Flushing, founded in 1645 by Dutch settlers, is a lower- and middle-class neighborhood in northern Queens whose ethnic diversity is reflected in its restaurants, shops and houses of worship.

Main Street sidewalks are pulsing with people of predominantly Chinese and Korean descent. Signs, written in Chinese, line the walls and buildings, and a mix of American fast food and Asian food is sold from numerous shops and carts around the area.

Offshoots of Main Street are quieter but still vibrant. Since the 1960s, Flushing has been home to a large population of Hindus from India, who have erected some of the largest and wealthiest temples in America.

Local institutions, including Queens College and the Flushing Cemetery, reflect the diversity of Flushing and its surrounding neighborhoods.

It’s prime time to view the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.
Photo by Jimmy Rivera

The name April comes from the Latin aperire, “to open,” and April is the month when flowers begin to bloom at public gardens. As if on cue, cherry blossoms have bloomed just in time for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s annual Sakura Matsuri Festival.

The festival, which opens on April 27, dates back to 1981 and is a showcase for traditional Japanese culture.

“Sakura Matsuri is the country’s largest event in a public garden,” said Kate Blumm, a communications manager at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “It really speaks to what the people of New York City and Brooklyn want to see and experience here at BBG.”

In 1885, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, the first female board member of the National Geographic Society, traveled to Japan, fell in love with the cherry blossoms and recommended that they be planted in Washington, where the blooming has become a major tourist attraction.

Blumm said the Sakura Matsui Festival is a way to “pay homage to our incredible collection of Japanese flowering cherry trees here at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.”

Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, is planning to attend the Sakura Matsuri Festival on Sunday. He said this is the time of year when people are treated to a rare spectacle and one of the most beautiful sights in New York City and added, “a love of these beautiful flowers is only one of the many reasons Brooklyn and Japan have a ‘blooming’ relationship.”

The garden has planned more than 60 performances, demonstrations and exhibits. Some performers come directly from Japan, including The Asterplace and Zakuro Chindon, an all-female marching band. Returning from last year’s festival are the Japanese Folk Dance Institute of New York’s hanagasa odori (a flower hat dance) procession, Samurai Sword Soul and traditional tea ceremonies. Children’s activities include origami workshops and pinwheel making.

“It’s kind of unique something that people really excited to see,” said Nattaphol Thanataveeratcrom, a 25-year-old tourist from Thailand who came with his girlfriend. “We just arrived just yesterday.”

This was his first time admiring the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “After one month, it’s all gone,” he noted.

In Sweden, brooms are sold to accompany the children’s costumes during the Easter season.
Photo by Emelie Pettersson

For centuries, during celebrations of Easter, Swedish children would rush home from school on Maundy Thursday, three days before Easter, in joyful anticipation. They would change and then flood the streets, dressed as beldams, or witches, ringing doorbells of neighbors’ houses. When the door opened, they would hold out homemade cards with pictures of chicks and eggs and scream, “Happy Easter!” They would hold out pots and with smiles, receive little gifts, usually candy, sometimes money.

The Easter ritual in Sweden, similar to Halloween trick-or-treating, now seems to be fading away, losing ground to modern fears and modern technology.

Moa Ney, a nurse in Stockholm, joined her nephews for the traditional Easter hunt this year and said the increase in entry codes at doors to apartment buildings made it difficult for the children to hunt outside their own neighborhoods.

“When I was a kid we always went as a group of friends,” said Ney. Parents never participated, but now more parents are worried about what might happen to their children in other neighborhoods.

While there haven’t been any reported crimes involving Easter hunts, Ney remembered a case in which a 10-year-old girl, Engla Juncosa-Höglund, was brutally murdered by a pedophile in 2008. She believes the murder made parents more cautious and careful.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, witch-hunts were rampant in Europe. Women accused of being witches would be burned at the stake if they didn’t pass one of the arbitrary tests that could “prove” their innocence.

In Sweden, townspeople also believed that on Maundy Thursday the witches would take off on their brooms to celebrate covenant with the devil at Blåkulla, where he resided. The public would light bonfires in an effort to scare off the witches and protect their children from being kidnapped by them. Although, the majority of the Swedish population is Evangelical Lutheran and has been since the Reformation, they have learned to have a bit of fun with the once-feared folklore.

The profusion of luxury retailers, nightclubs and restaurants among the old-fashioned cobblestone streets and derelict buildings make for a neighborhood with a unique atmosphere. However, the Meatpacking District was not always lush with Manhattanites looking to shop and dine by day and party and dance through the night.

