Welcome to the latest edition of the Bronx News Roundup. These are the Bronx stories we’re following on this snowy Friday.

Daily News scooped us on this one: MS 80 Principal Emmanuel Polanco’s alter ego as rapper “El Siki” has enraged some of the parents at the school. Youtube videos produced by El Siki show him cavorting with scantily-clad women and drinking champagne, behavior that some parents don’t think is appropriate for a principal at a middle school. The videos have been removed. (We’ll have more on this story Monday.)

Another story we’re following closely: Comptroller John Liu rejected a multi-million-dollar contract that would hand the Muller Army Reserve Center in Wakefield over to a group that would turn the building into a 200-bed homeless shelter. Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs wasn’t happy about it Liu’s move, calling it politically motivated, the Daily News reports. But the Bronx entire neighborhood of Wakefield isn’t happy about the building becoming another homeless shelter in an area already saturated with them, as the Bronx Times reports. Liu says the city failed to fulfill requirements called for in the re-assignment of closed military facilities. Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., one of three members of a group (along with two deputy mayors) tasked with finding a new purpose for the facility, says he never signed off the homeless shelter plan. The Muller Center was talked about as a new home for the National Guard units currently housed in the Kingsbridge Armory annex buildings, which would allow that space to be used for badly-needed school seats. (More on this next week too.)

DNAinfo has a feature on the Bronx’s “Best Valentine’s-Themed Events.”

A Bronx super was sentenced to one to three years in prison for his role in a dog fighting ring, NY Post reports.

Daily News Bronx Bureau Chief Patrice O’Shaughnessy tries to put the relationship between the search for illegal guns, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics and community relations into context and perspective.

Capital NY Editor Tom McGeveran writes a lengthy and fascinating piece tying his childhood in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx into his feeling about deceased former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (also a Bronx native). McGeveran delves into the psychology of growing up in the tough Kingsbridge neighborhood of the late 1970s and early ’80s. He writes of regular muggings and wanting to get out of what felt like a trapped life, but also of liking other aspects of neighborhood, like his school and the park and “the pizza guys, and the guy behind the counter at the butcher.” At age 10, after years of trying to move (like the other white people in Kingsbridge), his family moved to Roosevelt Island. And thanks to the mostly free amenities and programs there (that weren’t available in Kingsbridge), it was there that he really grew to love New York City and be proud of being a New Yorker. Here he reflects on his luck and wonders if people experienced those same feelings in the neighborhood he escaped from:

It was around this time that, according to his own assessment, Koch was beginning to succeed in the underlying mission, to give New Yorkers back their self-respect. I suppose I stopped being jealous of the suburbs. I was 10 now anyway, and the city’s attractions were starting to make sense to me in a way they hadn’t before. I wonder now if that really did happen in Kingsbridge, after we left. I know we became die-hard New Yorkers. But we had to get a piece of what Koch was talking about, and that took years, and persistence, and a bunch of luck.

And finally, check out this multi-media story from the Riverdale Press about the beer boom in the Bronx. Happy Friday everyone! Drink responsibly.

That’s it for today, folks. Stay safe and send your blizzard photos and stories to us at norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org.