Puerto Rico, You Lovely Island
• The fallout from Sunday’s Puerto Rican Day parade included 208 arrests, a huge increase from last year’s 50 or so. The police insist all but ten of the arrested were “gang members.” [NYT]
• First Connecticut was on the brink of legalizing medical marijuana; now New York is, too. The legislation may be heading for the governor’s desk within ten days, and Spitzer, who earlier opposed the idea, now says he’s open to it. [NYDN]
gossipmonger
Nobody Knows in America, Puerto Rico’s in AmericaJohn McCain has RSVP’d for the Puerto Rican Day Parade, but Rudy Giuliani has not. Lorraine Bracco will be a onetime co-host of The View. Baird Jones will celebrate Dr. Kevorkian’s release from prison tonight by exhibiting his paintings at Webster Hall. Kevin Costner ate at Michael’s. John Travolta may be in denial about his son’s autism because of Scientology. Paris Hilton plans to keep a diary when she’s in prison, which she can later sell. Sharon Stone is set to star in mock political ads to be unveiled at the upcoming Venice Biennale. Charlie Palmer’s Kitchen 22, on West 22nd Street, closed.
intel
Pol and Poet Wouldn’t Support N-Word Ban
Felipe Luciano ran for City Council two years ago, and he lost by only sixteen votes. Which is too bad, because if he’d won, he likely would have been the only council member to vote against the “N-word” moratorium that passed unanimously yesterday. A generation ago, Luciano wrote a poem that he has since performed widely: “Jibaro, My Pretty Nigger.” Jibaro refers to a person from Puerto Rico, and Luciano, who grew up in Harlem, calls himself a black Puerto Rican. “I used the word nigger to defuse its negativity,” he told us by phone. “When Puerto Ricans call each other the Spanish word ‘negro,’ it reflects feelings of love. I think New York blacks picked up ‘You my nigger’ from Puerto Ricans.”
in other news
Only 7.96 Million Stories in the Naked City!A brief, noteworthy detail in those census-data stories: The city’s population, which hit an all-time high of 8,008,278 in 2000, fell to a mere 7,956,113 a staggering decline of 52,165, or 0.65 percent.
It must be all those fleeing Puerto Ricans.
Latinos on the Rise in the City [NYDN]
Earlier: Dominicans Like the Island Manhattan, Smoke on Your Pipe and Put That In
in other news
Dominicans Like the Island Manhattan, Smoke on Your Pipe and Put That In
There may be a minor revolution under way in our city’s Latin American population, according to new census data reported in the News. For the first time ever, the Dominican Republic is poised to overtake Puerto Rico as the No. 1 provenance of New York Latinos. (Overall, Latinos account for 28 percent of the NYC population and are the dominant ethnicity in the Bronx). The new figures show the number of “Nuyoricans” dropping from 2004 to 2005, while the Dominican stats are on the rise. An auxiliary article describes the first front already ceded by the Puerto Ricans — the city’s 13,000 Hispanic bodegas, which are now almost entirely Dominican-owned.
Whither Puerto Ricans? It seems they’re following the arc of any other immigrant group that’s stayed in the city for a while: disappearing into the middle class and moving out, be it to the Long Island suburbs, upstate, New Jersey, or back to Puerto Rico. At least, though, this revolution appears to be a peaceful one, with no hard feelings between the two Latino groups. For instance, when Puerto Rican candidate Fernando Ferrer ran for mayor, he drew more support from the city’s Dominicans than from his compatriots. Of course, he still lost.
Latinos on the Rise in the City [NYDN]
Dominican Dominance at Bustlin’ Bodegas [NYDN]