After the Civil War, the neighborhood experienced major development from heavy industry to meat, poultry and fish markets, as well as dairy production and refrigeration. By the 1940s, more than 250 slaughterhouses were in the area known as the Gansevoort Market. Those houses produced the nation’s third-largest volume of dressed meat and as a result, the neighborhood became the “Meatpacking District.”

In late 1960s, the market’s prime Hudson River waterfront location was not modernized and could not compete with the rise of containerized shipping that uses locations in Brooklyn and New Jersey. The growth of supermarkets and home freezers also contributed to the decline of the Meatpacking District and led to another shift in 1980s.

The desolate neighborhood soon became the center of drug dealing and prostitution. Sex shops and homosexual clubs moved into abandoned warehouses. In the 1990s, as the rents in the West Village went up, the residents of that area moved up to the Meatpacking District, which was far less expensive due to its reputation.

Young professionals, fashionistas and gallerinas filled the streets of the district, as the abandoned warehouses were replaced by designer boutiques, world-class galleries, high-end restaurants and upscale clubs. From that time, the neighborhood changed its look and activity without surrendering all of its historic character.

Although the commercial climate of the neighborhood has changed, 36 meatpacking companies remain and continue to supply meat to New York City hotels and restaurants. However, as the Whitney Museum’s newest building moves in next to the Gansevoort Market, the meat purveyors are at risk of vanishing from the Meatpacking District.

For the time being, meatpacking occurs from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m., overlapping with daytime shopping, lunch service and office activity from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., which transitions to dinner and nightlife from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m.. The Meatpacking District may be gentrified, but a balanced 24-hour ecosystem persists within the walls of the old warehouses.

Surfing on Long Island is enjoyed during all seasons.
Photo by Patrick Campbell

Long Island survived Hurricane Sandy but as damaged goods. Boardwalks were removed from their foundations and tossed into flooded, sand-filled streets. Dunes were destroyed and oceanfront roads were taken to sea. Waterfront homes were flooded and in some cases, left barely salvageable. Popular beach locations became mere remains of a natural disaster. As the beaches and local communities continue to recover, Long Island’s surfers have been eager to get into the water.

“I just want to surf,” said one local surfer, Mike Garite, 20, of Seaford. “I’ve been surfing Long Beach all my life; nothing like this has ever happened before.”

The shores of Long Island contribute enormously to the local economy, due to seasonal house and apartment rentals, boating, fishing and beaches. Surfers and surfing are just a tiny piece of the Long Island shore economy, but the surfing culture is strong.

In the past, the south shore of Long Island provided surfers with a fair amount of year-round surf. No matter the weather, surfers have always come to surf the local beaches when a solid swell came through, giving them their own little taste of the California surf lifestyle. The Rockaways, Long Beach, Jones Beach, Fire Island and the beaches eastward to Montauk have all served as surf spots for generations. When Sandy hit, access to these beaches suddenly became tightly restricted, leaving surfers and beachgoers wondering what can be expected for the coming summer season.

“I looked at the surf report, and saw there were waves, then I realized I would have to drive out to Montauk,” said Garite, who realized, when attempting to surf just a week after Sandy hit, that surfing on Long Island would not be quite the same or nearly as simple as it used to be. Still, he was willing to make the two-hour drive to Montauk, the easternmost point on Long Island. Once again, the effects of the storm set him back: he needed to fill up his gas tank before he could make the drive, and he had to wait so long for gas that “by the time I got there, it was already dark.”

The gas shortage that followed Hurricane Sandy has long since resolved. However, the damage from Sandy remains problematic.

Garite, like many other surfers from Nassau County, usually surfs beaches on the Long Beach barrier island. Beaches in the city of Long Beach and other public beaches, such as Lido West and Point Lookout in the Town of Hempstead, all reside on the barrier island and are known for their quality breaks. However, the damage caused by Sandy left Long Beach in shambles and restricted surfers from accessing the island, let alone getting to the beach.

Naturally, surfers looked to other beaches like Jones Beach and Gilgo Beach, which are directly east of Long Beach. However, the Jones Beach barrier island was also severely damaged. Merrick Road, the first exit north of the beach, was closed because of the damage caused by the deterioration of the dunes that separated the roads from the beach. The Wantagh State Parkway and the Meadowbrook State Parkway did not completely open up until Nov. 17.

