TimesLedger.com – By Cat Cutillo
Residents at Carmen’s Place help Nicole get ready for a night out.
Three girls crowd around the huge mirror in the dining room of Carmen’s Place to touch up their make-up and perfect each other’s wigs, preparing for a Thursday night out while Father Louis Braxton sits down in the chair next to them and challenges them to a fight over bangs once again.
“You want to know what the bang fight was about. I think they wear them to hide behind their bangs. To hide yourself. I think that women come with different hair lengths, but they all want long hair. They all want to look like Beyonce,” says Braxton, who has been running the Astoria homeless shelter that primarily supports transgender and gay youth for about five years.