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MARK SERRANO says he spends 98 percent of his money on sneakers and the rest on food. He looks it. Thin as a skeleton, he sports spotless black Nikes — one of more than 200 pairs he owns. But collecting every new shoe he likes can pose a problem: how to make the rest of his outfit live up to his footwear, especially given new sneaker styles with hard-to-match metallic finishes in offbeat colors like cranberry and copper. Problem solved. For a growing number of sneaker fanatics, Da Bakery, a Bronx store specializing in graffiti-inspired clothing, cranks out custom-designed T-shirts,...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal authorities raided a government-funded clinic run by the state Senate's majority leader, one day after New York's attorney general accused him of siphoning $14 million from it. About a dozen FBI and IRS agents and investigators from the attorney general's office appeared Wednesday at the Soundview Healthcare Network in the Bronx, where a big canopy above the front door lists Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. as its president and CEO.....

A Bronx charter school is under fire from parents who say a teacher bullied kids -- and even forced one child to tell his crush, a girl, that he was gay. According to court papers filed this week, the teacher, Jared Alessandroni, 29, threatened to "out" a straight 9-year-old boy, James Pastrana, to his class at the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, unless James told his crush he was gay. "I was so humiliated," said Pastrana, who reluctantly scribbled the false confession in a note to the girl. "It started to spread around the whole...

High unemployment is spreading in New York City beyond the poorest neighborhoods to once-secure middle-class enclaves, where some residents are falling behind on rent and mortgage payments. Among the hardest-hit spots are the northern Bronx and southeastern Queens. Both areas have seen unemployment double since the third quarter of 2007, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "The recovery in the labor market is a long way off and it will be a long time coming to middle-income neighborhoods," said James Parrott, the institute's deputy director and chief economist. Close to half of all New Yorkers work...

Bronx advocates said that the City Council vote on Monday to reject a $310 million project to build a mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory provided an opportunity to come up with a more community-oriented plan for the massive red-brick castle. City Council members who voted down the project 45 to 1, with one abstention, said that the plan, proposed by the Related Companies, would have created hundreds of jobs that would have paid at or around the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, pay that they called too low to support local families. They wanted Related to pledge that...

She went out with a bang, and it's left her Bronx family fuming. Glatha Byrd's final send-off was "apocalyptic" -- as the hearse carrying her body exploded and caught fire on the Major Deegan Expressway, says family lawyer James Franzetti. The family has filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court over the May 13, 2008, incident, accusing the Griffin Peters Funeral Home of causing some of Byrd's relatives "severe and serious" injuries. Valerie Davis, wife of the Harlem funeral home's owner, Keith Davis, called the suit "ridiculous." She said she had heard the relatives, who are also related to her...

In the Bronx, a Clash of Cultures Turns Violent Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Community leaders organized meetings at Al Tawba mosque in Claremont to address fear and frustration expressed by many local West African immigrants who have experienced tensions with the local black American residents. Published: October 19, 2009 The storefronts on a stretch of Webster Avenue in the Claremont neighborhood in the South Bronx tell the story of local shifts as well as any census: a Senegalese-run 99-cent store, an African video store, an African-run fast-food spot, a mosque, several African restaurants. A Community Struggles The owner of...

It's the fried-chicken defense. A lawyer for one of four men accused of plotting to bomb Bronx synagogues complained on Thursday that a government informant plied the suspects with food. "You can't watch the tapes that you don't see eating going on," said Marilyn Reader, lawyer

SNIPPET: "The flames broke out around 11 p.m. in the mosque on East 166th Street in Morrisania and then spread. It took several hours to get it under control. Three firefighters were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. "The whole place was gone. The fire started inside the store and it was burning for like two hours and then everything started blowing, exploding," said local resident Lenroy Carr. The cause is still under investigation."

Workers at the Stella D'oro cookie factory in the Bronx were still in shock Thursday as the news sunk in that the business had been sold and was moving to Ohio. They wondered how they'd pay their rents and mortgages, how they'd find another job in today's recession and what they'd do without health insurance. "My family is going to suffer," said Evelyn Rivera, a packer at the plant for the past two years. "This is so sad. The company has been here for more than 70 years." Machine operator Juan Torres, 51, said he doesn't know if he'll have...

