June 2019 Red Hook Star-Revue by George Fiala

the red hook

SPECIAL RED HOOK TOURIST MAP

STAR REVUE

JUNE 2019 the new VOICE of New York

at newsstands

THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK PLUS:

EXPANDED MUSIC AND ARTS CALENDAR

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

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

3 Brooklyn is all about blending cultures. We’re all about blending Global Cusine 367 Columbia Street (929) 298-0074 at Jam’It Bistro

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

the red hook

STAR REVUE

THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK

JUNE 2019 CONTENTS Section 1

Section 2

News & Views

Music & Art

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

Spotlight on Beaver ........................................ page 30

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

Pajtim Statovci’s noble violence ..................page 31

Richard Wolff ....................................................... page 5

The cost of mythmaking ................................ page 32

Movie Retrospective by Yates .........................page 7

BWAC again ........................................................ page 33

Lets stop the destruction ................................ page 9

Sally Saul at Pioneer Works .......................... page 34

Gowanus Town Hall ..........................................page 11

Regina Opera’s Il Trovatore........................... page 35

Will’s ﬁrst day at work .....................................page 12

Ron Nagle’s ceramics...................................... page 36

Luquana McGriffs beautiful cakes ...............page 13

June Culture calendar......................................page 37

Local phone shopping............................... centerfold

June Music calendar................................... centerfold

Gowanus landmarks ﬁght ..............................page 17

MUSIC - Red Hook Roxx..................................page 40

Special Bicycling Section........................pages 18-21

The Original Dogg ............................................ page 41

Oyster Op Ed ..................................................... page 22

Eric Ambel’s studio.......................................... page 41

Hotdog and Mustard ....................................... page 22

Jack Grace on Peekskill .................................. page 42

The Tonnage of the World ............................. page 23

Ten years of Littleﬁeld.................................... page 43

Ellis back in town ............................................. page 24

Brian Dewan at Barbes................................... page 44

Matthew Reiss ................................................... page 25

Lil Nas X .............................................................. page 45

The Healthy Geezer ......................................... page 26

Los Cumpleanos in Williamsburg ............... page 46

Classiﬁeds .......................................................... page 26

Jalopy’s International Festival ......................page 47

Summer Sports ................................................. page 28  ART, CULTURE, BOOKS AND MORE FUN STUFF FROM BROOKLYN AND BEYOND 

the red hook

SPECIAL SUMMER TOURIST MAP

STAR REVUE

STARREVUE ARTS

JUNE 2019 the new VOICE of New York

at newsstands

THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK

EXPANDED MUSIC AND ARTS CALENDAR

317 Columbia St. Brooklyn, NY jalopytavern.biz

3 Brooklyn is all about blending cultures. We’re all about blending Global Cusine 367 Columbia Street (929) 298-0074 at Jam’It Bistro

UPS TATE ’S

NYC’s Number One Folk and Traditional music venue

S TORIE OST S H G N O B LE VIOLENCE 

LIVE Music Every Friday and Saturday

’S LAST GASP  SWAMP DOGG  MUCH MOR E!

ROXX 

Award Winning Burgers Great Wings

ITALY LITTLE E N E SC SIC MU

IL TROVATORE  RE D HOO BWAC  K

June 2019 Section 2

all inside, plus Rick Wolff, Matthew Reiss and new second section!

Featuring amazing Live Music 5 nights a week! 315 Columbia St. Brooklyn, NY jalopytheatre.org

jamitbistro.com

Wonder Woman Selfie Mixed Media 2017 www.thedasandiford.com Star-Revue Section 2

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

June 2019, Page 29

June 2019, Page 3

the red hook

STAR REVUE 481 Van Brunt Street, 8A Brooklyn, NY 11231

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

“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 Police Precinct, 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

June Events 5 Wednesday

20 Thursday

6 Thursday

25 Tuesday

76th Precinct Community Council. Voice concerns, ask questions, and meet the police captain. 191 Union Street, 7:30 - 9 Comedian Natalie Palamides: LAID live at The Bell House from 7-9 pm at The Bell House. LAID is an egg-themed comedy show replete with Palamides’ clowning prowess. Completely original in its concept as a surreal vision of motherhood, LAID is physical theater at its best along with plenty of jokes. 149 7th St.

7 Friday

Dead Meadow, American rock band founded in 1998, @ The Bell House from 7-11 pm at 149 7th St. Free Children’s Art Workshop, 4-6 pm. Red Hook Recreation Center, 55 Bay St. Friday Sound Bath Sound Baths include the sounds of crystal and Himalayan singing bowls, hand pans, gong and other instruments for relaxation and meditation. Facilitated by BMS’ Music Therapy Department Chair Katie Down. Brooklyn Music School, 126 St. Felix St.

9 Sunday

“Stumble” by Francesca Van Horne 7-9 pm. A sequel to ‘Tales From The Trundle’ – which played in Paris at Le Petit Gymnase Théâtre, London at The Ned, The Courtyard and Bridewell, and New York at The Soho House, The Duplex, and Jalopy Theatre – we follow Valentina, after the Trundle. Our heroine has traded in triple espressos for ﬂat whites as she makes her way in the wild world of dating online ala ‘Bumble’ and in real life. A single mother looking for love after 38. When it’s her second time around at love, will Valentina fall or will she stumble? Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, 315 Columbia St.

11 Tuesday

Red Hook West Tenants Meeting, 6:30 – 9 pm, 428 Columbia St. tenant ofﬁce room 1-C Natalie Palamides: NATE at The Bell House, 7-9 pm. NATE is a playful and powerful exploration of masculinity and consent. A dynamic must-see, every show is fearlessly performed and different night-to-night as Palamides often allows the audience reactions to play a part in the show. 149 7th St.

12 Wednesday

District 15 meeting seeks feedback from the public on the rezoning of Sub District 3. 6:30 p.m. at P.S. 29, 425 Henry St.), Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club 6–8:30 pm. New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge 333 Adams St.

18 Tuesday

Fiddler on the Rooftop Bar (Comedy Series) 7-11 pm. Description: FIDDLER ON THE ROOFTOP BAR Marcia Belsky, Melissa Stokoski, Golden Hours Live Comedy Series. Fiddler on the Rooftop Bar is a musical parody. The Bell House, 149 7th St. Red Hook East Tenant Association Meeting, 6:30 – 9 pm. Hear updates regarding Red Hook East and voice any concerns or ask questions. 167 Bush St., Apt #1B

Compiled by Soﬁa and Will

Kate Berlant Live Comedy at The Bell House, 7-9 pm. Golden Hours Live Comedy Series at The Bell House,149 7th St. YMUSIC Featuring Amos Lee 7:30 – 11 pm at The Bell House, 149 7th St. Gowanus Community Advisory Meeting, 6:30 – 9 pm. St. Mary’s Residence, 41 1st St.

ONGOING

“Race and Revolution: Reimagining Monuments. Race and Revolution: Reimagining Monuments” is the third iteration of “Race and Revolution,” a series curated by Katie Fuller that aims to bring the conversation of systemic race and racism from the past into the present by displaying excerpts from historical documents alongside contemporary artworks. Weekly on Fridays until June 15, 3-6 pm, Old Stone House, 336 3rd St. Romeo & Juliet: Shakespeare in Carroll Park, June 14-30 on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Free performances of Romeo & Juliet in Carroll Park. No tickets required; ﬁrst come ﬁrst serve. Carroll Park on President Street Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, 315 Columbia St. host their weekly Open Mic Night every Monday, 8:30-11 pm. Sign up in person by 9 pm. Performance order will be drawn at random at 9 pm sharp. Each performer gets two songs or eight minutes. Professional dancers teach free dance workshops every Tuesday, 6-8 pm, at the Red Hook Justice Center, 88 Visitation Pl. Brooklyn Crochets for a Cause: Homeless Outreach is held every Wed., 10 am-12 pm, at Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon St. Participants crochet hats, mittens, scarves and sweaters that’ll be donated to individuals who are homeless (yarn is provided free of charge). Join Healing After Violence, a support group for women who have experienced violence in a relationship, on Wednesdays, 5-7 pm, at Red Hook Justice Center 88 Visitation Pl. Call Red Hook CARES at 347-404-9017 for more info. Jalopy Theater presents “Roots n Ruckus,” a night of folk, old-time and blues music. It takes place every Wednesday, 9-11 pm, at 315 Columbia St. Listen to country, rock, blues and Americana LIVE with special guests at Pig Beach 480 Union St., starting at 7 pm on Wednesdays. The Red Hook Community Justice Center (88 Visitation Pl.) hosts CARES Wellness Support Group, 5-7 pm. Learn about coping strategies for dealing with stress, and ways to relax and take care of yourself. Dinner and Metrocards are provided. For more info, call Red Hook CARES at 347404-9017. Broadly Entertaining hosts FREE Thursday Night Trivia at Rocky Sullivan’s 46 Beard St., at 8 pm. First place winner gets 50% off their tab. Saturday Activities, held 10 am-5 pm, are available for ages 13 and up – including gym, theater, weight room and computers – at the Miccio Cornerstone Center 110 W. 9th St., a program of Good Shepherd Services. For more information, call 718243-1528.

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Writing Workshop at the Jalopy Theater, 11 am – 1 pm. Come workshop drafts of your short stories, essays, novel, biography, etc. on Sundays at the Jalopy Theater in Carroll Gardens/Red Hook, and even create some new writing with one or more prompts in every session. Jalopy Theatre and School of Music 315 Columbia St. Free Homework Help, 3-4 pm. Weekly at the Red Hook Library 7 Wolcott St. “News of the Strange” Daily from June 3-24. Target Margin Theater, 232 52nd St.

Red Hook Library SUMMER READING

Summer Launch! – Saturday, June 1st, 11-4pm Sign up for Summer Reading at the library or at Valentino Pier and Park during Red Hook Fest! Science Edutainment with Bill Louden – Thursday, June 6th, 2pm “Brainy Bill” amazes and amuses crowds of all ages and sizes with his incredible live science demonstrations.

HSE (GED) AND TASC

HSE Screening – Tuesday, June 4th, 1:30pm Come learn about the 4 pathways to your HSE (GED), take a practice test, and more. TASC Science and Math – Tuesday, June 11, 1pm Advance registered participants only. Register by submitting the TASC application, valid photo ID, any previous transcripts (valid only after 2002) to: hse@ bklynlibrary.org TASC Writing, Social Studies, and Reading – Friday, June 14, 10am Advance registered participants only. Register by submitting the TASC application, valid photo ID, any previous transcripts (valid only after 2002) to: hse@ bklynlibrary.org

SPECIAL ART WORKSHOP SERIES

The Art of Creating Digital Stories: Animating Your Neighborhood – Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays through June 22nd Join teaching artist Amanda Gutierrez for an intergenerational series of art workshops! Presented by the Brooklyn Arts Council. Photo class for KIDS: Wednesdays, 4-5pm (June 5-19) Art and Tech class for TEENS: Thursdays, 6-7pm (May 16-June 20) Walks for FAMILIES: Saturdays (June 1-22, meet at Library; minors must be with an adult) As always, all programs and events at the library are FREE and open to the public.

June 2019

Trump and China

atching the President speak about China and the tariff/trade war he initiated against China is exhausting. One day he says a deal is in the works and the stock market soars. The next day he tweets something offensive to Chinese sensibilities, adds a threat of new tariffs on more Chinese goods, and the market tanks. Scary headlines follow. A day or two later, the whole theatric is run again.

Along the way, Trump or his underlings give statements that are systematically incorrect and/or misleading on a truly heroic scale. Let me mention here just three of them. First is Trump’s repeated claim that the billions in tariffs he has already imposed on China are costing China billions paid to the US. This is wrong. A tariff is the name of a tax. The Trump/GOP regime has imposed a massive set of new taxes (something conservatives used to say they were against) on the US. And make no mistake, the taxes fall on US companies and consumers. That is because a tariff is paid to the US government by the US company that imports something from China that is subject to the tariff. That US company can and usually does pass the cost of paying this tariff onto the prices of whatever it sells. Then it is the US consumer who shares the cost of Trump’s tariffs with US companies. Those are economic losses to the US economy that follow from Trump’s tariff/trade war against China. Second is the likewise repeated accusation that China has been “stealing”

D AKE

by Richard D. Wolff

intellectual property (production technologies, product designs, etc.). This is a truly bizarre accusation. For at least the last 30 years China has offered a deal to US corporations (and likewise to European and Japanese corporations). China offers a disciplined labor force at wages far below what those corporations pay in their home countries. China also offers one of the world’s largest and fastest growing markets for those corporations’ outputs. China’s offers translate into big profit boosts for the corporations who have chosen to accept them. In return, China has demanded (1) that foreign corporations bring in capital to pay for building new factories, warehouses, offices, etc. and (2) that foreign corporations share their technologies, product designs, etc. No one forced any US company to accept China’s offers. Corporations have come in growing numbers because what China offered turned out to be very profitable. To call all that “stealing” now after 30 years may yield big headlines, may allow Trump to posture as the tough leader ending abuse from others, but it is as phony as a $4 bill. Third is the claim that China “cheats” in the sense that the government subsidizes its industries allowing them to compete globally with lower prices. This is misleading. All countries help their own corporations with tax cuts, subsidies, preferential buying and countless other advantages not provided equally to other countries’ corporations. This practice is as old as capitalism itself. Each countries’ corpora-

tions spend big bucks on lobbyists, political donations, and bribes to get favors from their governments; they always have. China no doubt does it, too. But for the US to play innocent, the victim of others’ bad behavior, is simply silly. The Trump 2017 tax cut for all businesses in the US (from 35% to 21% of profits) was an enormous competitive advantage for US firms competing against others from countries that gave their businesses no comparable tax cuts. So what is really going on in the Trump tariff war against China? First and foremost this is Trump political theater. He keeps the spotlight on himself. He postures as serving America at foreigners’ expense: the bully, tough guy working for our side. He keeps it going for as long as it works to distract the public from focusing on his political problems, failures, legal risks, and so on. This is what politicians often do until the economic costs of the theater outweigh their political gains. That point is coming fast as job losses, price increases, and the profit losses from businesses having to cope with changing trade patterns (often referred to as supply chains) and the uncertainties of when the tariffs will end and whether international trade will return to what they had been. The bottom line for Americans is this: Trump’s government is intervening massively in the world market by hitting it with historically unprecedented tariffs and endlessly threatening more. There already are and will surely be more real costs to both the US and Chi-

“All countries help their own corporations with tax cuts, subsidies, preferential buying and countless other advantages not provided equally to other countries’ corporations. “ nese economies. Eventually, Trump will move on to provoke some other crisis that can do for him politically what he hopes the tariff war against China did. Then a deal will be struck between the US and China that enables both sets of leaders to claim victory and return to something not very different from what was before Trump started the war. That, after all, is what happened among the US, Canada and Mexico – after much headline grabbing around “ending” NAFTA. A new deal was struck (now awaiting ratification) with a new name but little basically different from what NAFTA was. Proceeding unchallenged while all this theater plays out is a US economic system becoming ever-more unequal and being ripped apart by all the consequences of that rising inequality.

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June 2019, Page 5

Hook Arts Media Screens Student Films by Brett Yates

Tristan wrote “utopia.”

Hook Arts Media, the nonprofit formerly known as Dance Theatre Etcetera, is working to train a new generation of filmmakers in Red Hook. On May 18, a screening of short films directed by high-schoolers and young adults took place at the organization’s Van Brunt Street loft, concluding a seven-week afterschool filmmaking program, “In Transition: Media,” led by Jordan Campbell.

Hooks Arts Media partners with the New York City Department of Education to bring art education into schools and to recruit students for onsite courses (two sessions per week in this case). For “In Transition: Media,” several pupils came from South Brooklyn Community High School in Red Hook, others from the Secondary School for Journalism in Park Slope, but some came from places as far as Manhattan and Queens.

The event began with a series of oneminute, dialogue-free, often nonnarrative films, which, among other things, chronicled a Sisyphean journey up a parking garage stairwell, a (staged) car accident outside PS 15, and the doomed friendship of an anthropomorphic pair of vegetables that escape from Fairway. A longer, scripted story about a jaded adult man encountering his happy-go-lucky younger self followed.

FIND US AT:

aplacecalledbrooklyn.com

The main presentation was a documentary about the idea of “utopia.” The filmmakers researched the origins of the term, debated the aspirational value of the concept, and then traveled around the neighborhood to interview different people about what the word means to them and about the ways in which Red Hook might currently fall short of the ideal. One of the young directors, Tristan, explained that the idea came from a brainstorming exercise where the students wrote out the alphabet and then came up with a word for each letter — something that could serve as the topic of a movie. For “U,”

Participants in Hook Arts Media’s filmmaking programs receive minimum-wage stipends. They received instruction in camera operation, video editing, and audio recording; they also reported boosts in self-confidence — one said that she learned that “it’s OK to be weird” — and social skills. 11 students graduated. On July 1, some will continue onward to “Digital Boot Camp,” an 80-hour summer filmmaking intensive study that will culminate with the students creating promotional videos for local “cause-based organizations.” Keira, 19, and Alexandria, 20, experienced some initial difficulties with both camera (“It has too many buttons”) and audio equipment. With the latter, the most challenging part is “knowing if the voice is good enough” and also “knowing if the machine is off standby. There was one interview we had on the tugboat over here and I didn’t get the audio because no one told me to press it twice.” They reported, however, that the basics took no more than a day of instruction to grasp.

BROOKLYN HAS A NEW EVENT SPACE

The Hamilton boasts an old world, rustic beauty and is a historic space to have your wedding ceremony / reception. The Hamilton offers 12,000 square feet of combined interior and exterior space, and can comfortably house 200 seated guests. There is a spacious banquet hall, ideal for your ceremony or reception. Located in the heart of Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, The Hamilton features high ceilings, bare wooden beams, and breathtaking skylights. Our outside space can host up to 28 parked cars.

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June 2019

‘Straight Out of Brooklyn,’ and back again

by Brett Yates drug dealers in the Red Hook Houses; Dennis, Kevin, and Larry will wait until the henchman’s briefcase is filled and then will rob him.

ilmmaker Matty Rich was a 19-year-old kid from the Red Hook Houses when Straight Out of Brooklyn won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. Without Hollywood connections or rich relatives, he’d gathered enough money from donations, investments, and maxed-out credit cards to make a feature film, for which he served as writer, director, producer, and actor.

The simplicity of this plan may owe to the movie’s origins as a short film, which Rich subsequently expanded; the deed doesn’t equal the scope of Dennis’s ambitions, which involve buying a condo in Manhattan and permanently saving his family from poverty, but the one-off crime allows the film’s plot to hinge cleanly upon a single, significant action. This leaves space in the 91-minute running time for some scenes of the friends goofing off, which have real charm and humor. The other scenes feature a lot of shouting to amp up the drama, even when there isn’t much to shout about.

Rich had grown up in a crime-plagued era in Red Hook, and with Straight Out of Brooklyn, he told the story of three young friends who would do anything to get out of the neighborhood. On May 12, the Brooklyn Academy of Music screened a 35-millimeter print of the half-forgotten indie sensation as part of its weeks-long “Black ‘90s” revival series, which happened to coincide with the death of director John Singleton.

In 1988, LIFE Magazine ran a cover story on Red Hook, the “crack capital of America.” Three years later, Mario Van Peebles’s New Jack City dramatized the epidemic in Harlem in comic-book style. By contrast, Straight Out of Brooklyn lacks a ripped-from-theheadlines pertinence that would place it more firmly within its epoch. It isn’t just that, in its (quite beautiful) exterior shots, the Red Hook Houses of course look exactly the same as they do now. Its setting is not a time period but a genre, and the genre, surprisingly, is a cruder iteration of Lorraine Hansberry’s. A primarily domestic melodrama on timeless social themes, it doesn’t contain much action, and no one talks about crack specifically.

Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood – similar to Rich’s work but bigger and more detailed – also came out in 1991. Both movies took their titles, in modified form, from NWA songs. The surge of inner-city crime dramas at the time (including Juice and Menace II Society) seems, at least in retrospect, to have emerged partly for the purpose of contextualizing and humanizing the increasingly popular but still fearsome new musical genres of hardcore hiphop and gangsta rap. Most were coming-of-age stories centered on tough but sympathetic young men pulled into violence by social forces. Accordingly, perhaps, Straight Out of Brooklyn – rough around the edges (especially the sound) but still fully watchable – bears not so much the unbridled energy of Rich’s raw youth but a slightly stodgy, schematic quality: it intends to lay out an argument. In this endeavor, it has a certain structural soundness and even some nuance. In its opening scene, the main character’s father has come home drunk and beats up the mother while the teenage children huddle silently in their bedroom. The next morning, they clean up the

rubble of their household possessions, which the father has trashed yet again. Rich makes the audience understand that a lifetime of social and economic humiliation, in the form of minimumwage servitude, has stifled and broken the father, once a kind and bright man, whose frustration erupts upon his wife at night. Cursed to empathize with her abuser, she struggles to find a job with bruises on her face. (The makeup artist lays them on a bit thick.) For the protagonist, Dennis, home

life is unbearable, which is why he’s looking for a shortcut out of the projects while his responsible girlfriend waits tables and prepares for college. His friends Larry (played by Rich) and Kevin aren’t quite as hungry as he is: Kevin mentions that his uncle can get them jobs at a local gas station – the same work performed by Dennis’s dad. Dennis persuades them to take part in a heist instead. Once a week, as they know, a bigshot gangster sends a henchman to collect money from his

A more elaborate script might have chronicled a longer-term criminal involvement instead of focusing on just one robbery executed by a good kid pushed too far. In depicting a more realistic and complex response to the same set of circumstances faced by Dennis, it would’ve likely generated a broader social canvas with at least a degree of journalistic interest. Still, despite a dysfunctional ending, Straight Out of Brooklyn did enough to (continued on next page)

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June 2019, Page 7

BROOKLYN

Lawrence Gilliard Jr., moved on to a long career in TV shows like The Wire and The Walking Dead.

impress critics, including Roger Ebert. But it wasn’t so much the filmmaking itself as the fact of the film’s existence that garnered attention. The latter owed partly to a precocious artistic talent but even more to a precocious gift for fundraising, logistics, and management. How did a teenager come to hire crew of technicians and supervise them competently in the task of producing a professional-quality feature film?

Rich went on to direct a second, unsuccessful movie, The Inkwell, and then jumped ship to the video game industry. In a 1999 interview, Spike Lee expressed disappointment: “It’s unfortunate because when he came out he got bad advice. He was like ‘I’ve never read a film book, I don’t go to movies, I don’t know how to use a camera, I’m from the streets!’ And eventually that was reflected in his filmmaking. He knew nothing about film.”

Straight Out of Brooklyn cost $450,000 – extremely cheap by Hollywood standards, but for comparison, Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1992) cost $7,000. In most scenes, Rich doesn’t do much with the camera, but his movie looks like a real movie, and it even has an original score. The performances mostly are good: the lead,

Rich hasn’t made a feature since 1994. In April 2019, Hollywood news sources claimed that he would finally return to the big screen with a self-penned script, Caller 100, which hasn’t yet started production but will reportedly star the rapper T.I. Even so, maybe movies were never the point: Rich made it out of Brooklyn.

(continued from previous page) With a larger budget at his disposal,

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Thank you to everyone who supported Thank you to everyone who supported the Friends of PS 15 Spring the Friends of PS 15 Spring Celebration Celebration 21st at Pioneer on March on 29thMay at Pioneer Works! Works Center for Art & Innovation! Your generous donations raised $21,000 for PS 15 to provide educational resources for The generous donations from the big hearted Red Hook its students. Thiswill event have businesses and people help could providenot PS 15 with educational resources for its students. happened without the support of the big hearted Red Hook businesses and people.

48 Sullivan Street, Brooklyn Phone: 718-576-3443 Fax: 718-576-3840 learningwheelchildcare@gmail.com

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June 2019

Five grand old buildings still standing

photos and stories by Will Jackson and George Fiala

ome Red Hookers are upset about the tearing down of the 19th century warehouse at 202 Coffey Street. UPS, who bought the building over a year ago, plans to replace it with a 21st century warehouse, and purchased it from Estate Four with that in mind. The neighborhood reaction is similar to what happened when Thor Equities demolished the iconic Revere Sugar factory in 2006.

In both cases, the buildings were sold without them having landmark status, and thus the new owners felt no guilt in tearing them down. Since Thor Equities still haven’t figured out what to do with the denuded property, it would for sure would have been better if Revere had been landmarked. It could be a tremendous tourist attraction today, rather than the eyesore it remains. In the case of the Lidgerwood building that faces Valentino Park, landmarking would probably have kept it from being sold to UPS, and so today it would either still be vacant, or have been sold at a lesser price to someone with a nice idea of repurposing it, as Estate Four originally planned to do. Sunset Park has been working towards landmarking a number of historic buildings. The application is in process and may be finalized soon. This is a direct result of a dedicated group of volunteers who created the Sunset Park Landmarks Committee. They who put together a well thought out proposal to the powers that be. This is something that a group of forward thinking Red Hookers might consider emulating, so that we do not lose additional chunks of our history. A good roadmap is their website http://www.preservesunsetpark.org/. Surprisingly, there are a couple of buildings in this neighborhood that have already been landmarked – 76 Van Dyke Street and the Red Hook Rec Center. Here are some more candidates for preservation.

Beard St. Warehouses

Located on Beard St. and Van Brunt St., these warehouses have a plethora of history surrounding them. Built in the 1860s and 1870s by Jeremiah P. Robinson and William Beard, these massive buildings were once used to hold gear for ships arriving and departing New York Harbor. An Irish immigrant, Beard made his living building railroad tracks, and his estate owned the Erie Basin. Today, the majority of the warehouses are occupied by small businesses and manufacturers.

110 Wolcott St.

A gorgeous church built in 1899 is hidden on a small block in Red Hook. Originally named the Christ Church Chapel, it was renamed and is currently known as the Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church. The original church in the spot was built in 1866, but it was falling apart and was rebuilt. The structure was designed by William James Audsley and George Ashdown Audsley, two Scottish architects. The brothers have designed places of worship in multiple countries around the world. Despite the building being sold in the ‘70s, it is still used as a place of worship today. Already Landmarked

Built in 1859, this building was once used as the manufacturer for the Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Company. Owned and operated by Joseph K. Brick, the stone building was used to make clay bricks that are used for the making of iron and steel.

