He’s reflecting on his life.

All 30 years of it.

It’s more full than his cup of tea: He’s a college student, commuting to class in Connecticut three times a week, and he’s working a bunch of jobs to pay the rent and the tuition to fuel his ambition.

If you’ve taken a Chinese yoga class, stepped into an Uber, stopped into a neighborhood bar for an after-work cocktail or ordered fast food delivered to your apartment, chances are you’ve encountered Dave.

(When he’s a delivery boy, he calls himself “Doctor Pizza Man,” a nickname whose significance will become clear when you know more about him.)

Dave, who is studying traditional Chinese medicine so he can practice bone setting and acupuncture, was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but he spent most of his childhood in Harriman, a village in Orange County, New York, whose population hovers around 2,400.

“It’s suburban and rural,” he says, adding that his was a middle-class family with four boys. “It’s baseball and McDonald’s after practice.”

Dave, a bright, shiny new car, followed a rather traditional course: He joined the Boy Scouts and wrestled in high school and didn’t think too long or hard about the Significance of Life.

“When I was getting ready for college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I liked working out, music, art, nature and literature, and I was looking for something that had all of these.”

His first encounter with Asian medicine occurred around the same time. At a family barbecue, a cousin who was studying acupuncture asked Dave to be a practice patient.

Whether it was his cousin’s lack of experience or his own lack of belief (“I thought it was bullshit,” he says), Dave was suitably unimpressed with the experience and the results.

He went on with his life, finishing a bachelor’s degree in human biology at SUNY Albany and settling in Portland, Oregon, where, for a time, he worked at an outdoors school, getting students in touch with nature.

There just happened to be a famous acupuncture center in the city, and Dave made an appointment. He was hoping simply to alleviate his physical exhaustion.

“I practically had an out-of-body experience,”  he says, adding that he took the treatments for a couple of months. “It was like seeing the world for the first time. I saw bright lights, felt fresh air, and my brain was filled with ideas.”

It was one of those ideas that brought him back to the East Coast.



“I decided to go back to school,” he says. “I let all the old go, and all the new came in. I started to train in acupuncture, and my life started to change.”

He moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn and began taking classes at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City.

He transferred to the University of Bridgeport, where he will graduate in May with a master’s degree in traditional Chinese medicine and then begin work on a doctorate in the same subject that he will complete by the end of the year.

Dave can’t wait to share the medicine.

“I want to do good,” he says.

He has all kinds of ideas about how he can contribute to the well being of his fellow beings; it’s possible that he’ll open a clinic or even create a “floating” center to treat patients.

It will all come in due time.

“My perception of time has changed,” he says. “I used to be focused on the end result, but now there’s no beginning or end.”

He dreams of traveling the world, exchanging ideas – about medicine and culture – with everyone he meets.

Dave, who tends bee hives on the roof of his apartment, likens it to “cross pollination.”

“It’s spiritual pollen,” he says. “Its object is to help, to learn to get better, to change my perspective.”

He’s more than ready to get started.

“There’s suffering everywhere,” he says. “I’ll go where I’m needed.”

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com;  @nancyruhling; nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com,  astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2020 by Nancy A. Ruhling

As she sits on it, crossed-legged, she positions a brass bowl in front of her. She closes her eyes.

The room – and her thoughts – disappear.

In 20 to 30 minutes, she will emerge from her reverie, calm and collected and ready to start the rest of her routine.

“Meditation sets an intention for the day,” she says. “It really makes a difference.”

Manaslu manifested meditation only five years ago. Her first session was at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal, the land of her birth.

“My husband, Chris, had always wanted to go on a meditation retreat,” she says. “I love to talk, and when I heard that it was going to be seven days of silence, I didn’t think I could survive.”

She smiles. She not only survived, but she also thrived.

Once she learned to meditate, her life took an entirely new direction, one that she would never have chosen had she not been forced to apply mindfulness over matter.

Manaslu, who was named for the famed mountain in the Nepalese Himalayas, was born in Kathmandu, the country’s capital.

One of four children, she spent the first 17 years of her life there.

She had what she calls a “balanced” childhood. Her father had a doctorate in geography and traveled the world for work, and her mother, who didn’t finish high school, stayed home raising the family. It was she who taught Manaslu to cook, knit and garden, pastimes she still passionately pursues.

“My dad was one of the first people in the nation to get a PhD,” she says. “He believed in education for girls, which was unusual for the times, so I was sent to a fancy, all-girls Catholic convent school that was very strict.”

Manaslu knew she wanted to earn a college degree, so she went to Bangalore, India, for the last two years of high school.

“At that time, Nepalese high schools ended at grade 10,” she says. “There were no good colleges in Nepal, so everyone went to study abroad, where high schools went to 12^th grade. I wanted to come to America because women have more freedom here.”

Manaslu followed a friend to California, enrolloing at UCLA, where she earned a degree in geography.

“I wanted to be like my father and travel the world,” she says.

Her next stop was the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned a master’s degree in the same subject.

After an internship at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., Manaslu returned to Amherst, where she got a job with the international students office while earning a master’s degree in education.

