Gabriel Hamilton
Home:: Hollis
Height:  5’11
Weight:  240

    Gabriel Hamilton aspires to model or act professionally for television or film. He gets plenty of practice without a camera or stage. 

Hamilton, who hopes to begin work as a model in television commercials, lives in Hollis, teaches eighth grade English and American History at IS 238, and coaches the school’s basketball team.

    Frequently in front of an audience, Hamilton is able to apply some of the skills he’s learning in the acting classes he takes in his free time at Camera Two Studios in Forest Hills . 

    “I’m trying to break into the business,” said Hamilton, who is originally from South Carolina .  “Acting is my first passion.” 

    The graduate of Ohio State University moved back to New York after working for a community outreach organization in Columbus , which he called “Slowlumbus,” when compared with the fast-paced life here in Queens .

      Hamilton said he prefers the faster life here in the Big Apple because it is easier to stay up to speed with current clothes and music. 

    “When I first moved out to Ohio , I noticed people smiling at me a lot,” said the graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School .  “I’m from Queens ,” he said. “I didn’t really understand what they were doing.”

Did Flake Endorse Bloomberg?

    Mike Bloomberg’s recent visit to a Queens church showed signs of not only a closet comedian in our new mayor, but a hopeful two-termer, too.

    Bloomie enjoyed himself at a December appearance at the Allen A.M.E. Cathedral, where he played around with Rev. Floyd Flake’s various titles before making some hopeful speculations about his own future one.

    “Because of his new job,” the mayor said about Flake, a former U.S. congressman longtime Allen A.M.E. pastor and current president of Wilberforce University , “I wasn’t sure whether I should thank Reverend Flake or President Flake.  I know that at some point people were thinking of calling him ‘Mayor Flake.’  For today, I’ve decided on Reverend Flake.”

    Bloomberg joked that Flake didn’t endorse him during his bid for mayor, to which Flake responded that he would endorse Bloomberg for his reelection campaign.

    “If the press is here,” Bloomberg said, “please get that down.  This is my first endorsement for reelection.”

    Representatives for both Flake and Bloomberg described the exchange as nothing more than flirtatious banter, but didn’t entirely dismiss an actual endorsement in the future.

    “They really were just playing around,” said Flake spokesman Greg Larkin after a brief chuckle.  “There really was no endorsement.  [Flake] was purely tongue-in-cheek.  There’s no endorsement right now for Bloomberg or any other candidate.”

    Larkin added that the message of the exchange was “Now, he’s our mayor, and we’re behind him.”

    A Bloomberg aide who witnessed the incident said, “Obviously you can’t hold someone to something like that.”

    However, the aide added, “Flake’s a pretty savvy politician, I don’t think he would’ve said something like that without understanding how people would take it.”

A Sexual Hot Corner

In a perfect example of visual irony, sexual politics in Queens recently got a new twist.

The other day, a QConfidential scribe noticed that among the newspaper boxes on Queens Boulevard at the corner of Union Turnpike was a new one, for the weekly newspaper Gay City News (GCN).

Borough Hall's corner

The paper — and its bright yellow distribution boxes — has been popping up all over the increasingly diverse borough without much fanfare, but the subject matter — all things gay and urban — hardly reflects Kew Gardens, home to lots of old ladies in cozy Tudor homes.

The visual irony comes from the fact that the box is right in front of “Civic Virtue,” a classical sculpture that features a very proud, very naked young man standing unfazed by two women — named “Corruption” and “Vice” — grabbing at his feet, that has faced the wrath of women’s and ‘decency’ groups ever since the day it first appeared in public, in City Hall Park in 1914.

Except for the full nudity and female hangers-on, the sculpture at the corner of Borough Hall, could easily be of a model featured in GCN.

The sculpture, according to a local political player and history buff Jeff Gottlieb, was brought to its current Borough Hall location in 1941.  Kew Gardens historian Barry Lewis said the move was done when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia got tired of being mooned by the buff young man every time he stepped out of his office.

Borough President Helen Marshall said early in her tenure that she’d like to “do something about” the sculpture, but never elaborated.  Her spokesman, Dan Andrews, hasn’t returned a call about the sculpture as of press time.

Sizing Up Officials

A City Sanitation official and an elected official sized each other up at a recent town hall meeting in Lefrak City . At the meeting held by Queens Councilwoman Helen Sears, State Assemblyman Jeff Aubry jokingly was challenged by Sanitation official Tom Fitzgerald to come up to the podium to see which towering official was taller.  Fitzgerald said that he was 6’6 and a half inches, which Aubry also argued was his height.         

Fitzgerald said, “Assemblyman, you’re not the tallest in the room. I think I’ve got you beat by that much,” enlivening and entertaining the room of Lefrak City residents, as they stood side by side. 

No Parking!

The parking woes that neighborhood leaders around St. John’s University in Hillcrest have been complaining about for years have appeared to become common knowledge.

On a recent edition of the Z Morning Zoo radio show on New York ’s Z100, gossip queen Danielle Monaro stated that she was visiting her alma mater, St. John’s , to be a guest on the school’s radio station WSJU. Elvis Duran, the host of the Zoo, immediately responded, “Good luck finding parking there.”

Maybe those civic leaders have a point, after all.