Jacques Martin
Home: Forest Hills
Height: 3' 1"
Weight: 30 lbs.  

Handsome Forest Hills heartthrob Jacques C. Martin has a lot of experience turning heads with his good looks –three years and four months worth of experience, to be exact.

The pint-sized toddler has been gaining attention from crowds along Austin Street in Forest Hills since his birth, and he recently signed on with a local modeling agency to expand his audience.

His mother Natacha told QConf that Martin won over modeling scouts with his mature, calm demeanor and warm smile. The three year old who keeps his room spotless is a stand out from the crowd. 

When not watching "Sesame Street" or playing with toy cars, Martin can be seen hanging out in the Forest Hills Barnes & Noble.  Another favorite hang out for the up-and-coming model is Kids Line, where Martin can be seen picking out his button down shirts, slacks and dress shoes (which he ties on his own). 

The meticulously dressed young man keeps his wardrobe in tact, even when hanging out at the playgrounds around Queens Boulevard.

Martin has his young brown eyes set on expanding his career. This summer – after nursery school  graduation – Martin will enroll in acting classes. Natacha says her son has auditioned for some commercials.

Talk to the Hand

Don’t believe everything you read. Especially press releases.

One release we received,  from NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, was about how to cope with depression stemming from excessive exposure to war news, and listed so-called experts on the topic for media members to call. Trusting the release, we called the listed Queens source to get the story, but was told by the doctor, “I have no clue about this.”

A spokesperson for the hospital where the doctor worked blamed layers of bureaucracy for the problem. The spokesperson said the press release was sent from HHC headquarters in Manhattan, and that nobody had contacted the “media experts” to let them know of their new duties. The spokesperson at the hospital said, “It’s a case of the left hand not talking to the right hand.”

Now there’s an interesting anatomy lesson from an expert!

Queens Multiplicity

    There are two Northern Boulevards in Queens.

    That’s right, you’re reading correctly.

    There are two Northern Boulevards in Queens.

    You heard it here first.

    Let us explain.

    In this paper’s recent Insider’s Guide, we revealed a quick way to escape Shea traffic and get to the Grand Central Parkway after Mets games – take a small, rundown-looking, unnamed street that forks off of eastbound Northern Boulevard.

    The road, which features no street signs and is nameless on every major map, twists and turns narrowly through a landscape of fenced-off garbage piles and mounds of dirt. At night, there are no lights. It’s quite scary.

    But it’s worth the adventure, because it takes drivers straight to the highway, and bypasses a tremendous amount of Shea Stadium gridlock.

    However, the question is, what the heck is the name of the road?

    For the answer, we went straight to the source – New York City Department of Transportation Queens Borough Commissioner Joseph Cannisi.

    He personally checked it out for us, asking his topography experts and searching throughout DOT headquarters. Finally, he found the answer.

    “Believe it or not,” he said, “It’s called Northern Boulevard.”

    Huh?

    “Yeah,” he said, “For a stretch there, Queens has two Northern Boulevards. It surprised me, too.”

    Wow, who knew? Just for the record, the Northern Boulevard that everyone knows is actually north of the other one, so maybe the street with no name should really be called Southern Northern Boulevard.

            Just a thought.

Rev. Run on a Phat Farm Reparations bus back. photo: Shams Tarek

    The old saying that “If the shoe fits, wear it” is playing out on the backs of buses and feet all over the borough.

    Phat Farm, a company known for not shying away from heated political issues and founded by a man — Hollis hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons — with the same quality, is promoting the issue of reparations with one of its classic all-white low-top sneakers.

    The ads promoting the issue are popping up on buses all over the borough, with a picture of Rev. Run, the Hollis rapper from Run-DMC (and longtime Simmons buddy) who was recently ordained as a minister, and the words “Isn’t it time for a change?  Economic justice now.  Reparations now.  It’s an American justice issue.”

    It’s not the first time the company has jumped sneaker-first into politics.  Last year, it turned one of its sneakers into the “Carl McCall Running Shoe” in an effort to support the black Democrat’s chances of beating a rather influential and powerful incumbent.

            But whatever you think of the politics of reparations, you gotta love the decade-old picture of Run, complete with baby face, skinny neck and meatchop sideburns.

Proud To Play Lee Greenwood

The worldly citizens of New York City are fond of the hard-nosed, no-nonsense, heard-it-all-before persona that embodies their collective character.

But when it comes to the Lee Greenwood patriotic song, “God Bless the USA,” New Yorkers, like the rest of the nation, actually have heard it before – and probably many more times than they would like.

The played-out – not to mention aggressively inland – quality of the song makes it a stupefying choice for the soundtrack of the NYPD’s anti-terrorism presentation, coming soon to a community board or civic meeting near you. 

The 40-minute Power Point presentation begins predictably with a Sept. 11 montage set to the tune of Mr. Greenwood’s enduring power ballad and proceeds to instruct viewers on terrorism awareness. 

It might be overkill to suggest that two NYPD community affairs officers held a recent session of Community Board 13 “hostage” to their heavy-handed, Greenwood-backed video, or to assert that the room was “terrorized” by the song – but the board members did seem bored, to say the least.