July 2019 Red Hook Star-Revue by George Fiala

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SPECIAL SECTION

DAY TRIPPING

STAR REVUE

JULY 2019

INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

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THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK Is YIMBY the new limousine liberal? Yates, page 5 Summer of REVEL, page 16 Yesterday Yesterday - somewhat more than the music, page 44 Beer at Svendale, page 19 PLUS Garland Jeffries and lots more in our new

SECTION 2

2 LIVE Music Every Friday and Saturday Award Winning Burgers Great Wings 317 Columbia St. Brooklyn, NY jalopytavern.biz

Brooklyn is all about blending cultures. We’re all about blending Global Cuisine at Jam’It Bistro

367 Columbia St Brooklyn, NY 11231 (929) 298-0074 jamitbistro.com

NYC’s Number One Folk and Traditional music venue Featuring amazing Live Music 5 nights a week! 315 Columbia St. Brooklyn, NY jalopytheatre.org

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STAR REVUE

THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK

JULY 2019 CONTENTS

Section 1

Section 2

News & Views

Music & Art

Red Hook Tourist Map ..........Cover, 2, 27

Garland Jeffries hangs it up ................29

Community Calendar .............................4

Busking with Slack Mallard .................31 The boys discuss making a living in the UK as performers on the road

Letters ....................................................5

In which Brett Yates gets bashed for his column about eliminating the specialized high schools, not just the tests.

TAKES ..................................................32 Stefan Zeniuk reports from Dumbo’s Live Composition festival and Kurt Gottschalk on new albums by Big/Brave and Helium Horse Fly

Tonnage of the word by Yates ..............5 This month Brett takes on Councilmember Landers ownership of the Gowanus real estate initiative.

Paying in the Band ...............................33

Rally against Rezonings ........................7

Jack Grace gives tips on gigging around

Looking at the Gowanus IBZ .................9

Roots Cafe in the South Slope...............7

We try to ﬁgure out what it’s all about.

Roderick talks to DJ Valentin..............34 We try to ﬁgure out what it’s all about.

The Gowanus Canal seascape ............10 Will it be the San Antonio Riverwalk, or something else.

Italian American jazz guys ..................35 Mike Fiorito will educate you for sure.

The Containerport gets busy...............11 With a new customer!

Gig Economy stresses out musicians .37 Rebecca Castellani writes on musician’s health.

Landmarking ........................................12

Sunset Park and Bay Ridge get some buildings landmarked, Gowanus is in the process. Red Hook, stop whining and get to work too before we lose more old buildings.

Three pages of July stuff to do .....40-42

Formula E in the Hook .........................13

Sunset Park and Bay Ridge get some buildings landmarked, Gowanus is in the process. Red Hook, stop whining and get to work too before we lose more old buildings.

Summer Sandwiches .................... center

Street Games and Dumbo Silliness .....43

Summer of REVEL ...............................16

New Miller play at the Barge ...............44

Community News .......................18,21,22

Cool summer things in Gowanus .........46

Drinking at Svendale ............................19

Waterfront Museum turns 25 ...............48

Day Tripping in the summer ......23,24,25

Mark Jupiter Gallery ............................50

Erin visits Wonderland and goes kayaking. Brett takes the train to see a famous architects house, and hikes Breakneck Ridge and lives to tell about it.

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New non-Beatles movie .......................51 Talking Art Shamsky blues ..................52

July 2019, Page 3

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STARREVUE COMMUNITY HAPPENINGS email george@redhookstar.com to list your event. For more listings, check out our online calendar at www.star-revue.com/calendar

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER George Fiala ARTS EDITOR

Matt Caprioli

MUSIC EDITOR

Michael Cobb

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER Brett Yates REPORTERS

Nathan Weiser Erin DeGregorio

DESIGN

Noah Phillips

CONTRIBUTORS Soﬁa Baluyut Kelsey Liebenson-Morse WEB EDITOR Sonja Kodiak-Wilder ADVERTISING

Liz Galvin Jamie Yates

SUMMER INTERN

Will Jackson

July Events Thursday July 4th

Independence Day Celebration: Join Prospect Park Alliance for family-friendly programming to celebrate two Independence Days: America’s independence from England in 1776 and the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans in New York in 1827 Lefferts Historic House, plus enjoy nature exploration at the Prospect Park Audubon Center and a ride on the Carousel. 12-5pm

Saturday, July 6

The Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturdays event kicks off the month. There will be engaging and eclectic free art and entertainment from 5 pm until 11 pm. From 5 to 6 pm, enjoy maqam music from the golden age of Egyptian cinema by Brooklyn-based musicians. From 6:30 to 7:30 pm, dance to a set by Dj InO, who plays a range of genres, from Afrobeat and funk to reggae, soca and kompa.

Monday, July 8 “Best Community Publication”

FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email george@redhookstar.com.

The Red Hook Star-Revue is published monthly. Founded June 2010.

Community Numbers: Occasional Councilman

Carlos Menchaca (718) 439-9012 Red Hook Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (718) 492-6334 State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (718) 643-6140 Gowanus Councilman Brad Lander (718) 499-1090 Park Slope Councilman Steve Levin (718) 875-5200 CB6 District Manager Michael Racioppo (718) 643-3027 76th Police Precinct, 191 Union Street Main phone (718) 834-3211 Community Affairs (718) 834-3207 Trafﬁc Safety (718) 834-3226 Eileen Dugan Senior Center (718) 596-1956 Miccio Center (718) 243-1528 Red Hook East (718) 852-6771 Red Hook West (718) 522-3880 NYCHA PSA 1, 80 Dwight St. Main Phone (718) 265-7300 Community Affairs (718) 265-7313 Domestic Violence (718) 265-7310 Youth Ofﬁcer (718) 265-7314 Red Hook NCO police Damien Clarke, (929) 287-7155 Jonathan Rueda, (917) 941-2185

Page 4 Red Hook Star-Revue

Salsa with the Dodge YMCA will happen at the Pier 6 picnic tables at Brooklyn Bridge Park from 6:30 until 7:30 pm. James Martinelli will instruct a fusion of salsa and jazz dance. This will be hot, exciting and a great cardio workout. Sneakers are recommended, registration begins at 6:00 and children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

Tuesday, July 9

At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Artist in Residence will be Yoshihito Kawase. He will be the Artist in Residence until July 26. Kawaase uses mineral pigments to create a rich spectrum color, layering gold, silver and textural carbon ink to create reﬂections of the overlooked wonders of the natural world. The Tokyo native will work en plein air and take inspiration from the theme ryusui (running water or ﬂowing stream) to commemorate Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s recently completed water recirculation project.

Wednesday July 10

Greenmarket at Bartel-Pritchard Square: Nestled inside Prospect Park’s tree-shaded southwest corner, this muchloved market, occuring every Sunday and Wednesday, is where South Slope and Windsor Terrace residents stock up on locally grown staples. The offerings range from a selection of vegetables, fruits, baked goods, plants, and ﬂowers, to fresh-caught ﬁsh and organic baked goods. 9am-3pm Pioneer Works monthly community lunch in their garden from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. A lunch ticket is $5 at the door. If there is inclement weather, lunch will happen inside the building. Each event spotlights a local chef or restaurant, and this one features Chef Trigg Brown and Josh Ku of Win Son. Win Son (159 Graham Avenue) is a Taiwanese-American restaurant that opened in 2016 by Chef Trigg Brown and Partner Josh Ku. Win Son’s goal is to promote Taiwanese cuisine and culture as a neighborhood restaurant in a growing community.

Wednesday July 17

The Movie Brave: Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams and Prospect Park Alliance present A Summer Movie Under the Stars in partnership with Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. 7-10pm Brooklyn Roots Festival: Prospect Park Alliance and the Brooklyn

Compiled by Nathan Weiser

Arts Council (BAC) present the Brooklyn Roots Festival. This folk arts festival celebrates Brooklyn’s traditional artists and immigrant communities through a daylong schedule of performances, workshops, interactive family activities, and more. Come on out for a day in the park to learn, play and express yourself in Brooklyn’s Backyard!

Thursday, July 11 Pariah (2011) will be playing at Pier 1 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The movie will start at about 6:00 pm. This is the 20th anniversary of movies with a view. Pariah tells the story of Alike, a 17-year-old African American embracing her identy as a lesbian. Burgers, dumplings, pizza, Venezuelan street food, ice cream and beer from Smorgasburg will be available all night long on the Pier 1 promenade. Bag checks will be conducted at the entrance.

Saturday, July 13

The Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway) will have art and yoga from 9:30 to 11 am at the Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd ﬂoor. Courtesy of Adidas, following more than an hour of yoga and mindfulness meditation led by local instructors, explore the gallery on a self-guided tour. Tickets are $16 and include Yoga mats and Brooklyn Museum admission. Members receive free tickets. The Market at the Brooklyn Museum located in the Brooklyn Museum Plaza from 11 am until 6 pm. Handmade items from local artisans and vendors. This monthly event has more than 30 vendors who offer artwork, jewelry, fashion, apothecary goods and more.

Thursday, July 18

Girlﬁght (2000) will be playing at Pier 1 of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The movie will start at about 6:00 pm. High school senior Diana, without her father knowing, trains as a boxer and achieves impressive success, blazing new trails for female boxers. Burgers, dumplings, pizza, Venezuelan street food, ice cream and beer from Smorgasburg will be available all night long on the Pier 1 promenade.

Wednesday, July 17

There will be an educational dance party for toddlers and preschoolers at the Red Hook Library from 11 to 12 pm. This is a high energy learn-through-dance program where a renowned MC engages and guides children through creative exercise and learning while having dance party fun. There will be dance party activities every ﬁve to 10 minutes along with team building, positive socialization and language skills.

Wednesday, July 24

The Brooklyn Museum will have a gallery tour of the Ancient Egyptian Art exhibit from 2 until 3 pm. Meet in the Rubin Lobby on the ﬁrst ﬂoor. A museum guide will lead this free tour.

Thursday, July 25

Join Pioneer Works staff and artists-inresidence at Supersmith (125 Dikeman Street) for happy hour. This month’s happy hour will feature Nourish. Marissa Lippert is the chef/owner of Nourish, a small private events and catering company founded on the core ethos of intentional eating, and cooking what the seasons and our locality provide us. Nourish fo-

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cuses on beautiful, inherently healthful food that supports a broader community of farmers, purveyors and artisans. It Happened One Night (1934) will be playing at Pier 1 at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The movie will start at about 6:00 pm. In Frank Capra’s romantic comedy, a spoiled heiress who runs away from her family is helped by a man who is actually a reporter in need of a story. Burgers, dumplings, pizza, Venezuelan street food, ice cream and beer from Smorgasburg will be available all night long on the Pier 1 promenade.

Friday, July 26

At the Ford Amphitheater next to the Coney Island Boardwalk (3052 West 21 Street) Fela! The Concert will leave audiences on their feet wanting more. Fela Kuti has sensual, eclectic sounds and powerful lyrics. Kuti, the founding father of Afrobeat, is one of the worlds most celebrated music legends. This free concert next to the beach begins at 7:00 pm.

Ongoing

The Red Hook Boaters offer free kayaking from Louis Valentino Jr. Pier Park at the end of the Coffey Street. After being ﬁtting with a PFD, the kayaker will get safety and paddling tips and then will be able to paddle inside the protected area. Walk up kayaking is on Thursdays from 4 until 6 pm and on Sundays from 1 until 4 pm. The Red Hook Library will offer free summer meals for ages 18 and under on weekdays at 1:15 from June 27 until August 30. No registration, documentation or ID is required to receive a free lunch. There will be no lunch offered on July 4 or August 12. Red Hook Flicks, in association with Red Hook Labs, will have free summer movies at Valentino Pier throughout July. All movies will begin at 8:30 pm or when it is dark enough. They will be showing Top Gun on July 9, Major League on July 16, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids on July 23 , and The Terminator on July 30 On Wednesdays, at 12 pm, the Red Hook Farm Stand will be in front of the Miccio Center. They will have vegetables that are grown at the Red Hook Farm in clean soil, using organic practices. There will be special deals for NYCA residents. Every Wednesday of the month Jalopy Theatre and School of Music will have Roots n Ruckus from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. This is a night of folk, old-time and blues music. Every Thursday at Rocky Sullivan’s (46 Beard Street), Broadly Entertaining will host trivia night. The free trivia will start at 8 pm and go until 10 p.m. The ﬁrst-place winner will get 50 percent off their tab. Every Monday of the month from 8:30 to 11 there will be an Open Mic Night at Jalopy Theatre and School of Music (315 Columbia Street). The performance order will be drawn at random at 9 pm. Each performer will get two songs or eight minutes. Every Wednesday of the month, the Red Hook Community Justice Center (88 Visitation Place) will host Healing After Violence from 5 until 7 p.m. This is a support group for women who have experienced violence in a relationship. Join to speak openly about your experience and to begin the healing process after experiencing partner violence. Dinner and Metrocards will be provided. Call 347-404-9017

July 2019

In June, Brett Yates’s column, “Get rid of the specialized high schools,” advocated for the closing of Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and seven other selective public schools in New York City. While Mayor de Blasio seeks to reform the admissions criteria for these institutions, Yates’s piece argued that, instead of attempting to determine the fairest or least racially exclusionary way to leave behind the majority of the city’s student population, New Yorkers should commit to creating first-rate schools in every neighborhood, without the high-stress atmosphere of Stuyvesant. The column decried what its author perceived to be unnecessary competition, hierarchy, and elitism in public schools. Many readers disagreed. Below is a sample of comments.

Overachiever

The author is obviously not a product of specialized school or any decent school. You’re doing well for yourself writing for this website with an average of 10 readers a day.— Stanley

Why stop with HS?

How about we do away with all admission standards? Why stop at the specialized high schools. Not enough minorities in medical schools? Must be the racist MCAT exam. We can just let people into medical school as long as the student body “looks” like the surrounding community. You, Mr. Yates, are practicing

Missing the U Wants In

A nonsensical proposal

Author of this article is fcking dumb ass.—Ray No. Getting rid of the specialized high schools is not the answer at all. I can tell that you are a transplant, and unaware of the state of the specialized high schools before you arrived. I went to a Brooklyn Tech that was 51% Black and Hispanic. Don’t tell me our kids cant do well on the test. The problem is the terrible state of the K-8 schools in Black & Hispanic neighborhoods. The systematic removal of gifted & talented classes from Black and Hispanic neighborhoods is the single largest cause of the lack of qualified Black & Hispanic students from the specialized high schools. Not test prep. And not a so-called racist test. No joy in learning? To the contrary, my years at Tech were some of the best years of my life. The simple joy of being surrounded by kids who were just as smart, if not smarter than you. A stark contrast to what I had to deal with back in my neighborhood, dealing with constant bullying for being the smart kid. By the way, one of the best GT programs in the city used to be at PS 67. Rothchild in Ft. Greene had one too. Let’s be real: the real reason that you and so many transplants want the specialized high schools to go away is that all of you that have moved in

What you are proposing is handing over everything to people with money. Get rid of private schools? How? Rich people created them for themselves and the public can’t control what they do unless you are suggesting a dictatorship where somebody rules the world and says they can’t exist. I’ve heard the differentiation argument before and all it does it takes away opportunity from the poor and makes it a rich man’s game. Gifted and Talented education is removed from public and people who can afford will go private. Carranza sent his daughter to a screened school (in San Francisco), as did the Mayor as did almost every person who comes out swinging against these schools. When it is their children the rules don’t apply, but they are very willing to close the door behind them. This is a nonsensical proposal which relies on make believe controls which will never exist.—Bruce

Liked his school

The article misses the real point , there are high achieving students that need the advanced programs that Stuyvesant provides. Conversely these programs would be beyond the capabilities of most high school students or

the tonnage of the world

Brett Yates

very couple weeks, City Councilmember Brad Lander experiences a spasm of guilt over what Gowanus is going to look like in 10 years, and in order to relieve this sensation, he tweets a link to an article about the importance of increasing the housing supply as a means to combat rising rents in America’s cities. It may be Farhad Manjoo’s May opinion piece in the New York Times: “America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.” Manjoo partly attributes the crisis in San Francisco, where the median one-bedroom rent has soared to $3,700, to Democratic lawmakers’ obeisance to rich home-

Red Hook Star-Revue

STAR REVUE

MAP JUNE 2019

the new VOICE of New York

THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YO RK and gentrified the LES, Fort Greene, and Bed-Stuy, is that your kids aren’t getting into the schools either. And you want in. —Yusef Johnson

the soft bigotry of low expectations. — Bill DeC

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LETTERS

SPECIAL RED HOOK TOUR IST

send them to george@ redhookstar.com or post on our website, www.star-revue.com

owners who, for all their social progressivism, don’t want new high-rises blocking their Painted Ladies’ views of the Golden Gate. This led the California State Legislature to reject Senate Bill 827, which would have eased local zoning restrictions and allowed developers to build midrise apartment towers in lower-density neighborhoods. I lived in San Francisco when State Senator Scott Wiener introduced SB 827. The landed gentry of St. Francis Wood opposed it, but so did the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. The bill would have created new housing; it also would have completed the ethnic cleansing of the Mission District, cre-

PLUS:

EXPANDED MUSIC AND ARTS CAL ENDAR

j u2 s t not of interest to them. That the school system as a whole doesn’t do the job to give the 3 necessary skills to gain entry to the specialized schools is Columbia Street not (929) 298-007 the367problem the4 existence jamitbistro.com of the specialized schools themselves . Also rather than some place devoid of soul you will find many great artists , musicians and Actors are graduates of these schools . I am a proud graduate of Stuyvesant .— David Castagne Brooklyn is all about

blending cultures. We’re all about blending Global Cusine at Jam’It Bistro

and yes, we had other articles:

Richard Wolff, oysters, and a whole new Section 2!

article

like, I used to work at the Brooklyn Icehouse. I still do! Also, I am not sure of the relevance of including the relationship with Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, NFBID, and especially Rick Russo? What does he have to to with anything regarding this Red Hook initiative?

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I really wished you would have painted a more accurate narrative of what’s going on without including this confusion. —James Ellis

Shakespeare in Carroll Park

Editors Note: We apologize for mischaracterizing the current part-time employment of Mr. Ellis. He can still be found at the Ice House on Sundays.

Rocky’s is cool!

Like ghostly review!

Really looking forward to seeing this!!! — Susan Grant Thanks so much for writing about our Friday nights! We have SO MUCH FUN devery week. Why don’t Lovechild come and play—Jeannie Fry

Red Hook baking story

You go girl. Keep up the good work. I’m very proud of you— Yolanda Bennett

Consultant Not Happy

I thought you were going to check back before publishing the article to add the updated information that we were working on. There are some incorrect statements in your

Hello Matt, I found your contact info under the arts section and thought I would contact you hoping you could pass this along to one of your arts writers. I just wanted to thank Will Drickey for the very thoughtful and nicely written review of our show Ghost Stories. We at OyG Projects and the artists Mark & Norm loved his writing and we really appreciate the review. Thank you again and glad Will seemed to enjoy the show. - Lauren Whearty

Don’t buy Brad Lander’s YIMBY junk

ating an irresistible financial incentive for landlords to push their remaining Latino tenants out of the neighborhood’s smaller, older apartment buildings, which developers would then have razed in order to build shiny new condos for tech workers. A month later, Lander’s rationalization of choice may be “Americans Need More Neighbors” by the New York Times Editorial Board: “The United States is suffering from an acute shortage of affordable places to live, particularly in the urban areas where economic opportunity increasingly is concentrated. And perhaps the most important reason is that local governments are preventing construction.”

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The purpose of the article is to praise the city of Minneapolis for abolishing single-family zoning. “People should be free to live in a prairie-style house on a quarter-acre lot in the middle of Minneapolis, so long as they can afford the land and taxes. But zoning subsidizes that extravagance by prohibiting better, more concentrated use of the land. It allows people to own homes they could not afford if the same land could be used for an apartment building. It is a huge entitlement program for the benefit of the most entitled residents,” the board explains. I don’t know the first thing about Minneapolis or have a strong opinion on the policy in question. But I think I can

July 2019, Page 5

YATES ON THE BRIDGING GOWANUS CHARADE (continued from previous page)

spot the flaw in the logic above, which insists that ending single-family zoning will somehow give the boot to the city’s “most entitled residents.” In reality, high-income households will absorb the cost of the adjusted property taxes on their newly valuable land and stay put, as the first sentence in the quoted paragraph acknowledges. Other communities, where workingclass and middle-class families bought modest detached homes when prices were low and managed to hold onto them despite their smaller incomes, seem likelier, in the absence of other municipal controls, to disappear. These are the homeowners whom the New York Times deems undeserving. Personally, I believe in density and might accept the argument that, in the age of climate change, no one deserves to occupy a whole quarter-acre lot in the center of a major city, irrespective of his or her wealth, but this argument would have no merit within the logic of the market economy. The wealthy must always get their way. In any case, Minneapolis is just a pretext here. In both pieces, the larger message is clear: city governments must stand back and allow the eager free market to solve the problem of unaffordable rents. It’s time to bring the supply-side economics of neoliberal deregulationists to the housing crisis. The builders want to build; we just need to let them do their thing.

This is the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) attitude, which locates a politics of antiracism, desegregation, antihomelessness, and equality of opportunity within an opposition to municipal zoning ordinances that protect the light-filled lawns and uncrowded sidewalks of the NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard). The YIMBY’s nemesis is the homeowner who cares more about “preserving the existing character of the neighborhood” (a frivolous concern) than about the plight of the poor. The conservatism of the NIMBY allows the YIMBY to feel like a radical even as his policy prescriptions match those of any big-time real estate developer. Progressives like Lander distinguish themselves from libertarians because they support rent control and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), which, together, they believe can guide private development to serve the needs of the public. In general, some suspicion may be warranted when the proposed solu-

tion to a major social problem stands to produce an enormous profit for some private entity. Empirically, the YIMBY position is flatly wrong. On a regional level, significantly increasing the supply of market-rate housing will, in the long run, decrease rents overall – though it won’t ever end homelessness – but it’s not so simple on a neighborhood level. Empowering developers to build stacks of vacant luxury condos in coveted, up-and-coming areas of Brooklyn won’t create affordability there – just look how affordable Williamsburg became after its rezoning. Instead, it’ll trigger a speculative frenzy, and longtime tenants will lose their homes as developers rebuild the neighborhood in the image of the new arrivals. MIH units won’t come close to making up the difference. The true YIMBY knows, however, that the gains of increased production will ultimately trickle down even to the victims of displacement – perhaps

“The conservatism of the NIMBY allows the YIMBY to feel like a radical even as his policy prescriptions match those of any big-time real estate developer. “

somewhere in New Jersey, a few years from now. That’s good enough for him. For most others, the failure of the de Blasio administration’s rezonings is clear. A few months ago, Jumaane Williams won the Public Advocate election partly on a promise to call for a moratorium on neighborhood rezonings, although I haven’t heard him mention his pal Lander’s plan for Gowanus since taking office. The Gowanus rezoning will be the biggest of the de Blasio era thus far, and it’ll take place under an elected official who regards himself as one of the city’s most progressive councilmen. Afterward, Lander will tell himself that a democratic procedure birthed the new Gowanus – a process of outreach and input from equal voices, arriving at compromises for the benefit of all. In truth, his Bridging Gowanus was a charade. The decision to rezone came from the top, and it never mattered what anyone else thought. Very few voices count in New York City – although, in 2015, brownstone owners in the Cobble Hill Historic District forced Lander to reject a ULURP proposal by Fortis Property Group for the former LICH site, which would have generated 1.2 million square feet of housing in accordance with a plan that Lander himself reportedly had helped conceive alongside the developer. YIMBYism eventually figures out whom it can pick on, and ultimately, it isn’t the “wealthy (continued on next page)

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July 2019

Rally against rezonings by Erin DeGregorio

Brad Lander (continued from previous page)

liberals” of Manjoo’s imagination. Unfortunately, Gowanus doesn’t have a Cobble Hill Association of powerful donors. We all know how it’ll look a decade from now. Gowanus will be expensive and ugly, a place largely without industry, art, or people of color. Oblivious yuppies – their brains vaguely poisoned by the toxic soil beneath their new hardwood floors – will occasionally stumble headfirst into the canal, where flesh-eating bacteria will consume them whole. Their neighbors won’t look up from their streaming HBO shows long enough to notice. Who wants this? If we actually hope to prevent cities from turning into dystopian playgrounds for the wealthy, where service workers arrive by the truckload from distant shantytowns on the periphery, market-based mechanisms aren’t the answer. The solution is obvious: municipalities should start building their own housing. In Europe, it’s called “social housing,” and it attracts renters from all walks of life. For instance, in Vienna, 60 percent of residents live in the city’s social housing. Critics would demand to know how New York City would

pay for such a program if anyone proposed it, but in fact social housing doesn’t necessarily need to lose a great deal of money. In many cases, it basically breaks even, with wealthier renters subsidizing the poorer ones in economically diverse buildings. But because it doesn’t need to turn a profit, it can address the actual needs of the housing market at every level, instead of reflexively adding to a glut of luxury condos. When it comes to housing, we’re stuck in 2009 logic. Surveying a broken healthcare system at the start of the Obama presidency, progressives told themselves that they could find a way to make the capitalist market fix the problem. Instead of fighting for the right solution (single-payer), which now seems so obvious, they picked a wrong solution that seemed possible. At least they got to feel like they were doing something. Brad Lander feels like he’s doing something about the housing crisis. On the most basic level, I agree with Lander: we need to build more housing. So let’s build more housing. Some of it can be in Gowanus! But let’s leave the developers out of it.

Human-Scale NYC, along with 19 other neighborhood groups, held a press conference across the street from the Equitable Building, where the City Planning Commission (CPC) has its New York City offices, on June 19. They believe the Commissioners, who they say are mostly connected to the real estate industry, rubber stamp a majority vote along the lines indicated by landlords and developers via their lobby, the Real Estate Board of New York.

12-stories, if 20 percent affordable housing was included. Now more than a decade later, buildings of more than 20 stories are being presented to the community, despite many bringing up concerns about those extreme heights. She went on to say developers would be getting real estate and tax deals, should this plan move forward.

“When regulated industries take over the city agency that is supposed to regulate them, foxes are guarding the henhouse,” Human-Scale said in a statement. “Such is the case at the City Planning Commission. Having the foxes in charge explains why communities cannot get a fair hearing before that Commission.” There the groups stood and spoke in solidarity, calling for the following:

But Gowanus isn’t the only neighborhood in Brooklyn to be facing impending or current rezonings. Mi Casa No Es Su Casa spoke about the pending Bushwick rezoning; Movement to Protect the People spoke about the Brooklyn Botanic Garden spot rezoning; Boroughs United addressed borough jails; and Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network mentioned massive displacements and the city valuing capital over people.

A moratorium on upzonings until a majority of new commissioners, who don’t represent the interests of the real estate industry, is installed at the Department of City Planning.

Other represented community-based groups included: East Harlem Preservation, Stop Sunnyside Yards, Take Back the Bronx, G-REBLS, Neighborhoods United Below Canal, Moving Forward Unidos, Inwood Preservation, Lower Seamen Tenants Association, Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale, Artists Studio Affordability Project, Justice For All Coalition, and Queens Neighborhoods United.

A call to the City Charter Commission to rectify “agency capture” with changes to the City Charter that assures appointees to regulatory agencies don’t represent the regulated industry.

“We in Gowanus also feel that this rezoning is dirty, dirty, dirty politics, and we deserve a better plan,” Stoller said.

A public investigation of conflicts of interest at the CPC on rezonings for Gowanus, Bushwick, Flatbush, Industry City and the past rezonings of In- Jenny Dubnau, who repped the Artists wood, East Harlem and East New York. Studio Affordability Project, spoke on Debbie Stoller, a familiar face who has behalf of the understudied industrial attended Gowanus rezoning-related manufacturing zones where workmeetings and press conferences in ing artists have historically had cheap Brooklyn since February, represented spaces to do their work. Voice of Gowanus in Manhattan. “You all know how dirty the Gowanus Canal is, but if you knew what was going on down there with this rezoning, it’s dirtier than you could possibly imagine,” she said. Stoller informed attendees that the Department of City Planning (DCP) came up with a plan in 2008 that allowed for eight-story buildings along the canal that could turn into 11 or

“Simply put, the EDC [Economic Development Corporation] and DCP are whittling away at our manufacturing zones, destroying good job opportunities and raising surrounding rents as they go,” she said. “When you have these shiny glass towers replacing gritty auto repair shops and woodworking shops, all the rents in the surrounding area rise, not just in the manufacturing zones. Again, who is it for? Real estate.”

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July 2019, Page 7

Gowanus IBZ (see story to the right) Tuesday Evening Socials 6:30 - 7:30 pm

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July 2019

The future of industry in the new Gowanus

by Erin DeGregorio

anufacturing businesses, including contractors and repair shops that have been in Gowanus for years, have been wondering about what their futures will look like once giant skyscrapers become their neighbors.

The southern portion of Gowanus has been part of the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone since 2006 (see map to the left). The IBZ is a zoning designation created by the Bloomberg administration to supposedly protect manufacturing areas from encroachment by residential development, which usually outprices land and leaves industry homeless. This is exactly what opponents of the streetcar plan (BQX) fear. DCP put fear in the hearts of many Gowanus businesses when they neglected to include the IBZ in their study area. Paul Basile, president of the Gowanus Alliance, a business group, told City Limits magazine last year, “I think they [DCP] are trying to paint the picture with too many colors. They are going to create huge quality-of-life issues.” The magazine goes on to explain “What he means is, placing industrial businesses near an expanding residential neighborhood is bound to create use conflicts – heavy trucks trying to navigate around bike stands, manufacturers struggling to get deliveries in around the crowds gathered for recreational axethrowing, and the noise that leads to resident complaints and city fines – industry almost always loses.” In response, DCP held a couple of meetings last month to address the subject of Gowanus and manufacturing.

Gowanus IBZ Visioning Study City Planner Jonah Rogoff, who led one of the roundtable meetings, reiterated to attendees that the visioning study’s purposes and goals are to support business growth, create a land use framework, and identify priority infrastructure and workforce development needs that can reinforce the area as a 21st-century jobs hub for industrial and commercial uses. “[The] goal is not an area-wide rezoning, but a shared framework to guide future development, infrastructure improvements, and policy,” one slide read behind Rogoff during the presentation.

Group discussions The June 12 roundtable broke out into three large groups, with DCP facilitators leading discussions and other agencies’ representatives answering any relevant questions and listening for feedback. For instance, one table had representatives from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and from the departments of Small Business Services, Environmental Protection, and Transportation, as well as real estate, construction and studio stakeholders. For the next hour, stakeholders talked about the assets and challenges of operating in Gowanus, their vision for neighborhood improvements and their priorities moving forward.

Some concerns and respective recommendations that came up included: infrastructure upgrades to help flooding overflow; better public transit (i.e. bike parking, car sharing, shuttles); more accessibility into loading bays; traffic calming (by Whole Foods and BQE entrances, for example); lifting or lowering parking requirements; and allowing appropriate higher densities in certain areas. A hope that redevelopment would and should be gradual also came up in conversation, so that sudden and immediate displacement, especially of momand-pop shops, wouldn’t occur. “I don’t mind growth, but not at the cost of small businesses,” a music studio owner said. When the room later reconvened, it was clear that stakeholders want more space, more flexibility and an increase regarding vertical space requirements. Others said loading and unloading spots should be changed and that there should be job training with NYCHA residents for job growth.

