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2019
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UNIQUE COVERAGE
AUGUST 2019 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
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THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK Is YIMBY the new limousine liberal? Yates, page 5
Special “FIND THE PRESIDENT” issue
Summer of REVEL, page 16
plus
Mystery of Beard Street
Yesterday Yesterday - somewhat more than the music, page 44
and
Who Stole Good Cause Eviction
Beer at Svendale, page 19 PLUS Garland Jeffries and lots more in our new
and finally
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A critical review starts page 33
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ARTS pages 15-26
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SOME FACTS ABOUT THE BEARD STREET FLOODING BY BRETT YATES
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n early July, contractors for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) dug up a section of Beard Street east of Van Brunt Street, prompting speculation as to whether the project (marked as a “sewer repair” on the adjacent noparking sign) signaled the beginning of a new effort to mitigate the persistent flooding just down the road at the Richards Street intersection. “DEP is out there now making some repairs to the sewer line in the area as well as some of the catch basins. This should help to improve drainage in the area,” explained DEP spokesperson Edward Timbers. Workers at the site, however, asserted that the purpose of the job was to improve the sewer in advance of possible development at 280 Richards Street, despite owner Thor Equities’ admission in February that it had dropped its plan to develop a massive office park on the vacant property. Taking a break in the afternoon heat, they noted that they’d heard that residents in the surrounding area already were dealing with sewage backups.
Not the sewers But the flooding, the workers said, was a whole different problem. That owed to drainage, and expanding sewer capacity wouldn’t help. Red Hook has a combined sewer system for stormwater and wastewater, so to some degree, drainage and sewage are interconnected issues. But by the majority of accounts – based on the smell – the floodwater on Beard Street is rainwater, not wastewater, although some residents disagree. The prob-
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lem here, as most see it, is that, after a storm, the water won’t go down, not that it’s being spit back up by the storm drains.
ing on Beard Street is not, perhaps, that the city hasn’t resolved it. It’s that the city hasn’t even determined why it keeps happening.
Affecting local business
Councilman Carlos Menchaca agrees. “It’s deeply frustrating, and frankly totally unacceptable, that Beard Street continues to flood regularly. The Red Hook community needs to know yesterday what is causing this so we can fix it. We cannot live like this, especially knowing that climate change is going to make this worse one day,” he said.
The Beard Street flooding has plagued Red Hook for years. It occurs after every major rainfall. “I’m actually amazed at how bad it is,” said David Alessandro Gonzalez, a bartender at Rocky Sullivan’s at 46 Beard Street. David from Rocky's Rocky’s is the business closest to the problem area, and in Gonzalez’s view, the inundation cuts the bar off from customers. “It becomes a factor when no one wants to go past this flood, and it’s really deep. Pedestrian traffic is blocked. Smaller cars won’t go through it. Cars literally turn around and leave.” On bad days, if Gonzalez has to pick up limes from Fairway for the bar, he retreats one block back to Van Dyke Street instead of taking the direct route. If the DEP was cleaning out the catch basins closer to Van Brunt, would it make a difference at Richards, where the agency had already cleaned the catch basins last year? Gonzalez didn’t have high hopes. “I saw them dig a hole. I saw them putting in concrete. I’m not there 24/7, but I didn’t see anything that had to do with water remediation,” he commented. The surprising thing about the flood-
The underground stream City agencies’ indifference has made sleuths of the local citizenry, and today, theories about the source of the flooding abound. Red Hook Civic Association President John McGettrick believes that the water owes to a natural stream below street level, which has existed since the days when Red Hook was a tidal marsh. “There was, in fact, a creek – and still is, but now it’s underground – that ran pretty much along Richards Street down in this direction. A long time ago, people would John McGettrick be referred to in Red Hook – I guess well over a hundred years ago – as Pointers and Creekers,” he related. “And the Creekers were on the public housing side, and the Pointers were going toward the Van Brunt side, indicative of the fact that right on Rich-
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ards there was a creek.” In McGettrick’s opinion, the problem began with the construction of the IKEA at 1 Beard Street, which filled in Erie Basin’s old graving dock (or dry dock) – now a parking lot. According to McGettrick, springwater had escaped into the harbor through the graving dock every day. He wonders whether paving it over may have “truncated the flow.” Graving docks are massive tub-like structures that fill with water, allowing ships to enter, whereupon the water is drained, leaving the ship on blocks where it can be repaired. Carolina Salguero, the founder of the maritime nonprofit Portside New York, spent time in the graving dock as a photojournalist and knew the site well. “It just so happened that where they located the graving dock was near an underground stream,” she recalled. “It was roaring water, and they had to have pumps running to keep the graving dock dry.” Before the IKEA was built, consultants had to submit an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to the city. The 2004 EIS took note of the graving dock operations. “During the ship service period the dry dock must be maintained ‘dry.’ The dock extends approximately 42 feet below grade which corresponds to approximately 34 feet below the groundwater table. Groundwater infiltration and rainfall into the dock is dewatered/removed from the dry dock using stripping pumps and discharged
(continued on next page) August 2019, Page 11
...stories you care about
THE LEFT LIKES ITS CHANCES by Frank Stipp The cities are toxic. The subways are seething. The carbon is cooking. The forests are burning. Siberia’s melting. The ocean is rising. South Asia’s flooding. Our cells are half plastic. Miami’s a puddle. They site nuke plants on rivers. The war is raging. The money is talking. The radio’s braying. The TV is barking. The press has got to be joking. The fossils are fueling. The wealth is concentrating. The rent’s too damn high. The copters are filming. The police dress in armor. The weapon’s on autopilot. The music don’t rock. The tribes don’t dance. The kids are all wrong. Informants are trending. Integrity’s fleeing. Dignity’s dying. Courage is fleeting. Art says too little. A poet can’t make a living. Big Brother is watching. Sex needs a museum. Love is on wifi. Don’t fucking touch me. Everyone’s back aches. Inflammation is chronic. Your sisters’ on opioids. Cigarettes are electric. Mental health comes in pill form. Votes are in petro dollars. And, oh yeah, Trump’s in the White House
you very much,” said Wolff. The Conference quickly booked the downtown Brooklyn campus. “We had to scramble, and it’s smaller,” he added, but the alternative was unacceptable.
