Zakaluk_Carol_20180221_session3

Carol Zakaluk: I haven't prepared a thing.

Amy Starecheski: That's totally fine. I - don't - don't feel nervous at all. I have tons of things to ask you about. The only thing that you have to tell me to start is what's today's date? It's the twenty --

Carol Zakaluk: First.

Amy Starecheski: First. ok.

Carol Zakaluk: Today is the 21st.

Amy Starecheski: February 21st 2018. This is our first interview in 2018. This is Amy Starechski interviewing Carol Zakaluk for the Mott Haven Oral History Project. And this is our third session. So we were just saying that you don't have as much content prepared for today which just fine and great. And it's a special treat for me to interview someone whose been so well-prepared so I'm used to having to - to having to take the lead more. So one thing I was thinking I love to hear you talk about is a little bit more about Brook Park. You talked about Broo Park in the last interview on your involvement on the board. And I was actually listening to your interview yesterday while I was over there. You know I had on my headphones that are shovelling wood chips and I was thinking what a special place it is and how someone listening you know, you're talking to me and we both know that place you say, "Brook Park," and all these images come into my head. 00:02:00But imagine you're talking to somebody, even like, you know 50 years from now who's never been to New York. Can you describe Brook Park for me?

Carol Zakaluk: Interesting question. I would say that Brook Park, first of all physically, is shaped like a T. It has a long part on 141st Street and it has a kind of a short - shorter part down by 141st- by 140th Street. It's between 140th Street and 141st Street between Brook Avenue and Willis Avenue and it's across the street from two different or three different schools, two or three different schools, there are many schools in the neighborhood. I would say it's - it started out as a weedy, empty lot when the Cherry Tree Association people got a hold of it and it had heroin addicts that 00:03:00hung out in it and they kind of started working with the people that were in it and some local people and they began clearing the very tall weeds out of it and eventually got it to be a really wonderful community garden in which many, many things happen, including beekeeping and gardening, both for youths who are one step away from being incarcerated, it's called an alternative to incarceration program. There is gardening for the community on the south side of the park. There is a chicken coop. There is a greenhouse where local high school students and grade school students can start seedlings. There's a grape arbor section which we hope to get a nice new pergola for. There are canoes and kayaks. I think we're up to at least 10. I don't know 00:04:00how many there are due a lot. There's a lot of them and they are sometimes kind of parked on a canoe trailer so that they can be have a car hooked up to it and taken over to the waterfront and sometimes in the past we've taken canoes and kayaks by bicycle to the local waterfront which has been much more daunting but certainly possible. There's a big mural with Native American dancing pictured on it and it says 'Friends of Brook Park.' What else is in there? There's a sculpture. Linda Cunningham, a local retired arts professor, has a large piece that's made out of recovered industrial debris. It's kind of bent in a very interesting, I find them pleasant shapes, especially the way she has that kind of parked, buried in the 00:05:00garden. And I watched her put them in so very fond of her work. That's on the northeast corner of the park. There are trees in the northeast corner of the park and there's a big open space in the northwest corner of the park where often people wind up being audience if there's a performance. Once a year there's an arts festival led by the community led arts festival which draws 100 people- I'm going to say- I think that might be kind of ambitious. If it's raining certainly fewer than that and I'm slightly disappointed with the quality of the art that we get to exhibit. We've also tried to have art events with - using artists who are more well- well-established, less emerging and we've had performance art. We've had local 00:06:00high school students make giant photographs of themselves and put them on the fence and invite all of their friends and family- some of the photographs were of their family members who were inspiring. What other arts have we had we had? We've had Columbia Fierro, who teaches yoga at Columbia University, come and weave fabric through the trees in a homage to Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's recovery. We also have Native American dancers who come and use that central, open space periodically for festivals and there's a large teepee that comes every- not every Thanksgiving, but used to come pretty regularly, around Thanksgiving time. And a Native 00:07:00American elder from New Mexico, I think, from the Diné tribe, which in their language, is the same as Navajo, would come and hold ceremonies in the teepee and local classes were also encouraged to come during the day and see what it was like inside a real teepee and have a class inside the teepee. The teepee is really precious and wonderful thing. So that alone makes it a very unique Community Garden in New York City. That variety of things that goes on. Did I leave anything out?

Amy Starecheski: No. No. That's great. What do you- When you spend time there what do you like to do?

Carol Zakaluk: Mostly when I spend time there it's for meetings with other people and even if I'm going for a purpose, for a specific reason, to measure the fence, for some grant that we're writing or you know 00:08:00to look at some plants that, we recently had some wonderful - the beds were used to incubate plants for Mary Mattingly's floating food forest called "Swale," which is an exciting citywide project. Mary Mattingley rented a retired barge and began to get money from all over the place to create this floating food forest that she would be able to put- bring to all five boroughs. So we had maybe 15 or 20 different plants that would become bushes and trees on her barge later and there's a tiny little sign on her barge that says, "thank you, Brook Park." But I'd be going to look at Mary's plants in her absence and I'd get to talking to people. Whoever is there often seems to be very interesting and welcoming and open to chatting. It's almost like 00:09:00going to a coffeehouse and sitting down with some really interesting, random people and feeling relaxed and being able to talk to them. So every time I go I have an interesting conversation with somebody, which is even more memorable than whatever it is that I'm doing. Yeah.

Amy Starecheski: I'm interested in- you know, you talked about how when you stand on your corner you can still see the neighborhood before the projects were built and you remember when the projects were built. I just want to hear more about that - like what you remember about that process, both what it was like and how people were talking about it like what your family. You know it's right at the end of your block, you know what your family talked about it, what your parents or your grandparents thought about it, what you thought about it as a kid.

Carol Zakaluk: Well it was 1960 when they began tearing things down and it was really noisy. It was very disruptive because our walking paths were 00:10:00completely disrupted by that. There was construction, you know barricades, we couldn't go in this tremendous section of the neighborhood that had been where we wandered in our path to the subway and we couldn't do that anymore. So it felt really disorienting and the light was different. We could suddenly see a lot more sunlight and in some ways for a New Yorker, particularly, I don't know, I'm the kind of person that really likes shade and I like the kind of feeling of being protected from the wind or the weather in bad weather. So I felt very vulnerable to the fact that the buildings that I loved weren't there anymore. There was no greenery. I mean even when the projects were finished, the trees took 20 years to grow or 15 years to grow, so there were years when there were these tiny little spindly plants 00:11:00and no grass. And I thought that the projects themselves were not charming. They themselves are very slabby. They're at an interesting angle compared to the grid pattern that was there before. But I was very deeply unhappy. My parents were not excited about there being new projects, they didn't like the noise, they didn't like the problems. But, I guess, I don't remember to tell you the truth what their opinions were exactly. But I think I may have already told you my grandparents- Grandma Zakaluk and Grandpa Zakaluk lived in the corner building across the street and they lived on the third floor and at some point when the projects were complete, Grandma Zakaluk received- and Grandpa, he was still alive- received a letter that asked if they wanted to relocate to one of the projects and the enticement was elevator 00:12:00because they were both fairly elderly, had a little difficulty coming up and down the steps, particularly Grandma, and so they said, "yes." After three years or so, I think they let the projects get started, almost like to get the bugs out of them, to get the kinks out of them, so that they could figure out whatever ways of being, ways of administration. She just wanted it to take its time and when they really felt that they couldn't do the steps anymore they moved to 225 Willis Avenue in the projects, in Mitchell houses and they were happy that they had an elevator, but they almost never went out after that even though they had the elevator. Grandma Zakaluk didn't have a reason to go out. She qualified for a home health care worker so she had somebody 00:13:00to do grocery shopping for her and she went out maybe twice a year on a nice day. She went down and sat on the bench and talked to her lady friends. Maybe once a year after her husband died she would go to - ask to go on his birthday to the cemetery to visit him. And those were always very memorable days for us kids, grandkids, because she never came out of the building, so we would sometimes go with her to the cemetery to experience see grandma out in the wind. She's a very dear, wonderful lady, she's the person Ann is named after. So I was very, very fond of her. I think she also was skeptical about the project's coming, but the other thing about the projects that she liked, when she finally moved to them was that she had a better view of the 00:14:00neighborhood out the window. So being sort of a self-made shut-in, she could see everybody's comings and goings at her kitchen window and she knew when you sat with her in the kitchen, she'd say, "in five minutes this guy with this little dachshund is going to come around the corner. He's going to stop right there and light a cigarette," and like a detective, almost on the stakeout, only she knew- she didn't know anybody's name, but she knew exactly who would come when and who was a good guy who was a bad guy. She just ate that stuff up having been a grocer for years and years and years and years and knowing all the people on the street and what languages they spoke and what they wanted and chatting with them about their families. She was very much a people person even though she didn't talk to too many people in her older life before that was your grandparents social life like in this 00:15:00neighborhood. Grandpa, yeah. I could tell you about Grandpa Zakaluk, who did go out. Grandma Zakaluk had people in the apartment buildings who were her friends who would come in and they'd have tea and cookies and they would talk about either the news or their families. That was Grandma Zakaluk. Grandpa Zakaluk would go every day outside to the corner of the bodega and place numbers, play numbers, or he would play all while sitting on milk crates not dominoes. Never played dominoes but he would play card games and he would always be home by 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. But every day this was his routine and sometimes he would also play chess and that he would either go to Manhattan to play chess in the park with his buddies or he would go to Pulaski Park and play 00:16:00chess. There used to be chess tables there. I have some photos of him playing chess with my little - my older brother looking over his shoulder and if I can find one I'll throw it in the archive too. Grandma Beckhoff, who lived in this house- Grandpa Beckhoff, I can't tell you about his social life because he died when I was one. But Grandma Beckoff belonged to every - churches used to have clubs for all ages. But what happened was it was mostly seniors. There would be the Tuesday Club at the Episcopal Church and there would be the Tea Club at the Immaculate Conception and another one at Marble Collegiate. So depending on what day of the week it was she would go downtown and she would have tea with three or four ladies that she liked and - or she would go to the zoo with the ladies she had met at the Wednesday Club or sometimes 00:17:00she would visit people in hospitals and bring flowers or candy or just see if she could help take dictation or read to them or people who were sick at home. These programs also that she got into through churches. She also had a circle of people that she knew - I guess that must have also possibly been through church - but I remember them coming here at this table and playing canasta. There would be- the piano teacher who used to teach my sister and brother was a friend of my grandmother's - possibly because she also gave my grandmother piano lessons. There was a piano in the parlor for a long time and so - what was that woman's name? Florence Clapsaddle [laughs]. Florence Clapsaddle would come here and have tea and play canasta. And there was this very handsome, 00:18:00older man also because Grandpa Beckhoff was very, you long gone. And this very handsome man, his name was Alexander, like Alexander ragtime- Alexander's a Ragtime man. That's how I remember he was Alexander. He would come in his full suit and tie and he would sit right where you're sitting and the table then was a big, round, oak wooden table and they would play canasta and if I was being babysat at those particular hours I would learn canasta too. So for many, like I don't know three years, when I was old enough to know canasta but not old enough to have like branched out and not needing babysitting anymore I would play with them and they wouldn't let me win, I would just sometimes win on my own. Amy's laughing - yeah no this is very- that was a very sweet little memory. Yeah they were very sweet people, very nice, and it 00:19:00was great for me. This is an insight that I had relistening to the first interview. I think one of the reasons that I really loved my parents, all three of us kids really had no problem living so close to and evolving with our parents. One of the reasons is because we saw them interact with their parents and saw how forgiving they were of all of the gaps between the old country and the new country and different language. Ukrainian and English, Grandma Zakaluk could never understand how any of us went anywhere- why didn't we stay close to home here in the Bronx? There was a college here in the Bronx, right? Why did we need to go to college in Vermont or in upstate or wherever we went? So I think that really made us very tolerant. They were being 00:20:00tolerant. We were tolerant, too and was kind of like really nice people don't do that so much anymore, live close to their grandparents, have extended families, small village kind of thing.

