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ISLAM ON THE RISE; Converts, a Boom in Births Help Swell Rank of Muslims

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, November 09, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN

NADIA BARNES RECITED the shahada, or central principle of Islam.

“La ilaha illa Allah, sa Muhammadun rasulu Allah,” Barnes said after Imam Muhammed Salem Agwa: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is the messenger of Allah.”

The 23-year-old fashion designer and finance student descended from the balcony, where women pray apart from men, into the main hall of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York for a ceremony as old as time itself.

Under the copper dome of the nation’s most resplendent mosque, a gilded crescent pointing to Mecca as she was encircled by a dozen men, Barnes pledged belief in eternal life and hellfire, that “Jesus is a prophet, not a god,” that Muhammed is the “last prophet” of Allah and that Islam is the one true religion. Also, she vowed to give alms to the poor, pray five times a day and one day go to Mecca.

With that, Agwa welcomed her into the umma, or community.

“Good,” Agwa said. “Now you have faith; now you are a Muslim.”

Barnes is part of the dramatic rise for the religion of Islam in New York and in the nation.

Fueling the growth is immigration from predominantly Islamic nations, a high birthrate in Muslim families, and conversion to the religion by African-Americans and women, such as Barnes, who marry Muslims.

Immigration from countries with large Muslim populations, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, has been rising.

And, more recently, Muslims have come here from Indonesia, Africa, and, with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union, new nations like Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Many of the newcomers are highly skilled workers doctors, engineers, pharmacists who have been able to come because of less restrictive immigration laws.

The impact of Islam on New Yorkers’ lives is hard to miss, from the mundane changes, like alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules, to the most heartfelt.

The star and crescent moon now are displayed alongside Christmas trees and Chanukah and Kwanzaa candles during the winter holiday season.

Eid Al-Fitr, a feast that follows the Ramadan month of daylight fasting, was added to the 29 holy days of various religions for the estimated 100,000 Muslim students in city schools.

Mosques and traditional Muslim modest clothing now are commonplace in many city neighborhoods.

As Nadia Barnescompleted forms in a basement office of the nation’s most resplendent mosque at 96th St. and Third Ave., she spoke about the spiritualism of Islam and the calm and peace it has brought to her.

“I just felt the most strength of my life, that I was doing the right thing, that I was meant to do this,” she said.

Not only was Barnes converting to Islam, she was bringing a stray back to the flock: her husband, Muhammed Gundel, 33, a Pakistani immigrant who said he allowed his faith to lapse about 21/2 years ago.

As their ranks have grown, Muslims have done like other religions and established parochial schools for religious and cultural education.

At the Al-Iman School at the Imam Al Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, Masooma Hussain, 13, and her 11-year-old sister Fatima typify the emerging generation of Muslims.

Now of Elmont, L.I., they came to New York from Pakistan with their parents seven years ago.

The girls, wearing scarves to cover their hair, were outspoken about their place here, belying the stereotype of Muslim women as docile, compliant and oppressed.

Fatima, who wants to be a doctor, said she feels at home in New York.

“It’s not like I’m from another planet,” she said.

Marc Ferris, who teaches in the general studies program at New York University and has written about the city’s Muslim communities, said mosques bring a welcome brand of tolerance.

“In New York City, we’ve got the most international and cosmopolitan Muslim community in the world,” Ferris said. “Africans, Guyanese, Asians, Americans.”

And Muslims from countries that are mortal enemies somehow find a way to worship together in the same mosque when them come to New York, he said.

“At an Albanian mosque in Brooklyn, Turks and Albanians, who are historic enemies, pray side by side. The same with Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. They seem to be more united here in religion because they are minorities. A lot of the Old World stuff gets buried,” Ferris said.

A source of anguish to them is when Islam is equated to terrorism. They complain that the phrase “Islamic terrorist” unfairly taints their religion for nationalistic acts by groups and individuals who happen to be Muslims.

Numan Okuyan, 42, owner of Metropolitan Graphic Art, a gallery on 82d St., notes that no one referred to Timothy McVeigh as a Christian terrorist when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma.

And, like many Muslims interviewed by the Daily News especially non-Arabs Okuyan, who was born in Turkey to Uzbek parents, blames the media for defining his faith by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Okuyan pointed out that his mosque has worshipers from all over the world; others note that Arabs make up just 20% of the faithful.

