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PS 676 held their holiday gift giving party right before Christmas vacation. The 2019 party for the kids was held in the gym for everyone in the school and their siblings, according to Parent Coordinator Marie Hueston. This allowed more space for games and other activities. The first organized activity was a competitive game of musical chairs organized by the YMCA staff. winners earned a stuffed animal that they were excited to receive.. The next activity, which was for the older kids, was a Christmas themed word search game. The winner received a $25 gift card.
The first special guest was Baby Shark. When Baby Shark walked in the popular song played and the kids got excited. Next was Santa and Mrs. Claus as well as the Elf. The elf was played by Assistant Principal Perry, and Mrs. Claus by Principal Figueroa. Gifts were provided by Redemption Church, ACommunity Superintent Anita Skop’s and another donor. Assistant Speaker Felix Ortiz also came and took pictures with the kids. “Make sure you remain nice for the rest of the days at home with your parents and thank you for joining us today,” Figueroa told the kids. “Parents, enjoy your lovely children for the next 10 days. I can’t wait to see them on January 2."
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HOTD0G AND MUSTARD BY MARC JACKS0N I KNeW ALL YOUR Hi-JINKS WOULD END BADLY FOR B0TH OF US, MUSTARD!
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Building bridges
d hook
send them to george@ redhookstar.com or post on our website, www.star-revue.com.
Just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed the article on the footbridge! We’ll keep you posted on its progress - Marie Hueston, Parent Coordinator, PS 676
clear that they had not beaten or robbed anyone they should have been allowed to continue trick-or-treating, and certainly should not have spent the evening handcuffed to a pole on Union St. – John Battas
Police overreach
Pantanos like retrospective
Thanks Dr. Campbell (and George) for keeping the attention on this. I attended the meeting with Inspector O’Malley from the 76th. She spent much of the meeting insinuating (but never claiming) that the children were the perpetrators of a particularly violent attack in Carroll Park. But by the end of the meeting it became clear to many that these kids were not involved in whatever event had earlier occurred in the park. After having been questioned, searched, and arrested, they were not charged with any crime that may have been committed in the park. The only crime they were charged with was a nebulous one that by O’Malley’s admission only occurred after the kids had been surrounded by police - that being the charge of trying avoid arrest. While in some states it is legal to resist an arrest that has no underlying basis, in the phony progressive state of NY it is a crime even when no other crime has been committed. While I did appreciate O’Malley coming to Red Hook and addressing the incident, I did not appreciate her attempt to gaslight us. Something very foul happened on Halloween and we still deserve a truthful explanation. Whether it was proper, or just profiling, to pick on these kids, once it became
Thanx for printing my “shared “review. It looks and reads beautifully. I am very proud of it and you did a great job putting it all together! Give Michael Fiorito a big “thank you” for his truly fine writing. Is it possible to get the story on the Internet? It’s a very good issue! I have a faded xerox copy of Mondo the midget and the lion if you ever need one. It was such fun meeting you in Fairway! All the best to you this Holiday Season. - Nino & Judy
The old days Thank you for the memories. I remember some of those day’s My mother would take me to Columbia St. I worked while in high school for Nuzzolo meat store on Union St. between Van Brunt & Columbia St. Those where the days. - Joseph Ortato
Special neighborhood A wonderful walk down memory lane in the neighborhood which formed my life and sustains me to this day. A few blocks up My Dads print shop thrived, The Superior Press! Court Street between Union & President Sts. It will always be Home. (Bodies in garbage pails, shhhhh! We weren’t supposed to be listening) The best fresh food: Aiello’s, then Carroll Park with a nurse on duty. On & on xo – Pauline
Gowanus Green began its conceptual life in 2007 as a Request for Proposals issued by the New York City Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) for the redevelopment of the former site of manufactured gas plant (then known as “Public Place”) at the corner of Smith and 5th streets, extending below Liquer Street and past Hoyt Street to the Gowanus Canal. HPD asked for a plan “with a mixture of residential (market rate and affordable), neighborhood retail space, parking, community facility space, and waterfront parkland.” Following a soil
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A I’ve been selling advertising for a We work hard to present you with chain of community newspapers in an informative and entertaining the city for over 29 years, and it truly package of news, events and SCOTT P FAFFMA advertising heartened me to see your publication. N IS EVER that makes living in YWHERE In the a little more intimate and te rv ie Continued good luck for 2020. - Seth w pacity ge 25 Do es NYC friendly. really L. Miller need g rav (continued on
mistakes here. Firstly, it is an anti-war song. ondly, they had no idea that summarily turned them On top of this, Springsteen then uttered the down. Walter Mondale perhaps disastrous effort: “Bruce only cogent words of his been born to run, he might Springsteen might have but he wasn’t born yeshave been born in the USA, the Ronald Reagan terday.” Somewhat perplexed, popular song by Michihandlers opted for another "Main Street." It was gan rocker Bob Seger entitled that this was all about attention their to brought the central characters were action at a local bar, and pole dancers, users, dealers hookers, pimps, drunks, this idea too. In and gangbangers. They abandoned trounced Mondale, that particular election, Reagan state. This gave birth to who only won his home seen around then. It read the bumper sticker often “Don’t Blame Minnesota.” to the Fleetwood Mac How tiring was it listening album Rumors? If that hits from their huge 1977 lashed to death. Other music had any value, it was "Hotel California" songs come to mind here: the endlessly tedious by the bleeding Eagles, or Led Zeppelin. So once "Stairway to Heaven" by
Everythin g you ne ed to kn Newspaper overreach about M ow other Ca brini like Please, those Students act just
Campbell. Those students are so disrespectful. Why don’t you report how Summit Students go straight to Pave to start trouble. Why are Highschoolers around Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st Grade Students?
page 34
others. Tipper Priest, Madonna, and many censor. Her hubby was nothing but a moralistic an environmentalist, must Al, regarded by some as clean air stuff when he have forgotten all of that the Vietnam War as a juwas photographed during with General William nior army officer conferring of the scorched earth Westmoreland, the instigator of dispensing Agent strategy and the architect over there. The Macarena Orange dioxin defoliant came later. and the Inconvenient Truth cast their votes for This current crop has already to the New York Thanks their desert island discs. their musical know Times and the internet, we they want us to know tastes, or what they think The dropout Beto tastes. musical their about by The Clash. O’Rourke favors “The Clampdown” his father-in-law literThis is quite insulting, since of El Paso, Texas. Bill de ally owns a large chunk (You see Strummer, you Blasio is also a Clash fan.
What ha ppened songs? to all the prot Jack Gr ace won est ders Long Ry de Marti Jo rs, Don Dixo n and nes, High Les Sans women Culott , es and Nick Lo we Cobb George Edited by Michael Grella on Jaso n Mora n Show
(continued on next page)
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rds nd g olf c We are aalso here toou listen to you. rses? Y a t e s , You us letters page 3to the ediNYcan 's Bsend e Music tor that westgladly print, we Secti onaccept ! op-ed submissions interesting staron ts page 27 topics, and if you have ideas for stories or tips we can use, please let us know. And if you have gonzo ideas about journalism, definitely get in touch! Red Hook Star-Revue
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December 2019, Page 27
I pick my grandson every day and they are always cursing and using vile language. Report that and funny that no one ever mentioned that those disrespectful teens had a knife and bat what does that tell you.
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 papers to a coffee shop near you.
WTH are 14-Year-olds doing out on a School Night at 8 pm two neighborhoods over. As for George's comments, you stirring up Poop. You couldn’t give two Sh*ts about those the teens main focus selling the paper. – Lisa Alvarez
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Let's start over on Gowanus Green
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YATES'S VIEW: n December 2, in the auditorium of PS 32, Community Board 6 (CB6) got to hear the latest on Gowanus Green, the long-delayed project that’ll convert 247,877 square feet of polluted land into a mixed-use development topping out at 28 stories, with housing, green space, and a public school. For a variety of reasons, a lot of Gowanus residents in the audience didn’t like what they heard.
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cleanup paid for by National Grid, the developer would aim for a 2017 completion date. In 2008, the Bloomberg administration awarded the project to Hudson Companies, Jonathan Rose Companies, Bluestone Organization, and the nonprofit Fifth Avenue Committee, which together would take ownership of the city’s land. Two years later, when the EPA affirmed the area’s toxicity by designating the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site, the development team determined to push forward with Gowanus Green, though HPD’s confidence appeared to waver. A second wrinkle emerged when the Department of City Planning revealed that it would rezone the Gowanus neighborhood, rewriting the land use rules for hundreds of parcels near the canal to encourage new construction. Under the expected terms of the larger ULURP, Gowanus Green – already a major undertaking – would have the opportunity to grow
even bigger. The developers went back to the drawing board, and by 2019, 774 planned residential units had turned into 950, as the team disclosed in December. At the presentation, many CB6 residents refused to accept that soil permanently contaminated by coal tar at a depth of 153 feet – beyond the reach of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s excavation – could ever provide a suitable site for a children’s school. Despite a 17-foot ground floor elevation and resilient landscaping, some considered the project a flood risk. A majority in the room appeared to disapprove of Gowanus Green on the grounds of scale alone: they didn’t want seven massive new buildings in their backyard, despite setbacks that’ll shift much of their bulk away from Smith Street.
Asst. Editor brettayates@gmail.com Music Editor michaelcobb70@gmail.com Advertising liz@redhookstar.com jamie@redhookstar.com George Grella george@georgegrella.org Erin DeGregorio erin@redhookstar.com Nathan Weiser nathan.weiser@yahoo.com Music Listings will.goyankees@gmail.com Circulation george@redhookstar.com
(continued on page 5)
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YATES'S VIEW (CONT):
Let's start over on Gowanus Green (continued from page 3) Affordability a mystery For their part, the developers emphasized that Gowanus Green will come with plenty of amenities – notably the school and park, but also a number of smaller gathering places, rain gardens, space for retail and community facilities, and improvements to the street grid, which will connect Liquer and Nelson streets to Hoyt Street. The other major public benefit will be the affordable housing. But how much of it will be affordable, and how affordable will it be? In its various incarnations, projected affordability levels for Gowanus Green have varied, jumping up and down without explanation. HPD’s Request for Proposals attached affordability requirements to 50 percent of the standard residential units (without, however, demanding any units set aside for New Yorkers earning less than 80 percent of Area Median Income, or AMI) and asked the developer to make an unspecified number of senior units available exclusively to elderly people with incomes below 60 percent of AMI. By the time HPD released a Draft Scope of Work for an Environmental Impact Statement for Gowanus Green in 2008, the minimum affordability requirements had disappeared, and a maximum number of affordable units had taken their place, as the document promised that no less than 30 percent of the residential units would solicit market rents. Today, an apparently out-of-date description of the project on Jonathan Rose Companies’ website promises that 70 percent of units will be affordable for households earning between 30 percent and 130 percent of AMI. At the Public Place Community Workshop in 2018, HPD’s Leila Bozorg, Deputy Commissioner of Neighborhood Strategies, made a different claim: full affordability. At the time, BKLY-
"The city doesn’t have to use its typically limited toolbox to nudge the landowner in the direction of affordable housing; the landowner is the city. It can do whatever it wants." Red Hook Star-Revue
NER reported as follows: “Noting the city’s population growth, significant changes in the real estate market, and ‘a much deeper and broader demand for affordable housing at a range of incomes,’ Bozorg said the project will now provide 100% affordable housing, offering between 850 to 1,000 belowmarket units. ‘Feeling the effect of that affordability crisis in the city and in Gowanus specifically, we wanted to make sure that we are providing as much affordable housing as we can on some of these scarce public sites.’” Today, the official website of Gowanus’s councilman, Brad Lander, asserts, in the section of his Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning FAQ that addresses Gowanus Green, that “all of its 900 units will be affordable housing.” Evidently, Lander, who attended the CB6 meeting, had by December become aware that the developers’ plans had changed once again, and like everyone else in the crowd, he no longer knew what to expect. Alongside other community members, he eagerly pressed the team for details. Alas, the developers hadn’t yet determined how much affordable housing Gowanus Green would include. But they pledged that no less than 74 percent of the units would be affordable, with the cheapest ones allocated to families making 30 percent of AMI ($32,010 per year for a family of four). The priciest units still bearing an “affordable” designation would go to households earning 120 percent of AMI ($128,040 per year for a family of four), but the majority of Gowanus Green’s affordable housing would be available to those making below 60 percent of AMI ($64,020 for a family of four). HPD sets the rents for New York City’s affordable housing to equal 30 percent of the monthly income of a family in a designated income band – making the apartment “affordable” to eligible applicants, not necessarily to you or me.
Consider the landlord The development team noted that, because it has yet to finalize the residential component of Gowanus Green, 100 percent affordability remains a possibility, but tellingly, the representatives emphasized that a dose of market-rate housing would help “crosssubsidize” the affordable units – that is, the profits from the luxury apartments would offset the losses from the affordable housing. But an affordable unit for a four-person household at 120 percent of AMI would rent for $3,201 a month – would that price really represent a loss for the landlord, especially after the city has gifted said landlord the deed to six valuable acres of Brooklyn real estate for free? When CB6 residents objected on December 2, the developers explained that including market-rate housing would benefit everyone because it would mean that private capital would foot the bill for a greater share of the infrastructural upgrades built into the project, reducing the tax-
The current plan for buildings in Carroll Gardens' Gowanus Green, which is currently a vacant lot undergoing pollution remediation.
payer’s burden. Without 100 percent affordability, the developers would, in fact, pay an acquisition fee for land’s title – a price in the millions but undoubtedly still much smaller than the market value – instead of obtaining it for free from the city. And instead of receiving a complete property tax exemption, they would have to rely on the 421-a program to limit their tax burden. These modest contributions to the public coffers would help pay for the new streets between Smith and Hoyt, and by ensuring plenty of revenue from at least a few sky-high rents, Hudson Companies could even manage, perhaps, to create a special fund for the maintenance of the new park beside the canal, instead of leaving the Department of Parks and Recreation with the bill. Did anyone buy this argument? I wouldn’t bet on it. The important thing to know about Gowanus Green is that it’s the only city-owned site within the Gowanus neighborhood rezoning. This same rezoning will create more than 8,000 new units of predominantly luxury housing for private developers who – buoyed by tax credits and abatements on the city (421-a), state (Brownfield Cleanup Program), and federal (Opportunity Zone) level – will reap hearty profits. New York City needs more housing, and Gowanus, regardless of NIMBY complaints, is a sensible place to put some of it, but adding to a glut of overpriced units won’t help Brooklynites in danger of being priced out of their own borough.
Step up, Brad Lander Councilmember Lander says he wants 100 percent affordability at Gowanus Green. I’ve criticized him before for putting his faith in gentrification-inducing rezonings as the solution to New York’s housing crisis (rather than fighting for the better, “impossible” goal of social housing), but he has publicly insisted, at least, that he rejects libertarian YIMBYism and instead hopes to join incentives for new residential development with firm rent regulations, strict affordability requirements, and heavy community engagement to ensure stability and accessibility in the housing market for all New Yorkers. His Gowanus rezoning will nevertheless produce an aesthetic nightmare of anonymous
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condo towers, an array of potential environmental risks, and, in all likelihood, Williamsburg-level rents, but for Lander, New York’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing policy, which dictates 25 percent affordability for upzoned sites, makes it worthwhile. Lander acknowledges that it’s a challenge to steer private development toward the public good, but in his view, the new Gowanus will at least reflect a good-faith attempt. In other words, it’s not just a giveaway to real estate kingpins. But it’s hard to take this defense seriously if Lander won’t commit to an unconditional demand for 100 percent affordability at Gowanus Green. In this case, the city doesn’t have to use its typically limited toolbox to nudge the landowner in the direction of low-income and middle-income housing; the landowner is the city. It can do whatever it wants on the site – it can construct homes exclusively for the populations that need them most. Unfortunately, due to political ideology rather than any practical obstacle, New York City doesn’t directly build its own housing anymore, but if it has to work with a private developer, it can, on a public site, tell the developer exactly what it wants, and if the developer won’t supply it, it can get a new developer. “The City is under no legal obligation to convey the Development Site offered through this RFP,” HPD carefully noted in its 2007 Request for Proposals. “This RFP does not represent any obligation or agreement whatsoever on the part of the City.” So far, Gowanus Green still belongs to HPD. When the Gowanus Green developers suggest that 100 percent affordability may not be feasible, what they really mean is that 100 percent affordability might jeopardize their ability to generate private profits off of a public asset. What business does Hudson Companies really have on our property? A responsible HPD would have given Public Place fully to a nonprofit developer of affordable housing, although, to be fair, the median rent in Gowanus even as recently as 2010 was only half what it is today – the meaning of a “marketrate apartment” has changed a lot in the area over the last decade.