“It’s hard to find work in geography, and I was on a student visa, so I had to enroll in something to stay in the country,” she says, adding that she was, indeed, interested in teaching.

As it happened, Manaslu never taught a single class while she was there; her pedagogical pursuits would come later.

She married Chris, a classmate, and when they finished their degrees, he got a job in New York City.

“I was 29,” Manaslu says. “All my friends were married and had children. My parents were worried I was too old. I thought they would object to Chris because he’s not Nepali, but they didn’t.”

In 2005, they settled in the Bronx, and Manaslu commuted to a job with a nonprofit in Westchester, where she worked with international students.

“I loved it,” she says. “I got to travel all over the world and the country.”

A decade later, when new owners took over the company, Manaslu quit.

She and Chris decided to spend a year in Nepal with her family.

While they were there, they backpacked through Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.

“My mom used to joke that we were gone more than we were there,” she says.

During Nepal’s April 2015 earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 and injured nearly 22,000, they were among the first to join the rescue relief crews.

She and Chris raised money for batteries (people needed them to charge cellphones so they could contact their families) as well as children’s books, games and musical instruments.

“Most of the relief organizations were focusing on necessities,” Manaslu says. “We wanted to give children something to engage them.”

Right before they left for New York City, where Chris’ original job awaited, they went on that silent retreat that Manaslu can’t stop talking about.

They settled in Astoria, which Manaslu says “is the place I can call home.”

Manaslu is spending her time exploring different career options.

A teacher and assistant organizer at the meditation community Mindful Astoria, she studies Buddhism and recently completed her 200-hour teaching training in Kripalu yoga.

“I have such a rich life in terms of culture and community,” she says, adding that she’s made many friends through Mindful Astoria.

She wants to do meaningful work, but she’s not yet sure what that means.

“I can’t do 9-to-5 any more,” she says, adding that money is not her main motivator. “Buddhism is a deep philosophy that I find useful in my daily life. I want to invest my life in it and share it.”

Meditation, she says, will help her find a way to do this.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com;  @nancyruhling; nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com,  astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2020 by Nancy A. Ruhling

She is forthcoming about the basic facts of her life, but there’s a sense that there’s far more meaning behind her words than she conveys.

Olena, a tall woman with big, beautiful blue eyes, is sitting on a large, overstuffed sofa in her living room.

There’s a significantly sized flat-screen TV tucked into one corner. She says she rarely watches it – the shows don’t relax her.

The spare space also contains a computer desk cramped by bookshelves, which are topped by an assortment of framed photos of her nieces.

Right by the door, there’s a white Brother sewing machine.

When she’s not penning or translating poems, Olena unwinds by making her own outfits, a pursuit that she started only two years ago when she knew nothing of needles and thread.

Today, she’s wearing a dress of her own creation. The fabric, which she bought on Etsy, is printed with definitions from the dictionary. The black and white newspaper-style columns run up and down her torso like toy trains.

Olena formed an affection for words early in life, probably because in her house they flew like flocks of little birds into her ears.

Hers was an extended family all under one roof. Her mother’s parents, who were from the Ukraine, settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during World War II.

Olena’s mother, who was 2 or 3 years old when the family arrived, was born in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany.

“I don’t know too many details,” Olena says, adding that they were forced to stay there for a couple of years. “My grandparents never talked about this experience.”

They did, however, talk about a lot of other things — in their own language, which Olena picked up like seashells on a beach.

“We went to the Ukrainian church every Sunday,” she says. “It was more social than religious. It gave me an opportunity to speak Ukrainian.”

Given her experiences, Olean fell in love with languages and initially wanted to write fiction.

“I didn’t have many friends,” she says, “so writing was an outlet for expression. I wrote a novel in high school. I joined a writer’s group that was filled with adults. Surprisingly, they accepted me.”

In case you’re wondering, Olena’s novel was about perfume. Some of the chapters were told from the scent’s point of view.

At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Olena earned a bachelor’s degree in French and Russian, the other two languages she speaks.

During that time, she studied abroad in Russia and had an internship in Ukraine. She also attended the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, a seven-week immersion course.

“While I was at the institute, I felt I could express myself better in Ukrainian than in English,” she says. “That’s why I’ve continued doing translations — it gives me a great feeling of comfort.”

After earning a master’s degree in Ukrainian literature at the University of Alberta in Canada, she came to New York City in 2004.

It was her studies that brought her here: She earned a master’s degree in fiction from Columbia University, where she works full time as an administrative assistant to a trio of professors.

“I don’t write much fiction now,” she says. “I concentrate on poetry, which still allows me to tell a story but in a way that’s more pleasurable to me. Poetry is filled with images and metaphors. I like the idea of making connections between two disparate things. I love it when they come together.”

Although Olena sometimes writes on the subway or on her lunch break, most of her work is done at night at her living room workstation.

In this cozy spot, she also translates the work of other poets into English, an exercise that she says “allows her to express the voices of many writers.”

She plucks a volume from the bookshelf.

“Pray to the Empty Wells” is the work she and Iryna Shuvalova, the poet who wrote the verses, translated into English together.