159 Pioneer St.

Once home to Pioneer Iron Works, this building was constructed in 1866. In its lengthy history, the company primarily manufactured railroads, steamrollers and sugar machinery. In 1881, the building was damaged by a fire, and a result of this was more than 100 layoffs. The building was repaired the same year and continued fabricating iron works that were sold around the world. Today, the building is home to Pioneer Works, an art gallery that opened in 2012.

Red Hook Houses

The largest housing complex in Brooklyn, the Red Hook Houses were built in 1939 and were designed by Alfred Easton Poor. The buildings were originally built for the families of dockworkers, and was one of the first federal complexes in the U.S. Eleanor Roosevelt was given a tour of the complex when she was First Lady of the United States. Today it is estimated that 8,000 people live in the complex, around 73 percent of the Red Hook population.

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76 Van Dyke St.

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Brick came to New York in 1848 to run a gaslight work company, after going to school in Philadelphia. Brick’s company operated the building he designed up until the 1930s where a molasses company took over. In 2001, the Landmarks Preservation Commission declared it a landmark. Today, the historic stone house is operated by a glassmaking company.

June 2019, Page 9

Red Hook Lobster Pound Shellebrates 10-Year Anniversary

he Red Hook Lobster Pound, located at 284 Van Brunt St., celebrated its 10th year in the neighborhood on April 25. Hungry guests chowed down and received 10 percent off their bill. The idea behind the restaurant formed after owners Susan Povich and Ralph Gorham took a trip to Portland, Maine, and brought home fresh lobsters. Ralph had told Susan that they should open their own lobster pound; she thought it over and said the idea was brilliant, the very

next day. Soon afterwards they started selling freshly caught lobsters and lobster rolls at the Brooklyn Flea. Word caught on and the duo received great support since their concept was new and different at the time. Years later they added wooden picnic seating to their Red Hook dining room and built a kitchen to make and sell other seafood dishes and sides. After Superstorm Sandy hit, they had to rebuild from scratch. After being closed for four months, they served their first post-Sandy lobster roll to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“About four years ago Red Hook was really changing and we felt it. We needed full service and wanted to establish ourselves more in the neighborhood,” Susan told us in mid-May during a busy lunch service. “We’re happy to be a part of the community and are glad people come here as a destination and come here to experience the neighborhood.” The Red Hook Lobster Pound is open Mondays - Thursdays, 11:30 am - 9 pm; Fridays and Saturdays, 11 am - 10 pm; and Sundays, 11 am - 9 pm. - Erin DeGregorio

Susan Povich and Ralph Gorham

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June 2019

EPA and Velazquez talk Canal, by Erin Degregorio

ongresswoman Nydia Velázquez and the EPA provided updates regarding the Gowanus Canal cleanup at a 2019 Public Superfund Town Hall held May 29. The last town hall meeting, also hosted by the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group (CAG), took place in November 2017. Velázquez spoke first. “The Gowanus Canal is a high-profile Superfund site … because of all of you – the work, engagement, energy and hours that the CAG and other residents have put into this process – we’re seeing the results of that.” She said it’s vital that this “environmental sore spot” be remediated to keep contaminants away. She mentioned the city’s alternative plan for containing sewage overflows. Plans for two retention tanks have already been approved by the EPA, but at the 11th hour, the city proposed to replace the tank plan with a tunnel idea, claiming the tunnel would handle more overflow. Deputy Regional Administrator Walter Mugdan said they’ll have meetings in June for a very detailed federal analysis and discussion of the tunnel proposal. Mugdan also said that cleanup work under the outdoor pool at Thomas Greene Park won’t begin until a temporary pool is built for the neighborhood. The EPA has demanded remediation because toxins have been leaching into the canal for the past century. Velazquez addressed the current controversy regarding the long planned Gowanus rezoning. Activists are crying out that the cleaning of the canal

Save a beach The DEP once again sponsors a Volunteer Beach Floatable Program. This currently monitor 65 beaches around the city for floatables. Floatables are man-made debris that wash up on beaches and shorelines. Styrofoam, balloons, fishing line, raw sewage and medical waste are considered floatables.

will be spoiled by new buildings. “It is important that any EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] needs to take into account the population that will be coming in – and if the plan, as it’s been designed, is taking into account the new people that will be coming in as a result of the rezoning,” she added. “My position has always been [that] we have one shot at getting this right, one shot.” EPA addressed this a day earlier with an email sent to CAG members the day before the Town Hall. Senior Project Manager Christos Tsiamis wrote: “In anticipation of potential redevelopment, the ROD requires that any future activities which fall under the City’s purview, including development, do not compromise the effectiveness of the Gowanus Canal remedy. Among other things, the ROD specifically states that ‘redevelopment projects will need to take mitigation measures to prevent or offset additional sewer loadings’ to the Canal to protect the remedy.”

Updates on the Cleanup The Gowanus Canal was designated a federal Superfund site in 2010, initiating a complex, multi-year cleanup of more than a century’s worth of hazardous substances. EPA completed a successful pilot dredging and capping of the 4th Street turning basin last year – that portion of the canal is the cleanest it’s been in more than 100 years. Now the agency is turning its sights on the process of entirely cleaning the canal in the three segments, beginning at the head-end near But-

Volunteers will receive all materials necessary. To sign up contact Robert Gans, the coordinator of the volunteer beach floatable program, at Ozone Layer LLC at 212-889-4217 or 917658-2380 or ozonelayerllc@me.com

Melanoma in the spotlight

RHSR: What happens when someone discovers a spot?

Dr. Erica Friedman, specialist at NYU Langone spoke to us. RHSR: What can people do to lower their risk? EF: I recommend a physical sunscreen, something with zinc or titanium as opposed to a chemical sunscreen. Wearing sun protective clothing, and avoiding the high intensity sun between 10 am and 3 pm.

Red Hook Star-Revue

ler Street, in 2020. As part of the plan which is called the Record of Decision (ROD), the building of a cutoff wall will begin this month to isolate the worst of the contamination; this will mark the first real construction part of the project, according to Velázquez. The wall will be installed in front of the former Fulton manufacturing gas plant site (up at the top of canal), down to Union Street on the eastern side. The existing bulkheads there will also be replaced. EPA Senior Project Manager Christos Tsiamis had explained, in detail, the upcoming timeline to the CAG a day earlier. The agency is currently reviewing the design for the tank at the top of the canal. Starting this month, noise barriers will be built and placed near the existing bulkheads at the top of the canal to accommodate the needs of the nearby Eastern Effects

To become a monitor, you just need to record the various types of debris on your favorite beach or surrounding waters, once a week during the season. They have enlisted volunteers for the Gowanus Canal and East River locations as a result of community media efforts on their behalf. Other sites include Kingsborough Community College, Plum Beach, Manhattan Beach, Coney Island, Coney Creek and Seagate Beach Club.

Volunteers are needed to help save turtles, birds, fish and other marine life from ingesting these items or from being entangled in fishing lines or other litter. The program lasts from May to October.

While some exposure to sunlight can be enjoyable and even healthy, excess sun can be dangerous. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. The average age is 63, but melanoma strikes at any age.

Nydia Velazquez, a major reason that the canal is being cleaned up by the EPA, giving the keynote address at the Superfund town hall. (photo by Erin DeGregorio)

EF: We look out for the ABCDEs – asymmetry; irregular borders; variation in color within the spot; a diameter greater than six millimeters [about the size of a pencil eraser]; and evolution [of size, shape or color]. So if a patient notices any one of these features, or if there’s a spot that’s bleeding or itchy, they should see a dermatologist. The treatment for the overwhelming majority of melanomas is typically surgery and surgery alone. What’s important is how thick the melanoma goes deep into the skin.

Studio. Then any debris that’s there and could interfere with the placement of the sheet piles will be removed during a two-month estimation. From September to November, sediment will be softened so that the hydraulic press used at the 4th Street Turning Basin (which didn’t produce any noise or vibrations) can advance up to the head of the canal. Come November, EPA will be putting in the 55-foot-long sheet piles from the top of the canal down to Union Street. Nydia Velazquez concluded her remarks on the rezoning plans by saying: “We cannot afford to spend over $500 million to clean up, dredge, and restore the canal for families to enjoy and then compromise the health of the canal because of decisions driven by the real estate market and developers.”

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June 2019, Page 11

Langone opens food pantry

Touch-A-Truck Fundraiser is a success

by Erin DeGregorio

Families from PS 295 and the South Slope area had the chance to explore and sit behind the wheels of more than 15 special vehicles at the school’s 9th annual Touch-A-Truck fundraiser.

by Erin DeGregorio

The Family Health Centers at NYU Langone has debuted a new grocery store-like food pantry, called The Table, in Sunset Park. This comprehensive program provides a new nutritional resource by offering a diverse variety of food to local residents at no cost. “We were surprised to learn from our screening survey that one in three families in our community ran out of food at some point in the past year,” said Kathy Hopkins, vice president of Community-Based Programs–Family Health Centers at NYU Langone. “Addressing and documenting food insecurity and other social determinants of health within the context of the clinical care environment has the potential to improve patient and population health, as well as decrease healthcare costs.” “We have a pretty great agreement with United Way of New York City through the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program – that’s how we get our fresh produce,” Katie Barth, an NYU Langone volunteer who works at the pantry, explained. “It’s pretty great that we can have at

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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Page 12 Red Hook Star-Revue

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams

least four or five different options for vegetables and two or three different fresh fruits available, as well as fresh eggs. Everybody leaves with a nice, fresh selection for their home.” A couple who lives in Sunset Park was one of the many families to stop by. They have a baby boy at home and emphasized the importance of having access to fresh foods in a place that provides a full shopping experience. “I’m very grateful because they are products that you really need,” the mother said, according to an on-site translator who assisted us during an interview. “Sometimes there isn’t enough money to buy cucumbers and plantains; now this is a way to get some healthy food.” The Table also features a demo space for interactive cooking lessons, which incorporate items available in the pantry that day. Families can take home the ‘meal of the week’ recipe that’s distributed by the health center so that the meals can be prepared at home. Borough President Eric Adams recently used the space on May 10 when he visited the health center. He participated in a cooking demonstration and made brown rice and beans with sautéed broccoli and peppers. Adams is supportive of nutritional education programs like this and follows a plant-based diet himself. The pantry, which launched on April 5, has already reached more than 200 households (primarily in Sunset Park) and has served about one thousand clients, who include adults, seniors and children, as of mid-May. It is located within the Family Support Center at 6025 6th Ave., and open every Friday from 10 am to 2 pm. Appointments must be made – visit in-person or call 718-630-7942 for more information.

CIGAR CITY DINNER The CopperPot’s first beer pairing dinner is taking place at the Van Brunt Street eatery on Thursday, June 6. Enjoy a special menu made exclusively for this event paired with beers Cigar City Brewing has specially chosen. There will be two seatings, 7:30 and 10 pm. The Copperpot is located at the corner of Wolcott Street and features casual North and South American cuisine.

The vehicles lined up on 18th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues, this year included an FDNY fire truck, NYPD smart car and van, PSVAC ambulance, DOS garbage truck, vintage MTA/NYCT bus, Formula E racecar, 16-wheel moving truck from Gentle Giant, tow truck from MacArthur Collision, cab and tractor from Chef’s Warehouse, DEP’s lugger truck, fuel truck from Sprague Energy, and more. Plus, YoGo, Gorilla Cheese, and Yankee Doodle Dandy’s food trucks and DEP’s NYC Water-on-the-Go station were on-site to keep families hydrated and fed during the warm, sunny afternoon on May 18. PS 295 parents, volunteers and staff worked hard for months putting this big block party together, according to

MY FIRST DAY AT THE STAR-REVUE by Will Jackson

After completing my freshman year at the University of Maine, I received a summer internship here at the StarRevue, and I couldn’t have been more excited to get started. My first day didn’t go exactly how I expected. My first task was to roam around newsstands, trying to get the Star-Revue some more circulation. Unfortunately, it was close to 90° degrees outside, and I learned that there are not as many newsstands as my boss thinks. He grew up a long time ago, before smartphones replaced a lot of Daily News sales. After a long day on the road, I returned to the office and gave the bad news to my boss. After a minute of silence, he turned to sports editor Nathan to help determine my next assignment. “The Red Hook Recreation Center; he can work on that,” Nathan said. I was confused and somewhat disappointed when I first heard that. ‘What could I possibly write about a recreation center?’ Nathan printed out a flyer that has been circulating in the neighborhood about an event coming up in Coffey Park that the Center was sponsoring. “Find out a little more about that,” I was told. The assignment seemed to be uninteresting yet easy. All I had to do was head down to Bay Street and get some quotes about the upcoming event. However, when I arrived at the Rec Center, the project became a mess. I went up to the front desk where a cheerful woman, who greeted me, asked why I was there. I explained to her that I was representing a local newspaper and would like to learn a little more about a festival they were hosting in a local park. “Of course, let me get the manager,”

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the fundraiser’s event chair Jill Bloch. With more than 3,000 guests attending each year, Touch-A-Truck’s the biggest school fundraiser, and the proceeds support academic, arts and enrichment programs at the Title I school. “[It] provides a really unique experience for families to get up close to trucks in Brooklyn, but what most people don’t realize is that their support provides critical resources to our school,” Bloch explained. “One hundred percent of the dollars raised at this event is used for programming that enriches our student’s lives. In the past, this event has allowed our students to participate in dance and music programs that are not in the school’s budget—it is these programs that help to make PS 295 a special elementary school and would not be possible without our community sponsors and all of the families who come out to enjoy the event.” Other kids’ activities that took place included bouncy houses, build-atruck activities with South Slope Pediatrics, live band performances from School of Rock and Brooklyn Music Factory students, and a slime zone with The Tiny Scientist. she said with a large smile. After about two minutes she came back with the manager of the center. I told him the exact same thing I told the lady at the front desk; however, I was met with disheartening news. Apparently, when writing about the Red Hook Recreational Center, you need media credentials in order to ask and publish anything – otherwise the manager cannot say a word. I was told that if I get the New York Parks press department on the phone, I could get credentials immediately. Promptly I called the number, yet there was no answer. He told me to call once more; again no answer. I could sense this wasn’t going anywhere when I was asked to call a third time, so I sent the department an email and traveled home. PS – a week later and there’s still no response. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to ask simple questions about a local event, for an article in the paper. Why does a local newspaper need media credentials to ask a recreation center manager questions? I was there to promote their event, so that more Red Hook residents could be informed about the festival. The long process of getting a media pass doesn’t just apply for the Red Hook Recreation Center; I’m told that this goes for anything Parks-related. I would understand if this was for a national newspaper, or for a critical piece, but I was turned away in an attempt to write a few words on something they should be begging us to promote to you guys.

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A cake baked in Red Hook

orn and raised in Red Hook, Luquana McGriff makes some of New York City’s most beautiful cakes, cupcakes, and cookies.

In 2016, McGriff started her own onewoman dessert-catering company, A Cake Baked in Brooklyn. At the time, she was a 911 dispatcher for the New York City Police Department. She’d held the job since 2001, but a childhood passion for baking, instilled by her great-grandmother, had stuck with her. From her home kitchen in the Red Hook Houses, McGriff made cakes and cupcakes for her coworkers’ birthdays and retirement parties, earning renown in the NYPD. “People would say, ‘Who made this cookie? Luquana McGriff? What are you doing here, girl? You’re missing your calling!’” she remembered. Renting a commercial kitchen in a coworking space in Bedford-Stuyvesant, McGriff started her small business as a part-time endeavor while still working full-time. Before that, she’d found time in her schedule to learn the ins and outs of running a company – from bookkeeping to marketing – by studying at the public library and taking NYC Business Solutions classes offered by the New York City Department of Small Business Services, as well as NYCHA’s eight-week Food Business Pathways Program. Her culinary skills are self-taught.

Transitioning to professional baking, McGriff had to learn how to use icing tips and pastry bags and how to create more elaborate designs. She was a natural. But even as enthusiastic word-of-mouth led her to more and more clients, she doubted whether, with two daughters to support, it would be wise to leave behind a stable income at the NYPD. “You’re half out the door and half in. You don’t know when to make the jump,” she described. “I love helping people, and I was doing that at the police department, but I felt like there was no growth anymore. Was I going to sit there for the rest of my life and answer emergency calls? I just really wanted to pursue my dream of having my own business, and I feel like I’m still helping people in the cake world. Food is a comfort for people, and desserts make people happy.” In early 2018, McGriff took the leap and quit her job. Subsequently she catered events for Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Salesforce, and Kate Spade and earned the attention of WNBC and NY1. But she faced a new challenge when the small-business incubator in Bed-Stuy whose space she’d rented shut down, and she couldn’t find another affordable kitchen in Brooklyn. As a result, for now, A Cake Baked in Brooklyn, ironically, bakes its cakes in East Harlem, an hourlong drive from McGriff ’s apartment. On the

by Brett Yates

bright side, she’s had the opportunity to meet lots of other chefs at her new coworking space in Manhattan, and she’s also been attending a business workshop at Columbia University. In the future, she hopes to expand her menu of offerings to include brunch items like croissants – right now, morning events can be awkward, since not everyone wants to eat a cupcake at 9 a.m. Most of all, however, McGriff wants a brick-and-mortar bakery where she can showcase her creations for the public. “I love Red Hook, and I think Red Hook is the dopest, but I don’t know if I can afford anything in Red Hook,” she said. Once, when she inquired about a retail space on Van Brunt Street, the landlord told her that the rent was $10,000 a month. Even though her company primarily caters corporate events, McGriff would like A Cake Baked in Brooklyn to maintain an involvement in the community and in the lives of ordinary people – for instance, she often donates to Icing Smiles, a charity that provides birthday cakes to the families of critically ill children. She believes that a storefront would facilitate connections between her business and the public. In the meantime, however, she plans to use the event space RE:GEN:CY on Commerce Street to hold cookie-decorating workshops. She believes that the classes will provide a refuge in a

fast-paced city. “People can sit down, put their phones down, and really be social and creative. The takeaway will be even better than the cookie or cupcake: they’re going to meet people, they’re going to learn a skill. It’ll be fun and not stressful.” McGriff has big plans, but she’s struck by how far she’s come already. “When you think about doing a business, you get discouraged to know you have to do all of these things. Looking at it head-on, you’re like, ‘I can’t get over the obstacle; I can’t do this.’ When I look back at it, I’m shocked myself to see how many things I accomplished.”

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June 2019, Page 13

350BROOKLYN BECOMES GNCJ PARTNER

Conservancy and SJ Avery of the Park Slope Civic Council. For 350Brooklyn, the three offered a presentation titled “Gowanus: Environmental Justice or Disaster Capitalism?”

The author Naomi Klein coined the term “disaster capitalism” to describe the tendency of banks and corporations to make use of catastrophes and the resulting disorientation or desperation of their affected populations to engineer profit-driven takeovers of public assets. The disaster may be natural, like a hurricane, or manmade, like an economic collapse; in New York, a citywide housing crisis has, in the eyes of some critics, offered a pretext for developer-friendly upzonings of communities of color like East New York and East Harlem, paving the way for displacement.

by Brett Yates

he Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice (GNCJ), an advocacy group that formed in response to the city’s proposed rezoning of Gowanus, has joined forces with 350Brooklyn, the local affiliate of the international climate change organization 350.org. On May 9, GNCJ members shared their list of demands for Gowanus at 350Brooklyn’s monthly meeting at the Commons, a cafe and event space on Atlantic Avenue. The Fifth Avenue Committee, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing, convened the GNCJ in 2017 to address questions of sustainability and gentrification as the city developed a plan to rezone industrial Gowanus for residential skyscrapers. Their environmental organizer Karen Blondel leads the group, alongside others such as Andrea Parker of the Gowanus Canal

“Zoning is a tool that has been used to enforce racism and disenfranchisement for decades,” Blondel proclaimed. The GNCJ’s concerns include the nature of the affordable housing prom-

ised for the neighborhood (they want “deep affordability” and lottery priority for NYCHA and Community Board 6 residents) and the deterioration of existing public housing in the area. When the Department of City Planning (DCP) executes a neighborhood rezoning, the city typically promises a host of infrastructural upgrades to offset the population increase and community benefits to generate buy-in from the locals, but the boundaries of the Gowanus rezoning stop just short of the Gowanus Houses, Wyckoff Gardens, and the Warren Street Houses, which, like other NYCHA campuses, badly need repairs. In recent months, the GNCJ has found a measure of local fame (or notoriety) by interrupting public meetings in Gowanus to insist upon NYCHA improvements, with particular emphasis on the promised reopening of the long-shuttered Gowanus Houses Community Center. “The fact that this rezoning is going on and there isn’t a place for Gowanus Houses resi-

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dents to meet and talk about it is horrible,” Parker commented. Furthermore, the GNCJ wants an upgrade for the public swimming pool at Thomas Greene Playground between Douglass and DeGraw streets, a community-wide emergency preparedness plan, newly planted trees to fill the holes in the “urban canopy” in previously nonresidential areas, and an improved waterfront access plan around the Gowanus Canal – which they hope the city will designate an “Environmental Special District” that, like the Special Natural Area Districts in Staten Island, would include zoning restrictions to protect the waterway as a habitat for wildlife and plants. The GNCJ’s biggest worry, however, is sewage, which currently gushes untreated into the Gowanus Canal whenever rainwater overwhelms local sewers. The EPA – the federal agency overseeing the canal’s Superfund cleanup – has mandated that New York City build two wastewater retention tanks in Gowanus (or possibly a tank and a tunnel) to prevent overflows in the future, but according to them, the solution doesn’t account for the rezoning’s anticipated influx of new residents, who’ll add even more waste. [Editor’s note - in a response to City Planning’s Draft Scope EIS, EPA reaffirms the city’s responsibility for the new CSO inflow]. The city will face large fines if it allows new construction to negate the EPA’s solution to the wastewater problem, but it hasn’t yet committed to a solution. Parker stated, “The city right now is saying, ‘We’re building infrastructure to manage sewage already. There’s no need to build any more.’ We’re saying, ‘We’re already promised that infrastructure. If you’re going to add more toilets to this watershed, we need to do a lot more.’” The GNCJ advocates for the city to require developers to build their own digitally weather-sensitive retention tanks below their new high-rises, which would hold wastewater during storms and slowly release it afterward into the sewers. The activists also believe that internal water treatment systems could allow residential buildings to reuse their wastewater. (A few environmentalists in the audience grimaced at this suggestion.) At the end of the meeting, the GNCJ distributed a stack of prewritten letters addressed to Olga Abinader, Acting Director of the Environmental Assessment and Review Division at the DCP, asking 350Brooklyn members to sign and mail them in support of the GNCJ’s goals. On March 29, the DCP released a Draft Scope of Work for an Environmental Impact Statement for the Gowanus rezoning. Until May 29, the public had a chance to submit comments with the hope of influencing the document’s final draft. “The reality is that City Planning has been in discussion with developers for 10 years at least on this. This is not new to them. Our coalition is two years old. They have the advantage of the long game,” Avery said. In other words, the GNCJ needs all the help it can get.

June 2019

Gowanus tour highlights landmarks at risk by Brett Yates

owanus’s upcoming rezoning will likely make much of the neighborhood’s old industrial infrastructure eligible for redevelopment as residential high-rises. According to the Gowanus Landmarking Coalition, a local advocacy group formed in 2017, if the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) doesn’t step in to protect key sites from demolition, Gowanus’s built environment will cease to embody the rich history of the neighborhood. On the first weekend in May, around the birthday of the writer and activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), the nonprofit Municipal Art Society organizes Jane’s Walk NYC, an annual festival of free guided tours inspired by Jacobs’s granular, grassroots approach to urban planning. Gowanus Landmarking Coalition member Brad Vogel used the occasion to lead a group of about 20 from Union Street to Butler Street on a rainy Sunday, showcasing a piece of Brooklyn that might soon disappear. “It’s a really interesting place because so much of it is untouched from the 19th and early 20th century,” Vogel described. “Why? Because of the pollution, because of the crime, because of various things that have kept redevelopment or gentrification at bay for a long, long time. Even the geography – it floods. This is really low land.” Vogel referred to the tony heights of “Brownstone Brooklyn” as a “horseshoe” surrounding Gowanus. “We are down in the middle of the horseshoe. And what happens down in the middle of the horseshoe? That’s where you put all the bad stuff, just push it down the hill. You keep your nice house up on the hill, and you put all the toxic manufacturing down here. You put all the horses down here. You put anything that’s sort of less than pleasant down in Gowanus.” The challenge, for Vogel, is to persuade the LPC to regard the “lessthan-pleasant” stuff of Gowanus’s working-class history as worthy of protection. The agency’s criteria demand “a special character or special historical or aesthetic interest or value as part of the development, heritage, or cultural characteristics of the City, state, or nation.” The Coalition has suggested 15 sites in Gowanus for preservation, including the first stop of Vogel’s tour: the Union Street Bridge Control Tower, which operates the still-functional but rarely opened double-leaf bascule bridge that forms the Gowanus Canal’s northernmost crossing. Vogel mentioned that the city had already sought once in recent memory to replace the bascule bridge with a fixed bridge, which would render the control tower disposable. At the time, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, where Vogel serves as captain, pointed out that the EPA’s Superfund cleanup would require heavy equipment entering the polluted canal by barge, and a fixed bridge would

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block its entrance. The city decided to put off the new bridge idea until the end of the cleanup. After that, the bascule bridge and its control tower, the youngest site on the Coalition’s list, will likely reappear on the city’s chopping block. Vogel praised the tower’s Mid-Century Modern style and its “lovely pistachio-colored glazed tile.” “Some people in the LPC would probably say this is ‘too utilitarian,’” he lamented. “However, that’s one thing the Gowanus Coalition is really working on, saying to the LPC, ‘Look, in Gowanus, there are a lot of buildings that are important to this place that might not look like a pristine architectural gem from the Upper East Side or the West Village, but they mean a lot to us, and we think you need to have a more expansive sense of what is a landmark.’” Subsequently, the group visited the former National Packing Box Company (circa 1910) at 543 Union Street, which after a fire in 1932 switched its production from boxes to brass and cabinetry; the Gowanus Station (circa 1913) at 234 Butler Street, a city property sold to a sanitation repair company in 1978; and the R.G. Dun and Company Building (circa 1914) at 206 Nevins Street, an old printing facility that began to manufacture plastics in the 1960s. Vogel acknowledged the visible “accretion of changes as the building[s] adapted to different uses.” This can be a problem for the LPC, which tends to prefer structures that represent pure, unaltered examples of the architectural periods that birthed them. But as Vogel sees it, “in Gowanus, part of the story is the changes and the accumulation of different things over time. That’s part of what makes interesting history in this neighborhood.” Some of the abovementioned sites may continue to stand, at least in some form, after the rezoning. In a deal with the EPA regarding the Gowanus Station, which the city reacquired via eminent domain last year, the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation agreed to dismantle the structure carefully enough to allow for the reconstruction of its Beaux-Arts façade after the installation of a Combined Sewage Overflow tank or tunnel beneath the property. Vogel also reported that the owner of R.G. Dun and Company plant will make use of federal tax credits for the restoration of historic structures to convert the building’s interior into offices. But for many of the other disused factories in the area, nothing stands in the way of demolition, since the LPC has so far designated only two official landmarks in Gowanus: the Carroll Street Bridge and the Coignet Stone Building at 360 3rd Avenue, next to Whole Foods.