(continued on next page) January 2020, Page 5
Yates
(continued from previous page)
Genuinely affordable units have become more essential than ever – Hudson Companies may just not be the right developer to give them to us. Even at this late date, I don’t see why HPD couldn’t start from scratch. The circumstances under which HPD conceived of Gowanus Green no longer exist – it makes no real sense to think of today’s iteration as the same project. The existing development team is right, of course, that a residential development premised entirely on deep affordability (which the current proposal is not) would require a public subsidy even beyond the gift of the land. New York City should provide that subsidy. Despite the best efforts of government to give developers a free ride, the city will see some kind of increase in tax revenue following the Gowanus rezoning – NYCHA advocates have suggested using “value capture” to improve the local public housing complexes, which need help badly. With enough support, Gowanus Green could become another resource for the same population that NYCHA, before its dramatic decline, once protected. HPD – not City Council – is in charge of Gowanus Green. But in the end, it’s all in Lander’s hands: if he doesn’t approve the ULURP for the Gowanus neighborhood rezoning, Gowanus Green can’t happen. At CB6, Lander refused to stake his yes vote on a 100 percent affordability requirement at the development. He hopes it’ll happen, but he won’t stick his neck out
with a promise to torpedo the whole plan if it doesn’t. Since Lander will be termed out of City Council at the end of 2021, he’s already begun a campaign for City Comptroller. Voters should take note: if the councilman does not secure full affordability at Gowanus Green, it’ll represent colossal political failure. Lander has sworn off campaign contributions from for-profit developers for the 2021 election, but his earlier fundraising raises questions about his motivations during the pre-rezoning community planning process, Bridging Gowanus. For instance, in 2014, he accepted $4,750 from Two Trees Management, now a major landowner in the neighborhood. The fate of the Gowanus rezoning will ultimately determine whether, in his future political endeavors, he’ll have the standing to present himself as a pro-housing progressive or have to endure rightful branding as a servant of the real estate industry. Councilmember Lander – who has also accepted donations from four of the project leads on Gowanus Green ($1,350 from Jonathan Rose Companies, $500 from Marvel Architects, $425 from the Fifth Avenue Committee, and $250 from Hudson Companies) – must do whatever it takes to ensure full affordability at Gowanus Green. His rezoning will do plenty for private developers in Gowanus – at the very least, Gowanus’s Public Place, if indeed it’s safe for construction at all, should be developed entirely for the good of the public.
NEW CARD DESIGN!
Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020
76th Precinct honors cops for fatal shooting in Gowanus Houses
T
he NYPD’s 76th Precinct, the police station that serves South Brooklyn, holds a Community Council meeting on the first Wednesday of each month to update residents on recent incidents and local crime statistics. One regular feature of the meeting – the Cop of the Month award, delivered to one or more officers responsible for an exemplary deed – became a source of controversy in November when Deputy Inspector Megan O’Malley chose to celebrate officers Henry Neumann and Matthew Schmalix for their involvement in a fatal shooting in the Gowanus Houses on October 15. According to the narrative provided by NYPD on the night of the incident, two Anti-Crime Unit officers had intervened to stop a shooting in progress on the corner of Baltic and Hoyt streets. They ordered 30-year-old Nasheem Prioleau to drop his weapon, a .9-millimeter semiautomatic, while his target fled. Instead, Prioleau turned his gun on the police, who opened fire in response. The officers escaped without injury, but Prioleau died from gunshot wounds later that night. The NYPD had withheld the officers’ names from the press following the incident, which made the subsequent public ceremony for Neumann and Schmalix a surprise to the Community Council audience. Some questioned the appropriateness of celebrating a local man’s death as a triumph of policing, even if the circumstances had justified the officers’ actions on the scene. Zac Martin, the founder of the local community development nonprofit Trellis, called the decision “tone-deaf” after attending the meeting. By his account, the 76th Precinct’s own presentation – which, in its ambiguous description of a shootout in Gowanus, avoided direct mention of the deadly nature of the incident – reflected a buried awareness of its insensitivity. “If the Community Council had
by Brett Yates
shared that someone the police had descended upon was killed as a result of their gunfire, I’m not sure people would’ve been quite as excited about them receiving Cop of the Month,” Martin speculated. In the Gowanus Houses, doubts linger about the veracity of the official story of Prioleau’s death and about the conduct of the officers involved. NYCHA has not released surveillance video from the night of October 15, and because the two officers who shot Prioleau were plainclothes cops, body camera footage is unlikely to exist. (If it did, NYPD would have no obligation to release it.) The family has not seen a police report, and law does not require the NYPD to provide them with one. No independent investigation has taken place. The other civilian noted at the scene – Prioleau’s alleged target, before NYPD stepped in – appears to have vanished. As a result, community members have questions that, thanks to NYPD’s reticence, may continue to go unanswered. How many bullets did the officers discharge? Where did they aim? As plainclothes cops, did they offer Prioleau identification and a real chance to relinquish his gun before opening fire? Can an impartial witness confirm their story? What caused the initial gunfight that brought NYPD to the scene? The victim’s cousin, Tracey Pinkard, wished the 76th Precinct were “more forthcoming” with information about the final moments of Prioleau’s life. “We’re basically just going off what we heard from NYPD through the media,” she said. Pinkard emphasized that the entire neighborhood – not just her own family – deserved a thorough, public account of an incident that reportedly had left a total of 30 bullet holes in a residential area, putting bystanders and neighbors at risk. But in her view, the 76th Precinct showed its disregard early on for the Gowanus Houses
community – which has suffered from police violence in the past – by refusing during the incident’s immediate aftermath to provide basic details to family members, including, initially, the location of the dying victim. The NYCHA resident recalled her frantic questions on the night of her cousin’s shooting as NYPD guarded the crime scene: “‘Can you tell me where he is? Can you tell me whether he’s alive? Can you tell me what type of injuries he sustained and how critical they are?’ No one seemed to know. They were sending us around, kind of ping-ponging us. ‘Well, we believe he’s at Methodist Hospital – no, we believe he’s at Brooklyn Hospital. No, we believe he’s at Maimonides.’ It became a grassroots effort to just locate him.” At Brooklyn Hospital’s emergency room, NYPD refused family members access to the victim until, at about 1 a.m., they found out that Prioleau had died. For Pinkard, the Cop of the Month award represented a final slap in the face. “Even if a person is doing something wrong, I can’t imagine how you
would accept an honor for taking someone’s life,” she commented. A representative for Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon confirmed that her office would be working with congresswoman Nydia Velázquez to organize a meeting that would seek to open a dialogue between the 76th Precinct and Gowanus Houses residents in the wake of the shooting and its aftermath. Its date has not yet been determined. The NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, did not respond to the Star-Revue’s media request, and at December’s Community Council meeting, Deputy Inspector O’Malley declined to comment on the Gowanus Houses shooting or the subsequent Community Council controversy, citing an open internal investigation of the former. For the first time in recent memory, the 76th Precinct did not name a Cop of the Month in December.
sp a to ac be e
"The 76th Precinct showed its disregard early on for the Gowanus Houses community – which has suffered from police violence in the past – by refusing during the incident’s immediate aftermath to provide basic details to family members, including, initially, the location of the dying victim."
The officers receiving their awards. Left to right: Neumann, O'Malley, Schmalix.
Red Hook Star-Revue
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by Brett Yates
for 3 to 5 year olds
A lawsuit against NYPD Sergeant Patrick Quigley that began with the 2012 shooting of Red Hook Houses resident Tyjuan Hill ended on September 26, 2019. The NYPD will not compensate Hill’s estate for the loss of his life at age 22.
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The deceased’s mother, Carol Hill, filed the civil suit seven years ago after a prostitution sting operation by the 76th Precinct at Henry and Huntington streets ended in Hill’s death on Hamilton Avenue. Hill had fled from an attempted arrest, and after police had tackled him, five officers held him to the ground while Quigley shot him in the back of the head. Allegedly, Hill, while struggling against the other policemen, had pointed a gun backward at Quigley, who would face no criminal charges for the incident. After an initial mistrial owing to a hung jury, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York found Quigley not guilty of excessive force in 2018. The plaintiff filed an appeal, but in the fall of 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict of the lower court. Only the Supreme Court could overturn the most recent decision, which brought the lawsuit to a close.
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Carol Hill’s lawyer, David B. Shanies, had hoped to persuade the appellate court that, at the trial, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had used insufficiently restrictive language when describing for the jury the circumstances that would permit a police officer to use lethal force. Judges Peter W. Hall, Debra Ann Livingston, and Jane A. Restani dismissed this argument, along with complaints about the exclusion from the trial of recordings of 911 calls and “confusing” judicial instructions regarding the question of intent in the shooting. “It’s very disappointing that we were unable to obtain justice for Mr. Hill and his family,” Shanies said. “One of the hardest tasks for me in my job is to try to get people and the system to place equal value on black and brown lives as they do on white lives, and too often that fails to happen.”
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Page 8 Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020
Red Hook flood protection system delayed
F
by Brett Yates lood protection in Red Hook is still in the works, but don’t hold your breath.
In May 2018, FEMA approved the Red Hook Integrated Flood Protection System Feasibility Study, a joint effort among the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR), the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and consultants led by Dewberry. FEMA’s go-ahead marked the end of the first, conceptual phase of the city’s program to protect Red Hook from storm surge, authorizing the subsequent use of $12,649,003 for engineering, design, and permitting. FEMA, which is bankrolling half of the $100 million project alongside the City of New York, set a due date of November 2019 for the plans. The New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) issued a Request for Proposals in January 2019, and in August – only three months before the expected conclusion of the design period – the agency contracted the engineers at Florida-based NV5 for the job. NV5 – which reportedly will, in its arrangement with the DDC, handle three significant city infrastructure projects (including the one in Red Hook) for a total of $12 million in service fees – leads a team of 13 consultancy firms on what
the city has now termed the Red Hook Coastal Resiliency project (RHCR), formerly the Red Hook Integrated Flood Protection System (IFPS). The consultants will work alongside seven city agencies – the DDC, the MOR, the Emergency Management Department, the Mayor’s Office of Budget and Management, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Department of City Planning – as well as the EDC and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, with the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) interfacing with FEMA on their behalf. On November 25, 2019, FEMA approved DHSES’s request for a ninemonth deadline postponement for the engineering, design, and permitting submission. NV5 has tentatively scheduled the first community outreach meeting for the RHCR design for 6 pm on January 22 at PS 676. Time, date, and location all may be subject to change. Grain Collective, the Brooklyn-based urban design studio, is responsible for “stakeholder engagement,” after providing similar services during the Feasibility Study. On December 17, NV5’s director of engineering Joseph Menzer,
alongside city representatives and Sapna Advani of Grain Collective, visited an environmental workshop at the Red Hook Library, organized by Red Hook Houses residents Karen Blondel and Tevina Willis, to publicize the meeting.
Although the Feasibility Study will serve as “the baseline for our proposed work,” Menzer and his engineers will be “looking at that study and looking at alternatives to that study and seeing what the best way to move forward is in terms of Red Hook.”
NV5 inherited a flood protection concept centered primarily on raising the streets near Erie and Atlantic basins, which, according to Dewberry, would protect Red Hook from flooding during a so-called 10-year storm (i.e., a storm with a probability of occurring once every ten years) – much smaller than Hurricane Sandy. Many Red Hook residents had hoped for an IFPS robust enough to handle a more severe 100-year storm. At the library, Menzer announced that, instead of plowing ahead with engineering based on Dewberry’s ideas, NV5 will reopen RHCR’s conceptual foundations to potential revision, effectively putting Red Hook back near square one.
Menzer also implicitly indicated that DHSES would have to file for at least one more nine-month extension with FEMA during the design process. “Our project is looking at developing contract documents over the next 18 months that the contractor will use in a couple years for an actual construction of flood protection in Red Hook,” he said. The Feasibility Study’s targeted completion date for the construction was 2021, but Menzer predicted that Red Hook’s IFPS would arrive “three to five years down the road.”
“Some of you might have been involved in the IFPS study a couple years ago and provided some opinions and some thoughts on what is appropriate for the neighborhood and what is not, but some time has passed, and some of you folks maybe were not involved in that process, so we’re going back out to the community to make sure we’ve heard from everybody,” Menzer explained.
Local architect Gita Nandan of the advocacy group Resilient Red Hook supports NV5’s decision to return to the drawing board for the IFPS concept. “Resilient Red Hook finds the current proposal to be seriously lacking in vision, falling way short of the needs of our community in the next 25 to 50 to 100 years. We are looking forward to more engagement to understand the direction of the construction and to provide and push for the greatest protection possible,” she stated.
Promised return of skateboarding track to Ickes Park still not happening
I
n the fall of 2017, when Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and councilmen Carlos Menchaca and Brad Lander agreed (at the behest of teenage activists from the nonprofit Red Hook Initiative) to allocate $3 million to transform Red Hook’s Harold Ickes Playground from an unkempt concrete baseball diamond into a first-class skate park, the Department of Parks and Recreation took immediate steps to improve the disused space. Little more than a month after the politicians’ announcement, before design had begun for the new facility, Parks set up a “pump track” – a lightweight installation of ramps and curves – for skateboarders’ interim use, and life soon returned to Harold Ickes Playground. Since then, however, the pump track has vanished, and the cracked, concrete yard above the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance has become vacant again. Plans are still in the works for an 11,800-square-foot skate area with climbing boulders and seating on the side: design concluded in the summer of 2019, and the “procurement phase” – during which Parks will hire contractors – is expected to last until March 2020. But Parks has not revealed a start date for construction, nor can it declare definitively whether it’ll put the space to use again before construction begins. Although pump tracks are movable,
Red Hook Star-Revue
by Brett Yates most Red Hookers assumed that the one in Harold Ickes Playground would stay in place, more or less, until the start of renovations. When the pump track disappeared in the spring of 2019, it wasn’t the first time Parks had temporarily borrowed the equipment for an event at another site, but after it failed to return promptly on the second go-around, local skateboarders grew restive. “The park was really being used by a lot of people, primarily because that track was a big draw for families and kids. It was really interesting and a positive addition to what is a totally neglected and underused park,” said Joe Ruster, an architect and skateboarding enthusiast who lives in the area. “Now we have a dead zone again.” When the Star-Revue asked Parks about the missing pump track in June 2019, spokesperson Anessa Hodgson insisted that the void was temporary: “The pump track is coming back! The skate park element was temporarily moved to another park for a skate event. It will be brought back to Harold Ickes in the coming weeks,” she stated. But Harold Ickes Playground remained empty over the summer, and when we asked again at the end of August, the promised return date had shifted: “We decided to keep the skate elements at Ocean Hill Playground
A temporary skateboard track was placed in Ickes Park, across from Tesla, for the big political photo-op announcing a major park upgrade back in 2017. The upgrade is still at least a year away, and the temporary track, which was enjoyed by neighborhood kids, has been removed by the Parks Department. (Star-Revue file photo)
until after Skate Fest 2, an event scheduled at the playground on September 27, where skate enthusiasts and community members can test out the features and provide feedback as we plan to bring skate park elements to that neighborhood.” The pump track did not reappear over the fall, however, prompting a third inquiry in December. This time, Parks could not confirm that the interim skate feature would come back at all. By now, Parks wasn’t sure that reinstallation would be worth the effort: the possibility would depend on the start date of construction.
and novices from the community to give it a try. We plan to break ground on construction in the new year. In the meantime, we encourage skaters to check out one of the 13 skate parks throughout Brooklyn,” Hodgson offered. “We also plan to continue exploring the feasibility of bringing the temporary pump track back to Harold Ickes Playground before we break ground on construction.”
