Photos By Steve Azzara - steveazzara.com

Marsha
Cambria Heights
Age: 23
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 135 lbs.
Stats: 34-26-36
Black Cartel

Her name is Marsha, but she is far from being the Brady Bunch type.

This Marsha means business, especially when it comes to modeling.

This beauty of Jamaican descent grew up between Queens and Florida spending much of her childhood living with her mom in Cambria Heights.

About a year ago she said to herself, “I’m not getting any younger” and decided to live out her dream to be a model.

We are thankful for that.

While at a New York beauty contest Marsha met Derrick Jones — founder of the Southeast Queens-based modeling agency Black Cartel.

“There are a million people out there, but he was sincere,” she said.

After hooking up with Black Cartel, which currently represents her, Marsha has been  involved in several beauty contests and has done photo shoots and fashion shows for several up-and-coming urban designers.

And after graduating from the University of Florida in Gainesville recently, Marsha has more time to pursue her career – a welcome change she told us.

“Gainesville was a real hick town,” she said.

Although Marsha remains a part of the New York-Florida jet set, when in Queens you might catch her scoping out the streets of Jamaica Avenue searching for the perfect Jamaican beef patty – her favorite treat.

Getting Funked In Jamaica, Queens

    When a group of nine Jamaica funk musicians played a reunion concert at The Bottom Line recently, they transformed the downtown club — just blocks from famous Manhattan landmarks like Washington Square Park, Tower Records and New York University — into a piece of Southeast Queens for a few hours.

From the evening's program

    The show, which included a song called “Funkin’ For Jamaica,” was one-night-only and the magic was fleeting.  But organizers were smart enough to create some keepsakes that gave the self-described “Jamaica Cats and Kittens” a chance to leave some tangible marks in the City.

    The 800 people who filed through the door that night each got a program for the show with a back page that really gave it up for Jamaica.

    “Smile!  You just got Funked in Jamaica, Queens,” the page reads.  It also lists the names of legendary Jamaica music venues that most Manhattanites — and probably even Queensites — probably never heard of.  They include clubs and restaurants like The Galaxy, Copa City, Bowman’s Show Place and The Village Door.

    But the real show-stoppers — in terms of the permanent remains of a show that brought the heart of Queens to the heart of Manhattan — were the clothes being sold: Cool black tee shirts and hats that say “I got funked in Jamaica, Queens.

Color Commentary

Pop quiz - this is the 21st Century, right?

One QConf scribe thought so, but second-guessed herself after trying to obtain color photos of the Queens members of the State Assembly and Senate  for the Tribune “Official Guide to Queens.”

Of the seven Queens members of  the Senate, only Frank Padavan and Serf Maltese had color pix available. All the rest had black and white shots only. Although staffers at the offices of Toby Stavisky, Ada and Malcolm Smith were very helpful, and offered to take color photos for the reporter, they didn’t have anything ready to go.

A sympathetic Senator Ada Smith explained, “The Senate only shoots in black and white, I think,” and a Senate press person said that while he would try to take color photos, “I don’t know if we have that technology yet.”

Hmmm?

A staffer at George Onorato’s office said, “Sorry, honey, we don’t have one,” and that was the end of the conversation.

Senate newcomer John Sabini — who doesn’t even have an office yet — also doesn't have a color shot.

Of the 18 Queens members of the Assembly, only a few had color pictures ready to be e-mailed. Many had color shots, but couldn’t e-mail them. Many of them have sent us dozens and dozens of press releases with color photos we could use so it wasn’t so difficult, but others were absolutely impossible to get photos of.

Eventually, after digging through piles of photos, each politician was represented with a color shot.

To wrap up the tale of woe, there was trouble with the electronic transmission of the “pdf” file containing the color shots and pre-press had to burn the plate for black and white.

Wait till next year.

Color our scribe red.

Bad Rap

Queens rapper Ja Rule was accompanied by no less than 11 bodyguards at a recent Source Magazine party.  From his statements to the Daily News, the rapper is obviously shaken by the recent death of a fellow Queens rapper Jam Master Jay, who was fatally shot in Queens.    

The rapper told a reporter, “[The cops] don’t care about the rappers.  [Killers think], ‘we can kill rappers, but we won’t be caught.’  They won’t even look for us.”

He said that the killing of Jam Master Jay was “like a rerun of an old film,” naming rappers before Jam Master Jay who were killed, such as Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Madonna &  J. Lo

The feud between Madonna and Jennifer Lopez apparently continued when the two met after photographer Herb Ritts’ funeral, news sources reported. Former Corona resident Madonna had arrived to the somber event with her daughter, Lourdes, while J. Lo showed up with Ben Affleck in tow. When Lopez entered a restaurant where Madonna was with Lourdes, the material girl reportedly got up and left.

Despite the two divas’ distaste for one another, Lourdes is reported to be incessantly singing “Jenny from the Block.”

They Want The Airwaves

It appears that some Democrats are in a hurry to get their own version of Rush Limbaugh on the radio and are even considering a former Queens Tribune editor for the job.

At the forefront of the liberal media campaign is a group called Democracy Radio that recently organized a schmoozing session of nearly three dozen potential left-wing  Limbaughs following President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last week.

In a story that appeared in the New York Post last week, Tom Athens, executive director of Democracy Radio, said, “ We’re dedicated to creating more diversity in talk radio, so it really is representative of America as a whole.”

Athens added, “Whereas the D.C. gathering features high-powered Democratic speakers like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi, the only nationally-recognizable talk show name on hand was Detroit gabber Mitch Albom – and only because he wrote Tuesdays With Morrie.”

QConf thinks that’s too bad – if Athens only knew where Mitch got his start.

Before Albom penned his best-selling book, wrote for the Detroit Free Press and hammed it up on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” he was a reporter and then editor at Queens’ favorite weekly newspaper.

“One afternoon I was shopping at the supermarket on 108th Street in Forest Hills, and I saw a copy of the Tribune,” Albom said in an interview a few years back.

“Have spare time?” the ad seeking writers asked.

Mitch was hooked!