Nancy Ruhling's Astoria Characters

It was when Mark Cruz lost everything — his job, his girlfriend, his grandfather, his band and his faith in himself and in his god — that he found himself. Up until 2010 and 2011, when all this life-changing stuff threw Mark a curve ball he couldn’t catch, he was a pretty happy guy. And, when he thinks about it, he says that that was a bad thing. You see, if all these dramatic departures had not happened, Mark wouldn’t be sitting in the offices of his new company, Fling Design. …

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There’s a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table, and there’s an opera book on an antique music stand in the living room. They have only one thing in common: Renee Heitmann, baker, singer and believer in the goodwill power of small, random gestures like giving out chocolate chip cookies, which she does every week. Renee is a singer and a baker. “I get an extreme sense of joy from the act of baking and sharing that,” says Renee, who details her…

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It was pouring, and I couldn’t find it. I was annoyed because it’s not every day that you pay $50 for an umbrella, especially if you’re me. But this was a mighty fine umbrella. In fact, a greater one has never dripped itself dry in my presence. It was the basic black collapsible model that fits in a handbag or briefcase, the kind that is so ubiquitous that nobody ever notices it. A pair stranded in the street. The fact that it didn’t call attention to itself was the real…

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When the bell trills, Jet Thomason, a tree-tall Texan, adjusts the cowboy hat that’s the color of his first name and jumps on the bicycle like he’s trying to tame a bucking bronco. He twists the curly ends of his handlebar mustache, plants his hands firmly on the handlebars and pedals his fancy cowboy boots for all they’re worth. Ice Riders was Jet’s cool idea. Before you know it, chains chug, wheels wind, gears grind and in the colorful cart behind him a cheese-wheel chunk…

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There’s a Conga by the kitchen table. Tall and handsome, it stands next to a mushroom-shaped dumbek and a gloriously rotund davul. Richard Khuzami, whose smoldering eyes match his shoe-polish-black hair, has all these drums at his fingertips, yet when he wants to pound home a point, he raps on his shin. Pop, pop, pop; it sounds like a bat smacking a baseball. Richard’s a lot of things, but he’s no bionic man. He pulls up his jeans, revealing that his lower legs are encased in hard-plastic…

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