Parks estimates that construction, once it begins, will last 12 to 18 months. As of December 30, the pump track continues to occupy the blacktop of Ocean Hill Playground in Brownsville.
“Harold Ickes Playground will soon be home to a brand new skate park that we hope will attract skate enthusiasts
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January 2020, Page 9
OPINION - New paths to affordable housing in NYC: a look at the Singapore model
T
he number-one issue that 98 percent of New Yorkers care about is affordable housing. I have been studying the successful affordable housing programs in Singapore. New York City could learn a lot. Let’s look at the work of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. This guy was loved by the masses. Lee Kuan Yew was originally a union organizer and negotiator. He created a coalition that included socialists, and unions, and he rose to power in a tumultuous time. As Singapore was gaining independence from the UK, he was the first elected Prime Minister of this tiny city-state, located in Southeast Asia. “LKY,” as he was known, got reelected and held power for three decades in Singapore. He lifted the country out of poverty. His lifetime overlaps with Mao Tse Tung, but he is not as wellknown, maybe because he was less ideological, and more pragmatic.
LKY’s big innovation in housing was to have the government directly build quality high-rises that people wanted to live in. He helped working people to buy these new apartments, with the Singapore government kicking in matching funds. A worker could save
By Sander Hicks
up to five percent of their wages in a government bank account, and the government would match each dollar of their savings contribution. Soon, working people in Singapore went from a housing crisis, to 92 percent home ownership. Today in NYC, we have 33 percent home ownership. The average rate in the USA overall is 64 percent. Rent is a ripoff. We pay a big percentage of our income to a landlord, but we don’t get any long-term benefit. We get a temporary place to live, maybe on a one-year lease. A mortgage (if you can get one) is when you buy where you live and a third party, like a bank, credit union, or a government funding vehicle, finances the purchase, and breaks it down into payments. Instead of paying rent, you are paying toward owning land and living space, something that steadily goes up in value over time. As Bill Heywood used to say, “Nothing is too good for the working-class.” Home ownership would be a great benefit to working people, even if most of us in NYC don’t even think about it, due to the huge financial hurdles. Those hurdles don’t have to be there. Home owners tend to be more inter-
ested in improving their living spaces, in maintaining a building’s infrastructure, creating the goodwill of shared common spaces, and maintaining exteriors, for the mutual benefit of the whole neighborhood. But many of us in NYC can’t think of owning a home. We are dominated by our culture’s blind faith in the free market. That free market is a volatile monster that favors real estate developers, economic roller-coasters, gentrification and displacement. It has chased us around this city, and has robbed us of the long-term and stable housing that is our human right. Housing can also be a way to fight racism. In Singapore, before LKY, there was a lot of rivalry between ethnic Chinese, Malays, and Indians, the three main racial groups. But in the new Singapore housing, racial diversity was mandatory: every floor of each apartment building had an equal representation of the various racial groups in Singapore. They did this to prevent the build-up of racial tension, by neighborhood or building.
23 years ago. Rent in NYC commands an abnormally high percentage of wages. NYCHA units are on an “affordable rent” model, but they are falling apart. The broken locks on front doors and the scent of urine in the stairwells seem to be representative of the smell of defeat. There’s a huge backlog of repair requests. The mayor is currently rolling out a private-public partnership, called “RAD.” It’s not enough. The rate of home ownership in NYC is extremely low, and no one is addressing this. 33 percent home ownership is half the national average in the USA. We’re supposed to be the greatest city in the world, but we don’t take care of our people. We don’t make housing a human right. That has to change. Capital has a role to play here, not capitalism. The city government needs to set up a new public interest bank to contribute matching funds for affordable home ownership in NYC. We need to build more projects of quality affordable housing, like in Singapore.
Here in New York City the situation is dire. No new public housing projects have been built since 1997. 1997 was
Feeling the Holocaust
T
his January marks the beginning of this newspaper’s tenth anniversary. It’s something I started myself back in 2010. I’ve written lots of news stories, headlines, filler – even crossword puzzles, but I never attempted any sort of creative or introspective writing. It’s probably because I’m not that good at it, and I didn’t want to waste valuable room in the paper with my drivel.
However, since the paper has grown and there are now a lot of articles written by writers better than me, I’m giving myself the freedom to do this, with the excuse that there’s plenty of other, more interesting stuff to make this paper worthwhile to the reader. This particular tale began at a recent Christmas party. My friend Ed, who is also in the newspaper business, asked me whether I had ever been to something called the Newseum. “No, I’ve never heard of it,” I said. “Well, you’d really like it, and it’s closing at the end of the year, so I highly suggest a trip to Washington,” he told me. I had only two important things on the calendar from then till the end of the year. One was another Christmas party that my daughter was giving, and the other was to put this paper together. That gave me plenty of time to plan a trip to DC. I drove from Brooklyn directly to the Westin Hotel on Avenue M in D.C. You have no idea how cheap fancy hotels have become when you book them on your cell phone. Even at the last minute. I got a good night sleep in a fancy king-sized bed and then started four days of all on foot sightseeing. I picked up a street map in the hotel lobby. I scanned the museums, finding the Newseum pretty quickly. I remembered enjoying the Sackler Museum (that was way before the current family scandal) and figured I’d go there to see the Peacock room. Then I saw
Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue
by George Fiala
that the Holocaust Museum was on the next block. I’ve never been to any sort of Holocaust museum, even though both my parents spent time in German concentration camps. My dad didn’t make a big deal of it; in fact I don’t remember him ever speaking of those days, or almost anything about his life before he came to the US in 1948. My mother would tell us about her old days, both before the war and during it. I dealt with the whole thing in what I think must be a strange way. At least I think it’s strange – I’ve never spoken to anybody else whose parents were survivors. I probably could have: Queens, where I grew up, had plenty of World War II refugees, but it wasn’t something anybody I knew talked about, and frankly, I wasn’t too interested in anything that happened before I was born, at least not in those days. Growing up in the 1960s, nobody seemed too interested in talking about their parents at all. We were the generation-gap kids, mostly interested in our own stuff – parents being responsible for all the bad stuff in the world (so we thought). While I will now say that I was very lucky to have had the loving parents that I had, in those days I would have much preferred regular old American parents, full of the culture of the country I was born into. And there was something else. One thing I’ve always strived for was to be cool. I didn’t think that being Jewish was cool. My dad had changed his name when he was still in Czechoslovakia, one of the ways he avoided the Nazis for a couple years. Because of that last name, many people took me for Italian, and I didn’t say otherwise. Being black really set you off from white America, but in those days, Jewish was a close second. While lots of people found my mother very interesting and special because of her background, I would
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My mom is sitting at the far right. Also in the picture is her mother, her sister and her grandmother, all of whom didn't last more than a day at Auschwitz.
have preferred having a regular mom who would be special because of making cookies and taking us to Chicken Delight. Instead, my parents – both refugees from eastern Europe – fed us stuff like goulash, fruit soup, and yogurt. Don’t think that my parents weren’t great – they were. It’s just that I didn’t quite understand them to well. It wasn’t until my mother died, just last year, that I finally started really felling all the things she talked about.. So it turned out my first stop on my trip was not the Newseum, but the Holocaust museum. Going on an IKEA-like walk through the cavernous, almost prison-like building turned out to be like visiting someplace that I've already been.
January 2020
Left: East Flatbush Library; Right: Greenpoint Library; Below right: Brooklyn Heights Library
Brooklyn Public Library contracts go to donors
T
his fall, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) announced the upcoming demolition and reconstruction of the Red Hook Library at 7 Wolcott Street. In October, architects David Leven and Stella Betts of the firm LEVENBETTS visited the branch to showcase their new design, which marks their third job for BPL, following their work on the Brooklyn Heights Interim Library and the East Flatbush Library. According to public documents (which don’t yet include the year 2019), LEVENBETTS has made annual donations of $1,000 or more to BPL since 2015. With BPL input, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) manage the development of new and renovated libraries in Brooklyn. BPL’s list of donors includes a considerable number of architects, construction firms, and developers. Like New York City’s two other public library systems, BPL operates as a cityfunded nonprofit, not as a city agency. Its status as a 501(c)(3) organization allows it to accept tax-deductible contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations. Charitable contributions accounted for $7 million in income in 2019. In the same year, the City of New York supplied $120 million. BPL has contracted the architect Toshiko Mori on at least three occasions since 2010, mostly recently for the largest restoration of the Central Library in its 78-year history, which started in 2018. Toshiko Mori Architect PLLC has contributed $5,000 or more to BPL every year since at least 2012. Marvel Architects, meanwhile, has
by Brett Yates donated a total of $17,500 or more to BPL since 2015, the year it began design work on the condominium skyscraper One Clinton, whose ground floor – thanks to the BPL-approved sale of the formerly public site to the developer Hudson Companies – will house a new Brooklyn Heights Library in 2020. Hudson Companies donated sums between $5,000 and $9,999 to BPL in 2015, 2017, and 2018. Commissioned to design the new Greenpoint Library – due in 2020, thanks in part to construction manager Levien & Company, a 2018 donor ($1,000 or more) – architects Marble Fairbanks contributed amounts between $1,000 and $4,999 in 2016 and 2017. In 2014, before the hiring of Marble Fairbanks for the job, BPL solicited renderings for a potential redesign in Greenpoint from Beatty Harvey Coco Architects, which made financial contributions between 2013 and 2016 – two of them over $5,000.
role in determining how these public funds are spent and who receives them – making recommendations, conducting interviews, and approving the DDC or EDC’s selection of contractors.
to “City Council members who hold near-total power to determine whether their projects get built,” and several even hosted fundraisers for the city’s aldermen, as they’re known in Chicago.
BPL’s annual contribution income from private donors has more than doubled since 2016. While city agencies can also accept some gifts from private donors, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) doesn’t permit them in cases where the donor has conducted business with the agency in question. As a nonprofit, however, BPL sits outside the jurisdiction of the COIB.
Beatty Harvey Coco had renovated the Sandy-damaged Coney Island Library in 2013 with a crew from Westerman Construction, another donor (at least $3,000 between 2013 and 2017). Westerman Construction has also worked on the Central Library and branches in Red Hook, Gerritsen Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint.
A Library spokesperson stressed that the BPL’s “fundraising office is entirely and completely independent and separate from the office of procurement. Architects and other service providers hired by the library, through the procurement office, undergo an extremely rigorous multi-part selection process which takes place, on average, over a threemonth period. The process includes multiple competitive bids and presentations before a committee of anywhere between five and nine stakeholders (for example, facilities staff and librarians). Each stakeholder completes privately, on his or her own, two evaluations during the process.”
Most BPL branches occupy real estate belonging to City of New York, which owns the buildings and pays for their capital improvements from its capital budget. In 2018 and 2019, the City of New York spent a total of $69 million on BPL improvements and renovations. It has budgeted another $306 million over the next five years. While not a part of the government of New York City, BPL plays a significant
While New York City’s community activists often pressure politicians to refuse donations from real estate developers, lobbying by the city’s architects receives little attention. That’s not necessarily the case nationwide: a recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed that, between 2010 and 2018, “a who’s who of Chicago architects” contributed $350,000 in campaign donations
"NYC's Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) doesn’t permit donations in cases where the donor has conducted business with the agency in question. As a nonprofit, however, the Brooklyn Public Library sits outside the jurisdiction of the COIB." Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020, Page 11
BROOKLYN HAS A NEW EVENT SPACE
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January 2020
Nintendo jazz nights and Nutella burger by Roderick Thomas
V
lane Carter’s entrance into the restaurant business was an uncanny venture. Born in New Jersey and raised in the South Bronx, the restaurant owner and sci-fi author initially sought a career in law enforcement, but later enjoyed a successful stint in IT. Before he opened Action Burger, Vlane’s fascination with sci-fi was already laying the ground for what would become an integral part of his future restaurant.
I walk into Action Burger with no expectations. Inside is a late ‘80s, early ‘90s video game-themed restaurant – game consoles and controllers alongside menus. At first, the no-frills, Williamsburg establishment looks like a simple burger restaurant, but a few steps toward the back, the cocktail bar begins. The bar half of the restaurant is a neon-lit section, furnished with its own game consoles and pinball machine. I sit down on the white, glossy bar stool and patiently wait; the kitchen door swings open and Vlane appears – the interview begins. Roderick: So, what can you tell us about the origins of Action Burger? Vlane: Well, my career in IT had ended under some unfortunate circumstances. My business partner at the time was a comic book fan and I had business and IT experience. We had ideas of a comic book-themed restaurant, and things just took off from there. We opened Action Burger in 2012. While the modest space of the establishment has its charm, there’s nothing modest about Action Burger’s menu. The amount of food and drink options is pleasantly shocking. As I scanned the menu, two words caught my eyes: Nutella Burger. I had to put in an order.
Di Fara Pizza has still got it, by Mike Fiorito I live down the block from Di Fara’s Pizzeria on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn. I must admit that I have a love-hate relationship with Di Fara. Well, maybe annoyance is a better word than hate. Let’s talk about the annoyance part first. Mostly, when I pass Di Fara there’s a long line wrapped around the block. And you can tell that the line is comprised of people from other neighborhoods. Midwood is mostly Orthodox Jewish, mixed ethnic and working class. And, at least for the moment, is it not a hipster neighborhood. You don’t see a lot of nose rings, hair-buns and knitted summer hats. But on the Di Fara line, there’s a sea of nose rings and ironic facial
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I bit into the sweet waffle buns and immediately fell in love. The Nutella Burger is a perfect blend of sweet, salty and savory – no ingredient overpowering the other. Needless to say, I was thoroughly pleased with my burger and equally satisfied sipping my Black Island Ice Tea cocktail. Roderick: So, the Nutella Burger is addictive [laughs]. Vlane: Glad you like it! I just wanted to do something different when I came up with the Nutella Burger. I also recommend the Mac n’ Cheese Burger. Roderick: I couldn’t help but notice how diverse your patrons are. There is a huge LGBTQ gaming community – did you make a deliberate attempt to include the LGBT gamers, or is that just a product of the environment? Vlane: Honestly, there isn’t any deliberate attempt to be inclusive. It’s just part of the culture here. I know what it’s like to be discriminated against. There aren’t that many black-owned video-game themed restaurants. If you love burgers, video games and cocktails, you’ll be fine; everyone is welcome. The restaurant is all fun and food, nothing too serious, a true gamer’s kickback (hangout spot). Vlane describes pushing past the voices of naysayers, in the earlier years of Action Burger. Today, Vlane is finding success where his naysayers once said he couldn’t. He’s spent over a decade perfecting the themes you’ll experience in his restaurant. In addition to the classic comic book staples, posters of Vlane’s sci-fi series, Bio-Sapien, can be viewed on the walls of Action Burger – a point of pride for Vlane as a science fiction author.
