street, their major business corridor. Chinatown residents had to show identification to get into their neighborhood. Parking was taken over by law enforcement. Businesses could not get delivers and there were no customers in sight. People moved away, businesses shut down, tourist buses and tourists stopped going into the area. According to data from Chinatown Partnership website, by 2002, up to 100 garment factories closed, which resulted in the loss of 8000 jobs lost.

“No one came to the store at that time,” said Tea Fu Zi, owner of Good Tea Water, a tea shop in Chinatown for over 20 years. “If I got $5 in a day, that would be my big day.”

Life changed not only for Hua Li and Tea Fu Zi, but for many Chinatown residents. This led members in the community take proactive measures.

In 2006, Chen formed the Chinatown Partnership. His goal was to rebuild Chinatown into a business improvement district that brings residents, business owners, and community groups together to promote a special destination to live, work, and visit. They also want to preserve their neighborhood and culture.

“It needs a process,” Chen said. “Unlike other BIDs, we use our money directly to repair the environment that 9/11 left for us.”

In the last three years, the Chinatown Partnership has worked with the Chinatown Business Improvement District and the Clean Streets projects. They brought in guidepost, cultural lanterns decoration projects, and store rental projects.

Ten years later, there are more than 4,000 stores, markets and big malls in Chinatown. Every year the officers from Chinatown Partnership conduct market research to determine growth and needs of local businesses.

Jason Kwan, the vice president of A-image Company, sold his self-designed Chinese T-shirt at the festival. This is his third year participating.

“It is a good way to help others see the beauty of Chinese culture and history,” Kwan said.

Chen said this is only the beginning.

“After the 9/11 attacks, everything changed, but did not change indeed,” Chen said. Chinatown has more than 100 years history, it is our duty to protect it and pass it to our younger generation as what it was before the attacks.”

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The sounds of beating drums, rhythmic chants, and joyous people brought gatherers, near and far, to the Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx Sunday afternoon to celebrate a proud culture.

The Native American Festival, or yearly pow wow attracted hundreds of diverse people to celebrate native culture. They danced traditional Native American dances, ate Native foods, like fry bread, and listened to stories and admired the dreamcatchers that were sprinkled throughout the event.

“This is a unique opportunity for non-natives to interact one-on-one with native people,” said organizer and master of ceremonies, Bobby Gonzalez, 64, of Melrose, Bronx. “And, it’s a way of dispelling commonly held stereotypes about native people.”

There are 567 recognized Native American tribes in the United States, but the diversity within the culture is not often celebrated.

“We’re lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers,  we’re not all casino Indians,” said Kevin Tarrant, 46, who identified as part Hopi and part HoChunk, which are indigenous tribes from Arizona and Wisconsin. “We all look different. You could be riding the subway everyday next to an Indian, and you wouldn’t even know it.”

Tarrant said that the goal for the festival was to bring knowledge and exposure to native culture in the Bronx, which has roughly 41,706 people that identify as American Indian or Alaska Native alone. That is 2.9% of the estimated 1,438,159 people living in the Bronx.

Tarrant, the head singer for the Silver Cloud Singers and the Executive Director of the American Indian Community House based in New York, played a pow wow drum during the festival.

The drum used was made of Buffalo Hide in Washington state. The pow wow drum, like other aspects of indigenous culture, is intended to bring people together. Its design allows multiple people to play it at once, and it is used for a lot of the music at pow wows.

Toni Ceaser, 61, of Long Island City, Queens, participated in a women’s traditional dance – a very slow dance in Native American culture. While not Native American herself, Ceaser’s husband is and she has been immersed in his culture for over 40 years and participating in similar festivals for over 20 years.

“It’s really important for people to share culture with one another, because everybody’s got their own culture, and if we can share and appreciate each other’s culture, then I think it brings people closer together,” said Ceaser.

Skye Cabrera, 26, of the Bronx, who identified as Dominican and Greek, said that although she is not Native American, she loved the culture and felt that there was a connection between Native American culture and her own.

Skye Cabrera, 26, stands in front of a collection of dream catchers at the festival. Photo by Wyatt Salsbury

“If you look at our history – Dominicans, Taino culture – we stem from that, especially being American,” said Cabrera. “There’s a lot of Native American history in New York in general.”

According to Path Through History NY – “Native Americans” there were multiple New York tribes that occupied the state many centuries ago. The largest was the Iroquis tribe, who the European settlers first met when they arrived 400 years ago.

Ceaser said being able to connect to the past is an important part of the festival.

“In New York City, it’s become so modern, that it’s really important to be able to connect with the old ways,” she said.

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As a 10-year-old, Rose Villanueva snuck into the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park, crawling through the porthole and sidestepping glass fragments and garbage before climbing all the way to the top to catch a glimpse of the forbidden view.

Many years after her adventure sneaking into the building, Villanueva returned and visited the renovated lighthouse.

“It’s nice,” she recalled today of the visit several years ago. “It’s clean, you can walk up … you can go through the door.”