Post-meetings Following the two meetings, Basile said that the Gowanus Alliance was happy with the turnout, noting that many new businesses, along with a variety of property owners and older area businesses, had attended. He said that he hopes any future environmental impact studies will include a further look at other citywide rezonings and see how manufacturing areas were affected after the fact. This, he believes, is an opportunity to see what Gowanus’s future may be and how to prevent any negative ramifications before the rezoning process begins. “We are thankful for Councilman Brad Lander for allowing us to participate and for supporting businesses, and also thankful for DCP for having these conversations because it shows that they are effectively trying to address the issues,” Basile said on behalf of his group. “We’re happy to be at the table and we’re glad that this conversation is happening now rather than later.” DCP will compile all the roundtable notes into one summary over the summer, and will continue to get feedback and information from the community. In the fall, the agency will develop and share its preliminary recommendations, and draft a final land use framework and vision plan.

Red Hook Star-Revue

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July 2019, Page 9

What the Gowanus Canal streetscape might look like by Erin DeGregorio

The Department of City Planning (DCP) came to Community Board 6’s Economic/Waterfront/et al. meeting on May 20 to talk about the future of the Gowanus Canal waterfront. DCP has already talked about what they call a Shore Public Walkway, which is part of their rezoning plan for the area. They have issued pretty pictures of people walking in the 40 foot band that is reserved for parkland around the canal. The already existing Sponge Park, near the completed Lightstone Project, the first Gowanus Canal residential building, is an example.

During the Q&A portion, member Mark Shames said community members would like to see more life along the waterfront and beyond, programming-wise (aside from proposed dog runs, play areas and art areas, for example), to which DCP reminded the audience that 40 feet isn’t a huge amount of space. “The amount and types of programming is limited,” they continued. “There are a few opportunities that maybe could have a gathering space for like a food market or evening cinemas – those are things that could occur.”

The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club’s treasurer, Owen Foote, complained againt that DCP isn’t requiring private developers to provide ladders that go to from the water in their Waterfront Access Plan, and asked DCP and the CB6 committee to consider required access at the public portions that meet with the canal. The agency responded that those determinations wouldn’t happen until after the rezoning’s approved. “We are just cautious about placing a requirement of access at certain street ends where we don’t know it it’s feasible,” DCP added. “We see the value

of waterfront access and getting access to boat and kayak launches, for example, but those have to be evaluated case-by-case, by location. Those are things we don’t know yet.” When resident Brad Vogel also asked if the plan would designate spots along the canal for working vessels to be tied up and oﬄoad cargo (to interface with the Mayor’s Freight NYC plan – a citywide effort that launched in July 2018 to move more freight by waterborne vessels instead of by trucks), the agency said that would be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

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July 2019

Red Hook Container Terminal gets busier

n the spring, the Red Hook Container Terminal added a new weekly container service to its roster of clients. Each Monday for the past two months, a vessel from Miami-based carrier Seaboard Marine’s North Atlantic-North Central America loop has docked in Red Hook, the last port of call on a route starting in Guatemala, with stops in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Philadelphia, and Newark. The Red Hook Container Terminal will also continue to receive two other services: one from the French shipping company CMA GCM, which links Brooklyn to Europe and Australia, and a Seaboard Marine service from the Caribbean. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owns the Red Hook Container Terminal, its only deep-water port on the east side of New York Harbor; a private company, Red Hook Terminals, operates it. Last year, Red Hook Terminals signed a new five-year lease with an option for a five-year extension—a relatively short contract by the standards of the Port Authority.

Families and officials rally for smaller classes by Erin DeGregorio

chool may be out for the summer, but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t on people’s minds. A large group of parents, students, teachers, advocates and elected officials stood on the steps of City Hall for an hour on June 11, demanding smaller class sizes. They also urged the Department of Education (DOE) and Mayor Bill de Blasio to allocate specific funding in next year’s budget towards reducing class size in New York City public schools.

“The mayor and the chancellor talk a lot about bringing equity and excellence to our schools and some the moves they are making may bring us closer to that goal. But there’s a huge gaping hole in their agenda and that relates to class size,” said Executive Director of Class Size Matters Leonie Haimson, who’s been working on this issue for 20 years. “This fall, more than 330,000 kids were crammed into classes of 30 or more. Our class sizes are 10 to 30 percent larger on average

Red Hook Star-Revue

by Brett Yates

The smallest of the Port Authority’s container terminals, the Red Hook Container Terminal has kept alive the long tradition of Brooklyn’s working waterfront, but it handles significantly less volume than Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. Real estate developers, who covet the site for its views of Manhattan, regularly call attention to its financial losses. U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler, a longtime ally of maritime industry whose congressional district spans Red Hook’s shoreline, defended the terminal when Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested closing it in early 2018. “The Port Authority operates to fund transportation. Transportation doesn’t need to make money; transportation needs to break even,” Robert Gottheim, Nadler’s district director, told the Star-Revue in June. “We need to have goods brought into the largest consumer market in the world, which is the east side of the Hudson River, where two-thirds of the population in this region live.” He added, “It’s very important for economic development to have this facility operational. It’s very importhan in the rest of the state. Classes this large are neither equitable nor excellent, especially as studies show that students of color gain twice the benefit in smaller classes when class sizes are reduced.” Though the state’s highest court concluded in 2003 that City public school classes were too large to provide students with their constitutional right to a sound basic education, class sizes have increased, especially in the early grades. Between 2007 and 2016, for example, the number of students in classes of 30 or more in grades one through three increased by 4,000 percent, as per Class Size Matters. Solutions to the problem, though probably expensive to execute, are hiring more teachers and having more classrooms available.

District 15, Specifically There are 60 schools in District 15, whose neighborhoods include Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Kensington, Park Slope, Sunset Park and Red Hook. Twenty-two of the 26 elementary schools in District 15 were over-utilized, according to the DOE Office of District Planning. PS 32 was the most

tant for the jobs. It’s very important to take trucks off the road. Any more container service that the Red Hook Container Terminal can bring in is good, and we support that, and I’m glad that they are doing better economically all the time.” Local 1814 of the International Longshoremen’s Association union, with Frank Agosta as president, represents the Red Hook Container Terminal’s longshore and maintenance workers. According to Agosta, the addition of a third service is “going to help us tremendously.” By his account, activity at the facility already “has increased quite a bit” recently. “The first seaboard service that went into Red Hook, the first ship that came in, I believe we had less than 40 containers on that vessel,” he remembered. “That was about 10 years ago. And we’re up to about 800, 900 containers on a vessel now.”

tomer base. The word is out now; you get more customers interested in it— it’ll just grow.” The uptick in business has been good for jobs. “We’re in the process of hiring now. Over the past year to 15 months, we’ve brought in—I believe—36 new individuals working at Red Hook. Some of those people were hired locally,” he said. In addition to seafaring vessels, the Red Hook Container Terminal receives daily barges from across New York Harbor, and here too, the volume of cargo has increased this year. Last fall, the United States Maritime Administration created the North Atlantic Marine Highway Alliance, which, in conjunction with the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s Freight NYC plan, seeks to increase the use of barges for local transportation of goods, citing the environmental benefits over trucking.

Agosta continued, “I think we started out with a little less than a hundred on this new ship, and we’re already seeing a gradual increase. With a new service, you have to build up your cus-

“There’s a need for the Red Hook Container Terminal,” Agosta affirmed. “The Red Hook Container Terminal will be around for a long time.”

over-utilized building at 181 percent, based on 2016-2017 Blue Book records. (Construction on a 436-seat addition at PS 32, is scheduled for completion in 2020 to 2021.) PS 15, Cobble Hill School of American Studies and PS 373, which have between 150 and 299 seats, were under-utilized at 72 percent.

schooling to four-year-olds since 2014. However, once these students move on to Kindergarten and beyond, the problems become larger classes in limited spaces.

Lina Rosario, a sixth grader at MS 839, went to City Hall and spoke about her experiences from learning in an overcrowded class of 33 students. She said she and other students often sought out extra help from the teacher during their lunch periods, but she still sometimes didn’t get the best math grades afterward. “If there’s another student across the room who needs help and there’s another student that’s misbehaving, the teacher can’t get to both of them, so the class is sorta wild every single time,” Rosario explained at the podium. “Our mayor has to notice that us students are struggling in math and most classes that matter because we don’t get enough help due to all the students in our class.” The Universal Pre-Kindergarten program has provided free, full-day

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“The biggest risk to our Pre-K students occurs when they enter grades K through 3, where too often they’re expected to learn in classes of 30 or more. Yet the DOE insists on pushing more and more Pre-K and now 3-K kids into elementary schools that are already overcrowded, which causes our CBO [community-based organization] enrollment to drop and threatens our viability,” said Brooklyn Pre-K director Alice Mulligan, who spoke on behalf of CBOs for Equity. Similarly, Naila Rosario, president of NYC Kids PAC, mentioned kids need more help once they turn five, in addition to more feedback and support from their teachers – which she and others believe is impossible, given the current conditions. Other elected officials who spoke included Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo and Council Members Adrienne Adams, Inez Barron, Barry Grodenchik and Brad Lander.

July 2019, Page 11

Five historic Gowanus sites could become landmarks before rezoning threatens by Erin DeGregorio For the first time in the face of a proposed city-initiated rezoning, strategic advocacy by the Gowanus Landmarking Coalition—comprised of grassroots, neighborhood and citywide advocates—has led to proposed landmark designations of a set of historic neighborhood buildings prior to a proposed neighborhood rezoning.

also prioritized earlier this year. Coalition members will continue to advocate for the preservation of Gowanus history with the Commission, the Department of City Planning, Council Member Brad Lander, Council Member Stephen Levin, Council Member Carlos Menchaca and the broader community.

“We view this as a great first step by the Landmarks Preservation Commission,” said Gowanus resident Brad Vogel, one of the Coalition’s co-founders, on June 25. “While we strongly encourage the Commission to continue reviewing additional potential landmarks in Gowanus—and along Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, in Carroll Gardens, and in Red Hook—it is heartening to see even a handful of true landmarks calendared before the proposed rezoning arrives.”

“We are appreciative that Landmarks has gotten out ahead of the rezoning and done a tremendous amount of thoughtful work to calendar these five buildings, and that Council Member Lander has offered significant support to move this process forward,” said Kim Maier of the Old Stone House. “We want to be able to tell the story of Gowanus, and these buildings form a helpful core we can build from as we interpret its layers of history.”

The Commission selected five of the most architecturally and narratively significant properties for calendaring, all of which were on the Coalition’s priority list. Those buildings are the: Gowanus Flushing Tunnel Pumping Station and Gate House (196 Butler St.), the old American Can Company Factory (238-246 3rd St.), Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company Central Powerhouse (153 2nd St.), Montauk Paint Manufacturing Company Building (170 2nd Ave.) and ASPCA Rogers Memorial Building (233-237 Butler St.). This is only the beginning of an ongoing effort by the Coalition as the neighborhood moves through the rezoning process. The Commission didn’t close the door on discussion of several additional properties that the Coalition

While several of the sites on the Coalition’s priority list weren’t designated, the Coalition will continue to use every tool available to it to ensure that the structures aren’t lost in the rezoning. “We will continue to push for zoning that reduces the incentive to demolish historically significant Gowanus structures on and beyond our priority list, including irreplaceable industrial icons like the Roulston complex on 9th Street, the R.G. Dun building at Butler and Nevins Streets, and the brewery and icehouse complex at 4th and Bond,” said Peter Bray of the Park Slope Civic Council. “We will also continue to liaise with public officials to explore the creation of new policies that would help to protect extant Belgian Block streetscapes in Gowanus and elsewhere in the city.”

The ASPCA Rogers Memorial Building dealt with the inhumane conditions that Brooklyn’s dairy cows dealt with in the 19th century, which resulted in unhealthy milk.

Finding a way to reform the Department of Buildings process to prevent drop-by-drop demolitions, as in the case of the S.W. Bowne Grain Storehouse, is on the table as well.

ject owners of properties in the district to restrictions, but it does make historic properties eligible for certain state and federal historic tax credits to assist with restorations.

“Watching a true landmark like S.W. Bowne get destroyed along the Gowanus Canal—first by neglect, then by fire, and now amidst an ongoing flurry of violations—has been gutwrenching,” said Kelly Carroll of the Historic Districts Council. “We call on Gowanus-area city council members to host a roundtable to devise clear, time-sensitive ways for the Department of Buildings and the Landmarks Preservation Commission to intervene and prevent losses like this.”

“Aside from the city-level calendaring, Gowanus needs to be designated a State and National Register district before the rezoning is unleashed,” said Linda Mariano of Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus. “The original 2014 effort to get the neighborhood on the registers—which could have facilitated many historically-sound restorations—was derailed due to a lack of understanding of what register designation actually entails. The State Historic Preservation Office needs to make this happen. It’s time.”

The Coalition will also continue to raise awareness of the need to designate Gowanus as a State and National Register historic district. State and national register status doesn’t sub-

For more information about the Coalition, visit gowanuslandmarks.org.

FOUR HISTORICAL DISTRICTS IN SUNSET PARK BECOME LANDMARKED by Brett Yates The Sunset Park Landmarks Committee, an activist association of neighborhood preservationists, celebrated a major victory on June 18 when the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) responded to their six years of organized advocacy by voting unanimously to protect four historic residential sections of Sunset Park. The Sunset Park North, Sunset Park South, Central Sunset Park, and Sunset Park 50th Street historic districts join six preexisting individual landmarks (and one interior landmark) in the neighborhood. Collectively, the districts comprise more than 500 buildings, stretching from 44th Street to 59th Street between Fourth and Seventh avenues. Owners now have to earn LPC approval for exterior renovations to their properties. Built in the late 19th and early 20th

Page 12 Red Hook Star-Revue

These are the four different residential areas in Sunset Park whose buildings are now protected by a historical designation. (photo courtesy of NYC Landmarks Commission)

centuries, Sunset Park’s rowhouses historically belonged to working-class and middle-class immigrant families. The neighborhood contains many examples of Romanesque and Renaissance Revival architecture. Councilman Carlos Menchaca, assemblyman Félix Ortiz, and congresswoman Nydia Velázquez all supported the grassroots landmarking push.

five properties in Gowanus for landmarking consideration in advance of the neighborhood’s upcoming rezoning. These are the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel Pumping Station and Gate House, the American Can Factory, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Powerhouse, the Norge Sailmakers Corporation Building, and the ASPCA Memorial Building.

A similar effort by the Gowanus Landmarking Coalition also appears to have begun to make progress, as the LPC agreed on June 25 to calendar

The LPC—created in 1965 by Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. to safeguard sites of architectural, historical, and cultural significance—kept busy last month,

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additionally approving Bay Ridge’s first landmarked historic district. Created on June 25, the Doctors’ Row Historic District protects 54 homes (circa 1906 to 1913) on Bay Ridge Parkway.

Visit The Red Hook Star-Revue on Instagram and send us a photo!

@redhookstarrevue July 2019

Formula E returns to Red Hook

he Formula E New York City E-Prix returns to Red Hook for its third year this July 13 and 14.

Previous locations this year included Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Chile, Mexico, China, Italy, France, Monaco, German and Switzerland. When Formula E comes to the Cruise Terminal in July this will be the end of their fifth season. Formula E is offering a one-day ticket to the Allianz E-Village, which is their immersive fan festival near the racetrack with views of the cars, for $12 this year, free for those 12 and under who attend with a grown-up. Around 1,500 discount tickets for local Red Hook residents will become available in the days before the race. In the past these tickets were distributed at the Red Hook Library. These are passes for the E-Village, which this year will be featuring live music as well as the food trucks and racing car booths. The E-Village is separate from the grandstands in the track. Those tickets are more expensive. E-Villagers will have the opportunity to see up close the latest innovations in cars and technology from the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest car brands, enjoy food in the Taste Zone, listen to live performances, and access the new, shaded viewing area overlooking the track between Turns

by Nathan Weiser

8 and 9, which will have giant screens showing the action with replays and live commentary. The Saturday schedule is as follows: gates open at 7 am, practice sessions will be at 7:30 and 10 am, Formula E qualifying will be at 11:45, and then the first Formula E race of the weekend will be at 4 pm. The schedule is the same for Sunday, except of course the 4 pm race is for the championship. There will be 11 teams competing and each team will have two drivers. Another new aspect of the Formula E weekend in Red Hook will be a new, centralized pit lane in the middle of the event where you can watch the 22 drivers head out of the pits before the race. The new grandstands will overlook all the action on the track and there will be giant screens that will offer live commentary and replays of the compelling race action.

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In previous years, car racing fans have come from all over the region to witness the only car race in New York City and the only Formula E race in the United States. There have been parents eager to expose their kids to car racing for the first time and locals who wanted to check it out experienced something new close to where they live.

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R E M M U S THE L E V E OF R s e t a Y t t by Bre Whether we like it or not, it seems clear that the summer of 2019 in New York City will be the summer of Revel. After a discreet 10-month pilot program with 68 bikes in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, the Brooklyn-based startup suddenly unleashed 1,000 shiny new mopeds between Astoria and Sunset Park at the end of May, and now the app-activated Vespa-style scooters are everywhere, outstripping any new pop song or summer fashion in ubiquity. It happened without any advertising. People noticed the bikes and hopped on. Whether they become a permanent feature of cityscape remains to be seen, but for the next couple months, their novelty alone will likely sustain public interest. When I read that Revel had leased a 10,000-squarefoot operations facility in Red Hook, I sent the company an email with a few questions, and they invited me to visit them in person to learn more. The Red Hook location employs about 15 workers on Bowne Street. It’s where Revel performs maintenance on the bikes. But warehouse is still under construction, so their representative asked me to come to the company’s office in a coworking space in Gowanus instead. What I wanted to know was what Revel was really for. Joyriding? Commuting? Running errands? Journeys across the city or outings within the neighborhood? “It’s a little bit of all of those things,” General Manager Lauren Vriens explained. “At the core of it, it’s just another great way for New Yorkers to get around. We’re not necessarily trying to replace public transit or buses or anything along those lines, or even Lyft or Uber; we’re just another option.” She continued, “That said, these are electric mopeds, and we’re very cognizant of that and think that’s important because it doesn’t contribute to

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

local pollution levels. They’re smaller, so they don’t contribute as much to congestion. We like to view them as a transportation method that can seamlessly integrate into the city’s infrastructure because they park on the street but also take up very little space for parking.” According to Vriens, Revel can be useful for “last-mile” transportation – the distance between the subway station and the destination – or for full trips. A customer survey showed that they most often replace carshare rides by Uber or Lyft. Here’s how it works: you download the app, submit a photo of your drivers license and a corresponding selfie, and after a fast $19 background check for DUIs or excessive speeding tickets, you find the nearest bike on the interactive map, unlock it (or, if it’s a bit of a walk, reserve it for up to 15 minutes first), and start your ride for $1. After one free minute, intended for you to retrieve one of the two helmets from the hatch in back, each minute costs $0.25, unless you pause the ride, in which case the rate drops to $0.10. You can’t cross any major bridges or tunnels or use highways, but otherwise you can go anywhere within the battery’s range as long as you ultimately return to the Revel coverage zone. At the end of the ride, you can park the moped (perpendicular to the sidewalk, with the rear wheel to the curb) in any on-street parking spot that could be used for cars, as long as

it’s valid for the next 24 hours. The bikes look like Vespas, but the Revel website describes them as mopeds (despite their lack of pedals), partly because that’s how the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles officially classifies them, and partly because avoiding the term “scooter” distinguishes them from electric kick-scooters like Lime’s or Bird’s. At the Revel office, however, employees refer to the bikes simply as “Revels” and even use the proper noun as a verb (as in “I Reveled to Coney Island last weekend”). With a silent engine that reaches a maximum speed of 29 miles per hour, the Revel (manufactured by NEU in China) is swift, nimble, and easy to ride. It has two rearview mirrors and blinkers that shut off automatically after completed turns. It has retractable footrests for a companion in back. It even has a cell phone mount and a USB port for charging. Every three or four days, a mechanic stops by to replace the battery, clean the helmet, and check for problems. Riders and onlookers alike may worry about safety, understandably. Users must be at least 21 years old, and the whole service shuts down between midnight and 5 am to avoid any potential late-night hijinks. The app offers a how-to video for newcomers, but Revel encourages beginners to sign up for a free lesson in Gowanus before starting out. Their easygoing in-house instructor,

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Brandon Gilbert, helpfully gave me the rundown and even a couple socalled hacks: for instance, there’s not yet any limit on how many consecutive 15-minute reservations you can make, so if you spot a moped outside your apartment but don’t plan to leave home for another hour, just tap the button on the app every quarterhour to keep the bike waiting for you. Revel is great fun, but for me, the cost – cheaper than an Uber but pricier than a bus – puts it into the category of a once-in-a-while treat, not that of a potential daily expenditure. The app has seen noticeable success in the mostly wealthy sections of Brooklyn and Queens to which it’s currently restricted, but it remains to be seen whether, upon expansion, anyone will use it in East New York or the South Bronx. Revel offers a 40 percent discount to anyone on public assistance, including all SNAP recipients and NYCHA residents, but the app doesn’t make this obvious or immediately accessible. Those who’ve happened to hear about the offer can (with proof of status) email the company’s customer support for the discount code, but others who would qualify will likely end up paying full price without knowing better. According to Google Maps, my commute from Bushwick to Red Hook takes 35 minutes by car without traffic, which would cost me $9.75 (continued on next page)

July 2019

Revel in the streets one-way via Revel. At rush hour, per Google, it might take an hour and 15 minutes, which would cost $19.75. By bicycle, it takes 30 minutes at any time of day and costs me nothing. “Lane-splitting”—the practice that allows motorcycles to sidestep stalled traffic—is illegal in New York, and mopeds can’t use bike lanes, which means that a Revel, operated legally, is subject to the same fluctuations of roadway congestion as a car. Those who weave in and out of traffic risk a moving violation. Revel arrives in New York amid a nationwide “micromobility” revolution of sorts, as cities attempt to the determine how best to regulate e-bikes, e-scooters, electric skateboards, and other new modes of personal motorized transport. Revel, whose insured and registered bikes all bear New York State license plates, didn’t need to petition Albany for a change in law to bring their mopeds onto the streets, but it’s not clear that City Council would stand by if an app tried to rent them out by the minute in Manhattan. Just to be safe, Revel set up introductory meetings with Councilmembers in Brooklyn and Queens before commencing limited outer-borough operations. Following Silicon Valley lobbying, the New York State Legislature passed a bill on June 21 to legalize e-scooters, while prohibiting e-scooter rental services in Manhattan. If Governor Cuomo (who’s expressed reservations) gives his signature, the same legislation will legalize throttle-assist e-bikes, effectively decriminalizing food delivery in New York. In 2018, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) opened the door to peddle-assist e-bikes; Citi Bike added 1,000 (since recalled due to brake problems) to its fleet. The DOT also commenced a dockless electric bikeshare pilot program, permitting JUMP, Lime, Motivate, and Pace to operate

in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Far Rockaway. What remains to be seen is what precise role such vehicles (and the tech companies that rent them) will ultimately play in the 21st-century landscape of urban transportation. Revel has positioned itself as a supplementary service, not as a substitute for the MTA; it’s a nice add-on for those who can afford it. But whether it knows it or not, the space it now occupies in the lives of New Yorkers is one created at least in part by the MTA’s deficiencies. As more and more vehicle-sharing apps enter America’s cities, each applying its own variety of band-aid to their ailing transportation systems, the future of mass transit begins to look less like a public monopoly.

we are open!

In moped-choked Vietnam, the city of Hanoi has announced plans to ban by 2030 the motorbikes that the majority of its 7.8 million residents use daily. It’ll invest in long-overdue rail and buses instead. In the United States, it’s another story.

Come Celebrate Our 10th Anniversary Year!

Here, many urbanites seem to be dreaming of cityscapes based on individualized transport. Last year, The Atlantic published “The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair,” which advocated for a complete abandonment of the trains, whose tunnels would become “subterranean highways” populated by “competing fleets” of reservable autonomous vehicles, “offering different levels of service to different groups at different prices.” Each would carry one person at a time. On the New York City subway, it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO or the janitor; everyone gets the same service. It’s not beyond repair, but repairing it would cost a lot of tax dollars that could otherwise be spent on Ubers, Revels, and Limes. Different modes of transportation can coexist, but we may have to figure out where our priorities are.

“A Revel, operated legally, is subject to the same fluctuations of roadway congestion as a car. Those who weave in and out of traffic risk a moving violation.”

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July 2019, Page 17

Crown Heights student wins national essay competition by Erin DeGregorio

Parkside Preparatory Academy student Ariel Granger may still be in middle school, but she knows as much about stocks, bonds and mutual funds as her friends do about emojis and apps. Now she’s been nationally recognized for combining her commitment to sustainability with financial analysis.

ing and relevant through the Stock Market Game and InvestWrite, we can give students of all backgrounds a better understanding of their personal financial lives, our economy, and the opportunities inherent in the global capital markets,” said Melanie Mortimer, president of the SIFMA Foundation.

The incoming eighth-grader won first place in the SIFMA Foundation’s Spring 2019 InvestWrite competition after researching a long-term investment approach that incorporated environmental, social or governance (ESG) factors. Her essay was so impressive that it not only won best in New York State at the middle school division (out of 2,100 submissions), but also won best in the country.

This year’s InvestWrite competition required students to select an environmental, social or governance issue they feel strongly about and identify a company that’s doing something to address that. The students were also asked to determine stocks, bonds or mutual funds that could be added to a portfolio to increase the ESG impact and to obtain financial returns in the SIFMA Foundation president Melanie Mortimer congratulates an elated Ariel Granger. long run. Granger identified the issue of protecting the ozone layer. She Those prizes included a classroom on it around the time of state exams. indicated in her essay that she would pizza party, trophy, plaque, banner “I’m glad that she has learned that recommend a portfolio that included and certificate. As the first-place naperseverance pays off. It was very NextEra, Eversource, Exelon and TStional winner in the middle school hard to keep it a secret for nearly over BRX. She wrote, “The environment is division, she was also told she’d be rea month,” said Aaron-Dawes. “There very important for human existence. ceiving a three-day all-expense paid are other students who wrote beautiEarth is our home, so we must protrip to New York City, the financial ful essays; it could’ve been any one of tect it, and the components that helps capital of the world, with her teacher them. I’m just proud.” protect us.” and a parent. After the assembly, Mortimer em“When a company has a higher P/E “At first when I heard that [the winphasized the importance of both the [price/earning] ratio compared to its ning essay] was about the ozone layer, Stock Market Game and InvestWrite competitors or to its industry, it means I immediately thought of mine and opportunities being implemented inthat the investor is paying more for thought, ‘Wait, is this a joke?’ Then side and outside of the classroom. every dollar of earnings, which sugI started crying because I seriously gests that the stock is overvalued, and didn’t think I would win,” Granger “We recognize that if you make an not good for a long-term investment,” said after the assembly. “I’m really in- early investment in young people, Granger continued. “The electricity terested in space like the stars, planets they have the capacity to plan for and industry P/E ratio went from 13.15 in and gases. I learned that there’s a lot make good decisions in their future fi2008, to 27.3 in 2019. NextEra’s P/E of people out there trying to help the nancial lives,” she said on behalf of her ratio is 13.59 and compared to its planet and, in the meantime, they’re organization. “We also recognize that industry, the stock is undervalued, personal finance is something often also making money in the process.” which means that it might be good for considered in the domain of adults Math teacher Greer Aaron-Dawes, a long-term investment.” only. In fact, when you work with who’s also the advisor of the Stock young people, like Ariel, you can see Granger was surprised to learn she Market Game at Parkside Prep, said the enormous capacity that they have won at a school assembly on June 17, the essay was demanding for Granger, – not just to understand the concepts when SIFMA Foundation and Morgan in terms of researching and writing, but to apply them, to think creatively, Stanley representatives congratulated especially because she was working and really plan for their futures.” her and awarded her various prizes.

InvestWrite is a national essay competition that bridges classroom learning in math, social studies and language arts with the practical research and knowledge required for long-term personal financial planning. Students are usually asked to analyze an investment scenario and recommend portfolio allocations that target short-term and long-term financial goals. The competition serves as a culminating activity for participants in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game program. The Stock Market Game, an online simulation of the global capital markets for 4th through 12th grade students, reinforces STEM learning and 21st century skills, as well as economics and personal finance. In teams of three to five, students invest a hypothetical $100,000 in real bonds, stocks and mutual funds, learning cooperation, communication and leadership as they manage their portfolio. They also earn interest on cash balances and pay commissions on trades, just like in real life. “By making economies fun, interest-

New cancer center opens in Sunset Park by Erin DeGregorio

NYU Langone’s Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center in Sunset Park, which opened on June 10, offers medical and radiation oncology treatment and infusion treatments for adult patients with all cancer types and blood disorders. The first floor has five exam rooms and is equipped with the latest oncological technology, including a new state-of-the-art linear accelerator and a CT simulator to allow for 3D treatment planning. These devices offer precise targeting of tumors and minimize adverse effects to surrounding tissue and organs. The accelerator can treat about 30 patients and is believed to be the only one in the area, according to Dr. Alec Kimmelman, professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology. The second floor has four exam rooms and 21 chairs for infusions and blood transfusions. Support services, in-

Page 18 Red Hook Star-Revue

cluding social work, nutrition and genetic counseling, are also available. “Our idea is to bring in further specialty care directly to the patients,” oncologist Abraham Chachoua said. “We’ll be starting off with lung, breast and gastrointestinal malignancies – and then building as we go along.” The three most prevalent cancer cases in Sunset Park and Windsor Terrace, on average from 2012 to 2016, were breast, lung and bronchus and thyroid respectively. The top three cancer cases in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook were breast, prostate and lung and bronchus. NYU Langone Health staff also said that complete blood counts are done on the premises, prior to patients receiving chemotherapy. The center has also set up Stamp Out Cancer Brooklyn, a new initiative in

education and prevention that aims to reduce the disproportionate burden of cancer on a variety of communities in the borough. “We already do pretty well with breast cancer… but the other diseases, we need to focus on. I’m involved with setting up a lung-screening program. We have a program in the city and we’re going to basically translate that to the cancer center here,” Chachoua explained. “Lung cancer screenings save lives; no question about it.” Assistant Speaker Felix Ortiz told of his family’s connection to cancer and emphasized the importance of cancer screenings. Perlmutter Cancer Center is one of only 50 cancer hospitals across the country to be designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute – the highest ranking a cancer program can

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Felix Ortiz speaks on cancer.

achieve. They’re also among the top four percent of cancer centers in the country. Both Brooklyn and Manhattan-based physicians are seeing patients in Sunset Park. Visit nyulangone.org/perlmuttercancercenter or call 718-9074880 for more information. Tell them the Star-Revue sent you.

July 2019

A polyculture of Upstate beer in Carroll Gardens by Brett Yates

or many beer enthusiasts, the greatest adventures are bucolic escapes to farmhouse breweries in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom or the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, where, with monastic dedication, bearded bohemian hillbillies craft organic small-batch ales of such dignity and freshness that they seem almost healthful. But you need a car to get there. Fortunately, in February, Svendale Brewing Co., based in rural Millerton, New York, opened a small off-site taproom in Carroll Gardens. It looks like any other new yuppie bar, but with some imaginative work and a liberal sampling of the beer, one can mentally remove oneself from Brooklyn and picture instead rolling grassland, a light snowfall over the Taconic Range, or the sapphire of an unpolluted northerly segment of the Hudson River. At 486 Court Street, the Svendale Brewing Co. Tasting Room offers 14 taps of rotating house beer, plus two for wine from an adjacent Upstate vineyard. For prices between $4 and $9, customers can choose pours of four, eight, 12, or 16 ounces. I visited with my brother, and together we tried six brews in the medium-large or large format (for the sake of a fair and informed evaluation). Four of them were sours, which speaks more to our personal preferences than to a deficit of other options. These were the Lazy Garden Botanical Sour, a lightly herbal beer flavored with angelica root; the refreshing Sunset Sour Orange Wit; the convincingly fruity Hellblau Blueberry Berliner; and the Stick Shift Sour IPA, more sour than IPA. The Stunt Rider Raspberry Hibiscus IPA, meanwhile, earned its categorical designation even as it bore the appearance of ruby red grapefruit juice and a mellow floral character in place of the usual blast of hoppy bitterness. The Cafe Mocha Milk Stout managed to avoid the sweet, sludgy character that its name seemed to suggest as a worrying possibility.