“Songs from an Apartment,” another book from her shelves, contains Olena’s own poems.

Olena, the founder of Poets of Queens, an organization that promotes local writers, also does public readings. In 2020, she’ll be publishing a book of the members’ works.

In the meantime, she’s writing a collection of poems that were inspired by her translation work.

Between rhymes, she’s learning embroidery. She’ll employ is to embellish her wardrobe, not her words.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020.

Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhing@gmail.com; @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

Kristin Westbrook is sipping a cup of coffee and smiling, letting the morning light run its warm fingers through her long, blond hair.

Pinky, her pit bull, has just returned from a romp in Astoria Park and, exhausted, is lounging in a pillow-piled bed by her side.

All is calm and peaceful, as if Kristin and Pinky have not a care in the world.

Kristin, who is being treated for metastatic breast cancer, has worked long and hard to make it seem so.

Pinky rouses herself only to take a treat that Kristin offers.

The dog, who is 14 and looks like a big snowball, is a rescue. Kristin found Pinky one New Year’s Eve; she was tied to a fence, sick and starving.

“She was about six months old,” Kristin says. “Nobody thought she would live.”

Kristin, who got her initial diagnosis a decade ago when she was 42, undergoes targeted chemotherapy every three weeks. By 2012, the cancer had spread to her abdomen, lungs and liver. By 2017, it was confined to her liver, which, all things considered, is positive progress of a sort.

“I was really young when I got cancer,” she says. “In chemo, I met a lot of people going through the same thing.”

She doesn’t know when – or whether — the medical regimen will end.

“The chemo has changed me a lot,” she says, “especially going through it the second time. I got ‘chemo brain,’ which affected my cognitive thought processes. I could barely speak because I was afraid I would drop words or even sentences.”

What she does know, and which she is now able to articulate flawlessly, is that meditation, a practice she began nearly 20 years ago, helps her get through the bad times.

That’s why she founded Calm City, New York’s first mobile meditation station.

“I started meditating to cure a chronic broken heart,” she says, adding that it wasn’t any one guy she was trying to get over. “It was all the guys and the whole dating thing.”

She must have done something right because shortly after she got her mind in order, she met her husband, Jeff, on Match.com.

The year before they married, Pinky became part of their family.

At different points in her life, Kristin, who is from Califon, New Jersey, was an aspiring artist and actress. She made a career for herself in graphic design for a variety of publications and companies, most recently DirecTV, where she was a creative director.

Once her cancer treatment started, she used meditation to, as she says, “connect with my superpower and the center of who I am. It helps me stay in the moment and keep myself anchored.”

She added that while she’s sitting in the oncologist’s office, “waiting for the other shoe to drop, meditation has been an incredible tool to help me keep myself anchored in the present moment.”

Kristin, who is a certified meditation teacher trained in transcendental technique and in mental health first aid, came up with the concept for Calm City in 2016, shortly before she left DirecTV.

“I wanted to create a place where people could go to meditate during the work day,” she says. “I wanted it to be as convenient as a food truck, where you could go for 10 or 15 minutes. My original idea was to create a series of kiosks so there would be a Superman’s phone booth on every corner.”

She dipped into her savings and bought a 1976 GMC Motorhome RV for $5,000, transforming it into a meditation mobile that hit the streets in 2017.

At first, she parked the RV in public spaces, inviting people from off the street to stop in for 15- or 30-minute live or audio-guided sessions.

Now, corporations, schools and institutions hire her to bring peace of mind to staff members.

Kristin, who has no training in business development, admits that getting Calm City off the ground has been anything but calming.

“Starting this business has been very stressful,” she says, adding that she tries to make time to meditate every morning. “The first year I thought I was failing constantly. There have been many times I’ve wanted to bail out on the business.”

It is, of course, meditation and her desire to help others learn the life-changing technique that have kept her focused.

“I see the difference in people who use Calm City,” she says. “Meditation creates happier, healthier people – that’s my mission.”

Kristin provides the financing for Calm City, which has one employee – a driver. Someday, she’d like a corporate sponsor or a large-scale city contract so she can put more mobile units on the streets.

While she’s looking for like-minded investors, Kristin and Calm City are moving forward.

“We’re both doing pretty well,” she says.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at NRuhling@gmail.com, @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

They were die-hard Mets fans, you see, and when Roy died – on, of all days, the season opener on April 8, 2008 – Porky wanted to do something special to honor their friendship, which had commenced when they were boys going to battle with ball and bat.

“His death hit me hard,” he says.

So, he added, did the fact that the Mets lost to the Phillies that day by 5 to 2.

Porky, a friendly fellow with untamed snow-white hair and a grey goatee who likes to talk about baseball and everything else, got it into his head that the best way to commemorate Roy would be to scatter his ashes in ballparks around the country.

So he got the family to give him some of Roy’s remains – enough to fill a Planters peanuts can – and carried a portion to each game in a plastic Advil bottle.

After the first couple of scatterings, though, Porky realized that the legality and logistics of his plan were too cumbersome to continue.

