JOSÉ A. ALVARADO JR.

BASED IN NEW YORK, USA

Oscar yi Hou is in his poetry era. In his “poem paintings,” a private lexicon of hieroglyphs—cranes, the yin and yang symbol, Western spurs—serve as stand-ins for the artist. “It’s the universe of the paintings, and it’s up to the viewer if they want to decipher it or not,” the New York-based, Liverpool-born painter says of the works, which have served as a means to document his relationships with loved ones over the years. Photographed for CULTURED Magazine, with words by Meka Boyle At 25, Artist Oscar yi Hou Has Already Had a...

Did you see this photo?? *link* Wow. Omg!! Follow this exchange with a dynamic discussion, hit repeat, and you have a pretty accurate snapshot of the TIME photo department’s typical Slack conversations. Even though we collectively scroll through thousands of photographs each day, there are still those that stop us in our tracks on a regular basis. As we draw close to the end of another year punctuated by grief and conflict , but also records broken and breathtaking moments of human achievement , photographers continue to astound us by offering new ways of seeing the world. How...

For years, the social safety net intended to help homeless, mentally ill people like Mr. Gomez — and keep them from unraveling violently — has failed in glaring and preventable ways. Yet rather than be held accountable, a New York Times investigation has found, city and state agencies have repeated the same errors again and again, insulated from scrutiny by state laws that protect patient privacy but hide failings from public view. Violent attacks by homeless, mentally ill people are relatively rare. In fact, mentally ill people are more likely to be the victim of a violent...

n a Saturday in early fall, a sisterly crowd of political volunteers milled about in a community center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They were there to help elect a thirty-seven-year-old Democrat named Susan Zhuang as the City Council member for the borough’s first-ever majority-Asian district, the recently redrawn Forty-third. The district, in the usual manner of these things, has a complicated outline, with several sharp turns. It roughly resembles a crowing rooster, with the top of its head touching Kai Feng Fu dumpling house, on Eighth Avenue, and its feet perched right around the...

As New York City inches closer to recovering all the jobs it lost during the pandemic, Manhattan — the city’s economic engine — marked a far less encouraging milestone. It now has the biggest income gap of any large county in the country. Even in a city notorious for tableaus of luxury living beside crushing poverty, the widening gap is striking. The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites earned an average household income of $545,549, or more than 53 times as much as the bottom 20 percent, who earned an average of $10,259, according to 2022 census data, released earlier this...

What is the best way to combat homelessness? Research has shown that supportive housing, which provides tenants with long-term rent subsidies and support services, is highly effective-about 90 per cent of chronically homeless people who enter supportive housing remain housed after two years. 90 Sands Street, a newly renovated skyscraper in Brooklyn, offers 305 such units. Jennifer Egan reports from the facility, where she spends time with several tenants: Jessica (not her real name), who is frank about her heroin use and troubled history and spoke often of wanting to go back to school for...

During his afternoons at work, Bryan Ortiz wraps tourniquets around the arms of intravenous drug users to help them find a good vein. If asked, he will even insert the needle, and pull the plunger back, before letting the user push the drug in. Mr. Ortiz, 29, is the “responsible person in charge” — his official title — on the late shift at OnPoint NYC in East Harlem, one of only two openly operating supervised drug consumption sites in the country. He oversees the stuffing of the tips of crack pipes with copper filters, checks off paperwork that lists what illicit...

From the outside, the tall white building looks like any other hip, new Brooklyn living space. But about a thousand migrant men sleep here every night and there's room for hundreds more.  It's a sort of mega shelter, poised to become one of New York City's largest.   It's been open for just a few weeks, and it's already riddled with accusations of abuse.   For months, Mayor Eric Adams has been issuing warnings that the New York City shelter system simply cannot handle the deluge of over 90,000 people it has received in the last year or so. "We have...

