Word: polished
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Mongrel New York, always a port of entry and always a slightly hysterical place, is now becoming even more eclectic, more jazzed up and redolent. Manhattan has a Ukrainian neighborhood that overlaps Polish and Puerto Rican sections, Brooklyn a Lebanese quarter just north of formerly Scandinavian, now Hispanic, Sunset Park. In the Balkanized Astoria neighborhood -- one part of one borough -- there are some 5,000 Croatians from Yugoslavia; 1,800 Colombians; 6,200 immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. In the Flushing section of Queens, a few miles east, there are 38,000 Koreans. Before he explored...
...foreign born. Building prices doubled and tripled in one year in parts of Flushing. Tiny shops there now rent for $1,000 a month and up; so-so one-bedroom apartments 45 minutes from Manhattan go for $600. In Brooklyn's predominantly Puerto Rican Greenpoint section, the surge of Polish immigrants has, just since 1983, helped turn undistinguished $40,000 row houses into undistinguished $150,000 row houses...
...only Hispanics, of course, who are tempted to hunker down in an insular subculture. "In the summer," says Emmanuel Pratsinakis, a Greek Orthodox priest in Briarwood, Queens, "the air is full of the sound of children shouting in Greek. This community gives a feeling of security." "Polish Greenpoint is comfortable, familiar," says Ponanta, the typesetter. "You stay as long as you need to, then move out to Queens, to Manhattan." Assimilation still seems inexorable. "We want to be part of American culture," says Richard Ou of Flushing. The Russian New Yorkers may keep eating piroshki forever, but, says Sima Blokh...
...most distinguished is North Point Press, whose volumes are models of polish and elegance: many of its paperbacks have dust jackets. The house was founded seven years ago by Real Estate Millionaire William Turnbull, 59, and Bookstore Owner and former Salesman Jack Shoemaker, 39. Turnbull, whose bulk and authority give him the aura of an editorial-cartoon plutocrat, chose the name because "if you know which way north is you can't get lost." The firm moved into a converted church and rectory in Berkeley in January 1980. The quarters were chosen, says the founder, "because we knew we would...
...Polish government granted amnesty to more than 600 political prisoners last year. Since then, however, according to dissidents, it has arrested about 100 activists. Last week's trial was another sign that the truce is over. The court prohibited the defendants from meeting privately with their lawyers and barred Western journalists and international observers from the proceedings. The trial, declared Walesa in a letter to the Polish parliament, represents "an escalation of lawlessness." After eleven days of court sessions, the three dissidents were found guilty and given prison terms ranging from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years. The U.S. reacted...