Sand is brought from the Fire Island Inlet to the Long Island shorefront.
Photo by Patrick Campbell

The process of restoring Ocean Parkway is currently underway. The entire parkway is now open to two-way traffic, but a two-mile stretch, east of Jones Beach near Gilgo Beach, remains closed on the eastbound side, so the westbound side is split for two-way traffic, one lane in each direction.

According to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the $32.2 million recovery plan is currently operating on schedule, and the entire highway reconstruction, including the deteriorated traffic circle at Robert Moses State Park, is on track to be finished by Memorial Day, the traditional opening of the summer season. The project, funded mostly by the Federal Highway Administration through its Emergency Relief program, recently started pavement reconstruction.

In order to replenish the beaches and dunes and to build more protection in preparation for future storms, five miles of protective dunes and native vegetation will also be replaced, Cuomo said in a news release.

“It is easy to see the damage and how much sand was washed away,” said Jones Beach lifeguard Mark Dowling, 22, of Long Beach, “especially east past Gilgo Beach. It just doesn’t look the same.”

The dredging process, which began on Feb. 8, is conducted by piping sand from the Fire Island Inlet to shore and then redistributing it in trucks to rebuild the dunes. According to Cuomo, rebuilding the dunes is nearly complete, requiring 800,000 cubic yards of sand.

“The storm is a little ways back now, but we can still feel the changes it left. We are seeing the recovery. Things change each time we go back to the beach,” said Garite.

Long Beach has come a long way since the storm hit but is still in the recovery process. The remains of the boardwalk were demolished in a ceremonial event on Jan. 5.

“It’s a bit weird surfing Long Beach without the boardwalk,” said Garite, after surfing some winter waves at Lincoln Boulevard during the first weekend of March. “Usually I turn around and people are watching from the boardwalk, but now there is just sand.”

According to a newsletter from Long Beach’s City Council President Scott J. Mandel, the new boardwalk is going to be built with far more durable materials than those of the old boardwalk. The city plans to have sections open this summer and to continue building over the course of the year. The new planks are expected to have a lifespan of 30 to 40 years, as compared with the 5 to 7 year lifespan of the old planks.

The beaches are still recovering from the disaster, but this summer, crowds can be expected to pour in just as they always do, and the surfers will continue to surf.

“As long as the sun is out, people will go to the beach,” said Dowling, speaking from his five years of experience lifeguarding at Jones Beach. “The place might look a little different, but it’s still the same sand to lie on, and the same water to play in.”

Mike Garite speaks about his efforts to surf after Hurricane Sandy limited access to many Long Island beaches.

The friendly air of the meandering crowd was unlike many other local parades, welcoming onlookers to mingle and get up close for a sweet dish of eye candy. A very casual procession it has been since the tradition began in the 1870s.
The parade always seems more about tradition and fun than the partying of Halloween or Mardi Gras. With flair to spare, the homespun designs had a variety of seasonal, religious and cultural themes, and it didn’t stop there. Some fashionably accessorized pets also sported bright designs.

This year, along with the time-honored traditional bonnets of blooms, was homage to the new pope and a nod to Peeps, the seasonal marshmallow candy. Cultural icons and pop entertainment from the 1940s inspired swagger, bunny ears and an Oscar winner made this a classy act in the spirit of holiday fun and… well, springtime!

The Dropkick Murphys at Terminal 5 on March 13, 2013
Photo by Alex Goetzfried

St. Patty’s Day got off to an early start on Wednesday night as the American Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys rocked out to 3,000 rabid fans at Terminal 5 in New York City. Doc Martins, kilts, mohawks, tattoos and hockey sweatshirts imprinted with the Dropkick Murphys logo, are the fashionable items for an evening at a Dropkick Murphys show.

The band, together since 1996, is hotter today than when they first started. They are famous for their St. Patty’s Day tours, and this year’s culminates on Sunday night in Boston. In 2005, the band released the album Warrior Code, with the song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which was used in the Academy Award-winning film The Departed and exploded the Dropkick Murphys into mainstream fame. Their music can be heard regularly blasting through the sound systems of Boston’s sports arenas.

The mandolin and bouzouki, both fretted instruments and related to the lute family, help to distinguish the Dropkick Murphys from other punk bands. Interestingly enough, the mandolin is of Italian origins, and the bouzouki is considered Greek, but they lend a traditional Irish-ballad-feel to the more laid-back songs. The band’s seven-member eclectic lineup plays instruments including the accordion, tin whistle, organ and bodhrán, a traditional Irish drum with a goat skin head. These instruments may not be obscure to Irish folk bands or American Celtic punkers, but in the traditional American punk scene, they are alien.