CONVERGENCE Dr. Frederick Mills of Bowie State University, a frequent Left Forum presenter, also insisted the condensed gathering was no reflection on a weakening of the Left. Just the opposite, explained Mills, a professor of philosophy with a specialization in Latin American governance. Instead, he asserted, “we are experiencing an awakening. A convergence” of disparate groups and voices into an amalgamation of like agendas. He listed the Answer Coalition, Black Alliance for Peace, LGBTQ entities, immigrant rights groups, Never Again, and many others.
Mills further emphasized that the disintegration of the centrist character of the Democratic Party is well underway. After a closed-door meeting between left-leaning Democrats: Occasio-Cortes, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib – and House Speaker Pelosi — which House leadership originally called for to reign-in the quartet for its public call to address intraparty differences — leadership was forced to argue The Four’s censure resolution against the White House for racist statements.
REST IN PEACE Author Chris Hedges, who also addressed the conference, notes in his book Death of the Liberal Class that what we’re seeing is the ‘center’ coming apart. Establishment Democrats are beholden to corporate funding, yet want to pretend to be progressive.
“Liberals created the US system of mass incarceration, the war on drugs, the re-colonization of Latin America, etc.” added Mills, “not just Republicans.” These are sharply distinguished from programs favored by those who see themselves as progressive. “The Left recognizes that (this schism) is structural , not just one individual in the White House and the growth of White Nationalism.”
BET THE FARM “The tide is already turning,” said Wolff. “In Fairfax, Virginia, Lee Carter, a politician in the mold of our own AOC, beat the leader of the Virginia State House, running openly as a Socialist.” With such opportunity in the offing – or at least some glimmer of understanding of who’s on which side — “it’s sad if we don’t grab it.”
arts & leisure you love BUT THE LEFT LIKES ITS CHANCES.
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Had the recent arrest of Julian Assange discouraged attendance?
The annual Left Forum conference had filled a prison-sized classroom complex known as John Jay College of Criminal Justice with intellectuals, sociologists, identity enthusiasts, panelists and lecturers for half a decade. So when the event was downsized to a more human scale at LIU last month, questions arose. Had the recent arrest of Julian Assange discouraged attendance? asked one neighboring business owner. Was the Left summering at the Pensacola Riviera? speculated another. Had the average lifespan of a radical gone that far past retirement age?
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STAR REVUE Just the opposite, cited LF impresario Rick Wolff. While preparing a conference along the usual lines — hundreds of presentations, thousands of attendees — John Jay administrators demanded the school both govern the event and retain the proceeds. [An ongoing investigation into allegations of a long-time prostitution and narcotics ring at John Jay (N.Y. Times 9/22/18) was cited for the university’s change of heart]. “We smiled and said thank
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This dynamic is complemented by recent direct action accomplishments. These include the precedent-setting protection of the Venezuelan Embassy from occupation by Washington-backed anti-Venezuelan government forces for 37 days; immigrant rights groups’ blocking of ICE raids against suspected ‘undocumented’ immigrants outside targeted apartment complexes in Chicago and New York; Never Again (an anti-racist Jewish movement against concentration camps) in alliance with immigrant rights organizations turning out across the country at immigration facilities, following nationwide revulsion against breaking up families, mistreatment of children, and the operation of federal detention and concentration camps on US-Mexico borders and across the country.
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ABOUT US The Star-Revue is the new arts, politics and culture newspaper for New York city. We began publishing in June, 2010. Originally the local community newspaper for Red Hook and Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, we have slowly grown, expanding our coverage first to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo and Park Slope, and with circulation now in lower Manhattan, we are growing into a citywide publication, focusing in on NYC issues and arts. In 2019, we added a second section with expanded music and arts coverage. Our advertising base has grown exponentially. A distribution deal with a major coffee wholesaler has put the paper into over 200 coffee shops throughout the five boroughs. We have been members of the NY State Press Association since 2012, and have won major awards each year at their Better Newspaper Contest. The Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY named us Best Community Publication in 2017, and runner-up in 2018. For more information, and to place an ad, call 917 652-9128 or email george@redhookstar.com.
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