Dr. Abdul Rehman, who immigrated here in 1968 from Pakistan, recalled some of the early struggles finding a place to worship or the proper food to eat. Today, he is chairman of the board of trustees for the Al-Noor Mosque in Staten Island, which was started by Pakistani immigrants like him but now has a largely African-American congregation.

By far the largest number of Muslims in the United States are African-American converts.

The Chicago-based Nation of Islam opened a temple in Harlem in 1946 and saw membership soar when Malcolm X arrived eight years later as the imam. But its emphasis on black empowerment and exclusion of whites has been controversial.

M.T. Mehdi, secretary-general of the National Council on Islamic Affairs, said members of the Nation of Islam are not genuine Muslims because they are in a political movement, not a religious movement.

Traditional Islam is a color-blind religion, and the Nation of Islam is reacting to white racism in this country, Mehdi said. Of special concern to Muslims, he said, is the baggage Louis Farrakhan brings in his history of statements that have been deemed anti-Semitic.

But Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan reacted angrily to that characterization of his movement.

“I’m a Muslim,” Farrakhan insisted. “Don’t try to make me a politician. When we say that the Nation of Islam will be more political, it is out of our spiritual underpinning, our faith in Allah that we challenge the forces of evil in this society.”

GRAPHIC: MARK BONIFACIO JON NASO DAILY NEWS JON NASO DAILY NEWS MARK BONIFACIO BENEATH DOME of Manhattan’s Islamic Cultural Center, worshipers, including Nadia Branes and her husband, Muhammad Gundel, pray and study (photos opposite and top). Dr. Abdul Rehman and daughter Naheed (above) worship at Al-Noor Mosque in Staten Island, where he serves as chairman of the board of trustees.

November 9, 1997
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FBI’s Most Vaunted

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, October 5, 1997

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

The Most Wanted List, an icon of a seemingly bygone era, started innocently enough.

A wire service reporter asked the FBI in 1949 for a list of the toughest guys it would like to capture. The resulting story in newspapers around the nation generated so much publicity that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made it a permanent list.

The Most Wanted Lists of the ’50s featured bank robbers, burglars and car thieves. By the ’60s, radicals made it onto the list. Revolutionaries, serial killers and mobsters hit the list in the ’70s.

Since the late 1980s, the FBI has been using tabloid television shows, such as “America’s Most Wanted,” to generate publicity.

That program’s first show in 1988 profiled David Roberts, an prison escapee who had been serving six life terms, two of them commuted death sentences.

After the show, New Yorkers tipped off law enforcement that Bob Lord, a homeless man who quickly worked his way to director of Carpenter Men’s Shelter in Staten Island, was none other than Roberts.

New York has been a favorite haunt of the famed list’s fugitives. At least 37 of 451 suspects that the FBI has put on the list have been nabbed here.

Gerald Watkins was profiled on “America’s Most Wanted” in 1995. In 1994, his girlfriend turned down his marriage proposal; he shot her, her son and their 18-day-old daughter. He then came to Harlem, his boyhood home.

Cops caught him trying to duck out of the window of an apartment.

Even serial killer Andrew Cunanan came this way once.

The current list includes Queens hoodlum Paul Ragusa.

“What the numbers might lead you to conclude is that fugitives think New York is a good place to come, to sort of blend in, be anonymous, disappear,” FBI Agent Jim Margolin said. “We think otherwise.

“What the numbers also indicate is that we and the NYPD are very good at finding people who don’t want to be found,” he said.

Even beyond the city limits.

Before his late son Tupac branded himself an outlaw rapper, Mutulu Shakur was a black revolutionary who masterminded a string of armored car robberies, including a 1981 Brink’s holdup in Nanuet, in Rockland County, that went haywire and led to the deaths of three people.

After 3 1/2 years on the Most Wanted List, Shakur was captured by two New York cops on a Los Angeles street corner in February 1986. One of the cops stopped Shakur with a flying tackle.

Mutulu Shakur is serving a 60-year prison sentence.

October 5, 1997
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SAL WHO? Runs Strong 3rd

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Wednesday, September 10, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JERE HESTER, Daily News Staff Writers

Maverick City Councilman Sal Albanese surprised the experts again last night with a strong third-place finish in the Democratic mayoral primary.

The 47-year-old Brooklyn lawmaker had 21% of the vote with 99% of ballots counted — a good showing by a candidate who was met with responses of “Sal who?” when he announced his candidacy in March 1996.