hair. What’s annoying about this is that there’s always a line. It doesn’t matter who’s on it, but there’s a line, which makes going to Di Fara like a Mission: Impossible episode. Also, from my experience, seeing ironic facial hair is an indicator that my rent is about to go up. But that’s another story. If you must go to Di Fara and are willing to wait on the line, the whole situation becomes desperate once you’re inside. People are milling about, jockeying to get up to the counter, waving cash at the counterperson, afraid their turn will be missed. It feels like waiting on line at the DMV. Then when it’s your turn at the counter, you’re lucky enough to spend $5 per slice. Although it is not consistently great, depending on who’s making the pizza, Di Fara is often very good. At least for me,
Roderick: Thinking about the future of Action Burger, what are some things that you hope to accomplish? Vlane: I hope to franchise the restaurant. Maybe try Shark Tank again. Roderick: You were on Shark Tank? Vlane: [Laughs] Yeah, I only made it past the casting director, though. Roderick: Can we expect anything new from the BioSapien series? Vlane: I’m going to focus on one of the characters, Bellona. I’d like to develop her story more. Maybe do a film adaptation. We’ll see. Roderick: Time for some fun questions. Favorite movie this year? Vlane: Alita hands-down. That’s the best sci-fi film I’ve seen all year. Roderick: Favorite food and drink from the menu? Vlane: Jaden Burger, that’s the ravioli burger. My favorite drink... I think the Green Goblin. Roderick: Favorite video game? Vlane: Oh man, it’s a tie, Marvel vs. Capcom and Street Fighter 2. Roderick: Last question. Ever thought about an Afrobeats meets game night? Vlane: We do Nintendo jazz nights, and ‘80s and ‘90s music, but that’s actually interesting. I may consider that. Roderick: Vlane, thanks so much for the interview, and that Nutella Burger. Vlane: No problem, thanks for coming by. Go for the food, the cocktails, the video games or all of the above – Action Burger is a unique and nostalgic experience. Stop by 292 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, indulge, and enjoy yourself.
the lines, the waiting and the cost sometimes work against my gastrointestinal system. The fact is that the average slice of pizza in New York City used to be pretty good. But now getting a good slice of pizza is an event. You have to go to a brick-oven pizza place to get good pizza, for the most part. Most pizza places use generic cheese, sauce, and dough. And they probably don’t know how to perform the magic that makes those basic ingredients become something mouthwatering and delicious. Domenico “Dom” De Marco, who opened Di Fara Pizza in 1965 knows how to make pizza. Born in the Province of Caserta in Italy, Dom knows his way around Italian food. Many of the ingredients are imported from Italy; their distinct flavors create a taste that can’t be replicated. And Di Fara’s retro oven transmutes
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these already fine ingredients into something altogether different. Until recently, each pizza pie was handcrafted by Dom. You would often see him cutting the basil and pouring the virgin olive oil directly on each pizza. With several of his children supporting him in the kitchen, Dom is less seen these days. There are now two locations, in Midwood and Williamsburg, fully family owned and operated. And Dom’s children will continue the legacy of Di Fara, so long as people are willing to wrap around the block to buy it. Mike Fiorito’s most recent book, Call Me Guido, was published in 2019 by Ovunque Siamo Press. His two short story collections, Hallucinating Huxley and Freud’s Haberdashery Habit, were published by Alien Buddha Press.
January 2020, Page 13
“Once a tough, gang-infested South Brooklyn neighborhood and home of legendary crime boss Al Capone, Red Hook has ascended to expensive cool. Along with art galleries, restaurants and funky bars, you also have great shopping. Red Hook has welcomed popular sprawling Fairway Market on Van Brunt as a keystone in its redevelopment and nearby IKEA is busy all day long.”
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Page 14 Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020
Wiggin' out! 10 Truly Iconic Wigs by Erin DeGregorio
Wigs often become the scene-stealer when musicians, actors and actresses make a fashionable statement with colorful, avant-garde hairpieces. In no particular order, we’ve rounded up some of the best wigs worn by celebrities since the late 1960s.
Diana Ross: This is Wig Bar founder Isaac Davidson’s favorite celebrity wig. Ross wore this while singing “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” from South Pacific during the “Leading Lady” medley of the NBC TV special G.I.T. on Broadway in November 1969 (after she left the Supremes). The wig featured 10 hibiscus flowers placed throughout the larger-than-life locks.
RuPaul: RuPaul has served us so many iconic, glamorous looks, both on and off the Emmywinning reality competition series, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” This tall, side-swept, white-colored wig recently graced the cover of Vanity Fair’s Holiday 2019/2020 issue. The hair and wig designer for this piece was Curtis William Foreman.
Cher: Cher has always been known for turning heads with her dresses, hair and headpieces since entering the scene on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. This humanhair Nordic blonde wig was featured on her 24th studio album, Living Proof, released in 2001. The Daily Mail reported her saying, “My real hair is all under here, real tight to the head, that’s all. It is long and brunette. There’s nothing wrong with my hair, but I love wigs, and always have. They are so low maintenance. It just makes it easier to change my image.”
Rihanna: Who can forget the red wavy wig that Rihanna rocked at the 2010 Video Music Awards? According to People, the wig color was totally wrong and had to be re-dyed with less than two days notice. That led Rihanna’s stylist Ursula Stephens to throw it in the microwave to speed up the dying process.
Cardi B: Lisa Feierstein, Senior Trend Strategist at TrendWatching’s New York office, is a big fan of this look. “I love how beautiful and classy she made the mint hair look with the fur coat,” she commented. Cardi B wore this to the Billboard R&B Hip-Hop Power Players event in 2018.
Katy Perry: Perry hasn’t been shy about showing off bold, vibrant and pastel colors over the years. This look debuted in her “Cozy Little Christmas” music video, which dropped on December 2, 2019, and was designed by stylist Shon Hyungsun Ju. Doesn’t it look like she could be a part of a Dr. Seuss story?
Tina Turner: Who doesn’t love the big, wispy hair that Turner wore with her fishnet stockings, denim jacket and leather mini skirt? This look was part of her Private Dancer tour in 1985, which won the “Comeback Tour of the Year Award” from Pollstar Awards.
Andy Warhol: The Vintage News reported that most of Warhol’s silver-gray wigs were made in New York, but were made with hair imported from Italy. In 1985, a woman ripped the wig off his head at a New York book signing for America! He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and continued signing copies.
Taylor Lautner: Whether you loved or hated the very long, black hair that Lautner wore as soonto-be werewolf Jacob Black during the first two Twilight saga movies, we can all agree that everyone talked about it. In an interview with MTV News in 2012, Lautner called the wig an “important co-star,” but said, “There was hatred between both of us. It did not like me. I did not like it. Not fond memories."
Dolly Parton: In 2016, Parton jokingly revealed on Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family that, after bleach and curling irons left some wear-and-tear on her natural hair, wigs helped with “never having a bad hair day.” Her favorite bighaired wigs are the one with blue bows on her 1973 album We Found It; the curly one on the cover of her 1987 Rainbow album; and the gentle waves from her 2011 album Better Day. The 2011 look is still one that Parton wears today in 2020. Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020, Page 15
Where there's a wig, there's a way What led three everyday women to wear wigs, and how it makes them feel by Erin DeGregorio
Roshni Kamta, 23 New York, New York Kamta was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in late April 2019 after a breast biopsy revealed she had three lumps. Triple-negative breast cancer, according to breastcancer.org, makes up 10 to 20 percent of breast cancer diagnoses and is considered to be more aggressive than other types of breast cancer. In an article she wrote for Brown Girl Magazine six months later, she chronicled her experience and explained how shocked she was, given her young age and no family history. She endured 16 rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy at Mount Sinai Hospital. “After my first chemo treatment… my hair started to fall out after a week. I decided to shave it off. I could not deal with touching my head and having chunks in my hand,” Kamta told us. “I just wanted to feel real hair on my shoulders again.” She purchased three wigs this past summer: blond, purple, and long and curly. She got the synthetic purple and blond wigs for fun
Michelle Foster Brooklyn, New York Foster was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in April 2019 and underwent a mastectomy in July. She started chemotherapy treatments and just received a wig from the American Cancer Society (ACS) a few weeks ago. Some local ACS offices – like the one located in Park Slope, Brooklyn – are able to offer new, donated wigs for free or at reduced cost to active cancer patients who cannot afford to buy a wig. At the Brooklyn office, synthetic and human hair wigs are available for women in financial
Susan Kanoff, 58 Greater Boston Area Kanoff is a professional wardrobe stylist and style blogger who gives midlife women fresh, modern and easy-to-wear style inspiration. She was also diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia – one of the most common types of leukemia in adults – in January 2016. She isn’t currently on any medical treatments, but may need chemo in the future. “It was quite a surprise since I didn’t have any symptoms, except swollen lymph nodes. It came at a crazy time in my life as I just started a non-profit called Uncommon Threads [an ‘empowerment boutique’ for low-income women and domestic violence survivors] and was in the middle of building a house with construction issues,” Kanoff told us. “My husband and I had sold our home and were displaced for a year, moving three times in and out of short-term lease apartments. I truly believe that stress has a lot to do with getting sick.” Kanoff was approached by Shevy Wigs a few months ago to be part of a partnership. Though
Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue
through Amazon for under $20. [Kamta noted that the blond wig was bought specifically for a wedding in August and that she likes to wear her purple wig with different hair clips – one of her favorites being a pearl clip from Urban Outfitters.] The curly locks – which resembled her old hair – were purchased in-person at The Hair Place. This “perfect” human hair wig had a price tag of $200 and was covered by Kamta’s insurance prescription. “My curly hair wig makes me feel like my prediagnosis self. I feel like a normal 23-year-old and no one is looking at me like I am a young cancer patient,” Kamta said. “When I first put it on, I cried in the mirror because of how natural it looked.” When asked what advice she would give to other patients who are going through chemo or radiation and might consider getting a wig, Kamta emphatically said to do research and to ask the doctor for a prescription. “If you don’t want to wear a wig, that’s OK too,” she continued. “[But] if you do go to a wig shop, bring a friend and take pictures. Going bald is really weird and scary, but if you chose to embrace it – I found it [as a] time to really express myself – hence the purple wig.”
WIG ON... WIG OFF
need who are suffering hair loss due to cancer treatments. New, donated scarves, hats and turbans, which are dropped off at or mailed to the office, are also usually available onsite. In Foster’s case, her doctor connected her to the ACS, where she was eligible to receive her free short-length wig. “[I said,] ‘Wow, I’m so used to a full head of hair. Just wow,’” Foster recalled, reflecting on when she tried on the wig for the first time at the Brooklyn office. ACS offers free wig fittings in their Brooklyn office every other Monday. Anyone interested can call 1-800-227-2345 for information or to set up an appointment. Though Foster received her wig in Brooklyn,
free wigs are also offered in Manhattan at ACS’s Hope Lodge. Andrew DiSimone, owner of HairPlace NYC, has been volunteering his time, expertise and services with ACS since November 12, 2008 – cutting and styling synthetic wigs at no cost for their “Look Good Feel Better” program. DiSimone, who specializes in medical hair loss, told us he and his staff always go to the Hope Lodge to help as many cancer patients as possible. “It’s my church. I have to go there every week for the hugs,” he said. “And to make them look and feel good.” On December 17, 2019, DiSimone also donated 52 Jon Renau wigs and wig grips to the Hope Lodge.
she has a receding hairline and thinning hair, she never considered wearing a wig before and almost said ‘no’ to it. However, she changed her mind once she saw how natural-looking and beautiful their human hair wigs were. It took a little more than a month between Kanoff’s first virtual consultation with Shevy Wigs’ owner Shevy Emmanuel and when she received her custom wig in the mail. Emmanuel cut, colored and highlighted a shoulder-length wig that resembled Kanoff’s current hair and matched her hairline. “Shevy really takes the time to understand your needs and style preferences,” she said, later adding that she feels confident, beautiful and younger while wearing the wig. “I was shocked at how close my wig looks to my own hair. Shevy is truly an artist!” The way Shevy Wigs function is simple, according to Kanoff’s blog. Kanoff adjusts the clips for it and then ties her hair back in a ponytail or a bun. “The wig has little combs and an elastic band that keeps it snug and in place,” she wrote. “I can swish my hair around and brave the wind. It really stays put.” At the moment Kanoff wears the wig occasionally, and noted that the wig is a lifesaver when it comes
to bad hair days. However, if her hair continues to thin, she’ll be wearing it more often. “If and when I need chemotherapy for leukemia and I lose my hair, I’ll be wearing it all the time,” she noted.
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January 2020
Talk to the bigwigs!
Exploring wig history with three industry leaders New York City is the hub for many wig makers and masters, whose salons cater to individuals’ eclectic needs and personal preferences. From cutting an auburn-colored bob with blunt bangs for the everyday woman to creating a custom look for an A-list celebrity, these local salon owners have seen it all during their careers. They provided some insights into wig culture, their roots and their own experiences as wig experts.
Isaac Davidson founder of Wig Bar
“Wigs are misunderstood a lot. I’m happy they’re becoming more common and socially accepted for everyday people. Some people need to wear wigs for medical reasons. It’s obviously a very traumatizing experience that goes far beyond the hair, so I always like people to know we can make it a fun experience. In addition, real-looking wigs are available for everyone nowadays. The word ‘wig’ doesn’t have to be negative in the situation.” On wigs being considered fashion accessories: “Wigs are definitely a fashion accessory – think Cher or RuPaul’s Drag Race; it makes the outfit. I have clients who literally have wigs for everything; they change the style daily. I have a friend whose bedroom was inspired by Dolly [Parton]’s wig room. She has a wig for every occasion. A lot of drag queens refer to their wigs as ‘HATS’ – I love it … I believe that social media has made that happen more so.” On the evolution and popularity of wig-wearing by men:
Shevy Emanuel
founder of Shevy Wigs (the number one worldwide supplier of topquality European human hair wigs) “You know that [Iris Apfel] quote, right? ‘If your hair is done properly and you’re wearing good shoes, you can get away with anything.’” On why she got into the business, after being trained as a hairdresser: “Our community is a lot of religious people in Brooklyn and a lot of them wear wigs. Twenty years ago, I saw a need for a high-quality wig that was not just custom-made– back then, wigs were selling for over $1,000. It was a lot of money for a lot of people who couldn’t afford [them], or they didn’t want to go through
Claire Grunwald CEO of Claire’s Wig Studio
“When I got married, I had to cover my hair [according to Halakha, the Jewish law that a women must cover her hair in public after marriage]. I learned how to make the best wigs, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m a perfectionist.” A Holocaust survivor from Hungary, Grunwald, 87, learned the business as a teenager when she was an apprentice to a German wig maker for three years (outside Nuremberg after World War II). When she immigrated to America in 1949 at 17, she landed a job at a wig salon near Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Then Grunwald started making wigs for herself in her home because the wigs she had been wearing made her look twice her age. On the wig-making process at her business: “It’s a very tedious job because it’s hand-tied. It’s like knitting a sweater or making a rug. Each hair gets tied into the wig separately. I know
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“Men have been wearing wigs, on and off, forever. It was a status signal for men to wear elaborate wigs and makeup [from] 1600 into the 1700s. We’re having an amazing renaissance in the modern time – I love it! I remember when [Bravo TV series] Make Me a Supermodel wanted to add wigs to the boys. They [didn’t] really know how to describe it or how it would work … now it feels just normal.”
by Erin DeGregorio
On his highest priced wig: “Wigs are all over the place, as far as pricing goes [with] so many factors. I’ve definitely had wigs hit around $5000. I remember we had to find this specific hair from Russia in a natural red-color baby hair, super long, in 48 hours. It cost a fortune; that’s an extreme case. I had a client, years ago, ask me to do hair extensions on her horse; that was definitely pricey.”