Brad Vogel leads the rainy tour. (photo by Yates)

additional landmarks, but Lander refused on account of an unwillingness to work with the Coalition members from FROGG (Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus), a supposedly antidevelopment group that he’d deemed toxic. Parts of Gowanus belong to Council Member Stephen Levin’s district, but Levin has largely deferred to Lander on issues related to the rezoning. Vogel’s tour ended at the ASPCA Memorial Building at 233 Butler Street. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals constructed its Brooklyn headquarters in Gowanus in 1913 to care for the neighborhood’s horses, since the area had many stables, and a large concrete trough, built into the sidewalk, still

fronts the building, which now houses the music venue Public Records. Vogel complimented the structure’s “neo-Romanesque arches and all the little brickwork arcades up top” and doubted whether the new buildings in Gowanus would be as attractive. “I do feel like we have a problem right now that buildings are being built in the most generic way possible. Part of what the exterior of a building does is in a city is it gives something back to the community, and right now, buildings are being built that aren’t cognizant of that. It’s all about the view from the inside, and it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. In the past, there was much more of this give-and-take.”

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According to Vogel, in a face-to-face meeting, the Coalition asked Gowanus’s councilman, Brad Lander, to write a letter to the LPC to request consideration for their 15 proposed

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June 2019, Page 17

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STAR REVUE

The last days of the Swift Folder

by Brett Yates

costing $5,000. Reich put it together reluctantly.

ince 1996, the Swift Folder – the internationally renowned folding bicycle – has assisted New Yorkers whose complicated commutes typically feature some combination of walk-up apartments, crowded trains, office elevators, and city streets. How many of them know that its inventor lives and works in Gowanus?

According to Reich, the aluminum iteration of the Folder is lighter than the steel, and he “can’t tell the difference” in the ride. In either case, it’s “an incredibly overbuilt, stiff frame. Steel’s supposed to be supple, but if it was supple, it would’ve broken because it’s not triangulated the way a regular frame is.”

At the time, industrial designer Peter Reich wasn’t much of a cyclist. “I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. My father was horrified by the idea of any child of his riding on the street, so I didn’t even learn to ride a bike until I was 18,” he recalled.

Xootr stopped production of the Folder in 2018. “They knew it was time to do something different because they’d been making exactly the same bike for 12 years, and people get bored,” Reich explained.

A Pratt Institute grad, he came across a cheap loft in Gowanus in 1983, which he rented as commercial space but used as an under-the-radar residence with his wife, an artist. Two years later, he got his hands on a small workshop on the other side of the industrial complex’s courtyard, which became the headquarters of his company Design Mobility, Inc. Both spaces still belong to him. He’d always had an interest in lightweight, portable designs that didn’t take up much space. In 1980, the movie Altered States popularized sensory deprivation tanks as a form of alternative medicine; floatation centers charged for sessions by the hour. Reich built “a do-it-yourself, easy-to-build, easy-tostore floatation tank” for private use that could be assembled and disassembled in an apartment. He’d also worked on devices for people with disabilities, including a wheelchair-accessible taxi. The disability rights advocate Curtis Brewer, a quadriplegic, hired him to design a foldable patient lift (a device that transfers people with limited mobility from chairs to beds) that he could store in a closet. “It wouldn’t be a piece of hardware cluttering up the room, making it obvious that there was something different about this guy,” Reich described. In the early ‘90s, the bicycle designer George Bliss connected Reich to the cycling activist Jan VanderTuin, who had recently moved to Eugene, Oregon. On a trip to the West Coast, Reich met up with VanderTuin, and the two formed an idea to create a folding bicycle. Back home, Reich drew up plans, and VanderTuin turned the drawings into bikes. After three years and seven prototypes, Bliss sold the

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In New York, Citi Bike had swallowed some of the customer base for folding bikes. Meanwhile, Brompton Bikes, a larger folding bicycle operation, “had sort of flooded the market.” A folded Brompton is smaller than a folded Swift, but while the former must be carried, the latter can be rolled. “I use 20-inch wheels; Brompton always uses 16-inch,” Reich clarified. “The whole idea with the Swift was basically to make it as large as possible while still staying in your personal space – to not compromise it for the fold, to use as many standard parts as possible. 20-inch wheels are all over the place; BMX bikes use them. Any bike shop has the tube.” first Swift Folder at the Hub Station, his store in Manhattan. Before getting into the bike business, Reich had, out of curiosity, already bought a Moulton – the first massproduced, collapsible, small-wheeled bicycle, circa 1962 – at a yard sale in the Carolinas. He also owned a Dahon, which remains a major player in the folding bicycle industry. “This’ll sound horribly egotistical, but there was nothing as good as a Swift,” Reich bragged. Most of the folding bikes that rode relatively nicely, like Bike Friday’s, were suitcase-friendly touring bikes for travelers, designed to be unfolded and refolded once over the course of a weekend trip. The existing commuter bikes that folded quickly were not “confidence-inspiring.” While its heavier competitors featured “a big hinge-plate right in the middle” of the frame, the Swift used a releasable seat-post to collapse its frame. Undo two clamps, and ten seconds later, the size of the bike is halved.

After a write-up in New York Magazine, sales picked up, and VanderTuin could no longer meet demand. Reich found a factory in New Jersey that could manufacture 50 bikes in a single go. Then, at a conference in Philadelphia, Reich met brothers Karl and Nathan Ulrich of Xootr, and a partnership emerged. Reich called it “a match made in heaven.” Xootr contracted a factory in Taiwan to manufacture an aluminum version of the previously steel Folder, shipping containers of 400 frames at a time. One such container made its way to Reich, who still uses the frames to create custom-built Folders in Gowanus for customers who may want specific components that differ from those that come with the standardized version. Xootr charged about $800 for the mass-produced Folder; for his custom bikes, Reich prefers not to charge much more than that, but a loyal customer once asked him for a tricked-out Folder that, due to its topof-the-line components, ended up

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Both Brompton and Dahon “have their own saddles, their own stems, their own handlebars, everything that could tailor the bike to you – you’re stuck with their stuff. Swifts will accept whatever comes down the pike.” By email (swiftfolders@gmail.com), Reich still takes orders for custom-built Swift Folders, but he has only 17 frames left of the original 400. “It’s really the end of an era,” he sighed. “You tell your readers that if they want an heirloomquality bike in limited supply, if they act now, they can still get one.” Reich hasn’t necessarily given up on bikes for the future, though – recently, he drew up a design for a titanium Swift. “As we speak, somewhere deep in mainland China, Titan Industries is working on a prototype for a new frame for me,” he divulged. He worries, however, that the titanium Swift will cost too much: “This was always supposed to be a practical, everyday bike.” He also feels that, “given that Brompton and Dahon are all over nowadays, it’s not like I have (continued on page 22)

June 2019

the red hook

‘Cycling in the City’ takes twowheeled journey into NYC past by Brett Yates

hat do 19th-century dandies, first-wave feminists, commuters, messengers, deliverymen, recreationalists, environmentalists, and competitive athletes have in common? Many of them are (or were) cyclists. As the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition “Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History” shows, New York’s erratic relationship with the bicycle owes to the disparities in social status of these groups, each of which cycles in its own way, with its own needs. The exhibition opened in March at 1220 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Curators Donald Albrecht and Evan Friss divided the exhibition into three main parts, labeled Cultures, Landscapes, and Machines. The impressive collection of “machines” includes high-wheelers from the 1860s, a racing bike from the 1930s, a tandem tricycle with side-by-side seating, and the track bicycle used by legendary New York City messenger Fast Eddie Williams in the 1990s. The Cultures wall showcases organizations such as the Puerto Rican Schwinn Club in Bushwick and the Black Label Bike Club (an “outlaw” group in Bedford-Stuyvesant whose members “live together, ride together, work together, and party together”), as well as trends like bike polo on the Lower East Side and lowriders in Latino sections of the Bronx. On the other side of the room, Landscapes highlights the contributions of figures like Robert Moses and Michael Bloomberg to the city’s cycling infrastructure. Together, these three sections tell the story of the two-wheeled device known first as the “velocipede.” In New York City, it began life in 1819 as an ostentatious plaything of the entitled rich, whose pleasure jaunts rapidly began to block traffic on upper Broadway and Riverside Drive. In the late 19th century, the popularity of bikes grew, and in 1880 the city banned them from public parks – relenting, to a certain degree, three years later, by granting “proficient” cyclists from “established” clubs the

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right to apply for a special license. Around the same time, bicycles became a symbol of the nascent women’s rights movement, as suffragists like Susan B. Anthony, in learning to ride, found a new way to navigate the city without male assistance. Anthony claimed that bikes had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” In the 1890s, America’s first significant bike path opened on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, leading to Coney Island. The bicycle “fad” dwindled around the turn of the century but returned thanks to the Great Depression, which slowed automobile sales. Moses, as Parks Commissioner, used the New Deal to build bike paths in parks for fitness enthusiasts and nature lovers, but his interest didn’t extend to practical, everyday cyclists on the streets. The curators here have unearthed letters to Moses from 1930s schoolkids who complained that, although the paths in the parks were nice, they needed a way to get to the parks on their bicycles in order to be able to use them.

Tearing up bike lanes Later, Mayor Ed Koch promoted cycling in response to the 1980 transit strike, but he ended up tearing out his own bike lanes in Manhattan quickly after installing them. In 1987, he banned cycling in Midtown between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Koch’s purpose was to allow largely affluent, white commuters to get to work and leave on their bikes during rush hour, while simultaneously cracking down on working-class, often black or Latino bike messengers, who had acquired a dodgy reputation in the eyes of some. (To others, they were real-life action heroes.) The messengers protested and defeated the ban. Today, New York City has the most bike commuters in the nation. It also has the most total commuters; in fact, as of 2017, only 1.3 percent of them use a bike, compared to 6.3 percent in Portland, Oregon, and 41 percent in Copenhagen, Denmark, but the figure for New York still represents a 129 percent increase since 2006. Because Mayor Bill de Blasio has added to Bloomberg’s legacy, New York now has over 100 miles of bike lanes, facilitating 460,000 daily cycling trips. Citi Bike is nearly as popular as every all the other U.S. bikeshare operations put together. Still, some of the old problems remain. Protests over the two-way bike lane on Prospect Park West in 2010 showed that wealthy Park Slope homeowners still regarded cyclists as dangerous riffraff. On the other hand,

Cycling has been around for a long time, based upon this exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

some residents of Sunnyside, Queens, saw the installation of bike lanes as a harbinger of gentrification in 2018. U.S. studies indicate that workingclass cyclists, who use bikes because they can’t afford cars, vastly outnumber wealthy cyclists who may prefer bikes for health or environmental reasons, but the opposite perception persists because city planners tend to ignore the former group: bike lanes usually appear only when the condos go up. Importantly, De Blasio has refused to legalize the throttle-assist electric bikes used by immigrant food deliverymen, allowing the NYPD to continue to extract millions of dollars

Uber Pilots InApp Bike Lane Alerts by Erin DeGregorio Uber announced last month that it’s piloting a new, in-app safety feature using publicly available mapping data in three select U.S. cities, including New York. The feature pinpoints where bike lanes and shared roads are in the city, and will encourage Uber drivers to safely coordinate pick-ups and drop-offs away from bike lanes.

in fines and bike confiscations from low-income New Yorkers. A single ticket can cost $500. Meanwhile, the city legalized similar pedal-activated e-bikes in 2018 to pave the way for a new fleet of motorized Citi Bikes. “Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History” ends October 6. Red Hook makes two appearances in the exhibition: a clip of the annual Red Hook Crit (canceled for 2019) plays alongside footage of other New York City cycling races, not far from a dramatic 2005 photo of “100 Wheels of Death: The Brooklyn Bike Brawl,” in which riders gathered in Red Hook to play “chicken” with partners sitting on their shoulders.

With this method, riders and drivers reach towards the car door with their faraway hand, twist their body towards the window, and look over their shoulder before slowly opening the door to safely exit. “This pilot is just the start,” said Kristin Smith, a road safety product marketing manager at Uber, in a statement. “We look forward to continue working with safety experts to increase awareness and build safety products for everyone – regardless of the mode of transportation.”

Riders will receive a push notification informing them whether their upcoming drop-off is near a bike line or along a bike route. Additionally, it’ll remind them to take a second and look out for people on bikes before opening their door – a means to prevent “dooring.” The Dutch Reach, pioneered in the bike-friendly Netherlands, is a universal technique when exiting a vehicle that makes road travel safer for cyclists.

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June 2019, Page 19

the red hook

Red Hook Masseur Totes Massage Table and Equipment by Bike by Erin DeGregorio Long gone are the days of clinicians making old-fashioned house calls to patients at their convenience and in the comfort of their own homes. But one masseur has been making house calls since 2011 – and all on two wheels through the busy streets of Brooklyn. Kip Yates, 49, is a New York State licensed and insured massage therapist and certified prenatal massage therapist, having trained at the Swedish Institute. While he currently operates out of a SoHo studio, Yates also provides home services, such as Swedish wellness and recuperative deep tissue massage therapy in 30, 60 and 90-minute increments, to those living in South Brooklyn. He preps his Madsen cargo bike, secures his massage table onto the back and bikes to clients’ homes, usually within two or three miles of his own home in Red Hook. “I wanted to provide that service because not many people do it anymore. It was also my way of lessening my carbon imprint and also throwing back those savings back to my customers, so they didn’t have to pay me extra for gas and [other] charges like that,” Yates said as he recalled starting this practice nearly a decade ago. “I also think I’m still the only massage therapist in the city who makes house calls on bike.” He explained that Zeel, a then online company that connected customers with therapists for same-day massages, had inspired him to go a step – or rather a peddle – further with his services via bicycle. Since 2011 he’s built up a good base with his business “Massage Refresh,” now seeing weekly, bi-weekly, monthly clients and those who call when they need him at the last minute. His house calls do have an additional charge, depending on how far the residence is. “If I have to peddle 30 or more minutes to see you, it’s going to be a little bit of an extra cost for the wear and tear of the bike,” he said. “If I have to peddle 5 to 10 minutes to you, there’s no extra cost.” For those who already have their own massage tables in their homes, Yates still makes the trip on a smaller bike, rather than relying on a car or mass transit.

Bike schematics

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before he started using it for professional purposes. “It was used as transport for my kids because the cargo bike came with two seats (one facing the front and one facing the back) and you can put up to four children in it.” The bicycle has four sets of seatbelts, which are currently used as harnesses to secure the massage table, the massage cart and any other necessary equipment for the trips. The massage table juts out a little bit on each side of the bike, which hardly interferes with Yates’s biking or his surroundings. To date Yates has never had a table fall off his bike – though he noted, with a laugh, that he’s actually tipped the bike a few times, but with all the equipment staying safe, secure and in place inside the cargo space. Though biking comes with its pros, like building up leg muscles and helping to maintain a healthy lifestyle, Yates also noted that he always has to stay cautious when riding through the borough – navigating cars driving in bike lanes, riding around double parked cars in bike lanes, and avoiding broken glass on the roads. He mainly

relegates his paths to protected bike lanes, rarely riding on busy thoroughfares that aren’t designed for cycling. Moving forward, Yates, who’s lived in Red Hook with his family for the past two years, says he’s starting to establish a presence within the neighborhood. “As a man pushing 50, I don’t see myself slowing down anytime soon,” he said. “I already have a really good online presence throughout the city. But I’m trying keep [the practice] regulated in Red Hook, which is why – later this year – I’m planning on having a complete change in dynamic.”

Yates’s goal is to restructure and launch an in-house service right here in Red Hook, with the hope to be more physically rooted within the community and to coin the business name “Red Hook Massage.” He already has an eye on a couple of spaces in the meantime. He also hopes to hire other therapists who would be comfortable riding around on bikes, and thus also to invest in a few more Madsens for that purpose down the road. For more information about Yates and his practice, visit massagerefresh.com.

Bike bag company combines fashion and functionality

by Erin DeGregorio

ndustrial designer Maria Boustead thought of the idea for a functional and versatile bicycle bag back in 2009 when she couldn’t find one that was both bike-compatible for her work commutes and stylish enough to take into her office. Backpacks made her back too sweaty, and shoulder bags would swing around and annoyingly fall down her arm while she rode; plus, traditional bike bags were big, clunky and not intended to be carried off the bike. “Why hasn’t any company thought to do this yet?” she wondered, and then decided to solve the problem herself.

“I was seeing how more and more people were biking for transportation all the time, especially in cities across the country that were putting in more bike lanes and bike-sharing,” Boustead said. “It seemed like a good opportunity to create a brand and products that addressed some kind of crossover with lifestyle.” Since then, her Po Campo brand, which has its headquarters in Bushwick, has grown to be a celebration of the active urban lifestyle by offering bike, yoga and casual travel bags built for experiencing the richness of city life – and looking good while doing it. Boustead believes that you should be able to enjoy a bicycling lifestyle and the benefits of city cycling without having to compromise on either style or functionality.

It’s all in the details She explained that originally she started thinking about all the different bike trips somebody might make and what he or she would carry on those different kinds of trips. So she narrowed the scenarios down to biking to work (having a bag that would work with the commute and would also look office appropriate) and going out at night for dinner or hanging out with

friends (having a smaller bag that could hold the essentials). Boustead also felt the bike bags that were available in the market were boring, style-wise. “Everything is black – and there’s nothing wrong with black – but it just looks so basic,” she said. “To me, biking is so fun and your little adventure every day and those feelings are not coming across in the design at all. We wanted to have something a little more expressive, joyful and fun available to people.” As a result, Po Campo bags are available in black and a variety of colorful prints and patterns. They’re made of weatherproof, vegan fabrics and feature practical details, such reflective accents for extra visibility at night, intuitively placed interior and exterior pockets and a place to clip on your bike light or set of keys. For example, a Po Campo bag, which has adjustable and secure velcro straps for placement on the bike itself, later converts into a crossbody or handheld bag to carry throughout the day. “All of the attachments kind of blend into the design of the bag,” she added. “In my design training, I remember one of my mentors said that [the object or prod-

Yates had his Madsen cargo bike even

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June 2019

uct] has to work well and has to also be beautiful – and if you fail at one, then you didn’t do your job. That really stuck with me.”

A New York state of mind According to the 2017 report on American Community Survey Data by the League of American Bicyclists, 1.3 percent of commuters (51,733 people) biked to work in NYC – a 169.9 percent increase between 2000 and 2017. City residents often have to lug their bicycles up and down flights of stairs to their apartments or don’t even have the space to store them at home. That’s why Boustead feels Citi Bike has really taken off here because cyclists don’t have to worry about dealing with those situations. With that said, Po Campo was the first company to introduce a bag designed for bike share systems, including Citi Bike, Divvy in Chicago and Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C. Po Campo describes their Unisex Bike Share Bag 2.0 thusly: “We designed the Bike Share Bag to secure into the weird front basket of bike share bikes, so you can carry what you need without worrying about stuff getting smashed by the bike’s super taut bungee or falling out of the basket all together.”

10-year milestone Over the last decade, Boustead and her team have learned how to make bags more efficient and to prioritize what features customers value more than others. And while the designs have changed, the heart of the product has pretty much remained the same. “[Reaching the 10th anniversary] feels amazing because I appreciate how far we’ve come. Definitely every business owner can say there are a lot of ups and downs; sometimes the downs are such dark periods that you say it’s just not worth it – but I’m so glad we stuck with it,” Boustead said. “It makes me very proud and I want to keep going for everybody else that needs a bag in their life.” Moving forward, Po Campo will continue to keep micro-mobility trends in mind, thinking more about sustainability and supporting cyclists who bike in evolving urban environments.

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Bushwick to Red Hook by bike by Brett Yates One of the great misfortunes of my life is that I don’t live in Red Hook. The distance between my apartment in Bushwick (near the border of BedStuy) and the Star-Revue office at the foot of Van Brunt Street is six miles. Google Maps says the journey takes 37 minutes by bike, but I can do it in 30 if I’m motivated. Since I do most of my actual writing at home, I don’t have to come to the office every day, but I like to stop in and chat about ideas with George and Nathan, and then I also cover events in Red Hook. It’s not a bad commute, at least now that winter is over. Before I moved to Brooklyn, I was a fairly experienced urban cyclist in San Francisco. I got pretty good at it because I was always late for work and had to become powerful and fearless in order to turn my 23-minute commute into an 18-minute commute. SF has brutal hills but no snow or ice and not as much rain as NYC. All in all, I’d probably take the hills, especially since they come with more bike lanes per mile of blacktop, but Brooklyn isn’t too bad either. After I got here, I traded in my touring bike with a triple crankset for a singlespeed road bike. I arrived expecting everyone in Brooklyn to ride a fixie – stereotype-ridden anti-hipster polemics from the mid-2000s had informed my perception of the borough – but by now the fixie trend is basically over. I’m not sure Brooklynites have the energy to be hipsters anymore. Trump’s election probably ended the era. Now, when I do encounter a rider on a fixed-gear bike with no brakes, it’s sort of exciting: since the posers have abandoned the fad, the only people still left on those bikes are hardcore nutcases, and if I catch one in front of me in the bike lane, I know it’ll be a great challenge to keep up without getting arrested or running anyone over. These riders seem to inhabit a never-ending action movie.

One time, on DeKalb Avenue, I got a ticket for running a red light on my bike. Bicyclists run red lights all the time – the standard practice, except at particularly dangerous crossings, is to treat them more like stop signs or yield signs and to hope that, if there are any cops in the vicinity, they’ll regard this discreet illegality as a victimless crime and choose to look the other way. In this case, I committed the infraction directly in front of a squad car, so brazenly that it must’ve looked like a deliberate act of disrespect, so I don’t blame the officer for stopping me. In a throwback to my San Francisco habits, I was running late for a work event, and my frantic energy overwhelmed my judgment. The violation cost about $200. Drivers deeply resent cyclists who don’t strictly follow the rules of the road. We’re supposed to, but the truth is that the rules were written for cars, and bikes aren’t cars. The main difference is the effort of acceleration: if every cyclist truly had to come to a complete stop at every stop sign, hardly anyone would ever bike, and the world would be a dirtier, unhealthier place. In part, drivers dislike cyclists because they believe that cyclists are self-righteous and feel superior on account of their greener, more active mode of transportation. The reason drivers believe this is that it’s true. Cars suck. When building a city, planners should aim primarily to create an environment where people mostly don’t need to use them. If legislators gave cyclists their own set of rules for the road, the perception of “special treatment” would so anger the drivers as to inspire violent conflict. Instead, urban cycling (as it’s actually practiced) lives in a state of slippery legality, with mixed levels of enforcement. On the whole, the authorities recognize that even reckless cyclists don’t pose the same menace to public safety as their counterparts behind the wheel, but in communities of color, they might go as far as to arrest cyclists for riding on the sidewalk, for instance. I don’t think many people would ride on the sidewalk if they had better options. In addition to my work in Red Hook, which offers a mostly safe pas-

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sage through Downtown Brooklyn, I do freelance assignments for a newspaper in Canarsie, which means riding through Brownsville on my way to various meetings. I’m always worried that a driver will kill me on the way. Bike lanes are hard to come by in that part of Brooklyn. I’ve had two run-ins with cars in my cycling career. The first was in San Francisco. The other was near my apartment in Bushwick, when I tried to make a left turn from Broadway onto Palmetto Street, and a car hit me from behind just after I’d finished checking for oncoming traffic. Drivers sometimes get frustrated when they’re stuck behind bikes, even when the bike is traveling at the speed of traffic, and they experience a need to pass at all costs. At the same time that I began to make my left turn, the driver decided to pass me on the left. She braked when she realized what was happening, but it was a little too late. By that point, my bike was almost perpendicular to the car, and the impact knocked me to the ground. She seemed to think it was my fault. It’s possible that I didn’t use my arm to signal my turn ahead of time; I don’t remember. I stood up, brushed myself off, and told the driver I was fine. With my permission, she left. In fact, I had a small bruise on my back and a broken wheel, but it was no big deal. The driver behind her stopped as he passed and rolled down the window while I got my bearings. “You should’ve stayed on the ground, called an ambulance, and sued the hell out of her,” he said.

“I’m not sure Brooklynites have the energy to be hipsters anymore. Trump’s election probably ended the era.”

June 2019, Page 21

Oyster Past is Prologue, by Richard Dodd

“Lost World: UN Report Shows Nature on Death’s Door” was released at the May 2019 Biodiversity Summit in Paris. This 1800-page document carried the lede “Human activity is trashing the planet, pushing hundreds of thousands of species to the brink.” I’m an environmentalist and received coastal stewardship training and certification with Rutgers University. This led to my volunteer work with a movement launched by two educators at the Harbor School on Governors Island, Murray Fisher and Peter Malinowski, to save New York Harbor. This waterway, part of the HudsonRaritan Estuary, was on death’s doorstep. Once an ecological wonder brimming with marine life and celebrated as the Oyster Capital of the World in Mark Kurlansky’s book The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, it had become an ecological dead zone. In 2014 Fisher and Malinowski created the Billion Oyster Project (BOP) as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. They applied for and received a fivemillion-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. They had initial funding to launch this citizen-science initiative. Now the real work would begin. Their back-to-the-future goal was to reintroduce creatures whose origins dated back over 100 million years to restore this fragile waterway. Oysters are a keystone species that perform a wonderful sort of environmental alchemy: they convert polluted water into purified habitat. In fact, they have been called the kidneys of our estuaries. An adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day. BOP calculated that a billion oysters - populating over 100 reefs - could clean and recycle New York Harbor every 72 hours by 2035. The good news for this initiative was the enactment of the Federal Clean Water Act of 1972 that legislated all waters in the United States would be fishable and swimmable by 1983. Further, there would be “zero discharge” of pollutants in our waterways by 1985. However, in 2018 over 27 billion gallons of untreated wastewater fouled New York Harbor. How could that happen? Poor planning and underinvestment in sewage treatment systems resulted in alarming discharges of contaminated water triggered by storm and rain runoffs.

