Summer may be over but ROCK! AWAY! isn’t done yet. Event promoter Max Power’s ROCK! AWAY! Music Fest is back for round two this weekend.

ROCK! AWAY! has been bringing musical talent to the peninsula for multi-day music extravaganzas since 2017. Typically a summer festival, Max Power decided to broaden the ROCK! AWAY! brand and host multiple events throughout the year. Some got a taste of it this summer with the ROCK! AWAY! Summer Fest in July at the Beach 97th Concession. Now this weekend

The Rockaway Hotel is showing people the hospitality way. After a successful job training program in the hospitality industry in April, In Good Company Hospitality and 7G Group are doing it again. The Rockaway Hotel’s free, six-week Hospitality Way Program begins October 25.

When they launched the program in April, 25 participants entered the program to learn about opportunities and receive training in the hospitality industry. Six went on to secure jobs in the hospitality industry and four

It was like I busted out of the Rockaway State Penitentiary and hurried cross country as if bloodhounds were after me. I did both diddly-squat and doodly-squat this whole pandemic so when I finally saw an opening, I hit the road. I kept looking over my shoulder like I was being trailed, that I’d be called back, forced back to Rockaway.

Now, normally, I wouldn’t say anything about being forced back here but even Paradise can get a little old without a little change. Just ask Adam and Eve. They

 For years sea life has been coming back to the Rockaways. Dolphins going from Beach 19th up to Breezy Point and back. A long-time resident seal has a baby on the bay. Sharks shutting down the beach. The most incredible sea animal to see is a humpback whale putting on a show for all those to see right from our own beaches. For the surfers, they are so close they can almost touch these amazing creatures. I was lucky enough to catch one on camera recently.

They are here to stay, I believe, as

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We don’t visit the Upper West Side or Park Slope often so it’s hard to find a fan of Mayor Bill de Blasio and now sports fans throughout the City have another reason to sneer at the mayor. He’s the first mayor in a hundred years to hold office and not celebrate a major championship by New York teams. Instead of embracing the team of his adopted city, he continued to cheer for the Bostin Red Sox, a tone-deaf move among many of his tone-deaf moves. (Remember he took a boat to Rockaway soon

OCTOBER  14

Michael Benedetto was born.

Fernando Pires was born.

Claire Weisz was born.

Rich and MaryLou Raaf were married (70 years!)

1947 - U.S. Air Force Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager became the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound.

1964 - Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in civil rights.

OCTOBER  15

David Bernstein was born.

Tom and Marianne Henry were married.

1951 - I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball & Desi

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We don’t visit the Upper West Side or Park Slope often so it’s hard to find a fan of Mayor Bill de Blasio and now sports fans throughout the City have another reason to sneer at the mayor. He’s the first mayor in a hundred years to hold office and not celebrate a major championship by New York teams. Instead of embracing the team of his adopted city, he continued to cheer for the Bostin Red Sox, a tone-deaf move among many of his tone-deaf moves. (Remember he took a boat to Rockaway soon

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Several Good Samaritans came to the aid of a woman who’d fallen off her bike and knocked unconscious last Saturday morning on Cronston Avenue. Sarah Palmer, and a couple of young ladies called 911 and others, including Jim Moriarty and Brian Kelly, helped comfort the woman and alerted the family. The woman is recovering and doing well.

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Facebook and Instagram went down on Monday. The general health of people soared for a few hours. Meanwhile, local newspapers continued without a

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We have such a backlog with our Local Color feature (photos sent in by our readers) we couldn’t see straight last week and misidentified some of the photos (the names from the previous week carried over into last week). We think we’ve got it straightened out this week. As always, thanks for sending in the photos and helping our paper be that much more colorful.

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Interesting. The City Council race between Joann Ariola and Felicia Singh will be one of the more closely watched races

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Wow, we’d gotten used to the idea that the old Neponsit Home was going to be there like the Egyptian pyramids. But no, it’s coming down. As we reported, back in February, the NYC Health and Hospitals Corp handed over the Neponsit Home to NYC Parks which made plans to raze the structure which hasn’t had patients since 1998. Parks plans to select a contractor to do the demo by the end of the year.

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The New York State Independent Redistricting Commission is a bipartisan Commission

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To our Jewish friends: Gmar chatima tova as they observe Yom Kippur.

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Our thoughts are with the friends and family of Mike Melfi, a young, local ironworker who died in a work-related incident on Tuesday. Melfi also bartended at Bungalow Bar and was known as the life of the party. He will be missed.

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This past September 11 was particularly hard for many people. The Friends of Tribute Park, the people who do so much to make that oasis a special place, deserve heaps of credit

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The seashell flag tribute on our cover was made by Editor Katie McFadden and her boyfriend, Paul Zinskie. It's surrounded by 20 flags to mark the 9/11 anniversary, and 13 at top as a tribute to the troops recently killed in Afghanistan. Check it out on Beach 127th.