On how wig construction has changed within the industry since entering it in 2002: “The core construction has stayed pretty much the same. However, it has become more accessible … for example, when I started in the late ’90s, no one heard of a lace front wig. It was for film, TV, theater and such. We had to make them by hand! Now, lace wigs are a standard at every beauty supply. It’s great! We can focus more on design, customizing and fine-tuning. That said, most “shake and go” lace wigs are definitely not film- or theater-quality, but most people don’t need [them] to be. With a little love and education from a professional, they can be good for a lot of situations. There truly is nothing like a completely custom-made wig though – it fits like a glove!” the weight of having a wig that’s just custommade. It’s time-consuming and expensive. I wanted to have like a couture wig that was ready to wear, in a sense. “I started creating a whole line of wigs that is available in different sizes, colors, lengths, textures, that somebody could kind of see the finished product before they actually [buy it]. You go and try it on, see if it’s comfortable – it’s no longer going through the whole process of waiting and not being sure of what it’s going to look like. I wanted it to be more affordable and more reachable for more people, both in the medical and religious communities.” On the trend with middle-aged women purchasing and wearing wigs as a means to look younger (versus wearing makeup or getting there are different modes, of course, [like] making machine-made wigs and machinesewing [hair] into the base of the cap. What I do takes about 60 working hours, at least – everything from taking measurements to finishing it. One person blends the hair, one person takes measurements and one person makes the cap handmade. Another person blends the hair and another person ties the hair into the wig, according to design. I usually like to follow the natural root direction that the hair goes [when designing a custom wig] because each head is different. Some people have a left part, right part – and we have to follow it because [otherwise] it’ll look off balanced.”
Botox): “You can do as much Botox as you want, but if you don’t have good hair (if it’s thin, not looking good, not shaping well), then I don’t think any amount of Botox will make you feel good. It may make you feel good, but it won’t achieve kind of putting together the whole look. “I really believe that, for women who are older, it’s a great alternative for thinning hair, hair loss or hair damage. It’s very hard to have beautiful hair when you get older, especially.” On the looks that’ll be in style by the spring: “Hair was very much like one length, not so much layering. I think we’re going back into the shaggier [looks], unfinished ends and looking a little bit more broken up, a little bit more layering than what we were doing bewant to look good no matter what. I once had a client who just had a facelift and she didn’t have enough hair to cover her scar, so she came and bought a wig. When I put the wig on her, she looked 10 years younger. She said she would have come to me first, that she wouldn’t have done the facelift. Hair does marvelous, magnificent things for you, even for men.”
On some of the clients who walk into her shop: “I used to have all the young people in the Orthodox Jewish religious community – I lost that. I lost most of them because the hair that I’m using is very expensive. So far, right now, most of my business is the baby boomers who are getting to be 60 or 70, and they want to look young – and looking young is important. We want to look good – even when you’re old, you
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January 2020, Page 17
n!
e e b s y a lw a e v a and h ^
Wigs are all the rage Though high-profile celebrities tend to don wigs on the red carpet and in music videos, wigs have a long history throughout time, for all types of people. They’ve been around as early as Ancient Egypt, were worn throughout the Elizabethan Era and are still making headlines in 2020.
by Erin DeGregorio
Some historical examples
Ancient Egyptians shaved their heads due to the country’s hot weather, and wigs denoted wealth, social status and religious piety. The most expensive models that were worn by pharaohs and queens, as reported by the PBS documentary series Articulate, were made with human hair and beeswax, and decorated with gold pleats, beads and ribbon. Centuries later, European royalty and their wealthy subjects preferred artificial and powdered wigs that conveyed elegance. England’s Queen Elizabeth I fashionably wore redcolored wigs to hide her graying hair. France’s King Louis XIV hired 48 wigmakers to make his long curly pieces, after he started losing his hair at 17. Marie Antoinette pioneered the pouf and coiffure looks that were decorated with feathers, ribbons and figurines that represented political themes. During the 1960s, more than 40 percent of American women owned at least one wig and craved hair with volume and height. Many, for example, wanted to emulate the bouffant look that the Supremes wore on stage. In her 2016 “History of Wigs (Perukes) as Fashion Attire,” Dr. Yvette Mahe wrote that women would often drop off their wigs at the hairdresser to have them styled and would later pick them up at their convenience. In the early 1970s, ads in Vogue magazine showed synthetic wigs that cost as little as $23. However, the wig fad faded by the end of that decade due to the introduction and popularity of gel and mousse for natural hair. In 2008, Interscope Records introduced the world to Lady Gaga, who often wore platinum blond wigs with blunt bangs. Nowadays, we mindlessly scroll through social media and give hearts to photos that feature the likes of Cardi B, Katy Perry, and the Kardashian-Jenner family, who show off their often colorful wigs as fashion accessories.
What’s responsible for this recent boom?
According to the “Hair Wigs and Extension Market – Global Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023,” released in September 2018 by Research and Markets, North America dominated wig sales in 2017, with its market share increasing at a compound annual growth rate of more than 12 percent during the forecast period. Still, the global hair wig and extensions market is skyrocketing at an annual rate of nine percent and is expected to reach revenues of more than $10 billion by 2023, thanks in large part to rising economies such as China and India. This development is partially due to the aforementioned popularity and growing persuasiveness of wigs among entertainers. For instance, the New York Times reported in 2017 that high-definition cameras had created the “need for a more convincing illusion” at the turn of the 21st century. Consequently, celebrity wig stylists like Hadiiya Barbel focused more on density and perfect, balanced hairlines. “Consumers see public figures online, through media, experimenting with their looks, and debuting looks that help them stand out,” said Lisa Feierstein, Senior Trend Strategist at TrendWatching’s New York office. “Consumers, of course, also want to stand out amongst their peers. So in turn, consumers get inspired by celebrities and feel permitted to play around with how they present themselves to the world, too.” Another reason for the wig boom is hair loss experienced by those who have alopecia and cancer. However, industry experts have also found that baby boomers are purchasing and wearing human hair wigs to look younger. “While the obvious benefit of a wig for older women is appearing younger, a wig can also give wearers a bold, signature style that many of their younger colleagues may also be rocking,” Feierstein said. “Wigs are a convenient means of helping women express themselves, augment their brand and distinguish themselves both personally and professionally.”
Trendy wig styles at the moment
Shevy Emanuel, owner of Shevy Wigs in Midwood, Brooklyn, has seen a particular surge of customers in the 45-plus age range. She’s found that there are five major trends currently displayed on mannequins and on the heads of wig-wearers of all ages. • Minimalist look - While people used to want fullness, height and body with their wigs, now net-made wigs are ultra-flat, lightweight, thin and flexible. This look is commonly seen with the Kardashians: straight, unstyled strands, resting close to the head with a defined middle part. • Tousled elegance - Tousled, naturally wavy hair provides more style in a subtle way. “With a look that appears ‘undone,’ it screams the message that you didn’t try too hard while still appearing chic,” Emmanuel said. • Soft highlights - No matter what the color, style or length of wig, highlights in pastel and gold tones or the gently melting look of balayage, hand-painted on a slightly darker shade of hair, is super fashionable. The goal is to create and achieve soft, subtle and natural-looking sunkissed strands. • Curtain bangs - These kinds of bangs, which are worn on the forehead or swept away from the face, are making a comeback, according to Emmanuel. Center-parted, long, wispy bangs conveniently allow for different looks, CURTAIN BANGS TOUSLED LOOK depending on one’s mood, and exude sophistication. • Handmade wigs - These don’t come cheap! Today, there are custom-made options available with built-in lace fronts (which give the appearance of a natural hair line) and all-directional parts that mimic an actual head of hair. These wigs also feature ultracomfortable, malleable, lightweight caps with single-knotted, hand-tied strands, which give the illusion of hair growing out of the scalp. Real human hair wigs, such as the ones sold at Shevy Wigs, aren’t stagnant. This means that individuals can change up their wigs with different styles, depending on their moods, outfits of the day and any special occasions. “All of these trends are reflective of the natural look and feel today’s consumers are after,” Emanuel said. “People have become more comfortable treating their wigs like real hair and aren’t afraid to part them any which way, braid them, put them in a ponytail or dress them up with hair accessories.”
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January 2020
Nino on Opera "Carmen" begins Regina Opera Season by Nino Pantano
T
he Regina Opera Company began its 50th season with Carmen on Saturday, November 23, in Sunset Park at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH). A crowded house warmly applauded Regina Chair Francine Garber-Cohen as she announced Bizet’s masterpiece Carmen to the eager audience of opera lovers. Composer George Bizet (1838-1875) had previously written The Pearl Fishers. That opera is exotic and has some lovely arias and duets, but not even a brilliant opening night at the Met with a stellar cast including Enrico Caruso could save it. It was recently successfully revived but it is a far cry from Carmen. Bizet finished Carmen but never knew the great fame and future glory this masterpiece would create. He died of heart disease at age 36. The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) was treated to their Carmen on February 2, 1915, with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Enrico Caruso sang Don José on January 14, 1909, at BAM again with Toscanini. The Met Opera included BAM as part of its tour until 1937. The Regina Opera’s Carmen began with esteemed Maestro Gregory Ortega conducting the exciting overture.Ortega told me how much he enjoys conducting this incredible opera. The story takes place in a square in Seville in the 19th century. Carmen and her friends work in a factory and are known as “cigarette girls.” Carmen is not a puttana a diavolo, but she seemed to be at that time: she was a woman of an independent spirit. In the film, based more on French writer Prosper Mérimée’s story, Don José looks like he’s been hit by a truck when she gives him a rose. One knows he’s doomed. At the finale, he has lost his beloved mother, his sweet fiancee Micaëla, his reputation and his military bearing. He has joined the smugglers and in a sense has become something like the village idiot. Carmen falls in love with Escamillo, the bullfighter. She is stabbed and killed by Don José outside the bullring amid the cheers for her lover Escamillo, inside the bull ring. At OLPH, Lara Michole Tillotson used her lustrous mezzo soprano in the “Seguidilla.” The lyrics explain Carmen’s free spirit, while the toe-tapping rhythms entice even the tightest white-collared cleric to thoughts of lustful mayhem. Tillotson caught the audience’s attention in a pleasing, plangent, persistent outburst. Her “Seguidilla” was
Carmen (Lara Tillotson) with Don José (Christopher Trapani)
Photo by Steven Pisano
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seductive, and the castanets were well negotiated. The card scene was a bit tame, and I recall the late beloved mezzo from the Bronx, Risë Stevens, with Brooklyn-born tenor Richard Tucker (born Reuben Ticker in Borough Park, Brooklyn), giving us a lesson in great singing with strong emotion. A certain panache was eluding the Regina performance. Carmen’s “Habanera” was well done without incident. The castanets were as adroitly used as the cigarettes that the factory girls hungrily smoked. Her “Tra la la” song was like Lana Turner capturing her male prey in the film The Postman Always Rings Twice. Tillotson’s ridicule of Don José’s refusal of her effort to go back to military roll call was very strongly done, indicating a more controlling Carmen than one would want. Her final scene in front of the Corrida de Toros was indelible as well as inevitable. Carmen’s love duet with Escamillo was indicative of the strength of her new love. This duet was brilliantly sung by film baritone Nelson Eddy and film femme fatale Ilona Massey in Balalaika (1939). I thought it a bit rushed at this performance, which should have emphasized it more to show that this was Carmen’s new love. Dragoon, military officer Don José, was in the able hands of rising tenor Christopher Trapani. Trapani has a very fine tenor voice and his duet with Macaëla, “Parlez-moi de ma mère” was beautifully sung, recalling the recording of Enrico Caruso and Frances Alda, which is a classic. Trapani’s singing of the iconic “Flower Song” was wonderfully done in the style of renowned tenor Franco Corelli. Trapani hit the top note with seemingly effortless freedom and truly made one hope that his talent will carry him to fame and acclaim. His final scene should have probed his shame as well as his anger a bit more deeply. He did very well, but as with a good pasta dish, I wanted some extra meatballs. The Micaëla of Alexis Cregger was pristine but all in vain because Don José simply can’t leave Carmen. I once again felt a bit of restraint. Her singing of “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” was nicely done. This aria has ofttimes brought the house down, as it should. One does not have to feature histrionics, but a certain tear in the voice and a sob in the heart can do it. I suggest a little more indescribable thrust be felt by Cregger. The Escamillo of Jaeman Yoon was crowd-pleasing. His warm baritone was expressive and soothing. His singing of “Votre Toast” (“The Toreador Song”) was vividly done and with the splendid Regina Chorus, it really energized the audience. Yoon’s love duet with Carmen was a generous blend of sound and he has really come far as a Gerda Lissner, Giulio Gari, and Opera Index winner.
Micaëla (Alexis Cregger, right) finds Don José (Christopher Trapani, left) in the mountains to deliver news about his mother. Photo by Steven Pisano
eran chorister Cathy Greco and artist Wayne Olsen. Nomi Barkan also lent her sparkling presence. Gregory Ortega conducted an inspired performance, and I enjoyed the Maestro’s eliciting the phenomenal beauty and power of this brilliant score. Richard Paratley was noteworthy on the flute. Plaudits to Christopher Joyal, concertmaster. All 36 musicians deserve extravagant praise for their efforts. The beautiful and proper costumes by Marcia Kresge were colorful and gave one a good sense of time past. The Regina Chorus and the splendid Children’s Chorus sang with glory and abandon. How grand! The set design by Linda Lehr, Wayne Olsen, and Richard Paratley was exceptional. The painted large bull outside the Plaza de Toros was stunning. The blood-spattered paint in other scenes was a bit awkward, and I felt it should have been omitted. Goya and Dali clash rather than blend. This Carmen was directed by the brilliant Linda Lehr, a great favorite of mine. Regina Opera is lucky to have someone of such wonderful talent in this special celebration of Regina Opera’s 50th season of bringing the opera world to Brooklyn as the Metropolitan Opera once did. My group celebrated the occasion at Casa Vieja, a nearby Mexican Restaurant, where we had delicious food washed down with Sangria! Hostess Lourdes Peña was our Lillas Pastia and we all had a great time! We look forward to Gianni Schicchi and Turandot coming up in 2020, and many others in the future.
The rest of this talented ensemble were Geeseop Kim as Zuniga, a captain;Brian Ballard as Morales, an officer; Katie Lipow and Maayan Voss de Bettancourt as Frasquita and Mercedes, gypsies; David Tillistrand and Josh Avant as Dancaïro and Remendado, two smugglers; Thomas Geib as a guide; Roger Ohlsen as cabaret manager Lillas Pastia; and the superb dancers Wendy Chu and Keiji Kubo, whose graceful movements were magical. The ensemble members were all excellent, and it was nice to see vet-
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January 2020, Page 19
Caleb's film previews - January
T
he new year brings new hopehope for better jobs, better workouts, and better relationships. Not so in Hollywood. With awards-season submission deadlines now in the past, major studios traditionally treat January as a dumping ground for their weirdest and most troublesome films, hoping a surprise hit materializes from thin air. That said, there are a few signs of life hidden in this mostly-barren ground. Check out the highlights below:
January 3 The Grudge
What it is: A reboot of a remake of the classic Japanese horror film Ju-on, a ghost story that explored the inescapability of regret and the evils of the past. Why should you see it: Director Nicolas Pesce, whose previously films The Eyes of My Mother and Piercing were fondly received, pledged to turn the franchise in a new, darker, and more creative direction.
January 10
Three Christs
What it is: Based on a real experiment, Three Christs follows psychiatrist Alan Stone, who studied the interactions between three schizophrenic men who claimed to be Jesus. Richard Gere stars as Stone, and Walton Goggins, Bradley Whitford, and Peter Dinklage play the Christs. Why should you see it: Three Christs’ offers an opportunity for its all-star cast to explore mental illness and the nature of identity. However, the film pre-
Page 20 Red Hook Star-Revue
miered at the 2017 (!!!) Toronto Film Festival. Such a delayed release is concerning.
Underwater
What it is: After an earthquake destroys their laboratory, a group of scientists must flee from a menagerie of deep-sea beasties and return to the surface. Why should you see it: Underwater features a bizarre cast, one including Kristen Stewart, French arthouse darling Vincent Cassel, and disgraced comedian T.J. Miller.
Les Misérables
What it is: Unrelated to the Broadway musical, Les Misérables follows a trio of French police officers who spark a riot in Paris’s economically depressed and politically oppressed suburbs. Why should you see it: Paris’s outer banlieues offer visionary filmmakers an opportunity to explore France’s history of disenfranchising and exploiting cultural and religious minorities. Les Misérables’ marketing campaign frames first-time director Ladj Ly as such a visionary.
