Most people don’t realize it but raptors (birds of prey) migrate in good numbers along the Rockaway peninsula this time of year. On Sunday, October 17, more than 120 people attended the popular annual Raptorama Festival at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

 Bobby Horvath, a fireman who rescues and rehabilitates raptors and other wildlife, brought 20 disabled raptors to show them ‘up close and personal’ to the delight of children (of all ages) in the crowd. Attending birds included a Bald Eagle

People are nice. I mean, I know you don’t usually catch me saying that. The opposite is true so often I can’t go twenty minutes without saying people suck, people are a-holes, people are slobs, effin people…See? People make me curse but I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna do it, because….well, people are nice.

I come to this realization (which will have minimal staying power) because, recently, so many people have said if there’s anything they can do, I should just let them know.

 Rockaway’s swim star Tess Howley continues to impress. The 16-year-old Neponsit resident recently returned from Europe where she participated as part of Team USA in the FINA Swimming World Cup. Howley came home with some new accolades to her name including a few broken records, a couple medals, including gold, and a new title as the fastest teenager in the world this year in the 200m butterfly.

Howley made waves this summer when she returned home to a big Rockaway-style welcome parade in June

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Volunteers Needed. The Friends of Tribute Park have received 500 daffodil bulbs from the Daffodil Project. These are to be planted Saturday October 30 at 10 a.m. Please bring gloves and a trowel. Questions? Send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Well, Curtis Sliwa, the mayoral candidate, running on the republican side, ditched the Tuesday evening Belle Harbor Property Owners Association (BHPOA) meeting at PS 114 after committing to it weeks ago. Seems he had to prep for last

OCTOBER 21

Wil Pops Gilliard was born.

1879 - Thomas Edison invented a workable incandescent electric lamp.

OCTOBER 22

Janine DaSilva was born.

Janet Jenkusky Brady was born.

1962 - President Kennedy announced an air and naval blockade of Cuba, following the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.

1979 - The deposed Shah of Iran, was allowed in the United States for medical treatment. This action led to the Iran hostage crisis.

OCTOBER 23

Annette Lord was born.

On Wednesday, October 13 at around 6:35 p.m., a woman was struck by a vehicle in a hit and run near Duane Reade.

Police responded to a 911 call around Beach 116th Street and Beach Channel Drive last Wednesday. According to an NYPD spokesperson, a Nissan Maxima was traveling westbound on Beach Channel Drive at Beach 116th Street when it struck a 20-year-old female pedestrian traveling south to north over Beach Channel Drive.  The driver then fled from the scene. EMS responded and transported

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Volunteers Needed. The Friends of Tribute Park have received 500 daffodil bulbs from the Daffodil Project. These are to be planted Saturday October 30 at 10 a.m. Please bring gloves and a trowel. Questions? Send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Well, Curtis Sliwa, the mayoral candidate, running on the republican side, ditched the Tuesday evening Belle Harbor Property Owners Association (BHPOA) meeting at PS 114 after committing to it weeks ago. Seems he had to prep for last

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We don’t visit the Upper West Side or Park Slope often so it’s hard to find a fan of Mayor Bill de Blasio and now sports fans throughout the City have another reason to sneer at the mayor. He’s the first mayor in a hundred years to hold office and not celebrate a major championship by New York teams. Instead of embracing the team of his adopted city, he continued to cheer for the Bostin Red Sox, a tone-deaf move among many of his tone-deaf moves. (Remember he took a boat to Rockaway soon

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Several Good Samaritans came to the aid of a woman who’d fallen off her bike and knocked unconscious last Saturday morning on Cronston Avenue. Sarah Palmer, and a couple of young ladies called 911 and others, including Jim Moriarty and Brian Kelly, helped comfort the woman and alerted the family. The woman is recovering and doing well.

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Facebook and Instagram went down on Monday. The general health of people soared for a few hours. Meanwhile, local newspapers continued without a

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We have such a backlog with our Local Color feature (photos sent in by our readers) we couldn’t see straight last week and misidentified some of the photos (the names from the previous week carried over into last week). We think we’ve got it straightened out this week. As always, thanks for sending in the photos and helping our paper be that much more colorful.

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Interesting. The City Council race between Joann Ariola and Felicia Singh will be one of the more closely watched races

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Wow, we’d gotten used to the idea that the old Neponsit Home was going to be there like the Egyptian pyramids. But no, it’s coming down. As we reported, back in February, the NYC Health and Hospitals Corp handed over the Neponsit Home to NYC Parks which made plans to raze the structure which hasn’t had patients since 1998. Parks plans to select a contractor to do the demo by the end of the year.

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The New York State Independent Redistricting Commission is a bipartisan Commission

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To our Jewish friends: Gmar chatima tova as they observe Yom Kippur.

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Our thoughts are with the friends and family of Mike Melfi, a young, local ironworker who died in a work-related incident on Tuesday. Melfi also bartended at Bungalow Bar and was known as the life of the party. He will be missed.