Amy Starecheski: As the projects are kind of settling into the neighborhood, did you- what were the relationship like between people living in the projects and people living in the old apartment buildings. Was there any distinction? Or just generally what was that like?

Carol Zakaluk: I did not feel any differences because I went to school at P.S. 154, the very first year that it opened and that was a school that had been built on the project's property and I think as I told you before I had gone to a school not on project's property, and then they decided 00:21:00that when the projects were ready they cut our block in half and they said, "OK all you have to go to the Project School." And I was terrified but when I got there it was scaled to kids and the ceiling was lower and the colors were brighter and they had sinks that we could actually reach ourselves. We didn't need a leg up or to stand on a stool or anything to get to the water fountain. The teachers also seem more liberal to me and more forgiving. The teachers in the old school would practically wash your mouth out with soap if you said even close to a bad word which is a very old - old school thing to do. So amongst the kids, most of them came from the projects, but some of them came from these outlying, older buildings and we didn't know any differences. And I can't tell you about the parents. I was too young- age 5. 00:22:00I didn't - I wasn't aware of that.

Amy Starecheski: Over time, have you seen that evolve?

Carol Zakaluk: The differences between the people in the projects now?

Amy Starecheski: Mhm.

Carol Zakaluk: I think the general conception I think that people in the projects wish that they had houses. I think that they- from what I have seen is the people that come from the projects and come out from the projects into the side streets like mine. One of the reasons they do so is because for example now there are surveillance cameras in front of the projects and they're not allowed to drink or misbehave in front of the projects so they come down the side street where nobody is watching them. So if they're drug dealers they- they love it when there's an empty building on a side street or an empty stoop and they can kind of set up shop and there's no threat to 00:23:00them being evicted. I've had friends who lived in projects over the course of my growing up and they have been very nice families with very nice apartments and pets in neat and clean and aspirations just like our family. No difference. So I think I'm talking about the visible people who are the ne'er-do-wells and the ones that you would notice more. Other than that, I think people that live in projects are more tolerant of noise because the walls in the projects are very thin. Grandma Zakaluk, for example, had a very noisy family living next door with three or four teenagers in a relatively small apartment, and many times we were over there and the radio would be blasting or the family would be talking loudly- not having arguments, just talking, and we would say, "Grandma Zakaluk, are you sure you want to live here? You know this is kind of a lot to have to put up with." And she was so adamant 00:24:00about wanting her own place, and her own key in her own door, and nobody knew when she was coming or going. We all knew she wasn't going anywhere. She would say- she would say, "I like my privacy." [In accent] "I want to stay here. Clara, Steve, thank you for offering, but I want to stay here." So that's how that would play itself out.

Amy Starecheski: I just thought that- it just made me think of something else. Oh, when you were- Do you remember your parents or your grandparents talking about the demographic changes in the neighborhood as it went from being a white neighborhood to a Latino neighborhood basically?

Carol Zakaluk: Yes. They discussed whether or not it was a - they would discuss in front of us and out loud whether it was important to them to move or not. And my mother, as I've already explained, became - I think I 00:25:00explained - was the Puerto Rican and Black culture teacher.

Amy Starecheski: Oh, no I did not -

Carol Zakaluk: I did not mention that. OK. When my mother went back to teaching and if she had been a principal and you know she always had wanted to be a teacher and it was absolutely meant to be a teacher. When she decided to go back to work which was partly to help me pay for- help the family pay for my private school at Rhodes school on 54th Street in Manhattan, she decided- "OK now it's time Carole's 13 I'm not needed at home so much I'll go back to work" and the local school was P.S. 30, which is very near Brook Park, and she went in and they said, "Gee Clara we'd love to have you. But our only open position is for black and Puerto Rican culture teacher." 00:26:00And so she said, "well my degree is in history you know that's that's a good fit. It's a cluster position. So I wouldn't have to have one class. I would possibly have a room and they would come to me or else I would float and go through all the classes three to -third grade to fifth grade." They didn't have black and Puerto Rican culture for under third grade. So she thought that was ideal. And they said, "if you'll agree to make a couple of trips to Puerto- Puerto Rico and learn some Spanish you can have a job because we would love to have somebody in the neighborhood. We don't have hardly anyone in the neighborhood." And once my mother started doing that, they absolutely loved her and never look back. And she was one of the only teachers and I forget if I said this, because she lived so close to the school, if there was a snow day, none of the teachers would come in. And my mother 00:27:00would come in because she was only four blocks away and they would give her all of the abandoned classes in the auditorium. And my mother would have an auditorium full of kids who had no teacher that day so she would show a Disney movie. And then she would teach songs and then she would read stories or you know make up stories which she was excellent at. And she when she left the job they gave her a plaque that said Storyteller Emeritus because she's excellent at making up stories. So that's- that's that story. She loved going to Puerto Rico twice. She never succeeded in memorizing any Spanish whatsoever. And I used to help her with her report cards when she had to write them in English and Spanish because I was studying Spanish at Rhodes and was doing pretty well. What else can I tell you about that?

Amy Starecheski: Do they have like a - Do they have an explanation for why the neighborhood was changing?

Carol Zakaluk: I think they explained that there was a major ingress of Puerto Ricans. I don't remember if at first it was Dominicans also with this is just what they- their view of it was. And my mother, being a very Christian person, would say, "whoever they are, they're people, and they need to be taught too. And they need a place to go too. And it's very inconvenient for us to move." In fact my father thought that also. "And so if it's OK with you guys we're not going anywhere." But they also thought that because we were not landmarked yet, they saw all the buildings that had been 00:29:00what they used to say was taken by the city. This was their phrase they'd say, "those buildings over there, they were taken by the city and they made it - those people were pretty good deal to take their buildings and they had to. They were forced to move somewhere else. Our building block will be taken soon too. You'll see. And when they take the block we'll move. But we don't really want to move." This was the other - other part of the story. So and as I've already explained they would have had to move both parents, both mothers who were the parents that were left by that time. So I think my father, if you want me to be really, absolutely truthful, my father did not like taxi drivers. He didn't like some of the behavior of motorists or people on the block but he never said, "I hate niggers or I hate spicks" or any of 00:30:00those things that he could have said. He didn't. He just would say that behavior was wrong. "You shouldn't stop your car in the middle of the street to talk to your friends on the sidewalk when the light is with you. You shouldn't steal power from a pole to go to to power your your Casita in the garden. You shouldn't break the law. You shouldn't litter." You know he really hated some of the quality of life things that we had on a day to day basis all around us. And he was very verbal about that but he never said it was due to race. So.

Amy Starecheski: So your mom was at the school from '68 on, about?

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah.

Amy Starecheski: When you were 13?

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: Well yes pretty much until her retirement. And she didn't stop teaching at any point.

Amy Starecheski: And were there other white families that stayed? Do 00:31:00you know any other white families that stayed?

Carol Zakaluk: They aren't still here. The only person that I know of is Penny Lenny who have already told you about who lives on Alexander Avenue because she was married to somebody named Lenny last name and that person's brother was in a like not gang. My brother was in a gang, a group of boys that he played with, a lot and that boy was Bosi Lenny whose real name is John Lenny and Bosi lived on this block and I can tell you if you need to know which building I think 410, something like that. And so Bosi has been around once to visit. He now lives in the D.C. area and Penny Lenny maintains her property on Alexander Avenue. But I don't really know her. I've had two 00:32:00very brief conversations with her. There was one white family when I was growing up who my girl scout leader who lived on this block. Charlotte Adkins, have I mentioned her? I have? Mrs. Adkins now lives in Brooklyn and I have seen her both at my mom's funeral, which was sometime in the past 10 years, and she lives in Brooklyn and is doing very well and very happy. I think I sent her a photograph of the wonderful children's playground that now exists where I used to bake pies with her in her living room. So I can stand by the seesaw and remember being with Mrs. Adkins baking apple pies it's kind of cute.

