Last year, 990,000 records were sold –a 15% increase from 2006, according to the Nielsen SoundScan. Amazon.com recently unveiled a vinyl-only store with new and old selections from genres including jazz, rock, reggae, and pop. And UrbanOutfitters sells record players with USB connection for music lovers who want to tote their wax tunes on their iPods.

Brooklynphono, a small mom-and-pop vinyl record manufacturing company in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is profiting from this nostalgic musical resurgence. In 2001, Thomas Bernich and his wife, Fern Vernon-Bernich, established the plant on 42nd Street where they press vinyl for independent artists and New York City-based record labels for $1 a record.

Dressed in white with their long, paddle-shaped bats in hand, Queens’ Aviation High School’s inaugural cricket team prepare for a match against DeWitt Clinton High in Flushing Meadow Park. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Jamaican Patois, and Guyanese Creole fill the air as warm-ups begin.

These are the sounds of cricket in New York City, which last April became the first school district in the United States to introduce cricket as a varsity sport. The game is one of the most enduring legacies of the British Empire and the city’s 16 high school made up primarily of students of South Asian and Caribbean descent. The young athletes see the game as a continuation of the cultural traditions their parents instilled in them.

“Cricket, it’s from my native country,” said Vik Singh, Aviation High School team’s student manager, who is of Guyanese descent. “My dad played. And basically everybody before him played cricket, so it’s good to know that I am also playing cricket.”

Widely considered the world’s second most popular sport after soccer, cricket is unfamiliar to many Americans. In New York City’s West Indian and South Asian communities, however, the game continues to be a treasured export from home. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ozone Park and Richmond, home to Singh’s Sporting Goods, one of the country’s largest suppliers of cricket equipment. Customers drive here from as far away as Connecticut and Philadelphia to buy bats, balls, and gear. The neighborhood’s bars advertise televised matches in their windows and many residents sign up for satellite television just to follow their favorite teams.

“Cricket is like a religion to me,” said Ricky Singh. “It’s a part of your culture. It’s an everyday part of your life.”

After observing immigrants playing the game in places like Ozone Park, Eric Goldstein, the chief executive for School Support Services of the Public School Athletic League, followed a hunch, convinced an interest in the sport existed among the city’s high schoolers.

“The people who are playing are either recent immigrants or first generation Americans from immigrant families where cricket was very much part of the sporting culture of where they come from,” said Goldstein. “What we wanted to do is to embrace that — that’s what New York, America, is all about — it’s all about immigration and embracing change and welcoming the new groups.”

Many of the students currently playing cricket did not participate in sports before cricket went varsity. Aviation’s Coach Wesley Henry believes the game helps players who are recent arrivals adjust to America.

“This is a sport their parents understand,” said Henry, 34, who immigrated to the United States from Guyana as a teenager. “This is a sport they play in their country. So it’s a smooth transition for the students to actually come on to the field and participate.”

The sport also attracts athletes without any ties to cricket-playing nations. Cricket novice Shamir Alcequiez, a Dominican American, joined DeWitt Clinton’s team when his swimming coach suggested he try out. He said that it took him a long time to adjust to the game.

“They got the cricket in their blood and I don’t,” said Alcequiez, 15, who also plays baseball. “So it’s difficult.”

His heart remains with baseball, however. “I can’t lie,” he said. ”If I got to choose, I choose baseball.”

Yet, in baseball-obsessed New York, cricket has its passionate devotees. “I feel a lot of connection because when I play cricket, I am a member of my country,” said DeWitt Clinton’s Sohail Banaras, 14, who was born in Pakistan. “When I play baseball, I don’t feel as much excitement as when I play cricket.”

Mdarman Mannan, a Bangladesh-born Aviation High student who tried out for both baseball and cricket this season, agrees.

“It’s a new thing,” he said. “Baseball, you could say, is an old thing in America.”

Roisin O’Connor-McGinn contributed reporting

Drawing inspiration from alternative art spaces of the past like The Collective for Living Cinema, The Filmmakers’ Cinematheque, and Cinema 16, Light Industry evokes the spirit of these classic venues where people gathered in tight spaces to experience film screenings and interact face-to-face with artists. Founders Thomas Beard and Ed Halter are huge fans of this era that hailed the “projected image.”

“One of the great things about New York City is that there are many generations of artists,” said Halter. “People who run art spaces interact with one another so the history is all there.”

Halter and co-founder Beard introduced Light Industry’s weekly series, which allow local curators, filmmakers, critics, and artists to organize film and new media exhibits for the public without the financial pressure.

For the most part, alternative art spaces also serve a cultural niche that exists outside the dominant art institutions, according to Beard.

“They’ve been home to an adventurous and intrepid work,” said Beard. “There’s a sort of freedom for artists to do things that might not make as much sense in a traditional context or to do things that aren’t determined by the profit driven motives of commercial spaces.”

From sexy machinima flicks to tickling silent comedies, early exhibits featured at Light Industry illustrate Beard’s point.

