A Bronx Music Store Survives Decades of Change — and a Pandemic

Casa Amadeo houses an encyclopedia of Latin music and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

When Charlie Montoyo arrives at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for Opening Day on April 1, he won’t be following his usual routine.

Before the pandemic, Montoyo, the manager of the Blue Jays, would change into running shorts and T-shirt, plug the mambo beats of Tito Puente into his ears and jog along the Grand Concourse to Prospect Avenue.

The two-mile ritual led him through the history of the Bronx where apartments once filled with Jews and Italians aspiring to be middle class had been replaced by mostly Puerto Ricans who moved to the mainland in the 1950s, expecting streets paved with gold.

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