Sheryll Durrant left her family farm in Jamaica in 1989 and embarked on a career in corporate marketing. But after the 2008 financial meltdown, she reconsidered her life. She returned to her roots. Now she runs a thriving urban farm wedged into a triangular plot in the Bronx, between the Grand Concourse and the Metro North railroad tracks. At her farm, New Roots Garden, membership consists of refugees and migrants, resettled by the International Rescue Committee, whose herbs and vegetables sustain their memories of home. “Just putting your hands in soil is a form of healing,”...

In a part of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that has been transformed in recent years by modern apartment buildings and fast-casual restaurants, a nondescript door on Grand Street is the entrance to Toñita’s, one of the last Puerto Rican outposts of its kind in New York City. Here, the customers drink $3 beers and play dominoes, or sit around and chat over free plates of food like arroz con gandules . The walls are crowded with Puerto Rican flags and portraits of the bar’s owner and matriarchal figure, Maria Antonia Cay, who is more commonly known as Toñita. She opened...

A dispute between Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council intensified on Thursday, as the Council voted overwhelmingly to override the mayor’s veto and expand a city housing voucher program designed to address rising homelessness. The override passed by a vote of 42 to 8, after which most members of the City Council cheered and loudly applauded. “I want to be clear: These bills are about helping the lowest-income New Yorkers facing homelessness and housing insecurity,” said the Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, calling the bills the most “significant policy reforms to...

When Jerry Leader was growing up, he made himself a toy set of DJ equipment.   Two empty cereal boxes were the turntables. For the records, he cut circles out of cardboard. The needle, a plastic spoon. He would sing to himself, "mixing" the tracks.   Leader grew up in an 18-story apartment building in the Bronx, New York City, during the 1970s and 1980s, with his parents and eight siblings. The address was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. It's a tall, unremarkable high-rise overlooking an expressway.   But he says the building, and his unit, were always filled with...

A retired inspector who worked and socialized with Mayor Eric Adams when they were both members of the New York Police Department was charged on Friday with conspiring with four construction executives and a bookkeeper to funnel illegal donations to Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign. The 27-count indictment accuses the defendants, some of whom had sophisticated knowledge of campaign finance law, of trying to conceal the source of thousands of dollars in donations by making them in the names of colleagues and relatives. The indictment, announced by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L....

When Devine Cruz was 9, she began to hear voices. At first, the voices fought with one another. But as she grew older, the voices would talk about her. One night, the voices urged her to kill herself. For more than a decade, the young woman moved in and out of hospitals for treatment. Her symptoms included visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as delusions that prevented her from living a normal life. Devine was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can result in symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She also was diagnosed with an intellectual...

His girlfriend told him not to buy the electric scooter.                     But Alfonso Villa Muñoz was intrigued. He was working in a Brooklyn bodega last August when a delivery man said he knew someone selling one for $700. Mr. Muñoz said yes.                     The scooter was cherry red with the number 7 on the front. Under the seat was an ex- tra-large lithium-ion battery. When it needed charging, Mr. Muñoz would remove the battery from the scooter and use both hands to lug...

When Mr. Muñoz brought home the red e-scooter from the bodega, it did not come with any safety certifications. He did not know to be worried. He met his girlfriend, Marilu Torres, at a party in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in 2013. He drank too much and left his sweater and an ID card. She returned them. They moved in together, and the next year, Stephanie was born. They called her “gatito,” kitten in Spanish, because she made meowing sounds when she was young. She had a big heart for all creatures, even alligators and tarantulas. “She would like something odd and make...

Stills for the ABC News Studio Special on Hip Hop's 50th birthday, "Hip Hop at 50: Rhythms, Rhymes & Reflections - A #SoulOfANation Presentation", hosted by Angie Martinez. Now streaming on Hulu.

What will the office of the future look like? It's a question that may seem moot for a lot of workers in 2023, when work-from-home arrangements have become commonplace — but not for Wall Street. Financial firms are aggressively trying to lure employees back to the office. And for two big banks, JPMorgan Chase and BNP Paribas, the end of the pandemic has been an opportunity to reconsider the role of the workplace. JPMorgan, the biggest of the big banks, was in the midst of planning to build a new headquarters in Manhattan before COVID-19 hit. During the pandemic, people...