Emmett Malone, from Galway, Ireland, was visiting relatives in New York, and they took him to the show. “The band was great,” Malone said. “My only problem is there were not enough hot women and too many sweaty shirtless men,” he exclaimed through laughs in a thick Irish accent.

Seamus McSherry was another pleased concertgoer.  McSherry certainly looks the part of an Irish-Catholic punker with the Virgin Mary tattooed on his neck and full tattoo sleeves.  “They never disappoint,” McSherry said.

For many Irish Americans and young punkers, a Dropkick Murphys show signals the start of the Guinness-fueled holiday. Although the New York leg of the tour is over, most Irish bars in New York will play Dropkick Murphys songs on their jukeboxes all weekend long.

Donors and city officials help President Wallerstein (holding giant shears) cut the ribbon of the new plaza.
Photo by Emma Kazaryan

Does one closed street constitute a campus? Baruch’s president said he thinks so.

Before the opening ceremony for the East 25^th Street plaza, President Mitchel B. Wallerstein said he had been able to “give the college a campus for the first time,” adding, “The street is closed and it never will be re-opened.”

Where once cars and trucks clogged the street between Lexington and Third avenues, the corridor is now covered with sandy gravel and dotted with some rocks and small potted plants. No-smoking signs hang in campus windows, and each day about 20 blue tables and chairs are brought into the plaza, which separates the college’s library and its Vertical Campus building, creating a new space for students, faculty, workers and local residents to congregate. Within a few years, grass, trees and benches will replace the street curbs, Wallerstein said.

Students, discouraged from smoking outside the school are shooed away by security guards, and school officials are discussing the possibility of hiring of more of them. Baruch spokesman Eric Lugo describes the new outdoor center as a “public-private partnership” with the city’s Department of Transportation, and funding from private donors including Baruch alumni. College officials have promised to take responsibility for the costs, which include maintenance and security.

“It is bringing to fruition something we’ve been working on for two years,” said Wallerstein after cutting the ribbon of the new plaza on Feb. 20, 2013. “It is going to be a huge game-changer.”

According to Baruch’s Office of College Advancement, approximately $3 million in funding from Baruch alumni, the Baruch College Fund, the student government and the City University of New York will be allotted to the development of the new pedestrian plaza.

“There is an immense push in Baruch’s administration to get this to happen,” said M. Anas Uddin, a senior at Baruch and former senator in Baruch’s undergraduate student government.

Uddin, who organized students to attend Community Board hearings in 2011, noted that some members of the student government had doubts about the use of funds for the plaza. “There was some concern that we could use this money to hire teachers because we have a staggering amount of adjuncts—but the money we came up with was for this cause,” he said, adding that the funds were often donated by alumni and “earmarked for a public plaza.”

Wallerstein said, “There was an opportunity and a political opening to get it done. This was the time to do it.”

According to Lugo, local officials including City Council members Rosie Mendez and James Vacca and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, State Senator Liz Krueger, Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and organizations such as the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership Business Improvement District, support the 25^th street pedestrian plaza.

“It made it smoother, it wasn’t like we were trailblazing to get this,” said Mark Thompson, the former chairman of Community Board 6. He said the mayor’s New York City plaza program gave local residents a sense that the plaza would be similar to others throughout the city.

Rob Pihl, a Kips Bay resident of four years, said he sat in the plaza one day for lunch and felt it was a nice break from the street. Pihl said the closed street seemed to be safer for students walking to and from each building. “Anything they had before didn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” he said.

Students and the public are welcome to enjoy Baruch’s new plaza.
Photo by Emma Kazaryan

Community Board 6 approved the project, despite initial pushback from some members concerned about limited parking, an increase of noise from students and more garbage.

Robert Dress, who lives six blocks away from the plaza, noted the appearance of many new plazas throughout the city. “The city is becoming increasingly harder to cross town; this makes it harder,” he said.

Dress also mentioned that he was concerned whether school officials would listen to residents who question the impact of the new space on the surrounding community. “I think it looks safer for the students but it doesn’t look like there is a real plan,” he said, adding that the plaza looks “haphazard and temporary.”

Thompson said the community board has been in support of giving Baruch a campus, even though the first proposal was turned down by the city’s Department of Transportation.