Amy Starecheski: That's amazing.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah it is. It's kind of nice.

Amy Starecheski: When your parents said that the city would take the - take that take the -

Carol Zakaluk: Block.

Amy Starecheski: Take the block, were they thinking of like the taking- like where the projects were built that the that the city had taken those 00:33:00how like what did they mean by that?

Carol Zakaluk: They meant that the city would make us a deal because they would decide that they wanted to build something else here a social services agency or more projects and they would come and give us a decent deal on buying the houses and then we would move. But there was never any discussion of where we would move. I - I'd like to note, you know they didn't have a longing to go anywhere. In fact they didn't express a longing to be in Southampton until the opportunity came that Uncle Charlie made them the deal. "You can buy my house for half price when I die if you would like." Then, they wanted to go to Southampton because it was within their means. I guess previously to that they would not have contemplated moving to Southampton.

Amy Starecheski: You mentioned the landmarking. Tell me how like what that - what the significance that that was for your family.

Carol Zakaluk: My parents were very excited about landmarking. They thought that the houses deserved to be landmarked and they felt that if the buildings were landmark then we would end the conversations about the city will take the block and that we would have more stability. But mostly I think they felt that the buildings were really special and that they deserved to be preserved and given a place in a book and on the roles of landmarks in New York. I don't think I told you this story about how I used to get dressed for school in the main floor front room and one day I was there getting dressed for the third, fourth or fifth grade. I don't remember exactly. Maybe it was junior high school even I don't remember how old I was but there was a person lurking 00:35:00out front and he had a camera that he was white and he had like casual kind of formal wear on like he was working and I thought he's kind of crouching behind cars he's taking pictures of our house and I wonder what he's doing, "mom don't you think you should go out there and ask him why he's taking pictures of our house?" "Oh I don't have time to go out and ask him" and then he was gone. And then like within three or four years from that I was browsing in a bookstore and this was after we were landmarked. I opened this book looking for a birthday present for my brother and I just opened the book and I thought, "Oh my goodness. There's our house. That's the photo that that guy was taking because that was exactly the angle that would have been right for where he was crouching in the street behind this car. Oh that's what that was." He was from the Landmarks Commission. So 00:36:00anyway, little story. I was the only one to go to the landmarks designation meeting from the neighborhood. And I brought a balloon. And when they- they declared the Berteen block landmarked, I stood up [laughs] and I clapped. Yes. And they did the Estee Piano Factory in the same day and later the head of that committee Lee Weintraub is the person that I wound up working with very closely at City College. When I did projects on getting legal waterfront access, so I didn't know him at that time but there I was in the room with him. And so that was kind of a neat connection later.

Amy Starecheski: Was your family, or was anyone you know involved in like in pushing for landmarking or asking for landmarking, or?

Carol Zakaluk: Nobody in my family was. But I do believe that there 00:37:00were some people who came who knew people at the Landmarks Commission who were friends of my friend from college at SUNY Binghamton and she came and said, "oh this is a wonderful has it really should be landmarked. You really ought to meet somebody Eberly." I can't remember what her name was and she came and met us and talked with us and asked if we would like to be the family that was the liaison between the Landmarks Commission and Burteen block. And we said we'd be happy to but so we got a complimentary membership and we got literature that we shared with a few neighbors that we thought would be interested in that. And I attended some meetings on what land marking meant and I passed out literature to see if I could get people to go. They had the meeting said St. Germans. Mostly they told us things like, "Don't change your facade without permission but anything you want to do to the rear of 00:38:00the house probably won't bother you with." Since then I have heard of a lot more strict land marking enforcement on Alexander Avenue than here on the Burteen Block. And I don't know why that is exactly. It's certainly not fair. But people on Alexander have gotten way more tickets and have been called to task a lot more for their buildings.

Amy Starecheski: About when was it that this block was landmarked?

Carol Zakaluk: Sorry I can't tell you without looking.

Amy Starecheski: Like what- what decade?

Carol Zakaluk: It must've been this - the 70s.

Amy Starecheski: Ok. Do you have a sense of whether your family thought that it would affect the value of the property like the resale value of the property to be landmarked?

Carol Zakaluk: My father thought that there would be drawbacks. He 00:39:00thought that nobody- that fewer people would be interested once they found out that you couldn't do whatever you wanted to the facade and that you had to get a particular kind of window. But I think when we first went into it we didn't really understand the difference in cost between Anderson windows and final windows. But as I said nobody has really called anybody to task on this block. There have been houses here painted pink and light blue for a while and that is certainly not a landmarking color. They have not been stopped. So I have the feeling that we're being treated very leniently. That may not be for much longer. You know certain things were grandfathered in. Like if your house was blue when it became landmarked they would allow it to stay 00:40:00blue. At least for a while. I don't think that you immediately had to sandblast off all that paint.

Amy Starecheski: And so you moved back into this house and you came back here with Ann and your parents were next door and then they moved. Can you tell me -that you talked about cleaning out your parents house and that that was a lot of work and we were doing it when you had a small child. Can you tell me the rest of the story about the process of taking that house over?

Carol Zakaluk: Okay. I believe that what happened was during the process of cleaning it out it occurred to me that if we were to buy it that Annabel and her friends, then Ann, may have actually wanted to move in and if they moved in I could trust them to be flexible and for example I wouldn't have 00:41:00to put a fence up between the two backyards because the fence was down for years and years between the grandparents house and parents house. And I thought maybe we could help each other taking care of pets. But but mostly it was because I thought I could trust my daughter and I would love to live next door to her. This would be good for both of us. And some day it would pass to her an inheritance so if she was paying me rent she would sort of be in some ways going to be helping me to be able to pass it on to her later. So in the process of cleaning it out I made- I asked her that and she said yes she would be interested. So I went to the bank and talked to the bank about getting a loan at the same time as the family was talking about passing on the other 00:42:00half of this house to me. I thought why not combine that with getting a loan to fix up the house next door and then I would then build a landlady and have income and I would control in some ways who lived next door to me because I had had such a terrible relationship, a terrible experience with the 10 people that lived next door on the other side of me for ten years. I was very concerned about having- they was still there. As a matter of fact they were still there so I thought, "Oh my goodness we can't have that on both sides of us. I won't be able to hear a thing." My biggest complaint about them was noise. So that was another strong motivator for involving my daughter and her friends and buying the house next door. The bank process was very long and 00:43:00tedious and involved a lot of questions and daily phone calls from the bank and checking on us to make sure that we were at the phone numbers that we said we would be at and calls to where John worked and he had to prove that he worked there for a certain amount of time. Really a very long time before it felt like hounding and I evidently think they do this even now. When you're trying to buy a house it's kind of a really horrible process but we lived through it. We had a contractor that my Aunt Mary and I hired together. We both sized him up and thought he was the best one of the three that we interviewed who turned out to be a little bit less than honest at the end and left the job without giving us new windows giving- which was very rotten of him and I never to 00:44:00this day- I still feel like I let him get away with it. He got fifteen thousand dollars of our money that he shouldn't have gotten away with and I had all the paperwork lined up to take him to the Better Business Bureau and I just didn't do it partly because he said that if he - he appeared with his lawyer and laid out all the things that he did his lawyer would be able to prove that he had undercharged us on all of them and I- I said, "but I have the contract that says you'll do X, Y and Z for this amount." So I think if I had been a different person I certainly wouldn't have been taken for a ride like that. But anyway it made the process a little less than pleasant. But now we have the house and I'm glad we did it.

Amy Starecheski: About when was that they were buying that house?

Carol Zakaluk: Oh I'm so bad with dates it's probably over. 00:45:00Let's see I'm going to say 2001, 2002, something like that.

Amy Starecheski: Mhm.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. It's been over 10 years that we've had it and so it's beginning to pay us back a little. It takes a long time for you to recoup the money that you, that you put out and we still have a mortgage but it's very tiny. And tomorrow if we wanted, we could pay it off and then we would own both houses outright which is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. So even with all of that, "oh John is making less money now that retired" feeling. There's also, "oh we don't have to worry. We just have to worry about taxes and maintenance and keeping good people in it, things like that.".

Amy Starecheski: Did you -so when you were buying- thinking about 00:46:00buying that house and then buying it, what did you think was going to be happening with the neighborhood?

Carol Zakaluk: I thought that it was going to gradually and in minute ways improve, slightly. I thought that there already had been some changes and some improvements and I thought that the neighborhood. I mean what I'd still like for this neighborhood is for it to be a mixed neighborhood where it isn't only, when I was growing up it was mostly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and blacks and that was it. And now it seems to me that there are more Africans and there are more Indian people and there are more French speaking people- Africans and South Americans. I know many South Americans live in this neighborhood and of the more white people and of the white 00:47:00people that I've met, they're from places like Alaska. Sometimes they're from far flung places. So that's really great. I love that kind of almost StarTrek about it. You could be from any planet, you could be from any religion, rather than just these polarized, very limited number of groups. So I thought that was going to happen then and I think it is happening now more. And I think that's a really good change. So I thought that as I was buying the house it had already changed that there were more businesses and that the empty lots were had something being built in them more and more. There were buildings like the ones on the end of my block here that seemed to be kind of shoddily put together. But nevertheless they have people in them 00:48:00and they look pretty nice. And those people are pretty well behaved and they have jobs and it's an improvement. Even though it's not what I think of as gentrifying it's a good use of space and it's productive and it's good for the community to have thriving businesses and people living in houses. It's better than it was.