BOP faced serious barriers to success beyond raw sewage runoff. Oysters were susceptible to two diseases, MSX and Dermo, that could devastate entire reef populations. The BOP team needed to grow and release disease-resistant oysters that would adapt, thrive and reproduce on resilient reefs. They required millions of oyster shells to provide substrate for baby oysters to attach to. Community involvement and an active volunteer program were essential pillars to support program success. Finally, they needed a continuous stream of funding to make the project viable for long term sustainability.

Great beginnings The results to date are positive. Over 30 million oysters have been restored. More than one million pounds of oyster shells have been donated by over 80 participating restaurants. An environmental army of thousands of middle school and high school students from urban backgrounds have been trained to acquire maritime skills to grow oysters, build oyster reef infrastructure, scuba dive, operate vessels, and conduct research. Fisher and Malinowski’s plan to restore New York Harbor by unleashing an ancient species of pollution-gobbling superheroes had been launched, but could it actually succeed? Would history record them as ecosystem visionaries or practitioners of environmental sorcery? Perhaps, they have already won. You see they stumbled onto a discovery bordering on an epiphany. Their environmental project paled in contrast to the movement they created. Children put down their smartphones and adults traded in briefcases for pliers to build oyster cages on Governors Island. Restaurants mobilized and donated oyster shells for reef restoration. Generational cohorts drawn from Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y Millennials and Generation Z Centennials became environmental stewards forever linked to restoring New York Harbor. Fisher and Malinowski recently announced a goal to teach one million students in the metropolitan area on the benefits and steps needed to restore New York Harbor. This is a celebration of hope over cynicism. It’s a bridge to tomorrow connected to the prehistoric past.

To commemorate this “Back to the Future” citizen-science initiative, they hosted their fifth annual Billion Oyster Party on May 9 at The Liberty Warehouse on Pier 41 in the historic Red Hook section of Brooklyn. This sold-out event attracted 1500 oyster revelers and raised over $370,000. Oyster farms from California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and other aquaculture farming areas shucked over 25,000 succulent oysters paired with beer, wine, tequila, vodka and a wonderful assortment of beverages. An array of sponsors including Bloomberg Philanthropy, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Open Table, Tito’s Vodka, Bluepoint Brewing Company, and others united to support this cause. New York Harbor, once on death’s doorstep, is now a feel-good story of community mobilization to restore it. Richard Dodd is a freelance writer and environmentalist. His op-ed piece “Rage of the Ashes” was featured in Susan Shapiro’s bestseller The Byline Bible. His critically acclaimed debut novel Betrayal by Blood and Demons –written under the pen name Ian McBride–is rated five stars on Amazon. He is from Princeton, NJ, and volunteers with the Waterfront Alliance Bil-

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Page 22 Red Hook Star-Revue

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to worry about making folding bikes for the world anymore.” If he retires from the bike business, Reich will work on some of his other ideas – an ultralight, three-wheeled, electric car; a wheelchair-accessible pedicab – as long as he has a place to work on them. Despite the upcoming Gowanus rezoning, his loft on Nevins Street (now a legitimate residence) appears to be safe – the new landlord plans to update the building rather than tear it down – but his studio behind the National Packing Box Company factory could easily disappear. And as he tries to imagine what Gowanus will look like after gentrification, he’s not fully sure that he and his wife will want to stay anyway. “We’ve been really lucky to have found unwanted industrial space,” he acknowledged. “And how long would anyone expect unwanted industrial space in Brooklyn to stay unwanted? It’s been affordable, and the only reason we have it is that industry changed, and industry left. I’m sure, push comes to shove, there’s industry dying somewhere else.”

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June 2019

Brett Yates: The Tonnage of the World

Get rid of the specialized high schools

he last day of school in New York City is June 26. Congratulations, students and teachers!

When classes start again in September, the city’s elite specialized high schools, Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, will welcome 895 and 803 new freshmen, respectively. As nearly everyone who follows local news must already know, at Stuyvesant High School, only seven members (0.07 percent) of the class of 2023 will be black. The Bronx High School of Science will have 12 black ninth-graders. 26 percent of public school students citywide are black. The numbers above are undeniably abysmal, but Mayor de Blasio’s proposal to increase diversity in the specialized schools – by abandoning the standardized SHSAT exam and instituting a system that would award spots to the top students (by GPA) in every public middle school – remains a source of ceaseless controversy. It has ignited a battle that pits minority groups in New York City against one another: the change would secure significantly more seats for black and Latino students at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, but it would cost AsianAmerican students their current majority, roughly halving their numbers at the specialized high schools. Blacks and Latino families, on average, have lower incomes than Asian families in New York City, but that doesn’t mean that Stuyvesant or Bronx Science is a bastion of privilege, and working-class Chinese families in Brooklyn and Queens, whose kids earned their slots at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science by studying hard, bristle at the notion that the SHSAT is elitist. As they see it, it’s the opposite: the SHSAT ensures that admission to Stuyvesant has nothing to do with what you look like or where you come from – all that matters is your test score.

Still, many New Yorkers recognize a problem. They know that black and Latino students are smart, too, and if the SHSAT doesn’t recognize their abilities, the test must be flawed. This, it seems, is how de Blasio sees it. For him, the glitch is undeniable. “Can anyone look the parent of a Latino or black child in the eye and tell them their precious daughter or son has an equal chance to get into one of their city’s best high schools?” he asked last year. Amid all the debate provoked by that question, the assumption that New York City should have a set of “best high schools” has gone largely unquestioned, even as the phrase openly repudiates the central promise of public education, which is that everyone gets the same quality of education. Americans know it hasn’t worked out that way, but in New York City, the inequality is built-in: it predesignates a particular group of schools

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as superior and then allows students from around the city to compete to enter them. Compared to the basic affront to equality that this system represents, the particular mechanism by which “gifted” students qualify for their elite educations seems relatively insignificant. The very obvious solution to the specialized high schools’ diversity conundrum is here: get rid of the specialized high schools. They’re an ugly, embarrassing testament to America’s insistence upon inserting hierarchy into all things, including public services for children. What is the point of them? What, exactly, are we trying to accomplish here? For the New York City Department of Education, the covert purpose of the specialized high schools is to buy the acquiescence of ambitious families in underserved areas: these parents believe that huge swaths of the outer boroughs have no decent facilities for their kids, but the inadequacy of the school in their own neighborhood doesn’t trouble them so much because they’re focused on getting their child into Stuyvesant instead. For New Yorkers on the whole, the existence of Stuyvesant makes the perceived mediocrity of the zoned high schools conscionable: as long as every student has a fair chance to earn an escape, we can allow those who don’t to languish. Those who do escape receive the privilege of joining a hothouse of frantic academic competition, with its concomitant mental health crises. There’s little room for creativity or joy in learning. When students enter, they already tend to suffer from an undue focus on grades and test scores and the need to succeed at all costs (that’s how they got in), and thenceforth their universally like-minded peer group compounds the problem in an atmosphere of nonstop stress. There are other ways of looking at the world, other ways of perceiving life’s meaning, but Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are designed to ensure that their students are unlikely to encounter them. Proponents of diversity at the specialized high schools will never acknowledge that the specialized high schools inherently constitute a form of segregation, regardless of their racial demographics. For the ruling class, the racial diversity of the specialized high schools matters for reasons of public relations. The schools operate in the fashion of scholarship programs at top universities. Their function is to isolate and retrain the (supposedly) most talented kids from low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in order to make them eligible for high-level positions within America’s fake meritocracy, which uses the “diversity” generated by their compliant presence to

“For New Yorkers on the whole, the existence of Stuyvesant makes the perceived mediocrity of the zoned high schools conscionable: as long as every student has a fair chance to earn an escape, we can allow those who don’t to languish.” make a case for its own legitimacy. What if we let the “smart” kids actually spend some time around the “normal” kids, even around the “dumb” kids? What if they learned to value solidarity instead of individual advancement? What if they came to understand that their entire communities matter, not just themselves? Defenders of the specialized high schools would argue that New York’s brightest kids won’t reach their full potential if they have to share an educational environment with slower pupils. To a certain degree, this may be true: an institution of real diversity – meaning a student body possessed of a wide variety of abilities, interests, and worldviews – might not incite in its pupils the same all-consuming drive toward a very particular kind of excellence that Stuyvesant does. But so what? No one becomes a great scientist or engineer at age 16. Is it so important to be the best as a teenager? Do we expect the future discoverer of the cure for cancer or the next world-class poet to be a high school valedictorian? No, not really, but the grotesque stratification of American society – the vast disparity between the top and bottom – creates an anxiety that prompts early action: parents’ horror at the prospect of their children spending their lives at the bottom of our cruel economic food chain convinces them of the necessity of putting their kids on the “right track” from the beginning. If their kindergarten doesn’t have STEM programming, will Google ever hire them? As adults, we all sort of remember deep down that, most of the time, adolescent hormones don’t allow teenagers to absorb complex academic subject matter on any meaningful level, no matter how fine the instruction. Basic social interactions are hard enough. What really matters at that age, in a long-term sense, is building emotional health, curiosity, compassion, and the capacity for creativity – all the stuff that doesn’t especially interest the corporate interests that increasingly dictate our schools’ curricula. The irony of the frenzy surrounding specialized high school admissions is that Stuyvesant and Bronx Science don’t really matter that much even

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within the terms that their supporters value. Kids who go to Stuyvesant aren’t successful in school because they go to Stuyvesant; they’re successful because they’re the sort of kids who could get into Stuyvesant – that is, they have probably at least a tiny bit of inborn scholastic aptitude, but more importantly, they have parents who cared enough about their academic fate to make sure that they prepared well enough for the SHSAT to get a high score. That concern would still exist if Stuyvesant didn’t, and in most cases it would guide them to success regardless of which school they might attend. This isn’t to deny the differences between public schools in New York City, or to gloss over problems of underfunding or overcrowding. But these differences probably account for a much smaller part of the discrepancy in outcomes between kids who go to “good” schools and kids who go to “bad” schools than most people would like to admit. Why are most “bad” schools bad? Because the children they serve are poor, and poverty hampers kids’ ability to learn in all sorts of ways. School reform is usually a cover story for a refusal to make other reforms. In other words, it’s a lot easier to blame teachers, or to build charter schools, or even to concoct an “innovative” new method of pedagogy than it is to end poverty. Desegregating schools hasn’t been easy at all – the United States hasn’t made any progress in decades – but to most it still feels like a more achievable goal than desegregating neighborhoods (which would desegregate the schools as a secondary effect, in addition to solving a host of other problems). Personally, I’m in favor of always saying what we really want, not the thing we’ve been told we can have, and creating diversity in every part of New York wouldn’t be so hard – we could build public housing on the Upper East Side if we felt like it – but hardly anyone expects it to happen. For this reason, if New York City ended the practice of having eighth-graders apply to high schools and instead simply sent them to schools in their areas (as one would do in any society that wasn’t fundamentally broken in some

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YATES

(continued from previous page) other fashion), outrage at the segregational effect of this revision would surely arise in place of any insistence upon remedying the underlying problem: we take for granted that black and white New Yorkers will always live mostly separately, but at least we can create some contact through busing. The city’s zoned schools, on the other hand, have very little diversity. Of course, that’s at least partly by design: why, for example, does the catchment area for PS 67 consist exclusively of the Walt Whitman Houses and the Ingersoll Houses, instead of linking these NYCHA developments to the adjacent brownstones of Fort Greene? Racial segregation by neighborhood is real, but in the dense urban fabric of New York City, one can often cross the boundaries easily on foot; without straying far from home, many schoolchildren could too, if the politicians let them. In a city of 1,700 public schools, the specialized high schools are a high-profile, almost symbolic issue: there is a lot of other work to be done that Bill de Blasio will never bother to attempt. Why, then, am I writing about the specialized high schools? Well, symbols matter sometimes. A rejection of Stuyvesant is a rejection of hierarchy and unnecessary competition. Let’s have the courage to build schools that reflect the society we want, instead of schools that submit to the society we have. I want diverse communities (with diverse teachers), where everyone matters, where everyone lives and learns together – and they do it largely for fun, not out of terror of an uncertain future. The end of the specialized high schools isn’t the only demise I want in the realm of education. I want us to get rid of Gifted and Talented programs, standardized testing, charter schools (obviously), private schools (of course) – why not? – and the list goes on. But we’ve got to begin somewhere.

Brownsville Park gets new coat of paint

Crown Castle, the nation’s largest provider of shared communications infrastructure, hosted its third annual Connected by Good community service initiative on May 8. More than 1,880 employees spent their day planting, building, painting and improving public spaces around the country. The Floyd Patterson Ballfields, located in Brownsville, were one of those 22 chosen nationwide sites. Forty-eight Castle employees helped scrape off existing paint at a public seating area and repainted walls, rail-

Business Association for Red Hook? by Brett Yates On April 29th, Victoria Alexander of Realty Collective convened a meeting of local business owners at the event space RE:GEN:CY on Commerce Street. The goal was to create – or to consider creating – a formalized neighborhood business association for Red Hook. Alexander brought Perch Advisors, a consulting firm, into the process to “offer outside perspective and guidance.” Led by Jeanette Nigro and James Ellis, Perch – which previously organized the Rockaway Business Alliance in Queens – emphasized that “this effort will be led by the community.” Ellis used to work Sundays at the Brooklyn Ice House on Van Brunt Street. He is also Executive Director of the North Flatbush Business Improvement District, a post once held by Rick Russo of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Ellis also spent five years at the Chamber, before joining Perch Advisors in 2016. During the conceptualization phase Still time to apply for Formula E scholarship, by Erin DeGregorio Formula E and the NYC ePrix are reminding graduating high school seniors, who live in Red Hook and the surrounding neighborhoods, that they still have time to apply for a STEM scholarship. Formula E and Modis have partnered to create the first-ever NYC ePrix Scholarship, engineered by Modis, in recognition that future engineers, IT directors and event professionals will help shape the future. This scholarship will provide two current high school seniors participating in STEM with $1,000 to be applied toward college education-related expenses in the 2019-2020 academic year. An internal committee comprised of representatives from Formula E, the NYC ePrix and Modis will select the two ings and nearby fire hydrants. “It really is about giving back,” Rory Whelan, speaking for Crown Castle, said on-site. “We wanted to get our hands dirty, and help enhance and revitalize this park because we really believe in Brownsville’s future.” “Corporate citizenship can greatly enhance our communities, harnessing the philanthropic potential of the private sector,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said. “I commend the employees who took time and effort to spruce up Floyd Patterson Ballfields, a project that improves the quality of life for children and families in Brownsville.” – Erin DiGregorio

of Red Hook’s business association, Perch will donate their services. The exact nature of the proposed business association will be determined over the course of further discussions, but the organization will likely resemble a localized chamber of commerce – an alliance of shop owners, restaurateurs, and others who pay annual dues to a body of economic development experts and local stakeholders that in turn carries out marketing campaigns, stages promotional events, and advocates for the interests of the business community in city politics. Ellis mentioned a hope of finding intersections between the businesses’ needs and those of the neighborhood at large. The well-attended meeting in April attempted to determine the bounds of the business community in Red Hook (does it include nonprofits?), to identify common goals among disparate businesses in the neighborhood (will political clashes over land-use quesscholarship recipients. Formula E Advisor Mike Hopper says that Councilmember Carlos Menchaca and the presidents of the Red Hook Houses’ Tenants Associations helped play a role in developing this scholarship opportunity. “Everybody is looking to provide youth with opportunities to learn more about the world, and we want to be a part of that,” he said. “We’ve done a number of things over the last two years the race has been here, but one thing we wanted to do is really try to play a role when youth go to college. So, if they’ve got an interest in STEM and an interest in Formula E and [they] think it might be the right career path for them, we wanted to help out.” The recipients will also be invited to attend the NYC ePrix Shakedown on Friday, July 12, prior to the big race weekend in Red Hook. During their time at Shakedown, the winners will meet with Formula E and Modis executives and receive a behind-thescenes tour of the NYC ePrix. Interested applicants can visit modis. com/en-us/about-modis/partnerships/formula-e to complete the form.

James Ellis back when he was working at the Ice House. (Star-Revue file photo)

tions emerge between manufacturing and retail?), and to recruit volunteers who might want to think more about what steps could come next. The organizers believed it was too early to decide upon the proposed entity’s structure, to start planning specific initiatives, or to form an official membership roll. A second meeting was scheduled for May 30th. Interested parties contact redhookbiz@gmail.com or 718-812-8824. All app components must be uploaded and submitted online by June 15. The 2019 NYC ePrix race will return to Red Hook for the double-header grand finale on July 13 and 14. Formula E will continue to offer complimentary tickets to Red Hook residents. On July 12, neighborhood youth can try the racecar simulators and tour the garage where they can meet some of the participating drivers, engineers and crews working on the cars.

Other local involvement For the first time Formula E participated in PS 295’s 9th Annual TouchA-Truck school fundraiser on May 18. There they showcased their electric street racing series Gen2 car. Hopper explained that attending this event was all about meeting and connecting with families in South Slope for a day filled with fun. Formula E also was a part of PS 15’s Earth Day Parade and celebration in April. There they brought one of their racecars and talked to the students about electric vehicles and their role in the environment.

Grand Opening

718 643-2737 718 643-0741 218 Columbia Street, near Union

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June 2019

RUNNING FOR WHAT?? BY MATTHEW REISS THE ZONELORD We predicted long ago that the mayor was using his term of office to curry favor with the capital-concrete lobby in pursuit of a job that paid better. So when we read that Warren Wilhelm de Blasio announced May 16 he’d entered the race for president of the Real Estate Board of New York we felt vindicated. Why else would he have permitted his appointees to eliminate neighborhood zoning protections to transfer every square inch of city land to donor/developers? Why block sunlight from a population already suffering from the epidemic effects of vitamin D deficiency? Why subsidize luxury buildings to obstruct the flow of wind currents from city streets choked with hazardous auto emission particulates if he was not running for president of REBNY? And then we read further . . . What’s that? He declared for . . . what? The US presidency? What for? It’s gotta be a misprint Read it back. Which US? Not REBNY?

CHARISMA

A president should be sure of himself. He should speak coherently, confidently, clearly. Kennedy spoke like he meant it. Reagan managed to recite hour long speeches without looking down at the pages before teleprompters were in vogue. But when he repeated something Nancy said in front of the camera, it appeared he was in the habit of repeating what was fed to him. The first lady pretty much confirmed that blaming his gaff on that “gizmo” in his ear. We all remember Al Gore responding to questions robotically, as if calculating what he was supposed to say rather than what he knew. Compared to Obama—who stumbles badly without a script—Gore looks like a break dancer. New Yorkers tend to choose from candidates for mayor who berate them. Blame the voters for what your administration does wrong and you get reelected. Ed Koch turned back questions about his policies by criticizing questioners, like a mother making her kids feel guilty. Giuliani could be human in an interview, but he made no bones about the authoritarian persona he chose as his platform. This attracted guilty liberals, which may be redundant. In comparison, Bill Wilhelm makes automatons Gore, Obama, Reagan seem lifelike. His handlers will do anything to keep him away from a microphone. (The best de Blasio could come up with was calling Trump ‘Don Con’ in his announcement speech? What’d that take you all afternoon?) They’ve successfully hidden whatever passes for his personality. They may have put his soul in a blind trust. A corporation. Which is what Mussolini called his government: corporatismo. Contrasting the former, Il Duce was an orator among orators. He waved his arms and shook his head and the crowds loved it. But his corporation stuck too much in its pockets. Ordinary people suffered. The ‘activists’ didn’t just talk (or text) about it. They got together. Caught him. Hung him by his boots.

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THE CORPORATION

Herr de Blasio backed into Gracie Mansion in 2014TK after the two leading candidates quit the race. New York’s concrete-capital lobby has had their way at City Hall ever since. Whether it’s neighborhoods, land mass, mortgages, businesses or individual apartment leases, the law is no bulwark against the conquest of real property during the current land speculation bubble. Only New Yorkers as a whole are in a position to protect their homes from The Corporation. Bill’s underlings lit an incendiary with a delayed fuse against the city’s businesses and communities when they approved disproportional construction plans in districts long protected from same. His administration offered huge tax abatements for luxury towers and recast development plans on vast tracts of public land. City Hall called in cement mixers in wholesale attacks against New York’s busiest moderate-income business districts by approving structures designed for affluent tenants. It planted the seeds of thousands of evictions against longstanding businesses—from secondhand stores in The Bronx, to upscale groceries in The Village. It undermined the survival of tens of thousands of families living in relatively affordable apartments from the Belt Parkway in East New York, Brooklyn to the Miller Highway on the Upper West Bank. Though the rent demands have already shaken up certain neighborhoods, the fuse will burn and detonate an explosion in rents, new home prices and carrying charges—lawful and otherwise. Laws protecting the harassment of residents are not enforced. Those who wish to survive have prepared or are preparing themselves. Every season is open season. When New Yorkers look back on their decision as to whether or not to intercede on their own behalf, they will regret failing to do so.

SHOCK AND AWE

Shortly after Al Gore attained a majority of electoral votes but thought better of assuming the presidency in 2001, some rough equivalent to the real estate board of Iraq began visiting Cheney’s office in the old War Department headquarters, since renamed. Ostensibly to discuss “energy strategy” with his staff, representatives of large, medium and small oil processing, shipping and distribution firms pored over maps of Iraqi oil fields as if choosing silverware patterns from a wedding register. A conquest of the Middle East was unfolding that would become US military strategy of the next two decades. Iraq would be first killing field on this schedule, providing collaborators in the fossil fuel industry with a hefty commission to boot. Within a couple of years ‘green zones’ around both Manhattan’s Financial District and Baghdad’s government buildings would collapse under the weight of aircraft, detonators, ordnance, and other construction equipment while explanations of such state craft never came close of satisfying public scrutiny. Bombing Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad brought in a new landlord—one far less effective at curbing fundamentalist movements. Bombing one green zone or other diminishes air quality. The pillar of smoke, incinerated ash and pulverized concrete gestates in New York’s collective respiratory system still today. When asked for comment about air quality immediately after the Twin Towers went down, the EPA, DEC and DEP each had a different answer. The effects will continue to be felt across a generation’s demise

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

His Honors’ support for the transfer of so immense an inventory of public resources—land, air, neighborhoods, families—into the accounts of one or another finance or development house, may come to rate among the great feats of social engineering in modern times. The prospective effects of blocking

out the sun, capturing airborne waste, and remaking predominantly low-rise neighborhoods of the five boroughs into some sort of show room for stacking concrete, burning fossil fuel and filtering exhaust through human respiratory systems is a calculated risk in a city that has never been in compliance with the Clean Air Act. The effort may someday be seen to rival Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Act of 1954 which sprouted suburbs along the off-ramps and conservative voters across the suburbs. Or Obama’s redistribution of trillions from consumer savings to corporate bailout. Perhaps even the European powers’ granting of charters to the British East India Company and the Dutch West Indies Company. Government programs can alter life styles, trade public good for private profit, or conquer lands populated by peaceful populations. Not since the Dutch rented Manhattan Island from the natives has industry held such sway over a population. We know too little of Slick Wilhelm to imagine him more than a front for his Clinton Administration mentors’ plans for New York. No responsible journalistic outlet nor any known academic entity has chosen to evaluate the administration’s unprecedented handover of public property, etc. on a city-wide level. However historic preservation attorney Michael Hiller received calls regarding questionable developments on public land on a semi-regular basis during the Bloomberg administration. At a gathering of Upper West Side residents opposing an addition to the America Museum of Natural History atop public park land, he observed that the frequency of such calls went through the roof shortly after de Blasio took office. A lesson may be learned from the West Side’s effort to reign in the Museum’s planners and financiers, predominantly because the effort has garnered much the same result as each of the neighborhoods that spoke out against their particular rezoning and new development fears: they lost. Whereas residents did go through the motions of inviting together casual opponents to the museum’s, frankly, distasteful use of scant public land in the area, they could at no time expect to prevail. Neither did they organize local opposition, nor assemble representatives of other neighborhoods suffering the same threat they were complaining of. Of course, mass behavior patterns are strongly affected by popular media. One does not watch network sitcoms featuring sexy neighborhood organizers attending civic events or joining forces with crosstown hotties employing whacky socio-economic repartee. We’re more likely see Archie Bunker— the racist with a heart of gold, or Tony Soprano—Father of the Year with the ice pick, etc.

THE 42 PERCENT

A political faction called ‘Occupy’ took up shop in a small quadrant of New York’s financial district a few years ago. They remained there for a short time before they were forcibly removed by the anti-terror squad. They were surveilled mercilessly as they chanted, made speeches and carried signs. But they made their point. And they popularized the concept that 99 percent of Americans are forced to sacrifice their material and natural birth rights for the benefit of a tiny percentage of privileged corporations and individuals. Whether Occupy’s implicit raising of consciousness eventually brings about some shift in the above equation remains to be seen. However a more palpable statistic was generated by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board a few years ago which provides far more striking insight into why American residents face such lousy odds today, following public participation/citizen responsibility’s high water mark in the sixties and seventies.

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The RGB pointed out that landlords in New York City no longer enjoyed moderate profits from conducting their businesses, but average returns of 42 percent, dividends comparable to those associated with operating a cartel, a monopoly or a racket. Meanwhile, the rate of evictions of New York families from their homes has risen from four per day to one hundred and four per day since 2016. Snatching the floorboards out from under Mama, Papa and Goldie Locks is not as lucrative as burrowing into the Earth and stacking concrete and glass over the hole like a giant middle finger to humanity. However there are far more leases to trade and speculate upon to go around to the many small brokers, lawyers and managers who rely on a war-like atmosphere to bring in inflated profits. A US General famously declared that War is a Racket. Here in the parish of St. Tammany, so is land speculation when life and limb are under duress. Today that war is against New York’s greatest resource, its people, such as are contained in its neighborhoods.