Thompson said Baruch hired the engineering firm Philip Habib & Associates to conduct a traffic assessment of the neighborhood, which concluded that traffic issues in the neighborhood were minimal because 25^th Street leads to Madison Square Park, not a major intersection.

Thompson said nearby restaurants would not face many changes with deliveries because the shops were located close to avenues. However, Karen Liang, the manager of Jimmy’s House of Vietnamese Cuisine, a small restaurant adjacent to the Vertical Campus, said she regretted signing the statement of approval for the plaza because it has made her daily delivery of fresh pork, beef, and chili “very difficult.”

“I have to go around and around,” she said explaining that she cannot park in front of her shop anymore. Now, she needs to have someone sit in her minivan on the busy avenue while she unpacks her goods and wheels them down the street into the shop. “It’s nice for the school,” she said. She then added, “I have lots of problems, but the school is not helping me.” She noted her restaurant has been located next to the college for 10 years.

Thompson said he believed the plaza to be an “asset to Baruch” and the surrounding community. He explained that he overheard local residents saying, “We can’t believe we have this.”

He did disclose, “Baruch will have to expand a little more,” explaining that it may need to accommodate for the new space in its budget.

Steven Bartashev, a senior at Baruch, said he was curious as to how the school planned to keep the plaza clean with many students still smoking within the area. “It’s finally a campus whereas before it was a cloud of smoke and some chairs,” he said, mentioning his only concern for the new plaza is that Baruch students “don’t make it dirty.”

Debbie Mazzia, who has worked at Baruch for 29 years, said she was happy with the new “mini-campus” because it was something different for the school, but she also expressed concerns about cleanliness. “It’s going to take a lot of manpower to maintain, between the cigarette butts and normal litter,” she said. Though she added, “It will be gorgeous in the summer.”

According to Lugo, school officials may consider generating revenue to help fund the maintenance of the plaza by holding public events on the space.

Before then, school officials need to concentrate on the design of the plaza’s infrastructure in an effort to get it approved by the Department of Transportation and other city agencies.

A view of the interim plaza from Baruch’s library building. Photo by Emma Kazaryan

Wallerstein said “significant construction issues” remain, noting the presence of an old sewer line under 25^th street. He said although the budget for the construction of the plaza is estimated at $3 million, that amount is dependent on the specifics of the plaza’s design.

“I think it will be a part of my legacy,” he said of the campus and plaza. He also pointed out that he still needs approval from city agencies to make sure his final vision does not get turned down.

These people, all of them bloggers, were spotted outside Lincoln Center on Days 8 and 9 of New York Fashion Week 2013.

Pleased to announce its reopening after the storm.

Visitors to the South Street Seaport will remember tourist-filled sidewalks, cafes and bars whose seating areas spilled outside, chain stores and kiosks with quirky souvenirs. Now, the cobblestone streets are no longer filled with excited tourists but rather scattered with construction workers in HAZMAT suits. Outdoor tables and chairs have been toppled and joined by debris pushed out of windows by the gushing water of the East River that overwhelmed Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy. Stores like Abercrombie & Fitch and Brookstone are boarded up, with no indication of a prospective return date and street vendors are displaced by large National Disaster Team trailers.

Weeks after the storm, the majority of businesses near South Street Seaport remain shuttered, and it is easy to see, through broken windows and missing front doors, that they will stay that way for a while. But on the corner of Front and Dover streets, two repaired windows outlined with Christmas lights brighten the darkness that persists for blocks. Inside Cowgirl Seahorse, a bar and restaurant, the warm and comforting atmosphere starkly contrasts with the upheaval outside.

The co-owner and general manager, Maura Kilgore, entered after the storm to find debris and destroyed furniture floating in several feet of water. A fading blue line on the wall indicates how high the water rose. “We didn’t think the water would come up that high,” she says. “We knew it was possible, but that was the worst-case scenario. There was honestly a few days when we didn’t know what to do because it looked so horrible.”

While Kilgore was in a state of shock and uncertainty in those first few days, but she says that restaurant management is more or less disaster management on a daily basis and her years of restaurant experience had trained her to problem-solve, think quickly and execute plans after a catastrophe.

While the kitchen remains in disrepair, the bar at Cowgirl Seahorse was back in business on Nov. 15, and while it pained Kilgore not to be able to serve a full menu, that Thursday and every night until the kitchen was operational again, she cooked a hot meal at her nearby apartment, set it at the end of the bar and encouraged guests to dig in, free of charge.