The country’s most charismatic math teacher was standing in a middle school on a Friday night with a message for students and their anxious parents about the only subjects more stressful than algebra and calculus: AI and ChatGPT. It had been a long day for Po-Shen Loh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Team USA’s coach for the International Mathematical Olympiad, who is traveling to 65 cities and giving 124 lectures before the next school year like he’s on a personal mission to meet every single American math geek. He started that morning at a Brooklyn middle...

The area of North Bellport on Long Island sits in the shadows of a massive landfill. This predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood also has the lowest life expectancy on Long Island, as well as the second-highest rates of asthma in Suffolk County. Environmental activists do not think this is a coincidence, and for decades they have waged a battle to shut down the Brookhaven Landfill, which they believe is making their community sick. Every year, about 720,000 tons of construction and demolition waste and about 350,000 tons of incinerator ash from across Long Island is dumped into the...

Calories of Power; Comida Presented by: Hudson Yards Hell's Kitchen Alliance & Photoville Supported by: NYC Parks   Location: Bella Abzug Park, 533 W 34th St, New York, NY 10001 Calories of Power; Comida - Photoville Festival Photoville.nyc

On the evening of February 11, 2006, a severe winter storm arrived in New York City. By four in the afternoon the next day, nearly twenty-seven inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, surpassing the record that had been set in 1947. That night, as many streets in the city remained impassable, I trudged to a church building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and found six hundred or so people, mostly young professionals, squeezed into the pews. They had come to listen to a Presbyterian minister named Timothy J. Keller preach his fourth sermon of the day. I was there, as a religion...

Walking into the big Barnes & Noble store in New York’s Union Square a few years ago, a book lover might have been surprised by what they found: an absence of books. Barnes & Noble shops were once full of other things: Lego sets, calendars, Funko Pop figurines, puzzles, chocolates – all with their own display shelves. The books were mainly upstairs. Not any more. Now, “you’re not seeing much beyond books”, says James Daunt, Barnes & Noble’s British chief executive, standing on the first floor of the giant bookstore, the second-largest in the...

Former President Donald Trump is facing 34 charges relating to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. But it's not the payment itself that's at issue here – it's his business' alleged falsification of records to cover up any paper trail of that payment. In court, Trump was photographed appearing stern. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Trump is now going to have to stand trial and be judged by a jury of his peers, the first time this has ever happened for a former president of the United States. After a bruising day, Trump took to the stage at...

Fresh off a historic arraignment, former President Donald Trump is still very much running to regain office in 2024. This is the lay of the land for the weeks and months ahead. Photographed for NPR, with words by Manuela López Restrepo     What Trump's arraignment means for his 2024 election bid Fresh off a historic arraignment, former President Donald Trump is still very much running to regain office in 2024. This is the lay of the land for the weeks and months ahead. Npr.org

Elected leaders are cracking down on e-bike batteries amid a surge in fires, but while most delivery workers support increased safety protocols, they say it's too expensive to purchase batteries that meet the proposed standards — and that government is not doing enough to support them. “We are New Yorkers, too,” said Gustavo Ajche, who works in construction during the day and delivers food on his Arrow 10 e-bike in the evenings. “We live here. We are scared when we hear about fires caused by a battery with cheap quality.” Ajche delivers food for GrubHub...

A wave of cultural pride coursed through the grand reopening of the Casa Yurumein cultural center near Crotona Park in the Bronx, with more than 100 people of Afro-Latino descent gathering to celebrate the community space just ahead of Garifuna Heritage month, which runs from March 11 through April 12. The center — whose previous location shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic — is dedicated to the Garifuna, who originate from the Caribbean and planted roots in New York City nearly a century ago. It reopened on Feb. 25 with a night of solidarity for a culture that has fought to...