Svendale is a short walk up Court Street from the better-known Other Half Brewing, which draws long lines whenever it schedules a new can release. Svendale doesn’t have a retail business, but it has “crowlers” for takeaway customers, sealing individual cans of draft beer in open view just behind the bar in real time. According to the bartender, some tourists who visit Other Half subsequently wander up to Svendale, but the differences between the two operations are considerable. Other Half’s near-exclusive lineup of double IPAs and boozy stouts, which regularly exceed 10 percent alcohol by volume, orients itself around the extreme palate of the zealous online “beer geek”; in Svendale’s gentler approach, the highest ABV at the moment is 8.2 percent. It might be nice to see more Belgian or English styles in the rotation, but the offerings at Svendale already have a degree of eclecticism and a graceful style that don’t appear rooted in an effort to achieve the highest BeerAdvocate user rating in every case. On the other hand, Svendale’s generic contemporary interior—metal stools and Edison bulbs—might benefit from a little more particularity. It feels, alas, like Brooklyn (where its owner actually lives), not Millerton, wherever that may be. If the interior design doesn’t come from Upstate, at least the ingredients do. Svendale has a New York State Farm Brewery license. Any brewer in the state can receive one as long as 60 percent of their ingredients come from New York State farms. Besides water, the primary ingredients in beer, traditionally, are hops, yeast, and malted barley. Governor Cuomo introduced the program in 2012 to encourage brewers to buy local, which would create a stimulus for New York agriculture. In the early 20th century, New York grew more hops than anywhere else in the country, but Prohibition forced farmers to turn their attention elsewhere. When Prohibition ended, Washington and Oregon took the lead. The Farm Brewery law seeks to help New York

Svendale is at 486 Court Street across from Franks

reclaim a portion of the industry. Sold at a discount, the Farm Brewers license provides other perks, including the right to open satellite taprooms like Svendale’s; antitrust regulations otherwise prohibit breweries from owning bars in New York, although, as of 2014, they can sell pints inside their own brewing facilities, as Other Half does. In 2012, it was tough to make locally sourced beer in New York because farmers hadn’t yet adjusted to the new demand. Legally, a Farm Brewery could get by with 20 percent in-state ingredients at first.

the law upped the requirement to 60 percent (including 60 percent of the hops). In 2024 it’ll increase to 90 percent. Breweries like Svendale will adjust accordingly; ideally, the law will only make their beer – brewed without the popular varieties of hops unique to the Pacific Northwest, relying on different flavors instead – more distinctive. Svendale is open daily. It doesn’t have a kitchen, so customers can bring outside food into the bar or buy a bag of chips for $2 or pistachios for $4.

Things have changed, and in 2019

“It looks like any other new yuppie bar, but with some imaginative work and a liberal sampling of the beer, one can mentally remove oneself from Brooklyn and picture instead rolling grassland, a light snowfall over the Taconic Range, or the sapphire of an unpolluted northerly segment of the Hudson River.” Red Hook Star-Revue

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July 2019, Page 19

The Red Hook Star-Revue is the community newspaper that goes both ways. We work hard to present you with an information and entertaining package of news, events and advertising that makes living in Brooklyn a little more intimate and friendly. We are also here to listen to you. You can send us letters to the editor, that we gladly print, we accept op-ed submissions on interesting topics, and if you have ideas for stories or tips we can use, please let us know. If you happened upon this paper by chance and would like to be able to pick it up near you, drop us a line and we will get a stack of our free newspapers at a convenient location. You can stop by to see us if you like—we are at

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across from Fairway, inside of NY Printing and Graphics. You can call us most of the time at

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Ring of Faith looks at boxing and religion by Nathan Weiser

hy is there such a connection between such a brutal sport like boxing and faith?” the accomplished Bensonhurst, Brooklyn born and raised Craig Tubiolo said. “You would think it’s the complete opposite and ironic.” Craig Tubiolo, who directed and executive produced Ring of Faith, has had a passion for the sport of boxing since he was a kid and explored the link between religion and boxers in this documentary. He interviewed 25 to 30 boxers to get them to tell their stories about how God and their religion is intertwined with their upbringing and their career as a boxer. He interviewed boxers who were Christian, Jewish and Muslim. Tubiolo went to St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights and has 25 producing credits, eight directing credits and six acting credits going back to 2004. He is currently the Programming and Production Director and host of NET TV’s “Walk in Faith” for Desales Media Group. Ring of Faith, was fully completed near Christmas of 2018 and was first conceptualized three years ago as a topic Tubiolo felt he had to pursue, was nominated for an Emmy Award this year in the sports documentary category. Ring of Faith features longtime actor Mario Lopez, former professional boxer and Bensonhurst native Paulie Malignaggi, two-time welterweight world champion boxer Shawn Porter, Vatican officials and Showtime Sports President Stephen Espinoza. This July, Virgil Films will release Ring of Faith. Tubiolo thinks it is likely Netflix will pick it up since they have been big on boxing movies, and he wants the release to be timed around the Mayweather fight that is slated to happen in July. Tubiolo’s first introduction to boxing professionally was working on a documentary about Malignaggi’s life, Magic Man, that came out in 2007. However, he would watch the sport with enthusiasm, especially the heavyweights, as a kid and box and do martial arts for fun. “I started working on the documen-

Page 20 Red Hook Star-Revue

tary a little bit,” Tubiolo said. “That was my first introduction or relationship I built with Paulie. We are from the same neighborhood, that’s how I sort of knew who he was.”

realistic, but the stars aligned for him to know it was meant to be. Tubiolo’s wife saw a tweet from Lopez that showed the pope holding the boxing world champion belt, adding to the stars aligning for him.

The connection between Malignaggi and Tubiolo was made during the Magic Man movie and he was enthusiastic about being involved in this documentary. Tubiolo thought Paulie’s message added a lot to the film.

The director had no trouble convincing all of the boxers or other notable individuals to appear in the film. The boxers were extremely interested in being involved, since they wanted to get their message about faith and religion out there.

“Paulie says a great statement in the film just about following your dreams and about working hard,” Tubiolo said. “He is an inspiration to a lot of people. His family came from Italy and didn’t have much.”

“They were all very open especially about speaking about faith,” Tubiolo said. “From Yuri Forman, who is a world champion Jewish boxer, to the world champion Muslim boxer, they all said the same thing. They all believed that God gave them a gift and it was their job to fulfill that and give back and help people. It’s very different from what you see on ESPN or Showtime.”

His message to kids in the documentary is that he was training in the gym when they were away in Cancun partying during their teenage years. His hard work, faith, and sacrifice contributed to what he has accomplished. “That is why he is on Showtime, and he is speaking and does commentary,” Tubiolo said. “He adds a lot of value because he came from nothing, changed and developed his life into a very successful man.” Lopez, who has been an actor on many popular TV shows since 1984, has boxed and done Jiu-Jitsu as a hobby for many years, and is an accomplished boxer. He goes to church every week and his faith is very important to him. “Mario Lopez adds a lot because he is true inspiration to the Catholic faith,” Tubiolo said. “He also came from an immigrant family, and he worked really hard. He never forgot where he came from, and he always gave glory to God. I wish more celebrities would be as outspoken as he is about his faith.”

Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero, who is a devout Christian from Los Angeles, has won world championships in two weight classes and has fought Floyd Mayweather. The Ghost was one of the main boxers in the film and he talked about how he used his gift to be an elite boxer to create a platform to help kids. He started to cry and got emotional when interviewed in the film when talking about his faith since it means so much to him. “His wife was sick, and he said if it was not for God he would not be here,” Tubiolo said. “None of them forget where they come from. As quick as they got here is as quick as they go back.” Like how he described the boxers, the director surely has not forgotten where he has come from and where he grew up has influenced him and his documentary and career very much.

Tubiolo and his crew went to Universal Studios to interview Lopez and he was very nice in the process. Lopez, who grew up in the Southern California, has been very supportive of the documentary.

Growing up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, he grew to be fearless and embrace challenges. He also felt his upbringing helped him to be able to be comfortable talking to anybody and not let anything stop him.

There were no issues at all with getting Lopez in the movie since the topic very much connected to him.

“I have that drive, which is from growing up in the neighborhood I grew up in,” Tubiolo said. “I have that drive to be extremely ambitious.”

The director had no doubts about making this movie and thought it possibly wasn’t

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July 2019

Bed-Stuy priest a candidate for sainthood

n June 18, the Most Reverend Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brooklyn, accepted the Cause for Canonization of Monsignor Bernard John Quinn. Msgr. Quinn, a champion for racial equality, established the first church for African American Catholics—St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic Church—in Bedford Stuyvesant in 1922. In 1928, Msgr. Quinn established the first orphanage for African American children in Wading River on Long Island. Despite the building being burned to the ground twice, he rebuilt it a third time; this time fireproofing it by using concrete and brick. The building, known at the time as the Little Flower Orphanage, remains the operations base for Little Flower Children and Family Services of New York. Msgr. Quinn died in 1940 at the age of

by Erin DeGregorio 52, and was buried at the church he founded, where 8,000 people attended his funeral.

Msgr. Quinn had done at Little Flower, and that they helped him there during the winters and summers.

“Our investigation took almost ten years to put together and now we can send the documentation we have on the life of Monsignor Quinn to Rome,” said Bishop DiMarzio. “He combatted racism and is an inspiration to the priests of this diocese. He is a hero who turned things around and gave his life for his people, died an early death, and was a great man.”

“They used to burn crosses at our house in Mineola, even after he was gone, but my family stared fear down,” she said.

As described in The Tablet, Bishop DiMarzio said he prayed to Msgr. Quinn when he had quadruple open-heart surgery in 2010, attesting that he felt the monsignor’s presence while waiting in the emergency room. Mary Clare Quinn, a great-niece who attended the June service, said her family was very proud of the work

Msgr. Paul Jervis—who published a book in 2005 entitled Quintessential Priest: The Life of Father Bernard J. Quinn, and who is the Postulator for the Cause—said, “Monsignor Quinn could not separate his sacramental ministry from the social and political realities that denied to people on account of their race, or immigrant status, the opportunities to enjoy the fullness of life as the Lord willed for all humanity.” “St. Peter Claver Catholic Church became a meeting ground where white Catholics encountered blacks and discovered that they all had a common humanity with the same human

problems, and were all in need of the intercession of St. Therese and the pastoral intercession of Monsignor Quinn,” he concluded. The next steps in the process would be the title of “Venerable,” if nine theologians determine there’s enough cause to pass it to the entire Congregation, beatification and canonization.

“They used to burn crosses at our house in Mineola, but my family stared fear down.”

BASIS school celebrates their first graduation by Will Jackson

On June 20th, BASIS Independent school celebrated their first ever graduation at the BRIC Ballroom on Fulton Street. It was an achievement for the five-year old year school, as the 16 graduating seniors lined up in a black cap and gown with a gold accent, ready to take the next step in their young lives. Parents, teachers and faculty watched on as each student received their diploma, marking the first of what they hope to be many successful graduations in school history.

ating class,” adding “We have had to rely on ourselves and each other to complete this voyage.” In a small school where only 16 students are in the graduating class, it’s important that students build relationships with both their peers and faculty. Student Sam Levit endorsed this by thanking his classmates, saying “Thank you for always making our time here so special, so unique and for keeping it real. Each of us has our own remarkable passions and inspirations.”

In an address to the seniors, head of school Hadley Ruggles said, “You will be the first graduating class from BASIS Independent Brooklyn, thus always occupying a special and favorite place in our memories, minds and hearts”. He later added “You and your scholarship will define this campus, setting the bar high for those who choose to follow your lead.” Emotions filled the theater as students knew that this was more than a typical high school graduation.

It was an emotional night for parents and faculty alike. Some have been with the students since the opening of BASIS Independent. One of those is Steve D’Amato from the English department, who said “I have never worked with such a dynamic, diligent, and astute group of students.”.

In her speech to the class of 2019, valedictorian Eva Yarsky said, “We took a leap of faith when agreeing to be BASIS Independent’s first gradu-

Red Hook Star-Revue

In order to graduate, students had to conduct a three-month independent research project, involving internships and posting progress on blogs. The students researched a wide range of topics from HIV Susceptibility Among Minority Youth and internships at NYU to the safety of luxury automobiles. In talk about how the

BASIS’ sixteen graduates celebrate at the BRIC Ballroom.

school has prepared the students for the future, Yarsky stated, “BASIS Independent has prepared us thoroughly for the uncharted waters that await”. This is just the beginning for BASIS, with seniors earning internships at SUNY Downstate, NYU Langone, World Health Organization, Columbia University Medical Center and many

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others, it’s an impressive start for the 5th year school. The faculty have provided a huge role in the development of these students, especially in a small school like BASIS. In her speech, Yarsky thanked the teachers for “creating a learning environment where any question and contribution no matter how big or how small is valued.”

July 2019, Page 21

Broadway cast members perform in Brooklyn by Erin DeGregorio

ocal Brooklyn residents didn’t have to travel to Manhattan on June 14 to see quality Broadway theatre performances; Broadway came to Bed-Stuy instead. Cast members from the hit shows Hadestown and Mean Girls sang four or more songs each to kick off this year’s Broadway in the Boros concert series. Broadway in the Boros, which is in its fourth year, makes Broadway more accessible to city residents. Sirius XM’s Julie James emceed the performances and presided over giveaways, which included free tickets to each show, if trivia was answered correctly. Anne del Castillo, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, said this was the first time Broadway performed at Restoration Plaza. Previous Brooklyn locations were Fort Greene Park in 2016, Albee Square Plaza in 2017, and The Plaza at 300 Ashland last year. When asked how Hadestown and Mean Girls came to be chosen in this year’s Brooklyn line-up, del Castillo said it was by popularity and chance. “We were really lucky that Hadestown took home so many awards at this year’s Tonys, and that’s our opening show. We didn’t plan that,” she explained with a laugh. “We try to look at a mix of new and classic, and also look at where we’re programming. We try to really match the content to the neighborhoods that we’re going to be in, but we also want it to be an opportunity for those communities to be exposed to something they might not otherwise consider.”

HADESTOWN Hadestown received a warm welcome. The show intertwines two mythic tales – that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone – as it takes audience members on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s beguiling melodies and director Rachel Chavkin’s poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love. John Krause and Khaila Wilcoxon sang duet favorites “Wedding Song” and “All I’ve Ever Known” as Orpheus and Eurydice. Jewelle Blackman, Kay Trinidad, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, the show’s three Fates, performed “Livin’ It Up on Top.” Kimberly Marable, who sang “Our Lady of the Underground,” grew up about 10 blocks away from Restoration Plaza. “It’s great to bring Broadway home to my people,” Marable said. “We ought to be bringing it out to the boroughs, and I’m happy to be a part of doing exactly that – reclaiming Broadway for ourselves. I’m happy to be here and can perform in Brooklyn, which I think is the best borough.” MEAN GIRLS Mean Girls, which has been playing for over a year, is a musical from comedian Tina Fey. Based on the classic film that recently celebrated its 15thanniversary, the storyline’s all about what it means to be a true friend, a worthy nemesis, and – above all – a good human being. Mean Girls was nominated for 12 Tony Awards in 2018. Curtis Holland (as Aaron Sam-

Brooklyn native Kimberly Marable brings Hadestown to her people. (photo by Erin DeGregorio)

uels), Becca Petersen (as Cady Heron), Ashley De La Rosa (as Regina George), and Danielle Wade (as Janis Sarkisian) performed at Restoration Plaza. Becca Petersen spoke after the concert about the event. “It’s definitely different because we don’t have the elements of costume and lights, but it’s fun to have a different setting and atmosphere; it’s really exciting for us,” she explained. “We’re happy to share our story.” UPCOMING SCHEDULE Casts and musicians from Beautiful: The Carol King Musical and Wicked will be at Co-op City, Section 1 Greenway (140 Benchley Place) in the Bronx

NCO Powwow at Pioneer Works The 76th Precinct Sector C Neighborhood Coordination Officers held their June quarterly meeting on the third floor at Pioneer Works. Officers Class and Jovin discussed issues with the 15 community members present.

Grand Larceny There has been an increase of grand larceny thefts in the area recently. “People like to leave their windows open or their doors unlocked,” Officer Class said. “Some people leave their garage open and step away for a second and go inside. There are people out there who just walk by if there is a garage open and then walk inside and take an unattended bicycle.” Many ATMs have been broken into including the downstairs ATM at Brooklyn Crab.

IKEA The NCOs have been conducting an operation called Lucky Bag to deal with stolen belongings. It has been a common occurrence for

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people to shop in IKEA with their bags, then walk around with their shopping cart, turn around for their personal belongings and find that someone has stolen a wallet, cell phone or entire bag. “We have walked the entire IKEA several times,” Officer Jovin said. “We found unattended bags and say, ‘I could have easily stolen your bag.”

Noise complaints Officers are paying attention to this issue. There is a code called code 113, which has been around since 2005, which allows a noise violation to be given after a certain amount of offenses. Officer Jovin said that from 10 pm until 7 am is considered quiet hours, which means that the decibel levels during this period are supposed to be a good bit lower than during the day. Officer Jovin showed his NYPD issued sound meter that measures decibel levels. “If there is a noisy neighbor or event that blasts music,

then feel free to contact us,” Jovin said. “We can come to your apartment and take a measurement of your normal decibels. That way at any point in the night if they go beyond the decibel limit you can inform us and we will issue the proper summons. ” Officer Class encouraged everybody to take pictures and video of excess noise. People can call or text. Officer Class’s email is krystal.class@nypd. org and Officer Jovin’s email is vegnel.jovin@nypd.org.

Trucks A neighborhood resident asked about the truck lengths are allowed in Red Hook. He has had an issue with trucks idling for many minutes and has tried calling 311 when he sees this happening. Officer Class says it is a better idea to contact her or Officer Jovin directly as they have issues summonses for these issues. Leroy Branch, who works for the Department of Transportation, said the allowed truck length is 55 feet and that

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on July 12. Casts and musicians from Beetlejuice and Chicago will be at the Empire Outlets at the St. George Ferry Station (Staten Island) on July 26. All performances are free, take place from noon to 1 pm (rain or shine) and will have ASL musical interpreters on stage. “I hope this ends up inspiring some folks to check out Broadway or even just sparks an interest in the local theater because there’s tons of offerings in each of the boroughs that are a little bit off the beaten path,” said del Castillo. “We really want this to be an opportunity for New York City residents to really take advantage of the cultural offerings both on Broadway and in their local neighborhoods.”

by Nathan Weiser they are allowed three minutes to stay in one place.

Traffic light Another neighborhood resident said two or three years ago a kid was killed at the intersection of Lorraine and Hicks in the morning. NCO officers invade Pioneer Works He thinks a traffic light or even a cross-walk should happens is if you let people be at the corner of Lorraine park overnight when 8:00 am and Columbia. He thinks IKEA comes people will not leave,” shuttles should go on Bay Branch said. “Now we have to worry about towing people. Street instead. They can’t work if there are “We work with IKEA, so we cars around that location. Afcan get in touch with their ter they cap off the park, then management and discuss and we can say let’s restore parkalternative route for the shuting in the evening because tle buses,” Officer Jovin said. then there is no issue with Parking contamination.” A concern was brought up Redemption Church about not being able to park Starting July 10, Redemption around the four softball fields Church will start their sumthat are currently closed mer cookouts. They will be along Lorraine Street. A reevery Wednesday and will be quest was brought up to be free. A goal of Redemption able to have parking allowed Church is to bridge the gap from 6 pm until 7 am before between the community and and after there is work belaw enforcement. ing done in the fields. “What

July 2019

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STAR REVUE

No pier pressure when kayaking in Red Hook by Erin DeGregorio I’ve kayaked only once in my life, about eight years ago on Lake Mohonk – a half-mile long glacial lake in upstate New York. For me, the experience was terrifying with the wooden pier disappearing from sight as I paddled away with so much empty water surrounding me in the single-person kayak. At one point I stopped, struck with panic and with weary arms, after going around a bend. It felt like I’d never be seen if something bad were to happen, especially since no one else was that far out on the water, so early in the morning. When I made it back to land later, I told a resort employee that would be my first and last time on the water. What I should’ve done was stay by the pier and go a little bit further each time during my stay to feel more comfortable – rather than paddle all the way out in one trip because I felt pier-pressured to check it off my vacation to-do list. In hindsight what I probably could’ve used back then to prep for that experience was something like Red Hook Boaters. They’re a volunteer organization that has been providing free kayaking to kids and adults since 2006. Their mission is to help people get on the water and enjoy the New York Harbor, and to instill a sense of protection for the city’s unique coastal environ-

AN ‘IMPOSSIBLE THING TO DO BEFORE BREAKFAST’: TAKE AN ADVENTURE TO ALICE’S TEA CUP CAFÉ IN BROOKLYN by Erin DeGregorio

Alice’s Tea Cup, the popular Manhattan-based tea house franchise that encourages whimsy and imagination while enjoying a spot of tea, unveiled its latest ‘chapter’ in Brooklyn Heights on June 18. The new café, appropriately named Alice’s To Go, provides local Brooklynites with easy, fast countertop service. Though physically smaller in size, it still has the aura of quirky casualness with a grown-up feel and is styled with vintage key wallpaper, larger-than-life wooden mushroom adornments and potion bottles sitting above chessboard patterns in the windows. You can sit inside to enjoy a strawberry

Red Hook Star-Revue

ment by maintaining the small-boat launch site at Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier. “It’s really cool and fun to be out on the water and to get to see some cool ships passing by,” Boater volunteer Sherry Legg said one Thursday evening as kayaks were being taken out of the group’s container behind her. The way it works is you arrive at the very end of Coffey Street, put your name on a list (first-come, firstserved) and then take a kayak out for 20 minutes to explore the cove at your own pace. While many have paddled out toward the end of the pier and back from the small beach, some have gone out to Governors Island, the Statue of Liberty and Gowanus on guided trips/tours. Twelve-year-old Maggie Dalencour, who’s been kayaking in Red Hook for six years now, enjoys going out on the water whenever she can. “I love coming here. It’s something easy [to do] after school when I’m done with my homework [because] I don’t like technology too much,” Dalencour said. “So this is something fun I do on Thursdays and, on Sundays, it keeps me really active throughout the summer.” While you might be able to consider

chocolate scone (with homemade jam and cream) and iced tea before exploring the rest of Brooklyn Heights for the day. It also has a condensed menu, compared to its other locations, offering freshly baked vegan scones, cake and cookies from the private, full-working kitchen downstairs. Plus, it sells Alice’s Tea, their signature blend of Indian black tea, Japanese green tea, vanilla and rose petals. But what makes this café different from its Manhattan locations is the new emphasis on coffee. Their coffee menu currently offers espresso, macchiato, cappuccinos, lattes and more, to appeal to a wider audience. “It’s ok to love both coffee and tea. We have over 140 teas at other the locations, so it felt like having really good coffee would be good,” said Haley Fox, one of the franchise’s co-owners, a week after the grand opening. “We had been wanting to get into coffee for 18 years. We never took it seriously, but here we are.”

Red Hook’s beach comes alive every summer with free kayaking.

her a seasoned pro, compared to people like myself, she added that there’s no reason to be afraid of the recreational sport. “Most people think it’s scary [because] that they might get tipped over,” Dalencour said. “Even if you’ve never kayaked before, there isn’t a big chance you’ll flip out – unless you’re rocking the boat.” This summer you can hone your kayaking skills on Sunday afternoons (1 to 4 pm until Sept. 22) and Thursday evenings after work (6 to 8 pm until Aug. 15), weather permitting. Legg notes that wait times on Sundays are usually about a half hour. The Boaters offer

single and double, sit-on-top kayaks that are unsinkable and self-bailing. Children under the age of 14 need an adult to go in the boat with them. Anyone under the age of 18 needs a parent or guardian to sign a waiver before they can paddle, and the adult must stay on the beach while his or her child is on the water. Since water pollution is a major problem, attendees are encouraged to join in the group’s beach cleanup efforts, removing trash and debris that have washed ashore with supplied gloves and trash bags. For more information, visit redhookboaters.org.

GOING DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE HISTORY She and her sister Lauren originally opened shop on East 81st Street, just blocks away from the famous, bronze Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park—actually signing their lease on Sept. 12, 2001. “People thought we were insane; there was a mass exodus from New York,” Fox explained. “We were like, ‘No, it’s the perfect time because we are diehard New Yorkers, we grew up here … and we’re not going anywhere.’ If anything, we wanted to show a different side to the city that was changing, and people might have been more afraid of it.” The Fox sisters really loved “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll growing up, but realized the story was “more like an acid trip” as they got older as adults. (continued on next page)

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July 2019, Page 23

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Breakneck Ridge tried to warn you by Brett Yates

like hiking, but I’ve never been rock climbing. I’d estimate that Breakneck Ridge, a trail within Hudson Highlands State Park at the border of Putnam and Dutchess counties, occupies a rough halfway spot between the two activities.

A weekends-only stop on the Hudson line of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, with a pair of small yellow platforms on either side of otherwise bare tracks, serves the trailhead between the stations at Cold Spring and Beacon. This makes the hike (a classic in the New York metropolitan area) attractive to carless urbanites. The MTA drops you off right next to the mountain; with water on the other side of you, there’s nothing else in sight. Not every train to Poughkeepsie makes the stop, and the special northbound service ends in the early afternoon. On Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays in July, the first train for Breakneck Ridge leaves Grand Central at 6:45 am; subsequent trains depart at 7:45, 8:45, 9:45, 10:45, and 12:45. The first train back to the city picks up hikers at 1:09 pm, with later trains at 3:09, 4:09, 5:11, 6:13, and 7:13. The scenic riverside journey past the Palisades takes an hour and half in each direction. From the train station, one can choose from several routes of varying length for one’s hike, but nearly all of them include the famous scramble up the

Alice

exposed west face on the mountain, an elevator shaft of scalable stone rubble with several false summits along the way. Any able-bodied amateur can do it with some gumption. My girlfriend and I selected the 3.2mile Breakneck Bypass Loop (probably the most popular choice), which turns left after the tricky white-blazed ascent toward the peaceful, woodsy Wilkinson Memorial Trail. Because we’re lazy, we arrived on the afternoon train, and it was hot when we got there, so it seemed like a good idea to do the hike backward, starting out in the shade on a gradual incline and avoiding the rest of the crowd disgorged by the train as it marched single-file for the Breakneck Ridge Trail, to which we would connect via Wilkinson on the way back. This may have been a mistake; I’m still not sure. Near the top, we met a hiker coming from the opposite direction, who assured us that, owing to the steepness, it would be impossible to descend the Breakneck Ridge Trail; one could pull oneself up, but one surely couldn’t walk down. At this point it occurred to me that performing the climb as part of a pack of cooperative strangers in a bumperto-bumper traffic of bodies – which I’d imagined as a stressful Disney World queue, sure to negate the serenity of the great outdoors – might

(continued from previous page)

“What we all seek is the Mad Hatter Tea Party – a kooky, whimsical, upside down experience,” she added. “So, we wanted to offer afternoon tea without being a hotel version of afternoon tea with classical music, dressing up, pinky-up—fine china without the chips on it. We wanted it to be more eclectic and whimsical, so we kept coming back to the book, the characters, the unbirthday, and Alice was our inspiration.” “I do think, as we get older but want to stay younger, there is that draw to fantasy, allowing yourself to just be yourself with your friends and feel like you’re celebrating something, even if it’s not a birthday,” she said. SETTLING IN Fox, who currently lives in Park Slope, says she feels happy when she comes to the corner of Hicks and Middagh Streets. “I love this community – it’s very much like the Upper West Side,” she added. “The neighbors who come in are so kind, so supportive and have been super patient, like taking packages for us and communicating for us on our behalf [leading up to the grand opening and afterward].” One of her favorite Alice menu items – lapsang souchong smoked chicken breast – will make its debut on the Brooklyn menu this month in sandwichform. In the fall, Alice’s To Go will also offer soups, cold refrigerated drinks, and children’s lunch boxes. Alice’s To Go is located at 43 Hicks Street, conveniently located near the 2/3 subway lines (Clark Street stop) and within walking distance from the DUMBO/Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1 NYC Ferry stop.

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instead have supplied a memorable social experience of bonding through adversity, with new friends on the other side. Instead, we were on our own, acting against instructions. As it turns out, by choosing one’s course carefully and occasionally sliding on one’s butt, it is possible to plummet safely down Breakneck Ridge, but wear good hiking boots for traction if you try it. Try to make sure your partner will catch you if you slip. In either direction, Breakneck Ridge is an impressive hike and somehow more challenging than most of the treks I did in the bigger mountains of California back when I was a San Francisco resident. With a summit at 1,260 feet, it has several major vantage points that offer views of the Hudson River, Storm King Mountain, Pollepel Island with the abandoned ruins of Bannerman’s Castle, and the granite edifices of West Point standing imperiously on a peninsula to the south. Simultaneously Breakneck Ridge puts forth the pleasures both of nature and of a working, orderly civilization. In a fully functioning modern society, fast public transit would link every city directly to a multitude of recreation

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spots in the country: cars shouldn’t own exclusive access to the natural world even as they destroy it. In the meantime, we have MetroNorth, and because of it, the array of hikers on Breakneck Ridge nearly approaches the diversity of the New York City subway ridership. Because the MTA stop has in a sense ratified the trail as a normal weekend activity for New Yorkers, removing it from the realm of niche pursuits for serious outdoorsmen, some of its visitors may approach it a bit casually, despite its fearsome name; I caught some goggle-eyed looks on the scary parts. But even inexperienced hikers find their courage and a way to prevail. My girlfriend and I bought roundtrip tickets to Breakneck Ridge ($30 each), but we broke the rules and got off at Cold Spring for dinner before boarding again with the same tickets. Cold Spring is a quaint village, well-known for having the kind of attractive main street that every American town probably had 70 years ago, and back in 1985 it converted its old train depot into a restaurant for tourists with pleasant outdoor seating. The new train station is just down the road.