Amy Starecheski: When did you start to see those kinds of houses getting built, do you remember?

Carol Zakaluk: I don't remember when I'm bad with dates.

Amy Starecheski: That's totally fine.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah that's also something that would be so easy to look up.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah yeah yeah. I'm just curious. I'm interested in those houses and- I'm wondering I guess like if when they started being built just like what people were saying about that and what you noticed like what you expected. What kind of impact you expected they might have on the neighborhood like where you think they came from like why you think 00:49:00people started building houses like that here.

Carol Zakaluk: I went to one of the open houses and I remember thinking oh this doesn't look like a lot of money was put into it. It looks like it was put up really quickly. It looks like maybe it's not a very interesting interior. The walls don't look very thick but yet they're kind of pleasant looking on the outside and it's affordable for somebody to buy the whole building and then have a rental unit in it. So I thought that that would be attractive to somebody that had a decent middle - middle income kind of person and that I think that's who wound up renting those. I knew one family that moved into one of those buildings on my block. But they have since moved. It was the daughter that she was a pastor also of the pastor 00:50:00who had the building across the street for years and years and years and years. So Charlotte and her brother lived there for a while and her husband who is also a pastor. But now they live in New Rochelle. Otherwise you would be able to interview Charlotte in a heartbeat. She's a fun- fun person to talk to.

Amy Starecheski: Have you met other people that lived in those houses either on your block or anywhere? Like do they- do they hang out in the neighborhood? Do they participate in stuff?

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah I see them cleaning up in front of their property. I do know one family because I'm 422 and they're 442 and their mail comes to me all the time. So at first I took the mail down there and they have a mail box that stands on a stanchion at the end of the amenities strip outside their property so I can't leave it in there it's locked so I would tape it to their little window in their front door and tape it really well so 00:51:00that they would be able to see their name and they have Asian names. They're Burmese. So like the fifth and tenth time I went down there with a piece of mail and the mail was all from their insurance companies so I thought this is important this is about health. If it was a piece of junk mail I would throw it away but this looks like a bill or a notice about health. I better bring this down there. That like the 10th time I did that. The guy came out and he's very difficult to understand for me and I'm pretty good with foreigners and foreign languages. Otherwise I would introduce you and you could I can introduce you now and you can have at it. But I think you'll be able to cut through his accent. He was a radical in Burma and was almost jailed or was jailed for his writings. He writes books. And so he moved his family here and he's got children and wife and cousins and grandchildren and 00:52:00they're very nice. And I see them coming out and playing. Kids are playing and they definitely are somehow participants on the street. But I don't see them having a lot of conversations with other neighbors and I don't know the other ones.

Amy Starecheski: Were people like- were people excited when this new houses starting getting built, like that people talk about it in the neighborhood?

Carol Zakaluk: Well you know Norman Davis hated to have a building right next to his house because one of his windows was completely blocked.

Amy Starecheski: I remember him complaining about that.

Carol Zakaluk: He complained bitterly on on and on and on for the two years that it took for them to start going up and he thought that they were just atrocious and terrible and hated them. I don't know of any other people that thought that they were good or bad. I didn't hear anything one way or 00:53:00the other.

Amy Starecheski: Why do you think the neighborhood started getting better? Like why did that change happen?

Carol Zakaluk: Is it possible that it's be- because it hit rock bottom partly and that people in Manhattan started getting priced out of Manhattan and other places in Brooklyn and they thought let's- there's empty lots in the Bronx. The developers started thinking maybe this is a place that we could make money. That's one idea and another idea is that there are certain politicians like for example Bill de Blasio, our current mayor, is rather famous for making deals with developers. And he likes to have people come and build new developments in New York City in exchange for a certain portion to be 00:54:00affordable housing so that he can say to his constituents, "I gave you affordable housing." But he's also opened the door for a lot of developers and so thus we have those giant buildings on 138th Street. And I'll bet you know what kind of people were targeted to move in like what economic levels there are for each one. But I don't I bet 1 - one or two of them are market rate and one is at least for senior and disabled but I don't know the specifics of every single one of them. But I think that was a good change in some ways because my whole life I've seen those big empty spaces and thought there should be something here. There should be some shops that you pass when you're walking between the six train and the four and five. There should be more shelter from the weather because this is a crucial route and it's gone undeveloped for my whole life until now. So I'm 00:55:00glad that those buildings are there. We'll see what changes happen when the people actually move in.

Amy Starecheski: Very curious.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. Do you have hope that there are going to be a help for the neighborhood? They're also going to make this place really crowded.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah I think it depends a little bit on whether the city invests and infrastructure to support that many people. I'm just curious to see what kind of businesses go into those buildings and you know what kind of people move in and I think they're- you're right that they're a mix of low income, moderate income, and market rate. And you know I don't know what the market rate is going to be priced out so we'll see. Something else I was just going to ask about that. Oh this is going back a little bit actually. How - Tell me about the decision - so you came back here with Ann and moved in with your grandmother, right your parents were next door. 00:56:00And you talked about your parents talking to you about their decision to stay and you saying like, "well, it's kind of bad here but I know that you want to stay. So I'll say that-" Tell me about the decision to raise your daughter here then, in the- you know in the 80s by this point, right?

Carol Zakaluk: Mhm. Yes this was a terrible neighborhood in the 80s it was really infested with crack when I came back here with her. And I have to say that part of it was economic on my part. I had had five years of living on my own without any economic support from my family in San Francisco and traveling. And I knew how hard it was to support myself in an apartment, in a shared apartment. All all of my domiciles in those five years we've shared apartments. And I thought, "if I come back to New York I will at least have my own apartment. However bad the outside world is, I will have 00:57:00my own apartment for 250 dollars a month. I can do that. It's a very little apartment but nonetheless I won't have to deal with other personalities when I have this other job to do which is raise a child and I'll have free babysitting, which otherwise I would have to pay for." And I really believed that being home with Ann, was better for Ann than farming her off to babysitters and in retrospect I'll never know because I didn't do it. I mean it might have been absolutely fine. And from the age of 3 she went to school for part of the day and was with other people and had other people leading and directing and advising her and the other kids to play with and wasn't with me. So she's the kind of kid who absolutely loves people and 00:58:00other personalities and interaction. So I think she would have probably been absolutely fine. But at the time I thought I wanted to do it I wanted to be that person. So that trumped any danger on the street. And also the glorious availability of my parents, who I still thought were wonderful people to expose her to. If I had stayed living on the West Coast, she would not have gotten to know them hardly at all. Wouldn't have seen them very much, so those were the reasons. And yeah I did worry. But I was with her all the time and I was very careful about where I took her and often took her out of the neighborhood to Central Park or to our friends who lived on West 11th Street. We would go to the World Trade Center the Leroy Street library. So she wasn't 00:59:00here all the time. I wasn't- I am of Mott Haven. But I am- I was not- I was from Mott Haven, but I am not of Mott Haven and she wasn't either, I don't think.

Amy Starecheski: Do you know now what she thinks about having grown up here?

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. She treasures her exposure to her grandparents highly. She really thinks my grandma- my mother was wonderful. In fact when she first moved to California she had like a little tribute section of her -her apartment. And then when she got married the husband said, "do you really think we need 10 pictures of your grandparents? How about just one? So she put a lot of them away and she hasn't put them back up since. But she absolutely loved and understands why I brought her back to meet them and you know be 01:00:00raised with them and hear those stories and get those, you know absorb through osmosis, some of the wonderful Grandma magic and Grandpa magic, too. I think she does like the Bronx as much as she likes San Francisco. She's told me that many times and that California and San Francisco is a much nicer friendlier place to live an easier place to live. Everywhere you look there's flowers there's sort of a really nice conceptual climate in addition to the physical climate. She's kind of addicted to that. But - but as we said earlier before we started taping, she's in New Orleans today and I have the feeling that she's also tempted by the idea of spending more time in New Orleans because it's even more laid back than San Francisco and 01:01:00the circle of people that she's recently met there are younger than she is so she's getting a certain reviving of her youth even though she's only 36, they're 25 and so they're more carefree and less laid out about what their lives are going to be like and so she's having quite a bit of fun with the new people that she's met there, so, so.

Amy Starecheski: What do you - what do you think is the- What do you see as the future of these houses?

Carol Zakaluk: Of the Burteen Block houses?

Amy Starecheski: Well your two houses.

Carol Zakaluk: Oh these two houses. Well if I could go different ways. One is that I could encourage John for us to stay here and continue to be landlords and have the wonderful income from having a rental property which really 01:02:00looks smart to me particularly now, now that he's retired. We could, if necessary, we could live just on one floor where we could install one of those lift chairs to take us up to the second floor if we had difficulty walking. There is a sort of a separate apartment on the top floor. So if either of us needed full time care, there would be a place that would be very easy to hire a full time caretaker to live in the building and yet have some space apart from that person because privacy is very important to both of us. And I love stuff. John loves stuff. We have very different hobbies so it's nice to be able to separate ourselves within this large building and have plenty of room and not get on each other's nerves. There's a lot of great reasons to stay here. Plus I have tremendous roots. I love New York City. I was just 01:03:00telling John the other day I sometimes long to be either in Times Square or at 34th Street Herald Square or in Grand Central station at rush hour just because I love being around a lot of bustling people and a lot of energy. I like going to the Bronx Zoo on free days when all of those hundreds of school kids are shrieking and running around. I love that. And where else can you get that? You can't. And he doesn't understand that at all. He wants to run the opposite direction from those kinds of crowds. But I'm a real New Yorker that way. I love to talk to strange people on the subway. I love to go to weird, free events all over the city and I can't find another place in America that lures me the way that living in New York does. I don't think I can afford to live anywhere else in New York City except for these two 01:04:00buildings. So those are really good reasons to stay here, I think. If we get priced out by the real estate taxes going up so astronomically that we could not afford to stay in both houses, we could always sell one of them and continue to stay here. We could invest the money which would by then be more than the value of it now and possibly live off dividends that we got from investments. We could also move somewhere else as yet unknown to us and sell to somebody else. So I don't want to even contemplate that at the moment that's very scary to me, going out into the unknown. If we got to the point of being so decrepit that we could hardly move, it wouldn't matter where we were except we would probably be wise to be in some kind of care facility. I'm pretty 01:05:00sure Annabel at the moment is not interested in moving back here to live. But that could change if the neighborhood really changes a lot or if she ages some or gets a different mate than she's been with maybe he would be interested because of his job. Maybe this will be an attractive city. I kind of think maybe it would. With the current boyfriend but I won't say anything more about that.

