2020-06-04 Puerto Rican Invasion

Not one, but two moving vans drive onto Alexandra Island on the morning of Friday June 5th.  Ahead and behind are sedans filled with people.  From the first sedan blared some flavor of Latin music.  It drove up Water street and, followed by the two moving vans, it turned on 2nd, then Central and finally 3rd street.  The sedan parked in front of a row house with green trim across from a lemon yellow house across the street.  The moving trucks situated themselves and parked so that their back ends were at the entrance to the row house.  From the sedan came five people of latin descent.  It was hard to tell which.  One was clearly older … middle age, at least.  The others were young.  Teens and younger.  The youngest of them ran to the front door and jumped up and down in excitement until the older man walked up the steps and opened the door for them.  Within five minutes, the moving men, with the help of the apparent new owner of the row house, were moving things into it while the latin music continued to blare.  Mrs Norris came out of her house to glare down the street at her new neighbors.

At the same time, the sedan that had followed the moving vans had stopped in front of the Alexandra Garden Center.  Two women, one matronly and the other younger, got out on the passenger side of the car while two young men climbed out of the street side of the car.  All four paused to speak in rapid fire spanish before they walked first around the building and, finally inside of it.

The rumors began to spread … the Negron family was new … and would be running the Garden Center as well as some of them working with Adam Brate and Mint Portia on the deconstruction of the Greybar building, the Rose house as well as the Delmoniaco house to name a few.