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Throwing stones with Philip Johnson by Brett Yates

ince I live in a very small and ugly apartment, one of my favorite activities when I’m a tourist (in my own city or elsewhere) is to visit historic homes that’ve opened themselves to the public. Different houses serve different purposes. Some—like the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park or Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island, famous primarily for their bigness—give ordinary people a taste of elite privilege. We preserve others, like the Louis Armstrong House in Queens or the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx, because they allow peeks into the lives of artistic luminaries. Those renowned for their age, like the Wyckoff Farmhouse in Canarsie, exist to illuminate a historical period. For me, though, the most interesting type of house museum is the one where the house itself is the point. Edgar Allan Poe isn’t coming back to us, but a good architectural tour can turn a home into a living, breathing work of art, even for a layman. In 1949, the architect Philip Johnson used part of his inherited fortune to build himself a weekend getaway in New Canaan, Connecticut. Drawing from the radical purity of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Johnson’s famous Glass House became a National Historic Landmark in 1997 and opened for tours in 2007, two years after his death at age 98. I wouldn’t want to meet Johnson, an ardent fascist in his earlier years (at which time he adored Adolf Hitler), but he remains one of the major creative figures of the 20th century. Halfway between Manhattan and the Yale School of Architecture, midcentury New Canaan had relatively inexpensive land and a Building Department whose bureaucrats were surprisingly sympathetic to modernism. Landis Gores, Marcel Breuer, and other notables designed striking new homes in the functionalist International Style, whose aesthetic Johnson had helped define as a MoMA curator in a landmark 1932 exhibition. These remain private residences, whereas the National Trust for Historic Preservation now owns and manages the Glass House. Today, as a wealthy New York City suburb, New Canaan has a quaint little railway station and sterile, corporatized main street of unconvincing cutesiness. From Grand Central

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Terminal, Metro-North trains run at least every hour until about midnight ($23 for an off-peak round trip), sometimes with a transfer in Stamford. The Glass House’s visitor center, conveniently, sits directly across the street from the station. From here, a shuttle travels five minutes to Johnson’s former property. Tickets, which typically sell out in advance, cost $50 on weekdays or $60 on weekends for a twohour tour. I’d strongly recommend the trip to anyone who likes beautiful places. My guide, a smart, fast-moving older woman named Perrie, Philip Johnson’s paean to himself, the Glass House. (photo by Brett Yates) had both architectural expertise and an interpersonal light treehouse, whose design anticipates forest to revive his childhood memotouch. the columns that mark Johnson’s New ries of his grandfather’s 3,000-acre In photographs, the Glass House hobby farm on the Ohio prairie. On York State Theater at Lincoln Center. looks like a pristine steel-framed box one of the resultant meadows, he of windows placed within an other- Still, the Glass House is the best of all. even replicated a footbridge from the wise untouched woodland, its austere It’s stunning; I didn’t want to leave. old farm. We tend to assume a total geometry standing in sharp contrast Tiny from the outside, it feels infinite hostility to tradition in modernism, to the natural forms of the surround- from the inside. Without walls, the but Johnson preserved three vernacing forest. In real life, the house isn’t interior suggests discrete rooms: a ular buildings (circa 1783 to 1920) on at all lonely: it shares 49 landscaped modest kitchen, not meant for serihis acreage, including a former barn. acres with eight other buildings cre- ous cooking, with an adjacent dining ated by Johnson over the decades, room; a spare single man’s bedroom Artistically, the Glass House is perextending into his postmodern late (which Johnson actually shared with fect, but on a practical level, it’s anhis long-term partner David Whit- other story. There’s no cooling mechperiod. ney); and a living room delineated by anism, so at the height of summer, it’s The effect is a kind of park or playimmaculate Mies van der Rohe fur- almost uninhabitable. Even master land, fronted by a comically oversized niture. A smokestack-like top-to-bot- architects make mistakes: after movand deliberately pointless gate whose tom chimney hides, behind a curved ing in, Johnson found that the house pylons resemble tombstones and door, an outrageously stylish embed- became a hall of mirrors at night and then by a winding driveway that does ded bathroom of green tiles topped by had to hire a consultant to reconfigits best to keep the main attraction ure the lighting. Later, the shoddily a brown leather ceiling. out of sight. Johnson, apparently, had built ceiling began to sag, requiring a a morbid sense of humor, designing a The details are amusing. For instance, complete replacement in 2018. doghouse on the property to look like the thermostat acknowledges the an ossuary, as well as an ironic streak: house’s energy inefficiency by pre- Meanwhile, a leaky roof on the closed his elegantly weightless Glass House senting two main options – a button Brick House led to mold that awaits sits across the lawn from a twin struc- with a martini glass to turn up the heat remediation. Inspired by Frank Gehture in brick, whose lack of windows in order to keep guests comfortable, ry, Johnson constructed a chain-link in front gives it the dumb faceless and a button with a piggy bank to save Ghost House for growing lilies on the money when no one else is around south side of the property, but his bulk of a utility building. to complain about the cold. Famous fence couldn’t keep the deer out. Other important structures include avant-garde artists like Andy Warhol The goal evidently wasn’t to get everyan underground painting gallery, often stopped by for salons, but the thing just right: the Glass House was modeled on a bomb shelter, with roloonly painting inside the strenuously a lifelong multi-part experiment—it dex-style moving walls inside for canmodern home, on a display easel, is never ended and never will. The obvasses by Robert Rauschenberg and the Baroque Funeral of Phocian, as it jective, it seems, was principally to Jasper Johns; a sun-soaked sculpture matches the surrounding landscape. have fun, and good-natured visitors— gallery whose white-walled staircases even those who may not usually care The views are lovely. As a landscape recall those of a cliffside Greek island village; and an open-air pondside ga- architect, Johnson had a sentimental for “minimalism”—will take some of zebo, shrunk to the scale of a child’s side, thinning the dense Connecticut that home with them.

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July 2019, Page 25

The Healthy Geezer by Fred Cicetti

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TELANGIECTASIA—These are dilated facial blood vessels. SKIN TAGS—These are bits of skin that project outward. They may be smooth or irregular, flesh colored or more deeply pigmented. They can either be raised above the surrounding skin or have a stalk so that the tag hangs from the skin. They are benign. Now we get into the cancers of the skin. SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMAS—These are in the outer layers of the skin. They are closely associated with aging. These are capable of spreading to other organs. They are small, firm, reddened nodules or flat growths. They may also be cone-shaped. Their surfaces may be scaly or crusted. BASAL CELL CARCINOMAS—These are the most common of the skin cancers. They develop in the basal layer below the surface of the skin. Basal cell carcinomas seldom spread to other parts of the body. They usually appear as small, shiny bumps or pinpoint, red bleeding areas on the head, face, nose, neck or chest. MELANOMAS—The melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Melanomas can spread to other organs and can be fatal. They usually appear as dark brown or black mole-like growths with irregular borders and variable colors. They usually arise in a pre-existing mole or other pigmented lesion. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States. About half of all Americans who live to 65 will have skin cancer. Although anyone can get skin cancer, the risk is greatest for people who have fair skin. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun is the main cause of skin cancer. All skin cancers can be cured if they are treated before they spread. The most common warning sign of skin cancer is a change on the skin, especially a new growth or a sore that doesn’t heal. Check your skin often. Look for changes in the size, shape, color, or feel of birthmarks, moles, and spots. And don’t be reluctant to go to a doctor whenever you see anything on your skin that you suspect might be a problem. Dermatologists recommend that, if you are a fair-skinned senior, you should get a full-body skin exam once a year. This kind of check-up isn’t a bad idea for any senior.

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July 2019

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July 2019

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GARLAND’S LAND IS OUR LAND by Mike Morgan

Garland Jeffreys, the Brooklyn born rock and roll singer and songsmith, is hanging up his spurs. His retirement, hopefully an opportunity for him to relax with his family and enjoy the rest of his life, is our loss. Star-Revue Section 2

I know Garland Jeffrey’s music very well, having stumbled upon his records perchance somewhat earlier on (for me at least) in his recording career. The first song of his that I remember hearing was called “Scream in the Night” (1978). He wrote:

“I miss New York City baby, I miss the Sheik and Spanish Joe Violence it ain’t that pretty But that’s the place to go For a scream in the night…” I thought now here’s a bloke who wants to paint the city landscape. And just who were the Sheik and Spanish Joe? So, it seemed like Garland Jeffreys had a special relationship with where he lived and he had meaty stories to tell about it all. Even though “Scream in the Night” is actually about Los Angeles, the reference to New York is his cornerstone. Garland never forgot his roots. Much later on in 2011, he released an album entitled The King of In Between. On the cover, he is photographed standing at the intersection of Malcolm X Boulevard and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in Harlem (Lenox Avenue and 125th Street). His demeanor is not confused, but questioning, a wee bit curious or not too sure. That Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had differing views on how to change America for the better and forever is well documented. How to accomplish that transformation and

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build the new society is still the burning question for this current society. Garland Jeffreys has every right to look for the answers. This was another cornerstone marking out his territory, his city. A difference of thirty-three years spanned both productions. And Garland is still here. As an aside, Garland Jeffreys was born in 1943 of black American and Puerto Rican heritage. He was in his prime during the heyday of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, nation-wide resistance organizations from those particular communities that bore some indirect relationship to the street gang ethos. Garland certainly would have been aware of their existence. Then there was the 1977 re-release of his single “Wild in the Streets”:

“We got a gang called Shady And a Midnight Lady….” From my listening chronology, which was now going backwards rather than forwards, his gang has graduated from the Sheik and Spanish Joe to also include Shady and the Midnight Lady. While Garland Jeffreys wrote this song almost two decades before Mayor Rudolph Giuliani unleashed his Zero Tolerance blitzkrieg, the artist could see something sinister coming our way, like a massive storm brewing out in the Atlantic Ocean and slowly heading landwards, intent on making serious trouble: (next page)

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“…With your newspaper writers And your big crime fighters You still need a drug store To cure my buzz” There’s a bit of the 1979 Walter Hill film The Warriors to be found here, more than a bit maybe. Perhaps the song is a reminder of the Cyrus character in the movie, a gang honcho who addresses the entire assembly of the assorted gangs from all five boroughs. Now Shady and the Midnight Lady and the Sheik and Spanish Joe might not be the Van Cortland Park Rangers, the Gramercy Riffs, the Moon Dogs, or the Saracens, and Cyrus might have been pulling off his best Benito Mussolini impersonation, perhaps the pinnacle of his professional acting career, but he was definitely onto something. Presenting an alternative to the city’s popo and justice system, Cyrus too understood the territory issue…” Secure our turf one block at a time, because it’s all our turf. Can you dig it?” Bear in mind, the Warriors had to battle from the Bronx all the way back to Coney Island where they lived. Garland Jeffreys was born in Sheepshead Bay, right around the corner from Coney Island. He made his home in that neighborhood and has lived there all of his life. He attended the big basketball academy Abraham Lincoln High School, of which the NBA star Stephon Marbury is an alumnus. Garland’s other school or college mates were Lou Reed and the actor, Harvey Keitel. In the film The Warriors, the protagonists are getting whittled down fast. As the surviving members finally limp off the train at the Brighton Beach station, the camera slowly pans over Coney Island at early dawn. The picture is not a pretty one. We see the projects, the public estates, and the rows of houses with cold water, submarine apartments. The carnival is closed up and empty, surrounded by high razor-wire fencing and gates with padlocks. The streets are deserted. It all looks rather grim and bleak. Swan, the war chief, wearily stares out at this foreboding vista and says, “This is what we fought all night to get back to.” This is a statement not a question. Much has changed between 1979 and now, but on the 2011 album The King of In-Between, Garland Jeffreys took on his own hood and how he saw things there with the opening song of his record, a track entitled Coney Island Winter:

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“…Politicians kiss my ass Your promises they break like glass Twenty-two stops from the city… …All the money has been spent All the games are broken down Rust is fallin’ to the ground They say they’re going to fix this town Straight from City Hall Coney Island winter…” His sentiments really don’t differ too much from those of Swan. Since the early 2000s, Garland’s band has gone under the name “The Coney Island Playboys.” A few months ago, I attended a small intimate house concert in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. The performers were Garland Jeffreys accompanied by two musician associates of his. Garland played a composition that night that we knew wasn’t on any of his records. It was entitled “Nothing Big In Sight.” One of his pals told us that it was only ever recorded as a session for a music television show from the 1970s called Soundstage. It was a haunting song and I found it on YouTube the next day. His guest on the song was the jazz saxophone legend Sonny Rollins. Search Garland Jeffreys and Sonny Rollins on YouTube and you’ll find it. Sonny Rollins fer chrissakes! This is Mr. Saxophone Colossus, the Tenor Madness man, the player who blew his horn late at night on the Williamsburg Bridge, and a sidekick of John Coltrane to boot. Sonny Rollins is royalty in the world jazz community. And here he is on stage with Garland Jeffreys. Now that’s impressive. The song is another Garland Jeffreys homage to his city. When the video is not filming the band’s performance, the camera follows an extremely young and handsome Garland Jeffreys wandering passed the bodegas and the street vendors, doing his flaneur thing. He could be in Spanish Harlem, or in Washington Heights, or on the Lower East Side. The full whammy is on display, he’s schmoozing with the residents, the store counter guys, the three-minute chess match contestants, and all who make their living off the streets by providing affordable goods, food and drink or entertainment for sale to the local neighbors. The cars are period pieces, those gigantic boat-sized Motor City machines with belligerent names a la Chrys-

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ler Battle Wagons or Plymouth Tarantulas. Of course, the outfits and the haircuts are so much cooler than the latest hipster garb. And then there’s Sonny Rollins providing the horn melody. It’s quite a remarkable piece of work. The potential liberated zone is on these streets. Ownership is being proclaimed not by landlord-issued leases or by bank mortgages. It is being asserted by the very people and by the very institutions they have created that breathe life into the big city. The New York author Joseph Mitchell once wrote “many writers have got into the habit of calling these folk ‘the little people.’ There are no little people in my book (Up In The Old Hotel). They are as big as you are, whoever you are.” Garland Jeffreys understood this profoundly. If we try and focus on the things that matter then the meaningless shit might occupy less space. This is a hard row to hoe because there is no doubt an unlimited supply of garbage. Often, it is dressed up so as not to seem as it really is. Garland Jeffreys matters. He created a powerful body of work through his music, with no pretense. This should never be forgotten, not in his land.

“Take away my troubles And put ’em in a trunk Dump ‘em in the river And when the trunk is sunk Clear the air of all concerns Start everything anew Where everyone is happier And all good things come true” - Garland Jeffreys Garland Jeffreys last live performance took place on June 29 at the City Winery, a music venue in Manhattan. He promises to pitch up on future special occasions.

July 2019

Good Fortune & Bad Metal: 6 Weeks On The Road with A British Busking Band Making a living as a musician is hard enough in the USA. What’s it like in the UK? The Star got a report from anti-folk busking band Slack Mallard, who are from the region of Cornwall in southwestern England. The group consists of Aaron Barnes on Mandolin, Brian Dunbar on percussion, Ash on banjo, and Adam Whittaker on guitar. Together they travel England in their lorries (vans) which also serve as their homes. They earn income from tips and by selling CDs whilst performing on street corners, city centers, pubs, and festivals. Adam Whittaker recounts a month and a half of life on the road. We started out in the Forest of Dean on the border between south Wales and England, near Gloucester. It was Easter, and we hadn’t played together on the street for over nine months. My van had its annual MOT (annual safety) test due, and it was a race against time to fix the numerous problems before hoofing all our live-in vehicles 200 miles East to the Cosmic Puffin festival in Essex, our first gig of the year. The Foresters, as they’re known in the Dean, are a friendly folk. We made our camp outside the exmining town of Cinderford and encountered nothing but positivity from the locals. We eased ourselves back into our busking routine in the nearby cities of Gloucester and Cheltenham, and after a nail-biting 2 weeks waiting for parts, busking up the diesel money and endlessly imitating the local dialect, “Drive it up ‘em shag!” (Give it your best, buddy!), my van was fixed up, legal, and good to go. Sad to leave the humble beauty of the Forest for the suburban prosperity of Essex, but hungry for the journey, we drove in convoy late at night to stop over in Oxfordshire, another of the immensely wealthy “Home Counties” that circle London.

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Picking up a few quid between festivals

We met up with trad-folk friends The Devil’s Doorbells and busked in Oxford together. By now we had refined our act, and were making a decent wage. Just as well, as next we had to load our vans beyond feasible capacity to transport the stage and marquee we’d be playing on over to Essex. Our good friend Gail, organizer of Something Else events, needed the help. The communal aspect of our lives on the road is a beautiful thing. If someone’s in the shitter, we all reach in to pull them out, and don’t complain about getting shat on in the process. We’ve been through a lot together over the years, and we work together without resentment or blame. Things go wrong, people fuck up, but it’s easier to love and accept each other’s flaws when you know they love and accept your own. So again, late at night and in convoy, we skirted the M25 around London and hit Mersea island in Essex a little before midnight. Deep in the heart of Toryland, the people in the places we busked were elderly, white, conservative and wealthy. Travelling the UK, you get no better example of the disparity between rich and poor than to drive from Cornwall or the Dean to the Home Counties. The festival was over all too quickly. A whirlwind of great bands, good friends and intoxicating substances. By now though we were running low on CDs, sales of which make up the bulk of our busking wages, and had many more miles to cover. We ordered 200 more to be delivered at a friend’s house back in Oxfordshire, returned to drop off the stage & marquee, grab the CDs and hit Oxford again, before heading 100 miles North to rural Shropshire. We visited a friend there and had two day’s work doing odd-jobs on his land. We had our best busks yet in Chester, a wonderful Tudor town where we were met with gifted ales, free pizza, and friendly folk, then by the weekend drove the short distance to the pub where we were putting on a two-day event with Gail. Somewhere along the road, disaster struck. Shropshire is a very agricultural county. A farmer had laid his slurry pipe across the road, and made an unusually steep ramp over it. One by one we slowly crossed the ramp. I was second to last, and thought nothing of it. A few miles down the road and Brian, in our run-around hatchback, overtook me whilst gesticulating manically out of the window and shouting something indecipherable. I thought he was imitating being strangled by a jellyfish. He raced to the front of the convoy, and we stopped.

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The dodgy ramp had ripped off the plug in the bottom of my fuel tank, and the tank had been pissing out diesel like an elephant’s knob for ten miles. I plugged the hole with my finger whilst Ash found a receptacle to save the rest of the diesel in. We saved some, but must have lost £100 worth. By some strange serendipitous stroke of luck, a chap emerged from a nearby farmhouse. He inquired about our trouble before taking me to his barn full of bits of old trucks. We picked out a replacement tank, and he towed me to the pub where, after the gig, we successfully bodged it onto my van where it still sits now, held on by good fortune and bad metal. The gig that weekend was our best yet. By now we were five weeks in, and with one more festival to go in nearby Derbyshire, called Bearded Theory. This one wasn’t a dog-friendly party, so half the band parked up outside of the “Designated Fun Cage” (the band’s name for the festival site), opting instead for the woods. We met with Cara Means Friend and busked a few towns together. We played two gigs at the festival to a packed-out tent, amazed and honored to be the recipients of such warmth after our time off. Sadly, after the festival we parted ways. I drove over the Welsh mountains to see my family, Aaron and Bri went South to Devon and Cornwall to see theirs. Ash went Southeast to help Gail at another event. Eight years we’ve been doing this for a living. After weeks or months of living, working and travelling together it’s always sad to say goodbye. These people are my family and, as we said to the private security bullies in Lichfield as they tried to move us on, all we want to do is share our songs and make people happy. It’s one small thing we can do to brighten people’s day, and bring people together in a country that is increasingly fragmented. Music has always had that power. It transcends the imaginary lines we draw between ourselves and others and reminds us that there is more that unites us than divides us - and that we all deserve to be heard! Adam Whittaker is a singer-songwriter-guitarist and member of Slack Mallard. Check out the band online at: www.facebook.com/ slackmallard. And buy their music here: http:// slackmallard.bandcamp.com/

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Section 2

TAKES

Live Composition Festival SteFan ZeniUk

On May 29th and 30th, the Live Composition Festival was held at the Gemini & Scorpio loft in DUMBO. Over two days, 11 groups presented varying sets that presenting different approaches to “live composition” (also known as “sound painting” or “conduction”), which is a method of signs and signals communicated to a group of performers by a conductor in the traditional sense of the word. Styles varied in complexity and sophistication, and the performers included actors, dancers, and painters, alongside the musicians. Though the festival was focused on music, the addition of multi-disciplinary performers gave it a wonderful and open sensibility, often veering off into more theatrical or performance art qualities. The focus of the festival was based around Walter Thompson and his Sound Painting language. This was a rare performance from Thompson, who now lives in Sweden, but used to be a regular staple in NYC’s downtown music and art world from the 1970s-early 2000s. Sound Painting is a highly complex system that acts as a fully-formed alternative approach to composed performances. The conductor is able to cue nearly anything that you could conceivably notate in a live and improvised setting. Thompson developed it in 1974, in a time and era when alternative approaches to composition were common. While overlapping, in concept, with approaches found in Butch Morris’s “Conduction”, or John Zorn’s Game Pieces, or even the organized conduction of Frank Zappa, Thompson prides himself on the open inclusiveness of Sound Painting. Originally built for music, it has grown to incorporate dancers, actors, lighting designers, and pretty much every other aspect of performative arts imaginable. He’s sound painted circus performers, as well as construction workers. There is an annual Sound Painting think tank (held in different cities around the world), where sound painters meet to develop and grow the language. Though Thompson created and developed the system, it is now, essentially, open sourced; that is, it’s a language, that grows and changes with practitioners around the world developing and building upon it, to fulfill

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growing needs and stylistic changes. The Walter Thompson Orchestra was made up of four horn players, three string players, three percussionists, a dancer, and four actors, and the pieces were quite surprising. Often with a good degree of humor and irreverence, the musicians sometimes waded into the territory of actors or “characters”, while the actors and dancer often created visual textures that seemed to fold back into the music. Other groups that performed following Thompson’s Sound Painting methods were Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble and Letter of Marquee Theatre Co. Letter of Marquee was fascinating, as it used the sound painting language in a set that felt closer to Improvised Theater (though there were three musicians to accompany the actors as well). Strike Anywhere felt closer to performance art, with the actors and dancers creating surreal and abstract worlds. Drummer Billy Martin (of Medeski, Martin & Wood fame) conducted a group of about 15 musicians. Strikingly, as opposed to Thompsons elaborate language of 1500 individual signs, Martin had exactly two. Start a pulse; and then, change the pulse. It was concise, and he created a beautiful and meditative textural piece that sounded a bit like an improvised Morton Feldman composition. While eschewing the elaborate and vast possibilities of traditional Sound Painting, Martin’s set demonstrated the opposite of Thompson’s viewpoint, and thus the wide possibilities of improvised composition as a tool. Brian Adler led Human Time Machine, a group of six percussionists creating dense, drum-based compositions. Adler was influenced to start the group after working with Argentinian drummer Santiago Vazquez and La Bomba de Tiempo. Vazquez has been leading a group of drummers in a weekly performance in Buenos Aires for 15 years, and has developed his own rhythmic language of signing and conduction. Human Time Machine was fun and engaging, and created incredibly well-developed percussion pieces. The percussionists all took turns conducting the group, often switching off round-robin style, midgroove. This quality kept the pieces moving, with each percussionist conducting in their own personal style.

BIG|BRAVE A Gaze Among Them (Southern Lord)

Helium Horse Fly Hollowed (Dipole Experimental Records)

KUrt Gottschalk

It’s little wonder that the bonecrushing Montreal trio BIG|BRAVE attracted the attention of the dirge merchants at Southern Lord. Founded 21 years ago by Sunn O))) guitarist Greg Anderson, the label has become an emblem for the droney, doomy, stoner side of experimental metal. After BIG|BRAVE’s self-released 2014 debut, Southern Lord signed them up for what’s now three stunning discs of expansive agitation and disturbance. It’s to the band’s credit that they’re in no rush to push product. They’ve been averaging an album every other year and the diligence shows. They’re comfortable in their shoes and ready to walk long distances. Four of the five tracks on the new A Gaze Among Them features stretch past the seven-minute mark. The fifth, “This Deafening Verity,” is an electric étude for voice and amplifier hum with a desperate beauty. Robin Wattle’s plaintive yell centers the songs in an enormous emptiness of feedback and rhythm. Loel Campbell’s drums are glacial and Wattle and Mathieu Ball follow the drums with rarely a change of chords on their guitars. BIG|BRAVE exists somewhere between anger and resolve; The music pounds and nothing’s going to speed the pile driver up. The album was recorded by Seth Manchester, who knows how to use sonic space—his credits include mixing and engineering last year’s Strange Paradise by percussion ensemble Tigue and back a decade ago co-engineering Tyondai Braxton’s landmark Central Market.

With added textures provided by Godspeed! You Black Emperor bassist Thierry Amar, A Gaze Among Them is BIG|BRAVE’s boldest statement yet. The delayed attack and repeated whomps of closer “Sibling” are an absolute killer. Like BIG|BRAVE, the four-piece Helium Horse Fly—hailing from Liège, Belgium—is in no hurry to get things done. Hollowed is their fourth record in nine years and, like Gaze, is the band’s strongest. (Both are streaming in full on Bandcamp.) HHF’s music also shares a similar, slow gait with the Canadians’, but with more complex, almost proggy, overlays. Hollowed is a smart album, benefitting from tight, interlocking guitar and bass lines by Stéphane Dupont and Dimitri Iannello and solid-yet-skittering drums by Gil Chevigné. Of the six tracks, the opener “Happiness” is the hit, beginning with a jittery rhythm, a distorted guitar loop and a siren coming from the keyboard. Ninety seconds in, singer Marie Billy sings, and then repeats, “what—are these fuckers— doing—here?” with a disgust put so plainly you know someone’s in for it. The song entices without kicking in. A saxophone screams in the distance. The drums speed up, but the rhythm stays the same. The music quiets for a moment before finally hitting with actual riffs only at minute four of six. The tension is excruciating. There are more differences than similarities between BIG|BRAVE and Helium Horse Fly, but what they have in common is strong female singers who aren’t trying to enrage or entice. Robin Wattle and Marie Billy aren’t posing as pariahs or prostitutes. They’re calm and collected. They mean business. And with the promising British postpunk outfit Savages seeming to have fallen silent, there’s room on the cooker for them to simmer.

The Gemini and Scorpio loft, on Douglas St & 2nd Ave. in Gowanus, was a small and cozy space for the modest festival, and despite the comfortable atmosphere, the music and performances presented were varied enough and exciting enough that it felt as well curated a festival as New York City ever produces. The forms and tools presented seem like something that has yet to be fully embraced by a wider group of musicians, which added to the excitement. Stay tuned for next year’s festival!

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July 2019

Paying in the Band

Top Tips from Jack Grace Playing music live in a band is one of the greatest sensations a living being can experience; when it is right, there is really nothing quite like it. It can take the listeners and players to great spiritual heights, cure depression, even save one from a serious illness. Some folk are even able to mix this pleasure with varying degrees of financial stability. Making a living off live bands is no small task. Whether through incessant touring or playing every dive bar in a 90-mile radius, either will likely wear out your patience, liver, relationships, sanity and soul … there is also a dark side… you’ll still have to serve somebody. There are two basic sources from which most live bands are paid from establishments (NOTE: Merch is not going to be discussed here today): Variation one: DRINKS - is when you are paid an amount to aid in selling food and drinks at an establishment by creating an inspiring environment for their patrons and your growing collection of (preferred) high rolling followers. Jazz fans for instance, have been notorious for bringing a crowd that orders one club soda all night, and that does not work in this system. Variation two: TICKETS - Fans and/or music lovers pay for entry to be entertained specifically to see and hear your music. Sometimes it is a mixture of the two, and we can find some strange hybrids where you are perhaps paid to scare livestock out of a haunted house with your satanic emo band. But these are really the two main options for bands. So, ask yourself, is this a help sell drinks, BBQ or firearms kinda gig? If so, it makes

Roots Cafe: A Decade Rooted in Music and Community Jody Callahan

In 2008, a bearded and tatted up Alabama man named Jamey Hamm founded Roots Café in Brooklyn’s South Slope. The goal: bring back the grungy community center that was the typical indie coffeehouse of yesteryear. The shop still hides between a pharmacy and a cell phone store at the corner of 5th Ave and 18th street. An old-country rock’n’roller, Jamey also created a foothold for urban Americana music when he began an open mic that spawned a modest but significant music scene. He and other musicians who were either employed at Roots or were regulars of the shop drew crowds sharing the same line up bill not only at the cafe but places like Little Field, Union Pool, and Rockwood Music Hall. After two children

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sense to keep that decision in mind via song choices, volume, stage banter and general tone of performance. But art and commerce can make for strange bedfellows. Sometimes ya just gotta say, “screw it”. “It’s not gonna work here, we will play what we are and go down with dignity”. I’d like to see Captain Beefheart translated into a Mongolian Polka band or a Justin Bieber speed metal band fronted by a 85 year old Kilt wearing Scotsman, but it may not work at the old man sports bar in the suburbs of Westchester, NY. It also can matter how many covers a band plays versus their original material and what kind of material that act writes. I personally only play a cover when I am so inspired at a ticketed show. If I am playing a DRINK show and I feel I am losing the attention of an audience I am paid to inspire to drink, I will intentionally choose a number many will likely know and hope to use it as a kindling of sorts to win over the room of potential martini consumers. Some nights at DRINK shows, you may get ignored. I think it best to not take offense; you are being paid to create an atmosphere of drinking fun. When it happens, don’t play louder or they inevitably will shout over you. I suggest playing so soft that they become aware that they have been become the main focus. It often humbles them into retreat. It doesn’t work every time (but it does often), you just have to occasionally deal with idiots that do not respect a live band as actual living people in the room. Acquiring the gigs you want is a lifelong process for all musicians. I have had several agents book my bands over the years. It’s not always better, and these days you may need that percentage to buy that

and too damn high rents, Jamey moved back to Alabama. He passed the torch to a Tennessee husband and wife team he knew from church. Christian and Amanda Neill brought an unabashed kindness and southern hospitality that made Roots Café a slice of home away from home no matter where a person might hail from. They were unable to keep the open mic, but the music scene was kindled with sporadic shows that always filled the narrow corridor that is Roots Café’s seating area. The Neills made their exit and handed the cafe, now a pillar of the South Slope community, to their friends from church, Patricia and Gareth Manwaring from upstate New York. I wondered what a Yankee couple (I’m a Georgia boy) might bring to the coffee house founded on and built with the best bits of the South. The answer is more kindness and community. Patricia curated the found art and “junk art” from the old days honoring the roots of Roots Cafe. The shop still attracts musicians and artists of

special something. Every band leader should know how to book themselves. If you have a great band and you can sell out any place you want to play, everything should fall into place by itself. But for many musicians the deck is a bit more stacked against them coming out of the gates. Polite persistence is really the first rule in getting in the door. Never send emails that say, “I never heard back from you” or ” this is my fifth and FINAL email!”, do not keep forwarding the same email, update it and write something fresh each time. Send your avails to bookers, they do not want to waste time back and forth emailing with you. If a club keeps ignoring you, move on for a while and always keep submitting to new places. So many not so busy bands are stuck obsessing over the one club they can’t get in and many of these musicians do not bother patronizing this desired venue. A good way to get into a club is to go see music at the club as hard as it is to force yourself to go see other bands on your nights off, that is often the best way to get more gigs. They may put in a good word for you, you can open for them and become friends and share ideas. Then they steal your girlfriend or perhaps you eventually find the love of your life, start even better bands with these people… you know a scene. New York was once world famous for such a thing… Jack Grace is a composer, performer and writer, born in Brooklyn, NY and now resides in Peekskill, NY. He has been a contributor and radio personality for WNYC’s The Takeaway and Sirius/XM’s Freewheelin’.

all kinds as Patricia and Gareth make their mission to foster and nurture music and arts through the bastion of community they’ve inherited. The open mic is back. Every Thursday Roots opens at 7pm. They hide the register and tiny kitchen with a curtain, setup some mics, a drum kit, and a large keyboard. Then it’s literally whatever anyone wants to do. Wide open format. I watched two little girls with earbuds plugged into an old iPod get up in front of everyone, close their eyes, and sing along to songs only they could hear. I watched a family folk band who made Roots a pit stop along their travels across the country. I saw a mild-mannered dog walker become Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It is truly a living room where all are welcome to come sing, play, and create. Not only is it free, but Roots Café makes no money. The kitchen remains closed. It’s BYOB. They’ll even provide you a beer or wine if you find yourself without. So, get yourself to Roots Café where writers write, painters paint, and music players play.