He was sitting in a bar having an after-game drink when nature called and he hit upon what he calls his humorous home-run idea.

Roy was a plumber (“he was damn good – he fixed the sink in the bar in my apartment three times,” Porky says) – so why not flush his remains down ballpark toilets between innings?

“The Mets play in Citi Field in Flushing Meadows – everybody got the joke,” Porky chuckles, adding that in 2017, after ballpark No. 15, he ran out of Roy’s remains.

He says he did the flushing with the utmost respect.

“I always went into a stall because it was more private,” he says. “I wouldn’t think of doing it in a urinal where everyone could watch. And if I had to use the toilet, I flushed between Roy and me. I would never pee on my friend.”

Baseball has always been an important part of Porky’s life.

If you didn’t know this, you would guess it as soon as you walk into his studio apartment, which, with its player posters, baseballs, bats and books of autographs, has been an eccentric mini-Cooperstown for the 39 years he has lived in it.

But Porky is far more than a collector of memorabilia.

He’s a writer, who, to date, has produced 24 books, including two New York City guidebooks (A Walk in the City and On the Tour) and 10 volumes of poetry.

For the most part, they are about – what else? — baseball.

Porky, whose father took him to his first game, at Shea Stadium, when he was 6, grew up in the building.

The family lived in the apartment across the hall. When his parents divorced and his mother married the studio’s occupant several years later, Porky moved in and turned it into a shrine to the all-American game.

In the beginning, he had a twin bed, but at some point switched to a fold-out sofa, which he insists is exceedingly comfortable, and that, when opened, fits into the space with scarcely an inch to spare.

Aside from bookcases, a flat-screen TV and a computer, the only other furnishings are a pair of mezzanine stadium seats, Nos. 20 and 21, that Porky bought when Shea was torn down.

Porky’s Place, the sign over the kitchen sink that Roy kept fixing, is left over from the time Porky had a bar there.

Porky, who was christened Thomas, got his nickname from the neighborhood kids.

“I was a little fat and had a pug nose,” he says. “I looked like the cartoon character Porky Pig. The name stuck — it doesn’t seem right if you call me anything else.”

When Porky was 15, he got his first job. It was at the deli around the corner.

Although he tried college – “I attended Hunter for three weeks” – Porky was happier working, and in 1985 he got a job with the New York Transit Authority.

In 1989, when he was compiling statistics on the last outs of World Series games, Porky began writing poetry.

“The poems just happened,” he says, adding that he’s penned 3,067. “I can’t explain it. I have a lot of dreams, and the poems come straight from them. I write them in longhand then type them into my computer. I also carry around a planner so I can write down ideas during the day.”

Since his retirement in 2016, Porky, whose favorite authors are Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe and whose TV taste is revealed in bookshelves filled with DVDs that range from Seinfeld to NCIS, has devoted his non-baseball time to his baseball-themed writing.

His latest collection, Poet in the Parks: 2011-2020, will be published next year.

Porky, who typically attends 25 to 30 Mets games at Citi Field and eight to 12 away games each season, is a left-fielder. He regrets that he hasn’t played baseball since he was in his 30s.

But his old glove is on top of a bookcase, right by The Autobiography of Mark Twain and The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, inviting him to put it on and get back in the game.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com;  @nancyruhling; nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com,  astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

Greg Kritikos is pedaling his bicycle on 30^th Avenue near 42^nd Street.

This is the place he grew up in, and everything – the good and the bad, the things he can’t forget and the things he doesn’t want to remember – happened to him in this neighborhood, which he’s called home for most of the past half century.

Greg, a producer, stand-up comic and actor who has been compared to Jackie Gleason, is a larger-than-life lovable tough guy with slicked-back black hair and a diamond pinkie ring. His New York accent is as thick as cement shoes.

 If you are not acquainted with his work, you soon will be: He’s the co-writer, producer and star of the feature-length film Charlie Boy, which was shot on the streets of Astoria and will be playing in local theatres around Christmas time.

The movie, about a retired gangster who becomes a comedian to work through his grief over the killing of his son, is largely and loosely based on events in Greg’s life.

Greg, who was born in Athens, Greece, arrived in Astoria with his parents and older sister when he was 7 years old.

“We came for the American dream, but it was more like the American nightmare,” he says.

Things went sideways right from the start.

Greg’s father, a professional soccer player, ended up opening a shoe-repair shop, and Greg, who didn’t know any English (“I once mixed up the word ‘beach’ with ‘bitch,’ as in ‘I went to the bitch’”) was ridiculed because his mother dressed him in the European style.

“With my sandals, white tube socks and shaved head, I stuck out,” he says, adding that his was the only Greek family in the Irish-Italian neighborhood. “It was the early 1970s when boys wore their hair long. I got picked on a lot, and I had a lot of fear. Kids started calling me Hamburger, a word I didn’t pronounce properly, but in my mind I wanted to tell them that someday I would be the Burger King.”

The family determined to stick it out for five years, but right before that self-imposed time limit was reached, Greg’s mother was hit by a drunken driver. Her leg was amputated above the knee.

