The Devoted Daughter

What Antri Papanikolaou remembers most about her 16th birthday is that it was the last one she ever got to spend with her mother. Antri is an occupational therapy teacher. They drove to Philadelphia, where Maria was going for cancer treatments, and stayed the night in a Ronald McDonald House. Maria, who had been diagnosed with melanoma, didn’t make it long enough to see Antri turn 17. “She died a month before my birthday,” Antri says. That was a decade ago, and a lot of things have changed…

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The Falafel King

YEAHHHHH BABY! Finally, The King of Falafel & Shawarma is in his castle. Fares “Freddy” Zeideia — OK, you know you can’t help yourself so just call him The King — is a big guy so his YEAHHHHH BABY! is a lion’s roar. The King of Falafel & Shawarma on Broadway. These days, The King has a lot to YEAHHHHH BABY! about because after 14 years of cooking street food out of a truck, he finally has a restaurant to call his own. His eponymous King of Falafel &…

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The Guy Who Played With the Monkees

Laughter. That’s the first thing you hear in Gregory Briggler‘s second-floor walkup. The giggles and guffaws are coming from his three boisterous boys, 12-year-old Harry, 9-year-old Simon and 6-year-old Adam. Gregory’s the principal trombonist for the Astoria Symphony Orchestra. They’re clowning around as Gregory’s wife, Katarina Vizina, prepares a mid-morning snack in the kitchen, and he presents homemade ice tea in tall glasses. “I inherited the recipe from…

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The Power Couple

Saturday night. Love at first sight. (Well, almost.) The time: December 2007   Noel is from New Jersey. The place: a club in Manhattan The characters: Nick Fiorentinos, the clubgoer; Noel Descalzi, the club’s hostess. Nick is a Queens native. The story: Nick and his friends were out on the town. Noel seated them at the club. Nick wished that she were their waitress. Noel wished she were, too. He says/she says the flirtation was fiery and flamboyant. “We’re very social,” Noel says.…

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God’s Handyman

As Henry Kimpel climbs the stone steps of Trinity Lutheran Church, an act he has done some 12,000 times since he joined the congregation nearly seven decades ago, he apologizes. Henry has devoted his retirement to Trinity. “I’m a slowpoke,” he says, leaning heavily on his wooden cane. The bad thing about old age, he says, is that you get old. That goes for churches, too. There’s nobody who knows more about the physical aches and pains of Trinity than Henry. For nearly three…

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