“We came up short in . . . a tremendous battle for the soul of New York,” Albanese said in his concession speech at the New York Hilton last night, as his supporters chanted, “Sal! Sal! Sal!”

He said he hadn’t decided whom to support in the run-off. “I’m a Democrat, I’m a strong Democrat, but tonight I’m not going to make any decision,” said Albanese (pictured, with his daughter), who left the door open to a potential run as an independent candidate in November’s general election.

Albanese, who ran his grass-roots, citywide campaign on a shoestring budget of less than $900,000, blamed money woes for not being able to take out TV advertisements until the race’s final days.

“We ran hard and we ran against all the odds. But we never gave up,” said Albanese, who made labor and wage issues the centerpiece of his campaign.

“It’s clear that we began to connect with the voters,” he said. “We just could not reach enough people. We shook a lot of hands. But you have 8 million people in this city, you have 2 1/2 million registered voters. You have to get on the air.”

Still, for Albanese, the third-place showing marked a high point in his quirky political career.

It wasn’t the first time that the Italian immigrant and former public school teacher has surprised naysayers.

“Sal has always fooled the experts,” said his campaign manager, Don Crouch.

A graduate of John Jay High School in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and York College in Queens, Albanese launched his political career in 1982 by ousting Brooklyn City Councilman Angelo Arculeo, a 29-year incumbent.

He quickly made his mark as a maverick who often defied Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Queens) and his conservative Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst constituents by backing liberal causes such as gay and abortion rights.

On the campaign trail, he hammered Mayor Giuliani for doling out tax breaks to big corporations that pay low wages to nonunion laborers.

His mayoral platform called for cutting taxes for small business. But he also pushed to raise income taxes for families earning more than $150,000 and for suburban residents who work in the city.

He wrote and worked with fellow council members long enough to pass a popular piece of legislation requiring city contractors to pay prevailing union wages.

Original Story Date: 091097

September 10, 1997
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FLEETING INFAMY Many are called, but few are frozen in spotlight By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and RICHARD T. PIENCIAK, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, May 4, 1997

Most people who grab fleeting notoriety — Sukhreet Gabel, the kid who stole the A train, Lady Bing and Yankee switcher Fritz Peterson — disappear quickly and quietly.

Then there are those like Burton Pugach, resurrected at regular intervals, and Donald Trump, who never seems to leave the stage.

Pugach has defied the odds by stretching his fame to 45 minutes with front-page appearances in 1959, 1974 and 1997.

The 70-year-old ex-attorney first surfaced when he paid three goons $2,000 to throw lye into the face of a girlfriend who had discovered he was married. After serving 14 years in prison, Pugach hit the front pages again in 1974, when he married the woman who had been blinded in the attack.

His third major foray into the public arena concluded last week with his acquittal in Queens on charges that he had threatened to kill his most recent ex-mistress.

In Trump’s case, his soap opera — separation from Marla — is just beginning.

Here’s a reprise of what happened to some others who just faded away:

Howie Spira

Howie Spira, George Steinbrenner’s one-time archrival, would love to return to center stage. These days, Spira has an entertainment lawyer and a literary agent; he’s hawking a book and movie about his life and says he is dating a beautiful 25-year-old airline employee from California.

Howie’s big moment in 1990 produced dire consequences for a variety of people: The Boss got suspended from baseball; Fay Vincent ultimately was booted from the baseball commissioner’s office; and Spira ended up in federal prison.

Spira claimed Steinbrenner had paid him $40,000 to dig up dirt on slugger Dave Winfield. The FBI charged him with extortion.

Several weeks before his parole in October 1993, Spira made the acquaintance of another inmate, former New York Judge Sol Wachtler.

“He was very upset,” Spira, now 38, recalled. “I introduced him to people. We became friends.

“It’s been very, very difficult. The same people who to this day chase me for autographs or want to talk baseball will not give me a job because of the stigma. . . . I’m frightened about my future.”

Francine Gottfried

Front-page allegations of sexual harassment lodged last week by several female employees of a Long Island brokerage house suggested that the more things change in Wall Street circles, the more they stay the same. Take the case of the Wall Street Sweater Girl of 1968.

At the time, Francine Gottfried was 21 years old, stood 5-foot-3 and earned $92.50 a week as a data processing operator for Chemical Bank. A completely different set of numbers brought intense public attention to the Brooklyn native: her 43-25-37 figure.

