SEE PICTURES: National Night Out at the 52nd Precinct

By DAVID CRUZ

Families and their children joined police officers from the 52nd Precinct for the 35th annual National Night Out Against Crime. At Poe Park on Aug. 6, there was plenty of fun and games to go around at the event aimed at forging greater bonds between police and the community. National Night Out Against Crime was established in 1984 as a way of raising police awareness in community. Check out these photos by Jose A. Giralt!

Back-to-School Book Bag Giveaway Event Offers Good Start for Students

By DAVID CRUZ

Students got a good head start in preparing for school with a recent back-to-school book bag giveaway event sponsored by state Sen. Gustavo Rivera. The first of three events happened at Slattery Playground in Mt. Eden, with dozens of children picking up a backpack ahead of the new school year, which is slated for Sept. 5. The event was one of three events sponsored by Rivera’s office. Another events are scheduled for Aug. 15 and Aug. 22. Families living within Rivera’s 33rd Senate District are welcome to receive a backpack and obtain a free health screening. For more information, call

The $1 Million in Participatory Budgeting Results Are...

By JOE KONIG

There will not be a special election for the 11th Council District. At least, not this year. The Bronx Democratic Party nominated three candidates to the Bronx Supreme Court at a judicial convention on Aug. 8. None of the nominees were Councilman Andrew Cohen, delaying the long-anticipated campaign to succeed the term-limited councilman for at least another year and squashing theories of party orchestration. Instead, Bronx Democrats nominated Bahaati Pitt and John Higgit to two open seats and re-nominated Wilma Guzman to the seat she’s held since 2006. Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed Higgit to the New York State Court of

By JEROME GUN HILL BID

Mosholu Optical has been a neighborhood fixture in the Jerome Gun Hill Business Improvement District (BID) since it first opened in 1948. Originally owned by Dr. Irwin Kaskawits, Mosholu Optical has been serving patients and shoppers in the Norwood community for over 70 years. Ed Greenspan, the current owner, has been a part of the business since 1968 when he began working for Dr. Kaskawits. Ed first got his start in the optical business at the original location of Moscot eyewear in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, now one of the oldest businesses in New York City. By 1985 Ed took

By DAVID CRUZ

NEIGHBORHOOD ARTIST LADY K Fever puts the finishing touches on a newly restored column that’s been transformed into an art installation at the southwest corner of Jerome Avenue and East Gun Hill Road. The Jerome Gun Hill Business Improvement District commissioned the work, a total of four columns, within the commercial district’s borders as a way of sprucing it up with help from Councilman Andrew Cohen and ArtBridge. Photo courtesy Maria Estevez

Latest Edition of the Norwood News is Out!

By DAVID CRUZ

Dear Fellow Readers, The year’s sixteenth edition of the Norwood News is out with plenty of interesting community news stories to read and share. We have 28 pages packed full of news from this corner of the Bronx, capturing a good chunk of it. And as usual, we’ll start with page one! For our front-page story, we dive into the issue of loud partying at Van Cortlandt Park. Residents are so upset that after logging 165 noise complaints this year that were not heard, they penned and signed a letter of complaint to elected officials. Inside the cover you’ll find

Fighting Pediatric Asthma With a Personal Touch in the Bronx

By SÍLE MOLONEY

A new asthma-free Bronx program aims, within five years, to reduce asthma-related emergency room visits by 50 percent and asthma-related hospitalizations by 30 percent among children aged 5 to 17 at three of the Bronx’s public hospitals – North Central Bronx (NCBH), Jacobi, and Lincoln hospitals, which collectively serve about one third of all Bronx kids with asthma, a borough hardest hit by asthma. Each year, approximately 20,000 children in New York City end up in the emergency department or are hospitalized due to asthma. About 40 percent of these children live in the Bronx with black and Latino communities

By SÍLE MOLONEY

Picnics and yoga? Forget about it. It’s more like an open-air rave each weekend at the Gun Hill Meadow inside Van Cortlandt Park, which stretches along West Gun Hill Road and Jerome Avenue. After years of filing 311 noise complaints, residents at Knox Place, Gates Place, DeKalb Avenue, and West Mosholu Parkway say the late-night open-air sprees have gotten progressively worse each year, and are already untenable as the summer surpasses its halfway mark. After 165 noise complaints were logged for the area this year alone, the majority between June and July, 98 residents penned and signed a formal letter

By PROFESSOR ANTHONY RIVIECCIO, MBA PFA

Peace, obviously, is a very subjective term. This will be based on your own individual thoughts. Tranquility for one may be silence and/or scary for another. But your “peace” will be at a price! After all, we do live in a capitalist society, right? But again, based on your own definition, it does not have to cost too much. Peace for me, for example, started in the early 1990s, just graduating college and starting on Wall Street as an investment analyst. During those years, there were many early days and late nights. After 15-hour days, I wanted to be in