A decade ago, the idea of staging a gay pride event in the Bronx was unheard of. Today, organizers say a new day is dawning in the borough as neighbors and even some elected officials are supporting the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) community's fourth annual Bronx Pride Festival, to be held Saturday at Baretto Point Park in Hunts Point. Along with featured performers and information booths about HIV prevention and gay marriage, this year's Pride Festival will be more family oriented, with booths for cotton candy, clowns making balloon animals and other entertainment. "We are seeing this year's Pride...

A Bronx woman is under arrest in the fatal beating of a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor in his Upper East Side apartment, and a manhunt is on for her male accomplice, sources said yesterday.

NEW YORK - Two young women have been named best couple at their Bronx high school. Seniors Vikky Cruz and Deoine Scott beat out two opposite-sex couples for the honor at Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School.

Schwartz for News Rabbi Avi Weiss speaking at an earlier event in support of Israel. He told congregants at the the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale Saturday not to blame Islam for the recent plot to bomb synagogues. In the Bronx neighborhood targeted by a terror plot, a prominent rabbi cautioned Sabbath worshippers Saturday against condemning the Muslim religion. "We dare not condemn Islam over this one act," Rabbi Avi Weiss told congregants at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Weiss' temple was not targeted in the alleged conpsiracy, but two other Riverdale synagogues were. The four Jew-hating suspects were homegrown...

President Obama has done a lot of speechifying in recent days about America's "responsibilities" in fighting terror. So you'd think he'd have a word of encouragement for the team of crack FBI agents and NYPD officers that foiled a real-life terror attack against two Bronx synagogues on Wednesday. Alas, not a peep. Obama yesterday spoke at commencement ceremonies at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. -- largely rehashing the themes of his address the day before on terror detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay. "As Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals," he said....

They were like a million other petty criminals -- until they embraced radical Islam behind bars, launching a terrifying march to a planned mass murder that ended only when authorities sabotaged their sinister plot. "He was not born Muslim. He's an institutional Muslim," said Richard Williams, uncle of Onta Williams, one of the four Bronx terror suspects. "He wasn't raised that way." Richard Williams said that his 32-year-old nephew fell under the sway of dangerously radical Islamo-fascists while serving time on drug charges -- and that he became "brainwashed" after his mother died and his ex-wife fought him for custody...

EXCLUSIVE: Four New York City men were arrested Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up New York City synagogues and other city locations, WNBC's Jonathan Dienst has learned. Raids by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force in the Bronx captured the suspected ringleader and three followers in what law enforcement sources are calling a homegrown terrorist plot. Investigators stress the suspects' meetings had been infiltrated early on and there was "no chance" the alleged plot could succeed. Investigators said several of the suspects are Muslims who allegedly talked about destroying two Jewish temples, including at least one...

Despite his high approval ratings, President Obama still has a lot to prove as far as appointments go, given the scandals that have surrounding many of his cabinet appointments. And this is on top of the loose-cannon known as Vice President Biden. The success and smoothness of President Obama’s next few significant decisions are vital. Somewhat serendipitously, the most important decision for him yet, both politically and personally, has just landed on his desk. Just a week ago, and ironically on Obama’s 100th day in office, Supreme Court Justice David Souter, sent a letter informing the president of his decision...

after a teacher made a bomb threat, ... The teacher was reported to have been barricaded inside a classroom... The school, Junior High School 145, the Arturo Toscanini School, is at 1000 Teller Avenue, near East 165th Street, in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.

A woman with "a heart for Jesus" was shot in the stomach Sunday by an errant arrow that came flying out of the Bronx sky as she was dropping off churchgoers at a nursing home. Denise Delgado-Brown, 50, of Yonkers, clutched the shaft of the 30-inch long arrow that pierced her 2 inches above her bellybutton and screamed for her friends to call 911. "They shot me with an arrow," Delgado-Brown moaned incredulously as she staggered behind her maroon Kia SUV and collapsed. -snip- As night fell, the phantom archer remained on the loose.