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Summer Queen
Tamiko
T.
Cambria Heights-born-and-bred model Tamiko T. is only 22, but she’s
got the poise, confidence and body of someone a lot more mature.
She
describes herself as “outgoing” and “fun,” and said she loves to
laugh.
“I’m
not stuck up,” she said recently.
“You see more smiles on my face than anything else.”
The
smiles are on our faces, too.
Tamiko wooed us here with her endless praise for the borough she
called home until only a few years ago.
She
moved to Virginia to be near some family, she said, and has taken up a job
as an office manager at Fairfax Hospital there.
It’s
not the same.
“I
miss it,” Tamiko said of life in Queens.
“Down here, this is a different atmosphere.
I’m a city girl, you know?”
The
modeling, acting, traveling, shopping and entertainment hound said that
where she lives now, “they’re probably about five steps behind on a lot
of things.”
Tamiko
got her start when she was 13, with a four-year runway modeling stint.
She got into it most seriously after high school.
She
has quite a bit of experience at it, too, having modeled for numerous
magazines, clothing companies, the movie and television industries and even
non-profits.
She’s also a co-host on the public cable show "Mad Flava,"
which is shown in major urban areas across the country including right here
in Queens.
These
days, Tamiko wants to go into modeling full time, and is hoping to move to
Manhattan to “be closer to the things I want to do.”
And
even though Cambria Heights won’t help her modeling career as much as SoHo
or the Upper West Side may, she still maintains that her fondest New York
memories are from right here in Queens, particularly during the summertime.
“There’s
really nothing like summertime in Queens,” she said.
‘Wubba,
Wubba, Woo’
Though some criticize her husband’s presidency as imaginary, Laura Bush visited Queens recently to talk to a group of creatures that embody the positive meaning of that term.
The
First Lady toured "Sesame Street," the beloved children’s
television program filmed at Queens’ famed Kaufman Astoria Studios. During
her visit, Mrs. Bush – a former librarian – read to a group of eager
puppets, who hung on her every word. Bush read, “No matter what you look
like, no matter what you do, everyone likes to say, ‘wubba, wubba,
woo.’” Though
it may have reminded some adult viewers of a quote from her husband’s
press conferences, the First Lady was actually teaching children about the
letter “W.” Her
phonics lesson did not include tips on infusing the letter with the
Texas-twanged “Dubya” sound used by adults around the world to refer to
her husband. "Sesame
Street" just began screening its 34th season on PBS stations across the
country. Other
notable figures from reality that interact with the Big Bird, Elmo and other
legends of the street this season include singer Sheryl Crow, newswoman
Diane Sawyer, actress Natalie Portman and TV-star Wayne Brady. Hot
Stuff
Fictional
Queens dweller Carrie, played by Leah Remini on “King of Queens,” has
been caught on film smoking, according to one web site. The site, www.smokingsides.com,
is a Brown University student’s compilation of smoking data. It lists
almost every celebrity you can think of, detailing their on and off-screen
smoking habits. With
the new smoking ban trouncing the rights of smokers, will Remini have to
quit her fictional habit?
The
Ghost of Woolworth’s
Most Bayside residents remember the good old Bell Boulevard Woolworth’s store, with its old-fashioned soda shop and candy counter, and its wide variety of merchandise to satisfy all sorts of household needs.
The
store and neighborhood hang-out operated on Bell and 42nd Avenue from the
1930s to the 1990s, when the chain eventually went out of business and the
store shut its doors. After sitting vacant for several years, the old
Woolworth’s building became an “Associated Supermarket,” which has
given way to a headquarters for OTC, a new cellular phone store.
Frank
Skala, a longtime Bayside resident and community hoohah, said he fondly
remembers the Woolworth’s store explaining: “I grew up there. All the
kids did back then. There was nowhere else to go . . . We would get candy
and ice cream, and we would get hardware and Christmas decorations and
anything else. It was a store for everything.”
Well,
a reminder of the “store for everything” was revealed several months ago
when construction workers renovating the old Woolworth’s building removed
the Associated Supermarket awning and uncovered the outline of lettering
from the old Woolworth’s sign. The word “Woolworth’s” is clearly
visible along the Bell Boulevard strip, haunting the area and blasting
Bayside residents right back to the past.
The
sign was still visible on Bell Boulevard at presstime, although construction
workers said the new OTC sign should be installed soon, once again covering
up the oddball piece of neighborhood history.
My
God!
You
wouldn’t think there’s much about South Jamaica drug dealer-turned
superstar-rapper 50 Cent that the Greater Allen Cathedral, a
15,000-member superchurch in Jamaica, would want to emulate. True,
both parties gross millions in the course of enamoring the public with their
words and their deeds.
But with the rapper’s rap sheet (from the NYPD, not his producers)
and the church’s many charitable and subsidized housing projects, the
similarities seem to end there. Or
do they? The
opening page of 50 Cent’s website, at www.50cent.com,
features a picture of the chiseled rapper facing you and pointing a handgun
straight into your face.
The
opening page of the site at: www.allencathedral.com,
features a quote from Isiah 13:13: “Therefore I will shake the heavens,
and the earth shall remove out of her place…” Both
pages, as different as they may seem, use a new Web technique in which the
entire screen appears to shake, as if someone has slapped your monitor. Or
as if a drug dealer has shot you in the face, or as if God has shaken the
heavens.
After
surfing dozens of different websites every day in the course of our work, we
can say that this is a little used technique. And
even though Allen does so much good work in the community, we have to give
50 Cent’s people kudos for their Web authoring skills even though their
sound contains background of gunshots and glass breaking.
E-MAIL your items to: conf@queenstribune.com
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