The frenzy over Gottfried began spontaneously; several brokerage house employees noticed she exited the BMT subway station near the New York Stock Exchange each workday shortly before 1:30 p.m. The workers told their friends and colleagues, who told more people.

During a two-week period that September, the crowds grew from several hundred to more than 15,000 — all in search of a glimpse of Francine in her extremely tight yellow sweater.

“A Bust Panics Wall Street as the Tape Says 43,” blared one Daily News headline. Added The New York Times: “10,000 Wait in Vain for Reappearance of Wall Street’s Sweater Girl.”

Meanwhile, Francine began considering whether to charge for interviews and photos. “I’ve got a million dollars of publicity already, but no money,” she said. “This is the biggest thing to hit Wall Street since the Crash of ’29, and I should be compensated.”

But Francine eventually dropped from the radar screen by taking a different route to work.

Keron Thomas

On May 8, 1993, at the age of 16, Keron Thomas took Duke Ellington’s musical advice one step too far: He didn’t simply take the A train, he stole it.

A train buff since his childhood in Trinidad, Thomas rode the subway at all hours.

Thomas became such fast friends with trainman Regoberto Sabio that one day he found himself behind the controls of the shuttle between Franklin Ave. and Prospect Park.

Psyched by the experience, Thomas called the 207th St. subway yard in Inwood, identifying himself as Sabio and requesting an overtime shift.

The dispatcher failed to ask Thomas for photo I.D. or his employee badge, which enabled the older-looking teen to take control of a 10-car train.

An estimated 2,000 passengers were aboard during the ensuing three-hour ride.

Thomas might have gotten away with the caper had he not exceeded a 20 mph speed limit, tripping an emergency signal.

The sheer brazenness of Thomas’ act captivated New Yorkers. Friends at Brooklyn Automotive High School took to calling him “A Train.”

The charges were reduced to misdemeanors, and Thomas was sentenced to three years probation.

But 18 months after the A train incident, Thomas was arrested for stabbing a teen.

Charged with attempted murder, Thomas spent 177 days on Rikers Island and pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault. He was credited with time served and was released in July 1995 on five years probation.

Last week, Probation Department spokesman Jack Ryan said Thomas’ file was sealed. Despite being 18 at the time of the stabbing, Thomas ultimately was treated as a youthful offender.

Sukhreet Gable

For nine riveting days in 1988, Sukhreet Gabel testified against her ailing 75-year-old mother — a respected judge — former Miss America Bess Myerson, and Bess’ lover, contractor Carl (Andy) Capasso.

The prosecution alleged that Sukhreet had been given a city job in return for her mother’s fixing of Capasso’s divorce settlement. The bribery trial ended, however, in acquittals for all.

“I think I was naive,” says Gabel, now 47. “I might do it differently if I had to do it all again. But my mother’s words always come back to me. What she said was to always tell the truth, and I think those are good words to live by. My mother was a wise woman.”

Sukhreet remembers her moment in the spotlight as having been quite awful.

“So often I would be misunderstood and labeled crazy, when I don’t think I am,” she said. “I’m certainly a character, but I’m not crazy.”

These days, Gabel is busy importing and exporting traditional and high-end contemporary textiles, a job that takes her all over the world.

Lady Bing

At age 22, Carroll Lee Douglass married 65-year-old moviemaker Jack Glenn. Following a divorce, she married William Rickenbacker, son of World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. In 1987, at 47, she married retired Metropolitan Opera impresario Sir Rudolf Bing, 85 at the time.

The wedding ceremony had taken place only two days after Bing’s relatives succeeded in getting a judge in Manhattan to schedule a competency hearing for him.

Bing and his wife, who took to calling herself Lady Bing, appeared at the hearing on Jan. 12, 1987, but vanished once the judge declared that the groom was incompetent to handle his financial affairs.

Within a month, the Daily News traced the newlyweds to the idyllic Caribbean island of Anguilla.

Eventually, the pair returned to New York, where a judge annulled the marriage; Sir Rudolf entered the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale.

Last Thursday, a worker at the home confirmed that Bing still is a resident. “He’s doing fine,” she said.

Does Lady Bing ever come to visit?

“No,” the employee said. “She hasn’t been here in well over a year.”

Harvey Sladkus, Lady Bing’s attorney, said she appeared unannounced at his law offices on Park Ave. several weeks ago. “She looked very sad. She had lost considerable weight.”

Lady Bing wondered whether Sladkus would hire her as the office receptionist.