MAN OF THE YEAR: THE CORPORATE PERSON

Tammany Hall institutionalized the bribery of judges, commissioners, police chiefs, etc. before corporate efficiency measures—characterized by author Jack Newfield as “permanent government”—were instituted. Though a cursory glance at campaign donations still helps visualize how City Hall edicts are influenced, the Tammany mantle continues to shroud the corporations which manipulate the people who pull the strings. Despite its absence of human characteristics—most notably, a conscience— The Corporation has been transubstantiated into a “legal person” under US law. As such the 2003 film, “The Corporation” (Bakan, Crooks, Achbar, Abbott) establishes clearly that if comprised of flesh and blood these ‘legal persons’ would be deemed psychopaths. The film’s featured commentator, Noam Chomsky, added context when he said, “the corporation is the tool of your oppression.” With corporate logos comprising a large portion of America’s role models, it’s a hard calculus to ingest. History has a separate file for when a country and a corporation become indistinguishable. Mussolini defined his fascist system of governance as “corporatism.” The schoolbooks call it dictatorship. A business. Without conscience, a bank or law firm may sponsor a block party, but it never needs to feel good about itself. There may be puppeteers at the end of the strings, but they are governed by a corporate charter. The chronic inhalation of corporate media may dull the recognition of shared characteristics of Mussolini’s March to Rome and our quadrennial electoral twostep. Like any of a number prehistoric fish, however, both of these activities have seen success in pursuing their prey. Civilization itself has cursed us with what the founding fathers finally found in the underpinnings of Jefferson’s flowery attempt to blur the line between the corporation and the conscience by substituting “life, liberty and property” with “life, liberty and happiness.” Civilization is all very nice, but its discontents contrast the concentration of land ownership with the survival of a species that we may be indulging excessively. Peter Minuit famously gathered Lenape elders who were visiting the island and asked them to accept 24 guilders. In exchange, Minuit would retain the rocky outcropping at the tip of Manhattan. They drove a hard bargain, but Minuit, a harder one. He carried a gun. At the time, an acre of land was valued far less than a beaver pelt. Now the Earth’s under concrete, the beavers are gone, and the rent has come due. But what New Yorkers inherited from the Dutch, they no longer own.

June 2019, Page 25

The Healthy Geezer by Fred Cicetti

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High blood pressure can ravage your body. It can enlarge the heart, create small bulges (aneurysms) in blood vessels, damage the blood vessels in the kidneys, harden arteries, produce bleeding in the eyes. The possible consequences are heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and blindness. Your chances of getting high blood pressure are also higher if you are overweight, don’t exercise, eat too much salt, drink too much alcohol, don’t consume enough potassium, endure stress for too long. Obviously, changing your diet, exercising and altering your lifestyle will help. When you go to your doctor to have your blood pressure taken, there are a few things you can do to get an accurate reading. First, don’t eat, drink coffee or smoke cigarettes for an hour before your pressure is taken. (What are you doing smoking anyway?). Empty your bladder, because a full tank can affect the reading. Sit quietly for five minutes before the test. If you’re like me, you have white coat syndrome. That means your blood pressure jumps as soon as a doctor or nurse approaches you. If your doctor knows this, he or she may recommend a home blood-pressure monitor or ambulatory monitor that is worn around the clock and takes your pressure every half hour. If you have high blood pressure and lifestyle changes don’t reduce it, there are medications to treat the problem. Often, two or more drugs work better than one. Some drugs lower blood pressure by removing extra fluid and salt from your body. Others affect blood pressure by slowing down the heartbeat, or by relaxing and widening blood vessels. All Rights Reserved © 2019 by Fred Cicetti

Page 26 Red Hook Star-Revue

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June 2019

Summer Sports, compiled by Nathan Weiser with a fence, with at least 300 feet for a home run across the field, dugouts and bleachers for fans to sit and watch.

Summer is almost here in Brooklyn and that will bring

Running

a perfect opportunity to en-

The loop in Prospect Park is 3.3 miles, which makes for a nice run on a summer day. There is also Center Drive and Wellhouse Drive in Prospect Park. The Parade Grounds right next to Prospect Park is another option for a place to run without having to worry about street lights.

joy playing various outdoor sports in various parts of Kings County. Brooklyn has many different options that you can enjoy in Red Hook and beyond. Basketball

If you like to play basketball, there is Coffey Park in Red Hook as well as Bush Clinton Park where you can play basketball when the park is open. Further away, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier Two has what could be considered the nicest outdoor courts in Brooklyn. There are five basketball courts in Pier 2, including two that are covered in case of rain. The Pier 2 basketball courts are open daily from 6 am to 8pm Pier 2 will also have league play and clinics. From June 4 until August 25, The KING Hoops basketball program will have clinics on Tuesdays at 5 pm and Sundays at 12 pm for ages 7 to 17. Tillary Park at Tillary Street and Jay Street has a well-known summer league and courts for people to play at. There are also basketball courts at many schoolyards (with some nicer than others) where you can wait your turn and play when there is an opening.

Golf

The Marine Park Golf Courts, located at 2880 Flatbush Avenue, is an 18-hole championship course that is open to the public year-round. The course has panoramic water views and a beautifully manicured driving range and practice areas. To sign up for individual lessons or group clinics, call their Pro Shop at 718252-4625. You will be able to obtain a mastery of short shots and advance to full-swing sequencing and total driving. You can book a tee time one hour or up to seven days in advance. On weekends and holidays, 18 holes before 12 pm costs $51.00, 18 holes after 12 pm costs $40.00 and 9 holes early morning is $20.00. On weekdays, 18 holes before 12 pm is $41.00, 18 holes after 12 pm is $32.00 and 9 holes early morning is $18.00. The Dyker Beach Golf Course, located at 1030 86th Street & 7th Avenue, has a challenging and immaculately tendedto 18-hole golf course. There is a fullservice bar and grill, a full-size putting green, a pro shop with name-brand merchandise and there is cart rental. For information about competitive or social play at the golf course, call the pro shop at 718-836-9722. Their putting green offers a controlled and focused environment where you can sharpen your short game.

Soccer

There are many soccer fields where you can practice or play a competitive game in Brooklyn.

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The Red Hook soccer field at Bay Street between Court and Clinton Streets is still open and gets busy as various leagues (and high schools during the school year) use the only open soccer field in Red Hook. That is an option to use; just plan ahead, and when there you can eat at the renowned Red Hook Food Vendors, which are food trucks that serve authentic and traditional food from Latin America. These trucks are at the corner of Bay Street and Clinton Street, and have won numerous awards for best street food in NYC. At the Parade Grounds next to Prospect Park, located at Coney Island Avenue at Parkside Avenue, there are a few turf soccer fields (as well as a field used for soccer and football) that have league play and non-league play. There is the Time Out Snack Bar next to the soccer fields, which is a full-service concession stand with picnic and seating areas. Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier Three has three soccer fields with stunning views of Manhattan. The pier has 200,000 square feet of synthetic turf that are supported by shock pads and an organic infill made of hypoallergenic walnut shell fragments. There are restrooms located at the Pier 5 boathouse and Pier 6. Commodore Barry Park in Fort Greene next to the BQE at Flushing Avenue and North Elliot Place currently has a concrete area where soccer can be played. McCarren Park in Williamsburg has a mixed-use synthetic field inside of a track. There is football and soccer played on this turf field. The park, with a newly installed artificial-turf, opened ahead of schedule in February after a renovation. The park is located on Lorimer Street between Driggs Avenue and Bayard Streets.

Volleyball

Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 has three regulation-size sand courts. There is the option to apply for a permit for league play and to just come play on an open sand court. Fornino, located right next to the volleyball courts, has pizza and drinks. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, in partnership with Big City Volleyball, organizes a league and has monthly volleyball tournaments. The six-on-six league has games taking place Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

The newly renovated Domino Park, at 15 River Street on the water in Williamsburg has one beach volleyball court right next to the water that is available for drop-in games for up to an hour. Private leagues, classes and activities are allowed by Domino Park permit only. At Domino Park, which opened in June of 2018 and used to be the Domino Sugar Factory, personnel are available onsite if you want to borrow equipment or need any assistance.

An option for running outside of Prospect Park is to run from the circle next to the tennis courts in the Parade Grounds and go the about six miles down Ocean Parkway to Coney Island. You could run down in the morning, enjoy Nathan’s hot dogs and roller coasters and then go to a Cyclones game.

Kayaking

Brooklyn Bridge Park has kayaking available for free at the boathouse on Thursdays from 5:30 until 7 pm and on the weekends from 9:30 am until 2 pm Kayaking is available from June through August. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse provides a kayak, a life vest and paddling instructions. You only have to show up and fill out a waiver.

Other features of Domino Park include Artifact Walk, a playground that is a sugar refinery in miniature, a waterfront esplanade, a dog run, a taco shack run by chef Danny Meyer and plenty of seating.

The Red Hook Boaters is a volunteer organization that provides free kayaking in Red Hook at Valentino Pier. Their mission is to help people get on the water and enjoy the New York Harbor.

Baseball

Red Hook Boaters provides paddling and safety tips while out on the water as well as any equipment needed. Once you put you name on a list you will be able to take a kayak on the water and have views of the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island.

Their season begins on June 14 with a game against the Staten Island Yankees. The Cyclones will play 38 games at picturesque MCU Park, and their games begin at 4 pm, 6 pm, 7 pm and two games will begin at 11:30 am

From June 2 until September 22, Red Hook Boaters will offer free walk-up kayaking on Sundays from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm except for September 8. They will also have free kayaking from June 6 until August 15, on Thursdays, from 6:00 until 8:00 pm.

The Brooklyn Cyclones brought professional baseball back to Brooklyn back in 2001. The Single-A affiliate of the New York Mets has their stadium at 1904 Surf Avenue right next to the boardwalk in Coney Island.

In Red Hook, Field Nine, which is right across from the Recreation Center on Bay Street, is still open. Sometimes leagues that require a permit play at this field. The field is also open for anyone to use. If you want to go inside on a hot day to practice your swing in Red Hook, then Brooklyn Sluggers is a great place to go. They are an indoor batting cage located between Van Brunt and Richards Street at 80A Verona Street. Prospect Park is another option for playing baseball or softball in Brooklyn. If you enter at 15th Street or 9th Street, it is a short walk to the seven baseball fields. The fields of various sizes – some designed for adults and some for kids – have dugouts, water fountains and lots of room for people to watch. The Parade Grounds also has a few baseball fields where you can enjoy playing baseball or watching up and coming kids or adults play baseball. Former Major League Baseball players Tommy Davis, Joe Torre, Sandy Koufax and Willie Randolph played baseball when they were kids in the Parade Grounds. There are four baseball fields at the Parade Grounds, with one being a field

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If you interested in kayak lessons then The Kayak Foundation, formerly Brooklyn Kayak Guides, is for you. They are based out of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s One15 Brooklyn Marina. The main entrance is the gangway between Piers 3 & 5 on the north corner of the Picnic Peninsula. The Kayak Foundation is open seven days a week from May through September for instruction and trips by reservation. For general information, please contact them at info@kayakfoundation.com. A one-hour paddle session in the Pier 4 embayment is $30 for adults and $20 for youth (11 to 17). They start with an on-land orientation and then you get to enjoy time in the East River on your Stand Up Paddleboard or your Sit-OnTop kayak. The cost of individual instruction is $50 on the low end and $100 on the high end. They also have various other classes like ones that specialize in core strength and standup paddleboarding. Kayakers must sign a waiver before their lesson begins.

June 2019

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

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TROVATORE  RE L I  C A W D HOO B  K

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June 2019

photo: Mark Spero for The Center for Fiction

FEATURE Pajtim Statovci’s noble violence What makes a literary novel capable of change? Matt Caprioli

t’s a bit of a paradox that great literary fiction confronts its readers with uncomfortable truths. It’s not an intuitive reflex to pay for something unpleasant. The $25.95 for the Finnish-Albanian writer Pajtim Statovci’s second book, Crossing, for instance, could easily be spent on an IMAX ticket to X-Men: Dark Phoenix or a 15-minute foot massage. But literary fiction demands temporary discomfort for more lasting insight. “We ought to read only the kind of books that wound us,” wrote the evercheerful Franz Kafka. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Kafka’s criterion is a useful way to judge the “literary” merit of a book. Of course, most people’s idea of a fun Friday night isn’t taking an axe to their soul, so literary fiction has, is, and (perhaps for the best) will always be a sport for the happy few. Readers who do buy into Kafka’s vision, who value truth over hypocrisy and don't bristle at climbing the mountain of an artful text for the extraordinary view, will find great value in Crossing (Random House/ Pantheon), which follows two best friends from wartorn Albania as they flee north to ostensibly superior countries. The adolescent boys, Bujar and Agim, grow as transients, learning – often forcefully – about the world, themselves, and their relationship. There is murder, rape, and some twisted betrayals. Which is all to say that Crossing is what Marty McFly might call “heavy,” which is to say it’s the rare book that can change you. The novel is an eviscerating contemplation of cruelty becoming the norm, history warping us, how lying is, for certain peoples, a necessary reaction to trauma. But for all its bleak insight, Crossing isn’t overcome by nihilism. There’s immense heart with Bujar, the protagonist, a typical 14-year-old teen, reckoning with and eventually losing his father, a beloved if a jingoistic man. The father praises the virtues of a mythic Albanian as a way to feel his own self-worth in a country where, even today, nearly half the population lives below the poverty line, a fact neither he nor Bujar can help but conflate with shame. Agim, his best friend, is an admirable, precocious, caring, and fearless friend. “Do you realize,” he asks Bujar, hoping to loosen societal chains, “how narrow-minded it is to think that there are only two genders in the world, two types of people, men and women?” Against Agim’s tolerance is Bujar’s father inviolable definitions of what a man should be. After telling Bujar a story of Kreshnik Kaqibegu (a fictional hero)

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and that it was better to defend your honor and incur years of civil war than give up your claim to masculinity, the father declares: “Certain things are worth more than the blood of a few men. The family’s honor is one of them. That and a man’s self-respect, his name, and how he bears it.” Against such incessant pressure to conform to a masculine ideal, it’s no wonder why Bujar can’t come out to himself. Crossing is balanced with a fair amount of humor too, especially the scathing satire on Western game shows. In the final part, Bujar auditions for the Finnish version of American Idol. The producers dismiss him after 20 seconds for a good but not great voice. Desperate to be thought of as special, Bujar blurts out the lie that he’s actually a transwoman. On Bujar’s part, it’s a political play on difference to capture an advantage: Bujar knows an Albanian immigrant is worthless in Europe, but a transwoman – one whose struggles against the supposed barbarities of countries with weird-sounding names -- is something the Finns can safely embrace, congratulate themselves on their openness toward, then dismiss within a 30-minute show. The lie gets her to the next round where her voice would not. Crossing, like Statovci’s debut, My Cat Yugoslavia, has a marvelous elasticity of form. Character, war, and emotional insight supersede a straightforward plot. It goes from 1990 in Tirana (Albania’s capital) to 1998-2000 in Rome, Berlin, New York City, Madrid, then back to Tirana and Durrës, Albania, for 19911992, then Helsinki in 2003. The writing itself is so gorgeous that it’s easy to follow Statovci down uncertain paths. David Hackston’s translation from the Finnish captures Statovci’s rich similes: “outside the day is slowly struggling to its feet like a rheumatic old man” and “I cannot see the landscape opening up behind her, the rain brushing across the sea like a broom.” From the prologue: “I can’t breathe because the air gathers into a sodden ball of wool at the back of my throat and the incessant noise of the piazza makes my concentration come in fits and starts, and when I place a hand on my moist cheek and scratch off the sweat with my fingernail it feels like peeling away a layer of skin.” Throughout Crossing, Bujar struggles against the shame of coming from an impoverished, war-torn country, one that seems to live forever in the shadows of Italy (he goes so far as passing as Italian to get the upper hand in Europe). The sense of lying to survive is reminiscent of other literature from the

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region, from Serbian-American author Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife to the Bosnian-American Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, both of which stretched stories to surrealist proportions both as a survival mechanism and at the service of deeper truth. The epigraph Statovci chooses, from the late Amos Oz, emphasizes this need for an imagined truth: “Sometimes the facts threaten the truth.”

in conversation with aleksandar hemon In a reading with Hemon a couple of months back at the recently opened Center for Fiction in Fort Greene, Statovci said he came to Finland in the early ‘90s with his family seeking political asylum. He has no clear memories of Kosovo, although he speaks the language. But stories, some true, most false and stretching the limits of “real,” kept him sane growing up in a world where hardly anyone looked like him,

continued on page 32 June 2019, Page 31

FEATURE

noble violence, continued

and it was easier to explain that he was from Italy rather than try to get into the history of Albania.

too broken to do any of these things? Are you undeserving of love then?”

“I read books to escape a violent world,” he said. While it’s best not to confuse a writer’s biography with their work, I don’t see how the writer’s life can’t possibly refract into its characters. It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to say the fates of Bujar and Agim were possibilities for Statovci. While Bujar is an ordinary person who’s unable to process what history has done to him, Agim is a precocious boy who’s perpetually curtailed by his circumstances. Agim is the bright optimist who is defeated by the world to the point of self-induced oblivion. Bujar has always been a bit of a pessimist, one who’s ready to cave or change course if that’s what survival requires. But Agim has too much integrity. He would rather be erased than mask himself as a “normal” individual. The pessimist and optimist, the generous soul and the narrative vampire, the one who barely survives and the one who could not, are all twined together in Agim and Bujar. Statovci said of Bujar: “I wanted to create a character who is so afraid of being caught and losing face, which is something that many people worry about, losing face, especially in many Albanian communities, and I wanted to explore how long and how far would someone go to keep up the appearance. Would they be willing to transform themselves not only mentally but also physically, and would they be willing to even steal another person’s story and another person’s life, so that they would keep going on the same track and …. because the person they are themselves is unbearable.” Statovci is interested not in proud survivors, but people who endured, who were steamrolled by his-

In Crossing, this state of abjection is brought on by racism and xenophobia. The constant pressure of racism is, as the prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore trenchantly defined it, “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” In the countries Bujar and Agim pass through, in the thousands of people they encounter who accept ordinary violence and discrimination, Statovci viscerally details the scourge of racism and xenophobia. As Bujar watches Agim fall away from his former self, he thinks, “Now I’d say that death is just a word, the feeling that you no longer fit in your own name, your external form, like having someone else’s face drawn across your own.” Crossing moves us against injustice, but one does wonder how this work that so keenly captures the violence done to immigrants will impact the privileged lives on those who don’t have to choose tory and injustice and aren’t about to hide their suffering with a pretty face. Responding to a culture of constant aﬃrmation, Statovci said to Hemon: “They say ... you have to love self… I don’t believe in that. What if you are not capable of loving yourself? What if you don’t respect yourself? What if you are

between $25.95 and an edible meal. Responding to an audience question at The Center for Fiction, Statovci observed: “It takes so much strength and fortitude to rise against oppression. It’s easier to adapt to the violence.”

REVIEWS Ghost Stories: Building a Statue Is Killing a Person Norm Paris and Mark Shetabi’s joint exhibit explores the monumental cost of mythmaking. Will Drickey In 1978, on the 25th anniversary of the CIA coup that re-installed the Shah of Iran, four men doused the Cinema Rex theater in the city of Abadan with jet fuel, and burned the building down. As many as 800 people died. Prior to 9/11, it was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the planet. Even 40 years later, it’s still not clear exactly why they did it. Even now, we are still scrambling to construct a story that makes sense. Within a year, the Shah had been overthrown. Many narratives of the Iranian Revolution treat the theater fire as the inciting incident of the revolution, as vengeance for the murderous injustice – a sort of ghost story. This sort of creation, of martyrs, of idols, of monuments, is a form of destruction, Mark Shetabi and Norm Paris seem to say in their joint exhibition, “Ghost Stories,” because any story we tell about the dead, the famous, is less about them than it is about us. Ortega y Gasset Projects curator Lauren Whearty told me

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that these artists did not collaborate on their projects – their combined meanings were only constructed after the fact, their original intents eradicated for this collected effort. Paris’s “Monument” series exemplifies this, depicting enormous halfformed statues, either emerging from their marble slabs or being consumed by them. Paris’s work is laser-focused on this process – in “Erased Cards (Tower),” players are whitewashed from their own trading cards – he only parts of them left uncovered are the legs, all in powerful, dynamic stances, each indistinguishable from the rest. In “Stacks, 2019,” this process is complete – records, cassettes, VHSes, and cards are obscured, their original truths erased for a greater narrative. Nowhere is this more prominent than in “Monster Movie” by Mark Shetabi, who fled from the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The victims of the Cinema Rex fire here are doubly erased – the auditorium is hidden behind computer privacy filters, and once you get the proper angle

to see inside, all the seats are empty. Everything – the audience, the fire, the movie itself, have denatured into the melted, amorphous monster standing triumphantly above it, spot-lit like King Kong from below. Much of the rest of Shetabi’s work runs along these lines – empty chairs; viscous, bubbling creatures – except for two. “Jackal,” a sharpedged, jagged bust of the native Iranian scavenger, seems out of place and unnatural against the organic, flowing shapes of human atrocity. The other: “Future Objects: Astronaut” – a tiny figure in a space suit hidden in a small box, itself tacked

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into a corner I only caught because I double-checked the gallery’s image list before leaving. It’s a tentative glimpse of a future where jet fuel can be used the way it’s supposed to be, when monuments don’t need to be larger than life, because they’re still alive. It’s easy to miss.

June 2019

BWAC

REVIEWS

start your summer strong Matt Caprioli

The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC – be cool and proof May. Don’t miss your chance to absorb works from Brooklyn’s largest artist-run gallery. I recently strolled through and found several gems: Unlike just about every gallery in Manhattan, the works here are reasonably priced. You’ll find spectacularly composed street photographs by Resa Sunshine (Adrian Resa Jones) around $120 and alluring domestic scenes with rough brushstrokes by Isabella Sarra “Glaz.” On the first floor, you’ll find “Black Orpheus” by Mary Alice Orito. The flat dress raised to a canvas on the vertical wall is made of acrylic, draped

Mary Alice Orito Black Orpheus

Banjo - Resa Sunshine

nounce it Bee-Whack) opened its sprawling warehouses in the middle

canvas, and macramé. Given the humble materials, it’s a surprisingly affecting arrangement that mirrors a dress floating in a river. Ed Kent Object 202

The self-taught artist Ed Kent has an alluring piece whose flatline red, yellow, and mostly gray paint would make Barnett Newman proud. What makes the piece different, even by contemporary art standards, is the skeleton of a computer mainframe casually placed in the lower George Sand made some unique photographs in a field that’s very hard to innovate within. “Vestige #2” has a digital photograph on an antique cabinet card of a man who’s all but erased saved for his shoes standing near a plant with high resolution. The result is a question-welcoming object; vestige you say, vestige of what? It’s the questioning that helps

George Sand Vestige #2

left quadrant. This one is called “Object 202.”

this piece (and the viewer) come to life. Tiziana Mazziotto The Water Tower

On the second floor, Tiziana Mazziotto dominates with well-known subjects rendered in a unique tesserae. “The Water Tower” appears to be represented with acrylic, but Mazziotto’s canvas appears to be a quasicement slab. The representation, beautiful in and of itself, is given a weighty feel with the physical pairing of such a formidable base. St Sunshine” captures a sunrise in Midtown East. Rising from the ease in concrete jungle.

BWAC’s 2019 Recycling Show The Recycling Exhibition 2019 is as impressive as ever. Carole Landisman’s “What’s Important is on the Inside” uses old office supply in a sort of Malevich composition. Colors – all pastels of cerise and pewter and pale yellow – appear to be laminated beneath an encaustic white surface. Whether this was Landisman’s intention, it calls to mind a hospital ward and that illness doesn’t surpass personhood. The sculptor Peter Hiers used torn and ripped highway rubber tire fragments to create a beautiful work in “Declaration of Dependence - Main View.” The elegant lines of the central part of the tires recall the Nike of Samothrace.

Yongsin Cho Abandoned

Yongsin Cho’s “Abandoned” is another poignant homage to newspapers of yore. Using old newspapers and discarded paintings, Cho made a large mural featuring a close-up of an ambiguous face. The collage never loses its aura of being painted; that it is, in fact, collage is an impressive technical feat.

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Peter Hiers Declaration of Independence - Main View

Carole Landisman What’s Important is on the Inside

a still quiet day, the piece captures the tender side of our dearly beloved

Mark Oliver 42nd Street Sunshine

Mark Oliver showcases finely observed watercolors from the city. “42nd

June 2019, Page 33

Sally Saul at Pioneer Works Matt Caprioli

t Pioneer Works, the Germantown-based artist Sally Saul shares whimsical objects of clay and glaze that create a mythos around subjects that are by turns precious and nefarious. The name of the exhibit, “Blue Hills, Yellow Tree,” captures the sort of winding up and down these 34 works curate. It’s a pleasant ride, whose occasionally puzzling pieces remain amusing and warm. Peter, 2007

The second floor gallery conveys the gentle whimsy that defines Saul’s vision. You have “Ophelia’s Flowers,” which shows amorphous clay/ceramic objects on a red velvet blanket. Against the red drop they look like dead objects distilled for study. It’s impressive how curator Vivian Chui drew from many sources to gather these pieces: Betsy Kaufman, Phoebe Allen, KAWS, Rachel Uffner Gallery (which represents Saul). I’m equally appreciative of the fact this is the accumulation of three decades of work. You have “Big Beaver” from 1989, then more recent work on the third floor like “In/Out” (2018) and “UFO” (2017). In “UFO” (2017),

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a black flying saucer with circled by red dollops – the shape seems inspired by a 1950s toy – is perched on the crown on a tree whose two upper trunks have been cut off, incidentally making for a perfect landing place. There is a curious fox at the base of the tree, as well as a neon pink-green ladder leaning against the tree’s trunk. You get a keener sense of Saul’s vision in the more concentrated arrangement at PW’s top floor. There’s the immensely evocative “Peter,” presumably a rendering of the artist’s husband Peter Saul, whose own acclaimed paintings may affectionately be dubbed as “whacky.” The powdery shade of blue is one that runs throughout her work, a motif that no doubt would fascinate Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. There’s a crown of sorts coming out of his head. What to make of it? A pair of two-foot busts – Franklin D. Roosevelt with Gertrude Stein, then Dwight Eisenhower with Rachel Carson – attracted the most attention May 9, opening night. The interpretations behind these pairings are potentially limitless and you’re free to knock yourself out, or listen to Chui’s suggestions that the groupings contrasts “feminine ingenuity against masculine power.”