January 17
Bad Boys for Life
What it is: A threequel to the widely tolerated Will Smith and Martin Lawrence action franchise. Belgian up-and-comers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah replace Michael Bay as co-directors. Why should you see it: Michael Bay’s affinity for unnecessary explosions and racially insensitive screenplays has become a meme, but the man knows how to shoot an action sequence. Whether El Arbi and Fallah can replicate his unique visual style remains to be seen.
Dolittle
What it is: Robert Downey, Jr. plays the kindly veterinarian as he engages in low-stakes hijinks with his animal pals. I am, of course, kidding. This being a Disney blockbuster, Dr. Dolittle must save the world.
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Why should you see it: Because the Dark Lord Mickey, whom we fear and love in equal measure, demands it. Or maybe you have kids or whatever.
January 24
The Gentlemen
What it is: After directing a string of mostly-decent but always-slick Hollywood hits, director Guy Richie returns to his roots in his first proper gangster flick since 2008’s RocknRolla. Why should you see it: Back in the late ‘90s, Richie might have been rightfully dismissed as a pale, English imitation of Quentin Tarantino. However, he has over the years established a visual language as colorful and frenetic as his dialogue.
January 24
Color Out of Space
What it is: An adaptation of an HP Lovecraft short story. Nicolas Cage stars as a struggling artist whose fortunes are turned around when a mysterious purple meteorite crashes onto his property. Why should you see it: Nicolas Cage has gone from Hollywood A-Lister to unhinged B-movie star. However, after 2018’s weird-and-wonderful Mandy and now Color Out of Space, he may have progressed to a new stage of his career: low-budget/ high-concept Scream King.
January 31
The Assistant
What it is: An idealistic young college grad lands a job with a high-powered film producer, but soon finds herself steeped in a culture of systematic abuse. Why should you see it: Writer/Director Kitty Green earned praise for her stomach-churning depiction of the ways powerful abusers secure silence and complicity from their well-meaning subordinates.
- Caleb Drickey
January 2020
On Books
Exile in Donkeyville
H
orror Stories, the memoir by recording artist Liz Phair, is not a bad book, but it’s an odd one with which to have made her debut as a writer, and it’s certainly not the one fans of her music will wish she’d have written. Despite Phair’s assertion that it’s her “effort to slow everything down and take a look at how we really become who we are,” it gives no sense of who she is as a musician, neither citing her influences nor recounting how she got her start. Die-hard fans, eager to finally know more about the legendary Girly-Sound tapes, the handmade cassettes Phair recorded in her bedroom that anticipated her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, a milestone in the annals of indie rock, will find their love tested in these pages. Phair writes, “I’ve been writing songs for thirty years. From the beginning, my songs have been my stories. Every time I recorded an album, I was writing my memoirs.” Perhaps assuming that readers will have some sense of who she is from her music, Phair absolves herself of the usual responsibilities of a narrator. Rather than tell her story in a straightforward way, she takes a more conceptual approach, focusing on seventeen anecdotes which jump around in time, and mostly focus on her relationships with her dying grandmother, her aging parents, her betrayed husband, and different inappropriate boyfriends.
Chances are taken and opportunities missed. The entries sometimes amount to the scrawling in a diary, full of self-importance and meaningless asides, but at other times demonstrate a keen intelligence strengthened by self-interrogation. Phair’s writing is marked throughout by an obsessive, brooding quality. She likens the stories to “music, not data—the haunting melodies I hear over and over again in my head.” Phair writes, “Horror can be found in brief interactions that are as cumulatively powerful as the splashy heart-stoppers, because that’s where we live most of our lives.” There is a fair share of the mundane (such as what Phair wears when shopping at her local Trader Joe’s) along with the unexpected (she’s there to stalk a cashier who looks like her ex-boyfriend). “Our flaws and our failures make us relatable, not unlovable,” Phair elsewhere sniffs, but it feels like a slogan more than something she’s able to convince the reader she really believes in.
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Review by Michael Quinn The stories are all told in the present tense, which gives them a sense of urgency, but which may raise some eyebrows, such as when she narrates “Red Bird Hollow” (memories of the danger of climbing a very tall tree with her brother Phillip at their grandparents’ house outside Cincinnati) completely from the perspective of her six-yearold self. Looking back on such episodes from the present would have given her a wider range of perspective, and given the stories a greater depth and poignancy.
and somehow having them not only seen and heard, but celebrated for their power. Phair notices this in fans’ response to this particular album: “They heard themselves in the music, not me.”
What’s impressive here is when Phair manages to write about complicated topics without resorting to cheap platitudes. “Break-In at Blue House” recounts her time living in a shared house while in college at Oberlin. Men break in one night while she’s sleeping in a nearby room; Phair manages to escape without ever seeing them, and calls the police. Relating details of what she heard, Phair “can’t decide if saying they were black is valid or racist.” She writes, “As soon as I hear the words come out of my mouth, I feel like I’ve stepped over an invisible line. I feel white, in a way that I didn’t at the time of the break-in.”
Readers won’t get the same picture of Phair they get from her songs, where there is a lot more rock ‘n’ roll posturing. On the page, Phair sometimes comes across as rather conventional, a real Normy Von Normalton, but more often she is simply an elusive, sometimes confounding presence. Writing Horror Stories was likely a fun game for Phair to play with herself, but for the reader it’s something else: all tails, no donkey to pin them on.
“The Devil’s Mistress” depicts Phair’s troubled marriage and the affair she had that put the nail in the coffin. What’s interesting is that this is really a story about faith, of having betrayed something bigger than a person. Phair writes, “At one time in my life, I believed in God and thought that when I talked to myself, He was listening. He was like a playmate or an imaginary friend.” Guilt and grief are two chords without easy resolution, but it’s one of the best pieces Phair plays here. “Sotto Voice” recalls Phair’s humiliation singing a botched version of “Winter Wonderland” on live television with her hair in “Shirley Temple ringlets.” She writes, “Everybody in the United States knows the words to this song.” For fans of Phair’s early work, this episode feels like the culmination of everything that went wrong with her career. Phair might feel this way, too. Writing about being at a radio station event, she notes, “I feel like a prop, a cardboard cutout, a clone, and it’s a terrible feeling.” Surely one of the reasons Exile in Guyville resonated was because it was a teenage fantasy of being alone in our rooms sharing our most secret selves
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All these years later, Phair’s still the one fronting her band, but something has shifted. When Phair describes the band facing a crisis, “I want to be the girl. I want to be saved,” she writes. Totally understandable, totally relatable – but a little disappointing. We want Phair not only to face her demons, but to inspire us to face ours.
"The entries sometimes amount to the scrawling in a diary, full of self-importance and meaningless asides, but at other times demonstrate a keen intelligence strengthened by self-interrogation. " January 2020, Page 21
Art by Piotr ‘Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power’ at the Rubin Museum by Piotr Pillady Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power November 8, 2019 – May 4, 2020 150 West 17th St. , New York, NY
A
mong the most powerful recent exhibitions I’ve visited in the city, Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power at the Rubin Museum on West 17th Street chronicles the four-decade career of the prolific Bangladeshi photographer, writer, and activist Shahidul Alam. The first major U.S. museum retrospective of his work, the exhibition features both film and digital photography, Alam’s writing, contact sheets, and other media spanning the artist’s career. Alam, who has been jailed numerous times for his activism, shows Bangladesh and South Asia through impactful photography that seeks to combat the predominant Western categorization of the region as the “Third World” or “Global South.”
The exhibition starts with Alam’s work exploring Bangladesh’s political situation, especially within the context of the aftermath of the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971. An example of his earlier work in black and white 35mm film (the medium for the vast majority of the work) from 1987, Protesters in Motijheel Break Section 44 on Dhaka Siege Day documents and frames the protests related the opposition parties uniting to oust President Ershad. The image shows the uncharacteristically empty commercial center of Dhaka, framing figures occupying the street and memorializing the momentous event with an image. This type of street photography and framing brings to mind the work of French photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget. However, Alam, through the scenes he chooses to depict, imbues the images with both cultural and political significance outside of a focus on their aesthetic compositions like the Western photographers’ work. These photographs are quite different than the work of other well-known photographers from the subcontinent, such as Raghubir Singh. Singh’s usually vivid and colorful documentations of daily scenes and landscapes of India, such as New Delhi (1999), are largely apolitical in contrast to Alam’s fiercely and unapologetically politically-charged scenes of protest and dissent. Another set of images in this section frames Ban-
gladesh in the ‘80s in a particularly powerful way, calling attention to a deep wealth divide in the nation. In Wedding Guests (1988) and Abahani Wedding (1988), Alam documented the opulent wedding of a powerful Bangladeshi minister, which took place as much of the nation was experiencing catastrophic flooding. The curation explores this duality with images to the right of the wedding photographs, including Woman Cooking on Rooftop (1988) and Woman Wading in Flood (1988), which starkly demonstrate this divide. Additionally, a recording of the Adhan, or Islamic call to prayer, emanates from the central museum atrium and acts as a sonic background to the exhibition which brings to mind the role of religion in rallying political favor in the country that is de facto an Islamic nation, though claims secularity in its constitution. Closing off this section of the exhibition was a particularly powerful image entitled Woman in Ballot Booth (1991), which shows a woman voting in a makeshift ballot booth consisting of a translucent veil following the resignation of President Ershad. Next to the image is both the text and a spoken word recording of Alam reading a letter decrying the proliferation of propaganda through state media at this time, even in the wake of the fall of the Ershad regime. In a table in the center of the room, there are contact sheets from the photographer, giving insight into his artistic process and production. The next part of the show features a section of work Alam created in tribute and as an investigation into Kalpana Chakma, a human rights activist and feminist who has not been seen since her disappearance in June of 1996. This section starts with a selection of color photographs such as Red Orna (2013) that are close up abstract photos of Chakma’s garments and other personal ephemera. This photograph shows a close up depiction of her orna, a shawi-like cloth worn by Muslim women, but thoroughly abstracts the representational source material in stark contrast to the more documentational earlier photography. Other, less abstract works include Sole of Mud-Caked Shoe of Kalpana Chakma (2014), which was taken on the 18th anniversary of the disappearance of the activist. The exhibition continues with a series exploring the role of migrant workers in Bangladeshi society,
who often must travel past the nation’s borders to work in order to send money back to their families from places such as Abu Dhabi and the Maldives. A poignant portrait from this series was Bangladeshi Migrant Workers in Maldives (1994), showing workers at the docks in Male, the capital of the Maldives. The photograph thoroughly captures the individual’s sense of tedium resulting from the work, with one man shown almost facing the lens and the other shown in profile. The photograph simultaneously captures the opportunity for a better life that this labor presents and the toll of the labor itself. Another work in this section explores the death of Nurjahan Begum and suggests a tragic narrative among the largely documentational work. The 1993 series of black and white photographs tells the story of Begum, who was abandoned by her husband and wished to remarry but needed to receive the approval of the village imam. The imam originally approved the decision but later revoked it, ultimately resulting in Begum being publicly stoned and later dying by alleged suicide, highlighting the struggles for women’s rights in the country. The penultimate section of the show features Alam’s newer color photography, which explores topics from refugee resettlement by the ethnic and religious minority Rohingya people from Myanmar. Images such as Densely Packed Homes in Balukhali Camp (2017) and Signaling on River Naf at Nightfall (2017) help shed light on the conditions experienced by the refugees fleeing persecution. Other images in this section explore the effect of the climate crisis on Bangladesh, a nation extremely susceptible to rising sea levels. In an interesting turn, the exhibition ends with an iPad showing some of Alam’s most recent photographic works shot on an iPhone. These photographs, mostly apolitical depictions of daily life and more in line with the works of Singh, show scenes both from Alam’s life in Dhaka and from his travels abroad. As well framed and composed as Alam’s film photographs, these digital images, such as one showing men and women praying at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur and a beautiful image of changing leaves in Auckland, further point to Alam’s masterful use of the camera. The exhibition will be on view at the Rubin Museum on West 17th Street through May 4, 2020.
Protesters in Motijheel Break Section 44 on Dhaka Siege Day (1987) Woman in Ballot Booth (1991) Bangladeshi Migrant Workers in Maldives (1994)
Page 22 Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020
STAR REVUE
MUSIC James Blood Ulmer
Modern Rock Journalism
When will the blues come? By George Grella
I
n this giant international city where supposedly everything is available 24 hours a day, there is one thing that’s in short supply: live blues.
Where to go to hear the blues? B.B. King’s Blues Club closed in April, 2018, and Hank’s Saloon is now interred in the cemetery. You can try to stroll by 55 Bar on Christopher Street and check the sandwich board on the sidewalk, you can scan the jazz clubs to see when a blues musician might have been booked for a night – it does happen – but is there any blues club or venue, a place where you go because you want to hear the music and you know they’re going to be playing it there, where it’s the norm and not the exception, left in New York? That’s only partly a rhetorical question, because I’m looking too. The blues has become like the Theory of Relativity, something that you know exists and is a part of everyday experience but that you never have to stop and think about (or listen to). If jazz is a niche music, than blues is a cult music. It has some specific regional centers, like Chicago; figureheads, like Buddy Guy and King, who you may be unsure are alive or dead; and obsessive chroniclers who exist as shady figures at the edge of the music itself, collecting records and preserving ancient lore. I’d wager more people read Hari Kunzru’s novel White Tears, about two young white men desperately searching for a legendary blues recording, in
its release year of 2017 than actually listened to the music that year.
blues with contributions from the previous generations via Guy and Keb’ Mo’.
This despite the blues being alive and well. The autonomic view of music outside the public consciousness is that it’s over and done with, the classics are history, nothing’s happening. But Buddy Guy is still rolling along, something of a franchise now but still capable of two or three inspired tracks on whatever new record he puts out (his most recent, 2018, release is The Blues is Alive and Well. Yes indeed). Guy’s adopted hometown also boasts terrific musicians like the tough-minded Toronzo Cannon (his latest is The Preacher, The Politician or The Pimp), and the Cash Box Kings (their new album, Hail to the Kings!, opens with the jump-blues “Ain’t No Fun (When the Rabbit Got the Gun)”), both not only maintaining the classic sounds of Chicago blues but making songs about contemporary problems. Ronnie Earl continues to play elegant guitar; the phenomenal Gary Clark Jr. carries the banner of Texas blues around the globe, and refreshes the music with soul and hip hop. Benjamin Booker is making a personal and expressive blend of punk, gospel, and the blues, while Cedric Burnside, son of drummer Calvin Johnson and grandson of the late, great R.L. Burnside, is the sound of how young musicians hear the music of the Mississippi Delta in 2019. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, who turned 21 this month, put out his debut album last year, Kingfish, fresh electric
These musicians deserve the space taken up by the pyrotechnics of Joe Bonamassa and the Rolling Stones’ much-praised and utterly awful Blue & Lonesome. So much of the world seems to look at the buffoonery of old white men and reacts by wanting to be that way themselves, and conversely sees great black artists as literal token entertainment. An intense example of this is yet another album that is beloved by so many listeners and critics and is a complete sham, The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions, with the great Wolf backed by Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. After the first verse of “Rockin’ Daddy,” Wolf is clearly bored by what’s going on behind him. The Stones themselves sound both cliched and lost while backing Muddy Waters on Live at the Checkerboard Lounge. This is a sad state of affairs for music that is at the core of American culture. Without the blues, there’s no jazz, rock, soul, R&B, funk, and so much else. The blues is the single most important American musical form because is the foundation for everything that follows. It is also the ne plus ultra protest music of the exploited in America— that’s its raison d’etre. And we’re all needing some protest music, aren’t
(continued on page 34)
Edited by Michael Cobb Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020, Page 23
Visit the artist!