“I told her, ‘We already have someone in that position,’ ” the attorney recalled.

Alice Crimmins

Alice Crimmins may well have achieved her aim of blending anonymously into the community. But more than three decades ago, her crime held the city spellbound.

Her daughter, Alice Marie Crimmins, 4, and the child’s brother, Edmund, 5, disappeared from their Kew Gardens Hills apartment July 14, 1965. The girl’s body was found a half-mile away and the boy’s a mile away.

It took two trials over a six-year period before Alice Crimmins was convicted of her son’s murder and of manslaughter in her daughter’s death. The investigation focused on Crimmins’ many boyfriends.

The murder conviction eventually was overturned for lack of evidence, but she was sentenced to 5 to 20 years for the manslaughter conviction.

On Friday, Thomas Grant, assistant to the chairman of the state Parole Board, said Crimmins no longer is under parole supervision. He said records indicate she was released from a state correctional facility on Sept. 9, 1977, after serving nine years. He said her official file also showed a closure date of Jan. 17, 1993.

Crimmins, who married a Long Island construction contractor while on a weekend furlough, no longer talks to the media. Her last known address was a high-rise in Bayside, Queens.

She consistently has denied killing her children.

Yankee Wife Swappers

Even if former Yankee left-handed pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson had produced Hall of Fame numbers, their off-the-field exploits would have overshadowed what they did on the mound.

At the beginning of the 1973 baseball season, the two close friends and free spirits told the world they had swapped wives, children, dogs and houses.

Peterson moved in with Susanne Kekich and her two daughters, Kristen, 4, and Reagan, 2. They married soon after she divorced her husband.

For Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson, the exchange had an unhappy ending. They broke up two months after he moved in with her and her sons, Gregg, 5, and Eric, 2.

Fritz and Susanne remain married. Peterson works as a craps dealer at Grand Victoria Casino Boat in Elgin, Ill.

Original Story Date: 050497

May 4, 1997
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PUSH TO LIFT TATTOO BAN; City Council votes for body art

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

February 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

New Yorkers may soon be able to get openly what they’ve been getting illegally for 35 years — tattoos.

The City Council yesterday passed a law that would lift the official though little-enforced 1962 ban on tattooing.

Councilwoman Kathryn Freed (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the law, said it was absurd for the city to continue pretending that the increasingly popular trend of body art did not exist.

“This way we actually put in regulations so that the artists are protected, and the public at large is protected,” Freed said. “People are going to do it, so you might as well regulate it to safeguard the public.”

The city enacted the ban amid fear that the needles used in tattooing could trigger a hepatitis epidemic. Despite the law, tattoo parlors have continued to operate and city health officials have looked the other way.

The City Council measure, which requires mayoral approval, would replace the ban with a new licensing system.

Before setting up shop, tattoo artists would be required to take a city Health Department course on infectious disease prevention. They would also have to pass a Health Department exam before they would qualify for a license. The license, good for two years, would cost $100.

Tattoo artists found guilty of operating illegally would face fines ranging from $300 to $1,000.

Tattoo artists at the Council meeting, where the proposed licensing system passed by a 38-to-7 vote, said they were happy to gain municipal legitimacy. But some contended that the licensing system would not safeguard the tattoo-craving public.

East Village tattoo artist Tom Murphy complained that the law will not require inspections of tattooing parlors to make sure that they use sanitary and safe body-decorating procedures.

The city Health Department, while endorsing the move to lift the ban, opposed mandatory inspections. Health officials said inspections would be too expensive and time consuming at a time when the city faces more serious health threats.

Health Department spokesman Fred Winters said agency officials would also prefer regulating the tattoo industry through the health code instead of through an amendment of city administrative laws.

Mayor Giuliani said he would consider all sides in the debate before deciding whether to sign the law.

Original Story Date: 022697

February 26, 1997
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IN THE CITY, SEX IS A RICH EXPERIENCE; Borough Of Queens Sits Atop the Lust List

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments
Monday, January 20, 1997
by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PAUL SCHWARTZMAN, Daily News Staff Writers

The rich are different from the rest of us and not just because they have more money. They have more sex, more fantasies about sex and more sex partners. But, then again, so do people living in Queens.

Yes, Queens, that bastion of single-family homes and front lawns, is New York’s most libidinous borough, edging out the reputedly licentious Manhattan and putting Staten Island positively to shame.