Untitled, 2016 Saul’s interest in the vacancy behind a surface is seen in the titles, like one work called “Peel,” but also with “In/ Out,” a slapdash of positive and negative space. The clay/ceramic piece appears to be an abstracted chicken has been exploded and rendered in a new form. The yarn on which two beads balance gives a joviality to what may be a dramatic scene; the yarn sparingly yet sensitively used calls to mind Judith Scott’s equally mysterious, childish, and haunting work. Saul explores cavities more in an untitled piece from 2016. A woman, about two feet tall, stands looking forlornly while a hole is in her cheek, splotches of primary colors dote her

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slits in the back of the women are almost the same shape as those in “In/Out.” What to make of this connection? The title of the woman, perhaps thankfully, gives us no clue toward meaning. But taken collectively, there’s a mythology in the making, a driving vision from a dedicated artist to how the world works. That Saul has was born in Albany in 1946, moved west to study literature throughout Colorado and California during the 1960s, would position her as a mythmaker. The twined use of clay (rough, childish, raw and real)

While most of the works involve ceramics, the third floor has some acrylic drawings on paper. The modest pieces are naive and some retain the raggedness of being ripped from a sketchbook. That these brute drawings are contained in respectable Ethan Allen frames lends a playful element to the more lurid subject matter: night owls, eagles twisting in tree, a tulip apparently melting from the inside out.

nails, nipples, and groin. The open

with glaze (refined, frail, skillful) reflects a sensitivity that’s aware of violence but won’t recapitulate it. “Blue Hills, Yellow Tree,” runs through July 7 at 159 Pioneer St., Wednesday to Sunday, 12 to 6pm. Red Hook residents can hear from Saul herself UFO, 2017

June 9, when she gives a gallery talk that Sunday at 2:30pm.

June 2019

Musetta (Carami Hilaire) brags about her own charms, to the horror of her wealthy, elderly escort Alcindoro. (David Tillistrand, seated left) Photo by Steven Pisano

REVIEWS

Regina Opera presents a stirring ‘Il Trovatore’ A review by Nino Pantano Saturday afternoon on May 11 became one to remember always with the first of four Il Trovatores held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Auditorium in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Il Trovatore premiered in Rome, Italy, in 1853. The libretto is by Salvatore Cammarano and is one of three masterpieces composed by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in that time period – the other two were La Traviata and Rigoletto. Il Trovatore is set in 15th-century Spain during a civil war between the provinces after a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Conductor Gregory Ortega stepped to the podium and the opera began. A few vibrant, heavy chords and the curtain rose with Ferrando (Captain of the Guard) telling the story of the Gypsy (“Udite, udite”) to his rapt and horrified men. Adam Cioffari had a powerful and vibrant basso voice that, coupled with precision and dramatic flair, made for a very strong opening to the opera. Immortal basso Ezio Pinza (1892-1957) made a recording of this and it was like a storytellers passage to those who heard it. Cioffari continues a great tradition. Count di Luna and Manrico are sworn enemies and both are in love with Leonora, the Queen’s lady in waiting. Manrico’s “Mother” is Azucena. In a rage over her own Mother’s death at the stake for witchcraft, ordered by the prior Count di Luna, Azucena kidnapped the Count di Luna’s baby. However, crazed, Azucena threw her own baby into the fire instead of the royal baby, and raised Manrico as her own. Manrico is the troubador who serenades Leonora and arouses the jealous fury of the current Count di Luna. Manrico, the Troubador, was rising tenor Christopher Trapani. Mr. Trapani has a voice that is even in quality, gathers more freedom in the upper registers and is compelling in the middle and lower registers. His rhapsodic singing of “Ah! si ben mio” in Act Three, Scene Two, revealed a first-class tenor at his best with finely sung melody: thrilling, passionate, lyrical passages, superb legato, and an impassioned finale. Some trills added to the re-

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fined outpouring, one of the best in memory. This was followed by “Di quella pira” which was sung with fury, fire and brimstone culminating with two superbly hit and held high C’s. “Non son tuo figlio” with Azucena in Verdian harmony. I was fortunate to see and hear magnificent tenor Franco Corelli as a superb and dashing Manrico, soprano Zinka Milanov as a marvelous Leonora, and the brilliant Leonard Warren as Count di Luna. I recall Fedora Barbieri as Azucena and Fiorenza Cossotto in some other performance. The Regina Opera performance was very satisfying on every level. Great singers of the past echoed in their superb voices. Leonora, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting was sung by soprano Alexis Cregger. Her performance as Leonora was like a time capsule transferring me to the old Met in its golden age. Ms. Cregger sings with beauty of tone sudden optional high notes that thrill and a flowing legato that makes one float in ecstasy. Her superb singing of “Tacea la notte placida” and its cabaletta evoked Met divas Zinka Milanov and Montserrat Caballe in its soaring and lyrical outbursts (Act One, Scene Two) and her stunningly beautiful Act Four aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” ravished the ear of the listener. Her ascending notes and floating “highs” plus her interpolated highs were like extra scoops of ice cream for a sweet-deprived opera kid. Ms. Cregger’s duet with di Luna, “Mira, di acerbe lagrime” and “Vivrà! contende il giubilo,” was thrilling. Her “Miserere” duet with Manrico

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as a group of monks marched by was heavenly. As a youth, I listened to immortal tenor Enrico Caruso and Mme. Frances Alda sing “Miserere” on an old 78 recording. Caruso sang Il Trovatore at the Met Opera in 1906 and his recording of “Di quella pira” is a sensation as is his “Ah! si ben mio”. Ms. Creggar’s death scene was beautifully done, evoking great sympathy. Alexis Cregger has shown the world her beautiful Leonora – she is a blessing. Count di Luna was robustly and brilliantly sung by baritone Nathan Matticks. His sublime singing of “Il balen del suo sorriso” was perhaps the opposite of the great Leonard Warren’s heavenly lyrical outpourings; but Matticks’ di Luna was more inherently evil, and the great love that is the melody of this aria was more obsessive. Mr. Matticks dark Iagolike passion was bordering on dangerous: a truly exciting di Luna. When Manrico is beheaded and Azucena tells him he just killed his own brother,

continued on page 36

June 2019, Page 35

Ron Nagle’s Joyous Mayhem

The well-known ceramicist uses everything from clay to epoxy to play with life and death Matt Caprioli

he collector Sam Wagstaff liked to keep paintings and photographs on the floor of his minimalist apartment at 1 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Washington Square Park. He outlined his rationale for a room of Pratt students in 1978: “I cannot tell you the sensation that one misses, all of you who make photographs, when you put it behind glass.”

Often glass is a literal barrier to the perception of art. But the cheeky ceramic-artist Ron Nagle encloses his miniature sculptures here to magnifying effect. It’s as if each is in a sanctuary, enclosed and happy under glass from a harsher, less whimsical world. It really is the collection of a San Franciscan born and based artist who was surrounded by equally creative ceramic and clay artists, including Ken Price, whose biomorphic teacups in the ‘60s redefined what was possible with the material most likely encountered at a dinner room table. This world comes from the cartoonish shapes and lacquered colors Nagel choose to display in a glass box and straight white rectangular column. Associate Director of the gallery Ted Turner confirmed that all the wall niches and height pedestals followed Nagle’s specifications, i.e. the glass is critical to how these pieces are to be perceived. The fun primacy on making objects is seen in his album released last year, Introducing the Many Moods of Ron Nagle, a rock-licking with a whiplash baseline and drunk piano bar chords. The psychedelic sensibility of a song like “Fading

il Trovatore, continued

Count di Luna says in horror “E vivo encore” – (and still I live) the last line of this opera. Azucena, a gypsy was sung by Lara Michole Tillotson. Her mezzo-soprano had tremendous beauty and some stunning upper register notes that made us all heaven bound with burnished lows that made us see the dark past she endured. “Stride la vampa!” was magnificently sung, and her cries of “Figlio Mio” were emotionally shattering. Her final duet with Manrico, “Ai nostri monti” was pure and full of longing. Her laughter after singing that her Mother is now avenged was like a female Mephisto. Leonora’s attendant Ines, was sung by Aida Carducci, who evoked the proper concern and sympathy for her lady. Her warm soprano was indicative of good potential, and she was really a solid and vital singer. Chance Polic was an able and dependable Lieutenant to Manrico. His strong tenor was impressive. Baritone Rick Agster as an old Gypsy sang with finesse and flair and tenor Andrew Watt made his mark as a messenger.

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Away” entertains the possibility of some irreverent marks by Nagle, such as my question about “Solomon’s Option,” where two clay-looking trees root in a cellulose acetate green platform, an epoxy resin leopard-patterned wall behind them, a curious-looking pile of teal that resembles (for lack of a better word) shit. Am I being too literal when I ask if the same droppings, this time in gold, appear in “Cappuccino Nervosa?” If titles are guides, do the peristaltic effects of coffee not manifest themselves here through such whimsical aplomb? The second room has similar sculptures, but each is embedded in a wall with a veil of glass guarding it. It gives the sense that the sculpture is unattainable. Is this a crypt where the sculptures are safer when buried into the walls? Is the object retreating behind a wall?

light the knife edge on which Nagle balances thoughts of death with childish delights. There’s a giddy ominous in “Offline Connection,” one of the few ceramic-based works where a pool of crimson seems to perpetually move as a block of remorseless onyx-green intercuts it. The rocky gilt base gives an Elvis-aura to the silhouette of a coffin. The interplay of known space and what you know to be invisible. It’s a problem of having so many ideas that you reach the point you’d rather throw them up in the air like so much confetti and shake your hips. Such is the sentiment of “Conversion Immersion.”

When Nagle includes small perforations in “New Collusion,” the question is how far can you peel reality back?

The glass is less a protector than an amplifier. The species of objects seem incapable of breathing without it, and the light announces their place in the world of things.

Coffin imagery (or is that a bathtub?) repeat throughout. I say this not to be glib, but to high-

Matthew Marks Gallery. 522 W 22nd Street. Through June 15.

The Chorus sang with warm friendly and spirited tone and it was so nice to see outstanding chorister Cathy Greco among the gypsies.

sil Rathbone back for some Robin Hood villainous swordplay. I once saw Basil Rathbone hailing a cab as part of the crowd of operagoers, in front of the Metropolitan Opera with his deep unforgettable voice calling “Taxi, taxi.”

Conductor Maestro Gregory Ortega got excellent results from the 33 splendid musicians in the Regina Orchestra. The gypsy song of the Anvil Chorus aroused the audience with its iconic familiarity. Azucena’s themes were heightened by the horror ever lurking in the music. Kudos to chimes player, percussionist Miguel Tepale, and to Concertmaster Christopher Joyal. Bravi to all the musicians and Maestro Ortega for this glorious music of Giuseppe Verdi. Linda Lehr, the stage director and set designer, gave Il Trovatore’s great characters room to maneuver, threaten, fight, love and die with clear focus. The “Miserere” was so impressive visually and vocally that the image is retained in my mind. The fight scenes were right out of some MGM spectacular. Rob Aronowitz was the superb fight choreographer and the outstanding duel and armor scenes stood out with their muscle-flexing swordplay. Ms. Lehr almost brought the late British actor Ba-

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The costumes by Marcia C. Kresge were perfection. Leonora’s gowns were magical and Count Di Luna’s outfits regal. The gypsies were colorful and Manrico heroic. Kudos to Make-up and Wig Artist Saori Morris. So nice to see Regina Opera’s President Francine Garber-Cohen; Executive Vice President Linda Cantoni; Treasurer Joseph Delfausse; Elena JannicelliSandella, Vice President; and box office volunteer Marlene Ventimiglia, who keep us all comfortable and seated. Our group went to Casa Vieja Restaurant nearby for a lovely and lively Mexican dinner. Sunset Park is ablaze with hope and promise! This is the last opera of the Regina Opera’s 49th season. We look forward to the glorious 50th upcoming season.

June 2019

June Culture Calendar  Comedy

Union Hall hosts the comedy variety show “Decolonize Your Mind” on June 5. Karen Chee MCs with performers Rachel Pegram, Aparna Nancherla, and Ana Fabrega. 8pm. GA is $8. 702 Union Hall. Brooklyn’s only dedicated joint, EastVille Comedy Club, hosts “The Writer’s Room” on June 17, featuring Matt Goldich (Seth Meyers) Josh Gondelman (Desus & Mero, John Oliver) and Django Gold (Stephen Colbert). GA is $13. 487 Atlantic Ave. "Search Party’s” more delightfully vicious stars, John Early, performs several shows at The Bell House. Early’s accompanied by Yazan and the Gates Family Band, Theda Hammel, and Vicky with a V. 7pm & 10pm. GA is $30. June 27-29. 149 7th St.

cess yet violence of grids in modern art. Beltré gives a talk at Kentler June 15 at 4pm. 353 Van Brunt. The artist/curator Will Hutnick shows a group of “small works” at Trestle Gallery. This show, “Lobster Dinner,” features small painted works. The opening reception is June 20 at 6pm. Runs through July 14. Sat-Sun 12-6pm; Wed-Fri 1:30630pm. 850 3rd Ave. At Court Tree Collective, the photography Clarence K shows photos taken from weeks of visiting skate parks around the city. Reception June 22 5-7pm. Through July 13. Sat 12-6pm. 371 Court Street.

Film

Greenpoint’s Film Noir Cinema hosts the Splice short-film festival June 21 – 23. The 1-10-minute film aim to forward underrepresented voices from around the world. 122 Meserole Ave.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will see the essayist Michael Shulman moderate talks with Matt Holmes, Dara Allen, Marcus Goldberg – each subjects of the photographer Ethan James Green’s monograph “Young New York,” which examines trans and queer representation in the 50 years since the Stonewall riots. GA is $15. June 19, 7pm. BAM Fischer – 321 Ashland Pl. “Eatin’ Good in the Hood: The Link Between Socioeconomics and Access to Nutrition” is part of Brooklyn Historical Society’s upcoming exhibition “Taking Care of Brooklyn: Stories of Sickness and Health.” Erick Castro, the maestro behind the Instagram account How to Be Vegan in the Hood talks with Iysehima Harris of East New York Farms. Moderated by the Deputy Digital Editor of Health Magazine, Esther Crain. GA is $10. June 6 at 630pm. 128 Pierrepoint St.

Theater

Men in Black: International sees a reboot on June 14. Rebecca Ferguson, Tessa Thompson, Liam Neeson, and Chris Hemsworth star. Yesterday (June 28) is here for all people who dream they could write like The Beatles. Kate McKinnon and Ed Sheeran costar with Himesh Patel.

Galleries

The Mark Jupiter Gallery in DUMBO launches its inaugural show with works by Craig Anthony Miller, Jaimie Walker, Joshua Reynolds, Steve West, and Kirsten Kramer. 202 Plymouth St. Sally Saul “Blue Hills, Yellow Tree” runs at Pioneer Works through the month of June. Saul gives a talk at Pioneer Works June 9 at 2:30pm and a guided tour with curator Vivian Chui. 159 Pioneer St. Mildred Beltré presents “Science of the World” at Kentler Drawing Space. The “agitprop” works look at power dynamics and social justice and those intersect with home life. Beltré wrote that she inspired by the art historian Rosalind Krauss’ essay “Grids,” which looks at the suc-

The Waterfront Museum opens its first exhibition of the summer on June 27. Folklorists Naomi Sturm and Dan Ward honor 10 remarkable stewards of coastal living, including Red Hook’s own Carolina Salguero (Director of PortSide) and David Sharp (Founder of The Waterfront Museum. On display Thurs 4-8pm; Sat 1-5pm. At Booklyn, the Northern Ireland artist David Sandlin closes his “76 Manifestations of American Destiny” on June 27. The gallery looks at the artists’ books of drawings, prints, and paintings from the past 35 years. Bound together, the work spreads 27 feet. Tues-Fri 12-5pm. 140 58th Street, Brooklyn Army Terminal. Monica Jahan Bose closes her stunning “Seven Minutes on the B67,” a site-specific piece at Open Source that looks at communities most threatened by climate change, on June 29 with a climate art auction. This piece is part of the Bangladeshi-America artist ongoing project, “Storytelling with Saris.” Wed-Sat 2-6pm. 306 17th Street. Audrey Frank Anastasi’s “EnSamblage” closes June 30 at Welancora gallery. The assemblages feature drawing, watercolor. The subject is female self-perception. Thurs 6-9pm; Fri-Sun 12-6pm. 33 Herkimer Street.

Open Calls

yesterday

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Talks

john early



Through June 3, Red Hook Labs is accepting applicants for its third open call. The 25 selected artists will have a summer show. They’re typically underrepresented by established agencies and galleries. In the fall, the show will travel to Oslo and Milan. Submit your work through Red Hook Labs’ website. 133 Imlay St.

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The 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury debuted Fairview, about a black extended family preparing for what should be a nice dinner, for Soho Rep last year. From the success of that run, Theatre for a New Audience launches a new run at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center from June 2 to the 30th. 262 Ashland Pl Target Margin Theater sees three original works by emerging artists. The company is still early on in its multi-year exploration of The One Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa layla). This month, Levya Mona Tawil stages an experimental Arabic work All We Could Give (June 6-9); Nicolás Noreña and Timothy Scott produce The Million Underscores (June 13-16), about the epic reimagined in a roadside bordello; and News of the Strange (June 20-23) by Moe Yousuf, which combines a Medieval Arab Fantasy with a western disco. 232 52nd St.

Voice

M Shanghai, a motley folk collective in Brooklyn, plays Jalopy Theatre on June 1 at 9pm. GA is $15. 315 Columbia. “As One” features a male and female counterpart sharing the voice of a transgender protagonist. Produced by the Clinton Hill-based American Opera Projects (AOP). Performances at Merkin Hall in Manhattan, 129 W 67th St on Jun 1 at 9pm, Jun 4 at 8pm, June 6 at 8pm. AOP at 138 South Oxford Street. Tickets start at $30. Vertical Player Repertory produces “We the People: a Secular Oratorio” by Benjamin Yarmolinsky. Brooklyn Opera Works joins forces with The VPR Chorus. Thurs June 27 at 7:30pm; June 29 at 4pm.

June 2019, Page 37

STARREVUE MUSIC

Red Hook Roxx

reviews, previews, happenings in the neighborhoods you love

Leo LieBeSKind

Three great bands for $5 in a beautiful, old-school venue in Brooklyn is almost unheard-of these days. However, that’s just what Jeannie Fry and the good folks of Red Hook Roxx offer every Friday night at Rocky Sullivan’s. Fry first set foot in Rocky’s about three years

venue. And David Gonzalez, music director and

ment is a deal that is hard to beat. And with

ago, when the bar was still at its old location,

co-manager at Rocky’s, has been invaluable in

100 percent of the door going to artists and a

just a block from its current one, down the road

encouraging the series as well as in assembling

full backline, it’s a pretty sweet gig for musicians

from IKEA on the corner of Dwight and Beard

a drum kit and amps for the shows. The team

too.

Streets. Jeannie was there with her friend,

has been running Red Hook Roxx at Rocky Sul-

Robert Maloney (Moe), when the two discov-

Rocky Sullivan’s is located at 46 Beard St.

livan’s for three years now, and though Jeannie

ered that the back room of the bar had a small

Brooklyn, NY 11231. Bands interested in per-

sometimes worries that the remote location

stage, some guitar amps, and a piano, but that

forming can send a sample of their music to

will dissuade attendees, people continue to

neither the stage nor the equipment was often

misspooz@gmail.com.

flock to the bar every Friday night to get a dose

put to use. Eager to make something happen

of good music in a fun and humble setting.

with the space, Jeannie (a member of a slew of Brooklyn bands including her own project, Jeannie Fry and the Lifers) and Moe (a lifelong promoter of live music) hatched a plan for a weekly Sunday afternoon series, aiming to “make being an artist easier for musicians” and for “bands around the world to come and get a decent audience even if they’re relatively unknown.” While it was initially tough to get the operation off the ground on Sundays, Jeannie and Moe moved the event series to Friday nights, and were able to enlist the help of a few key friends to kickstart the series. Bob of the Brooklyn band The Shirts, who used to book bands

Rocky’s inclusive, old-school vibes are a perfect place for the friendly and supportive DIY atmosphere that Red Hook Roxx provides its patrons. A mom-and-pop operation, Moe emcees and broadcasts the shows to Facebook Live while Jeannie and Bob book the bands and work the door. They charge $5 and give 100 percent of the money collected at the door to the bands in an effort to better support musicians.

• Upstate NY’s Music Scene • Littlefield’s Anniversary • The 4th Annual Brooklyn Int’l Music Festival • Little Italy’s Last Gasp • Swamp Dogg • Cowboy Tech • Bembé • Barbes

Bands play at 9, 10, and 11 pm, and genres from rock to noise to country have all been featured at the weekly events with the first metal night even set to take place on July 12.

at Lauterbach’s back in the’ 90s, proved to be a

While lovers of live music are frequently over-

big help with booking, bringing bands in from

saturated with options in New York City, $5 for

around the country and even Canada to the

three bands in a laidback and inviting environ-

Page 40 Star-Revue Section 2

ALSO IN THIS SECTION:

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June 2019

Swamp Dogg hails from a select line of belters, crooners and shouters who wear their individuality on their sleeves. In other words, nutters.

I’ve never been to Africa

Visiting the Swamp Dogg songbook is a bit like experiencing Ian Dury for the first time (“Knock me over with a feather, Clever Trevor”) or hearing Hank Wangford, the English country twangster (“How long have you been going out with Chico, and when did you run off with him to Puerto Rico”). It recalls characters like Big Jay McNeely, the honker Saxophonist, who would lead his audience out of the pub onto the local bus, then ride up the hill with them and return on the downhill one to the same venue, all without losing track of his enormously long horn solo. Mojo Nixon has the Swamp Dogg gene (“Don Henley must die, stick a sharp stick in his eye”).

And it’s your fault - Swamp Dogg

Swamp Dogg’s album titles reinforce this. Here’s a sample: I Called for a Rope and They Threw Me a Rock; Finally Caught Up with Myself; Total Destruction of Your Mind; Rat On; Cuffed, Collared & Tagged and Doing a Party Tonight; Surfin’ in Harlem; An Awful Xmas and a Lousy New Year; and The White Man Made Me Do It. Listening to these records is akin to imagining Allan Sherman, Gil Scott-Heron, Louis Prima and Screaming Jay Hawkins getting together in the studio during a busy night of drinking Chinese whiskey (Schenley).

The Original Dogg Mike Morgan

In 1970, the black American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter Jerry Williams, originally from Virginia, changed his name to Swamp Dogg. Recalling this transformation, he wrote, ”I wanted to sing about everything and anything and not be pigeonholed by the industry. Since then I have sung about dead flies, Sly Stone, revolution, peace, war, sex and blood transfusions… topics that interest me.”

Once in a blue moon, Swamp Dogg gets up to our neck of the woods. This author saw his show in 1993 at Tramps, with Afrika Bambaataa as the deejay. Sometime around the time of the 2008 economic implosion, he played at the sorely missed Southpaw club in Brooklyn. Both were memorable performances. To quote from the man himself, “If you’ve got to do it wrong, do it right.” The world needs more Swamp Doggs. Swamp Dogg will be performing at Le Poisson Rouge on June 14, 2019.

Bottle Rockets CTS mix pano

American roots music is probably the closest that one will get to describing Swamp Dogg’s material. There are plenty of original songs that recall the heyday of ‘50s and ‘60s soul shots, there is a healthy dose of rock and roll, and there are hat-doffs to country. But what distinguishes these compositions from most others is that they are the creations of a true outsider.

Swamp Dogg is still at it. Last year he released an album entitled Love, Loss and Autotune, featuring the tall sound of Texas blues guitarist Guitar Shorty. And there are reports that he is working with John Prine on a country record. Swamp Dogg is no stranger to country music. He brought out an album of country songs in the 1980s, which included the track “He Don’t Like Country Music and He Hates Little Kids.” One of the mainstays of his live repertoire is the John Prine number Sam Stone (“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes” – that one).

20 Years of Cowboy Technical Services It’s been 20 years since Eric Ambel, aka Roscoe, first opened his recording studio in South Brooklyn with his musical partner Tim Hatfield. Since then they’ve moved shop several times, and today are located at 231 Norman Avenue in Greenpoint under the name of Cowboy Technical Services (CST). Though it appears to be a fairly simple room, Ambel states, “We’ve got everything you need to make a great record.” CST differs from other studios in that it doesn’t have an isolated control room. Ambel explains, “We’d been hearing about how producers like Daniel Lanois (whose approach

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can be heard on Bob Dylan’s ethereal Time Out of Mind) had been working this way. We really liked how not having a control room affected the work flow. It gave a better vibe and communication with musicians.” Ambel continues, “The one room thing makes a lot of sense in New York City where space is tight, and you can’t spend a lot of money on buildouts. Instead of chopping everything up, we like to all be in the same space. In typical recording studio, a lot of time is spent setting up drums. I don’t want to be sitting in some cramped room because of that. Here we have a

Mike Cobb

nice big room good for capturing the band and mixing.” However, isolation can be achieved from cabinets or by instruments being plugged directly into the console, and CST does have a vocal booth. With 17-foot-high ceilings, acoustically tuned paneling, and stateof-the-art equipment including a handmade Neotech Élan console (used by the likes of Steve Albini, the Beastie Boys, Todd Rundgren), CST can capture top-notch sound. And the proof is in the pudding. Ambel has recorded many of the best in the Americana music world including Steve

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Earle, The Bottle Rockets, Los Lobos, Debby Harry, Marah, Marshall Crenshaw, Ryan Adams, and countless others. As a sideman-guitarist Ambel has worked and toured extensively with Joan Jett, The Del Lords, The Yayhoos, and many more. In 2000, Ambel became lead guitarist in Steve Earle’s band the Dukes, appearing on such projects as Earle’s acclaimed Jerusalem album,

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Peekskill Yesterday

Peekskill Today

Musicians Form Upstate Brooklyn Jack Grace There was a time when Brooklyn was an artist’s bedroom community: many musicians only moved here to flee the oppressive Manhattan rents. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, you and your significant other would tell everyone you were moving out to Brooklyn to a great place with a huge backyard. Friends would come to your first party, agree how cool it was, ask three times where the subway back to Manhattan was, and then no one would ever come out to see you again. Times have changed. Being a Brooklyn band is now a brand of sorts. But bands who claim to hail from Brooklyn may not contain any Brooklyn natives at all; and yet, the cycle has happened all over again. Many of the musicians who once basked in the affordable rents of Brooklyn have sought refuge north of the city. Beacon, NY, has already jumped the shark for cheap living and has succeeded in being its own variation on a modern hipster gathering area much like Williamsburg. But Beacon still has soul. Dogwood Bar is a fine example with a blend of older pioneers mixed with new folk. The food is good, and the bartenders are smart, full of opinions and life. The live music features touring acts mixed with musician settlers from Brooklyn

and beyond. Quinn’s has a legitimate jazz scene mixed with rock, something you won’t easily find at an Applebee’s happy hour. The legendary Towne Crier is the longest-running music venue by a single owner in the country. Peekskill, NY, is the underrated gem just 30 miles outside of NYC by train and still has reasonable rent. There are a few places that offer live music. Birdsall House has good beer, food, and a mix of bands. Peekskill Coffee has a nice offering of singer/songwriters and the BeanRunner Cafe has solid jazz players on the calendar. Peekskill is on the rise, and I expect it to grow its live music options. Further north lies Hudson, NY. Years ago, it was predicted to be the next musician enclave, but the Amtrak ticket is expensive, and it’s too far from the city for many folk. Club Helsinki relocated from the Berkshires to the town many years ago and is truly a first-class venue with a capacity of 225. But while a nice place for antiques and day trips, live music options don’t appear to be expanding much. Woodstock is still dominated by a Baby Boomer culture all too excited to tell you about the time

they smoked pot with Jimi Hendrix. But recently the live music options have resurged thanks primarily to the boom of affordable Airbnb’s. The Colony has a new sound system, stage, and is an amazing place to play or see music. Musician Jeremy Bernstein opened The Pines in nearby Mt. Tremper, and it is a cozy place to see music with a pleasant comfort food menu. Once the capital of NY State, Kingston lies eight miles south of Woodstock. Now it may just be the capital of aging Brooklyn thrill-seekers rapidly buying up real estate. BSP Kingston is an indie music venue, Keegan Ales is great for their delicious beer and long-running music program, and The Anchor still provides a good ole rock show. While some burrow deeper into Brooklyn towards Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and Bushwick, others find it easier to settle up north as the options grow and diversify. Whatever happened to everyone moving to Detroit?