On the third floor of the six million square foot complex, huge black cloths block the light coming in from industrial size windows as people sit in grey fold-out chairs close enough to rub elbows, drink bottled water or $4 Dutch beer, and pay $6 to watch multiple film clips as short as three minutes bounce off a white wall.

The shows attract a diverse audience as well. On an April evening, the room was filled with people of many ages and backgrounds from across the city’s five boroughs.

Sixty-year-old Manhattan resident Charles Krezell crept in minutes after the film projector started clicking away. He nodded in sync and cocked his head left and then right as images of a black gospel choir singing and Richard Pryor telling jokes flashed at high speeds. Krezell heard about Light Industry from a friend who lives in Sunset Park and after logging on to the website decided to come and check it out.

“I wasn’t expecting such a huge crowd,” he said. “The show was really good!”

Another member of the audience, Darnell Witt, 26, was amazed by the space and how it lends itself towards showing thought-provoking pieces. Witt recently moved to Williamsburg from Chicago where he created an alternative cinema listings. He is working towards a Brooklyn version.

“It was a long trek,” said Witt, “but definitely well worth it.” He is convinced that he’ll be a regular.

Regulars are likely to be witnesses to the Light Industry’s ongoing development. For now, the space has an unfinished quality—speakers are visible and wires are taped down along the concrete floor. But Beard and Halter hope to create a permanent space in the future that will be more like a theater, where they can do shows two or three times a week. As always, though, providing an audience for artists is their primary goal.

“People can show things on the Internet and share DVDs with one another nowadays,” said Halter, “but there’s something much more fulfilling for an artist to show their work in a room full of people, get feedback, talk about their work, and have it in a social atmosphere.”

For more information on Light Industry, visit their website at www.lightindustry.org

In Brooklyn and Queens, Dominican salon owners are setting up shop and black women are making the switch.

A Personal Touch

At Elisa’s Beauty Salon in Hollis, Queens each client has her own throne. Black styling chairs face large, gold framed mirrors that hang above the stylists’ mahogany lacquered stations. Heads lean forward then backward with the steady rhythm of blow dryers and round brushes smoothing out damp hair.

Elisa, the owner, had the option of opening a salon in a community with a larger Dominican population, but chose this mostly African-American and Haitian-American area.

“I like working on this type of hair,” she said in Spanish. “I also enjoy working with people from different backgrounds because I consider them my family and they receive me as a part of their family.”

She believes that Dominican beauty salons appeal to black women and are successful because of the level of intimacy Dominican stylists provide and their knowledge of various hair textures.

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“You can’t invent too many wild styles or treatments for this type of hair,” said Elisa.

She uses mostly Italian and Dominican hair products at her salon and keeps it simple when styling by washing and blowing out hair into a bouncy, straight look.

Buffy Simmonds, a customer, faithfully places her locks into the hands of stylists at Elisa’s. “With my hair, it’s very hard for a lot of people to do because I have full thick hair,” she said.

Their grasp on managing Simmonds’ hair texture keeps her coming back every week.

Reflecting A Diverse Clientele

One quick glance inside of DeJesus Dominican Style Salon and you will see women, men, girls, and boys of different ethnicities and ages. Marie Septimus, owner, takes pride in staffing a beauty salon that illustrates a diverse community.

“It’s been nothing but joy and happiness,” said Septimus.

She left behind 20 years teaching special education to open up her shop in East Flatbush where Jamaican, African-American, and Dominican women and men stand side by side washing, braiding, twisting, and curling hair.

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Yet, she has done research into hair styling and treatment methods and strongly believes that “Dominican treatment is excellent for hair growth.” Along with products created especially for black women, Septimus stocks her shelves with Dominican products shipped directly from the country, including Baba De Caracol, Alfa-Parf and El Bebo.

With such a diverse range of stylists, DeJesus offers more hair care services than the average Dominican beauty salon, but with familiar, affordable prices.

High Quality Over Low Costs

Grace Monika’s Hair & Skin Care Salon in Brooklyn, has cut, colored, and permed black women’s hair for over 28 years. As a full-service salon, clients were also offered European facials, manicures and pedicures. The business remains prosperous because they manufacture 100% human hair, custom-made extensions on-site.

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Grace Monika, the owner, is a witness to the impact Dominican beauty salons have made in communities where black women were traditionally styled by black women.

“There is a vast difference with the black salons trying to work with the Dominicans and their ten dollar wash and sets,” she said. “They cannot compete with those Dominicans. They have hundreds and thousands of people going into their salons daily. While in the black salon…they’ll have ten people a day.”

This is a financial move that she believes doesn’t add up when you have worry about “paying an overhead.”

“If you check ten times ten dollars..see what it comes to,” she said. “People may say ‘I’m high-priced,’ but I like to think we provide high-quality.”

Map Of Featured Dominican Beauty Salons In Black Neighborhoods

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Text By Dana L. Oliver and Djenny Passe-Rodriguez

Slideshows Produced By Dana L. Oliver

Video Produced By Djenny Passe-Rodriguez