Robyn Hitchcock at Murmrr On November 21, Robyn Hitchcock performed two sets at Murmrr, Brooklyn’s cool venue for cutting-edge folk and rock. The show was originally meant to be a double bill with Tanya Donnelly (Throwing Muses, The Breeders, Belly) opening, but for reasons unclear, she was unable to appear. All the better for fans of Hitchcock who were able to enjoy even more of his psychedelic brilliance than originally anticipated. Hitchcock’s sets spanned the course of his career with works from his solo acoustic albums as well as tunes recorded with The Soft Boys and The Egyptians. Murmrr is a magical place to see live music. Located with Union Temple the space lends itself perfectly as a concert venue. The floors slope downward giving the audience a perfect view of the stage while stained glass windows are illuminated by gently shifting back lighting that pulses with a variety of kaleidoscopic colors. The sound was generally quite good, though a bit tinny at times. Hitchcock humorously requested adjustments from the tech throughout the set: “Justin, if you could make my voice sound like something between David Crosby and John Lennon, that would be great.” Due to the overall excellence of the show, it’s hard to point out highlights but Justin did his best and helped Hitchcock achieve real magic on “Chinese Bones.” Stripped of its ‘80s production, here it was remade with enhanced slap back delay that pulsed hypnotically throughout the hall. Also exciting was when Hitchcock descended from the stage to play the house piano on the rarely performed “The Man Who Invented Himself ” from his first solo album Black Snake Diamond Role, and “Flavour of the Night.” Such are the unique moments of live concerts. Hitchcock periodically takes requests and gladly performed the hilarious “The Cheese Alarm.” In person, he is quite funny, frequently dispensing impromptu, surreal witticisms that could only come from his singular brain wave. Other stellar numbers included “Cynthia Mask” and the mournful “She Doesn’t Exist.” He was joined by his partner Emma Swift for the last six songs including the literary “Virginia Woolf ” from his most recent album, followed by the eerie “Glass Hotel.” Hitchcock often uses open tunings which help him achieve the drone notes that give so much of his music a psychedelic quality. Swift provided stunning harmonies and helped elevate his set to higher heights. Together they closed out the show with lovely renditions of Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman” and “Visions of Johanna,” whose dreamlike images are a clear influence on Hitchcock’s work. Hitchcock and Swift were available to meet and greet, signing CDs, vinyl albums, posters, and other merchandise in the lobby. Their superb performance and accessibility combined with the acoustics and ambiance of Murmrr made for a top-notch experience. - Mike Cobb
Page 24 Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020
FRESHEST LOBSTER IN NYC! Mick Barr’s outcast metal by Kurt Gottschalk
A
fter two very slow pieces for strings, organ and accordion – of which he was not a part – on a December night at Roulette in Downtown Brooklyn, Mick Barr walked onstage gripping his guitar by the neck and addressed the audience with a slight grin, saying simply, “Ear plugs?” He tested the amp with a quick strum, sounding more like a saturated snare drum than any ordinary string instrument, then launched into warp speed, playing precise geometric figures that seemed to reduce thrash metal to a nervous tic. Eventually, the music began to take form, or at least the ear began to find shapes in it, figures closer to Terry Riley than Yngwie Malmsteen, suggesting how the unusual double bill may have made some sense. Still, the lines connecting Barr and his metal band Krallice to the usual Roulette bookings – or to the 20th-century composer Giacinto Scelsi, for whom the band named its 2015 album Ygg Huur – are anything but clear. Barr, however, seems comfortable in that gray area. Most of the night was given to composer Judith Berkson, who also provided a brief vocal passage to one of Barr’s razor-sharp pieces. He’s written voice and organ pieces for Berkson and, in other arenas, has composed for string trio and mixed ensemble. An album of his chamber works is slated for later this year. “I definitely have some weird art world crossover here and there,” Barr explained at a noisy Chelsea cafe last month. “I’ve been fortunate to be able to do things like that as well as have a set at St. Vitus occasionally.” As fate would have it, Barr will be playing with his band Krallice at that same Greenpoint metal club this month, the band’s first show in a year and a half. But he said he doesn’t expect too see many faces from the Roulette show there. “The metal world hasn’t really embraced my solo stuff at all,” he said. “It’s not heavy and it doesn’t rock. There isn’t that much to latch onto.”
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“These days, I just call it ‘weirdo music,’” he added. “I feel like it’s always been a little too weird for the metal world and too metal for the experimental world. I might say ‘weirdo metal’ or ‘annoying metal.’ I try not to get too specific.” Barr came up in Connecticut and DC listening to and playing in thrash bands. He started writing his own music in the ’90s but didn’t always have a band to play them, so started recording them, multi-tracking his guitar with a drum machine. After a few years, he began doing it onstage. “I guess I was mildly influenced by [outsider folk guitarist John] Fahey,” he said. “I was into the idea of just playing with the guitar and no vocal, this very raw form and just letting it be what it would be. At first, my solo sets were improv guitar, probably fairly awkward but it had to be done.” He began composing the solos and working under a variety of monikers: Ocrilim, Octis, Or:12r3. “I want to say they’re different concepts but they’re kind of the same thing, it evolves,” he said. And while steeped in the syntax of heavy metal guitar, he found at least as much inspiration outside the rock realm. “I always think more toward horn players and drummers, a lot of Moroccan horn-and-drum music,” he said, “In general, I don’t follow other shredders. I’m more influenced by Coltrane, trying to find the trance-y aspects I enjoy in that.” As for the enigmatic Giacinto Scelsi: “I’m a big fan of his work, not that I think we really took any influence from him.” He adds, however, that he has considered arranging something by the composer noted for single-note and microtonal explorations. “Maybe that’s something we’ll do next year. Probably not, but maybe.” With such an array of influences, Barr’s music still projects something very personal, although how that’s received – in the metal or experimental or any other crowd – depends on the listener. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. “If they hear it and feel compelled to explore, that’s great,” he said. “I’m not sure that I would feel inspired to listen to the music I make if I didn’t make it. I’m just compelled to make it.”
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January 2020, Page 25
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Interview with Robyn Hitchcock by Michael Cobb
W
ith a colorful career spanning more than 40 years, Robyn Hitchcock remains one of the world’s most idiosyncratic song writers. Born in Paddington, a neighborhood of London, in 1953, his father Raymond Hitchcock was a novelist, screenwriter, and cartoonist best known for his novel Percy. Robyn attended Trinity College at Cambridge but failed to graduate. However, he began his musical career by busking and performing with a variety of groups.
path into adolescence and into early adulthood was started by the Beatles. As they were developing, I was developing, and millions of us were doing that. The Beatles accompanied us and they still, even more now, remain a tremendously positive sound, even when they broke down into their individual components like they did for the last three records. There was such an atmosphere, heart, and vibe to their songs. It was there, and I think children still love Beatles music. You were born in 1970?
First coming to prominence in the late 70’s with the seminal Soft Boys, Hitchcock’s album Can of Bees had brutal, jarring guitar lines reminiscent of Captain Beefheart, while the classic Underwater Moonlight veered into Syd Barret surrealism. Subsequent works oscillated between solo acoustic material and fuller productions backed by The Egyptians and the Venus 3, the latter of which included R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey.
MC: Yes.
Along the way, Hitchcock has had fruitful collaborations with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, Nick Lowe, and many others. Recently he has been working on a psychedelic pop project titled Planet England with XTC’s Andy Partridge. Hitchock has also dipped his toe into the world of cinema and has worked on various projects with director Jonathan Demme. In 1996 he appeared in Demme’s concert film Storefront Hitchcock, acted as double agent Laurent Tokar in Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and as a wedding singer in Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. Today, Hitchcock lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his partner Emma Swift. I spoke to him by phone. MC: Do you remember what it was that initially drew you to music? RH: Well, I loved music ever since I was two or three. My father had bought records: Bill Haley's “Rock Around The Clock” and Lonnie Donegan, who did skiffle, which was sort of an odd mixture of acoustic folk and rock and roll, a pre-beatnik kind of thing. John Lennon started with that. It was a British variation of American music with acoustic guitar, somebody playing bass on a tea chest with a broom handle on it. It was really primitive, like pre-electric punk, y’know? My father used to listen to folk music. He’d been injured in World War II and when he was recovering from his leg injury in Newcastle lying in the hospital on morphine almost obliterated by German shrapnel, the nurses were singing northern English folk songs. He developed a taste for British folk music. So we had that in the household and early rock and roll. Then the Beatles and Bob Dylan came along, and by the time I was exposed to that, my fate was decided. MC: As a child, the Beatles struck me as almost kind of dreamy, cartoon music. I know that quality filters down to much of your music. How did the Beatles strike you when you first heard them? RH: They were just magnetic. I didn’t have an opinion about them, I was ten. I remember hearing their name and thinking, “Oh, the Beatles, that’s a silly pun.” I was a snooty kid, quite precocious, trying to think like a middle-aged person. But I just heard “From Me To You” and “Please Please Me” and that was it. I didn’t think about it, I just followed it like millions of other children around the world. And you’re right, it was sort of cartoony. They even had a Beatles cartoon over in the states, which we never had in Britain. My life was mapped in Beatles songs. I went from “Please Please Me” when I was ten to “Abbey Road” when I was 16. My whole
Page 26 Red Hook Star-Revue
RH: So, you appeared as they went. But I think the message still reaches people. I think of the Beatles as really true 20th century folk music. If you want to play songs to children, the Beatles are a very good place to start. MC: You cite Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Syd Barrett as major influences. Your music has always had a psychedelic quality. What continues to draw you to that sound? RH: Well, to me it’s a genre of music that The Beatles, Dylan and all the other heroes of that age forged between them, the Beatles being the biggest example beginning with Revolver but also spanning Jimi Hendrix, Syd Barrett, and many others. It was the sound that I heard and that was the genre of electric music that I wanted to produce. And it hasn’t changed. The same principle for my last album was the one that we had for Underwater Moonlight 40 years ago. The Soft Boys stuff before that was a bit more experimental and Captain Beefheart influenced I suppose. But if I made another electric record it would sound like Underwater Moonlight. I’m not sure I’m planning to, but to me that’s that sound I do. I’m a two and a half trick pony. I do that, and I do quiet acoustic with a bit of piano. I tend to lurch from one to the other across the windshield. Those are the genres. Again, I don’t really think about it until I’m asked, but if there was a category of music in record stores, there’d be a genre of music with those people, and I’d be in it. Not necessarily from time but more from sound and attitude. I suppose the nearest equivalents are Julian Cope and Andy Partridge, who ironically live about 20 miles from each other. And of course I am working with Andy from time to time on psychedelic pop. MC: What’s your relationship with him and how did this project come about? RH: Andy and I appeared out of the corner of each other’s eyes and were quite suspicious of each other, probably because we were already being compared. XTC was a sort of pop version of the Soft Boys; they actually were on top of the pops and had hits. We never did anything as high profile as that. The Soft Boys wasn’t really designed as a pop group. But in the late 80’s we were getting the same play on radio stations and gradually we just ran across each other. By the 21st century, when were both into our 50’s, I started going up to his house in Swindon, and we’d write round the table and record in his shed. We had a hiatus for a while, we lost touch, and then I moved to Nashville, so there was a big gap. Last year we finally finished them off. We had so much fun we started another one. We’re two songs into it I think. But I have to get over to Swindon. He doesn’t really travel; Andy’s not portable. I got him down to London once when I lived there. We recorded some stuff, but I lost the tape. So that’s ongoing. I’m hoping we can make a full-length LP, but it just depends if we live long enough.
quite psychedelic. So, it seems like a natural collaboration. RH: Yeah, we both love that stuff. MC: How does co-writing work? Does he suggest a line and then you chime in or vice-versa? RH: Yeah. Or we’ll come in with a title or something. But whatever it is, so far it’s been quite easy for one of us to follow the other in a way that I can’t really do with anybody else because the way I go doesn’t really go with anybody else. So I like that, and I like exercise of co-writing with him. My stuff is very self involved and quite dark. With him it’s more outgoing and extroverted. It’s more like, “This is gonna be fun to hum along to.” Again, more like the Beatles and less like a solo Lennon or Harrison record. MC: I know you paint and draw, which we can see happening in your latest video “Sunday Never Comes”, and you've done the artwork for several of your albums. You also reference authors Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath on your last album. How do other art forms influence your music, if at all? RH: Poems, stories, pictures... if they echo with you it’s only a matter of time before they find their way into your work. Music is the most emotional way of expression for me; it’s hard to listen to a painting, so I prefer to sing if I can. MC: As an expat Englishman living in the USA, it seems like you have an opportunity to view things from the inside and the outside. Do you think this allows you to see things others can't? Does any of that filter into your writing, in particular on Planet England? RH: Being based in America helps me mythologize Britain, and the past is all about myth. The older you get, the more past you have to play with. Andy Partridge and I actually wrote Planet England in Swindon, when I was still based in London. MC: Looking back at your career and life, how do you think you've evolved as a songwriter? Are there sources you find yourself coming back to? RH: Well, I’m less vivid, probably less inventive, more integrated with myself. I think I’m less thinking “me” and more thinking “we,” but I don’t know if that shows. Maybe more general and less particular; though. God knows, I’ve had a very particular life. My songs are generally less grotesque and slightly sadder. MC: What’s different at this stage in your life? RH: I’ve got less to prove, but fewer new tricks to do that with and less time to do that in. Everything seems as urgent as ever. MC: If you could travel in time, where would you most like to go? RH: 1949. I’d ride the trams and trolleybuses, smoke in the bars, and wait for rock’n’roll. But then, would I appreciate it?
MC: Somewhere along the way I got turned onto to Andy’s work with The Dukes of Stratosphere, which is
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January 2020
Hugh Pool makes Nyc look good by Jack Grace in another field had I put as much time, money and energy into it, but at the same time, I also realize that I’ve been very lucky to co-create the life I have and in the middle of my third decade and do what I do “professionally.” I still consider myself a lifer. I say co-create because there is too much luck, generosity and fate involved to believe that you created anything in life yourself. JG: If a twenty-year-old guitar-slinging singer just arrived to New York City in 2020, how could one possibly begin to build a life of home, recording studio and family as you have in Brooklyn? HP: With substantially more help than I received. I think about this question with regard to the many 20-year-old interns I’ve had at the studio over the years.