So say the findings of the Daily News lifestyle poll on matters sexual.

Overall, the poll found, New Yorkers’ sexual appetites tend more toward the regular than ravenous.

And their thinking is more conventional than kinky on questions like when it’s appropriate to lose your virginity.

“We might like to think of ourselves as being wilder than the rest of the country, but we’re not,” said Julie Weprin, of Blum & Weprin, which conducted the poll.

Still, respondents revealed a wide array of habits and attitudes. Not surprising, perhaps, men and women differ on everything from the frequency of sex to the number of partners.

More surprising, perhaps, the number of New Yorkers not having sex is almost twice the national average.

There also are differences according to age, ethnicity, education, income and residence.

Now, then, everything you wanted to know about New York’s sex life but didn’t know where to ask:

The Don Juan Index

Maybe it’s the potholes, or those long subway rides home, but New Yorkers are not frequent lovers.

Less than half 46% say they have sex at least once a week, and only 20% report three to five sexual encounters weekly.

A tiny minority 4% say they have sex daily, while nearly one in five say they have not had sex in the last year.

The poll also found that New Yorkers, by and large, are not promiscuous.

About half 44% say they have had five or fewer sex partners in their lives, with four being the median number. A minority 15% say they’ve had more than 10 partners, and about the same number report having had only one.

Men vs. Women

Look at how male and female New Yorkers describe their sex lives, and you could fairly conclude that one is from Mars and the other, Venus.

New York men report they have sex far more often than New York women. Nearly 60% of men say they have sex at least once a week, but only 36% of women do. And very few men admit to having had no sex over the past year, compared with a quarter of women.

Men also claim to get around far more than women. Nearly 30% say they’ve had more than 10 partners, but only 4% of women do.

“Men are told from when they’re kids to be with a lot of women,” said Eddie Assad, 45, a Staten Island electrician who claimed he has had 60 sex partners. “It starts in school, how’d you do with this girl, how’d you do with that girl. I don’t think it’s like that for girls.”

Edna Dyepp, 75, of Brooklyn, said she has had only two sex partners in her life her first and second husbands.

“I can only be with one man at a time,” she said. “Men like to prove themselves by being with many women. Women have other ways, cooking or cleaning.”

How the Boroughs Stack Up

While the results were close, Queens residents said they have sex the most, with half the poll respondents reporting they have sex at least once a week. Following by a hair were Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.

“I’m at a loss to explain it, but I guess it’s a good thing,” chuckled Sherman King, 30, a UPS supervisor who lives in Laurelton, Queens, with his wife and children. “Maybe we got more married people, or more younger people. I know it’s not the air or the water that does it.”

Staten Islanders, on the other hand, may be the borough of the perpetual bedtime migraine. Slightly more than a third of Staten Islanders say they have sex at least once a week. And a quarter have had only one sex partner.

“Maybe it’s the garbage dumps out here, the aroma will kill your desire,” said Edith Jones, 83, a retired nursing attendant who lives on Staten Island. “Who wants to be involved in any pleasure with all that stuff around?”

The Money Factor

No one is more sexually active than those earning more than $ 100,000 a year. Nearly 70% of the big earners say they have sex at least once a week. And almost half have had six or more lovers.

Nearly one in five say they have had more than 20 lovers.

Russ Brink, 28, a Queens businessman, earns more than $ 100,000 and says he has had 20 sex partners.

But he says it has nothing to do with money.

“I had all my partners before I started working, when I was in college,” said Brink, who attended Oneonta College. “College was all about going to bars and meeting women. You were bound to sleep with five or six in a year. All you had to do was keep drinking.”

New York’s wealthiest are more likely to have carnal daydreams, with 14% saying they regularly fantasize about sex. In contrast, only 5% of those earning between $ 10,000 and $ 25,000 say they daydream about sex.

When to Start

The prevailing view is that young people should wait until they are at 17 to 19 years old before they have sex. But that attitude is not shared equally among New Yorkers of all ages. For example, most poll respondents under 30 said they think it appropriate to begin having sex in the late teen years.

“If you start at 18, it gives you experience,” said Jose Ramos, 22, a plumbing salesman from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “I started when I was 15, I can’t remember who it was, but I think that was maybe too early. I could have made a mistake, gotten the girl pregnant, then what would have happened?”

Elderly New Yorkers, on the other hand, feel that young people should wait until they are married before having sex.

