A few nights ago, I drove to Staten Island to look for one of our city’s most dynamic ethnic communities. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Sri Lankans live on the island, and they have worked hard to preserve as much of their culture as possible. While I sat eating fish, lentil cookies and vegetable pastries, I noticed that this small, steam table restaurant is far more than a place to buy a meal. Over the course of our one-hour meal, at least 20 people popped in to pick up some much needed snacks from the restaurant’s owner, a much loved, utterly charismatic woman who stands like a gracious queen behind her counter. The neighboring grocery store is equally friendly, functioning as a Sri Lankan sundry for most of its customers and a sort-of anthropological museum for the few other people who happen to stop by. If you listen to our audile recording, you will hear the owner of the grocery welcoming his customers.

• New Asha Sri Lankan Restaurant website >>

Thanks Lynne for sending me to a new place in the 5 boroughs of New York, Queens! I have long wanted to explore the Roosevelt subway stop area which centers on Roosevelt Avenue filled with Asian Indian restaurants, sari shops, and, voila Le Henna womens’ beauty salon. The young woman artist who designed my hand was so surprised that I didn’t want an elaborate design, but rather, one that could be completed in the 2 to 3 minute video clip you asked of me. There she is, there are our ears, our hands. Wedded for 3 minutes! Of course, I immediately went to the nearby store and bought my own henna ready to draw the body brown line beauty brown.

The borough of The Bronx was a wonderful place to shoot movies when I lived there. If you needed jungles and mountain streams there was always either The Bronx Botanical Gardens or Van Cortlandt Park. For prairie settings an area near Bruckner Blvd. was ideal and for seaside vistas there was Orchard Beach. A magnificent setting, bleak and empty (like an Antonioni film), was the wasteland which is now occupied by Co-op City. For bombed out, war locales a vast stretch of tenements that stood in the projected path of the Cross-Bronx Expressway made apocalyptic visions possible. For inspiration there was always the unobtrusive structure named GOLD MEDAL STUDIOS where scenes from the Marlon Brando, Joanne Woodward, Anna Magnani film called, THE FUGITIVE KIND was shot. And then there was the splendor of the PARADISE THEATER on Fordham Road; a true movie palace of incredible opulence. What more could a budding filmmaker want? The sexual frustrations and religious traditions also helped fuel the imagination and the full-bodied figures of many Bronxites added fuel to the furnace of seething passions. Though the scenery may have shifted and changed here and there the dreams continue so follow that yellow stained brick road, who ever you are, and become the thing you always wanted to be! Good luck!”