The Hip-Sip Guy

It’s early in the morning, and the first order of the day at Juuz.me is super simple. Zsolt “George” Csonka cuts a green apple, a peach and pineapple into chunks and pops them into the blender with some coconut water. He takes the ice-cold smoothie, hip-health in every sip, to the woman making herself at home in the window seat. On his way back, he serves herbal tea and a warm croissant to customer No. 2. Before he opened the bar and grill in March 2016, George spent his restaurant…

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The Artist Who’s a Work in Progress

The small studio is hidden, behind a hollow-core wooden door, in a corner of the basement apartment. Its scant space is squandered by a plastic shower curtain that separates it from the mechanical machinery that runs the four-family house. It is here, in the shallow night light of a single ceiling bulb, that Angelo Giokas retreats to create the pseudo-urban mixed-media hodge-podge collages that define his artistic life. “My working process is akin to a dance or a song,” he says. “I respond…

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The Baker Who’s Found Her Sweet Spot

There are eight fresh-baked cupcakes on the metal stand. Anastasia Cunningham is crowning each with a snowflake star smothered in shiny sugar sprinkles. Like a jeweler setting a diamond, she centers each star and gently eases it into the swirl of soft icing, where it must lie not too low or too high but just right to make its aesthetic presence known. For Anastasia, the cupcakes are simple fare. Her Aloria Cakes and Gourmet Sweets is known for complicated custom orders that are as much decorative…

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The WWII Veteran With the Purple Heart

When the Battle of the Bulge bomb went off, Herb Greenberg flew up in the air. He landed on his back. Separated from this event by the passage of seven decades, Herb, sitting in his big easy chair, inserts a metal leg brace into his left shoe and deftly ties the thin black laces. He’s itching to take his walker out so he can sit on the park bench. From there, he can watch the children play and the flag on the pole wave in the wind. He’s 95; it’s a pleasant way to pass the time. The bomb…

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The Tree Tender

Along the stretch of 27th Street that slouches toward Con Ed, there are 22 new honey locust trees. Nancy Perez knows this because it is she who spearheaded the effort to get them planted through Greening Western Queens when she and her husband, Rob Rodriguez, moved into their house in 2011. “There were no trees on the entire block,” she says, strolling in the sidewalk shade. “There was only sun.” Nancy knows first-hand the sear of the sun. She has been up since 6 a.m. tending not only…

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