Author: ruhlwrite

Crystal Gonzalez sets the small white box on the table and carefully opens it to reveal a half dozen elaborately iced cupcakes. She created Crystal’s Confections during the pandemic. There’s one with a couple of cherries on top, one adorned with a gigantic strawberry, one defined by an upright Oreo and two decorated with edible parchment butterflies that look as though they are going to flutteroff into the spring air. She brought the home-baked goods, she says, to sweeten the day. Crystal,…

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It’s the start of yet another day at Astoria Family Pizza. Family is the operative word. Jose stepped up after his brother died. Jose Guaman is making the pizzas, gently kneading the dough for what he calls “three baby pies” to complement a large one that will be sold slice by slice, each with a different topping. As he slides the silver pans into the oven, his wife, Maria, his 22-year-old son Jose and his daughter-in-law Carolina – the “family” referenced in the establishment’s…

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When Alice Lipping arrives at her studio, she immediately rolls up her sleeves, revealing a tattoo on her lower left arm. Alice became a full-time artist during the pandemic. “Keep Working,” it reminds her in subtle script. She’s more than ready to do just that. Alice, you see, has always loved art and has been painting and selling her work for two decades, but it’s only since the pandemic that she’s allowed herself to indulge her passion full time. It wasn’t so much a…

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Cheeto and Onyx, the current rescue residents at Whiskers Holistic Petcare, are ravenous. Randy’s the owner of Whiskers Holistic Petcare. The meowing year-old felines – as their names indicate, one’s orange, one’s black and white – drop their elusive demeanor and run up to Randy Klein when she opens the cans of food. They gobble their breakfast like street dogs then settle in for a well-deserved morning’s nap in the shop’s screened-in Rescue Ranch at the front window.…

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In the back of the house, in the old two-car garage she calls her atelier, Eirene Archolekas is wielding a blowtorch, applying firepower to one of her abstract encaustic paintings. Eirene started painting six years ago. With bold strokes, she guides the tiny blue flame, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down, waking up the wax. It is, she says, an “addictive, mesmerizing, healing” pursuit, one that she wishes she had discovered much earlier in life. Eirene’s…

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