“The driver didn’t have insurance,” Greg says. “The medical bills were high, and we didn’t have the money to pay them.”

Greg became a member of The Steinway Street Boys, which was more of an association  than a gang although one of the members was deported and became the John Gotti of Greece.

He pulls up a photo of the boys on his smartphone; all are ominously clad in black leather.

“Hey, it was the Eighties – everyone was wearing leather,” he says.

By the time he was 17, Greg had dropped out of high school to work in his brother-in-law’s Manhattan deli. He started drinking at 18 and began using coke at 23.

The drug trade was his main occupation, and by the time he was 25, Greg was doing six months in Rikers for assault and narcotics trafficking, charges lodged during a sting operation he got caught up in.

While he was on the inside, he was attacked by three inmates whose intent was murder.

“One had an ice pick, one had a razor and one had a Master Lock tied up in a tube sock,” he says. “They sliced my ear, and I lost one tooth.”

Greg dramatically pulls back his left ear to reveal the wound.

“I never told my mom I was in prison,” he says. “She thought I was working with the Merchant Marines.”

At any rate, when Greg was released, he didn’t change his habits, he escalated them, hustling and using coke and pot and drinking a lot.

“Prison enhanced my reputation in the neighborhood,” he says. “The people who picked on me, let’s just say I returned the favor, and I hurt a couple of people’s ‘feelings.’”

Eventually, he got a job as the director of security for a Greek developer, got married and had a son, who is now 24.

By 2000, Greg’s life, by his own admission and fault, was pretty much a mess.

“I hit rock bottom,” he says. “I was like a boat with broken sails. My wife and I separated (we are happily divorced now), I blew up to 385 pounds. I was drinking a bottle of Dewar’s every night and smoking coke and cigarettes. I developed a lot of problems – I was depressed, I had sleep apnea, high cholesterol and diabetes, but God kept me alive.”

It took him nearly a decade to get his life back in order. After spending seven days detoxing in a hospital plus nearly four months at Phoenix House, Greg was ready to face the world head-on and head-clear again.

“I make it a point to give back – I give anti-addiction speeches at detox and rehab centers and prisons,” he says, adding that he was proud to recently give a talk to students at Lake Erie College in Ohio.

Ironically, he found his new life while sitting on a barstool.

“I met a bartender at Cronin’s who thought I was a funny guy,” he says, adding that he continued to frequent drinking establishments after his recovery but didn’t imbibe alcohol. “She got me booked at the New York Comedy Club.”

Greg’s six-minute stint was a success.

“I wore a hat and sunglasses because I didn’t want anyone to recognize me,” he says. “I just said random things, and people laughed.”

He ditched his disguise and became a punch-line factory.

“After I got sober, I briefly moved to Spokane, Washington, which is where my comedy career took off,” he says. “I wasn’t going to come back to New York, but a part in a movie, plus free air fare to the city, lured me.”

Today, Greg’s a regular on the comedy circuit – his third one-man show, Sober Is the New High, typically sells out.

The Witless Protection Program, an animated series he developed with former Marvel Comics editor Mike Rockwitz, will be released next year.

Greg says Charlie Boy has opened new doors for him. He’s already writing another feature film, The Shoemaker’s Son, which is a semi-autobiographical account of immigrant life in Queens that he’ll have a cameo role in.

As part of his research, Greg made a mammoth 42-day trip to Greece for the first time since he came to America.

“I did a lot of soul searching, and it wasn’t easy,” he says. “I wasn’t with family, and I was all alone. It was an incredible experience, and the people in the islands were very genuine.”

Conceding that his real life reads like the improbable plot of a B movie, Greg says that he hopes his experiences help others make positive changes.

“Everybody has an opportunity,” he says. “I’m 56, but I have so much energy that I feel like I’m 15. I’ve been through so many things. I’m grateful every day that I’m alive.”

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020.

Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhing@gmail.com; @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

When it reaches Astoria Park, it eases itself into an ample parking place by the water.

The doors open, and the unconventional driver of this unconventional vehicle steps into the sunlight, smiling.

Annalisa Iadicicco is an artist, and the bus is what she calls her “living and breathing mobile art gallery.”

The Blue Bus Project, which brings art to New York City’s underprivileged communities, is her biggest and most public production.

Annalisa, who is from Italy, spent the first decade of her life in the village of Bellona outside Naples. When her father moved to New York City for work, her mother moved Annalisa and her older sister to the city of Anzio, which is near Rome.

Up until that moment, Annalisa thought she was going to be a dancer.

“I was a little ballerina, but I stopped when we relocated,” says Annalisa. “I had to restart my life – it was difficult.”

Although she had always been creative and clever – she made her own outfits – it wasn’t until she moved to New York City, a decade later, that she honed her artistic talent.

“My parents had a lot of friends who were artists, and they collected their paintings,” she says. “So I was exposed to art even though I wasn’t doing it.”

After high school, she joined her father in Greenwich Village.

“I fell in love with it at first sight,” she says.

She focused her newly eager eyes on photography, taking classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the International Center of Photography.

