The Painter Who’s Coloring In Her Life Lines

Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out who you are and who you want to be. Juniper started drawing as a child. For Juniper Foster, this is a very welcome work in progress. To see where she’s been and where she’s going, all she has to do is study her paintings. Juniper’s living room serves as her studio. This is something she gets to do a lot because she paints in the cramped living room of her one-bedroom apartment. Her abstract canvases, emotive, spur-of-the-moment riots…

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The Actor Who’s Wooing the World

Actors make their living manufacturing emotions at a moment’s notice. Happy. Sad. Surprised. Toney started acting in elementary school. Toney Brown does them all flawlessly, but there’s one he doesn’t have to fake: wide-eyed enthusiasm. Toney, who will go by the stage name of Anthony Joel Brown when he gets his first professional acting or directing credit, is fresher than newly baked bread, and his arrival in Astoria puts a whole new “new” take on New York City. He…

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The Life of the Party

There has been much to celebrate in Elizabet Flores‘ life, but she has marked only four occasions with formal parties. The largest, an event for 300, was for her wedding a decade ago. La Bomboniera at its new location, 34-19 28th Ave. There were smaller affairs when her daughter, 8-year-old Marylu, and then her son, 6-year-old Richard, were christened. And the latest, a blow-out bash on the sidewalk with a mariachi band, bouquets of balloons and a tent, was held in November 2015 to mark the…

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The Gal of Grand Gestures

It’s too hard to sit still, and there’s no point to it. Life equals kinetic energy, which is why Verunka Vlkova-Fierro plugs in the 6-foot-long sign as soon as she makes her entrance into the living room. Dozens of dazzling light bulbs, Broadway brilliant, spell out LASSO THE MOON. Until recently, Verunka was an opera singer. Verunka, who is Betty Boop cute and as bright and bouncy as a beach ball, can’t stop herself. She jumps onto the sectional sofa and throws her arms triumphantly…

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The Couple With the Right Recipe

Forty-eight. That’s how many years the Victory Sweet Shop, Astoria’s oldest Greek bakery, has been serving its traditional desserts. Forty. That’s how long George and Antigoni Sakalis, the owners and bakers, have been married. Victory Sweet Shop & Victory Garden Cafe, 21-69 Steinway St. Fourteen. That’s how many days they knew each other before they became man and wife. They don’t think there’s anything unusual about their quick wedding or, for that matter,…

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