Amy Starecheski: What's it like being a landlady?

Carol Zakaluk: Oh I love being a landlady. I love being a landlady partly because I seem to rent to a series of younger people that- collegiate, you know just graduated, ball has continued to roll over 10 years so I always wound up with people who were between say 22 and 42 and I feel like I have 01:06:00children - more children than I miss Annabel so much. But I have young people next door and they are very tolerant of me I'm very tolerant of them. I'm very forgiving if they need a few extra days to pay something and sometimes on utilities I let them slide for a couple of months. I pick up packages for them every day. I take care of their pets, they take care of my pets if I go away which is very rare. We joke sometimes I used to be invited in to be a 4th or 5th hand at a board game regularly so that was really fun. We exchange Christmas presents, they come in for Thanksgiving once -once in a while they get Easter eggs with me. Well that's - that's a 01:07:00religious, they will come here every Easter. You know the week before Easter and we will dye eggs together and they're all crazy. Oh we make crazy eggs and Jared still lives there. My daughter's original boyfriend after college who lived with her for nine and a half years all together in different places. They broke up when they were together in San Francisco and Jared came back and now he's - he's my head tenant. Have you ever met Jared?

Amy Starecheski: I don't know if I have, no.

Carol Zakaluk: Jared and I are good friends and I've met his family. I've been to, I went to his wedding, eventually got married to somebody else, who I love who now lives next door too, and she's very much like Annabel in lots of ways. Liz, a big lover of animals like me, has two 01:08:00fantastic cats. I just really enjoy being a landlady. So if I weren't a landlady anymore I would miss that connection. There is something about being a landlady I have to say- you know they can't disagree with me. The advantage to be nice to me and I guess they can kind of tell. I would like things to be friendly between us so maybe they're more indulgent of me than they would be to a random older person. You know what I mean. But I think they genuinely like me. I don't think they're just making it up. I think they really like me. I like them.

Amy Starecheski: What is your- what is your experience like now walking around on the streets of this neighborhood? Like today was a really - it was February but it was super warm today. Like you're walking around, like what- Tell me what it feels like.

Carol Zakaluk: It definitely felt - today was a record high- 74 for 01:09:00February 21st and I don't know if you saw the article in The Times it was the times of the past 1930 something. It was record high 68 in 1930-something and how they actually had the number of people that showed up in Coney Island and the number of people who chose to fly to Boston, a hundred and fifty, which was a record. You know a record number of people and there were people waiting to apply to fly to Boston and it was a hoot. Today I passed our new playground, Renakwa playground on the block, and I was so happy to see- full, full of parents and kids, happy, really using the new playground really well and I thought, "this is a giant, wonderful improvement. I love this happening to the block," and then I went to the post office today and I saw four older 01:10:00guys maybe 65, 70 years old hanging out as I have seen them my whole life. A little group of older men and one of them was quite drunk and the other three were laughing at him. He was holding fourth and they were just kind of quietly chuckling at him [laughs] and I thought, "you know, that's also, the neighborhood is coming to life again. This is a very typical thing," and then I went into Baskin Robbins which has now opened. And I walked in and I thought, "this is really -is this gentrification?" Is really what I thought. I thought, "there's an ice cream cone that's three dollars and twenty nine cents. That's why there's nobody in here because they can get an ice cream cone at the pizza place diagonally across on the other side of the corner for a dollar fifty. I wonder how long this Baskin Robbins is going to be here." And I did not buy anything, mostly because I'm on a diet. But it 01:11:00looked great and it's a nice addition to the neighborhood. And I hope it does well. And then I went to the post office and the post office was super hot because our particular post office is probably the lowest most badly run post office of the whole city. And every time you go in there either the fire alarm is making that horrible chirping noise they obviously don't know how to turn the heat off. And the only good thing about my experience was the people behind the counter were there. They were working and they you know got to the line really quickly. Today that was the line out the door. So my experience today being in this neighborhood was pretty routine and pleasant of course. The weather is so charming that, who wouldn't like being outside today?

Amy Starecheski: Do you feel self-conscious walking around here as a white person?

Carol Zakaluk: Not as much as I did when I was growing up and certainly not since I passed a certain age. We had a conversation earlier about how you catcalling happens really a lot especially when you hit the age of 13. And it's really dreadful if you're a shy person or if you don't want to have attention called to you or you just don't like rude things being said to you whatever age you are. That's a real problem. But it doesn't happen to me anymore. I'm 62 now. If I - I see more people on the street that I know. So it's more likely that I'll pass somebody and be able to stop and have a pleasant exchange with them. I've also cultivated relationships with business owners. So when I go into a shop I have a nice few sentences with the guy in Lee's vegetables or the lady at King 99 cent store or whatever that place is called. She knows me and you 01:13:00know we exchanged pleasantries.

Amy Starecheski: You were talking about the Baskin Robbins and wondering if that's gentrification. What do you think about the potential for gentrification in this neighborhood? Like what- I guess maybe to start like, when did you first start hearing people talk about that? Not like the date, but like do you remember when, you know, when that started being an issue that people thought about in relation to Mott Haven?

Carol Zakaluk: I would say that started around the same time that I started working for Tim Blum and haven arts shortly thereafter. It was an extremely hot topic. It was a conversation that was on the- I think front page of The New York Times. There was an article about a couple who had moved to the clock tower. He was the guy who I mentioned before who came from Alaska. Actually 01:14:00they were a couple in Alaska together. So they both moved here from Alaska. They were wonderful people and they were being interviewed in connection with gentrification. Port Maurice. I have always thought that gentrification is not going to come here like it has come to places in Brooklyn because we have 11 housing projects in this community ward district and that's a lot. Unless they change the rules for who lives in those projects, we will not be gentrifying the way that - you know not by leaps and bounds. The building that they built immediately to the west of the Willis Avenue Bridge, the Gateway building?

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. I can't remember what it's called.

The Gateway Building is east of the Willis Avenue Bridge. Here's the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: That building is owned by Sobra. That building is 01:15:00called the East one is called the Gateway Building. That's different than the one on the west side. That's huge.

Amy Starecheski: OK.

Carol Zakaluk: And the one on the west side was originally touted as a market rate and there are all of these ads in the newspaper with charts showing this number of apartments for- our studios. And you must have this income range in order to get one of those in the rent is this and it was elaborate and I kept that for a long time because I thought, "I will run into people at Haven arts, particularly, all the time who were looking to move here. They thought this was going to be an art- art zone, an an art-friendly place because Port Morris in particular was undeveloped and they thought, "we can get loft spaces here for cheap. There's nobody in them. This isn't being used." So, anyway, I did- on a daily basis, there would be people that came to Haven Arts 01:16:00Gallery asking, "did I know any place they could live? Did I know any place they could crash? Do I know any place where the landlord would make them a deal so that they could make an artist studio?" And that happened all the time. The year of that- when did I say that I started working for Ken Blum in my previous- I don't remember- I don't have any of my written notes..

Amy Starecheski: Oh it's fine. Maybe like 2000- Like 2002, 3, 4, 5- like in there?

Carol Zakaluk: In there. Absolutely.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: Definitely.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: But then again, those people didn't stay, or they changed the zoning in Port Morris. There were a lot of people that got up in arms about that. People- we had meetings in St. Jerome's. I was one of the people that was hesitant about rezoning Fort Morris to be mixed use with 01:17:00residential as well as industrial. And it sounded like it might be good but it also sounded like maybe it might be terrible if there was way over development. But I was- I kind of had the feeling that the city was going to do whatever it wanted anyway depending, you know despite what local people wanted. I always have that feeling, that the city is going to do whatever the hell it wants despite all of these charettes where the stakeholders are supposed to come out and express their views on what it is that they think they'd like to see and then they go ahead and build what's within their budget. And sometimes they'll throw in a couple of things that you ask for and mostly they don't. So that's pretty skeptical of me.

Amy Starecheski: You were talking about the rezoning in Fort Morris and that the pe- when you were working in the Haven Arts Gallery and that those people didn't stay and can you kind of describe for me like the like 01:18:00ebbs and flows of the art scene in Mott Haven over the time that you've been involved with it? You mentioned like around that period like 2002 or so like the first artists starting to come just like mirror that for me from up then to now.