“I’m from the old school, people shouldn’t do it unless they’re married,” said one Queens respondent who asked to be identified only as Pauline, 75. “That’s the way I was brought up. Morally, it’s the thing to do. It’s proper.”

Getting to Know You

More than half 65% say couples should date for at least a year before getting married. Blacks show the most support for long-term courtship, with 75% saying couples should be involved for at least a year before heading to the altar. Fewer than 60% of whites and 46% of Jews agree.

“You need at least a year to really know someone, so you don’t rush into anything and make mistakes,” said Mary Gonzolez, 26, a children’s store manager from Queens.

At the same time, though, Gonzolez is unlike most New Yorkers 54% who believe couples should live together before marrying.

Respondents earning more than $ 100,000 are the most likely to endorse cohabitation. But less than half of those earning between $ 10,000 and $ 25,000 agree. And men are more likely than women to favor the idea, by 62% to 47%.

“If you live together, there’s less incentive to get married,” Gonzolez said. “Then marriage is just a piece of paper, it’s not something that you grow into.”

Sidebar: ITS OWN WORLD

Staten Island has the fewest people who:

Have sex at least once a week.

Have had more than five sexual partners in their lives.

Say 17 is a good age to start having sex.

Say living together before marriage is a good idea.

Admit having affairs.

It has the most people who:

Have had one sex partner.

Say you should be married before having sex.

Say it’s wrong to have an affair.

Would tell if the spouse of a good friend were having an affair.

Sidebar: NEW YORK CITY vs. AMERICA

Look to your left on the subway, look to your right nearly one out of every five of your fellow straphangers hasn’t had sex in the last year.

According to the Daily News poll, 18% of New Yorkers say they have gone that long without making love.

That statistic is nearly double the national average.

In other respects, though, New Yorkers are typical Americans. They have sex with about the same frequency and have about the same number of partners as everyone else.

“They are neither more or less sexually active than the larger number of folks in the society,” said John Gagnon, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and co-author of “Sex in America,” a comprehensive 1994 study of sexual behavior.

Why, then, does the city have so many people going without sex for so long?

The answer is likely the city’s demographic composition.

“There are more single people and elderly people in New York, and those are the people who tend to have the least sex,” Gagnon said.

Notes: Graphics by TRINE GIAEVER DAILY NEWS are not available electronically.

Graphics include:

NEW YORKERS WHO SAY THEY HAVE SEX AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK

NUMBER OF SEX PARTNERS

SEX AND MONEY

WHEN TO START

Series: NEW YORKERS THIS IS YOUR LIFE. Second of five parts.

January 20, 1997
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Normal City? Are You Nuts?

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

December 12, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JANE FURSE, Daily News Staff Writers

New York ain’t normal, according to a new book — whereas Orange County, Calif., is.

That’s Orange County as in Disneyland and the biggest municipal bankruptcy in history.

Whaddaya mean New York is the “most abnormal” of American cities?

Merely a statistical term, Places Rated Almanac co-author David Savageau hastened to explain yesterday.

“New York is top-notch in the arts, in higher education and in transportation, but bottom-of-the deck in crime, cost of living and jobs,” he said. “So you see, it’s either hot or cold — nothing in the middle.”

Take yer book and toss it, suggested Mayor Giuliani after he heard about this volume.

“They’re screwy,” said Giuliani, who disputed the MacMillan-published almanac’s charge that Atlanta, Detroit, Newark, St. Louis, New Orleans and Los Angeles are all safer than New York.

FBI numbers say otherwise, the mayor noted. “Big experts on crime, right, MacMillan,” Giuliani scoffed. “I will take this report and say it comes from amateurs. They don’t know what they are talking about.”

Giuliani’s opinions notwithstanding, said Savageau, Orange County really is the best of the 351 metropolitan areas surveyed by the almanac.

“The climate is good, it has a very rosy outlook for jobs and, because of the drop in housing prices, it’s more affordable,” he said. “It’s an amazing place.”

Joining Orange County on the book’s list of top 10 metropolitan areas are Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash.; Houston; Washington, D.C.; Phoenix-Mesa, Ariz.; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Atlanta; Tampa-St.-Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.; San Diego, and Philadelphia.

As for life here in abnormal New York City, Long Islander Pamela Barrow was feeling just fine as she got off the train at madhouse Penn Station yesterday.

“Personally, I come here to feel normal again,” she said.

Original Story Date: 12/12/96

December 12, 1996
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