Today Villanueva, now 67, attended the 23^rd annual Little Red Lighthouse Festival, which celebrates the restored building and brings attention to a little-known park in Upper Manhattan.

Originally built in New Jersey, the lighthouse was taken apart and brought to its current location in the 1920s, where it was in use for barely a decade before the construction of the George Washington Bridge rendered it obsolete. In 1942 Hildegarde Swift wrote his children’s book, “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge,” which brought fame to the building, but for a period during Villanueva’s childhood, it was abandoned.

“Bums would go in there,” she said.

The Little Red Lighthouse, which has not been in use for decades, was the site of an annual festival today. Photo by Karis Rogerson

Today, the riverside park was filled with families for an early fall afternoon outing. Vendors lined the sides of the grass, selling everything from handmade soaps to books while a brass band filled the air with lively music. People mingled with each other, sat on the grass and ate food in paper plates, and many signed up for tours of the lighthouse.

“[The festival] gives people an opportunity to know the lighthouse, the area and to see how pretty it is,” Villanueva said. “It’s a pretty part of the city. It’s not all just downtown.”

Dan Lampen, 35, from Hamilton Heights, brought his son to the park to enjoy the afternoon.

“He listened to the book reading and is enjoying the brass band,” Lampen said. “[This is] a hidden park, I feel like. I don’t know how many people are aware of it.”

Another attendee, Alissa Redpath, 25, from Fort Washington, said the park is her favorite place, although she believes it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

“I love it down here,” she said. “The recognition of places like this that have kind of been forgotten is really important. The small little parks in the city are really what make up our great city. So I think that anything they can do to bring awareness to the smaller areas that don’t really get that much recognition is really great.”

Redpath loves the park at all times, even after dark when others might describe it as “creepy,” she said.

“It is dark to walk, but once you get down here there’s all the lights of the bridge, you can see the whole city and it’s wonderful,” she said.

Mary Antonini, 27, a babysitter from Haven Avenue, agreed.

“We love the Little Red Lighthouse,” she said. “It’s sort of off the beaten path, there aren’t a ton of people here, which is great. I like the idea that it’s sort of away. You’re not in the middle of Central Park.”

While today’s event was free and open to the public, vendors paid a fee to set up their booths and ply their wares.

Ramona Prioleau, 49, who runs the Harlem-based social enterprise FraMiATi, said the purpose of that fee is one of the reasons she chose to attend.

“The vendor fee is a donation to the park,” she said. “So it’s not really going to line any more pockets. I thought that was a great idea. We’re a social enterprise, so it fit with what we want to do.”

FraMiATi is a soap and hand cream business that donates a portion of its proceeds to nonprofits. They recently partnered with the American Cancer Society to provide soaps to the society’s Hope Lodge. Prioleau, the founder, said the idea of giving back is very important to her, and that impacted her decision to attend the festival.

“This is in the park and for the community,” she said. “It was a slam dunk.”

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The red, white and green clad streets of Little Italy yesterday afternoon were empty. Hundreds of vendor tents lined the walkways, selling everything from pizza and cannolis to Italian flags and clothing, But customers were scarce.

Despite crowds being thin, expectations among the vendors were up with over a million visitors expected during the 89th year of the Feast of San Gennaro.

The annual feast is meant to keep the spirit and faith of the Italian immigrants alive, and to pay tribute to the patron saint of Naples, San Gennaro. Thousands of Italians emigrated from Naples, Italy, to the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Little Italy over a century ago in search of a better life. But the descendants of the immigrants have long moved to Brooklyn, Staten Island and beyond. Only a few Italian stores and restaurants which stand as reminders of the bustling Italian neighborhood it once was

Vendor Rose Lansang, of Bayonne, NJ said she knew why business was slow. The feast started right after Labor Day and had other holidays stacked behind it.

“[The visitors] just came back from their holiday, then the Jewish holiday was approaching, so you know, their minds were set on school opening, not on the feast,” she said.

Lansang and her daughter, Dorothy Lansang, are the owners of Street Fair Cosmetics based in New Jersey. They have had a stand in the festival for over 25 years.

The duo’s beauty stand on the corner of Mott and Hester Street sold discounted cosmetics, including body lotions, bath products, makeup kits, and hundreds of nail polish colors just waiting to be bought.

Liza Nagelkirk, 26, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was hoping to see bigger crowds.
This was her first year working the festival as the event manager of Gelso & Grand restaurant, and her spot was at the wooden high-top window bar serving food and alcohol to passersby.

Liza Nagelkirk, the manager of Gelso & Grand, awaits the influx of customers the sunny weekend weather is predicted to bring. Photo by Leann Garofolo

“We started off with it being rainy, and so that was difficult for people,” Nagelkirk said of the thin crowds. “I think a lot of people put it off because they knew this weekend coming up was going to be nice, and they’re like, we’ll just go. I think it’s going to be swamped this weekend”

Fabrizio Facchetti, 21, an Italian immigrant who lives in the Bronx, worked out
of a makeshift café stand in front of the Christmas in New York Store, which also happened to be his second job. He compared scooping gelato and preparing cappuccino to his days as a pastry chef in Milan. He was hopeful the crowds would come.