Carol Zakaluk: OK well we had - one of the first galleries was called Sidewalk Gallery, which was a tiny, little place on Brookner Boulevard. It was really little. And I was on the board of directors of that for a very few months. There were three of us. And it was a couple - I can dredge up their names but I can't dredge them out of my brain right now. I have it written down. I have a big file of articles, which I may or may not still have. I may have thrown them away, but for a while during that period I kept every article 01:19:00that I ran across that had to do with gentrification or the arts coming into the neighborhood because I went to Music and Art and I am very arts oriented and John is a sound engineer and I wanted to help that happen as much as possible, I was encouraging of that. So we had Sidewalk Gallery. That had some very nice, little shows. Those people, the originating couple, and their friend, David, and him- his name I remember. The three of them had many friends from Brooklyn. And so when they had an opening, people from Brooklyn would come and their openings were terribly well attended and very exciting and their shows were really good and the art was high quality but they couldn't sustain having a gallery because nobody buys art from Mott Haven, nobody goes to Mott Haven to buy art. They come because their friends are in the show because there's 01:20:00a buzz. And we had that same exact problem at Haven Arts, but in the case of Haven we had a rich guy boss who was happy to give the money that he had made- Barry Kastrinsky. Do you know him?

Amy Starecheski: No I don't know him.

Carol Zakaluk: Barry Kastrinsky's family ran the silver plating factory next to Western Beef. There was a huge building. And now it's the other half of Western Beef because it got sold. But back then, when art was first looming around Mott Haven, blooming, shall we say, Barry Kastrinksy was still in his silversmithing shop, silver plating shop, and you could go there and he would have a whole section devoted to silver art. He would weld together huge pictures and spoons and he would create art out of this stuff and he 01:21:00would paint- what do you call the things you put a- pelettes! What you put a forklift into. He had brightly colored palettes and he would put them out in front of his silver shop and his raison d'être was to make art to meet artists to help artists. He would create sections of his silver shop that he would create residency spaces for. He had two artists living there for a while or rather not living but creating art. Jack Belcher, who is a woman from Australia, who makes even now, exquisite punch-outs, takes big wide pieces of paper and she cuts with an exact-o knife floral patterns. It's meditative her and sometimes she'll display these huge four feet by four 01:22:00foot pieces of paper that have thousands of cutouts and very geometric shapes and then she'll display them in such a way as the shadows come through the cuts and they're very popular. There are thousands of dollars each and Barry was instrumental in helping her you know break into the New York art scene. Now she sells to hospitals because it's meditative and rich people in corporate offices and she's doing really, really well. So he had Jack Belcher and he had Algernon Miller, who is an older African-American gentleman, who made large sculptures and also smaller works and famously in New York he got a commission to create a sculpture and a plaza at the north end of Central Park, kind of in the middle of the North and Central America.

Amy Starecheski: I don't know.

Carol Zakaluk: OK. Well Al Miller was one of the people who was at 01:23:00Barry's place for a while. So where was I?

Amy Starecheski: I was asking you to kind of narrate that trajectory of the art scene.

Carol Zakaluk: Right. So we had Sidewalk Gallery, we had Haven Arts, and while those two things were going on those two galleries were getting going. We also seemed to have maybe 50 artists who had moved into the neighborhood and they were mostly living in places in port. Some of them were in the clocktower building maybe 10 that I knew were in the clocktower building I'm sure they were more than I just didn't know and then some of them lived in the neighborhood where Tim Blum, my boss, was- had his studio. Some of them lived in his building. They were illegally living in the building but the owner didn't seem to mind having rent and you know didn't mind dividing up the huge industrial spaces so that he could get three or four people 01:24:00in there paying rent and they were ideal for making big work or for living cheap if you were an artist. Some of those artists did not want to come to the gallery and be part of the art scene because they felt that would call them out- that that people would find out where they were living illegally so they just literally shunned the rest of the arts community and other ones you know joined and came to things and got to know everyone. There were more gay people that were in that community also which I found wonderfully refreshing because I didn't grow up with people who were gay or lesbian in this neighborhood and I felt the fact that they could walk around and be comfortable in Mott Haven and Fort Morris was so different than when I was growing up. I was really relieved that that change had come here. I'm not sure exactly how that 01:25:00happened but I guess it must have happened gradually and a result of there being more gay people portrayed on television and gay people having talk shows you know and I'm talking about. What else happened in the art scene? At some point they started getting priced out of the clock tower and the clock tower raised its rent it was fifteen hundred dollars for twelve hundred, at first I believe was the starting price for a studio and then it was 1400 and then it was fifteen hundred. And then when my friends who were on the cover of The Times decided to move out, I think their rent was up to 1900 in a very short amount of time for a relatively small place. So they moved into a building like this one that we're in on Brookner Boulevard right next to 01:26:00McDonald's. I can't tell you the address. I'd have to look it up.

Amy Starecheski: I know you're talking about, though.

Carol Zakaluk: So it was a nice apartment and it was bigger and it was cheaper and they were fine there and it was also very close to Haven Arts and J.C. was the other co-Director. It was me, Barry Krasinsky and J.C. Price.

Amy Starecheski: Did that- that art scene at Haven Arts and Sidewalk, does that continue into the present or was there like a- was there a break at any point?

Carol Zakaluk: Well the break for me was that Barry's money ran out and even though the gallery was in what was called the empowerment zone and that there were economic incentives for businesses and nonprofits in that zone. We made an application, I worked on it for a really long time, it was to get a grant for seventy five thousand dollars. And they said BDEDC, the 01:27:00Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, said, "we'd love to give you this grant and you deserve this grant, but you haven't told us what you will do to be sustainable after this grant money runs out so we can't give it to you." So we came really close to being able to sustain another year or two and then we ran out of money. So we had to close after three years which was really a shame because we were kind of a magnet for all of the artists moving into the neighborhood. John, my husband, was just telling me today that he was an admirer of Jane Jacobs and that she you know was quoted as saying, "you have to watch the places in a neighborhood that aren't yet fully formed, that you should treasure the places that look a little hardscrabble because they're going to be something eventually but there's 01:28:00something beautiful about chaos and you should appreciate the fact that they're not an urban neat, fitting into the grid kind of looking like everything else," and the art scene back then in 2005-ish was like that. There were a lot of places where an artist could paint a mural and get away with it and it would be lovely and create some buzz and there'd be an article and there'd be an opening and there were a lot of cracks that you could maneuver within.

Amy Starecheski: Is it still like that now?

Carol Zakaluk: I don't know if it's still like that quite as much because all those little gaps have been begun to be filled up with things like there's a hotel next to that mural that I was just talking about, which was by Wanda Ortiz. I just walked the other day, it's on Lincoln and 01:29:00136th Street there's her old, crumbling mural and right next to it is a much bigger, much brighter, colorful mural that has less character. I think that one is there because they built a hotel across the street a very small hotel and one of your first hotels ever in this neighborhood that I know of. Although there may have been hotels a hundred years ago in my lifetime this is the first hotel and I know that hotels are often the very first thing that comes to a neighborhood. Artists, and then when there's a hotel you have to start watching out for big development.

Amy Starecheski: You- are there- You mention the risk of being priced out by taxes. Are there- Do you hear that worry from other homeowners in this neighborhood?

Carol Zakaluk: A couple of homeowners have mentioned that they think prices are going up and that when a house on the block sells for a lot of money, 01:30:00they're afraid, you know it's a double sided coin. On one hand it raises the price of your house if you want to sell it. But if you want to stay here your taxes are going to go up. So I'm happy that Osama Takahashi sold 418 for a goodly amount of money but probably my taxes did go up and they probably will keep going.

Amy Starecheski: Do you get a lot of unsolicited offers on these houses?

Carol Zakaluk: Oh yes. Oh many. And I would say that's been going on my entire life. Yes. For a while, I kept the file. And every time somebody came to the door I would go in and get the file, which was easily two inches thick you know Manila just folding file. And I would come to the door and I would let the realtor, or whoever it was see that I was adding his business card to 01:31:00a file that was two inches thick because I didn't want the people to get the sense that they were alone in wanting to buy the property. And I didn't want them to get their hopes up or to spam me in that way. I mean spamming did exist back then and their faces would fall. "Oh gee. Other people have been here before me." And phone calls. We used to get phone calls every other day. Quite recently, actually.

Amy Starecheski: I got a phone call right when I was leaving to come over here- trying to find my landlord.

Carol Zakaluk: Oh, really? To buy the building?

Amy Starecheski: Mhm.

Carol Zakaluk: Do you get them every other day?

Amy Starecheski: Not at my - not had my phone number.

Carol Zakaluk: Uh huh.

Amy Starecheski: I think they must have cross-referenced it with the landline they must have it with the address.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah.

Amy Starecheski: But they were asking for my landlord.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. That's very persistent of them to bother attendant to get the landlord. I mean it's real evil.

Amy Starecheski: I know. Yeah I was surprised. Has the the 01:32:00neighborhood you know have been like times are there's been more buzz about the neighborhood? Have you seen the calls and the solicitations go up in those times?

Carol Zakaluk: Yes. I'd say that this is one of the buzz times, is now, for the past couple of years, even. And I think that there was a lot of buzz around that time when the articles were on the cover of the - like almost every newspaper that you had in New York would have real estate articles and they'd say "Where's hot?" Or "where's affordable?" And Mott Haven would show up in a way I guess that's good that seems to have died out a little bit now. I don't see those articles quite as much. Do you?

Amy Starecheski: I think it's - I think it's down a little. It's hard to tell.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. It seems to be down a little. Glad. It's 01:33:00very bothersome. And it's kind of intrusive to have all these strangers come around and want to buy your house and throw you out. It's really distasteful. Of course if I wanted to sell the house I only need one buyer. I know that if I did ever want to sell it I have no problem.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. Just you know people who are listening to us who don't live in New York that probably be surprised to hear about this thing where people bother people like - give me an estimate of like during a busy time how many unsolicited offers to buy your house would you get in a week or something?