Unlike most neighboring restaurants and bars, Cowgirl Seahorse was able to reopen two and a half weeks after Sandy partly because “we have no basement so all our electricals are on the first floor,” explains Kilgore. And unlike neighboring South Street Seaport buildings, the Revolutionary War-era venue that houses Cowgirl Seahorse was erected primarily of brick and “because we have cement floors, not wood floors, which has been a problem for a lot of the historic buildings,” warping was not a problem.

While the beams and bricks share in the credit for the prompt reopening, the support of the community has meant even more. In what Kilgore describes as a “ray of sunshine,” her loyal patrons mobilized in an effort to offer whatever services they could to get Cowgirl Seahorse back in business. “Friends, neighbors, almost everyone got involved,” says Kilgore.

In a darkened neighborhood surrounded by businesses so damaged they had not reopened, the Cowgirl Seahorse was a beacon of light.

One patron helped by repairing the bar’s riddled fleet of delivery bicycles, while others pitched in to repair tables, chairs and afford other assistance, in each’s realm of expertise. A lawyer and patron of the bar is fighting pro bono for the owners to receive payments from their insurance company, Marine Life.

In another testament to the community’s love for the bar and its owners, a Web site launched with ambitions of raising $25,000 to get the bar on its feet raised $8,630 by Nov. 20.

Cowgirl Seahorse had only recently broken even after opening three years ago when Sandy delivered its crippling blow. In the two and half weeks it was closed, “we probably lost around $90,000,” says Kilgore, referring to lost revenue and inventory. “That would have paid my October bills.”

Even though the bar has brought in revenue since reopening, the owners are struggling because the kitchen is still closed. Cowgirl Seahorse loses $4,000 to $6,000 a weekend on lost brunch sales alone, says Kilgore, adding, “We’re falling behind every day.”

Fortunately, with the help from volunteers and a few paid construction workers, Kilgore was able to make the transition from serving only drinks to serving a limited menu of bar food within three weeks. On the bright side, she says, the interruption gave them a chance to revisit and improve the menu that hadn’t changed since the restaurant opened. While she focuses on that positive, she is also realistic about the downfalls of losing the entire kitchen and most of its equipment.

With the holidays approaching, she says, “People who would be considering us for a Christmas party aren’t sure we’ll be ready when they’re ready to book it.”

Kilgore is optimistic, though, and fondly describes the area as a solidified enclave in the bustling city, with the Cowgirl Seahorse as a focal point. “We have a strong foothold in the local community,” she says. “This neighborhood was always known for that, we’ve always been a tight-knit little community.”

But there were exceptions. Kilgore says that after the storm, a tenant who lives above the bar alerted her to an older woman standing outside with a shopping cart and a ruckus inside the bar. Kilgore learned that two teenagers had crawled into the vulnerable bar through a broken window and were handing their mother the remaining bottles of booze that had not been washed away by the storm.

Maura Kilgore, co-owner of Cowgirl Seahorse.

Moving forward, Kilgore is more worried about the loss of staff than she is the loss of inventory. “I have 29 employees out of work,” she says, with an expression of concern in her eyes that is far more intense than it was when she spoke of debt, bills and finances. She would like to get all 29 back into Cowgirl Seahorse as soon as possible but realizes that some may have to find other work in the meantime. She says, “We finally have a fine staff that work well together and that’s really hard to find… You know, you lose the refrigerator, that sucks but I go out and buy a new refrigerator, you lose an employee, you can’t go shopping for one.”

As one of the few open businesses for several blocks west of the East River, Cowgirl Seahorse is a light in the darkness of South Street. At first, it is a mystery that while most business owners have not even started to haul away the rubble, Kilgore has succeeded in reopening the doors of Cowgirl Seahorse and is on schedule to be fully operational, a mere month after the hurricane hit. But it quickly becomes clear that Kilgore and the bar she manages exude warmth and welcome to all who encounter it and as a result of that hospitality, a community did everything in its power to avoid losing Cowgirl Seahorse, even temporarily.

While there is still plenty to be done within and outside the four sturdy walls of the bar, Kilgore is hopeful that Cowgirl Seahorse will be resilient and recover in the upcoming months. Her perspective is that the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy has “really been an uplifting experience due to the outpouring of support.”

Kilgore gives a tour of the kitchen under construction at Cowgirl Seahorse:

See more Dollars & Sense storm coverage.