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A life in music brings together buddies “Stanley John Mitchell And His Band of Buddies” might be a long band name but the man behind it has certainly had a deservedly long career. Originally from New Zealand, Mitchell arrived on the west coast of the US in the late ‘70s with his band Red Alert who had been backing the New Zealand theatre troupe Red Mole. After several months playing in San Fransisco’s Bay Area, Red Alert joined Red Mole for a short stint at the Theater of New York City. After these shows Red Mole moved-on to the UK with some of the band but Mitchell and the remaining members decided to stay in NYC. Holed-up in a hotel, broke and without any fixed plan, they eventually decided to hit the sidewalks and busk for cash. To their surprise the street proved an ample stage and the loose change from passers-by started to add-up. When the other members of Red Alert returned from the UK the band changed their name to the Drongos (essentially down-under slang for ‘idiot’) and developed a sharp act with original songs that translated well to street performance. From there it didn’t take long for the Drongos to move from the streets to the stages of CBGB’s and the Ritz. Their building popularity led them to record their self-titled debut album, produced by Steve Katz of Blood Sweat & Tears. A

second album, Small Miracles, produced by five-time Grammy winner John Holbrook, saw the Drongos going back to their roots, capturing the band playing live on the streets of New York. The album became a hit on college radio and in turn the Drongos proceed to play more clubs and universities, while still including their trademark street performance as part of their live set. The Drongos gained many fans, one of the most notable being New Zealand’s prime minister at the time, David Lange, who had met the band on a trip to NYC. Although they drew record company interest, a major label recording contact remained elusive and after a 1986 of tour of New Zealand the band split. Mitchell returned to New York and played drums on many projects in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, including Long Island’s Lone Sharks, led by Gene Casey. In the late-90s Mitchell relocated to Los Angeles for several years playing with various artists such as lounge act Dirty Martini and fellow New Zealander Theo Ray. After moving back to NYC it was time for Mitchell to do his own thing as a singer/songwriter. This eventually led to him forming “Stanley John Mitchell and his Band of Buddies” around 2014. The Brooklynbased trio regularly play venues in

Andrew B. White

Brooklyn and Manhattan, with Bar Chord in Ditmas Park being a favorite. Lead guitarist Mike McMahon is a journeyman player from Staten Island who has played the Americana scene for many years, most notably doing a stint with Buddy Cage, late of the New Riders of The Purple Sage. Bassist Billy Smylie is a Texas native who relocated to New York in the late ‘80s. Also heavily involved in the New York Americana scene, Billy was sideman to David Yazbek as he developed and eventually brought the hit show “The Full Monty” to Broadway. Many years earlier, the trio had played together as the “Lonesome Debonaires”, backing singer/songwriter Jonathan Gregg. Mitchell says “We played the NY club scene and toured the country hard and fast and soon became very good friends. So, when I decided to put together a band of my own, it was going with solid citizens – people I really liked and could trust as opposed to hiring players I don’t really know that well. I wanted camaraderie as well as musicianship. With these fellows I have both, and know exactly where I stand. All of us have been around the block and know that primarily we’re in it for the pleasure of

playing good music with good people.” With his Band of Buddies, Mitchell is in the unique position of vocalist, guitarist and drummer – simultaneously. With his modified drum kit Mitchell is able to play drums, play guitar and sing at the same time. As well as being technically impressive this makes for an entertaining show. With a combination of originals and some choice covers, Band of Buddies’ music is a mix of Americana via the South Seas. You can also find Mitchell on the drums with Brooklyn’s Crevulators, teaching students a myriad of instruments or in the pottery studio making works of art. Keep a look out for Stanley John Mitchell And His Band of Buddies at a venue near you!

A talk with DJ Valentin Lamar by Roderick Thomas

A talented multihyphenate is accurately one way to describe Valentin. Lamar Stephens, known to his listeners and fans as Valentin Lamar answers the phone at 9:30 pm. I can hear the sound of utensils tumbling around a plate, the chaotic rustling of bagged chips — he’s having dinner and we begin our interview. Valentin is a Brooklyn based DJ, Producer and music event guru. Originally from Jersey, he’s played all over the tri-state area and even scored a film that recently screened at the White House. So, who is Valentin Lamar? Roderick: Tell me about your musical background. Valentin: So, my grandfather was a Jazz musician, my mother loved House, and Soul and my father was a rapper. My dad actually made a diss record to my mom [laughs]. She won the beef though, and they’re still together. Roderick: Hillarious! How’d you get your name? Valentin: I was briefly part of a DJ collective and they were trying to name me. My birthday happens to be on Valentines Day, so they named me Valentin --- it just stuck. Today’s artists cant be monolithic. They have to do more than their main gig, to make a living, if they’re lucky enough to get the opportunities. Additionally, they have to be a brand. Valentin began his producing career as a teen, in the mid2000s, with Fruity Loops and years later fell into Dj’ing one NYE in NYC --- he’s been booked ever since. Yet, he agrees that the art of Djing is dying and there doesn’t seem to be any cure. Valentin: If you’re an influencer, can stand behind a

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DJ booth and press play on a playlist, today you can have a career. The value of the art just isn’t there anymore. I’ve gone to certain venues where the DJ is playing a playlist off of youtube. Roderick: What are the challenges of being an independent NYC artist and what is making it to you? Valentin: Thanks for asking that. There’s so much music and so many musicians out there. That’s the first challenge. As far as making it, I don’t have dreams of being a celebrity. I don’t want to lose the reason why I make music, I want to be inspired and inspire. Roderick: What inspires you? Valentin: Man so much, I love Chad Hugos and Pharell of N.E.R.D, Ryan Leslie, Kanye West, and Radio Head to name a few. These days, I’m especially inspired by Brazillian music, Bossa Nova and House.

the White House. It was amazing and it came out of nowhere! Roderick: Fun question time! If you were trapped in the current administration’s White House for a day, what song would you have on repeat? Valentin: [Laughs] For my sanity, I would put Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues” on repeat! Roderick: Adding that to my playlist now! Lamar, thank you so much for doing this, I’m excited to see where music takes you next. Valentin: No, thank you, this was cool! Join Valentin (@Valentinlamar) and other partygoers for his Independence day Cook In event July 3rd, 8:00 pm ET, at the Brooklyn venue Kinfolk. Be sure to keep an eye out for Vol. 2 of the Waves EP series with Sergio Rivera ( @s.e.r.___).

In Vol. 1 of his EP series Waves, a collaboration with producer Sergio Rivera, Valentin showcases that he’s an expert in creating a “vibe.” On Waves, his house influence shows up more subtly than some of his live shows, yet still has a pronounced role in his music. Ethereal synths and echoey House pulses softly mixed in the background while Hip-hop kicks, 808’s and dreamy melodies play a balanced lead—a delicate balancing act that he’s very good at. Roderick: Let’s talk about you scoring Shape Up, The documentary covered being gay in the black barbershop and screened at the White House! How did you get involved? Valentin: No one knew I was a DJ or produced at the time. By chance, the director and Co-Producer of Shape Up, Derick Middleton, and Aaron Tredwell (Janet Mock’s Spouse) heard my Soundcloud and reached out. I later found out it was screening at

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July 2019

Rhythm is Our Business While the African American impact on jazz is recognized and well established, the contribution of Italian immigrants on jazz is not. Italians arrived in America playing mandolin, violin, guitar and piano. They brought traditions of Southern-Italian marching bands, opera and folk histories. Whether Neapolitan, Sicilian or Calabrese, they understood passion and romanticism in music. And the Italian propensity for humor and style contributed to the theater of early jazz. In addition to outstanding musicianship, Italian performers were also entertaining.

music. I discovered other big bands of that era like Paul Whiteman, Ted Weems and Ben Pollack. I began to love the stylized pre-Sinatra falsetto voices of Russ Columbo and Nick Lucas. I became fascinated by the arrangements, bands playing without drums, using horseshoe clucks for percussion and tubas to hold down a bass line. I also fell in love with the vibraphone. You’ll hear the vibraphone sometimes coming in at the end of a musical stop, capping off the stop with a bell tone ring.

So why do these facts go unmentioned in many mainstream jazz documentaries and literature? Ken Burns, for example, neglects to mention the impact of Italians on jazz in his popular “Jazz” documentary. He makes one mention of Nick LaRocca suggesting that LaRocca was one of the white musicians who got on the jazz bandwagon only when jazz became popular. However, Burns doesn’t mention that LaRocca wrote “Tiger Rag” and that he was one of the many influential New Orleans Sicilian musicians who forged jazz history. Even Louis Prima doesn’t get a mention. Although Burns features Benny Goodman’s version of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” he never tells us that Prima wrote it. Burns disregards the great fount of Sicilian jazz musicians that came from New Orleans and never explores conditions that put them in the creative center of the development of jazz. Consequently, people like Wingy Manone, Sharkey Bonano, Leon Rappolo, John Signorelli, Ted Fiorito, Eddie Lang, Adrian Rollini, Sam Butera and countless other Italian American artists who shaped the soul and direction of jazz in America remain obscure.

Fiorito played in numerous big bands and other configurations. He joined Nick Lucas in a group called The Kentucky Five in about 1915, a band consisting mainly of New Jersey Italian-Americans.

My intention here is not to provide a comprehensive history about each artist or to enumerate a list of facts and dates. My objective is to offer my personal experience with their art and acknowledge the Italian contribution to American Jazz.

Although Al Jolson became synonymous with “Toot Tootsie,” it was written by Ted Fiorito. Some sources even show Jolson as having written it. But the fame Ted Fiorito gained from the success of “Tootsie” coincided with his co-leading a band with Dan Russo, who was already an established bandleader. From there he played in numerous incarnations with Dan Russo until he formed his own orchestra. He then recorded songs like “Simple and Sweet,” “I’ll Take an Option on You,” “Soothing,” “I’ll String Along with You,” and countless others. In the 30s, Fiorito teamed with the “Debutantes” vocal trio and brought in guitarist Muzzy Marcellino and bassist Candy Candido, both of whom would become equally known for their vocals. Marcellino had an unusually clear and melodious whistle. His whistling was featured on Mickey Mouse and Lassie, and even The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtracks. Marcellino was also the uncle of Vincent Guarldi, the pianist and songwriter associated with the music of “Peanuts.” Candy Candido, born in New Orleans, provided unusual voices in films like Abbot and Costello in the Foreign Legion and others. Even Betty Grable briefly joined Fiorito’s band. Though she didn’t make any recordings with Fiorito, she appeared as a vocalist in the 1933 film “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.” At the peak of his popularity, Fiorito managed to succeed as a composer and bandleader and performed his songs in film.

by Mike Fiorito in many of the same configurations. Born in Larchmont, New York in 1903, Rollini was considered a child prodigy. He was dubbed Professor Adrian Rollini at age 4, playing Chopin‘s Minute Waltz at the Wal- Mike Fiorito dorf Astoria Hotel. He played piano, bass saxophone, chimes and vibraphone, all extremely well. I don’t see him credited for playing piano on recordings. He was credited for bass saxophone and vibraphone. The bass saxophone is an unusual instrument; I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want to learn it, except for the fact that it’s so novel. It’s difficult to even hold, much less play. The bass saxophone was more commonly used in orchestral music giving richness and depth to brass harmony arrangements. Rollini also became an early master of the vibraphone, where he played behind many prominent jazz musicians, some already mentioned. Initially recognized for its novelty effects, vibraphone was then added to the arsenal of percussion sounds used by vaudeville orchestras. The vibraphone soon became a jazz instrument standardly employed for its dreamy percussive ring. Unlike its cousin the xylophone, the vibraphone is not a solo instrument. As only he could, Rollini wrote “Vibrolinni,” a completely untypical composition for the instrument. The vibraphone provides atmosphere and color but doesn’t stand out as a featured jazz instrument. Despite this, Rollini pushed his playing of the vibraphone into exciting new directions. In addition to playing as a sideman on notable artists’ records, I have a collection of Rollini 1934-1938 recordings that has songs like “Davenport Blues,” “Bouncin’ In Rhythm,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” and others. It’s a good collection but doesn’t give you the depth and breadth of the man’s great career. Rollini is the gem hidden in the songs of the 20s and 30s.

Towards the end of his career, Fiorito moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he opened the Black Sheep Club. He continued to play in California and Nevada

Ted Fiorito

I have a special place for Ted Fiorito because of the namesake I share with him. I’m not going to lie and say that I searched him out because my dad talked about him when I was a kid. Surprisingly, the only time in my life people recognized the Fiorito name was when I worked on a retail floor in Berkeley, California just after college. WW2 retirees would look at my name tag and ask me if I was related to Ted Fiorito, the bandleader whose music piped out on the Army Broadcasts across the world. I went out to Berkeley to discover myself, to escape the world I grew up in, and there I was running smack into the old New York of my father’s childhood. Only many years later, at about 40 years old, I found a collection of Ted Fiorito music, “Spotlight on Ted Fiorito,” on CD. I then later found another collection, “Never Been Blue.” Here and there I’ve picked up singles like “When The Lights Go On Again,” a song about soldiers returning from war, about life returning to normal after WW2. From Ted Fiorito I became more interested in 20s

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in different band incarnations until his death in 1971

Adrian Rollini

Ask the first ten people you know who consider themselves music experts if they’ve ever heard of Adrian Rollini. Rollini was a hub for music in the 20s and 30s, playing with Annette Hanshaw, Cliff Edwards (Ukelele Ike), Frank Signorelli, Joe Venuti and his Blue Four, Miff Mole, Red Nichols, Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and many others. Read the personnel listings on recordings from the 20s and 30s; you’ll see Rollini’s name often appearing. In fact, Rollini, Lang, Signorelli, Venuti, Trumbauer, and Bix played

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Nick Lucas When I play Nick Lucas for people, often their first

reaction is a chuckle. His choice of songs, though once standards, now sound corny and old fashioned. Also, he sings in a stylized falsetto like many pre-Sinatra popular vocalists of his time. The Nick Lucas collection I have is mainly solo works on guitar and vocals with songs like “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Accompanying himself on guitar he can stand in front of the audience, making the guitar more intimate than the piano. His chord progressions are innovative (next page) and dynamic, giving

July 2019, Page 35

the guitar the power to front an orchestra. Using the jump rhythms of jazz guitar, he also picks out the melodies to compliment his vocals. A guitar player can tell that he learned banjo before the guitar by the way he alternates his index and forefinger while using his thumb to maintain tempo. This ragtime style would be one of the branches of guitar evolution which would further develop in the hands of guitarists like Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. Born Dominic Nicholas Anthony Lucanese in 1897 in New Jersey, he later changed his name legally to Nick Lucas. Nick’s older brother Frank taught him music without any instrument using the solfeggio system. The idea behind solfeggio is that you first learn to sing a song before you play it on an instrument. This very Italian form of musical education has had a tremendous impact on Italians in music, particularly Italian-Americans. By never forgetting the melody, a musician can express the story of a song in instrumentation. A violin can weep, a guitar can gurgle like a brook, and a banjo can dance. Once Lucas mastered the solfeggio system, he then learned how to play the guitar, mandolin and banjo all while still very young. According to Lucas, his brother Frank dragged him along to play at Italian christenings and weddings. “We even played on street corners and in saloons and I’d pass the hat around. I was getting a lot of experience because the Italian people, when they get to feeling good, like to dance all night long, especially the tarantella. We played for hours and hours, and my wrists got very tired, but I was getting great practical experience that paid off years later.” Lucas switched from tenor banjo to guitar after playing with his brother. He even played in The Kentucky Five and in the Russo-Fiorito Orchestra in the early 20s. He became known as “The Crooning Troubadour.” After cutting a string of hits on the Brunswick Label, he was then signed by Warner Brothers to sing “Gold Diggers of Broadway.” In this film he sang, “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips with Me.” During “Tiptoe” the dancers actually weaved through red and yellow tulips as Nick sang. “Tiptoe Through the Tulips with Me” sold three million copies in its initial pressing as a record and has since sold five million copies.

ics of a vocalist. As such, vocalists often worked with Lang. In addition to Etting, Lang played with Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith and countless others. He was a vocalist’s guitar player. I have a collection of Eddie Lang’s solo guitar works called “Jazz Guitar Virtuoso.” As it comes through on my shuffle, hearing individual songs out of context, it can be hard to identify a song I haven’t memorized. There are elements of jazz, Delta blues and even bluegrass in Lang’s playing. In the mix of all of these American styles, Lang added perhaps a bit of Neapolitan romanticism. Lang could play anything. You might say that Lang killed the banjo. After Lang demonstrated that the guitar could be sophisticated, the banjo slowly disappeared from jazz orchestras. The advent of the electric recording for the guitar allowed it to develop a wide range of guitar sounds, from honking brass tones to rounder, softer accompaniment. Lang set the direction for what jazz guitar could be. Django Reinhardt, Les Paul and Charlie Christianson all benefited from Lang’s trailblazing chording techniques. Unsurprisingly, Lang initially played violin, taking lessons for 11 years. In school he became friends with Joe Venuti, who was a lifelong collaborator. By 1918, he was playing violin, banjo, and guitar professionally. He worked with various bands in the US, briefly played in London, then settled in New York City. On February 4, 1927, Lang was featured in the recording of “Singin’ the Blues” by Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra with Bix Beiderbecke on cornet. He was in the center of the storm. In 1929, while with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Lang was introduced to Bing Crosby who was then an up-and-coming vocalist. They developed a close personal relationship which would propel Lang’s career. When Crosby signed a five-picture deal with Paramount Studios, he insisted Lang share the experience with him. Lang, playing guitar accompaniment, appeared with Crosby in their 1932 Hollywood feature film “The Big Broadcast.” Like Rollini, Lang played with numerous artists through his brief career. He is the quintessential jazz guitar player of the 20s and 30s.

Lucas has had a lasting impact on the guitar. Listening to it today, his guitar playing still sounds inventive. Lucas developed a whole new vocabulary for guitar accompaniment; his ideas are still being assimilated by guitarists.

Eddie Lang

Among those listening to Nick Lucas was Eddie Lang. Born Salvatore Massaro in 1902 in Philadelphia, PA, he is considered the Father of Jazz Guitar, though he may not be well known today except among specialists. You can see a performance of Eddie Lang and Ruth Etting on YouTube from their 1932 film “A Regular Trouper.” His guitar playing is subtle and dancelike; he never gets in the way of a vocalist. He could offer a light touch, or dazzle with a thumping rhythm, moving with the changing dynam-

Louis Prima I remember as a kid dancing to “Buona Sera,”

“Please Don’t Squeeze the Banana,” and “Just A Gigolo.” My mom had a Prima Greatest Hits record that we would go crazy listening to when all of the company left after Christmas. For most of my life, Prima was a clowning musician who made some funny music. I didn’t know how good a trumpet player he was or anything about his history. Then I started to dig and learn more and more about his history and his music. I read a book called “Louis Prima” by Gary Boulard and learned Prima’s dirty little secret. Because Sicilians weren’t considered to be white, the white establishment wasn’t concerned if Sicilians lived and played among blacks in New Orleans. So, Prima and many other New Orleans Sicilians played in the homes, streets and bars of Storyville, learning the jazz idiom. The Italians in Storyville also brought their language and humor to the music. Prima combined his Sicilian dialect with rhythms and harmonies of jazz to make songs like “Please Don’t Squeeze the Banana,” “Angelina,” “Buona Sera,” and others. His music allowed for a private joke among the growing Italian American population in America. They knew the lyrics were slightly off-color. They understood that when Prima sang “Zooma, Zooma Baccala” he wasn’t referring to fishing. But most of all, the songs were entertaining. Prima had to change with the times, performing in smaller ensembles before the war, then playing in big bands, then playing in smaller ensembles again. The musicians and arrangements were tight, combining the dizzying rhythms and time signatures of New Orleans with comedy and theater. Mike Fiorito is Associate Editor for Mad Swirl Magazine. His most recent book, Call Me Guido, published by Ovunque Siamo Press, explores three generations of an Italian-American family through the lens of the Italian song tradition. As poet Joey Nicoletti (Thundersnow) writes, these are “the stories of relatives, potato farmers, performers, imagined aristocrats, and the ballads they sing.” John Keahy (Seeking Sicily) says, “This collection, in quick bites, informs, entertains, and surprises---a masterpiece of storytelling.” His short story collections, Hallucinating Huxley and Freud’s Haberdashery Habit, were published by Alien Buddha Press. Mike Fiorito’s writings have appeared in Ovunque Siamo, Narratively, Mad Swirl, Pif Magazine, The Honest Ulsterman, Chagrin River Review, The New Engagement and many other publications. For more information, please visit: callmeguido.com or email callmeguido2@gmail.com Part Two in this series will appear in the August Section 2 of the Star-Revue

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July 2019

The Gig Economy is Burning Out the Music Industry by Rebecca Castellani

Gaga and Ariana Grande suffer from industry fatigue.

In May, Record Union released the 73% Report, so named for the 73% of surveyed musicians who reported suffering from “...negative emotions such as stress, anxiety and/or depression in relation to...music creation.”

In an aptly-titled article, Sometimes, Artists Turn Their Back on the Music Business for Good Reason, Peter Robinson notes: “All these extra obligations have benefitted some bands and singers in terms of allowing them to round out their artistic proposition, but it’s the rare artist who’ll tell you this explosion of required content hasn’t resulted in them spreading themselves or their ideas incredibly thinly.” When creativity--the very thing that draws people to music in the first place-becomes blocked by gig economy baggage (and it almost always does), career burnout is inevitable. The lucky ones turn their backs on this toxic system, trading tour buses for classrooms, even real-estate jobs. The unlucky ones end up in the 27 Club.

Though this number would set off alarm bells in any other industry, it does not register the same shock in the music world. Sure, we grieve the untimely passing of artists like Scott Hutchinson, Chris Cornell, and Mac Miller, but these tragedies are never wholly unexpected. Such is the nature of the limelight, recalibrating otherwise grim realities into idealized, widely-circulated stereotypes: instability is seen as freedom, substance abuse is fuel for an energetic performance, melancholia marauds as creative fodder, recklessness is just misplaced passion. This comorbidity between creativity and mental illness has captivated our cultural consciousness, often illustrated in romantic scenes like van Gogh cutting off his ear, Virginia Woolf wading into the Ouse, and Kurt Cobain’s infamous suicide note; we purport these episodes as tragedy, yet take an undeniable, voyeuristic pleasure in the drama of public self-destruction. But according to science, this enduring connection is but a popular fallacy — Studies using test or clinical assessments have not proven a connection between creativity and mental illness,” (Psychology Today) — begging the question: what is to blame for the mental health crisis in music? When pressed to describe the triggers of their negative emotions, musicians surveyed in the 73% Report primarily cited “fear of failure,” and “financial instability.” These responses are supported by a study released last year by the Music Industry Research Association, which stated the median musician earned just $21,000 from musicrelated activities, only $5400 of which was generated from live performances! The study also noted the average musician received income from three different sources, as opposed to one steady job. There’s a name for the thing that’s killing our musicians, and it’s not creativity; it’s the gig economy. “The gig economy started in music,” said the late economist Alan Krueger. “The term comes from jazz. The idea is you have to be nimble; you have to do multiple things. That is going to be the secret for music. The artists are going to have to find how to use their music to market something else” (Variety). It’s nice to think of musicians spending their days capturing the human condition in song, but the reality for your average indie artist is much bleaker: side-hustling to pay the bills; marketing shows and self-financing production; maintaining mental health on the grueling, unglamorous road. Even successful superstars like Lady

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And if you think musicians are the only ones suffering from gig economy burnout, think again. According to a recent survey of 520 promoters, venue operators, and event organizers, 82% reported high levels of stress, 67% suffered from anxiety, and 40% dealt with depression. The three most popular triggers for these feelings were: “no regular income,” “a lack of support,” and “unsociable hours and the effect the job has on relationships” (Skiddle). As the digitization of music continues to raze and rebuild the industry, the gig economy has only become more prevalent. Indie record labels have been forced to expand their reach into uncharted territories, leading Rolling Stone to declare: “Every Music Company is Morphing into the Same Thing.” Boutique promoters are on the Endangered Species List. And let’s not even start on Fyre Festival and its contemporaries biting off more than they can chew in a desperate bid to impact the market….

pensation to working in music, but after years of accepting perks instead of proper pay, the incentives begin to carry less emotional weight until they’re inevitably replaced with disillusioned resentment. If standard business practices were commonplace, the industry might be functional, but the mere association to music has thus far prohibited a healthy work-life balance (and all the catharsis born of rest and relaxation). When opportunities arise, the only answer is, “Yes.” And if you’re handed that free drink at the end of a sleepless weekend, you take it.

Even successful superstars like Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande suffer from industry fatigue.

Versteeg has a plan to fix the damage done--Royal Mountain Records recently announced a new policy allocating $1500/artist for mental health needs--but as noble and encouraging as this is, it’s like taking Advil for a broken leg; until the bone’s reset, it’s all just pain management.

drink and drug problems, and the industry doesn’t really care” (Independent). For too long we have let musicians, the mouthpiece of our culture, suffer while we idly consume their content; if we cannot adequately compensate them, we do not deserve their offerings. The gig economy is unsustainable long term, and unless we acknowledge and address this, we will continue to see talent prematurely snuffed out. The commodification of artists in general, and musicians in particular, has driven countless talent to the margins of our society, sacrificed the elevation of art, and stripped the struggling music industry of valuable revenue. Musicians are people, not products; until the industry starts seeing them as such, they will struggle to survive. Perhaps with a little more humanity, we can help them thrive.

When actress/musician Kate Nash was recently asked about her greatest achievement, she replied: “Surviving the music industry. I think it’s been responsible for killing a lot of musicians. Lots of us have mental health issues, and

Rebecca Castellani is the Director of Venue Operations at We Save Music, a frequent contributor to WNPR’s “The Colin McEnroe Show,” and a freelance writer. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

“You can get away with it in music,” says Royal Mountain Records founder, Menno Versteeg. “You know, people go to work at the bank because it’s a good paying job, and I don’t want to speak out of turn, but people will do anything to be in music” (Vice).

SUNNY'S BAR JULY 2019

ALL SHOWS 9PM UNLESS LISTED OTHERWISE

At the dark heart of the gig economy is a simple paradox: the music industry is neither a functional “industry,” with consistent benefits, infrastructural support, and a steady paycheck, nor a true representation of “music” --a concept more akin to philosophy or religion than a transactional exchange. Such Janusian thinking has allowed the music industry to forsake standard business practice in favor of hawking an emotional experience; people are drawn in by a love of music, and they stay, despite the long hours and below-average pay, because the industry has told them it’s a privilege to be there in the first place. Lisa Gritter expounds, “...the music industry is unique in some aspects— the line between your personal life and your work is scarcely there, for a start. Your office is often located on festival grounds, inside a music venue, or on a tour bus, which also means the bar is never far away. It makes your work fun, interesting, and dynamic, but it can also lead to an excess of incentives” (Vice). For too long this “excess of incentives” has been positioned as the real com-

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Spending your Pre-Brexit weekend in the Big Easy with Beck by Will Jackson and Ben Masten

o, it’s early July and you, for some reason, are already tired of the summer and pining for the fall. Labor Day, eh... but Halloween???

Maybe this is the year to do something really wild. Maybe you’ve been to one-too-many Village Halloween Parades. OK, so while you’re thinking about that, you’re also thinking about Post Malone. Where is he playing this summer. You check out his website. Hmmm, New Orleans - Voodoo Fest. That sounds cool. But what IS Voodoo Fest? Officially named the Voodoo Music and Arts Experience, Voodoo Fest has become a Halloween destination for festival-goers around the world — over a million of them, in fact. From relatively modest beginnings as a one-day event to its current incarnation as a three-day juggernaut, the festival has always hosted an incredibly diverse selection of acts. In its 20 years of existence, the festival has hosted everyone from Eminem to Mumford and Sons. Hell, this year’s headliners are Guns n’ Roses, Beck and Post Malone, which is either an inspired piece of crossgenerational programming or three names from inside Karnak the Magnificent’s envelope. The festival isn’t just for tourists—Voodoo Fest has shown its hometown some love too. After Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, the festival organizers staged an invitation-only concert for the first responders, rescue workers, and members of the armed forces who had helped the city recover. This year’s festival runs from Oct 25 to 27 and features dozens of bands for music fans of all tastes.

FOOD! BEER! HAUNTED HOUSES!

Like any other modern music festival behemoth, Voodoo Fest offers side attractions aplenty. Ride a Ferris wheel! Check out art installations! Get freaked out at the Haunted Mortuary! Drink premium craft beverages at the “Brew Dat” beer tent, which we promise we are not making up. The night before the festival you can purchase a ticket to Feast Under the Stars, a five-course meal on the festival grounds with dishes by celebrity Chef

Aarón Sánchez and friends. Voodoo Fest’s website describes the dinner as, “A sneak peek of Voodoo Fest before gates open the following day.” Maybe you’ll get lucky and catch a sound check from your favorite band.

I’M SOLD! GIVE ME VOODOO!

Okay! Stop yelling at us! If this sounds like the kind of thing you might enjoy, you can buy tickets and book accommodations right now at voodoofestival. com. Pour one out for Dr. John while you’re there. He’s walking on gilded splinters in a better place now

KNOW YOUR HEADLINERS!!

A quick guide to the top acts at Voodoo Fest:

Guns N’ Roses

Led by Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Dizzy Reed, Richard Fortus, Frank Ferrer, and Melissa Reese, Guns N’ Roses is an American rock band started in 1985. Their album Appetite for Destruction was certified platinum, and in 2011 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Recently, GNR has toured in Europe and Asia and is currently on a North American tour. Guitarist Slash has dropped hints the past few months that tell fans a new album may be released soon, but for now, the band performs classic hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet O’ Child of Mine.” The Voodoo Experience will round out a busy October for the band, as they will have headlined both Exit 111 in Tennessee and Austin City Limits Music Festival.

Post Malone

Post Malone is a hip hop artist who is just emerging as a star. Winning song of the year for his hit song

Rockstar, Post also received four Grammy nominations as well as 12 Billboard Music Award nominations in 2019. His first album, Stoney, where he was able to work with artists such as Kanye West, Justin Beiber, Quavo, Young Thug among others. Malone is most commonly described as a mix of hip-hop, country, and pop music, and is heavily influenced by the likes of Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. In August of 2017, Post Malone broke Michael Jackson’s record of consecutive weeks on top of Billboard’s Top R&B and Hip-Hop Albums chart. Recently Post Malone has been touring in Europe, Australia and across North America.

Beck

Beck Hansen, widely known by just Beck, is an American Alternative Rock artist from California. His albums Sea Change and Odelay have both been listed on Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums of all time. In April of 2019, Beck and Pharrell Williams released a single titled “Saw Lightning.” At the same time, Beck announced he will have a new album released in the summer of 2019 titled Hyperspace. Throughout his career, Beck has received seven Grammy Awards to go along with 17 nominations. He is currently touring across North America but has performed in Europe as well. Along with Guns N’ Roses, Post Malone and Beck, artists such as Bassnectar, Brandi Carlile, The National, Bishop Briggs, Denzel Curry, Interpol, Zhu, Moon Taxi and many others will be performing at Voodoo 2019.

