Crystal Edwards
Home: St. Albans
Age: 19
Height: 5’5”
Weight: 112lbs.
Stats: 34-25-34

Crystal Edwards now has two schools to call her alma mater.  The 19-year-old model graduated from Andrew Jackson High School not long ago, but she is an even more recent graduate of Barbizon, the famous finishing school for models. 

In the few short months since graduation, Edwards has been keeping herself busy.  Her raven locks have been featured in five hair books, and – most remarkably – she was called on to introduce a segment on the popular MTV program “Direct Effects.” 

Though her visage was beamed onto millions of TV screens, her MTV appearance was not without controversy. 

“It was supposed to be a contest where a hip-hop group would win a contract with Def Jam Records,” Edwards recalled – only a fight broke out during the contest and that portion of the show had to be cancelled.

For now, however, Edwards works at a haute denim boutique in The Bay Terrace Shopping Center called Beginnings Bleus. The store is a perfect fit for her personal aesthetic: “Personally, I’m like a jeans and t-shirt person,” Edwards said. 

Her leggy looks put into motion the designer jeans sold at the store, and she patrols the aisles dispensing advice to customers. Her most common recommendation to patrons is wear jeans that are “more form fitting and lower in the waist to show off their form.”

Jennings Joy?

A third Asian woman has added to the bizarre story of embattled Councilman Allan Jennings.

This paper along with some 30 other news outlets received a press release last week from Jennings' office about an event scheduled to happen on Oct. 23, 2002 – six months earlier.

Oooops!

The release didn’t come from Jennings’ press secretary Charmaine Gibson but from Rachel Yoon, who Gibson said is Jennings’ executive assistant and that the release was a mistake.

Rachel Yoon, hmmm!

The Caribbean American Councilman who placed "love ads" in Asian papers that chronicled his failed marriage and budding romance with two different Chinese women seems to have a third Asian woman aboard.

Allan, for advertising info, call (718) 357-7400.

Official Taxi Voice From Queens

It began with a Queens secretary and ended with Elmo.

Such has been the strange, quirky and often irritating saga of the recorded greetings heard in New York City taxicabs.

Anyone who has had the privilege of riding in one of the City’s armada of yellow taxis has by now been reminded — probably dozens of times — by such traffic safety luminaries as Elmo and the Rockettes to fasten your seatbelt and request a receipt from your driver.

These recorded celebrity reminders have grated on the nerves of natives and tourists alike for years.

After all these years, the Taxi and Limousine Commission has concluded that, lo and behold, the celebrity recordings are a nuisance and actually promote poor passenger conduct, alienating customers from drivers and bugging everyone.  Officials plan to begin phasing out the greeting entirely.

But few recall that the concept of the recorded taxi message was launched with the voice of a woman from Queens.  Victoria Drakoulis worked as a secretary for Pulsar Technologies, the manufacturer of the message-playing devices. 

In 1996, for reasons unknown, Drakoulis’s boss asked her to be the voice for the original greeting — making this secretary from Queens a sort of unofficial ambassador of the City and a minor celebrity. 

The original message featured Drakoulis speaking these words in her heavy Queens brogue: “Please remember to take all of your belongings when leaving this taxi and please get a receipt from the driver.”

A Citywide debate ensued, with some New Yorkers criticizing Drakoulis’s performance as “too outer borough.” Her recording only ran for a few months, when it was replaced by a professional voice-over artist, but in that time Drakoulis acquired enough celebrity to appear on the "Rosie O’Donnell Show," make a cameo in the film "Men In Black" and have her voice sampled in a dance remix.

Get Your Husbands Scrubbing

“Keep It Clean”

That’s what a frustrated working mom from Long Island has said countless times to her husband about cleaning up the mess around the house.

What’s a woman to do?

Well, in an effort to bring tidy tidings to the frustrated domestic goddesses of Queens and the rest of  the world, Charlotte Coti of Sea Cliff, Long Island has created “Keep It Clean” a CD ROM that aims to get husbands hopping around the house and eager to do some housework.

Here’s the catch – one that is sure to garner a rise from the laziest of husbands — the CD ROM features live video demonstrations by two scantily clad cleaning experts who will “give you the basics and plenty of practical how to’s.”

“From cleaning the stove to cleaning the toilet, from making the bed to making the furniture shine, these girls will motivate you,” reads the literature on the back of the CD ROM.

The CD Rom is also available as part of a kit that includes an electrostatic duster and man-sized rubber gloves.

The Punk Rock Ataris & Astoria

The "Ataris," a long-time punk band with an army of fans and a ton of respect, recently released a new album with a bit of Queens flair – the name of the disc is “So Long, Astoria.”

That’s right, a Queens reference made it into the title track of the album. Or did it?

Actually, the album title has nothing to do with our modest little borough. It refers to Astoria, Oregon, where The Ataris have played routinely over the years, according to representatives for the band.

In addition, some of the songs on the album make reference to the movie “The Goonies,” which was set in Astoria, Oregon. There are songs about treasure maps and adventures and all kinds of weird things on the album in reference to the movie.

But a quick search on some Ataris fan sites showed QConf that most fans  have no idea where the ‘Astoria’ in the title came from.

So what’s the difference? We can say it refers to our borough. This is punk music, after all. 

Anarchy rules!