Maria Alvarez
STILL MUY BONITA - CRI$IS ROCKS LA ISLA - BUT TOURISM IS BOOMING WHEN a government lockdown put thousands of civil servants out of work in May, travel to Puerto Rico spiked. However, According to tourism officials, the economic nightmare that saw 100,000...
SCHOLAR DOLLARS - PROGRAM HELPS KIDS PAY TUITION SCHOLARSHIP winner and Puerto Rican Day parade shining star Angel Ayala of The Bronx is on his way to Yale this fall to study astronomy and physics. At five, he...
POINTE PLEASANT - QUEENS WATERFRONT GETS FENG SHUI TOWNHOUSES WE’VE heard of feng shui – a Chinese practice of arranging space and objects to create a more harmonious environment – working in small apartments and office buildings, but on...
HEY, JUDY - ACTRESS NAVIGATES HOLLYWOOD MINEFIELD OF LATINA STEREOTYPES SOFT-SPOKEN and sweet, Judy Marte is the antithesis of the gritty character she plays in the upcoming indie film, “On the Outs.” The moving drama tells the story of three...
BROOM WITH A VIEW - FORMER PORTER 'CLEANS UP' AS CEO OF HIS OWN COMPANY BECOMING CEO of the company where you used to work scrubbing toilets may seem like an impossible feat to most people – but not to 36-year-old Brooklynite Michael Rodriguez, who,...
MAGICAL MARILYN - PUERTO RICAN ACTRESS SPARKES ON STAGE AND SCREEN HARLEM born-and-raised actress Marilyn Torres isn ‘t stressing about her role as a maid in the new film “Bernard and Doris ” – the story of tobacco heiress Doris Duke...
PEDAL-PUSH PEDDLERS 'AD' MORE TRAFFIC Look out! Michael Dudich is about to add yet another wrinkle to New York’s ever-changing and crowded streetscape: bicycle-drawn billboard advertising. The 48-year-old businessman feels the city, which has seen...
DESIGN OF THE TIMES - QUEENS WHIZ STARTS GRAPHIC BIZ Danny Gonzalez is a Queens boy through-and-through – never taking no for answer and never flinching at a job, whether it’s a small affair or a colossal undertaking. Gonzalez is...
STAMP AND DELIVER - NEW POSTAL ARTWORK CELEBRATES THE MAGIC OF LATIN DANCE SALSA’S explosive, swirling moves are caught in a dreamy freeze-frame by artist José Ortega, designer of a U.S. postal stamp that celebrates Latin dance. “I wanted to get that angle...