Dressing up like a banana is encouraged at every Voodoo Fest

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Out Now on Bar/None Records available on CD or Vinyl Streaming or download. A new album from

the schramms omnidirectional �...a truly arresting album of songs, all of it as thoughtful and powerful and tuneful and illuminated as the first song...It is easily already one of most impressive albums of the year.. - Rick Moody, The Rumpus

+ Featuring Dave Schramm +

Guitarist and songwriter alumnus of Yo La Tengo and session guitarist for the Replacements, Freedy Johnston, Holsapple/Stamey, Richard Buckner and many more. Now his own band The Schramms delivers a ten-years-in-the-making tour de force.

�...a broad and ultimately rewarding experience in terms of both expert songwriting and instrumental adeptness. + Produced by Overall, the fittingly titled Omnidirectional delivers guitar pop of uncommon intelligence, so smart in fact that IIm tempted to call it art-pop. But hey, therees not a trace of quirk to be heard. And thatts just fine.. - The Vinyl District

JD Foster +

�Itts the beautiful sparseness of the whole enterprise along with the raw open up and spill outpouring of pure naked emotion that in turn makes this album so exceptionally poignant and resonant.. - Jersey Beat

�...rich yet understated soundscapes, complex and subtle melodies, imaginative lyrics, compelling vocals, and all sorts of well-conceived instrumental surprises. Just close your eyes and go with the flow. Youull be glad BRN-CD-268 these guys tossed out all the rulebooks and followed their muse.. BRN-LP-268 BAR/NONE Records - Americana Highways PO Box 1704 Hoboken, NJ 07030 www.bar-none.com

Star-Revue Section 2

www.star-revue.com

July 2019, Page 39

REVUE MUSIC JULY

Park Slope:

Freddy’s, 627 5th Ave

7/2 SlamJunk Tuesday; 7/3 The Push and Pull; 7/4 Cashank Hootenanny; 7/5 Amber Lewis, Laela Giovanna; 7/6 Heather Eatman, The Morrow; 7/7 Karaoke Grand Prix; 7/10 SONGWRITER NITE With Ruby Rae and Friends; 7/11 Home Brew Opera; 7/12 Jonathan Heagle Quarter; 7/13 Fun Guys; 7/17 Humans Against Music Karaoke; 7/19 Mercury Matinee, The Boogie Down hosted by DJ CprodG; 7/20 Big City Folk Presents; 7/21 The Brooklyn Open Mic; 7/26 Fred Thomas LateNight Funk-N-Soul Dance Party; 7/27 Smith St. Band

Prospect Park Bandshell 7/12 Gaby Moreno

& Friends, Enjambre, El David Aguilar; 7/13 Salif Keita, Courtnee Roze; 7/18 I’m With Her, Darlingside; 7/19 Burna Boy, Sampa The Great, DJ Tunez; 7/20 Alloy Orchestra: Variete, LAVA; 7/25 Broken Social Scene, Nilufer Yanya; 7/26 Jidenna, Anik Khan, DJ MOMA; 7/27 Compagnie Herve KOUBI

Union Hall, 702 Union St. 7/2 Stellar Underground

Hosted By Nore Davis; 7/3 Alice Snedden; 7/5 Whiplash, Karaoke Tremendous; 7/6 Picture This!, Sandwich, DJ Party; 7/7 So It’s Come To This; 7/8 Ellen Degeneres Is The Only Ally; 7/9 Phoebe Robinson And Friends; 7/10 Sophie Santos; 7/12 Dark Tank; 7/14 Doug Smith on Wax; 7/16 Jamali Maddix: Vape Lord 2.0; 7/18 Jay Malsky, Taylor Ortega, Mila Myles, Ashton Womack, Adele Computer, Jessica Henderson, Josh Gondelman; 7/22 Johnny Pemberton; 7/23 Phoebe Robinson And Friends;

Chris Wilcox and the Boys, Wall Street Walke Human Resources; 7/24 The Narcotics With The Molice and Heavy In Pocket; 7/27 Oh He Dead, Old_Sport, The Good Few, Kill Me

Mercury Lounge, 217 E Houston St. 7/2 MAAFA,

Nick Cage, Afro Dominicano, Suspect; 7/3 Party Nails, PRXZM; 7/5 Sweet Baby Jesus “Discount Magic”; 7/6 Human Man, Flying Fish Cove, No One And The Somebodies, Kolb; 7/7 Coyote Eyes, Greg Farley, Pub Choir; 7/8 Kayden, Gringo Star; 7/9 Surfaces, Joshua Skate Party, Liz Brennan; 7/10 Syd Straw, Spirits Having Fun; 7/11 Mapache, The Blackfires, Yeled Zaiin; 7/12 Kevin Johansen, Proxima Parada; 7/13 Freezepop; 7/14 Speed The Plough, The Carpenter Ants, Jac With No K, Mykele Deville, Already Late, Daniel Victor; 7/15 Fieh; 7/16 Coyle Girelli; 7/17 Jacob Lee, Taylor Phelan; 7/18 Behaviorist, The High Divers, Francis Aud; 7/20 The Mooney Suzuki, The K-Pop Party; 7/23 Icon For Hire; 7/24 Illiterate Light, The Suburbs; 7/25 Joe Robinson, Jamie N Commons; 7/26 The Cosmic Coronas; 7/27 Chloe Moriondo, Tipling Rock, Terrorhythm Takeover ft. Plastician, Deadcrow, Noah B, Klasey Jones; 7/28 Stephanie Schulte, Valentina Blu; 7/29 Black Pumas, BKO Quintet; 7/30 Paradise Fears, Limbo

Drom, 85 Avenue A 7/3

Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 7/2 Thoman

Wynn & The Believers; 7/10 Nick Viall, Alyssa Coscarelli, Justin Mcleod, Tori Piskin; 7/11 Operators, Doomsquad; 7/12 Charly Bliss, Emily Reo; 7/18 Black Midi, PC Worship, Norman Westburg; 7/20 The Marias, Paul Cherry; 7/25 The Get Up Kids, Great Grandpa; 7/26 Sebadoh, Eleanor Friedberger; 7/28 Viagra Boys; 7/29-7/30 The Faint, Ritual Howls, Closeness; 7/31 tiLLie

Coney Island Baby, 169 Avenue A 7/5 XN, Vincent

Lima; 7/12 Elbaum Tanner Rock N Roll Scene Present: ‘A Bright Light in a Dark World’ Timothy Dark’s Birthday Party; 7/14

Arlene’s Grocery, 95 Stanton St.

7/2 Blubird, Ethel Shank, Crazy Mary, Zombie Sunday; 7/5 Carrier, Patch Kid, Seldomo; 7/6 Teddy Midnight; 7/7 Aqua Seafoam, The Hats, Solid Goold, Raised By Tigers; 7/8 I Am The System; 7/9 Stuyedeyed, Native Sun, Den-Mate; 7/10 Old_Sport , Christian Sparacio, Lily Vakili; 7/12 Valentin Marx, Airlift, Heavenly Faded, Low Amiss; 7/13 Chel, Ava Della Pietra; 7/14 Pity Sweater, Without Oars, Guilty Giraffe, They Are Dancer; 7/18 Petite Celine, Wolf & Moon, Satin Nickel, Jack * The Beanstalk; 7/20 Sunbathers; 7/22 Seven Spires; 7/25 The Connect, Great Pretender, Cecily; 7/26 Above The Moon, Mars Motel, Plz Rspnd;

West Village:

Mezzrow, 163 West 10th St. 7/4 Glenn Zaleski

East Village/LES

The Soft Parade: A Tribute To the Doors - Jim Morrison Memorial Show; 7/5 Hot Rabbit LGBTQ 8th Anniversary Party; 7/6 7 Crown Presents; 7/10 LAMC Presents Sounds from Spain Showcase; 7/11 LAMC Indie Showcase; 7/18 CEG Presents The Funky Knuckles with Adam Ahuja; 7/19 New York School of Burlesque Student Showcase, Hot Rabbit LGBTQ Dance Party; 7/20 Colombian Independence Day with Grupo Rebolu; 7/23 Silver Arrow Band; 7/26 Brasil Summerfest presents Benji & Rita

Meat; 7/20 Tigerman, Zr. King, Cat Dail; 7/21 The Shirts And Shoes; 7/22 Granite To Glass; 7/23 Kayla Hill, Them Travelers, Christina Hart, Mary Lyn Maiscott, Zoe Briskey, Harriet Brown, Quinton Brock, Simmi; 7/24 Supersuckers, The Sweet Things, Ten Ton Mojo, The Threads; 7/25 Black Magic Flower Power, Supervillain, Little Vicious, Robbie Chemical, Boy Miles, Orrin, Idkhim; 7/27 Carvin Jones Band; 7/29 Aicha, Saint Kwam, Jalen Ramce; 7/30 Granny 4 Barrell Showcase

Heather Eatman will be performing at Freddy’s on July 6. She is a major talent in multiple fields. The Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery 7/2 Bohdi,

Halima, Shlee; 7/3 Blind Folds Five; 7/5 Connor Leimer, Choir Girl, Brianna Nelson, Kingkween, Kid Le Chat & Ane; 7/6 Z-Man, Carl Banks; 7/7 Wild Prxfits, Mad Wiz, Mean Joe Scheme, The TK Mac Experience, AV; 7/8 Spesh FX Launch Battle; 7/9 Blssom, Los Hollywood, DI Wave, Neysa Blay, Erick Elera, Mr. Tropical; 7/10 The Vaughns, Dot.s, Ohnomoon, Cuneiform, Zach Schmidt, I&R, Mollo Rillas, Pinewalls; 7/11 Alexandra Kay, Stereo Verde, Take Your Shoes Off; 7/12 Lowdown Brass Band, Shareef Keyes & The Groove, Black Alley; 7/13 The Humble Cheaters, Parlors, Dakota Jones, Colin Leeds, The Thomas G. Waites Project; 7/14 Walter Lure And The Waldos, Lenny Kaye; 7/15 Boku Revolution X; 7/16 Ed From Space, Otro Lado, Holy Vulture, Boom Vang, A:rport, Rokosz, Cheap Synths; 7/17 Sweet Boy, Foxy Dads, Charlotte Parrott’ 7/18 Liza Colby, Ryan Redebaugh; 7/19 Dead

Page 40 Star-Revue Section 2

& Will Vinson, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 7/5-7/6 Mike Soskin, Adam Nussbaum & Jay Anderson, 7/7 Emmet Cohen, Phil Kuehn & Andrew Atkinson, Pasquale Grasso; 7/8 Kyoko Oyobe, Michael O’Brien & Andrew Atkinson, Pasquale Grasso; 7/9 Jay Clayton, Dan Tepfer & Jay Anderson, Naama Gheber; 7/10 Sam Yahel; 7/11 Mike Longo & Paul West, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 7/12-7/13 Adam Birnbaum Trio ft. Al Foster; 7/14 Nate Radley & Gary Versace; 7/15 Hendrik Meurkens, Tadataka Unno & Joe Fitzgerald, Pasquale Grasso; 7/16 Carolyn Leonhart & Helen Sung, Vanessa Perea; 7/17 Bob DeVos & Andy Laverne; 7/18 William Anderson, Peter Anderson & Ehud Asherie, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 7/19-7/20 Vanessa Rubin, Brandon McCune, Kenny Davis & Winard Harper; 7/21 Johnny O’Neal Trio; 7/22 Alberto Pibiri & James Cammack, Pasquale Grasso; 7/23 Marianne Solivan Trio, Lucy Yeghiazaryan; 7/24 Mike Hashim, Steve Einerson & Marcus McLaurine; 7/25 Ed Cherry, Dean Torrey & Anwar Marshall, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 7/26 Peter Zak, Kiyoshi Kitagawa & Sylvia Cuenca; 7/27 Peter Zak, Kiyoshi Kitagawa & Sylvia Cuenca, Anthony Wonsey; 7/28 Rob Schneiderman & Brian Lynch; 7/29 Richie Richie Vitale, Steve Ash & Paul Gill, Pasquale Grasso; 7/30 Harvey Diamond & Cameron Brown, Vanisha Gould; 7/31 Jim McCarron, Paul Gill & Joe Strasser.

Smalls Jazz Club, 138 W 10th St. 7/2 Robert Ed-

wards Quintet, Buzz Donald &

Friends; 7/3 Tuomo Uusitalo Trio ft. Chris Cheek, Francisco Mela & MTP Trio’ 7/4 Gilad Hekselman Group, Luke Sellick Group; 7/5 Marshall McDonald Jazz Project, Wayne Escoffery & Tenor Traditions; 7/6 Billy Mintz Band, Wayne Escoffery & Tenor Traditions, Phillip Harper Quintet; 7/7 Tad Shull Quarter, David Gibson Quintet; 7/8 Joel Frahm Trio, Rodney Green Quarter; 7/9 Justin Robinson Quartet, Abraham Burton Quarter; 7/10 Josh Lawerence “Color Theory”, Jay Rodriguez Quartet; 7/11 Chip White Group, Asaf Yuria Exorcisms Sextet, Mimi Jones & The Lab Session; 7/12

Bushwick:

Elsewhere Rooftop, 599 Johnson Ave. 7/3

Froth, Sadistik; 7/4 JD Samson, Photay, Rimarkable & Kfeelz B2B DJ Raqx; 7/5 Wand, Bay Faction + Mons Vi, Ren G, Lilei & Despina, Dre Ngozi, Jessicunt, DJ Swisha, DJ Nativesun & EQUISS; 7/6 Moon Boots, Blonder, Pig&Dan, Tiefschwarz & Mara, Brian Dario, CGC, Eddie Benitez; 7/7 Chicken & Beer; 7/9 MAE.SUN + Eyal Hai; 7/10 Palehound; 7/12 Lydia Ainsworth, Bad Gyal, Ms Nina, Girl Unit; 7/13 Dorian, Metro Area, Cromie, Sage Caswell; 7/15 Cayucas, Vlad Holiday; 7/16 Covet, Cosmo Sheldrake; 7/17 Del Water Gap, Tijuana Panthers, Jasiah; 7/18: Chris Malinchak, Tirzah, Sampa the Great; 7/19 jackLNDN, An Horse, Fujiya & Miyagi; 7/20 Baauer, Mark Farina; 7/22 TWRP + Protomen; 7/23 XYLO; 7/24 Kira Metcalf, Siobhan Wilson; 7/25 Drunk Mums; 7/26 Le Youth, Tee Lerone, Mark Redito; 7/27 Soul Summit, Pixx; 7/30 A Giant Dog; 7/31 This is Not This Heat

Williamsburg:

Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St 7/2 Lau-

ra Lacy, Ted Morcaldi; 7/5 Tim Kuhl, Nick Diaz, Lizzie Edwards & Friends; 7/6 Patrick Mulroy; 7/7 Justin Nash Fisher, Earth to Jordan, Broken Flight; 7/8 Kate Schell, Jason Bemis Lawrence, The Library Band; 7/9 Joanna Schubert, Emmerson & Her Clammy Hands; 7/11 Olivia & The Significant Others, Savoir Adore; 7/12 Elska, Andrea Longato’s Eta_Beta; 7/13 Jocelyn Mackenzie; 7/14 John Shakespeare, Tyler Berd, Jack McKelvie & The Countertops; 7/15 Notanairplane, Year of the Hare; 7/16 Dexter Dine, Clover, Alwyn Robinson; 7/18 Patrick Collins, The Fearless; 7/19 Da Vinci The Girl, Cry Babi; 7/20 Lorraine Leckie; 7/21 Prints of Monaco, The Matt Howells Blues Project; 7/22 Cosmos Sunshine; 7/23 Words N Guitars, James Margolis; 7/25 Lauren Rosato; 7/26 Sham Sundra, The Nightenders; 7/27 Dogwood Last; 7/28 Little Mazarn, Grease Trap; 7/29 John Shannon; 7/30 Falsa: 14th Century Sufi Ensemble

Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave 7/2

The Final Sound, The Exits, DJ Sean Templar; 7/3 Carbon

www.star-revue.com

Heart, Steal Cheat & Gamble, Critical Miss; 7/5 EMIA, Illicit Ghost, Caroline Lazar, dolltr!ck, Panky Rang Presents: Nazaar w/ Tripnotic, AG + Shneur; 7/6 The Black Parade - Emo & Pop Punk Night; 7/9 MajorStage Presents BamSavage; 7/10 Mapache; 7/11 Koe Wetzel, Chris Colston; 7/12 Joselito The Puppet; 7/13 White Ford Bronco; 7/14 Just Another Night; 7/16 Mystery Skulls, Phangs, Snowblood; 7/17 King Yellowman w/ Sagittarius Band, K’Reema; 7/18 Huntertones, Ryan Scott; 7/19 Temple of Angels, Teen Body; 7/20 Smalltown DJs, Rumpus, Full Force & H<3art Beats Fam; 7/22 Stunna 4 Vegas, Blacc Zacc, RetrolSAwesome, DStone; 7/23 Toy Records NYC, Astral P Presens Toy Bop; 7/28 School of Rock All Stars; 7/31 The Perceptagons, Reptilian Elite, Sofia D’Angelo, Fashion Tory

Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St 7/12

Heize, 7/15 CHAI, 7/17 Aimee Mann, Jonathan Coulton; 7/19 mekons, Fond Farewells; 7/20 Drugdealer, Purr, Maraschino; 7/23 Nilüfer Yanya, Pixx; 7/25 The Buttertones; 7/26 The Get Up Kids, Great Grandpa; 7/27 Fruit Bats; 7/31 We Were Promised Jetpacks, Catholic Action

Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave. 7/3 Lady Moon

& The Eclipse, People’s Champs, Kala & The Lost Tribe; 7/6 God Street Wine, Just Tyler; 7/9 Los Campesinos; 7/10 Sweet Crude, Shamarr Allen; 7/11 Soul Live with Ivan Neville; 7/12 Soul Live with Oteil Burbridge; 7/13 Soul Live with John Scofield; 7/14 Sammy Rae & The Friends, Lohai, Peter Collins; 7/17 The Chats; 7/21 Raging Fyah; 7/23 Villalobos Brothers; 7/24 Charley Crockett; 7/25 Ibibio Sound Machine; 7/27 Long Beach Dub AllStars; 7/28 The McCray Sisters; 7/31 Jupiter & Okwess

Union Pool, 484 Un-

Marshall Crenshaw playes the City Winery on July 16. His songs and his guitar playing are memorable. ion Ave. 7/2 The Chasm;

7/5 Ruby The Hatchet; 7/6 Ben Perani & The Means of Production; 7/7 Summer Thunder!; 7/8 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 7/9 Ricardo Dias Gomes, Ryan Dugre, Jesse Harris; 7/11 Gemma; 7/12 The Messthetics; 7/13 Purling Hiss; 7/14 Summer Thunder!; 7/15 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 7/16 Elsz (solo); 7/17 The Gotobeds; 7/20 High Time; 7/21 Summer Thunder!, High Time; 7/22 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 7/27 Escape-ism; 7/28 Summer

Thunder! Julia Shapiro; 7/29 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir

Brooklyn Steel, 319 Frost St. 7/1 Rich The Kid; 7/9 Citizen Cope; 7/10 Belle & Sebastian; 7/12 - 7/13 Nick Murphy aka Chet Faker; 7/27 G Jones; 7/31 Snail Mail

Fort Greene:

C’Mon Everybody, 325 Franklin Ave 7/2 Puck,

Quinton Brock, Nathan Bajar; 7/5-7/6 Young Adult Friction; 7/10 Wild Yawp, Night of Cups, Emily Ritz; 7/12 Zach Jones & The Tricky Bits, Lakes with DJ Rochelle Rochelle; 7/14 Sunghouse with Antagonista, Laura Zarougian; 7/17 The Hum Presents: Beccs X Little Kruta; 7/19 The APX with S/G Jill Peacock; 7/20 Boulevards with special guest Herbivores; 7/25 RES *Residency* with special guests

Gowanus:

The Bell House, 149 7th St 7/23 Parker Millsap,

Sierra Ferrell; 7/26 Part Time, Gary Wilson

Manhattan

Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway 7/9 - 7/10 Earth,

Wind and Fire; 7/23 Godsmack; 7/26 The Try Guys; 7/28 Kirk Franklin; 7/29 - 7/30 Rob Thomas

City Winery, 155 Varick St. 7/2 James

Thorme, Matisyahu; 7/3 Melissa Gardner, Andres Osborne; 7/5 Popa Chubby, David Bromberg Quintet; 7/6 Joe Grushecky & The Houserockers, The Nick Moss Band; 7/7 The Weeklings, The Lone Bellow; 7/8 Van Hunt, Selda Sahin and Derek Gregor; 7/9 Gilbert O’Sullivan, Mike Rocket, Crystal Joilena, Victor V. Gurbo & Co, Eliza And The Organix; 7/10 Dar Williams and Susan Werner, Slam Allen; 7/11 Dar Williams, Jenny Marie McAdams; 7/12 Dar Williams, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers; 7/13 Marissa Nadler; 7/14 Adam Ezra Group, Eric Roberson, Lynyrd Williams with Hank Williams Jr.; 7/15 Bettye LaVette, Juwan Crawley; 7/16 Marshall Crenshaw, Joseph Arthur, Scott Sharrard, Emily Duff, Laith Al-Saadi, Tash Neil, Ricky Byrd, Kevin Rath; 7/17 Okkervil River, James Maddock; 7/18 The Earls of Leicester; 7/19 Eilen Jewell, Jordie Lane; 7/20 Weird Al Yankovic; 7/21 Dave Alvin, Dave Leisz, Christy McWilson; 7/23 Karine Hannah, Taj Mahal Quartet; 7/24 Elvis Costello and the Imposters, The Showdown Kids; 7/25 Melissa Polinar, Jeremy Passion And Gabe Bondoc, The High Kings; 7/26 Melissa Polinar, Jeremy Passion And Gabe Bondoc, Heather McDonald; 7/27 Marc Broussard, Jamie McLean Band, The New York Bee Gees; 7/28 Marc Broussard, The THE BAND; 7/29 Clare Bowen, Imogen Clark, The Wallflowers; 7/30 Jake Elliot, Jeff Slate

July 2019

REVUE MUSIC JULY Ridgewood:

Ghost Component, Rudy Cadilac, Jerryl B, Unlimited; 7/6 Cop/Out, Harvey Pekar, Crazy & The Brains, Incircles, Witch Slap; 7/7 Detach The Islands, Dead Empires, Wreath of Tongues; 7/8 Ambient Lullabies; 7/9 Ukulele Moon; 7/10 Turner Cody, Goodmorning Valentine, Blood Wolf Super Moon, Caged Animal, Playerpiano; 7/11 Amy Hoffman, Tom D’Agustino, Carter McNeil, Nick Cortezi; 7/13 Attis, Social Skills, Ryan Natsis, Lola Johnson, The French Nurses; 7/16 Polina & Jake’s School Night Sleepover; 7/17 Uazit, Gesserit, A Place Both Wonderful * Strange, Darling Nights; 7/19 Out of System Transfer, Rob Taxpayer, Zebu, Disengaged; 7/23 Wreath, Wisebuck, Cave Diver; 7/27 High Tea; 7/28 Dead Satellites, Lacey Spacecake, Ruby Dear, Savage Youth; 7/31 Dogwood Last, Primitive Heart, Dot Gov, The Spectrum

Gaby Moreno & Friends/Enjambre/El David Aguilar

THURS 7/4, 10PM

Salif Keita/Courtnee Roze

Kneeling Drunkards

SAT 7/13, 7:30PM

THURS 7/18, 7:30PM I’m With Her/Darlingside

FRI 7/19, 7:30PM

Burna Boy/Sampa the Great/DJ Tunez*

SAT 7/20, 8PM

Alloy Orchestra: Varieté/LAVA

THURS 7/25, 7:30PM

Broken Social Scene/Nilüfer Yanya

FRI 7/26, 7:30PM

Jidenna/Anik Khan/DJ MOMA

SAT 7/27, 8PM

Compagnie Hervé Koubi

ROCKY SULLIVAN’S 46 Beard St. 718-246-8050 rockysullivansredhook.com Every TUES, 8-10PM Irish Night Every WED, 9PM Karaoke Night EVERY SUN, 5PM The Open Mind (Jazz)

Abby Hollander is a singer, bassist and guitarist, and songwriter originally from Woodstock, NY. Coming from a family of musicians, she was raised on an eclectic mix of bluegrass, country, and jazz – which were played on the stereo a little and the back porch a lot. In her travels so far she’s studied voice, violin, and theatre, absorbed some swing and blues from a stint in Austin, taught English to little kids in Spain, taught Spanish to little kids in Brooklyn, and moved a piano across the country twice to finally settle in New York and make music. Abby was recently honored in the songwriting competition at the 2014 Podunk Bluegrass Music Festival with awards for two of her original songs, ‘Darlin City’ and ‘Loneliness Here’. Her band plays at Superfine in Dumbo on Sunday July 21 Bene’s RECORD SHOP

360 Van Brunt St. 718-855-0360 All Shows 8:30PM, unless noted.

SAT 7/13

CP UNIT* Chris Pitsiokos - sax Sam Lisabeth - guitar Henry Fraser - bass Jason Nazary - drums Ben Bennett - solo percussion

SAT 7/26

Branch/Eisenberg/Kalmanovitch* jaimie branch - trumpet Wendy Eisenberg - guitar Tanya Kalmanovitch - viola Tom and Lee Tom Csatari - guitar Levon Henry - sax Paul Gunsberg - percussion/ reeds/electronics Jason Nazary - percussion/electronics Jaimie Branch - trumpet/electronics

IBEAM

168 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave. ibeambrooklyn.com shows at 8PM unless otherwise printed.

WED 7/3

Mara Rosenbloom Trio Mara Rosenbloom - piano Sean Conly - bass Chad Taylor - drums

FRI 7/5

Billy Mintz Band Adam Kolker - sax Richard Perry - sax

Star-Revue Section 2

TUES 7/2

FRI 7/12, 7PM

Trans Pecos, 915 Wyckoff St. 7/3 Easy, Tiger,

July is upon us and there are a ton of concerts to get to this summer. Stop by Bene’s Record Shop to hear some Free Jazz Stylings or get into Jalopy to hear some fine roots and blues music. The free shows continue at Prospect Park Bandshell as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn summer festival: Mick Jenkins and Leikeli47 will light up the stage on Friday July 5th, not to be missed. Enjoy the sunshine this summer and get out and enjoy some music! See ya on the dance floor - Jaimie Branch

Oddisee & Good Company/ 47Soul/Narcy

Noah Bless - trombone Roberta Piket - piano Hilliard Greene - bass Billy Mintz - drums

JALOPY TAVERN

317 Columbia St. 718-625-3214 jalopytavern.biz Every FRI, 9PM Papa Vega and the Rocket 88’s

Aces

SAT 7/13, 9PM

The Horse Eyed Men & Maggie Carson

SUN 7/14

3:30PM: Brooklyn’ s Oldtime Slowjam 6:00PM: Exceedingly Good Song Night

SAT 7/20, 8PM

Barry Clyde

Nora Brown + Jerron Paxton Solos and Duos SUN 7/21, 7PM Darren Hanlon + Shelley Short FRI 7/26, 8PM The Sterlington Collection, Franz Landspersky, and WJDI

Isto

LITTLEFIELD

Frankie Sunswept & The Sunwrays

SAT 7/6, 11PM, 21+

MON 7/1, 9PM Wild Goats

SAT 7/6, 9PM Avo and Skalopy!

WED 7/10, 9PM THURS 7/11, 9PM SAT 7/13, 9PM WED 7/17

Charlie Judkins and Miss Maybell

THURS 7/18, 9PM Audra Rox

JALOPY THEATRE

315 Columbia St. 718-395-3214 jalopytheatre.org Every Tuesday Night, 9PM Open Mic Night, sign up by 9 sharp! Each performer gets 2 songs or 8 minutes.

SAT 7/6, 8PM

Zoe & Cloyd SUN 7/7, 8PM Visions for the End of the World

FRI 7/12, 7:30PM

Cajun Dance Night with Hi-Lo

FRI 7/5, 9PM

Red Hook Roxx Presents: Meyerman, The James Rocket, Sad About Girls

SAT 7/6, 9PM La Madrugada

SUN 7/7

5PM: The Open Mind (jazz) 8PM: Dance Party

FRI 7/12, 9PM

Red Hook Roxx Presents: Cyro Child, Jesse Black, Scathed

SAT 7/13, 9PM Alegba & Friends

THURS 7/18, 8PM Krussie Nagy, Swing Jam

FRI 7/19, 9PM

Red Hook Rox Presents: Red Hook Rox, Sound Dogs

FRI 7/26, 9PM

Red Hook Rox Presents: Stephen Alexander, James Rose, TBA

SAT 7/27, 9PM

John Brothers Piano Company

Ryan Luce (RECORD RELEASE) W/ Low Roller, WC Beck, Honky Tonk, Radio Girl (WFMU)

Prospect Park Band Shell located in Prospect Park 718-683-5600 bricartsmedia.org ALL SHOWS FREE!

FRI 7/5, 7:30PM

Mick Jenkins/Leikeli47/Levan Kali/Joy Postell*

SAT 7/6, 7PM

www.star-revue.com

Arnt Arntzen

TUES 7/9

Jason Loughlin

THURS 7/11

Greg Humphreys

FRI 7/12

Stillhouse Serenade

SUN 7/14, 5PM Paul Spring

TUES 7/16

Max Johnson*

THURS 7/18 Mara Kaye Trio

FRI 7/19 Doggy Cats

SUN 7/21

3PM: Harry Bolick’s Old Time Jam 6:30PM: Honky Tonk Heroes

TUES 7/23

Frankie Sunswept

THURS 7/25

Ryan Scott and the Kind Buds

FRI 7/26 Holy Hive

SUN 7/28, 5PM Tamar Korn

TUES 7/30

Sabine McCalla

SUPERFINE

126 Front St. superfine.nyc EVERY SUNDAY Bluegrass Green Chile Brunch / Evening Jazz and Americana Noon - 3pm / 6 - 8pm Unless Otherwise Printed

SUN 7/7

The Haggard Kings/Neha Jivrajka Jazz Trio

SUN 7/14

Abby Hollander Trio/Beat Kaestli Jazz Dup

SUN 7/21

Jack Grace Band/Sabine McCalla (New Orleans)

SUN 7/28

SUPERSMITH

509 Atlantic Ave. Roulette.org

MON 7/1, 8PM

SUNNYS

Be Cute Brooklyn, Dance Party

SUN 7/7, 5PM

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM

SAT 7/20, 6PM, 21+

SAT 7/13, 11PM, 21+

FRI 7/5

Andrea Asprelli Trio/Bobby Blue the Balladeer

WED 7/17, 7:30PM, 21+

Reggae Retro 1st Saturdays Party

Doggy Cats

Alegba & Friends

75 Dollar Bill Record Release show with Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society* SAT 7/20 + SUN 7/21, 8PM Roulette’s 40th Season Closeout Party Celebrating the close of Roulette’s 40th season with two evenings of experimental performance.

635 Sackett St. littlefieldnyc.com

Andrea Asprelli and Jason Borisoff

125 Dikeman St.

THURS 7/25, 6:30PM*

Pioneer Works Community Happy Hour Feat: Jan Bell & The Maybelles * Critics Pick

253 Conover St. 718-625-8211 sunnysredhook.com all shows 9PM unless otherwise printed. EVERY WED Smokey’s Round-Up* A late night Raucous Western Swing dance party with virtuoso guitarist, Smokey Hormel. Three sets. EVERY SATURDAY TONE’s Bluegrass Jam Bring your axe!

July 2019, Page 41

Comedy

REVUE ARTS JULY younger. $10 students & seniors. 200 Eastern Parkway.