Cowboy Tech, continued and the Grammy Award winning record The Revolution Starts…..Now. Ambel lends his expertise as a musician to attain sparkling tones from the studio’s ample selection of guitars and amplifiers and works closely with Dr.Z, manufacturers of some of the most highly rated guitar amplifiers in the US. With the help of engineer Mario Viele, CST often combines old and new technologies by recording first to digital, mixing down to analog tape, and then sending it back to digital for mastering. This provides the precision of digital with the warmth of analog. One of their secret weapons is the BURL Mothership converter, “which gives a heavier sound”, says Ambel. “It’s probably the most exciting piece of digital equipment that I’ve ever heard. A higher-quality converter just sounds better.” As a producer, Ambel helps bands with preproduction work like developing arrangements, guitar lines, and harmonies. He describes the initial process as follows. “I’m a producer, not an engineer. I always like to hear the demo tape first. I want to hear a stripped-down version of song, preferably just the singer and their guitar. That way I can add something. I think the arrangement is the key to really good recordings. That’s how I did it on the last record I produced with Girls on Grass.” Ambel is also involved in other interesting projects. “I’m partners in the Solo Sounds

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label with Scott Ambrose Reilly and the people from Sony Orchard. It’s a label devoted to solo instrumental versions of classic records old and new. There’s one with Ben Hall, a young guitar player from Nashville, who did Nirvana’s Nevermind album in the style of Chet Atkins. There are over 70 titles available.”

Cowboy at CTS

New York bands continue to be the backbone of what they do. “Jack Grace had Norah Jones come in for a session. She nailed it in one perfect take. It was incredible.” But national touring acts also come to CST while in town. “We have all the gear you want, and instruments can be inspirational. Los Lobos came in here to do a song for a PBS children’s special. David Hidalgo saw our cheapo electric sitar, and never let go of it.” In closing Ambel states, “Coming up, I saw a lot of time being wasted by the process being engineer-dominated as opposed to being creative-dominated. I learned a lot from negative example. We’re set up to start working on your music quickly with a streamlined approach. People will come in and be amazed that they can get a track cut before lunch. We have a lot of pride in that.” Whatever bands may need, CST offers a superlative recording experience. For more information see their website: www.cowboytechnical. com.

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June 2019

Littlefield celebrates ten years Erin DiGregorio

Littlefield, the performance space located at 635 Sackett St. in Gowanus, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a week-and-ahalf-long festival that featured live music, comedy shows and dance parties. “We couldn’t fit all our history and programing into one week; there were so many people we wanted to work with,” said co-owner Julie Kim. “We hoped we covered all the genres. That week and a half should capture the essence of Littlefield.” The venue was originally a dream for Kim and her business partner Scott Koshnoodi, who both shared a love for music and had great experiences with the music scene in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s. The duo first met in engineering school and met again at a consulting firm where they worked as environmental engineers. “We opened officially in 2009 at the peak of the Great Recession. It was really tough and a big challenge for us because we were new to do this and new to a neighborhood that was predominantly industrial – we

were one of the first commercial spaces to come in,” explained Kim, who grew up in New York. “There was no foot traffic so we really had to adapt. What our original vision for the space was to initially just showcase live music, but without the foot traffic here it was really difficult to compete with the larger, more established music venues.” So they switched gears and began hosting comedy shows, which seemed to resonate with the Gowanus neighborhood. Their goal was to do something weekly and team up with individuals who were just as hungry to succeed as they were. Littlefield hosted “Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen” for two years, which did really well. Then they brought on comedian Wyatt Cenac to take over, after his four years as a correspondent and writer with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Now they have “Butterboy” with Jo Firestone, Aparna Nancherla and Maeve Higgins every Monday night. While Littlefield became known for comedy, they also host live music shows and other pro-

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SUNNY'S BAR

we are open!

Come Celebrate Our 10th Anniversary Year!

Brunch Starting in June

JUNE 2019

ALL SHOWS 9PM UNLESS LISTED OTHERWISE

LOBSTER WEDNESDAY 1½ LB Lobster DiNNer $28.00

Mon-Thurs 11:30-10 Fri 11:30-11 Sat 11-11 Sun 11-10

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June 2019, Page 43

Night Pollution at Barbes

Stefan Zeniuk

n June 12, Pamelia Stickney (formerly Kurstin) and Brian Dewan will be playing at Barbes, in Park Slope, at 8 pm. This duo, collectively listed as Night Pollution, promises to give a unique performance, to say the least. Stickney is one of the world’s leading performers on the Theremin, the bizarre and otherworldly electronic instrument known for its schticky use in UFO sci-fi films. Few performers have devoted themselves to the instrument like she has, and few musicians have taken it to such musically diverse places. Besides more high-profile collaborations with David Byrne, Yoko Ono, and Bela Fleck, she is most notable for her extremely musical and inventive incorporation of the instrument into jazz, improvised music, orchestras and rock bands. Stickney presents such a unique personality and approach in her idiosyncratic way that she seems like she was brought to us from a foreign sci-fi landscape, and the Theremin is the grounding force. She plays with accuracy, confidence and clarity, something seemingly incongruous with the nature of her instrument. Brian Dewan, the other half of this duo, has followed an even more circuitous career path. Known equally for his off-kilter folk as his electronic music, he uses a wide range of instruments. He uses rare and unusual instruments, as well as homemade electronic instruments, but is also equally known for his visual and multimedia art. Dewan’s art has graced the covers of David Byrne, They Might Be Giants, and Neutral Milk Hotel. He creates manipulated educational film strips from the 1940s; installation art (dubbed “Shrines”); and cabinetry-encased homemade electronic instruments. Dewan is a true artist culling from the widest range of Americana. His music veers between musicology and an instrument museum, often featuring accordions, koto, homemade instruments, organs, autoharps and zithers, as well as singing and storytelling.

Brian Dewan is always searching at 8 pm and 10 pm, nightly, shows are almost always free, and they haven’t pushed their luck with overly expensive ticketing. Most of the same bands that helped open the club and put it on the map appear there regu-

larly, even if they tour internationally on stages in front of thousands. The music room is tiny, and thus fills up easily, but the overhead and maintenance of basic club expenses keep it incredibly manageable.

Stickney and Dewan’s connection through an outsider Americana lens is clear, and their appearance at Barbes is a natural fit. Having just turned 17, Barbes has been indoctrinated into the “institution” category of NYC clubs. Though the neighborhood has changed significantly since it first opened, Barbes’ success has to do with its homey, musician-friendly adherence to old and steady norms. Bands begin

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June 2019

COUNTRY MUSIC IS INVITED TO THE COOKOUT...AGAIN

Roderick Thomas

ip-hop-country is a musical genre. That statement may seem unusual, but it should shock no one. Both country music and hip-hop have roots in folk music and blues – slaps, chants, rhyme, melody, and rhythm are all intrinsic qualities of both genres. It was only a matter of time before these distant cousins joined forces and skyrocketed to massive, worldwide success. In comes… “ Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. “Old Town Road “ is a song that was originally made for social media, specifically the platform Tik Tok. It was released in December 2018 for the viral “yeehaw” challenge and eventually picked up steam. The song isn’t the first hip-hop-country record to gain popularity. Rapper Nelly’s “Over and Over” was met with acclaim when it came out in September 2004. However, “ Old Town Road’s” omnipresence is something we haven’t seen before. The remix with country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus, the star-studded music video, and its # 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 make “ Old Town Road “ a phenomenon. The song samples “13 Ghosts IV” by Nine-Inch Nails and was produced by Dutch producer, YungKio. Lil Nas X can be heard crooning over 808’s and banjos, “Can’t nobody tell me nothing, you can’t tell me nothing,” before boyishly howling in a higher octave, “I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road “ The song is an instant pop culture classic, anyone, and everyone can like and listen to the song without potentially feeling left out. On the remix, Billy Ray Cyrus lends his experienced voice and star power. While Lil Nas X sings boyishly, Billy Ray brings more polished and soulful vocals to the record. If you expected Miley’s dad to stick out like a sore thumb, you’ll be disappointed; he actually fits right in. Billy Ray Cyrus’

appearance, in fact, elevates the record by giving it a sense of country music legitimacy. Lil Nas X, however, shouldn’t be underestimated. The Atlanta native definitely understands song composition. He’s described his fusion of hiphop and country as deliberate – “If you mix the 2 genres, of course, it’s gon’ get some attention.” “Old Town Road” is a feel-good classic that will be enjoyed for years to come, yet it isn’t without controversy. Initially, the song charted on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, but was pulled from the Country music charts for not being “country” enough. This isn’t the first time the country music scene has snubbed a successful country song by a mainstream black artist. Appropriation is a much used and misused word these days. Appropriate: to take exclusive possession of, for one’s own benefit, without authority or right. Throughout mankind’s existence, cross-cultural pollination of ideas, genes, and music has occurred. Country music’s origins lie in the rural Southern and Midwestern United States. The genre is the child of Southern black, rural folk singing old gospel and blues while playing the banjo (an instrument of West African origin) and hillbilly music; fiddle and banjo playing, yodeling and Scottish/Irish folk songs. Country music itself is a hybrid genre. It first gained popularity throughout the South and then saw commercial success nationwide in the ’40s and ’50s. Yet despite roots in black culture, the genre’s most successful artists are, to near exclusivity, white singers: Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Carrie Underwood and yes, Billy Ray Cyrus for example. Appropriate: to take exclusive possession of... Unfortunately, the dissociation of black people

from country isn’t an isolated occurrence in music. Rock ‘n’ roll, for example, has origins in jazz, gospel, and country music. In its earliest days, rock music was often sung by black American women in local bars. Funny enough, at the time, rock ‘n’ roll was seen as “race music” – music by African Americans. The 1950s would see Rock get defined as a genre. Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry (African American) would have much success with songs like “Maybellene,” yet he wasn’t dubbed the “the King”; no, that was Elvis. Over time, except for a handful of singers, black artists would have a hard time finding success in rock. Today, rock music is seen as “white boy’s music.” No one should see black musicians singing country as foreign, especially due to its black roots. In fact, “Old Town Road” being so popular to listeners across the globe is an ode to the start of country music – a hybrid sound that became a mainstream American genre. Origins aside, today, country music has become heavily associated with conservative, white America. These days, black artists like Lil Nas X who find mainstream success in the genre, still get shunned by country music gatekeepers. That being said, if Lil Nas’s success signals a changing of attitudes by general listeners towards black, country artists, I’m very optimistic about the future of country music. While I still predict that “ Old Town Road” will be snubbed by prestigious music awards like the CMAs, I expect the song to continue to dominate Billboard and playlists all year long. You’re going to hear it at wedding receptions, the “cool” night clubs and bars downtown and all the summer barbecues. Country music is officially invited back to the cookout. Roderick Thomas is an NYC based writer and filmmaker (rt.roderickthomas@gmail.com)

Diplo, Lil Nas X, and Billy Ray Cyrus, April 2019 (photo by Matt Winkelmeyer) Star-Revue Section 2

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June 2019, Page 45

Littlefield (cont)

gramming that wouldn’t be found in a typical music venue. For example, they host “Punderdome” (competitive spontaneous punmaking), “Drunk Science” (when intoxicated comedians compete to present the best scientific dissertation to real scientists), “Mortified” (telling embarrassing, horrific childhood stories to strangers), and “Dig Deeper” (bringing back 1960s/1970s soul singers and bands). “Littlefield morphed into a destination, rather than just a neighborhood venue,” Kim said. “I love that we are not only known for comedy but as a place where we can nurture talent and get to see some of these really amazing performers in all mediums come through.” The celebration concluded with comedian Kurt Braunohler. Kim said she saw Braunohler and Kristen Schaal grow each week at Littlefield as they perfected their craft before taking their comedy show to California. In an interview, Braunohler reminisced about his time there, explaining how he and his comedy partner Schaal had been looking for a new home for their show “Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen” when they found the Gowanus venue. “We both just fell in love with the space and then we ended up running our show there two full years before moving to L.A. It was tough because when we moved to L.A., we wanted to find a place that was exactly like Littlefield – that just doesn’t exist.” Braunohler, who was also the comedy consultant and an actor in the 2017 rom-com The Big Sick, noted that all the stand-up comedy scenes were filmed at Littlefield. With 10 years officially in the history books for Kim and Koshnoodi, they hope to further elevate Littlefield in its new location with both new and old musical acts, in addition to the comedy. “We’ve really been pushing live music because we have noticed a shift in nightlife and live music, especially in South Brooklyn. We’re trying to bring that back and trying to create a community for musicians,” Kim told us. “We’re trying to encompass the whole notion of truly being a performing arts space. We always want to give everyone an amazing experience, regardless of what they’re there to see.”

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Rhythm Section Sundays at Bembé Stefan Zeniuk On June 30, Los Cumpleaños will be playing at Bembé. Known as “Rhythm Section Sundays”, a weekly series that has been consistently voted the best late-night Sunday dance spot for years, this is one of the city’s hidden gems. Co-hosted by in-demand singer Mariella Price Brooklyn and mainstay DJ Mickey Perez, the party features some of the city’s best Latin and “world groove” (for lack of a better term) musicians, often in looser, dirtier forms than their regular big-stage gigs. The night starts at 11 pm, and the room is small, so the sweat, energy, and late-night joy is dense. Bembé is one of the last grungy music clubs left in Williamsburg; small, and dank, and special. Los Cumpleaños is made up of Colombian percussionist Nestor Gomez, Argentinian drummer Lautaro Burgos, and US-born Eric Lane (keyboards) and Alex Asher (trombone), with other guests often sitting in. Their music is based primarily in the Colombian Cumbia tradition, with plenty of psychedelic sounds and punk-rock attitudes thrown in. They’re typically multi-cultural in their influences, and draw on many Latin styles, including tons of interpretations of the rep from the golden age in Spanish Harlem. Filtering everything through psychedelic organs and soaring trombone solos, the place will be bouncing, for sure. It’s important that there are still after-hour dance parties, and in this city, on a Sunday night, you can get some of the best musicians in the world willing and ready to throw down. These types of nights, these types of clubs, these types of hangs are always the key to the heart of Brooklyn. Bembé is located at 81 S. 6th St. (corner of Berry St.). www.bembe.us •

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June 2019

The 4th Annual Brooklyn International Music Festival Andrew B. White

ot on the heels of their recent Folk Festival, this June Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theatre and School of Music host the Brooklyn International Music Festival. Now in its fourth year, this slightly more petite festival shines the spotlight on a wide variety of international sounds, all emanating from New York City. Unlike other festivals such as WOMAD where artists from around the world come together, the Brooklyn International Music Festival draws its performers locally. Considering the city’s diverse makeup, there’s no denying the amount of musical styles that are part of it, some of which is showcased here. Curated and organized by Feral Foster, the festival program runs across the nights of June 14 and 15 at the Jalopy Theatre, with after-show music at the adjacent Jalopy Tavern. Foster has built himself a following for his original blues/roots music and hosting Jalopy’s weekly Wednesday “Roots n’ Ruckus” review, showcasing new and established artists. As both an artist and curator, Foster’s finger is truly on the musical pulse of the city. In his own words he describes the festival as “a cross-pollination of music from the world’s most diverse city. It’s an opportunity for the audience to tap into the wealth of talent from different scenes throughout our global city.”

Feral Foster

The program sees a wide range of music and traditions from Spain, the Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, Serbia, Nepal, Mali, China, Haiti, and even Brooklyn itself. It’s a great way to experience this international smorgasbord up-close. In fact, you may have already seen some of the performers on your daily commute like Zong Li Lu, who has made a name for himself playing his homemade Chinese monochord (Duxianqin) in the NYC Subway system. Other artists include NPR Tiny Desk sensation Yva Las Vegass who sings and performs with her “face-melting” cuatro Venezolano (Venezuelan ukulelestyle instrument). Ukrainian Village Voices are a culturally diverse group performing traditional Ukrainian music, bringing together members of NYC’s Ukrainian and larger folk music communities. Yacouba Sissoko, originally from Mali, is a master kora (multistringed harp-like instrument) player and “jeli” (storyteller) who has played with African and American musicians including Amy Koïta, Baaba Maal, Sekouba “Bambino” Diabate, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, Lauryn Hill, and Regina Carter. Peter Stan & Friends features accordion maestro and Ridgewood, Queens, resident Peter Stan performing Serbian & Romanian Romani music. Tropos, a duo of Liamna Pestana Roche and Daniel Yost perform Tambalagumba Spanish and Colonial Latin American music from medieval to the 18th century. They perform on replicas of early instruments, many of which are built by Daniel himself. Kongo is made up of members of NYC’s Haitian community and perform socially-conscious Kreyol songs. Formed in 1997, Sukarma is Nepal’s most sought-after folk-classical trio comprised of three talented instrumentalists. Referred to as a walking museum, these musicians belong to the illustrious gharana (home) of music who have been playing for generations. Farzad Amoozegar-Fassie has spent years mastering the setar and tanbur, studying classic Persian music under Iranian master musicians such as Mohamed Reza Lotfi, Dariush Tala’i, Hooshang Zarif, Masood Shareai, Hossein Alizadah and Ershad Tahmasbie. Finally, Julia Patinella, a singer and songwriter with deep roots in Flamenco traditions is multilingual in Spanish, Italian, Sicilian and English and draws from her traditions to performs music with deep socio-political themes.

Yva Las Vegass

The after-show parties at the Jalopy Tavern feature The Rocket 88s on Friday with their mix of rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, and country and western, featuring “Papa” Ernie Vega, Jay Sanford, Chris Gelb and Charlie Giordano, and on Saturday night La Nueva Cancion, comprised of Latino and American musicians whose aim is to “interpret, collect, and rediscover the diverse folkloric musical styles of South America and the Greater Antilles.” Additionally, on Saturday afternoon the festival also hosts a Flamenco vocal and rhythms workshop with Julia Patinella. The workshop is suitable any level of skill and for musicians from any genre. Julia will pass on her special vocal techniques and explore the infectious “palmas” or clapping rhythms that anyone can use to accompany themselves and strengthen their general sense of musicality. Tickets are $20 for each evening (or $30 for both nights). Flamenco workshop tickets are $35 each. For more information and tickets, go to Jalopy at 315 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, or www.jalopytheatre.org.

Julia Patinella Star-Revue Section 2

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June 2019, Page 47

★ ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

BROOKLYN AMERICANA

UNPLUGGED MUSIC SERIES FRIDAYS AT 6PM • BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK • Pier 3 Greenway Terrace

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

6-8PM

June 7 ALI DINEEN & FERAL FOSTER LITTLE NORA BROWN June 14 TIM GRIMM LINDA MCRAE

FREE

June 21 QUEEN ESTHER JAN BELL & THE MAYBELLES

June 28 WILL SCOTT & CHARLIE BURNHAM GREG SCHATZ

“Top Ten Summer things to do in Brooklyn Bridge Park” - Time Out NY

Save the Date! 5th Annual Brooklyn Americana Music Festival September 21 & 22 • Pier 6, Brooklyn Bridge • www.bkamf.com

Page 48 Star-Revue Section 2

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June 2019

REVUE MUSIC JUNE

Lower East Side:

Midwood Bar Chord, 1008 Cortelyou Rd.

Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey

6/7 Hugh Pool Band, 6/8 Madguganda, 6/9 Cortelyou Jazz Jam, 6/10 Alan Lee & the Whiskey Bumps; 6/11 Jack Grace Solo; 6/13 Cosmos Sunshine; 6/14 Stan Mitchell Presents Local Vocal, 6/15 Alegba & Friends, 6/16 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 6/18 John Pinamonti Solo; 6/19 Suzette Sundae; 6/20 Ryan-O’Neil & the Bandits; 6/21 Michael Louis Band; 6/22 Bull ‘n Los Picadores;6/23 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 6/24 Craig Dreyer Organ Trio, 6/25 Kira Metcalf; 6/26 Damian Quinones Electric Trio; 6/27 Los Mucheuelos; 6/28 Jake G & The Soul Vibrance; 6/29 Jack Grace Band

6/5 Hey Violet, Sage;6/6 Grapetooth, James Swanberg. 6/7 Geographer, Manatee Commune. 6/8; Remo Drive, Slow Pulp, Slow Bullet.; 6/14 Wild Planes, Soleil, Don’t Believe in Ghosts, Wake the Sun, Eagle-I; 6/19 Ari Lennox: Shea Butter Baby Tour, Baby Rose, Mikhala Jene, Ron Gilmore.; 6/21 Holy Ghost!; 6/22 Holy Ghost!m; 6/26 Foxwarren, Hannah Cohen.; 6/27 Advanced Placement Tour feat. Bloxx, Hembree, Warbly Jets.

East Village: Webster Hall, 125 E 11th St.

6/6 - 6/8 Empire of the Sun.; 6/11 Pink Sweat$. 6/12 Lukas Nelson & The Promise of the Real.; 6/14; Real Estate, Palm.; 6/15 City of the Sun.; 6/20 X Ambassadors, Your Smith; 6/29 Devils Playground Drom, 85 Avenue A; 6/7 Greek Rock Story with Athan Hilaki and his band; 6/11 Silver Arrow Band; 6/12 Lasso: Las Historias detras de mis canciones; 6/13 Sertab Erener US Unplugged Tour; 6/14 Samba NY’s King of the Drams; 6/18 CEG Presents Them Travelers. 6/23: New York School of Burlesque. 6/26 Queen Generation, 6/28 Direct from Cuba: Jorge Luis Pacheco; 6/29 Requinte Trio Brazilian Jazz

Coney Island Baby, 169 Avenue A

6/7 Glamdammit: Rockaway Bitch, The Nuclears, Sewage; 6/8 Coney Island Baby Blue Grass Brucn Bash (2:30), Common Jack, Nicotine Dolls, Nishti, Macabre Americana (7 pm); 6/9 Josh Zuckerman; 6/10 Pancakes and Whistey Showcase; 6/11 Leon & The Peoples; 6/12 Halo Maud, Dead Editor; 6/13 The Tall Pines Vinyl Release Party w the Yahtones, Lizie & The Makes, Jon Spencer; 6/14 EastVillainy Presents: Kilcool, Vinnie Neuberg, Tomas Tomas; 6/15 Bluegrass Bash; 6/16 Sones NYC Bash!; 6/19 Sharkmuffin, Prude BOys, Vamanos, Lumbs; 6/21 Ecks Men, Spanking Charlene, Les Sans Culottes; 6/30: Coney Island Baby; Derek Nelson Band, Goodbye Picasso.

West Village: Fat Cat, 75 Christopher Street

6/5: Raphael D’Lugoff Trio, Dan Aran Group, Ned Goold. 6/6: Keith Brown Band, The Zebtet, Paul Nowiski. 6/7: Fat Cat Music; Andrea Domenici Group, The Supreme Queens, Ray Parker. 6/8: Flavio Slive and Break Free, Corcoran Holt Group, Greg Glassman; 6/9: Terry Waldo’s Gotham City Band, Jon Davis Trio, The Program of Deprogramming. 6/10: Erik Robert Jacobson, Ned Goold Quartet, Billy Kaye. 6/11: Fat Cat Music; The Zebtet, Roberto Quintero Salsa Band, Craig Wuepper; 6/12: Raphael D’Lugoff Trio, Harold Mabern Trio, Ned Goold. 6/13: Jure Pukl Band, Greg Glassman Quintet, Todd Herbert. 6/14: Groover Trio, The Supreme Queens, Lawrence Clark Quintet. 6/15: Fat Cat Music; Ivan Renta’s Latin Jazz Quintet, Organ Monk, Greg Glassman; 6/16: Fat Cat Music; Terry Waldo’s Gotham City Band, Ark Ovrutski, The Program of Deprogramming.

The Owl Music Parlor, 497 Rogers Avenue, 6/6 tica Douglas, Wish Wish &

Lizzie and the Makers at Coney Island Baby, June 13

With influences ranging from Kate Bushand Ann Peebles to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pink Floyd, Lizzie Edwards has been a guest at many NYC all-star jams, sharing the stage with the likes of James Carter, Syd Straw, Ted Leo and Reeves Gabrels. On lead guitar, Greg McMullen describes his music style as “sonic deconstruction on electric/acoustic/ resophonic/lap/pedal steel/bass guitars, and other devices...” Trying to bridge the gap between Arto Lindsay and Joe Walsh, Greg has played with Chris Whitley, Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie/The Cure), Meshell Ndegeocello, Trixie Whitley, Twilight Singers, Bonsai, Bentmen, Matt C’Mon Everybody, 325 Franklin White, Speedbuggy USA, and the Glenn Branca Ensemble.

Fort Greene:

Lizzie and the Makers has rocked up and down the East Coast, taken the West Coast by storm, and found a new musical family in Texas, after blowing the roof of their SXSW 2018 and 2019 showcases in Austin. Dark and soulful lead vocals and lyrics by Lizzie and innovative arrangements by Greg combine the blues, rock and psychedelic soul of musicians like Freddie King, Sharon Jones and Led Zeppelin. The band also features Brett Bass on bass, Steve Williams on drums, and Rob Clores on keys. Their latest EP, MEANWHILE features a psychedelic blues rock sound with powerful vocals, thoughtful lyrics, and stellar instrumentation.