Carol Zakaluk: Four or five. Sometimes written get postcards also from realtors that you know that they're writing to everybody on the block where everybody in the neighborhood and they have a picture of the realtor and they have their address and sometimes they have the five or six other 01:34:00houses that they've sold in the neighborhood. And for how much. If you want to sell your property, then, you know, call me. And sometimes I get a personal letter. I got a lovely letter from somebody who came to the block on an open house day to go in 418 and he said, "while I was here making a bid for 418, which was a little over my price range, I saw 416. Do you have any information about 416? Do you know if it's for sale? I'd love to buy it. Here's here's two paragraphs about me and what I would be able to bring to the neighborhood." So him, I actually wrote back and I had a little bit of a dialogue with him because he was so nice and he went to the effort and was seemed like a very nice guy. And then after two or three correspondences when he figured out 416 wasn't going to be sold, then he stopped writing 01:35:00to me. Sometimes it's pleasant like that, but very rarely.

Amy Starecheski: I was just going to ask you about that. What was it? Oh. Can you tell me a little bit more about your - what it's been like being- I don't know what how you describe your role with the houses on Alexander like especially you know being a landlady here on 136th Street and then you've had the experience of seeing how people from outside the neighborhood react to that neighborhood like what they think of it. And so I'm interested how that's changed over time. Yeah just what you've learned from being in that role.

Carol Zakaluk: A remarkable number of people come to look at the apartments that I have shown that surprise me. I have both people that are kind of just starting out young people or just new in their careers and are looking at the 01:36:00apartments because they work in the neighborhood where they work in Harlem, East Harlem, and they want to be close to work and it would be very practical for them to live here. But maybe the rents are a little high, so they're hopeful but they love the apartments because the ones that Jonathan Brandt has redone are very beautiful inside and they love the location. I've also had people who were kind of on the fence, they weren't sure how they felt about the neighborhood, and after viewing the apartment which most of them like, they also walk around the neighborhood. And of those, I'd say a third of them come back and they say, "neighborhood isn't what I was looking for" or "I don't feel safe here." And most of them say, "really like it. Really like Mexican food, really enjoyed all those kind of high end places 01:37:00available on the other side of the major Deegan and Fort Morris. Nice to have that option. Also nice to have relatively cheap shopping options in a frugal neighborhood." People need to hang onto their pennies. They could save money by living here is often something that I've heard. People that have cars always ask me, "Is it safe to park in the neighborhood? Is it easy to park in the neighborhood?" I had one woman say she didn't want to move here because she was not sure that her car would be safe on 136th Street. She didn't want to rent 418. And she thought it was a little bit far from Albert Einstein, where she was a nurse. So she- she was just very hesitant and she was from a neighborhood in the Bronx, from the Bronx and had lived in the Bronx but yet was a little bit frightened of 136th Street. I thought that was a little 01:38:00strange. Those are the people that come to mind. Sometimes like it's a family. And some of the family members are very comfortable and really like it and other family members are. And so they'll hash it out amongst themselves and then they'll come back with either a yes or no. But mostly those families have like wound up liking and wanting to come. They've convinced the person who is a little on the fence to bend their way.

Amy Starecheski: What do you say when people ask you if it's safe here?

Carol Zakaluk: I tell them that in any place in New York it's always wise to keep an eye out when you're on the street and keep an alertness and awareness you know wherever you are. And I tell them that I think it's smart to not be ostentatious about wealth, that to flash a really 01:39:00expensive new phone or a really expensive anything: headphones, jewelry, is probably not a good idea because there are a lot of people who are poor here and that need money to eat and very basic things and that they're kind of taking a risk. But if they watch themselves and they have their head on their shoulders they would be absolutely fine. That's what I believe, anyway. And I also tell them that for 10 years I have rented to young people of all colors and all shapes and all physical- some of them are very strong and good runners and obviously could beat them back up and some that are little wimpy people, and everybody's been fine and nobody has had an issue. Actually I take that back. One guy went back and forth to Columbia University where he was 01:40:00a librarian and he was about 30 years old and he rode a scooter across the Madison Avenue Bridge on 138th Street to Manhattan and he once got pushed off it and his scooter was stolen from him. But he dressed very nicely, he dressed in chinos and a blue serge suit. And he looked like a white guy with money and he got his scooter taken. So that did happen and he wasn't living with me at the time, he was living someplace just a few blocks away I think on the cul de sac where Michael Johnson lives. He was living in one of those houses. Anyway, but nobody else has had any issues. So I tell prospective tenants that too and they think, "oh, if your people can be safe, then mine can.".

Amy Starecheski: I'm thinking again about the question of what your experience is like on the street in this neighborhood now. And if you 01:41:00feel self-conscious as a white person. And I just wanted to kind of come back to that because I'm wondering like how that has. You know there's like - there's the gendered aspect of it right. Like the catcalling and being a young girl and game that kind of attention that changes as you age. As we both know to different extents. And then there's also- there's also the racial aspect of it. And you know as a neighbor it has become somewhat more mixed - like is it- is it mixed enough now that it makes a difference in terms of that kind of - I guess have you ever felt like you got attention for being white as opposed to just for being a woman. And has that changed as the neighborhood has changed a bit over the last 20 years or something?

Carol Zakaluk: Yes of course. I have experienced that when I was one 01:42:00of the only white people that lived here, there would be people who would turn their heads because it was so unusual for them to see me. But I think that our family was so no after a while that that kind of head turning only happened when the person wasn't a local. When I was a surprise to them. To this day, I do get some of that, particularly if I'm walking with one of my tenants who is white and there's more than one of us. Just the other day I was walking with a tenant who's from northern Minnesota who is very tall and very blonde and has blue eyes and is very strapping and looks like a Nordic. You know he's an actor and he's very physically present wherever he is. And several people turned their heads and looked at both of us. A couple of them looked disappointed or angry that there were - you know, "What are 01:43:00these white people doing in this neighborhood?" But the number of times that I experienced that is very small compared to when I was growing up. I don't get the vibe that we're not welcome and I get much more- much more frequently kind of a welcoming, "let's talk to these people. Are you lost?" I've gotten quite often in my life from some people: "can I help you find your way?" [laughs] I know. Amy's laughing. And you must also sometimes have gotten that in this neighborhood too, "you know can I help you, lady? Do you need help? Are you lost? Do you need an escort?" I've gotten back in the day but not anymore now. I'm pretty comfortable. I think being 62, I think that's one of the reasons I'm comfortable is I'm not worth chatting up as a possible love interest and I'm not feeble 01:44:00enough that they need to offer to help carry my groceries although sometimes people say, "you know that looks heavy. Can I help you carry it?" I guess I've said no so many times to people that they've stopped asking me. Sometimes I used to get that. I'm fairly comfortable.

Amy Starecheski: When there's a gentrification buzz period does it change the way people respond to you as a white person? Do you ever notice that?

Carol Zakaluk: I don't think- amongst the people that know me that I chat on the street with, no I haven't. Because they know me and I'm already a known friend entity. But I have heard local people express worry about being displaced and when the Brueckner grill opened I had a number of local people say, "have you been there yet. Isn't it amazing that that place 01:45:00is here in this neighborhood? You know I go there I go there to drink with my friends. It's very nice." And I have a lot of that. I thought that that was kind of nice that they were- That's a kind of a mixed race Bar Grill on Bruckner. I think the address might even be one Bruckner Boulevard on Third Avenue and Bruckner and it was kind of unique and a surprise when it first came to this neighborhood. Now it's called the Mott Haven Grill, even though it's in Fort Morris, which I'm very annoyed about. But anyway yeah I think the most I could say about that.

Amy Starecheski: I think that's most of what I wanted to make sure to ask you about. I know it's getting late. Let me just look at my notes and make sure there's not something that I forgot. And you think about if there's anything that you want to add. Anything that I should have asked you about that I didn't, anything that you wanted to say and you haven't, anything at all.

Carol Zakaluk: Ok.

Amy Starecheski: I remember this, that we always know when it's time to start to end because your cats know that it's time for them to be fed.

Carol Zakaluk: Right. Well Scout's just hopeful. She has to have a whole forty-five minutes before she gets to eat. [Indiscernible].

Amy Starecheski: I remembered one thing you talked about like conflicts and just having a hard time with your neighbors and in terms of sound and also just the use of public space, people sitting out on the stoops or you know, all of that. And that I think was more like from your adult life. And I'm wondering if there were those kinds of conflicts over public space, sound, public behavior in like the 60s and 70s. Do you remember like what- if - if they were 01:47:00the same kinds of conflicts or if they changed over time?

Carol Zakaluk: Well one change, one giant change, was that in the 60s, people didn't speak English. So, when you walked down the block, and there were giant numbers of people, young men, unemployed, sitting in clusters on stoops and some of the stoops on this particular block are very tall stoops. So there would be eight or nine or 10 guys sitting on a stoop speaking a language that wasn't understandable to me and my family. It was threatening and I also think that when I was young and there was this new influx of Puerto Ricans, a lot of the Puerto Rican families that we got to know that would speak to us, they wanted to go back to Puerto Rico as soon as possible. And they were resentful that they weren't able to make enough money to be able 01:48:00to do that. And they - there were other local people that thought that they were taking over this neighborhood. So this was their neighborhood now. And what were we doing in it? Even though we were here first and we were here living in minding our own business. So there was much more tension and much more danger. And being younger of course and inexperienced and not having a lot of chutzpah, I was frightened walking around quite a bit, you know definitely tense. And now I don't have that sense of tension anymore. Once in a while, maybe, in a particular situation, but I'm really cautious and I watch myself and I'm ready to call out to my friends who I know live in these buildings, you know, "help me, save me," or whatever it is, which I've never had to do. I have more of a voice now. And sometimes I also have said to people 01:49:00which we probably talked about already- somebody once threw an apple core at me on my own corner, like a little group of men standing outside the bodega. John and I were going downtown for a concert and somebody threw an apple core and it landed practically on me and I stopped and I just said to the whole group of them you know, "why did you do that? I live here. You know you don't you realize I'm a visitor. I live here and I've lived here longer than any of you people. So cut it out." And I just kept going. And nobody bothered me. Nobody said anything to me or whatever. And I have often done that when somebody says something to me that I find offensive. I stop and I say, "you know, you have no business doing that." I try not to be really rude to them I don't want to get punched or knifed or hit or anything or engage them too 01:50:00much. But at the same time I don't want them to get away with it fully. I want them to realize that I'm a person with a voice with something to say I'm not just going to let them bounce something off me. Somebody was through a coke bottle at me and Ann, out of one of the project windows. I think that they were aiming because it landed four feet in front of us. And I for a while after that didn't take her down that road through the projects, I deliberately took her around the projects to take her to school, even though it was longer. It could have been a random thing because people in projects just throw baby diapers out the window, they just throw cigarette cartons- empty cigarette cartons out the window, any kind of junk used to sail routinely out the windows of the projects. They don't do it quite so much anymore. But that was a memorable moment when I felt really bad and they were- [indiscernible].