Every Tuesday in Williamsburg enjoy some free beer from 8-8:30pm as Ambush Comedy (hosted by Lucas Connolly and David Piccolomini) performs in the back of a Two Boots Pizza joint. Free. 558 Driggs Ave. The Bell House hosts “Oh, Such a Huge Show, Oh!” The Comedy/

Variety show returns July 6 for a benefit performance for The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, featuring material from Emmy Blotnick (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert) Josh Gondelman (Last Week Tonight), Anna Drezen (SNL) and more. 7 PM. GA $18 in advance, $23 day of show. 149 7th St, Brooklyn. Jalopy Theater presents “Little

Laffs: A Kid’s Variety Show”

on July 7 at 11am. Elementary and pre-school kids can enjoy balloon art and juggling at the Carroll Gardens theater. GA for families $25; $5 for children. 315 Columbia St.

In Boerum Hill, Ben Asher hosts “DoublePlusGood” on July 10 at 7:30pm at Pacific Standard. Seating for the free event is first-comefirst-served. 82 4th Avenue. Union Hall presents a taping of comedian Yedoye Travis’ podcast “Dark Tank” on July 12. In every episode, a white person pitches solutions to America’s many pressing racial issues to an all-black panel of judges. Who doesn’t love well-meaning white people? Don’t answer that. 7:30 PM. $10 in advance, $15 day of show. 702 Union St.

Dance

Local salsa staple Willie Villegas performs at Industry City every Sunday through the end of Aug. Expect discounted drinks, lessons for the clueless, and lots of outdoor salsa dancing. Free. 12-6pm. 238 36th St. July is the perfect month for a trip to Central Park. SummerStage celebrates the 100th anniversary of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Melissa Toogood leads a workshop of Cunningham’s most iconic moves. Free. Doors at 7pm. 8-10pm.

Tom Gold Dance premieres a

new contemporary ballet piece, “Traveling West” at the Cooper Hewitt in Manhattan on Thursday, July 11, as part of the “Cocktails at Cooper Hewitt” performance series. 6pm. Tickets $14 online; $16 at the door. 2 E 91st St Kids who want to bust a move should check out a free Hip Hop dance class at Pier 3 Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park on July 14. It’s part of the Parks Department’s Moving together series. 1:00-2:00 PM. .

Film BAM celebrates the 30th anniversary of Spike Lee’s breakout film “Do the Right Thing” with screenings running from June 28 through July 4. The tale of simmering (and eventually exploding) tension between neighbors is just as relevant as it was in 1989. Switch around some of the demographic changes in the movie’s BedStuy setting and swap Sal’s Pizza for a juice bar, and suddenly it’s

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“The Secret Life of Bees” is hosted by Atlantic Theater Company through July 21. The musical is written by Lynn Nottage, with music by Grammy Award winner Duncan Sheik, lyrics by two-time Tony nominee Susan Birkenhead, direction by Tony winner Sam Gold. $75-125 336 West 20th St. Manhattan not hard to place the story in today’s Brooklyn. It’s an unmissable piece of New York movie history. $15. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. Nitehawk Cinema presents “Keanu: The Works,” a film series that looks back at 30 years of everyone’s favorite cyber messiah/ rocker dude/ strangely-difficult-to-classify actor. Screenings cover everything from “Bill and Ted,” to “My Own Private Idaho,” to “The Matrix” and everything in between. Screenings start July 12 at Nitehawk’s Williamsburg and Prospect Park Locations. Check nitehawkcinema.com for showtimes. $13. “Midsommar,” the latest creepfest from indie-horror auteur Ari Aster, opens July 3. It’s the tale of a young American couple who encounter a seemingly charming pagan countryside festival in Sweden. (Uh-oh.) It’s all sun-drenched hills and flower garlands at first, but things take a turn for the sinister. Midsommar gained early buzz thanks to the success of Aster’s previous film, last year’s unsettling “Hereditary.” Wide Release. Rated R. Parklife, the Gowanus bar/ outdoor event space, hosts a series of outdoor film screenings throughout the summer, and whoever has picked the movies has excellent taste in fizzy summer fare. Nora Ephron’s unequaled romcom “When Harry Met Sally” plays July 10th followed by underrated Tom Cruise Sci-Fi action flick “Edge of Tomorrow” on the 17th. Next up are two more indispensable comedies: “Waiting For Guffman,” Christopher Guest’s small-town theater mockumentary on July 24th, and Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs” on the 31st. 636 DeGraw Street, Movies start at sundown, which is roughly 9:00 PM. Free! Get a little suspense from your outdoor screening experience as the Narrows Botanical Gardens presents Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Vertigo” on July 26th. Jimmy Stewart gets dizzy from exposure to high places and/ or Kim Novak in one of the greatest American thrillers ever made. Enter on Shore Road between Bay Ridge Avenue and 72nd Street. Show starts at approx. 8:45 PM. Note: no restrooms, so go before you leave. Free. At the Metrograph on the Lower East Side, catch back to back screenings of “Chulas Fronteras” and “Del Mero Corazon.” These two documentaries by Les Blank celebrate the Norteño and Conjunto music of the Texas/ Mexico border. Showings July 1-4, tickets $15. Check metrograph. com for showtimes.

Food

On July 13, take the Dead Distillers trolley tour through Green-

wood Cemetery, meet some of the buried whiskey barons, then visit Kings County Distillery and sample some choice booze. $40, 5th Ave and 25th St. 2:00-5:00 PM Ages 21 and up only. Want to learn how to make your own fermented foods at home? On July 15, 92Y in Manhattan will teach you everything you always wanted to know about sauerkraut but were afraid to ask in their Fermented Veggies class. 7:00 PM, tickets $60. Details at 92y.org.

On June 11, The Invisible Dog is offering fresh spring and summer produce, sauces, spices, honey, and more, courtesy of Treiber Farms in Peconic, NY. Chef Lucian Zayan will be cooking Treiber Farms products all day long to give you a taste. 57 Bergen St. 11am-7pm. Celebrate Bastille Day at FI:AF in Manhattan on July 14th. Highlighted by champagne, cocktails, and jazz, this party contains live music, chocolates, macaroons and hors d’ oeuvres. Hosted at the FI:AF skyroom, this Bastille Day celebration contains French and American Music from the 20s to the 40s. $75, 22 East 60th St., 8th floor

Galleries & Museums

For nine months, artists Emilio Martinez Poppe, Tuesday Smillie, Sasha Wortzel and American Artist have been developing independent projects and engaging closely with each other’s work. The artists share a similar concern for political dynamics that shape human relationships to virtual, natural, and built environments. The Abrons Arts Center hosts the artists work through August 22nd. Free. 466 Grand St. Celebrate the 30th anniversary of Do The Right Thing by viewing exclusive photos by Brooklyn’s own David Lee. Through the lives of numerous characters, we journey through gentrification to police brutality, themes that are as culturally and politically relevant today as they were 30 years ago. MoCADA hosts the event through July 28th Free. 84 Hanson Place Ground Floor Gallery is hosting Rhia

Hurt’s

“Seeing

Through”

through July 14. Hurt’s paintings feature repeated and irregular geometric shapes painted in a range of colors from subtle earth tones to acidic industrial color. Free. 343 5thSt Two of the catchiest acronyms in Brooklyn art team up for a pop-up show, as artists from BWAC and ChaShaMa show their works at the BWAC Gallery from July 20- Aug 4. Show up on the opening day for a chance to meet the artists and enjoy a live, on-site painting and sound performance. 481 Van Brunt Street, 1-6pm.

Kentler International Drawing Space presents two

shows running through July 28. Science of the Word” features the Work of Mildred Beltré, a Dominican-American artist working in textiles and mixed media whose work explores social justice, racial identity, and the power of language. Also running is “When the Morning Gathers the Rainbow,” a multi-artist show with works pulled from Kentler’s flatfiles archives. 353 Van Brunt Street, Thursday- Sunday, 12-5pm.

Kustera Projects hosts “Ghosts of Our Future” a showcase of paintings by South

African artist Kevin Connolly

At Belli Gallery, Jonathan Belli showcases woodblock prints from the 20th century with a collaborative perspective from the furniture designer Will Kavesh. “Walking Bulbs of the S�saku-hanga” features seven artists who responded the strictures of traditional Japanese woodblocks with an emphasize on artistic freedom and self-expression. The show starts with Yamamoto Kanae who founded the movement in 1904. Of particular interest are the three female S�sakue-hanga artists who were part of a 1957 group, the Joryu Hanga Kyokai. Through July 14. 481 Van Brunt, #9A. Weekends only.

Gillespie that runs through July 27. The works confront the terrifying eradication of African wildlife by poachers and man’s changing relationship with the animal kingdom. 57 Wolcott Street. WednesdaySaturday, 12pm-6pm.

Talks & Readings

Pioneer Works presents the latest in their “Scientiﬁc Controversies” series of talks with a look at animal consciousness on July 9. Are animals self-aware? Are they capable

of empathy? How do consciousness and morality evolve in the Animal Kingdom? Columbia professor and physicist Janna Levin moderates with primatologist Frans de Waal and CUNY animal behaviorist Diana Reiss. Free admission. Doors at 7pm, talk begins at 8pm.

Andrea Dunlop and New York City-based writer and editor Jamie Blynn host a book signing of “We Came Here to Forget” at Strand Books on July 10. The book highlights the story of Katie Cleary, a teenager who leaves her home to live full time with her two best friends. The NYC Native Blynn covers novels, movies, music, and television, and has appeared in US Weekly, Today. Architectural Digest, Refinery 29, Mental Floss among others. $15-27. 828 Broadway at 12th St. Manhattan Authors Katie Rawson and Elliott Shore discuss the history of restaurants at the 92nd St. Y, taking us from the world’s first restaurants in Kaifeng, China, to the latest high-end dining experiences. July 25th 7:00 pm $29. 1395 Lexington Ave. Manhattan

Theater

Pioneer Works is promoting “Decoder: The Ticket That Exploded” as an “intergalactic fever dream.”

Based on the second novel of a trilogy by “Naked Lunch” author William S. Burroughs, it’s a Dadaist tale of alien mind-control and the nature of language. Really, even that description sells the weirdness of the source material short. This staged version, playing July 8, combines psychedelic audio and video designs with live performance. Doors at 8pm, Performance at 9pm. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. If you’ve ever said to yourself “I enjoy the works of Herman Melville, but I wish I could experience them under an enormous fiberglass whale,” boy does the American Museum of Natural History have a treat for you. AMNH is hosting a dramatized, musical version of Moby-Dick in the Hall of Ocean Life. Featuring music by Dave Malloy (“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”) and direction by Tony Award-winner Rachel Chavkin (“Hadestown”). The show runs for two nights only, July 26 and 27. 830pm Tickets $120 at amnh.org At The Clemente on the Lower East Side, come check out the Drilling Company’s

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot production of Romeo and Juliet,

with the Montagues and Capulets portrayed as feuding Lower East Side families. The show runs from July 11-27, Thursdays through Saturdays. Check out our 25th-anniversary profile of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot in this very issue! La Plaza at the Clemente Parking lot, 114 Norfolk St, Manhattan. Free! Shakespeareintheparkinglot.com

The Brooklyn Museum hosts a First Saturday this month on July 6. From 5-10pm, visitors will be treated to curator-led tours of Garry Winogrand:

Color and Egyptian maqam music. Later on sees performances by

Dj InO, poetry readings by Raven Jackson, and Trace DePass, and Colombian cumbia music from NYC-based Cumbia River Band. GA is $16. Free for 19 &

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Mel Brook’s Spaceballs will be shown at Parklife, starting at sundown on July 31. 636 Degraw Street in Gowanus

July 2019

 ART, CULTURE, BOOKS AND MORE FUN STUFF FROM BROOKLYN AND BEYOND 

Recess Under the Arch

Photo courtesy of Lia Bulaong/ Come Out and Play Festival

STARREVUE ARTS

By Ben Masten

Come Out and Play, New York’s long-running festival of street games and general silliness comes to DUMBO. Even by New York standards, Nick Fortugno has a radical idea. In a city where people are notoriously loath to make eye contact or take out their earbuds, he wants New Yorkers to run around and be ridiculous in public.

Championships.” Some of the games are played in groups as small as three or four; others can support hundreds of players at once. The thing they all have in common is that the players have to, well, come out and play.

Fortugno, 44, is a co-founder of the Come Out and Play Festival, an annual celebration of street games that’s been running in New York since 2006. It returns to DUMBO this year on July 20.

“There’s a certain kind of play that’s performative,” says Fortugno. “Adults don’t want to do it anymore because we get self-conscious. Giving people the excuse to do that is very freeing. The value of play is that it gives me the freedom to do things I wouldn’t normally do.”

While playground classics often inspire the games, they’re an order of magnitude more creative than Tag or Red Rover. The titles of some past games should give you an idea: “Pigeon Piñata Pummel,” “Teeny Tiny Soccer,” “Brooklyn Meditation

It’s not just the players who bond over the games. Passing New Yorkers do too. Street games are designed to create a spectacle. Fortugno recalls a clas-

INSIDE:

sic entry in past festivals called “Pac-Manhattan,” where costumed ghosts ran around after a player dressed as the titular munching hero. “When pedestrians see Pac-Man hide behind a car from a ghost, they have to decide what to do about that,” Says Fortugno. Do the pedestrians tip off the ghosts to Pac-Man’s hiding place? Do they point them the wrong way? There’s an infectious goofiness to street games that draws people in. It’s hard to resist the sight of people having a good time, even for the shyest passers-by. “The festival programs people to just walk up to

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The Waterfront Barge Museum / Community Lunch at Pioneer Works /

Toxic Fumes / Parking Lot Shakespeare / Matching Jumpsuits / Scheherezade’s Sister / & MORE

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Arthur Miller’s Red Hook excavated at Waterfront Barge Museum by Brett Yates

f one could go back in time and visit Red Hook in the 1940s, one would, at about 4:30 am, find a scene of desperation on its crowded waterfront.

Days began with “longshoremen huddling in doorways in rain and snow on Columbia Street facing the piers, waiting for the hiring boss, on whose arrival they surged forward and formed up in a semicircle to attract his pointing finger and the numbered brass checks that guaranteed a job for the day. After distributing the checks to his favorites, who had quietly paid him off, the boss often found a couple left over and in his generosity tossed them into the air over the little crowd. In a frantic scramble, the men would tear at each other’s hands, sometimes getting into bad fights.” This description comes from the autobiography Timebends by Arthur Miller, who as a young playwright became intrigued by the real-life story of Pete Panto, a dockworker and union activist whose body ended up in a ditch in New Jersey after he led an unsuccessful revolt against the mafiosos controlling the Brooklyn waterfront. A few years later, Miller visited Red Hook and witnessed the grim resignation of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) workers who, for a chance to earn their daily bread, had no choice but to offer the local gangsters kickbacks.“It was as though they had lost the mere awareness of hope,” Miller wrote. On June 22 and 23, this scene played out again on Pier 44 during Brave New World’s sold-out performances of The Hook, an unproduced 1949 screenplay by Miller whose story of a Panto-like figure subsequently unfolded, in a theatrical version by Ron Hutchinson, aboard the Waterfront Barge Museum, a circa-1914 vessel that has docked in Red Hook since 1994. Miller came of age during the Great Depression, which produced a new brand of populist, left-wing dramaturgy by New York’s Group Theatre and the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project. Inspired by the social realism of Clifford Odets, Miller brought new depth and artistry to the agitprop of the 1930s stage, becoming the American theater’s bard of the common man in the following decade with All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. He wrote The Hook in the same period. Six decades later, productions of Death of a Salesman continue to fill community theaters across the country, but since the playwright died in 2005, it’s not every day that one gets to see the U.S. premiere of an Arthur Miller

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script. That’s what happened last month, however, when Brave New World imported Hutchinson’s adaptation from the UK (where it first played in Northampton in 2015) for a series of staged readings. The company’s full production will take place in 2020 in the same spot, but already the expressive cast rarely had to look down for lines. The Hook brings to life an expansive New York landscape of hopeful immigrant families, greedy kingpins, guilt-ridden henchmen, defiant heroes, forlorn cowards, and everyone caught in between. Miller finds color, wit, and even poetry in the tough language of working men. His villain is a thin caricature, but his protagonist carries an almost mythic aura. Driven to fight the corruption on the waterfront by an internal force incomprehensible to himself, the longshoreman Marty Ferrara would rather leave the docks behind than organize them, but a fire in his gut forces him to put his life on the line for dignity and justice. Not much given to speechifying, he experiences his own morality primarily as rage. At the Waterfront Barge, Ferrara’s Red Hook blends into ours. Audience members may be of one mind or another regarding site-specific theater: I once saw a performance of Macbeth amid wind and fog in an abandoned seacoast fortification beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, but the immersive character of the production, which shuffled from one room to another within the atmospherically desolate military structure, didn’t necessarily empower the material. Some playgoers may argue that any reminder of the outside world functions as a diminishment of the play’s interior world. For others, the creative use of a relevant location as a non-traditional stage may draw out new resonances from a work of theater. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate site for The Hook than the preserved maritime landscape of Red Hook’s shoreline. The actors in their newsboy caps and suspenders seemed to enjoy yanking ropes, and hauling sacks as waves occasionally shook the Lehigh Valley Barge Number 79. I wish Brave New World well as the talented company continues to develop The Hook, but someday I’d also like to see the movie that Miller originally intended. On the stage, one can sense the set pieces that have gone missing owing to its constraints: a deadly work-

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July 2019

photo by Brett Yates

place accident, a large-scale labor strike. Reportedly, Miller traveled to Los Angeles in 1950 with Elia Kazan, his prospective director, to pitch his screenplay to Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures. After a meeting with a Hollywood union boss, Cohn asked Miller to revise his script to change the bad guys from racketeers to communists. Miller refused. (In The Hook, it’s precisely the ILA’s collusion with the capitalists – the ship owners – that defines its failure in its gangster incarnation.) Returning to Broadway, Miller would earn his only original screenplay credit in 1961 when he penned John Huston’s raw, doomy masterpiece The Misfits. Meanwhile, Kazan held onto Miller’s earlier story idea and hired Budd Schulberg to redevelop it into the Marlon Brando classic On the Waterfront (1954), which moved the action to Hoboken. Ultimately, Miller’s pro-worker screed became a reactionary, self-justifying allegory for a filmmaker who, by then, had ratted out his leftist colleagues to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Miller would symbolically condemn Kazan’s testimo-

ny in 1955 in A View from the Bridge, another drama set in Red Hook. But despite its director’s political infamy, On the Waterfront’s portrait of the mobbed-up Port of New York and New Jersey of the 20th century has become legendary. In reality, the ILA wasn’t the only labor union whose rank-and-file suffered when parasitic thugs invaded its leadership positions, but the others didn’t get the Hollywood treatment. In 1952, state and federal officials created the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor to root out corruption, and today, ILA Local 1814 continues to represent the workers at the Red Hook Container Terminal. On the Waterfront diagnoses more or less the same social problem as The Hook: criminals controlling the union. In the former, their sin is murder; in the latter, it’s oppression. Only The Hook hints at a vision of liberation for the workers, who demand democratic control of their workplace. Unfortunately, their courage fails them in the end.

recognition of the vital importance of strong labor unions motivates the work’s condemnation of their corrupted iteration. He’d like to see them reformed but fears the worst. The beaten-down workers manage only spurts of revolutionary spirit; otherwise, they settle for half-measures. Their main concern is keeping their jobs, whatever the conditions. It remains a pertinent warning. Last year, Brave New World staged Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Waterfront Barge Museum. The production returns for 12 more performances on September 12, 2019. Brett Yates is a staff writer at The Red Hook StarRevue.

Some theatergoers may mistakenly regard The Hook’s attitude as anti-union. But in fact, Miller’s

Silliness, con’t from page 1 an experience and try it,” says game designer Dalton Gray, 26. “And in our normal lives, we try to find ways to avoid those new experiences.” Gray has two games in the festival this year. The first, “Build and Destroy,” has players constructing a sprawling metropolis out of wooden blocks before natural disasters (including a person in a giant shark costume) whisk

it all away. Another is a safari for (ahem) “pocket monsters” where some players try to snap photos of puppets that pop into sight, while others control the creatures themselves.

Clara Schuhmacher, a marketing director for the DUMBO Business Improvement District, says that

Star-Revue Section 2

the festival is a great fit for a neighborhood that prides itself on creativity both in business and art. “It’s the perfect combination of innovation and play,” says Schuhmacher. “DUMBO is a neighborhood full of artists that are experimenting with their medium.” Come Out and Play is open to kids and adults alike and is completely free to anyone who wants to come and run around—and who isn’t afraid of getting wet. “If it rains,” says Nick Fortugno, “we run in the rain.” Ben Masten is a student at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism Lia Bulaong/ Come Out and Play Festival

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July 2019, Page 45

PLACES

photo by Brett Yates

Pioneer Works’ Community Lunch is the best deal in town by Brett Yates From May to September, typically on the second Wednesday of the month, the arts organization Pioneer Works hosts $5 first-come-first-served lunches in its garden at 159 Pioneer Street. The series started in 2017, but I went for the first time this June. For each gathering, Pioneer Works hires a new chef to cater the event. When I attended, the food came from Eli and Max Sussman, who own Samesa, a Middle Eastern restaurant on the Lower East Side, and also independently operate the kitchen at the Grimm Artisanal Ales taproom in East Williamsburg. In the Pioneer Works backyard, they grilled chicken (seitan for vegetarians) and paired it with pickled radishes and greens, orzo salad, and flatbreads with beet dip. The food was remarkable. Homemade Moroccan hot sauce gave the juicy, crispy chicken an extra kick. The salads – one savory and filling, the other light and piquant – complemented each other; the beet dip was rich and sweet. The Sussmans also poured a refreshing beverage of their own making, a deep-red concoction flavored with hibiscus, mango, apple, and lemongrass. Snack-sized chunks of lemon turmeric buttermilk cake provided a dainty bite of dessert. The Community Lunch series is no secret. The chefs, by their account,

Page 46 Star-Revue Section 2

prepped for 120 guests, but the line grew longer, and the food, offered buffet-style (not of the all-you-can-eat variety), ran out before some of the latecomers could get plates. Even so, the ample outdoor space at Pioneer Works accommodated its visitors without trouble. When the seven picnic tables had filled, people began to scatter around the garden. Once they’d disposed of their single-use compostable wood plates and utensils, they wandered into the building. To judge by the quality of the food, the Community Lunch definitely is not a revenue-generating event for Pioneer Works, which conceives of itself as a dynamic space for multidisciplinary creation in the arts and sciences (“STEAM,” according to the new buzzword), not as a traditional gallery., and It structures its outreach accordingly. The nonprofit is nearly as popular with kids as it is with art-world elites and regularly offers educational workshops, concerts, and parties. While I ate, I sat across from a sculpturist-collagist from Birmingham, England. She said she’d come to New York on a grant but was living mostly as a tourist. She’d heard about

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Beat the heat and bask in the toxic fumes of Brooklyn’s best-kept secret.

Gowanus When it Sizzles by Erika Veurink Gowanus exists right between the middle of nowhere and the middle of everything. The constant growl of the F/G train, low-to-theground buildings, and a general air of unfinished business has given the sprawling central Brooklyn neighborhood a bad name for long enough. But the fewer people to fend off, the more room at the bar, making it the ideal place to meet this summer. There’s a sort of twisted appeal to the canal, the repugnant quality of water that flows through it. It’s no beach, but it’s Brooklyn. Toxic waste will have to do. So let haphazard decay amidst flashy new high-rises set the tone for your summer — quirky and unexpectedly charming.

Dirty Precious (317 3rd Ave)

Posh enough to pass for a Manhattan hot spot, this bar might be the crown jewel of Gowanus bars. An impressive cocktail list and welldressed waiters outfit this chic establishment. It doubles as a cafe during the day, with food options that last long into the night.

Royal Palms (514 Union

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St) When an activity is in order, shuffleboard is the clear winner. And what better way to engage in some friendly competition than to a live DJ under the watchful gaze of 1960s flamingo decor? Some organization is necessary, but a food truck in rotation and a myriad of drink options make this place the ultimate crowd pleaser.

Bar Tano (457 3rd Ave) The name of the game here is a happy hour. Sure, the menu is fantastic all the time, and the ambiance doesn’t quit, but Bar Tano’s happy hour is the best of Gowanus. From 4-7pm on Monday to Thursday, you can expect criminally inexpensive cocktails and delicious small plates. Loads of seating both indoors and out, making it the ideal place to unwind post work.

Mission Dolores Bar (249 4th Ave) Summer in New York tends

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July 2019

Q&A

PURCHASE TICKETS AT waterfrontmuseum.org Tickets $15-$18

CIRCUS AFLOAT photo by Brett Yates

David Sharps on 25 Years of the Waterfront Museum

A summer series of shows for kids and adults of all ages.

PREPOSTEROUS! a happenstance clown circus Sat, July 6: 2pm & 7pm

Award-winning company from D.C. brings their wonderfully imaginative ensemble to town.

interview by Ben Masten Red Hook residents know David Sharps as the founder, owner and fulltime resident of the Waterfront Museum. Housed on Lehigh Valley Barge #79, docked at the end of Conover Street, the museum celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. What they may not know is that his years on the Red Hook waterfront are just the most recent chapter in an eclectic career. Sharps began his love affair with shipboard living while performing as a juggler and clown on cruise ships in the late ‘70s. He then lived aboard a barge on the river Seine in Paris while studying theater at the prestigious École Jacques LeCoq.

The Flip Flop Circus SR: How has the audience that you draw to this place changed over the years? DS: I think we put on our first show in Red Hook in ‘95 or ‘96. And of course, we’d ask how many people here to Red Hook for the first time, and you could see, you know, dozens of people raising their hands. So, culture and the arts and the funky old barge was something

What’s Dis?! with The Grand Falloons Sun, July 28: 2pm

Veterans of Broadway, film, TV and over 25 years bringing humor to kids in hospitals, present joyful juggling, jokes, saxophone, concertina, and audience involvement in their nod to American Vaudeville of the 1920’s. Their shows have rave reviews from NY TIMES and NY POST.

290 Conover Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (718) 624-4719 waterfrontmuseum.org

that really did attract folks to help create a cultural destination in Red Hook.

SR: How do you go We sat down with about picking which Sharps to look back shows and events at his time in Red Hook and talk about you’re going to put photo by Ben Masten the shows coming on at the museum? up at the Museum DS: People find me. They’ll say, “Oh, during its anniversary season. SR: This year is your 25th anniversary in Red Hook, but you bought this barge and started converting it into a home and museum even earlier than that.

I have a great program or a band or

I floated it off of a mud flat in Edgewater, New Jersey, in 1985. It took two years to get the mud out and another two years to do the carpentry so that it was seaworthy and didn’t leak too much and the doors opened, which isn’t too bad.

With kids’ entertainment, I had my

story,” and I like to find the connection with water, or shipping or, or boats or maritime. Summer_Schedule_2019.indd 3

career started by that. So the mu-

seum produces what we’re calling our “Circus Afloat.” These are folks that have wonderful programs that travel

SR: You’ve carved out quite a unique career for yourself. It seems like this place lets you marry your background as a performer to a role as a local and maritime historian. You also get to help nurture a sense of community.

to South Jersey or Connecticut, or,

DS: It’s the blend where education and entertainment might meet. When you have a cultural… let’s call it a “happening,” it brings people together that might not have otherwise been together. You know, I’m from a small town and the cliques and whatnot, that was always difficult for me. I feel like this is the place where we bring all of the neighborhood people together so they can enjoy what they have.

enjoy great performers.

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Sun, July 21: 2pm

This female duo delivers stunning costumes, original puppets, and comic antics in a fabulous frolic enjoyed by all.

you know, go on tour. New York City doesn’t have many school assemblies that include entertainment. The barge is a great venue for local families to SR: You really light up talking about people coming to Waterfront. DS: The barge comes alive when there’s activity. Seaports, the coming and the going and the constant change as a natural state — that’s what makes the waterfront really amazing.

RED HOOK BROOK

LYN

OPEn STUDIOS 2019: Call for artists and makers FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO WWW.REDHOOKOPENSTUDIOS.COM

NEW event DATE for 2019: OCTober 12th & 13th, 1–6 pm

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July 2019, Page 47

THEATER Montagues, Capulets, Fords and Chevys

By Ben Masten

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot celebrates its 25th season on the Lower East Side

he plays are some of the greatest ever written in the English language. The venue is a product of necessity, opportunism, and the quirks of New York real estate. This July marks the 25th anniversary of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, the annual production of the Bard’s plays that is exactly what it sounds like. Produced by local theater group The Drilling Company, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot is theater in the open air and on the blacktop, free to anyone who wants to stop and watch. This summer’s offering, “Romeo and Juliet,” runs from July 11 to the 27. “It’s the best place to perform Shakespeare in the world,” says Hamilton Clancy, Artistic Director of The Drilling Company. “The parking lot is at once tremendously intimate and tremendously presentational. You’re right there. You’re talking right to people.” “The audience can see backstage a lot of the time,” says Anwen Darcy, who plays Juliet in this year’s production. “There’s no divide between the audience and us, so it makes everybody feel like we’re all on the same team.” The plays were originally produced by the nowdefunct Expanded Arts theater company, who in 1994 occupied a tiny storefront space at the corner of Ludlow and Broome Streets. Across the street, a city parking lot offered space aplenty, reliable lighting, and only a few heroin addicts. “I once had to ask a fine young man if he would go shoot up a little further up the block, and he said sure,” says Jennifer Pais, 51 who co-founded Expanded Arts with her then-husband Robert Spahr, 53. They wanted to produce theater that was part of the fabric of the neighborhood, and they wanted to keep it free. The couple passed around a bucket at the end of a show to fund the parking lot productions. It’s a tradi-

tion that continues today. Also traditional (or just inevitable): the disruptions that come from staging Shakespeare on a New York street corner. “There was a garbage truck that would cut through the parking lot as a shortcut on certain nights of the week,” recalls Robert Spahr. “We Adam Huff (as Romeo), Anwen Darcy (as Juliet). All photos courtesy Jonathan Slaff/ The Drilling Company would just stop because it was and set design is minimal. Juliet’s balcony this sumso loud and bow down to the garbage truck as kind of a schtick.” The mer will be a small scaffold. That puts the show’s audience loved the ritual so much that when the embarrassed garbagemen offered to stop driving through focus on the actors, the text, and the characters. the lot, Spahr and Pais told them to keep it up. “Secretly, those are my favorite, favorite times,” says Pais. “Things happen in the open air. It’s bumpy and messy. It’s not pristine, and it’s not neat.” These days the parking lot of choice is behind the Clementé Soto Vélez Cultural Center on Suffolk Street, but the pleasant messiness endures. The unpredictable environment helps build a connection between the audience and the cast of the play. If a truck rolls by, or a siren goes off, everyone experiences it together. The setting also ensures that the show is boiled down to its bare essentials. Costumes and props are simple,

“If you want a Romeo and Juliet that really digs into the emotional tragedy of two kids falling in love and the world falling apart around them,” Says Anwen Darcy, “come see us.” Ben Masten is a student at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism

Scheherezade (& Her Sister) Shushed in Sunset Park Last June, Sunset Park’s Target Margin Theater commissioned the Brooklynbased experimental theater company, The Million Underscores, to stage “1001SUR” as part of its three-play festival News of the Strange Lab, which reimagines the classic story of The One Thousand and One Nights. 1001sur begins as you might expect, with the foundational myth of Scheherezade’s story: royal cuckold gone hunting; horny, palace orgies of the unfaithful horny queen discovered; the subsequent campaign of rape, terror, and ritual murder the king mounts against womankind to avenge hurt feelings. Into this mess walks Scheherazade, saving her own and her sister’s lives by weaving tales so powerful the king cannot abide but keep her alive for one more night to hear how they end. The one nights multiply into 1,001 nights, after which the king is in love and decides he will now stop murdering his wives. Walking through the doorway and into

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by Mariam Bazeed

the Target Margin’s Doxsee Theater, the temperature drops; the space is that cavernous. At 36’x98’, it was gratifying to see that enormity put to use so effectively to create the spectacle that was “1001SUR.”

of just one or two costume pieces or props. The cast, with acrobatic endurance, does an incredible job sustaining the“1001SUR’s” zany, kaleidoscopic, manic energy. By its end, I was thoroughly exhausted on their behalf.