“I was attracted to pieces of rusted metal I found in the street,” she says. “I felt they described who I was. I also went back to my roots – to Bellona, where I took photos of farms and animals. I combined my photos with the metals and found objects.”

For several years, she worked in the film industry as a location scout but shortly after 9/11 decided to focus exclusively on her art. She does freelance photography projects and has a steady job teaching art in after-school classes.

“I can’t just do one thing,” she says. “I get bored.”

In 2016, as part of her quest never to be bored, Annalisa decided she wanted to make her art more accessible to people.

She didn’t know how she was going to do that, but when she saw the blue bus parked by her house, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

As she biked by it day after day, she realized that it would be a wonderful vehicle for carrying out her plan.

So she put a note on its windshield that said, “If you are selling the bus, give me a call.”

Nine months and $2,500 later, The Blue Bus Project was born.

The 1997 blue bus, which is painted red inside and has beaded bamboo curtains at its windows, is funky, fun and politically on pointe.

The side stop sign on the exterior, an Annalisa art piece, is encircled by images of black revolvers. The other signs – “Come In, We’re Closed” and “No Under-Standing Any Time” — also throw conventional wisdom under the bus.

When it’s parked, a sunglasses-wearing mannequin steps into the driver’s seat; she may or may  not be the owner of the jeans-clad legs lounging in the back.

There’s a fabric and feathered rooster roosting on the front windshield, and a paper fish is swimming over the driver’s shoulder.

The blue bus is a cranky contraption; it has introduced Annalisa to numerous mechanics. Up until recently, it had been plagued with massive rust spots.

Its latest difficulty: The heater caught a cold the minute the weather got chill.

Annalisa, whose venture is financed by grants and commissions, has driven the bus to a variety of venues, including the Museum of the Moving Image and Socrates Sculpture Park, holding free public participatory programs and workshops ranging from dance performances to art exhibitions.

Working with other artists, she’s taught people the value of recycling by having them decorate a papier-mâché tree with flowers they created from found objects. And she has deepened the appreciation of music by having people create sounds using everyday objects then turning them into recorded tunes.

“Every time I do these projects and see how joyful they make people, it brings tears to my eyes,” she says.

Annalisa sees the blue bus as a driver of art and community engagement.

“It has the power to bring people – the public, artists and educators — together,” she says.

Someday, Annalisa would like to have a fleet of blue buses if not all over the country then at least all over New York City.

“I’ll keep driving until it happens,” she says.

She positions herself behind the steering wheel and holds her breath as she turns the key in the ignition.

Will it start up this time?

After several seconds of silence, the engine leaps to life.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at NRuhling@gmail.com, @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

He’s a regular customer, and when Peter Tummolo steps up to help him, the bearded guy asks him about his SUV, which is parked outside the shop.

“You and your brother have the same car,” he says as a looks at the grey Chevy Equinox. “You must really like it.”

Peter says that it’s new and that he and his older brother, Salvatore, who drives a blue one, are indeed pleased with the performance of their purchases.

When the bearded guy says he’s interested in buying one soon, Peter offers to put him in touch with the dealer he and Salvatore worked with.

“When you pick up the shirts, I’ll give you his info,” Peter says as he bundles up the garments and places them in the clothes hamper.

Peter and Salvatore are the owners of Whiz, which has a cleaning plant on 30^th Avenue and a drop-off branch nearby on 31^st Avenue.

They switch off between stores every other day, pulling six-day stints, which is why the bearded guy with the shirts is so knowledgeable about them and their SUVs.

Whiz was started in 1956, before Peter was born and around the time Salvatore was in diapers.

Their father, Michael, bought it in 1967, and the brothers started working there full time as soon as they graduated from high school.

Michael came to America from Potenza, Italy. A machinist, he worked in a restaurant on the weekends.

“He saw that you could make a lot of money from restaurants, so he bought one when he was 25,” Peter says, adding that he served as the chef there for eight years.

Michael got the idea to open a dry cleaners from his mother, who was a talented tailor.

“He went to get a haircut at an Italian barber and saw an ad in an Italian paper saying the dry cleaners was for sale,” Peter said. “He had settled in Lynbrook, Long Island, which is where Salvatore and I grew up.”



Michael had no connection to Astoria and didn’t know anything about the area but figured the shop, at 32-10 30^th Ave., would be profitable because it was close to a subway stop and there was a lot of foot traffic.

Besides which, his mother would help out – she was to be the tailor. So he invested his $15,000 and got to work making Whiz a success.

Michael worked many hours, probably far too many, and introduced his sons to the business when they were in elementary school.

“I couldn’t wait for Saturdays to come around so I could spend time with my father at the store,” Peter says. “I used to take care of the customers.”

When Salvatore, who is four years older than Peter, started working at Whiz full time, Michael opened a second store in 1976.

When Peter joined the team, Michael added store No. 3, at 37-02 31^st Ave.

“My father wanted each of us to have one,” Peter says, adding that he and Salvatore completed courses at a dry cleaning school.

In 1990, when Michael died – far too young at age 56 – Peter and Salvatore sold the store he had been manning.

