Daily Dispatch News

On a cold winter night in the South Bronx Hostos Community College and the Longwood Arts Gallery were abuzz with activity for the launch of a new exhibit, ANTHEM: an all-american dystopia . The exhibit is a 20th anniversary celebration of the Bronx Council on the Arts' BRIO ( B ronx R ecognizes I ts O wn) award and according to the Longwood Arts Project, this exhibit, " explores an America within the crux of reforming a national identity; family, health, politics, urban crisis and decay, environmental issues, consumerism and globalization." The exhibition is curated by Melissa A. Calderón , a local Bronx Latina artist who received her BA in Art History from CUNY Lehman College and works in various forms of media such as sculpture, installations and photography. SOURCE Every artists in this program are BRIO award winners from 2008 or 2009 and all have created works that are multidimensional in their scope of message and what you see may not necessarily be what it mea...

It began in Debbie Quiñones’s apartamente in East Harlem in the winter of 2002. An old family friend had recently died without passing on her secret recipe for coquito, the traditional Puerto Rican Christmas drink that tastes something like eggnog on a beach vacation. Ms. Quiñones invited a few friends over, many with a bottle of homemade coquito in tow, and turned her party into a competition. Seven years later, as buckets of snow were falling on the city, about 200 people gathered Saturday night at Museo del Barrio to select the best coquito in New York. It was the eighth annual Coquito Masters contest , the culmination of weeks of preliminary contests held across New York by the International Coquito Federation, the brainchild of Ms. Quiñones. [NYT] WHAT IS COQUITO? (¿Qué es coquito? ) Coquito is an eggnog -like alcoholic beverage that is traditionally served in Puerto Rico and no Boricua Christmas or New Years Eve celebration is complete without it. It's made with cocon...