Astro moved to Hell’s Kitchen with his friend Graham Haber from Los Angeles in the fall of 1989. Graham had just graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he studied commercial photography. Two years earlier, Graham had found Astro in a box full of other German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix puppies at a gas station in East LA. He stopped for gas, left with a dog, and the rest is, as they say, a beautiful history.

A parking lot is what passes for a back yard in Hell’s Kitchen and Astro and Graham frequented them all. Astro loved to run and catch balls and Graham loved roaming through the neighborhood’s rough edges with his rangy and fiercely loyal dog. A friendly, open-hearted guy, Graham quickly became an integral part of the fabric of Hell’s Kitchen. He joined the Community Board 4 (CB4) and Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association. He became an NYC Citizen Pruner and planted tens, perhaps even a hundred trees in the neighborhood over the thirty-two years that he lived here.*

Community Board 4 member Joe Restucia first had the vision to create a "pocket parks" in Hell’s Kitchen in 1996. That year, with the help of the Port Authority and CB4, Joe, Graham, and Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association members Meta Brunzema, Huong Huang, Lenni Schwendinger, David Collins, and Tye Williams, identified the small L-shaped piece of land below a Port Authority bus overpass, just west of Tenth Avenue and West 39th Street, as the perfect place for a dog run.

Astro's Dog Run and Community Garden officially opened in Spring 1997. Meta Brunzema, an urban landscape architect by training, helped to design the park.  Graham was instrumental in getting it up and running with annual membership drives, Spring neighborhood planting, and clean up events. Huong oversaw turning the long strip at the front of the lot into a community garden. It has been a gathering place for many Hell's Kitchen residents ever since.