Rush Shah
Home: Rego Park
Age: 20
Height: 5’11’’
Weight: 140
Hair: Black
UModels.com
UModel # 8304

Intellect and good looks gush from Rush Shah, a 20-year-old Rego Park resident who has posed for the popular clothing company J. Crew and was featured in television commercials promoting products like bicycles and chocolate in his native city of Bombay, India.

Shah said that he has always been interested in modeling, but his first true passion is tennis. 

He is a member of the tennis team at SUNY at Stonybrook, where Shah is a junior, and he loves the competitive nature of the game. 

“I’ve always been interested in anything competitive,” he said, adding that he enjoys testing the limits of his strength and weaknesses.

Shah loves the game so much that he was a ball boy at the U.S. Open held at the USTA at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park this year. The highlight of the job was working during a match with Pete Sampras, as well as a brushing with fame in the form of Tim Henman, the British pro and, Rush’s idol.

Shah’s propensity to taking on a challenge has translated into his ultimate career goal of becoming a financial analyst. He said he has always held an interest in business and has learned what it takes from his parents who were stockbrokers.   

A graduate of Stuyvesent High School, Shah emigrated to the U.S. in 1994 from India where he attended boarding school.

Food From the Grave

When a QConfer was recently searching the internet for a restaurant to eat at, she came upon a CNN website called “CNN Food Central.”

Thinking that a CNN site must be reliable and up-to-date, she searched the large database and found an entry for the restaurant “The Greatest Bar on Earth.” It described: live music from Thursday to Saturday; jeans and sneakers not allowed; major credit cards accepted. All of this would be great, of course, had The Greatest Bar on Earth not been located at the top of the World Trade Center.

The fact that QConf had accidentally stumbled upon this entry became even more eerie upon reading further: “There’s also a wine-connoisseur’s heaven called Cellar in the Sky.” Heaven? Cellar in the Sky? Creepy.

Intrigued, we looked further and, as expected, found the entry for Windows on the World, the ultra fancy restaurant that was also located on top of the now fallen World Trade Center. After describing a $25 million renovation and “an unbeatable view,” the entry for the posh place mentioned, “out of this world international cuisine.” But rest assured: “No smoking permitted.”

CNN? Can you rely on the news?

Great Job?

    Let’s hear it for the Queens gubernatorial candidates.

Cuomo Cronin

    Andrew Cuomo, the Jamaica Estates native who was forced to concede the Democratic line to the immensely unsuccessful Carl McCall in September, received less than one percent of the vote on the Liberal line during the Nov. 5 general election, tallying only 16,417 votes and being beaten by Marijuana Reform Party candidate Thomas Leighton, the man who believes farmers Upstate should grow hemp for industrial purposes. As a result of Cuomo’s performance which did not tally 50,000 votes, the Liberals will not retain their all-important ballot-line for the first time in 58 years.

    The other Queensite in the race, Right To Life Party candidate Gerard Cronin – a former teacher at St. Francis Prep High School in Fresh Meadows – also was unable to scrape together 50,000 votes to salvage his party’s line, but did gain a mighty one percent of the vote, and received about 42,000 nods.

            In fact, the only third parties that retained their ballot lines on Election Day were the Independence, Conservative and Working Families parties, because Green Party candidate Stanley Aronowitz also did not get 50,000 votes. Hey, at least he’s not from Queens.

Wonderful World

    Queens’ most treasured vocal performer is honoring Queens’ most coveted jazz legend.  In a newly-released album titled “A Wonderful World,” singer Tony Bennett, who was born and raised in Astoria as Anthony Dominick, along with singer k.d. lang pay tribute to Louis Armstrong, who made his home in Corona.

    According to the Tony Bennett website, the album features 12 “Satchmo” classics that have been interpreted by Bennett and lang, and includes solo and duo renditions of the two artists. 

    Bennett, best known for “I Left My Heart My Heart In San Francisco,” is reported to have been a singing waiter when he lived in Astoria and attended the School of Art and Design, where he first pursued one of his two loves, that is, painting... before he decided to go along with a singing career instead. 

    Armstrong lived in Corona with his wife, who bought the property in 1942.