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This past September 11 was particularly hard for many people. The Friends of Tribute Park, the people who do so much to make that oasis a special place, deserve heaps of credit

 Dear Editor:

The positions of the two candidates running to fill Eric Ulrich’s 32nd City Council seat could not be more different.

Are you happy with the jump in gun violence and deaths on our streets and the law and order breakdown currently in New York City? Then vote for Felicia Singh. She wants to defund the police.

Do you think Rockaway, Howard Beach, Ozone Park and Woodhaven need new local businesses of prostitution and neighborhood injection sites? Vote for Felicia Singh, because she

 Dear Editor:

Presently, the Army Corps wants to lay tons of concrete on our beach in their one stop solution to erosion/protection/maintenance; nature be damned. Why? 

Up until 1998, twice a year, Parks, in partnership with Sanitation, would maintain our beaches. In summer, workers from Parks and Sanitation pooled men and heavy machinery scaling the sand height from the back of our beaches down to the tide line following markings on measured bamboo poles they implanted. In autumn, sand

 Dear Editor:

So, I just sat down with Kevin Boyle’s weekly rag - which I always love. However, in his weekly “Boiling Points” I must correct an assertion made, and it’s really kind of pathetic that I have to make this point: Mr. Boyle, the proper vernacular is The River Shannon!! NOT The Shannon River!! I ought to know and frankly, so should you!!  Haha!! Keep up the great work.

  Patrick Shannon

(Publisher's Note: You’ve ruined my day. PS: It’s Boyleing Points. So there.)

 Dear Editor:

Voters in the western half of Rockaway and the rest of District 32 have some soul searching to do before casting their ballots for city council on November 2. Chair of the Queens Republican Party, Joann Ariola, is running as the successor to her ‘good friend’ Councilman Eric Ulrich. Although the banners and signs you’ve likely seen all over the peninsula do not list her party, she has proclaimed herself the “commonsense candidate” and it is with the utmost sense of urgency that

 Dear Editor,

In community meetings, I often hear that the beaches in Belle Harbor will be required to have eight crossover ramps after the new dune is built and that the number can be dropped to four if the ramps are connected. However, that is not what the law says. According to the ABA, the required number of access points for the disabled in Belle Harbor/Neponsit is two, not four or eight.

Federal guidelines require no more than one-half mile of shoreline between access points. Hence, we

Dear Editor –

I just read, former Chief of Transit, Joe Fox’s recent Letter to the Editor (10-7-21) regarding the importance of voting on November 2 and to VOTE for candidates who will turn our city around such as Joann Ariola (New York City Council District 32) and others like her.  I’d like to add that this election is especially important as there are five New York State constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Proposals 1, 3, and 4 deal with voting. BALLOT PROPOSALS: 1). AN AMENDMENT

Driving in New York City is a video game. It reminds me of the old video game Pole Position and the newer one Grand Theft Auto. My nephew, Tyler, plays a game where he drives like a lunatic and laughs. He runs things over, crashes and then can hop into a new car. It seems these games are becoming more real.

People in New York City, especially Rockaway and Broad Channel, need to learn how to drive. What people also need to do is to learn simple driver’s etiquette. PS: I really only drive from

Over the years my family, friends and I have all worked in the restaurant industry. I used to say everyone should have to do a semester of hospitality work to become empathetic with the workers and understand walking a mile in their shoes. Unfortunately, not everyone has taken that semester of working in the restaurant industry, so a lesson in restaurant etiquette is needed. Since I know so many people in the industry, I sent out a few texts to servers from local restaurants and this is what

Thank you so much for all of your emails this past week. Everyone seems to be on the same page with people needing beach etiquette. I just want to note these rules are for everyone, not just our visitors. I just am so sad we had such a poor weather weekend that we could not try to implement the rules. 

Here are some we ran out of room for last week:

Rule 4: PDA. Our beach is a public beach, not a private beach on a romantic getaway. You may hold hands but do not make out in the water or on

I should have had this column in last week, but I did not know it was going to be such a spectacular weekend. I usually do not go swimming this early in the year and I almost went in for a dip!

Here is my annual beach etiquette column and it is for all of our new residents and our visitors that were pouring off of the ferry this past week. One loyal reader said Kevin should place my column as one of the photos on the boardwalk, but my suggestion has been ignored! 

Rule 1: When you get to the

For those of you who read my column regularly, you know I am a high school English teacher. One of the reasons I love being an English teacher is I get paid to do what I love: teaching reading and writing and oftentimes spreading that love to my students. Being an English teacher is challenging, but there is nothing greater than when students inform you about their enjoyment for a novel or short story you just finished.

During the last month of “regular school” in 2020, my ninth grade class

Mother’s Day has a long history. According of History.com, the Greeks and Romans had festivals honoring mothers and England had celebrations during Lent to honor mothers. The American holiday can be traced back to Anna Jarvis from West Virginia, who around the time of the Civil War, started “Mother’s Day Work Clubs,” which helped mothers learn skills to raise their children. Ms. Jarvis then changed the focus of the club to “Mother’s Friendship Day,” where mothers of former Confederate and Union