Page 38 Red Hook Star-Revue

Avenue 6/5: C’Mon Everybody; Tiff Ortiz, Man-

tis Mantis, WaterLynx Trio. 6/6 DRUVVY, Corin Gabriella. 6/7 Carly Ann Filbin, Diana vs Donna. 6/8 Yes Homo, a Dynamite Queer Party, Cool Company with Special Guests. 6/13 Kill the Rich with Julian Edward Williams. 6/15 Kaleta and Super Yamba Band with KUYE and DJ tres dos. 6/19 Ziarra with LiLu and Natie. 6/21 Walk Talk and Sonny Stop. 6/22: C’mon Everybody; Iris Lune with Lenii and Puck. 6/27 SeepeopleS with Leaders of the Shift.

St Connection; 6/9 The Black Soul Experience; 6/10 Red Sahara, Black Velevet Mondays Jam; 6/11 Joe Benjamin, Unltd; 6/12 Olivia K, The Kennedy Administration; 6/13 The Tristones, Linards Many Moods; 6/14 Emily Rose, The Black Soul Experience; 6/15 Belen Cusi, The Hook Club; 6/7 Cindy Rainne, Black Velvet Jam; 6/18 Montagna Band, Funk Y’all; 6/19 Tatiana Owens, The Kennedy Administration; 6/20 Rho & the Nomads, Li’nards Many Moods; 6/21 Gentlemen Brawlers, The Black Soul Experience; 6/22 Sublunar Minds, Tracey Nicole; 6/23 The music of Tina Turner & Earth Wind & Fire; 6/24 Black Monday Jam; 6/25 Freeo, UNLTD!; 6/26 Olivia K, The Kennedy Administration; 6/27 Planetary People, Li’Nards Many Moods; 6/29 Brooklyn Funk Collective; 6/30 The Music of Nina Simone & First Ladies of Jazz & Blues.

Bushwick Elsewhere Rooftop, 599 Johnson 6/5: Maurice Moore. 6/6: JR J, R Michigander. 6/7: TOKiMONSTA, Rosehardt & Bad Turner, Thouxanbanfauni. 6/8: Angel Du$t, Interstellar Funk. 6/11: The Heavy, Jesse Jo Stark. 6/12: Moon King, The Gloomies and Glasino. 6/13: Braxton Cook, Ginger Root 6/14: Beshken (Album Release), Sinkane, Bubble_T Chandler_By_Night. 6/15: Laundry Day, Shlohmo, The Magician, Aston Shuffle, Zephyr Ann, The Golden Pony, Samo Nights. 6/16: DJ Momma and Friends. 6/17: Thick, Miss June, Pom Pom Squad and Groupie. 6/18: Helado Negro, AJ Tracey, Nasty Nigel. 6/19: Connan Mockasin, Branko, Human Pitch. 6/20: Future Generations, Sports Team (Debut). 6/21: Virginia, Project Pablo, slowthai, FM-84, NAAFI, Zutzut, Fausto Bahia and Debit. 6/22: slowthai, Rollover DJs, Higgins. 6/24: ; Slayyyter. 6/25: ; Sir Babygirl, Slayyyter, Exotic House Party. 6/26: ; Kikagaku Moyo, Cate Le Bon, Alisaloog. 6/27: ; Cosmo’s Midnight, Bad Books. 6/28: ; Papi Juice World Pride. 6/29: ; Out of This World Pride with Alinka & Shaun J Wright, Amber Martin, DJ Holographic, DJ Minx, In Training, Jason Kendig, The Carry Nation, Trans Pecos, 915 Wyckoff St. 6/7

www.star-revue.com

On a personal note, I am super looking forward to celebrating my annual birthday at Hometown BBQ on June 17th with Singkhol for their record release of “See Through Suits” featuring: Scottie Murchinson, Igor Ivanov, Jamie Weygint, and Phil Kestra, Chicken Missiles will be making a rare appearance, and more bands may be added, so come on down and (double) party! — Jaimie Branch

VENUE LISTING BENE’S RECORD SHOP

HANKS SALOON

345 Adams St. Brooklyn, 11201 718-885-2427 hankssaloon.com

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM 509 Atlantic Ave. Roulette.org

JALOPY TAVERN

317 Columbia St. 718-625-3214 jalopytavern.biz

SUNNYS

253 Conover St. 718-625-8211 sunnysredhook.com

635 Sackett St. littlefieldnyc.com

SUPERSMITH

125 Dikeman St. 718-855-3439 supersmith.org

WEEKLY GIGS: TUESDAYS

9:00 PM at Jalopy Theater OPEN MIC, Sign up by 9! 9:00 PM at Rocky Sullivan’s Irish Night (Language, Dance, Traditional Sessions)

WEDNESDAYS

9:00 PM at Jalopy Theater Roots n’ Ruckus Presented by Feral Foster 9:00 PM at Rocky Sullivan’s Karaoke Night with Karaoke Kings 9:00 PM at Sunny’s Smokey’s Round Up*

THURSDAYS

10:00 PM Jalopy Theater Brooklyn Raga Massive Weekly Raga Jam Free entry to musicians after 10PM who come to play.

FRIDAYS

9:00 PM Jalopy Tavern Papa Vega and the Rocket 88’s

PROSPECT PARK BAND SHELL SATURDAYS located in Prospect Park 718-683-5600 bricartsmedia.org

HOMETOWN BBQ

454 Van Brunt St. 347-294-4644 hometownbarbque.com

ROCKY SULLIVAN’S

46 Beard St. 718-246-8050 rockysullivansredhook.com

tan Ave 6/5: Raja Kumari, YaSi. 6/6 JJUUJJUU,

Lede. 6/13 Nails, Misery Index, Outer Heaven, Ulthar; 6/19 Christian Loffler; 6/20 Ocean Alley, Ruby Waters; 6/21 SOAK, Fenne Lily; 6/22 Culture Abuse, Tony Molina, Lil Ugly Mane, Young Guv, Dare; 6/23 Lil Simz, April, Vista; 6/28 Great Good Fine OK, Vesperteen; 6/29 Corpus Presents Show Me the Body

IBEAM

168 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave. ibeambrooklyn.com

This month I am going to highlight a couple festivals JALOPY THEATRE 315 Columbia St. 718-395-3214 with drastically different jalopytheatre.org programming that hit us in SUPERFINE June: the 24th annual Vi126 Front St. superfine.nyc sion Festival and Celebrate LITTLEFIELD Brooklyn!

159 Pioneer St. pioneerworks.com

Williamsburg: Knitting Factory, 361 Metropoli-

Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St 6/11 SYML, Fleurie. 6/12 Kiana

We take our music seriously over here at the Star-Revue and this month we are expanding our music listings so that everyone can get out and enjoy some great music this summer!

PIONEER WORKS

Fog Lake, 6/8 Justus Proffit, Dig Nitty, Fever (midnight show); 6/9 King of Nowhere, Wsabi Fox, Tiny Gun; 6/10 Bee.Tyle, Crownkidd, Young Heartbreak, Mars as a Girl, Joey Blackheart; 6/11 Peaer; 6/12 Jeanines, Bex, chzram, Bushies; 6/14 Amici Tomodachi Presents: Midnight Matsuri; 6/15 Xhosa, Cherry, BBY Boy, Awksymoron/Anaya; 6/17 Pro Teens, Sabine Holler, Blaketheman1000, Thug; 6/19 Lionlimb, Cigarette, Dark Tea, Teen Body; 6/20 Arthur with Special Guests; 6/21 Macseal; 6/22 ACLU Benefit with Ryley Walker & more; 6/23: Sizzy Rocket, Chloe MK; 6/25 Computer Science, Haiku, Whiz!Bang!, Science!; 6/27 The Glow, Sean Henry, How Says; 6/28 Poppies, Rubber Room, Nick Llobet

Max Pain and the Groovies, Heavy Birds. 6/7 Blu & Exile, Choosey, Dag Savage, Pistol McFly, Sirplus. 6/8: Shane Smith & the Saints, Low Roller, Bonehart Flannigan. 6/14 The Values, Greyhunter, You Bred Raptors?, Tabemono. 6/15 The Color Fred, Proper, Second Letter. 6/18 Robot Princess, Ben Pagano, MNOP, Rachael Sage. 6/19 Pentagram, Brother Dege, Dirty Streets, Overdose; 6/20 Zealyn, RevV, Miette Hope; 6/21 Take Me Out; 6/22 Ameliarose Allen, Brother Jerome, Rachel Lynn, Kirstin Marilyn, Babe Patrol; 6/23 School of Rock, Yosef Daviud, Levi Robin; 6/24 Emily Frembgen, Central Plains, Tim Pourbaix. 6/25 Smoking Popes, The Ataris, Live Well. 6/26 Nerf Herder, Top Nachos. 6/27 Bobaflex, 9 Electric, Spider Rockets. 6/28 Mickey Avalon and Dirty Nasty. 6/29 Riot Antigone, Hard Nips, Lizdelise.

elcome to the new expanded arts section!

360 Van Brunt St. 718-855-0360

The band is 8 songs into their second full-length album.

Mezzrow, 163 West 10th Street Ave. 6/5: Steven Feifke, Tardo Hammer, Lee Hudson; 6/6 Camille Bertault, Chico Pinheiro. 6/7: Cyrus Chestnut, Dezron Douglas; 6/8: Mezzrow; Cyrus Chestnut, Dezron Douglas, Jon Davis; 6/9: Bryn Roberts, Matt Penman, Jochen Rueckert; 6/10: Milton Suggs, Tadataka Unno; 6/11: Christine Tobin, Phil Robson, Peter Washington; 6/12: Mezzrow; Zach Lapidus, Peter Brenlander, Vinnie Sperrazza; 6/13: Roberta Piket, Todd Coolman, Billy Mintz; 6/14: Lennie Cuje, Spike Wilner, Paul Gill. 6/15: Lennie Cuje, Spike Wilner, Paul Gill. 6/16: Tom Guarna, Ugonna Okegwo, Rodney Green.6/17:Ingrid Jensen, Geoffrey Keezer. 6/18: Mike Lipskin, Dan Levinson, Dinah Lee. 6/19: Allen Farnham, Jay Leonhart; 6/20: Lafayette Harris, Rodney Jones, Peter Washington. 6/21: Jonny King, Ed Howard, Nasheet Waits. 6/22: Jonny King, Ed Howard, Nasheet Waits. 6/23: Spike Wilner, Deborah Davis, A Few Good Men.6/24: Michael Weiss, Pasquale Grasso. 6/25: Diego Figueiredo, Vanisha Gould. 6/26: JP Jofre Quintet. 6/27: Yotam Silberstein, Sam Yahel 6/28& 29: Bill Mays, Matt Wind, Martin Wilson. The Groove, 125 MacDougal St 6/7 Ritmosis, Tracey Nicole and Company.; 6/8 Linden

Rosie Lilly; 6/7 Steph Richards Trio, Josh Henderson and Relatives w strings; 6/8 Alexis Hightower & The SoulFolk Experience; 6/12 Hoot and Holler, Julia Easterlin; 6/13 Duo Violete with Charlotte Munn-Wood; 6/14 Halo Maud, Secret Sibling, You Bet; 6/15 Michael Rocketship & friends featuring Wendy Eisenberg; 6/16 The Pointless Forest, Curtis Garabedian Vin, Sarah Elizabeth Charles and Jordan Peters; 6/21 Charlotte Jacobs, Hanna Epperson and Ian Davis; 6/28 Mirah w special guests Guidon Bear

Jaimie’s Music World

BROOKLYN AMERICANA ‘UNPLUGGED’ MUSIC SERIES

Friday’s in June 7, 14, 21 and 28 at The Greenway Terrace by Pier 3 Brooklyn Bridge Park Featuring some of the finest acts in Americana music, Friday night Brooklyn Americana ‘Unplugged’ Music Series spans the range of Americana music including Folk, Country Blues, Old Time, Bluegrass and Jazz. The performances take place every Friday in June at 6PM at The Greenway Terrace by Pier 3 in Brooklyn’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge Park. Live music for all ages, the series features artists from Indiana, New Orleans and of course Brooklyn favorites. See back page for details.

June 2019

9:00 PM at Sunny’s Tone’s Bluegrass Jam

SUNDAYS

11:00 AM Jalopy Theater Cast Off! Rough ’n’Ready Writer’s Workshop

CALENDAR * Critics Pick

THURS JUNE 6

8pm Roulette Interpretations: String Noise, The String Trio of Me

8:30pm Jalopy Theater Raga Massive: A Circle Has No Beginning 9pm Sunny’s The Loyales

FRI JUNE 7

7pm Jalopy Theater 2nd Annual Steel Guitar Unconvention: Kashia Hunter and the Sacred Sounds, Dave Easley, Dime Store Romeos feat. Raphael McGregor, Bob Hoffnar/Christopher Hoffman Duo 9pm Rocky Sullivan’s Rome 56, Frank Ruscitti, M. West 9pm Sunny’s John Pinamonti

SAT JUNE 8 7pm Jalopy Theater 2nd Annual Steel Guitar Unconvention: Murnel Babineaux, Anupam Shobhakar, Michaela Gomez, John Eichleay 7pm Prospect Park Bandshell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival IBEYI, Sudan Archives, Orion Sun (Free Show!) 8:30pm Bene’s Record Shop* Sam Weinberg/Jon McCowen/Henry Fraser & Alex Cohen Group 8:30pm IBEAM Ches Smith Quartet w/ Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman, Nick Dunston 9pm Jalopy Tavern Frankie Sunswept & the Sunwrays 9pm Rocky Sullivan’s Alegba + Friends (Reggae, Caribbean) 11pm Littlefield Be Cute Brooklyn (Dance Party) Presented by Matty Beats x Horrorchata

SUN JUNE 9

10am Littlefield Brooklyn Music Factory performances 12pm Superfine Jack Grace 3:30pm Jalopy Theater Brooklyn’s Oldtime Slowjam 5pm Sunny’s Andrea Asprell & Jason Borisoff 6pm Superfine Beat Kaestli 7pm Jalopy Theater Stumble Written/ Performed by Francesca Van Horne 7:15pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL FILMS Big Fire (1984); One Long Fire (2019): live painting by Jeff Schlanger with live performance by Oliver Lake; Milford Graves Full Mantis 8pm IBEAM David Leon/Nick Dunston/Tomas Fujiwara 8pm Pioneer Works Combo Lulo, Super DJ Univsall

MON JUNE 10

8pm IBEAM Mara Rosenbloom Trio & Bone Labyrinth w/ Sean Conly, Michael Wimberly, Melanie Dyer, Gwen Laster, Leonor Falcon

TUES JUNE 11

7pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL Andrew Cyrille Lifetime Achievement Haitian Fascination, Lebrobra Trio, Andrew Cyrille/Tomeka Reid/ Beatrice Capote, Andrew Cyrille/ Peter Brotzmann, Andrew Cyrille/ Kidd Jordan/Lisa Sokolov/Stefan Roloff/Milford Graves 9pm Jalopy Tavern Fatboy Wilson and Friends! 9pm Sunny’s Max Johnson and Michael Blake*

WED JUNE 12

6:30pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL DAY 2* Marc Ribot/Jay Rodriguez/ Nick Dunston/Chad Taylor; Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio; Edwin Torres/Fred Moten/Brendan Lopez/ Gerald Cleaver; Davalois Fearon Dance; Tribute to Alvin Fielder: Kidd Jordan/Joel Futterman/William Parker/Hamid Drake 9pm Jalopy Tavern Barry Clyde

THURS JUNE 13

7pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL DAY 3 Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks; God Particle; Alain Kirili Lifetime of Achievement; D/B/K/LH; Alto Gladness - tribute to Cecil Taylor 8:30pm Jalopy Theater Brooklyn Raga Massive: Matt Rahaim 9pm Hanks Saloon Steak (with Jack Grace); Mike Cobb and the Crevulators 9pm Jalopy Tavern Isto 9pm Sunny’s Colin Brown Quartet FRI June 14 6:30pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL DAY 4* Ava Mendoza/Matt Nelson/Adam Lane/Hamid Drake; Marty Ehrlich Trio Exaltation; Rob Brown Quartet; Kris Davis Trio 7:30pm IBEAM Gordon Beeferman Organ Trio & Eva Novoa/Masa Kamaguchi/Ches Smith 8pm Rocky Sullivan’s Red Hook Rox Presents: Son of a Beach, Heap, Lizzie & the Makers, Foxy Johnston’s 8:30pm Jalopy Theater 4th Annual Brooklyn International Music Fest Peter Stan & Friends, YAcouba Cissoko, Ukrainian Village Voices, Yva Las Vegas, Zong Li Lu 9pm Sunny’s Tubby

SAT JUNE 15

3pm Prospect Park Bandshell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Family Concert: Rich Medina, Shareef Keyes and the Groove 4pm Jalopy Theater Flamenco Vocal/Rhythms Workshop with Julia Patinella 5pm Jalopy Theater Overtone Sing-

24TH ANNUAL VISION FESTIVAL AT ROULETTE

ing Workshop with Neel Murgai* 5:30pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL DAY 5 Visionary Youth Orchestra, Darius Jones Quintet; David Virelles Mbókò; Patricia Nicholson/ Val Jeanty/Cooper Moore; James Brandon Lewis’ Unruly Quartet; Douglas R. Ewart and Bamboo Constellations 8:30pm Bene’s Record Shop Ryan Power Band, Sandy Ewen/Ka Baird Duo 8:30pm Jalopy Theater 4th Annual Brooklyn International Music Fest Julia Patinella, Farzad Amoozegar-Fassie, Sukarma, Kongo, Tambalagumba 9pm IBEAM Ingrid Laubrock/Eva Novoa/Drew Gress/Tom Rainey

7:30pm Prospect Park Band Shell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Calexico & Iron & Wine; Adia Victoria 9pm Rocky Sullivan’s Decanted Youth, Yes Exactly Yes, Meïa

SUN JUNE 16

7pm Jalopy Theater Brooklyn Accordion Club Meeting and Concert with Stephanie Simon-France

12pm Superfine Alex McMurray and Bill Malchow, Linda McRae 3pm Sunny’s Harry Block Old Time Jam 5:30pm Roulette VISION FESTIVAL DAY 6* Tom Rainey/Ingrid Laubrock/Sylvie Courvoisier/ Mark Feldman; José Kao Hwang’s Human Rites Trio; Dance of the Comedians; Dianne McIntyre; Heroes Are Gang Leaders; D.D. Jackson’s Bluiett Tribute Band 6pm Superfine Daria Grace and the Pre-War Ponies 6:30pm Sunny’s Honky Tonk Heroes

MON JUNE 17

7pm Hometown BBQ* Singkhol Record Release Party for “See Through Suits” with: Singkhol, Chicken Missiles and More!

TUES JUNE 18

8pm Jalopy Tavern The Honky Tonk Heroes 9pm Sunny’s Max Johnson and Michael Blake*

WED JUNE 19

8pm Jalopy Tavern Charlie Judkins and Miss Maybell

THURS JUNE 20

7pm Littlefied Howe Gelb, Nathan Xander 7:30pm Prospect Park Bandshell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Tank and the Bangas; Cory Henry & the Funk Apostles 8pm Rocky Sullivan’s Krissie Nagy Swing Jam 8:30pm Jalopy Theater Brooklyn Raga Massive: Pamelia Stickney 9pm Jalopy Tavern Audra Rox!

FRI JUNE 21

7:30pm Littlefield Summer Solstice Funk Night Feat. Funkrust Brass Band

I hope everyone can get to at least ONE show at the 24th annual Vision Festival, this year honordrummer Andrew Cyrille with a lifetime achievement award. The Vision Festival has long been a destination festival for free-jazz fans from around the world and this year will surely be no exception. Andrew Cyrille will be honored this year on the opening night of music, June 11. Mr. Cyrille has been recording since the 60’s with such luminaries as Geri Allen, Walt Dickerson, Carla Bley, Coleman Hawkings, Charlie Haden, and maybe most famously, Cecil Taylor. Spanning for week from June 10th (film night) through June 16th, the Vision Festival is a world class series of concerts showcasing both legendary elders such as Wadada Leo Smith, Jemeel Moondoc, and William Parker as well as up and coming newcomers including James Brandon Lewis, Tomeka Reid, and Ava Mendoza. Not for the faint heart, Vision Fest is that real live ish. June 10-16th at Roulette.

SAT JUNE 22

7:30pm Prospect Park Band Shell* BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Tortoise (performing: TNT); Emily Wells with Metropolis Ensemble

SUN JUNE 23

12pm Superfine Abby Hollander 5pm Sunny’s Paul Spring 6pm Superfine Paisley Fields

MON JUNE 24

TUES JUNE 25

9pm Sunny’s Joanna Sternberg*

WED JUNE 26

7:30pm Prospect Park Band Shell* BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Chucho Valdes - Jazz Bata; Dafnis Prieto Si O Si Quarte

THURS JUNE 27

6:30pm Supersmith* Pioneer Works Community Happy Hour feat. Sean McCaul - solo vibraphone 7:30pm Prospect Park Band Shell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Protoje; Jah9; Yoga on Dub; DJ Top Notch & Mircro Don 9:00 PM at Sunny’s Rick Snell and the Brand New Babies

FRI JUNE 28

7:00 PM at Pioneer Works Press Play Fair, book and music fair 7:30 PM at Prospect Park Band Shell* BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Celso Piña; Dos Santos; Riobamba 9:00 PM at Jalopy Theater Steamboats, Lula Wiles 9:00 PM at Rocky Sullivan’s DeRosa, The Minettes, The Planet Truth 9:00 PM at Sunny’s Li’l Mo and the Monicat’s

SAT JUNE 29

12:00 PM at Pioneer Works Press Play Fair, book and music fair 7:00 PM at Prospect Park Band Shell BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival (Free Show!) Liz Phair, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists; Caroline Rose

ing

a of

BRIC CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! FESTIVAL

BRIC arts media has once again done a fabulous job curating the free to the public Celebrate Brooklyn! festival at the Prospect Park bandshell. This summers series of concerts kicks off with the one and only Patti Labelle on June 4th and continues throughout the summer with an exciting line-up. June’s highlights include (besides Queen Labelle) Tortoise performing their 1998 album TNT in entirety (with special guests) on June 22nd, a Calexico-Iron and Wine combo-platter on June 21st, Chicago’s Liz Phair on the 29th and my homies, also from Chicago, Dos Santos (a psychedelic cumbia band) performing with Celso Piña and Riobamba on June 28th. It’s free and it’s burning music, this is why we live in Brooklyn Folks…—Jaimie Branch Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

June 2019, Page 39

Star Revue ª

FOCUS with Erin

on local shopping by smartphone

Staubitz Market, 222 Court St. – Cobble Hill opened as a butcher store in 1917 and is now the oldest operating butcher in New York. Besides having your choice of meats and poultry, they also offer imported, domestic and local fine foods that include olive oils, ghee, balsamic vinegar and more. Nearly 100 items are available for purchase through Mercato, and they’re the same price as in-store. Minimum orders made through Mercato have to be minimum $10. Same-day local delivery is available (fees vary by zip code).

The hot weather is here. If you feel like you’re about to melt before visiting your local supermarket, butcher or specialty food shop in person, have no fear. You can now order from a local neighborhood purveyor right from your cellphone! Mercato is an online grocery marketplace that connects customers who want to do their food shopping, at their convenience, with local participating merchants. Bobby Brannigan, who attended Xaverian High School in Bay Ridge, is an entrepreneur who grew up working in his father’s grocery store in Brooklyn. He co-founded Mercato in 2015 to bring online shopping and same-day delivery to independent grocers and their valued customers.

Bien Cuit, 120 Smith St., Cobble Hill offers a wide range of

sweets and pastries like croissants, danishes, tortes and éclairs. But they’re most known for their baguettes and loaves of bread with dark, caramelized crusts. Each dough is mixed in small batches, shaped by hand and baked daily in the Cobble Hill eatery. Their miche, a sourdough that’s been fermented for up to 68 hours, is the most popular loaf, according to Zack Greenspon, director of retail operations. Twenty-eight items are available for purchase through Mercato, and they’re the same price as in-store. Minimum orders made through Mercato have to be minimum $15. Same-day local delivery is available (fees vary by zip code).

“Mercato analyzed year-over-year and fourth quarter 2018 sales for retailers on the Mercato.com platform and found there were sharp increases,” according to a Business Wire statement released on Feb. 12. “Increases ranged from 45 percent to 400 percent, with additional increases during year-end holidays, despite growing competition from national chains and

Bedford Cheese Shop, 265 Bedford Ave., is – you guessed

it – a cheese shop in Williamsburg that carries 200 to 400 different cheeses on average. It works directly with farms in order to select cheese at their perfect peaks. One hundred and twenty items, including crackers and meats, are available for purchase through Mercato, and they’re the same price as in-store. Minimum orders made through Mercato have to be minimum $15. Same-day local delivery is available (fees vary by zip code).

Sahadi’s, 187 Atlantic Ave. – Brooklyn Heights

is a specialty foods shop that’s known for selling Middle Eastern products like tahini, chickpeas, zaatar and other spices. They also offer dried fruit, more than 150 varieties of cheese, imported olives, fine grains and more. More than 1,100 items are available for purchase through Mercato, and they’re the same price as instore. Minimum orders made through Mercato have to be minimum $20. Sameday local delivery to select zip codes is available (fees vary by zip code). For more information about zip code deliveries, visit sahadis.com/pickup-local-delivery.

Queen Ann Ravioli & Macaroni 7205 18th Ave.,

Mercato.com

is a small family owned and operated business in Bensonhurst that continues to produce gourmet pasta products on a daily basis. Their freshly-made, non-multicolored pasta and shells have been made on an antique hydraulic press, which is over 100 years old, since opening in 1972. According to owner George Switzer, the round cheese raviolis, filled with creamy Ricotta and Pecorino Romano cheese, are their No. 1 best seller. “People who may not have the opportunity to come to my store can now sample my product that’s brought to them,” Switzer had previously said on Mercato’s website, after having joined the platform in 2015. Nearly 200 items are available for purchase through Mercato, and they’re the same price as in-store. Minimum orders made through Mercato have to be minimum $10. Same-day local delivery is available (fees vary by zip code).

Page 14 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

June 2019

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

June 2019, Page 27

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