In addition to co-writing “1001SUR” with Timothy Scott, Nicolás Noreña is credited as its director and scenic designer; it is in this last that the play most outdoes itself. Noreña used much of the 98’ not taken up by our seats to stage the long and deep rabbit holes of the story-within-a-story structure known to the 1001 Nights. As each successive storyline branches off from the previous, the stage telescopes out and away from the audience, revealed with the draw of each successive curtain as Scheherazade narrates.

Despite its being, essentially, the story of a powerless, very young, female captive held against her will and raped and impregnated for years by an all-powerful male captor with all the tools of state at his fingertips whose emotions are large and conquering of every moral consideration, Scheherezade’s story is one often romanticized in popular culture. Ostensibly, it has a happy ending.

The effect is of a visual glut; the stage teems with characters that the cast multiplies and moves into and out of with incredible velocity (often literal) and economy, most helped in the latter by inventive costume design evoking entire characters with the addition

In its way, “1001SUR” explores this incongruous, patriarchy-fueled fantasy that dares imagine Scheherazade happy. When the vizier, who is her father, gives Scheherazade to the king – despite the certainty of the executioner’s blade the very next dawn – the cast collectively drops the satirical, maximalist tone in voice and body to repeatedly and hollowly intone the dirge:

ter. The vizier gives him his eldest daughter. The vizier gives him his eldest daughtr.” The cast, at times speaking as a choir, shush Scheherazade and her sister, only to be – inevitably – asked to speak again on command when the king is ready for his bedtime story. Noreña’s direction is anything but unimaginative: in addition to the telescoping stage, “1001SUR” tells its story via lip-synced cabaret sets; text projected above the stage that sometimes matched, and other times commented on, the goings-on underneath; tableaux vivants that constituted some of the very few pauses in the action. Of these elements, it’s the text I’d miss

“The vizier gives him his eldest daugh- continued on page

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51 July 2019

FILM The buddy comedy gets a makeover Coming of Age with Matching Jumpsuits and Alanis Morissette Karaoke We’re all familiar with the “One Crazy Night” format immortalized by classics such as “Dazed and Confused” and “American Graffiti.” The teen movie canon welcomed the newest member of the Class of 2019 this summer, “Booksmart.” Olivia Wilde’s (you know her from “The O.C.”, “Tron,” or a number of semi-forgettable romcom-adjacent films of the 2000s) directorial debut kicks into gear in the same place all great dramas and tragedies of the high school variety do: the bathroom. Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) are best friends and Ken Burns-documentary-watching, straight-A-earning high school seniors. Molly plans to attend Yale University and become the youngest Supreme Court Justice in history. Amy’s off to Columbia in the fall after a summer abroad. Their late nights in the library have paid off, and the sweet taste of bigger and better awaits them. That is until Molly overhears her classmates discussing her probable virginity. Seniors the girls wrote off as dense, and juvenile happened to be hardworking as well, so much so that they’ll be headed to several elite intuitions that fall. In shock, Molly confronts them. “You guys don’t care about school.” Triple-A (so named for a rumor of servicing three men alongside the road) scoffs back, “No, we just don’t only care about school.”

Molly and Amy conspire to fit the four years of tomfoolery they missed in the night before their graduation. Their classmates deserve to see them for their fun, choreographed dance greeting and the quick-witted women they are. Sex, too – they deserve sex: Amy with the elusive Ryan, a cool skater girl with bouncy curls, and Molly with the jock Vice President. Jumpsuits are swapped. Parents are avoided. The classic “One Crazy Night” party follows. “Booksmart” (written by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman) is built on a simple premise bolstered by pitch-perfect dialogue. It doesn’t waste time laughing at its own jokes, which left a few storylines unattended, but in the sense that high school felt like a tapestry of open narratives. The art of the buddy comedy hinges on chemistry. Feldstein and Dever lived together for the duration of the movie’s filming, and unsurprisingly, it shows. The ease with which they deliver what are in some cases incredibly precise and fast-paced lines is as impressive as the looks they exchange in silence on camera. The casting, by industry superstar Allison Jones (“Freaks and Geeks”; “Superbad”; “Eighth Grade”; “Lady Bird,” to name a few) is the tie that binds. The story unapologetically leans on the characters it builds. There’s the misunderstood rich kid, played by

Lavender Lake Bar (383 Carroll St) With outdoor real estate like Lavender Lake Bar, it would be acceptable, even expected for the food to be lackluster. Modern branding, a darling bar, and excellent cocktails would be enough. But it turns out, the fried Brussel sprouts and pickles are just the beginning of an impressive menu crafted for summer. Be warned. The place fills quickly on weekends.

Other Half Brewing (195 Centre St)

What appears to be a garage packed with bearded Brooklynites from the curb is actually a fantastic brewery made for meeting up. A rotating beer list, lots of table seating, and plenty of events make

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from dropping out of NYU. Supporting roles by Billie Lourd, Noah Galvin, and Jessica Williams are impressive as well. The third act of the film boasts Wilde’s directorial chops in both a fantasy sequence and an iconic karaoke scene. The girls land themselves in a massive fight, their crushes don’t pan out, and the whole thing is recorded on partygoers’ cell phones. But they make up, forgive each other, and roll into graduation with day-old hair and stupid grins. Like Molly says in her graduation speech: “Things are never gonna be the same, but it was perfect. And I didn’t before, but I see you now… Don’t let college fuck it up.” In the “Booksmart” universe, there are no mean kids, no cool kids, and no problems with being smart and fun. It’s idealistic and maybe a bit improbable, but so is coming of age in 2019. Erika Veurink is a writer living in Brooklyn by way of Iowa.

Community Lunch, Continued

Sizzling Gowanus, Continued to dictate outdoor space as a non-negotiable when it comes to meeting for drinks. Enter Mission Dolores Bar. Concrete and cool, plus with frozen drinks on tap, this bar is perfect for sunny skies. It’s barebones in the way all of Gowanus is — picnic tables and scrawled-on chalkboards. Plus, there are loads of beer options.

Skyler Gisondo; there’s the sultry Diana Silvers, fresh

this the perfect place to start the night.

Freek’s Mill (285 Nevins St) If a proper dinner out is in order, forget making the trek into Manhattan. Instead, wander into the impossibly chic Freek’s Mill and let the food do the talking. Brilliant natural wine pairings meet unexpected and playful dishes. Settle into the plentiful tablespace or opt for the chef’s counter in the back of the restaurant. Either way, expect to be impressed and find yourself wondering why you ever thought you had to leave Brooklyn in the first place.

Gowanus Yacht Club (323 Smith St) And what summer guide would be complete without a no-frills, perfectly dive-y establishment? There are times when what you’re drinking and the font on the drink menu could matter less; When it’s all about who you’re with and being in the sun. Gowanus Yacht Club is just the place. It’s grill-out-adjacent in its appeal – terrible, endearing, and totally Gowanus.

Pioneer Works and had walked over by herself from the Smith-Ninth Streets station. On the other side of me, two workers from the Red Hook Community Justice Center held a business lunch, scribbling into their notepads on the table. I also spotted Micah Rubin, the Star-Revue’s photographer, with his daughter; he wasn’t working. Back in January, I checked out the monthly Community Potluck at DE-CONSTRUKT, a considerably more DIY studio on Seabring Street. I found an intimate, art-focused evening that mixed dinner and small

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talk with presentations by a German filmmaker and a Chinese writer in residence. I thought the event at Pioneer Works might be similar (albeit on a larger scale), but for most guests, the food appeared to be the point here: a nonart-lover, if he or she found out about it, could easily use the occasion simply as a lovely and inexpensive cafeteria. It might violate the spirit of the event, but we all need to eat. Art is great, and STEAM supposedly is wonderful too, but food is more important than either.

July 2019, Page 49

GALLERY Art Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass

by Piotr Pillardy

The Mark Jupiter Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, featuring local DUMBO artists, ran from June 6 to 16 and showcased works in a variety of different media It was a beautiful New York early summer day, not too hot with a refreshing light breeze. You know, the kind we have before it gets unbearably hot and sticky. Having finished a quick bite with a friend, we decided to take the long way from Wall Street to check out a new gallery opening in Brooklyn. Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and then crossing another, or rather, going under it, we arrived at a gallery opening in DUMBO, located in an artisanal furniture store. The group show at The Mark Jupiter Gallery, the eponymous new gallery space from local furniture maker Mark Jupiter, featured DUMBO artists who have long been a vital part of the neighborhood’s art scene. The exhibition comprised of five artists working across a diverse media, ranging from photographic prints on canvas to Pronto Plate lithography to acrylic painting on wood and everything in between. Jupiter, who curates this first show, said that the gallery aimed to showcase neighborhood artists who may not find a space for their works within established NYC galleries. Besides this first show, which ran from June 6 until June 16, Mark intends to keep hosting exhibitions in the gallery in perpetuity. He noted, “I curated the selection of the pieces, and I choose the artists

as the people I respected and who were a reflection of the work that I do and trusted that they would bring to space things that I love and ultimately they did.” Craig Anthony Miller, who also goes by the moniker CAM, echoed stainless in his paintings, which bore much resemblance to the artist’s style seen in his many DUMBO murals. Jaime Walker’s collage works, ranging from the figurative to the abstract, evoked many symbols long associated with the neighborhood. One painting, in particular, featuring layered abstract brushstrokes and stenciled typography, reminded me of the work of Ed Ruscha. Speaking with the artist, Jaime noted her process involves starting with the edges of the pieces and working towards the center. Many of her works repurposed found materials in novel ways. Regarding one, Jaime told me, “On my last trip to Costa Rica, my phone case burst in the flight. I then used the gold flakes from the phone case in the piece. I saved all the pieces in a plastic bag and used them in the piece.” Joshua Reynolds, who had inkjet photographic prints on

canvas in the show, shot iPhone images of vistas with particular significance to the artist. One series in the show that resonated with me – a triptych of Brooklyn views with aligning horizon lines and reflections that displace the viewer’s sense of grounding and space – captured beauty in the seeming banality of the everyday. Additionally, the medium made the photographs take on a painterly quality, further augmenting the source material.

There is not a lot of room for nuance on shows like “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” – our heroine is easy to like and easy to sympathize with, which makes it easy to follow the many ways in which society often leaves her disadvantaged – yet she triumphs nonetheless. Other shows try hard to ascend to that plane of great TV shows but wind up trying too much. Such is the fate of “Dead to Me.” Created by Liz Feldman, the show is a mighty affirmation of the power and importance of female friendship. This is its strongest attribute.

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Based on the first exhibition, all I can say is, I look forward to future shows. I would even be happy to traverse a bridge or two to go see them. Piotr Pillardy received a BA in Art History and History from Cornell University, lives in Manhattan, and plays live regularly with the band Bad Weird.

Steve West’s works documented DUMBO’s physical changes through Pronto Plate lithographic prints. The show also featured Kristen Kramer, whose figurative paintings explored the multiplicity of meaning inherent within the image of the anatomical heart. Mark intends for the gallery to showcase artists who break the mold of what is often shown in Manhattan galleries. “It’s going to be a gallery space for local artists who I admire and we’ll see what happens. Artists need a space to explore and show their

‘Dead to Me’ is dead to good TV Great TV shows not only reflect the current culture, but also offers a subtle critique of it — avoiding heavy-handed, simplistic moralism in favor of deeply comic and profound reflections on the nuanced power structures and characters that create what issues the show critiques. Others are wholesome depictions of society as we wish it would be.

work. The rest of the city and the established galleries don’t necessarily take that kind of risk anymore.”

By Briana Murphy

Jen (played by Christina Applegate) and Judy (Linda Cardellini) are two middle-aged, well-to-do California women who meet at a support group – Jen’s husband, Ted, was recently killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident; Judy’s fiancé, Steve, “died” of a heart attack, though it’s quickly revealed that it’s just their relationship that died, after five miscarriages and the pressure of sharing the secret of vehicular manslaughter.

dream of getting back together and returning to their life as it was before.

The series skillfully depicts women reacting to a world frustratingly controlled by men. It begins months after Ted’s death, yet his choices and actions (often selfish ones) leave Jen struggling to provide for her two sons and grieving for her husband, even as she learns more and more unsavory truths about him (including an extramarital affair). Judy, too, struggles to live with the choices forced upon her by her former fiancé — it was Steve who convinced her to run after the hit, and who manipulates her with the absurd

There are tender moments that remain oddly incongruous to the rest of the show. When Jen and Judy stalk Ted’s lover, Jen reveals to Judy that she had a double mastectomy, a plot line inspired by Applegate’s own experience. In the show, Jen says she had the gene, and she didn’t want her boys “to grow up without a mother,” as she did.

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The show is at its best when it concentrates on the relationship the two women build together, despite the mounting tension that what brought them together (shared grief) must drive them apart when Judy’s role in Ted’s death is eventually revealed (and Judy is so genuinely wracked with guilt over this that it’s never a question of if but of when).

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July 2019

Scheherezade con’t least. First, there was the difficulty of seeing both it and the stage action simultaneously, the distance the eye had to travel between being too great; it felt like a lost opportunity.

Imagine There’s No Beatles by Christien Shangraw Did somebody say High Concept? After a conk on the head (during a mysterious global blackout, no less), Jack Malik, played by th talented Himesh Patel, awakens to a world that never knew The Beatles. He alone, it seems, is aware of their very existence. He even Googles them. Nothing! Jack’s a musician, can play a few Beatles numbers, and cobble together a few more from memory. After a few minutes, he claims their catalog as his own and turns the world on its ear. He has a girlfriend named Ellie. Not a girlfriend, mind you — just a girl who’s a friend His supportive, faithful servant. I won’t spoil it by revealing the true nature of her feelings for Jack. She won’t either, sadly, and Jack is too dim to perceive them, himself, and so forward goes the tale. The Beatles’ greatness has been a basic article of faith for all humans since the late Sixties. Those random smart guys who say they never really liked The Beatles? Get outa here. You’re not interesting. We’re all Beatle fans. So why this reminder, this gag based on what we might be like without them? If it’s directed by the guy who directed Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) and written by the guy who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral (Richard Curtis), why not? The songs cleverly integrated into Jack’s journey to the top, and they’re artfully and carefully arranged. They are, in many cases, near faithful renditions that locate the heart of the songs without being too on-the-nose. And they’re fresh, a feat owed largely Patel as Jack. Danny Boyle said of Patel’s audition, “He sang with soul; you cannot manufacture it.” There is more to the film than music, too. Sort of. There’s the talented and relatable su-

perstar Ed Sheeran, upon whom some of the story sort of depends. Chris Martin, of Coldplay, was apparently the first choice, but that might not matter much either way. Kate McKinnon, who is herself decidedly not a one-trick pony, is given a one-trick role as the ball-busting L.A. agent Brenda. And she positively nails the same joke in every scene. Jack has a doofy buddy name Rocky (Joel Fry). Rocky’s pleasant enough, but aside from a plot contrivance near the end that requires him to perform a small errand of sorts, it’s hard to say why he’s here. There’s a running gag about a few other things missing or mixed-up according to the world-as-this-filmknows-it. Jack Googles those, too, and guess what. Try ordering a Coke. And, “Live! From New York! It’s... Thursday Night?” Etc. Oh wait! In addition to the continuous heightening of the only-guy-who-remembers-The-Beatles premise, there’s a plot! Sort of. And it’s a Rom-Com! Sort of.

The text’s need to explain weakened any power its rather trite conclusions might’ve had, and belied the confidence it opened with, daring the audience to keep up. In one of the most exciting visual sequences, an enormous boulder rolls downstage towards the king, who is a clear proxy for a different, more contemporary, also woman-hating, also verbally

challenged dunce capable of uttering only the shortest sentences. As the king tries and fails to get out of the boulder’s way, and as it topples him and rolls over his prodigious body, the overhead text (not in so many words) suggests we should trust in the power of the Imagination – yes, capital “i” – to engender empathy, and through empathy, to conquer all. Or something like that. Mariam Bazeed is a non-binary, Kuwait-born Egyptian writer living in a rent-stabilized apartment in Brooklyn.

‘Dead to Me’ con’t The scene is moving, and deeply reflective of the bind women often are caught in — the pressure to conform to the time-consuming and unhealthy societal expectations of beauty and that of being a perfect mother and wife. Ted’s lover, Bambi, is a young, aspiring singer (Ted was a musician. It’s not clear how successful); when she enters the scene, one can almost see the script notes calling for a buxom twentysomething.

The implications of Jen’s mastectomy are never shared with anyone else, and the other characters (mostly her gay business partner and her oldest son) perceive Jen as suffering from violent, incomprehensible episodes of rage. When Jen confesses to not being the mom she should have been; her son tells her it’s ok: “Just try not to be an asshole anymore.” To the viewer, the moment feels more confusing than cathartic. The audience realizes how much Jen sacrificed for her husband and family; her acceptance of the blame in this situation feels deeply misguided. She blames herself for her husband’s death, for their imperfect marriage, for

her lack of maternal dexterity — and her son and mother-in-law blame her as well. It is only in her relationship with Judy, who is capable of fully expunging Jen’s guilt that the reasons for her rage are fully explained. This contradiction is best explored in a scene when Jen admonishes Judy for calling herself crazy. “It should be illegal to call women crazy,” she says, since women are so often forced to react to men’s actions and choices. Indeed. But the show leaves the viewer in a nebulous space — understanding why Jen and Judy lean so heavily on each other, even while forcing their characters to accept blame and punishment from the supporting cast. Their relationship is a closed circuit; together, they build their own little world, which takes them nowhere. Briana Murphy is a writer and editor by way of Wasilla, Alaska.

Our hero, you may recall, has that girl, Ellie, who appreciates and supports him. But damn if he doesn’t take her for granted. So much so, in fact, that he loses her when he gets distracted by his overnight world superstardom. And he’s lost her for good, or so it would seem, until he realizes that (wait for it) All you need is... Well, I won’t give away the ending. You’ll have to check out this “jukebox musical fantasy comedy film” for yourself. Christien Shangraw is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn.

Grand Opening

718 643-2737 718 643-0741 218 Columbia Street, near Union Star-Revue Section 2

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BOOKS

Art Shamsky: After the Miracle by Frank Stipp

WE WHO INHERIT THE EARTH It’s not just saints and prophets who endure the weak, the lame, the denialists. So too do Mets fans comprise such noble breed. To endure the hell of rooting for fallen heroes – great athletes who won’t bust it out of the box, adjust too eagerly to failure, or break down upon doing a deal with the Wilpons – one earns points in the afterlife. This is not to say that just one fare zone away lies that pearly obstruction to eternal reward. Yankee fans, by such measure, who get heroes in their prime and victories like summer rain drops, need not be damned to the split levels of hell and North Jersey. Even the souls of Steinbrenner, Giuliani and Wally Pipp are granted clemency after serving their time in office. Purgatory’s fine, but this ain’t no angelic mob.

AFTER 11-8 New Yorkers have three shifts in their daily routine. Work, off hours (leisure to some) and sleep. For most subjugated species, work and sleep are compulsory. These provide the carbohydrates and the dreams needed to walk upright and to reflect on societies’ contradictions, respectively. Leisure is largely reserved for consuming such things as media, entertainment, and for shopping, our most vital bodily functions. Yet when media upped its volume and raised its pitch in November 2016, too few muzzled their radios, booted their picture tubes, or shoveled away unread stacks of Timesnewspost. Without a whisper from the corporate conscience we found culture (dishes in the sink, cobwebs on the ceiling, something rustling behind the sofa). But that all came to an end when Spring Training began. It was safe again to smile at the neighbors’ kid, answer the phone, turn on your radio. Nowadays baseball broadcasts drown out the bad news in brief three- to four- hour doses. When we open the newspaper, American males go right to the box scores to bring down the blood pressure or reduce inflammation. The sinuses blossom. Back pain subsides.

BASEBALL EVERYDAY Fifty years ago the news was just as bad. Youths let their hair grow. They neither bathed nor kept their place. They appeared in televised news reports, gestured threateningly, ridiculed authority, engaged in sex without a wi-fi signal . . . Eventually the days began to lengthen and the nights got shorter. There were 540,000 troops in Vietnam. But the long, cold, lonely winter of ’69 lasted only until the end of May when the Mets won 11 in a row. There’s an expression in American English meaning unmitigated joy: “baseball everyday.” And while that

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refers to playing it, media provides a daily armistice through its exclusive licensing of the pictures, descriptions and accounts of baseball coverage 162 days a year and October.

HODGES “‘Losing’s not funny, it’s a sickness,’ Gil Hodges told us at a team meeting at the start of Spring training in March of 1969,” writes Shamsky. “Last year you made a lot of mistakes,” he reports. “We’re going to cut that stuff out and turn everything around. You’re better than you think you are.” Few religious leaders within broadcast range and only a handful of your better yogis of Uttar Pradesh have expressed this sentiment at any time between 1969 and the present as lucidly as the Wizard of Flatbush. Put another way: You can’t live on your knees. You can’t win if you don’t play. You ain’t on your heels if you’re joining into the fray. Hallelujah. “We all looked around at each other while he spoke,” Cleon Jones later told to Shamsky. “Hodges was making us think differently about ourselves.” “Gil was teaching us . . . how to win, and how to think like a winner,” observed Ed Kranepool. Tug McGraw was just that in Spring ’69: raw. Yet Hodges went right up to him and said, “You’re my man. You’re going to be my left-hander out of the bullpen,” pitcher Jim McAndrew recalled. “Despite McGraw’s outward persona,” McAndrew continued, “he was actually pretty insecure. In doing so Gil was his rock and stood right behind him.” McGraw pulled the Mets chestnuts out of the fire repeatedly after the move from starter to reliever. “I give Gil all the credit for Tug’s great career,” added McAndrew, “I really do.” Praise ye Jehovah.

KING OF THE JEWS Art Shamsky was the preeminent role model among juvenile Members of the Tribe in the late 1960’s. Now author and broadcaster, to the critically circumcised of Generation X he was King of the Jews. By no means the sole Hebrew to earn such respect (Golda Meir could cover the hot corner but her bat speed had something to be desired), he was the only Yid in Mudville and a preeminent contributor to the New York Mets’ first World Championship team. He reigned supreme among this illustrious minority. In “After the Miracle” (Art Shamsky with Erik Sherman, Simon & Shuster 2019) Shamsky deciphers both the blemished and exalted histories of Queens’ most prominent, near-billion-dollar sports franchise. He introduces, quotes and profiles its personalities, its victories and its deviations. The knowledge he acquired as player, historian of the club’s humiliating early days, of its heirloom championship year, and of the present critical moment in the second generation of its present owner-

ship, is precious. It’s all wrapped inside countless examples of the spirit that reigned true fifty years ago. (Sadly, he brings no news about some off-season exorcism of what’s plagued the clubhouse for the past 33 years). I first ran into Shamsky on a rainy night in Midtown Manhattan about 20 years ago. We were both heading downtown and as the taxi decelerated toward our destination with neither of us having gone for his wallet, it appeared the hotshot ex-big leaguer must have expected me to cover the fare. I hesitated long enough to risk what could have become an uncomfortable moment, when he offered to split it and ended the standoff. There’s not much character development on the back of a two- by threeinch baseball card, except the latest season’s statistics and either a fiveo’clock shadow close-up or threeinch batting crouch. Hence, I learned about his most revelatory long-ball proclivities in retrospect, i.e. by reading the volume at hand. In person he’s swarthier than thou. Kind of tallish and slender compared to what baseballers look like today. His heavy Semitic eyebrows don’t join in the middle, but set the tone for a tough customer staring up at the mound from the right side of the plate. It’s quick wrists that make bat speed, home runs, and put fannies in the seats. His big hairy paws must have clued-in the hurlers of his long-ball proclivities.

KEEPING THE TIPS Recollections, anecdotes, and a rich back-story comprise a large portion of the book. (He hired McGraw and Wayne Garrett to work at his bar on the East Side after the Series, but never remembers paying them). However Shamsky adds an act to this passion play, a hook to the story, that any fan – hell-bound or from Queens – can appreciate. He hauls Ron Swoboda, Bud Harrelson and Jerry Koosman with him to visit Tom Seaver at his hilltop vineyard in the grape-covered peaks of Northern California. There’s a lot of humor (reprising his role on the ‘69 team, Koosman is the hero of the journey), some surprising memories, touching reminiscences, and a timely reunion with Seaver whose complications from Lyme Disease have triggered accelerated symptoms of dementia. (The Wilpons threw in a street sign, most comfortably viewed from Citi Field’s Caesar’s Palace concession).

HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH We who lived that championship baseball season have never forgotten it. The spiritual – if not hormonal – effects of aligning oneself with a winner are lodged in Gotham’s muscle memory, ready to resume pumping the day the Mets Club House is demolished and made-over for winning instead of its present losing trajectory.

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Though your travel agent will claim that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, he’s never been to Hanshin Stadium, outside Osaka. Though relatively modest per the standards of the tri-state concrete lobby, at around 30,000 seats, one reflects on the contrast between mob dynamics in the East and the West through such lens. When thousands of Bleacher Bums behave as one in the Bronx, federal law requires issuance of an amber alert. But when half the gathered fans beat their drums, swing their towels, pump their fists and sing in unity for their beloved Tigers, it’s something between a love-in and Grateful Dead show. Disney, Woodstock and Jerry Garcia had nothing on Shea in ‘69. A clue to the success of a major sports franchise was delivered by former Tiger Tsujoshi Shinjo. A Japan All-Star selection for his glove, Shinjo came to the Mets during the managerial tenure of Bobby Valentine, who won pennants in both the US and Japan. Shinjo couldn’t hit a change, but managed to hit more game-winning hits than any teammate one season in the late ‘90s. Asked whether Shinjo’s clutch hitting success was the result of his meditation or the discipline he developed practicing Aikido, Mets Team Psychiatrist Sparky Lans said, “No, it’s because he can’t understand English,” that is, he didn’t know what media was saying about him.

SAY IT AIN’T SO FRED And while Fred Wilpon is said to have seen the effects of success on New York’s common spirit (i.e. with the whole city ‘getting together’ behind the Mets in 1986), winning a pennant or a World Series is neither brain surgery nor wizardry anymore, it’s return on investment. Shamsky establishes well that ‘69 cheered up a downtrodden public. But since the young Mets pitcher Mike Pelfry fell off the mound on the first pitch thrown in Citi Field in 2009, it’s getting to look like the amber alert will go off for giving a pious fan base a competitive team. Is it really so imperative to keep the underdogs from having their day again?

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StarRevue

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on the

Sandwich (for your summer picnic)

CITY SUBS, 82 5th Ave. offers 24 meats, nine cheeses and loads of con-

Defonte’s Valentino Sandwich featuring roasted peppers

diments for any hot or cold sandwich you’d like. Their menu has 30 signature sandwiches, all of which are named after Park Slope blocks or other known staples in the borough (like the Verrazano Bridge or the Cyclone roller coaster).

DEFONTE’S SANDWICH SHOP, 379 Columbia St.

We stopped the shop, which has limited seating inside, in late June. An employee working the afternoon shift said their most popular orders are the 5th Avenue Sandwich, the Sterling Place Sub and the Douglass Street Sub. The 5th Avenue (Hot) Sandwich – a chicken breast cutlet baked with melted mozzarella cheese – is $14.49. The Sterling Place Sub – ham and salami with provolone cheese – is $14.99. The Douglass Street (Hot) Sub – Cajun-style turkey and pepperoni with melted Swiss cheese – is for those who love some spice and costs $14.99. But if you’re in the mood for something not on their menu, you can always create your own sandwich with either one or two meats.

Nearing its century birthday, Defontes has been a staple in Red Hook since 1922. Former owner Nick Defonte had purchased the storefront, where long shore men would wait to be selected for work by the water nearby, for $100 before it became the popular sandwich shop it is today. We stopped by in late June to grab a quick lunch, ordering hot eggplant parmigiana heroes (which is a popular choice) and a roast beef with mozzarella hero. Take it from us – if you’re really hungry, order the large. But if you want a true neighborhood-inspired sandwich, there’s the large Red Hook Special (chicken cutlet, melted American cheese, sliced hot turkey, lettuce, tomato bacon, gravy, and mayo) for $11.95. Fun fact: Emmy nominated host Elle McLogan of The Dig, a CBS2 show that unearths gems in food and culture, stopped by and shot her show on June 26. For more information, call 718-625-8052.

LIONI’S ITALIAN HEROES, 7803 15th Ave. – Bensonhurst

serves more than 150 different kinds of heroes and wraps, which must be ordered by number rather than by name or description. We spoke with the owner and he said #62, 130 and 139 are the three top-selling, foot-long sandwiches.

City Subs is open daily 11 am to 7 pm, 718-636-1777.

No. 62 or the Alyssa Milano “Call Collect For This One” – chicken cutlet, prosciutto di parma, Lioni’s fresh mozzarella and basil mix – is $17. No. 130 or Lioni’s Brooklyn Italian Cheesesteak “Even Philly Loves This One” – homemade roastbeef, onions, Prosciutto di Parma, and melted white American cheese – is $16. No. 139 or the Doo Wopper Hero “Your 1950’s Early 60’s Doo Wop” – Prosciutto di Parma, capicola, sopressata, Lioni’s fresh mozzarella, provolone, bruschetta and balsamic vinegar – is $20. Lioni’s is open daily, Mondays through Saturdays (8 am to 7 pm) and Sundays (8:30 am to 2:30 pm). For more information, call 718-232-1411 or visit lioniheroes.com.

PROSPECT PROVISIONS,

597 A 4th Ave. – at Prospect Ave. and 17th St., opened in Park Slope last July. Their menu

consists of 14 sandwiches, all named after neighborhood blocks and crafted with meats roasted daily. No. 4 (aka the Windsor Place hero) – roasted organic turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and mayo – makes it feel like Thanksgiving again and costs $11. But if you’re in the mood to add a side, they also offer signature salads with the option to add proteins at an additional rate.

JOHN’S DELI, 2033 Stillwell Ave. has been serving up breakfast, lunch and din-

ner in Gravesend since 1968. They offer different specials daily, but serve roast beef every day due to popular demand. They have nine-inch and 16-inch heroes, starting at $7.50 and $12.25 respectively, depending on your meats and toppings. The signature sandwiches, which are mainly named after famous celebrities and fictional characters, are also available on rolls, bread and tortilla wraps. While the roast beef hero is their most popular sandwich, they’re also well known for their hot sides of gravy, fried ravioli, potato croquettes and buffalo chicken. John’s Deli is open daily, Mondays through Saturdays (8 am to 10 pm) and Sundays (8 am to 9 pm). For more information, call 718-372-7481 or visit theoriginaljohnsdeli.com. Page 14 Red Hook Star-Revue

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Prospect Provisions is open Mondays through Fridays (7 am to 7 pm) and Saturdays (8 am to 6 pm). For more information, call 347-763-2777 or visit prospectprovisions.net.

July 2019

Red Hook Star-Revue

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