Three years after Corona and its surrounding neighborhoods in Queens became the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, the area once hit hardest by the virus has slowly transformed into a bustling market full of street vendors. On any given day, Corona Plaza is lined with vendors selling food, clothes and other things mostly from Central and South America. The smell of grilled meat wafts through the air, each stand with its own soundtrack below the roaring 7 train tracks. But it didn’t always look this way. Before the pandemic, only a few vendors shared the space. The...

Halfway through a yearlong high school course in African American studies, Shannah Henderson-Amare asked her students to think about college — but with a question that many had never heard posed in a classroom before: Could they name the “Divine Nine,” the popular nickname for a group of the nation’s Black fraternities and sororities? One senior immediately responded: “The Kappas!” “Alphas.” “Deltas.” “The Ques!” others shouted out in succession. For these New York City high school students, the exercise served as...

The United States and Canada have reached an agreement that will allow both countries to divert asylum seekers from their borders at a time when migration has surged across the hemisphere, a U.S. official familiar with the agreement said Thursday. The deal, which is set to be announced Friday by President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the two leaders meet in Ottawa, will allow Canada to turn back immigrants at Roxham Road, a popular unofficial crossing point from New York for migrants seeking asylum in Canada. In exchange, Canada has agreed to provide a new, legal...

The Half-Marathon isn’t the only race happening on New York City’s streets this weekend. For those in the know, mid-March also means the return of Monster Track, an unsanctioned “alley cat” bike race through Manhattan. Monster Track has a storied history stretching back to at least the early 2000s, when it was first organized by a group of New York bike messengers. (This year’s race is the 24th installment.) It’s one of the nation’s most well-known alley cats; others include Minneapolis’ Stupor Bowl and Los Angeles' former Wolfpack...

The new play “War Dreamer” is taking the stage this month at The Wild Project in Manhattan. But it first found its footing inside a Brooklyn apartment known as the Loading Dock Theater , taking its audience from a living room to a Humvee in Iraq. The play centers on a United States veteran who’s returned from Iraq and is struggling with war trauma, ultimately spiraling into paranoia and conspiracy theories. It was the brainchild of Steven Gridley, who wrote and workshopped the play during the pandemic with his partner and star of the show, Erin Treadway. It found its...

On Thursday afternoon, a number of local politicians and tenants’ groups came together in the East Village to draw attention to a practice known as “Frankensteining,” which, in the context of New York City’s housing crisis, has emerged as a newly born grotesquerie. The term refers to a loophole in an otherwise tenant-friendly 2019 law that allows landlords to circumvent rent regulations by reconfiguring an apartment — chopping it up or combining it with a second one or simply expanding it through the addition of hallway or other appropriated common space. Its...

New York officials, who once condemned Texas leaders for busing migrants from the southern border, calling the treatment inhumane, are buying bus tickets for newcomers who want to go north and seek asylum in Canada. Mayor Eric Adams had originally welcomed the migrants, but he has since begun echoing the points of southern leaders , saying the city was buckling from the strain of absorbing more than 42,000 people in need. Now, city officials are assisting the relocation of a growing number of migrants traveling to New York’s northern border, where crossings are surging. The...

A landlord's plan to renovate a historic townhouse in the West Village is being complicated by a lone tenant who refuses to vacate his $1,500 a month rent-stabilized apartment. Russel Patrick Brown is a harpist and software engineer who’s lived in a 175-square-foot studio apartment on Gay Street for 13 years. The median asking rent in the West Village in December 2022 for all apartments was $4,974, according to StreetEasy. The building’s owner, Lionel Nazarian, has already been ordered to demolish a neighboring landmarked townhouse after construction workers botched...

A 13-year-old boy ran through the Bronx streets one May afternoon last year, chased by two teens on a scooter. Surveillance video showed him frantically trying to open the doors of an assisted-living facility. The scooter peeled onto the sidewalk and sped toward him. A 15-year-old boy riding on the back pointed a handgun and fired multiple times, police say. Nearby, 11-year-old Kyhara Tay stood outside a beauty salon after school, eating chicken wings and waiting for her friends to finish getting their nails done. A stray bullet struck the pavement in front of her, authorities say. Another...