“Salvatore and I always knew we would be working here,” Peter says. “We’ve never worked for anyone else. I can’t imagine what that would be like.”

The industry has undergone numerous changes through the decades, and Whiz has always kept ahead of the cleaning curve. Next year, it will become an organic operation.

“With our set-up, we do everything on-site ourselves,” Peter says, adding that the business will be rechristened Whiz Organic Cleaners. “We do it the right way – we inspect everything, and our machines are up to date.”

Sometimes, Peter, who is 58, and Salvatore, who is 62, think about retiring, but they really don’t know how they’d fill their time if they stayed away from Whiz.

Peter mentions that he recently bought a house in Jupiter, Florida. He thinks he may start splitting his time between the two states, but he hasn’t set a date for such a major move.

“Our children have their own careers, and none of them want to take Whiz over, so we’d have to sell it,” Peter says. “All we know is that when we leave, we will leave together.”

The idea of Whiz changing hands doesn’t really bother him.

“Everything in life has a beginning and an end,” he says and shrugs, adding that “we want to sell it to the right person so it keeps going.”

A customer comes in to pick up a jacket. She inspects its sleeve and exclaims, “Oh, you were able to get the stain out!”

Peter, as satisfied as she, smiles.



“My father would be very proud that we kept the business alive all these years,” he says.

On the wall by the cash register, there’s a laminated newspaper ad the family took out to memorialize Michael’s 86^th birthday. Peter and Salvatore see it every time they ring up a sale.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020.

Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhing@gmail.com; @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

Anthony, who is older by a decade and shorter by a half foot, didn’t leave the Italian restaurant/bar they’ve owned for three decades until nearly 2 in the morning. It’s barely 10 a.m., which means that he’s only had a couple hours sleep.

But it doesn’t matter. He’s glad to be here.

Up until September, when Sac’s Place moved to its new location at Kaufman Astoria Studios, Domenico and Anthony pretty much had their routines down pat.

Which means that they are used to working hard. But during the months-long transition, they have been going non-stop, their 10- to 12-hour days tumbling one into the other like clothes in a dryer.

“We haven’t had a day off yet,” Anthony says, not a trace of weariness in his voice.

Domenico, a tall man whose bright blue eyes remain undimmed by exhaustion, adds that “it’s been rough.”

Sac’s Place is an old-school Italian restaurant. Its homemade, farm-to-table, cook-to-order dishes range from pasta and pizza to Veal Domenico and Veal Antonio (named, of course, for the brothers). Its fresh vegetables come from a farm in Pennsylvania that Domenico and Anthony visit once or twice a week.

Sac’s Place is famous for, among other things, its fried Italian artichokes and its annual outdoor pig roasts (2019’s final one is Nov. 21).

“In Abruzzo, the little-known region of Italy where our family is from, the pig roasts celebrate the bounty of the harvest,” Anthony says. “I do the roasting under a tent while people mingle and eat antipasto and mini-sausages. Then we move inside for the feast.”

Sac’s Place’s recipes are from Domenico’s and Anthony’s mother, Maddalena, who worked with them every day up until her death in April at age 94 and a half.

“She came here to make sure we didn’t screw up,” Anthony says.

To hear Anthony and Domenico tell it, Maddalena, who arrived in America in 1955 and gave birth to her three sons in Astoria, was one of the best cooks in the tiny town of Orsogna.

“I have a distinct memory of her teaching me to cook when I was 5 or 6,” Domenico says. “I had been playing outside and came in early. She was making meatballs and tomato sauce and a lamb shoulder. I watched her and picked up everything.”

She taught him to make pasta – the secret is in how the dough feels in your fingers – and told him to trust his tongue.

“Her cooking was not an exact science,” he says. “On tomato sauce, she told me to make it any way I wanted the first time and then figure out how it should be changed to taste perfect.”

Anthony, too, learned his way around the kitchen at an early age.

“I always wanted to open a restaurant, and I dragged this poor guy into it with me,” he says, pointing to Domenico. “Every time I ate at restaurants, the food was so-so, and I kept saying that I could do it better.”

He had, in fact, said it so many times that the woman who became his wife got so fed up with his boasts that she made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“She told me to quit my career in finance and open a restaurant and she would support me for six months,” he says.

So he and Domenico made the plunge, opening a pizzeria in a small space at 29^th Street and Broadway in 1989.

“We spent a lot of time experimenting with the sauce recipe,” Domenico says. “And Anthony and I did everything – we were cooks, electricians, plumbers, handymen, pizza makers and bookkeepers.”

Their efforts won them a lot of customers, many of whom have been devoted diners for 30 years.

So it was quite a shock when Sac’s Place lost its lease and closed for three months to complete its move. (Just in case things didn’t work out, they opened a Sac’s Place pizzeria in Jackson Heights; it’s run by Anthony’s oldest son, Rocco.)

“We had one customer who was dying and came knocking on the door to buy one final slice of pizza,” Anthony says. “It was very sad – we were in the middle of moving; I had to tell him we couldn’t serve him.”