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The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 is Saturday. “Never forget” is an appropriate term because we never will and never can. There is no right way to honor those who were taken that day. The day remains extraordinarily

 Dear Editor,

In community meetings, I often hear that the beaches in Belle Harbor will be required to have eight crossover ramps after the new dune is built and that the number can be dropped to four if the ramps are connected. However, that is not what the law says. According to the ABA, the required number of access points for the disabled in Belle Harbor/Neponsit is two, not four or eight.

Federal guidelines require no more than one-half mile of shoreline between access points. Hence, we

Dear Editor –

I just read, former Chief of Transit, Joe Fox’s recent Letter to the Editor (10-7-21) regarding the importance of voting on November 2 and to VOTE for candidates who will turn our city around such as Joann Ariola (New York City Council District 32) and others like her.  I’d like to add that this election is especially important as there are five New York State constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Proposals 1, 3, and 4 deal with voting. BALLOT PROPOSALS: 1). AN AMENDMENT

Dear Editor:

Every four or two years, we face a campaign season full of name calling and false information. Though the candidates that appear on the ballot may be different, they usually represent an establishment that rejects change in every form. I know it is long past due that Rockaway gets the change in leadership that it so desperately deserves. This pandemic has created problems that we have never seen before and these problems deserve new answers, not the usual answers. Franklin

 Dear Editor:

Greetings to the people of Rockaway, Queens and fellow New Yorkers. I served 37 years with the NYPD, recently retired as Chief of Transit, and 20 of those years I was a Chief/Executive. I have watched our city go from bad to worse in the 1980s and early 1990s, and then rebound to levels that no one would have expected in the late 1990s and 2000s. Real estate was booming. Our city became a brighter jewel than it ever has been. There were many contributing factors, but I know from

 Dear Editor:

This letter is being written to express my appreciation for the great work being accomplished by the members of the Wound Care Center at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway. Located on the ninth floor, Dr. Thomas Lubeski, DO, FACOS, WCC, Medical Director, and his dedicated staff of residents, nurses, technicians, and assistants continue to serve the community in a most professional and magnificent manner.  Throughout the past few years, I would never hesitate to bring

 Dear Editor:

Just a quick thank you to all the friends and neighbors who stopped me to ask about and knew that my son, James, was in a tight spot through Instagram or whatever communication is out there. It really meant a lot to me. I’m not on any of that stuff so it was a bit of a surprise when I was asked about him in such a serious and concerning way. I didn’t even think that others were thinking and or praying that this situation didn’t go sideways. Prayers do matter. Happy to report that

Over the years my family, friends and I have all worked in the restaurant industry. I used to say everyone should have to do a semester of hospitality work to become empathetic with the workers and understand walking a mile in their shoes. Unfortunately, not everyone has taken that semester of working in the restaurant industry, so a lesson in restaurant etiquette is needed. Since I know so many people in the industry, I sent out a few texts to servers from local restaurants and this is what

Thank you so much for all of your emails this past week. Everyone seems to be on the same page with people needing beach etiquette. I just want to note these rules are for everyone, not just our visitors. I just am so sad we had such a poor weather weekend that we could not try to implement the rules. 

Here are some we ran out of room for last week:

Rule 4: PDA. Our beach is a public beach, not a private beach on a romantic getaway. You may hold hands but do not make out in the water or on

I should have had this column in last week, but I did not know it was going to be such a spectacular weekend. I usually do not go swimming this early in the year and I almost went in for a dip!

Here is my annual beach etiquette column and it is for all of our new residents and our visitors that were pouring off of the ferry this past week. One loyal reader said Kevin should place my column as one of the photos on the boardwalk, but my suggestion has been ignored! 

Rule 1: When you get to the

For those of you who read my column regularly, you know I am a high school English teacher. One of the reasons I love being an English teacher is I get paid to do what I love: teaching reading and writing and oftentimes spreading that love to my students. Being an English teacher is challenging, but there is nothing greater than when students inform you about their enjoyment for a novel or short story you just finished.

During the last month of “regular school” in 2020, my ninth grade class

Mother’s Day has a long history. According of History.com, the Greeks and Romans had festivals honoring mothers and England had celebrations during Lent to honor mothers. The American holiday can be traced back to Anna Jarvis from West Virginia, who around the time of the Civil War, started “Mother’s Day Work Clubs,” which helped mothers learn skills to raise their children. Ms. Jarvis then changed the focus of the club to “Mother’s Friendship Day,” where mothers of former Confederate and Union

During the last year, many of us have realized that the news media is sensationalized. I think we always knew that it was, but the events of the last year have really brought it out. I remember as a young elementary school student learning about yellow journalism, and I feel that has truly taken hold in our mainstream news media. Not all news publications have great covers such as “Smells Like Summer” or “April Fools: No Joke Connolly’s to Reopen!”

I have taken to Twitter quite often to see