Amy Starecheski: The only other thing I wanted to ask you is you talked about going to Brook Park, and you know for no specific reason but always just kind of meeting somebody getting involved in a conversation . You might not have one but if you have one, could you give me like an example of that?

Carol Zakaluk: Of a conversation?

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. Like yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: I had a conversation with a guy who was one of the artists at the community art festival who made photographs of industrial spaces in New Jersey, which is where he was from. And I thought that they were really good photographs. And I just asked him, you know where are you from and how did you become enticed by these kinds of landscapes? And I said how much I enjoyed decaying metal and how much I enjoyed working in a warehouse neighborhood where there were very few residents and how much I enjoyed how useful 01:52:00loading docks were and we- and some of the projects at Haven. And we had an artists type conversation that was really nice. I've had conversations with people that don't speak English that well that are kind of broken conversations in which we talk about family and what is the name of Harry's old roommate who used to be the mother lamb?

Amy Starecheski: Naila.

Carol Zakaluk: Naila. I've had conversations with Naila that fall into that category of I don't understand exactly everything that she's talking about but we're going to try and we'll talk about her children and that I understand and we'll talk about Colombia, where she's from. And we've had kind of interesting conversations that way. Short, but interesting. I would not normally speak to somebody who is from Colombia, I wouldn't have any reason to. But in Brook Park, I have a reason to talk to her.

Amy Starecheski: What does the neighborhood sound like now?

Carol Zakaluk: It's interesting that you ask that because now that it's 74 degrees out today, I was listening to see if people would turn their beat boxes on. It sounds quiet, blissfully quiet in the winter. I mean I'm- I'm always waiting for winter and I'm waiting for rain so that people will go inside and it will be quieter. And then I can hear myself think and I can hear my music better and I can think my own thoughts I guess. But in the summer, it's a lots of different radios tuned to lots of different stations and lots of people laughing and playing and shouting and arguing and fighting and doing all kinds of things in public. 01:54:00Sometimes it's washing fire hydrants you know and sometimes they open fire hydrants all the way in which case maybe on the top floor we don't have quite as much water pressure as we should. And sometimes the firemen come around and they put a little sprinkler cap on a fire hydrant so the kids can play, which is nice. I like that. But for the sound of fire trucks, used to be quite a few fire trucks in the 70s. I lived through that period of the Bronx is Burning, when that's what you heard sirens for ambulances, heroin addicts overdosing, and you heard fire trucks because there were fires, sometimes 40 fires in one day in one neighborhood. You know, really crazy it sounds. But that doesn't happen quite so much anymore. We also have quieter 01:55:00ambulances. I think that they don't use their sirens quite as much as they used to. I don't know why but I see the lights but I don't hear anything. I see the lights coming down the block. Maybe they changed the law. Maybe they're just- the trend is different. Maybe they're more conscious of people's - I kind of think sometimes that that's a sign of gentrification. If the neighborhood is getting quieter and there are more trees on the blocks, which of course there are more trees all over the whole city because of the Million Tree Project, but those kinds of things, those changes are signs of the neighborhood getting much more peaceful and much better. To me, that's much better.

Amy Starecheski: Ok. I promise this is last question and you just made me think of it. Was your family afraid of fire in the 70s, like did you have like escape plan if fire came to your home?

Carol Zakaluk: We had all of the fire places, we have many fireplaces 01:56:00in both houses and there they were all blocked up by my grandfather. Long before the issues with multiple fires happened in the 70s. So we felt we were home, guarding our house, every night practically. We were very infrequently on vacation and we thought we would be lucky. But when there were fires we would keep a very good eye on where they were and which way the wind was blowing and we only had three exits and we all knew where they were. We knew that going out through the roof was more difficult. We had been up through the roof many times to repair the roof so we knew, "Man that's really hard to get out that way. It's never a fire we better not try that," but we didn't we didn't not have an escape ladder like my uncle had and Aunt Mary 01:57:00had out in Michigan, which I had been up and down a rope ladder that you throw out the second floor window and you practice going up down. I had done that with- at their house but we didn't have one. So I thought that if I ever needed to jump onto the extension, that would be one floor and I could somehow survive jumping one floor and get out that way. So that's my- do you have an escape plan?

Amy Starecheski: We have a fire escape.

Carol Zakaluk: Oh, you do?

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. Down the back the back.

Carol Zakaluk: Down the back. Ah, that's good

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. And we have roof access.

Carol Zakaluk: Do you use your roof?

Amy Starecheski: No it's- it's in too poor conditions. It starts to leak if you walk on it.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. Ours does too. So I tell my tenants and it's written in lease only for emergencies.

Amy Starecheski: I know it's- it's a shame because it's lovely to be on on the roof, but, is there anything else that you wanted to add or say? Anything I missed?

Carol Zakaluk: I don't think there's anything that you missed. I hope that I have adequately conveyed the experience of walking and 01:58:00being in this neighborhood. I think- I'm very curious to listen to Danny's. When Danny Cervone finally does his because he's a person that's lived here close to the same number- he's about my age he's lived here a very long time. And because he's Puerto Rican and was a drug user and had been in jail and all of the things that he's going to talk about, his experience of being on the street is so different than mine and in some ways this is his neighborhood and not mine. So I'm very curious to see him talk about all the good things that he feels and how he can- I can walk down the street with Danny and on any given block, 12 people say hi to him. And he calls them all cousin. I don't think they are all his 01:59:00cousins, but he calls them primo and I have the feeling that for somebody who is Puerto Rican this is a very different neighborhood. I'd like to hear what he has to say.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah I'm excited.

Carol Zakaluk: Are you going to interview Harry?

Amy Starecheski: Maybe. Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: Because he has been here since the '93.

Amy Starecheski: No he's - Yeah. Gosh '93. Yeah maybe. Yeah. I should interview Harry.

Carol Zakaluk: Oh I mean it might be interesting. I bet he has really good things to say about urban planning because he's studied that at Cornell.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: And he's very involved in urban planning now in Greenwich Village.

Amy Starecheski: Right.

Carol Zakaluk: So I'm sure he thinks about it and detests the idea of gentrification and has insightful things to say.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. That's a good idea. Well thank you so much.

Carol Zakaluk: You're welcome.

Amy Starecheski: It's really been amazing hearing all of this and I really appreciate all the work that you put into preparing and thinking 02:00:00about it. It's been so, so interesting for me.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah?

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. I really appreciate your time.

Carol Zakaluk: I appreciate you listening because I always put myself to sleep listening to myself again when I replayed the tape. I thought, "oh my God poor Amy has been listening to this for hours and hours."

Amy Starecheski: I've loved it.

Carol Zakaluk: You have? Oh, I'm so glad.

Amy Starecheski: Now you'll have this record for your family and to you to tell the story of these buildings which are so important.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah I'm probably going to be selective with who I- I tell that they're there. It's interesting to me, I do kind of have a little kind of question in the back of my mind about whether this is going to come back to bite me.

Amy Starecheski: Mhm.

Carol Zakaluk: Because I- and you have the link and it'll probably appear in the archive also to the New York Times article that was about me in the houses because largely what happened to me because of that article 02:01:00was good. I got to speak at the Museum of Immigration downtown and you know people came out of the woodwork from P.S. 31 where I was in fourth, fifth and sixth grade and got in touch with me and people in the neighborhood saw it and it was a very positive thing. But one guy read the article and thought that he understood the situation of living next door without listening to my lecture on what it was like to live there and these are the rules and this is the rent. And here's when utilities are due and don't go on the roof and all of the things that I tell people he just said, "Oh I read the article. I don't need to know that. Oh you know don't worry about it." And he, I could tell was shutting down. So when he moved in, he made all kinds of assumptions based on something that was in his head, based on having read the 02:02:00article and it really didn't work when he had moved in. So the article bit me in that one particular instance so I hope that there isn't some person that listens to this in the future and takes something that I said the wrong way. No I didn't want to offend anybody.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah. No I mean you always hope that people will take these interviews in the same spirit of generosity in which they were given. You're being really generous by sharing your experiences with the public and I think most people take it that way and you're right that there is always that risk. You never know how people are going to hear things.

Carol Zakaluk: Yeah. Right. Particularly far in the future.

Amy Starecheski: Yeah.

Carol Zakaluk: And I'd like to apologize for using slang. For all you people listening a hundred years from now, if you don't know what hot to trot means or something that I may have said. It's our ancient slang, then I apologize deeply.

Amy Starecheski: It'll be- It will be a learning experience for them. So I'm sure they'll love the slang it makes that way more interesting for them.

Yeah. I hope so.

I ' m going to turn it off now.

Carol Zakaluk: Thank you, Amy Starecheski.

No problem. Thank you.