“Everybody, maybe they are working,” Facchetti said. “Most of [the customers right now] are tourists from all parts of the world, like Italy, Asia, South America. But tonight is going to be busy, trust me.”

Camille Welsh, of Naples, Italy, has assisted her family in working at the stand for their restaurant, the Mulberry Street Bar, for 72 years. Welsh grew so accustomed to Little Italy that she moved to Mulberry Street to live permanently, just a short distance from her family bar, which also boasted Thursday karaoke nights and weekly comedy shows.

Welsh’s familiarity with the festival helps her understand the occasional lull in business.

“Now it’s the middle of the day,” she said. “People are still at work, lunch time is really over, dinner didn’t start yet. It comes in spurts.”

A few idle visitors walked by to check out the various homemade pizzas lining the picnic table style stand for the family’s bar. They walked away empty-handed.

“You never know how crowded it is going to be,” she continued. “So, it’s like anything else. It’s like the weather. You don’t know if the sun is going to come or the rain. So, whatever happens, happens.”

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Small sculptures, jewelry, poster art and paintings are showcased in the Cuban Art Space in Chelsea, Manhattan. Photo by Emily Canal.

For two years, the 16-member Cuban band Los Munequitos de Matanza has planned a nation-wide U.S. tour, hoping to end in New York City for the Si Cuba festival this month.

But the Cuban government must first approve their departure from the island and issue them visas, which could put their travel plans on hold.

“It’s a pretty nail biting experience,” said Ann Rosenthal, the executive director and producer for MAPP International Productions, a nonprofit performing arts organization that staged the Los Munequitos de Matanza concert. “We have obviously made the arrangements and still don’t know for sure that they will get on a plane on April 1.”

Roadblocks to U.S. travel are not new for Cuban artists. Yet some Cubans and Cuban-Americans in New York are now facing an internal struggle between celebrating the country’s culture and condemning travel regulations imposed by its political dictatorship.

Nick Schwartz-Hall, the project line producer for Brooklyn Academy of Music, which helped organize the Si Cuba event, said between 125 and 150 Cubans will travel to New York. They will participate in music and dance performances as well as exhibits, discussions and film screenings.

“There is a rich, vibrant, diverse, contemporary culture… that has valuable contributions to make to the New York cultural world, ” Schwartz-Hall said in an e-mail. “So far, we are unaware of anyone being prevented from coming to the U.S.”

But Iraida Iturralda, vice president of the Cuban Cultural Center of New York, a non-profit organization that strives to preserve and promote Cuban and Cuban-American culture, said government restrictions will prevent some artists from attending.

“I love it. I think anything that celebrates culture is enriching,” Iturralda said. Apart from a few Cuban performers such as Telmary Diaz, one music genre Iturralda hasn’t seen in the Si Cuba line-up is hip-hop, whose artists “are very critical of the government and aren’t allowed to leave,” she said. “There is a huge hip-hop underground movement that deals with topics that are taboo.”

Carmen Pelaez, of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, a Cuban-American writer and actor who may participate in the Si Cuba festival, said she doesn’t think the festival will be lined up with “little pawns for Castro.”

“I think the intent is in the right place and I think the artists coming will reflect that,” she said, adding that events like the festival are great ways to connect the cultures but will not solve all political issues.

“The best way to break away the embargo is by getting to know each other,” Carmen said, referring to the long-time U.S. commercial blockade on the island. “It’s by getting to see your country and by them getting to see you.”

Si Cuba will be the first large-scale Cuban cultural festival in New York. The idea for the festival blossomed two years ago when several New York institutions independently planned Cuban themed events, Rosenthal said. When word spread, the venues and organizations decided to collaborate to create a citywide celebration.

“Its just amazing that it lined up in such a beautiful way that we could work together,” he said. “Its interesting that independently we were interested in taking risks to reengage with Cuban artists at the very moment we were able to,” crediting Obama’s eased travel restrictions in 2009 as the driving force behind interest in the island.

Since then, the number of artists at another celebration—the Havana Film Festival in New York—has nearly doubled, said Diana Vargas, the festival’s artistic director who will also perform in Si Cuba.

“During the Bush Administration, none of them were coming in,” she said. “It was so sad to produce a festival where the honorees were usually Cuban and we couldn’t bring any of them here.”

Paquito D’Rivera, a musician and composer of traditional Cuban music and jazz, said he’s against the Cuban dictatorship, not the artists who will perform in New York.

“You cannot leave Cuba if they do not authorize you,” said D’Rivera, a nine-time Grammy winner who moved to the United States from Cuba in 1990. “Every person that comes here is sent by the Cuban government and they are from the dictatorship.”

D’Rivera added he was disappointed that the country has seen 52 years of dictatorship and that U.S. festivals are celebrating artists approved by the Cuban government.

“We should do the same with thing with Qaddafi and ask him to organize the Libya festival with belly-dancers and shish kebob,” D’Rivera said. “I don’t see the difference.”

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