Sac’s Place has set up its new shop in the old Paramount Pictures commissary at Kaufman Astoria Studios.

In the olden golden days of the silver screen, stars like Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Bebe Daniels and the Marx Brothers dined there between takes.

Anthony points out a poster-size vintage black-and-white photo over one of the tables in the private dining room that shows them, frozen in time, at lunch.

He sets a hot-from-the-oven Mama’s Old Fashioned pizza on the table.

As the slices disappear, he notes that the true test of a great pie lies with the temperature.

“You should want to eat it cold the next morning,” he says.

Domenico and Anthony are looking forward to welcoming all of their old and new customers to Sac’s Place.

“It gives me great pleasure watching people eat dishes my mother taught us to make,” Anthony says.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020. Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com;  @nancyruhling; nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com,  astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by Nancy A. Ruhling

And so do Tiffany Hopkins and Katrina Olson and their cats, 9-year-old Homer and 13-year-old Thursday.

In this happy house, homemade biscuits are baking as Tiffany and Katrina set the breakfast table.

Their careers keep them busy and sometimes apart, so they do everything together, including the cooking and baking.

Homer, who, when he feels like it also answers to the nickname Bear, wanders into the living room for a treat. He’s been blind since the women rescued him from the street when he was a kitten.

It’s a lively household. The women chat – about big and small things. Tiffany possesses an infectious laugh that she lets loose liberally. It always makes Katrina crack up, too.

Tiffany and Katrina, who celebrated their love with a formal wedding in 2011, have been together since they met as college students nearly two decades ago.

Their won their complimentary ceremony in a contest that marked the passage of New York State’s Marriage Equality Act and were one of 24 couples who exchanged vows as a group in Central Park courtesy of The Knot.

“I had signed up, so they notified me that we won,” Katrina says. “I called up Tiffany and asked her whether she wanted to get married in two weeks.”

And Tiffany said: “Oh my God, are you proposing?”

They both said yes, a fact commemorated in their bedroom by a pair of pillows, each of which proudly bears the honorific “Mrs.”

It was their Texas ties and love of theater, among other commonalities, that made Tiffany and Katrina fall for each other even though they are separated by eight years.

Tiffany, who was born in Hillsboro, Texas, moved around a lot because her father had a career in the Army. She lived in Germany for a few years, returning to Hillsboro to attend the same community college her parents had gone to.

She chose to major in theater because the school offered her a scholarship in honor of her parents who had been in the program. After graduating, she transferred to Texas A&M University. She stopped her studies when she was offered a full-time job as a props runner at Yale Repertory Theatre.

After eight years there, she decided to return to school, subsequently earning a bachelor’s degree in media production and a master’s in journalism from Quinnipiac University.

Katrina, meanwhile, was pursuing a path that also would lead her to Yale.

Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, which is 170 miles north of Tiffany’s birthplace, Katrina lived in Budapest, Hungary for five years of her childhood when her parents worked for the U.S. Embassy there.

She fell in love with the stage when, at age 6, she saw a community theater production of “Annie.”

“I also saw a lot of plays in Budapest,” she says.

She studied theater at the University of North Texas and spent a study-abroad year in Glasgow, Scotland. She landed a stage management job with the Houston Grand Opera, where she worked until she went to the Yale School of Drama to earn her master’s degree.

By the time Katrina arrived there, Tiffany had already left to complete her own degrees and was producing videos for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.

“But all my friends were still at Yale, so I kept going back to see them,” Tiffany says, adding that Katrina soon became one of them.

After dating for a while, Tiffany and Katrina moved in together.

When Katrina finished her studies, she took a job with the Public Theater, and as Tiffany says with a big smile, “dragged us to New York City.”

For a year, they commuted between cities then moved to Astoria in 2008.

Katrina recently became the senior events manager for the Pop Culture Collaborative in Manhattan, while Tiffany remains the multi-media producer for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.

Sometimes, they work remotely.

They’ve spent a lot of time turning their apartment into a cozy home. From the mason-jar pendant light over the living room table to the cube-shaped dresser in the bedroom, which includes a ground-level cat door, virtually everything is hand-made.

“Tiffany is super-handy,” Katrina says.

And every item has personal significance.

Right above the “LOVE LIVES HERE” sign, there are two oil paintings whose fancy gold frames kiss like lovers. One is of Tiffany’s childhood home; the other is the house Katrina grew up in.

Below it, there is a wooden sign that adds “always & forever.”

Tiffany and Katrina love their lives together. They enjoy each other’s company so much that they can’t complete a conversation without smiling and laughing.

It would be nice, they decide, to make jam to spread on their homemade biscuits.

“I’ve always wanted to try to do it,” Tiffany says.

“We should go berry picking,” Katrina says.

“We could pick blueberries in New Haven,” Tiffany says.

“We should put it on the calendar for the next weekend,” Katrina says.

Astoria Characters Day is Sept. 13, 2020.

Sponsored by Bareburger, it’s a free, public event.

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhing@gmail.com; @nancyruhling, nruhling on Instagram, nancyruhling.com, astoriacharacters.com.

Copyright 2019 by NancyA. Ruhling