T
he first time I saw Hugh Pool perform, I was deep in conversation with an old friend, Tom Vaught, at the enchanting but since departed Lakeside Lounge. Suddenly from the stage, a long-haired, National guitar-picking, slide-screaming, harmonicathrough-amplifier, screeching force came soaring like a nip-soaked cat on fire in a bag filled with rabid dogs on acid. Our jaws became acquainted with the floor tile. We felt it in the air; this night had magic in it. We got in close and gave this man our full attention. We were thoroughly inspired, aligned, and ready for a night of enchanting debauchery. After Hugh finished his show, we sat down with him and introduced ourselves. Tom duly impressed Hugh with his eclectic tales of nightlife, one involved an alley, a mobster and a meatball sandwich available, if you “was from the neighborhood” of Little Italy. Hugh was hardly shy and added a few reports himself, painted with sharp wit and a wizardry of wordplay. Hugh Pool, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, came to New York at 20 years old to see where his music would bring him. Cut to 2019, Hugh Pool is married with two kids and owns a house in Brooklyn and a long-established recording studio, Excello Recording. He has had years of bounty, struggle and everything in between, yet he has always managed to keep himself and his family above water as a musician and studio owner in a century that has created far too many obstacles toward obtaining that goal. Hugh Pool is not only a gentleman; he is a hero and a legend in New York, a city that could try shifting its focus back to all of the genuine music it has helped inspire the past few hundred years and cease from creating half-baked celebrities or phone zombies simply observing and not participating in what this paradise has to offer. I asked Hugh a few questions as he was mixing a Reverend Freakchild album and readying to play his 11th St. Bar residency: JG: Have you ever tried to get out of the music business? HP: I’ve done nothing more than fantasize about it. I’ve wondered what I might have accomplished
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The cost of housing, going out with friends, a cell phone bill, an internet connection; the baseline expectation and associated expenses feel very different to me. When I was 20 in 1985, the golden years of the modern art era were still glowing here in New York and it was still very bohemian. You’d see pictures of David Byrne wearing black espadrilles which cost 2 bucks in Chinatown and Phillip Glass would be walking down Great Jones street wearing an Army surplus jacket and jump boots from a second hand shop. You could look like that for 20 bucks. There is a part of growing that is emulating. You try shit on and kinda keep what fits and recycle what doesn’t. This is as true of clothing as it is of other elements of the creative style. Nurturing or growing that creativity requires experimentation and ideally (when you are young) you get to experiment without big risk. Higher monthly costs significantly increase the risk, and I wonder how the army coming up to replace us here deals with it internally. To me that creativity was the lifeblood of New York. I never would have moved here if I were not drawn by generations of artists. Walt Whitman, Willem de Kooning, Allen Ginsburg, Saul Bellow, Bob Dylan, the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads and the gigantic history of Greenwich Village, Folk City, and Dave Van Ronk. I mean, I know New York is the financial center and real estate, blah, blah, blah, but that never entered my mind as a kid. I moved here with $300 to try and be part of the creative bloodstream. I don’t know what that feels like today but I know that people are finding a way. JG: Can you recall one the worst gigs you ever played in New York? HP: My worst gig was the gig when I realized that my feet hurt. When it happened, I was playing guitar with another artist, in a short-lived club in midtown. I remember thinking about how in all the years that I’ve been playing I had played with broken ribs, stitches in my mouth, high fevers, outdoors in December in Sweden, etc., but never until that moment had I ever backed away from the performing moment enough to realize that I was uncomfortable. I thought to myself, oh… maybe this gig sucks. That felt valid because I was already in my 30s at this point. JG: Do you consider yourself a Brooklynite at this point? HP: I consider myself a Greenpointer because we are pretty involved with the community over here and that is a good thing, totally driven by Janie. My kids are products of our home, this community and our local public schools so I’d have to be pretty aloof not to consider myself a Brooklynite. Especially on account of the fact that my kids are
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kind, bright, well-mannered and energetic people. They have good internal compasses, and that stuff is not all stuck inside them by Janie and myself. That stuff is stuck inside them because of what they see and experience. They are born in Brooklyn! I’m a Pennsylvania transplant grateful for my new home, but my kids are Brooklynites. JG: Have you ever considered going back to Pennsylvania or leaving New York City? HP: Yes… several times a year. JG: What was the busiest year at Excello like for you? HP: Early 2000s. 2003-04 or something. A bunch of stuff happened at the same time. Our managing partner left the studio partnership, an article about me came out in Tape Op magazine and an engineer-producer I was good pals with was heating up a bit in the biz. The studio was a one-man show for a couple of years. I was doing every session, the accounting, fixing headphones, managing the bookings and logistics. I’d just bought a house and had a new kid in the mix too. Plus I was playing 10 nights a month. It was pretty intense but perfect timing. You can handle all that shit no problem when you’re in your 30s or early 40s. JG: Did you ever dislike a band’s music that you were recording so badly that it affected the sessions? HP: I have always been of the opinion that it’s my responsibility to find the thing in what someone does and do my best to make it beautiful… or make it ugly… just make it say something worth saying. So no, I find that thing. I feel it’s my job and I have to do my job well or I don’t do well internally. JG: If you were never a musician, engineer or anything in the music industry, what kind of job could you have seen yourself doing? HP: First, I wanted to be a salvage diver, then a downhill skier, then a musician and now I guess anything that puts several million dollars into your bank account… you know, same as any other American. JG: Do you still practice guitar? HP: I most certainly do. I wish that I were more consistent about it but there is always a guitar nearby. I take one on every family trip. I’m never without a guitar, pad and paper. Never. JG: Did you grow up listening to a lot of slide guitar players? HP: Not especially slide players. I listened to the radio: Dr. Hook, David Essex, Brewer and Shipley, Motown, etc., and then Neil Young and then Allman Brothers. That’s when I first heard slide and from there, through the Grateful Dead and Hot Tuna directly the world of the blues and then the extremely profitable sub-genre of acoustic blues and bottleneck guitar. JG: How would you like to see yourself 20 years from now? HP: Well, alive for one thing and maybe with some grandkids and kids who are happy and reasonably secure. I’d like to feel that I’ve done my family proud and helped a lot of people. I still very much hope that I can increase my media capacity, perform and pull attendance to larger venues with larger paydays and work with artists on similar lines, but if I had to choose, I’d definitely trade the professional stuff for the personal stuff.
January 2020, Page 27
Pop culture and drugs by Roderick Thomas
T
he recent death of Juice WRLD (pronounced “juice world”) is yet another famous casualty by drug abuse. Jarad Anthony Higgins, age 21, was a gifted and rising musician, praised critically and supported by devoted listeners. During his short career, Juice WRLD released hit songs like “Lucid Dreams” (peaking at number 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart), complete an international tour with rap queen Nicki Minaj, and released multiple collaborations like “Hate Me,” with singer Ellie Goulding. On December 8, 2019, just six days after his birthday, Juice WRLD died of drug-related complications (cardiac arrest, seizure). According to most sources, authorities were alerted by the pilot of the private jet rented by Juice WRLD. Chicago Police and the FBI were waiting for the musician upon arrival at Chicago’s Midway Airport. They seized numerous sealed bags of marijuana and codeine syrup (aka “lean”). A consistent narrative surrounding Juice WRLD’s passing is that he took a lethal dose of pills (allegedly Percocet) out of fear of being caught by authorities. In his music, Juice regularly discussed his troubles with addiction and depression, often highlighting the difficulty he was facing with drug abuse. “Realistically you can’t win; you will overdose and die. I try not to speak about drugs in such a positive light,” Juice WRLD said during a 2018 interview with radio personality Tim Westwood. This story is riddled with all the unfortunate
tropes of fame, drug abuse, and addiction. Juice WRLD’s unfortunate passing invites us to look at our pop and drug culture, as well as our attitudes toward mental health.
are contributors to abuse, our general unease regarding mental health is perhaps the biggest contributor. Drug abuse is often a response, not the root issue.
The currency of fame is stronger than ever (see social media), and most things attached to fame are glorified, drugs included. Today, Percocet and Molly (capsulated MDMA) have become lyrical norms in pop music, with apathy being the most prevalent pushback.
Additionally, the slow pace of the evolving legal and social acceptability of drugs adds to the “hush-hush” attitude around their use. Most of the drugs found in Juice WRLD’s jet were bags of marijuana, which begs the question, would Juice WRLD have felt the pressure to take all those Percocet pills if marijuana were federally legalized or legal in all states?
From Marilyn Monroe and Elvis to Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse, pop culture regularly presents us icons who wrestle with drug addiction and, sadly, lose. “What’s the 27 club? We ain’t making it past 21,” Juice WRLD eerily predicted in his 2018 song “Legends.” It would be unproductive to have the usual conversations about fame by simply regurgitating doom stories of Hollywood’s dark side. The truth is, people struggling with addiction come from all walks of life, most of which aren’t in Hollywood. Admittedly though, the stressors of fame’s demands, heightened access to worldly pleasures, and our lagging interest in mental health make the entertainment business an ideal breeding ground for excess and early death. What is the casual user’s understanding of the biological effects of drugs? Do people really know what they’re taking or do they just know it feels good? While a questionable comprehension of drugs’ effects and greater access to them
Grand Opening
While the landscape is daunting, the growing popularity of self-awareness practices like therapy and harm reduction does provide some hope. Drug abusers often become addicts, not simply from a moment of curiosity alone, but also from unresolved trauma and mental health issues. Mental health counseling from a young age (adolescence) needs to be standard, and not a pop-up conversation every time there is a mass shooting or famous death. Intentional and proactive selfawareness practices can be challenging, but they shouldn’t be put off. Talking about mental illness doesn’t make one crazy, and trying to escape ourselves through drug abuse isn’t sane. Roderick Thomas is an NYC-based writer and filmmaker (Instagram – @Hippiebyaccident; email – rtroderick.thomas@gmail.com).
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Page 28 Red Hook Star-Revue
“Addiction knows no boundaries and its impact goes way beyond the person fighting it,” said Carmella Wallace, mother of Juice WRLD.
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646-552-3491 January 2020
Psychedelic punk for the literary teen by Kurt Gottschalk Me & Mr. Cigar by Gibby Haynes 243 pp Soho Press
W
ould you let a Butthole Surfer babysit your tween? That seemed to be the question – more of a dare, really – implicit in the advance hype for Gibby Haynes’s first foray into fiction. Not just fiction, mind you. The man who once sang for the most dangerous band in rock penned a novel for the young adult market, and the question is, would any responsible old adult let a youth in their custody read it? Hype aside, the fact of the matter is that Haynes hasn’t written a YA novel any more than John Waters makes rom-coms: it might fit the form, but it’s undermining it at the same time. What he’s really written is what he wishes YA novels had been like when he was a YA. How many YAs are like Haynes the YA, however, is another kettle of fish The story concerns a teenage, entrepreneurial rave promoter and his backfrom-the-dead terrier. With the somewhat complicit assistance of a slightly older scientific genius who has devised ways to filter potable water from the air and project videos onto invisible gel, Haynes’s hero sets out on a mission to make big money while expanding the minds of the youth. Or something like that. There’s also a kidnapping and some naked bank heists. Like Charles Burns’s nightmarish graphic novels, Me & Mr. Cigar is YA fiction that’s too disturbing, too disgusting, too grotesque for most young adults (or at least their parents) to indulge in. Ultimately the book may all be nothing more than an elaborate excuse for Haynes’s “selling out” (the punk original sin) and “going techno” (the punk cardinal sin). At his hero’s first trip, at a rave he organized, the protagonist concludes, “I realize now house music is totally cool – I hadn’t given it a fair shake. The tree now reappears as a weird box of coolies… I think. [...] Yes, I’ve finally found my people.” Be that as it may, Haynes has concocted a compelling story. The cartoon chaos he used to create within the confines of a five-minute rock song were legend. Given 250 pages (divided into 90 speedy chapters), it’s bonkers. None of this would surprise anyone who’s paid much attention to Haynes’s career. The Butthole Surfers were a bit like Beavis and Butthead fronting Led Zeppelin without a fire permit. The band inexplicably rose to a surprising moment of mass popularity during the younger Bush presidency. It’s perhaps only natural that Haynes should now confront the era of Trump by going after an even younger audience with his elaborate distortions of reality. It’s silliness at its most subversive.
"The Butthole Surfers were a bit like Beavis and Butthead fronting Led Zeppelin without a fire permit." Red Hook Star-Revue
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January 2020, Page 29
Liberty Valance, ASCAP, Rolling Stone & The Man: gather those rose buds!
I
by Joe Enright
n my wayward youth, before I accidentally found my true mission in life, I applied for a job at ASCAP – the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The position was Deputy Under Assistant to the Radio Associate or some such ridiculous title. The work required successful applicants to tune across the AM/FM dials and identify the music they heard on some official sheet so ASCAP could charge royalties to the station on behalf of itself… and oh yeah, its songwriters. Back then ASCAP was located in a brand-spanking-new building near Lincoln Center and as I got off the elevator and entered their fancy offices, I thought I could hear the walls screaming, like Zero Mostel in The Producers: “I WANT THAT MONEY!” To get the job you needed a perfect score on a simple test: listen on headphones to a tape consisting of 15-second snippets of ten songs played consecutively, and correctly identify each tune. “Piece of cake,” I thought, because I was obsessed with pop music, in much the way some males get obsessed with baseball stats. In fact I used to maintain a huge binder containing the weekly Billboard Hot 100 charts. This obsession came with a price though: Billboard magazine was not cheap. Plus I had to take a subway to midtown to find a newsstand that carried it. And all because of the lategreat Gene Pitney’s 1962 hit, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” First, let me explain that the man who shot Liberty Valance was not the same man who appeared in a Rolling Stone magazine ad in 1968. That ad featured a grainy photo of proverbial long-haired youths lounging in a prison cell listening on headphones to a tape recorder. Underfoot were discarded signs reading “Grab Hold!” and “Music Is Love!” I gotta confess to this day I have never seen any such posters, but maybe they just never made it to Brooklyn. Below the photo were thumbnails of Columbia Records LP jackets for synthesizer albums nobody bought. The text alongside the photo of locked-up youth said stuff like “The Establishment’s Against Adventure,” and “Nothing can stop great sound makers like Stockhausen.” Above which, in heavy block letters, appeared this tag: “But The Man can’t bust our music. “ Second, The Man did bust “Liberty Valance,” a song the aging director John Ford so disliked that he nixed its use for the closing credits. The drums were too prominent or something. So, you can imagine my disappointment when I sat through that flick at the ancient Brooklyn Paramount just to hear the song and… nothing! During that summer of Liberty Valance, as a pimply teen, I earned some money house painting for The Man. And if you’ve ever painted or wallpapered or done some other repetitive manual job, you know the radio is an essential accessory. So, I fell in love with Liberty Valance. There was no record player in my ramshackle home, but that hit inspired me to buy a portable machine for $14.99 and lay down another 69 cents of my painting money for the 45 RPM. Despite the fact that the record store had it occupying one of their “Top 10” shelves, Liberty never appeared on the NYC radio countdown shows – even though the DJs boasted they based their lists on “local record store sales, NOT on national trade magazine charts.” How could that be?! When I learned what a “trade magazine” was, and then saw Liberty Valance sitting at #4 on the Hot 100 of the first Billboard I ever bought, I realized long before Rolling Stone that DJs were THE MAN. Also, THE MAN never mentioned the additional information provided
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in the Hot 100 lists, like who wrote each song. “Valance” was a Burt Bacharach tune according to Billboard and Bacharach was also listed as a composer for another song I liked on the chart, “Any Day Now,” by R&B legend Chuck Jackson. Wow! I was hooked! So yeah, I was feeling kind of cocky as that ASCAP gal explained those fancy headphones. I was particularly strong on R&B, Country & Western and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. I could also name practically every tune Sinatra had crooned for the past decade. But Jazz was my weakest link. I knew Brubeck and Miles and some Coltrane and Parker, but I couldn’t go deep on jazz at all. Jazz was not Hot 100 stuff. Well, I needn’t have worried. There was no jazz. But there were instrumentals. In fact they were ALL sappy instrumentals played by easy listening keyboard titans Ferrante & Teicher. After a while, the snippets all started to sound exactly the same. Is that the “Theme from the Apartment” or the “Love Theme” from Love Story? The “Theme from Exodus” or the “Theme from Lawrence of Arabia”? The “Love Theme” from the Jews in Exodus Dancing With the Arabs in Lawrence of Arabia? The Theme from This, The Love Theme from That, The Theme from the Theme, etc, etc, etc. About five themes in, I knew I was toast.
been improved by using even more of my far-out lists. My favorite was “Bizarre Last Records,” which I defined as recordings that were released prior to an artist’s death but which gained eerie relevance because of the title. For instance, on the day Hank Williams died, he had a #1 Country & Western hit, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” And R&B artist Chuck Willis had a twosided chart hit when he died, “What Am I Living For?” backed with “I Don’t Want to Hang Up My Rock & Roll Shoes.” I ranked the records, of course, because countdowns still rock. Coming in at number one was Sam Cooke’s masterpiece, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” On a whim, I just Googled “Bizarre Last Records” and found only one reference to it: Martha Hume singled it out in a New York Daily News review for her weekly music feature in October 1981. Martha was the late-great wife of Chet Flippo. Isn’t Life Strange? (Moody Blues, peaked at #29 on the Hot 100, June 1972.)
But nine years later my obsession with pop music eventually found its full flowering when a dear friend, Debbie Geller, who was taken from this earthly realm way too early, asked to borrow the crazy pop music lists I had created over the years. During some wonderful weekend afternoons in my Carroll Street garden apartment, I laid out my binders and notebooks and we talked about rock ‘n’ roll, imbibing some excellent spirits and spinning many a 45. Debbie was putting together a book for her boss Dave Marsh at Rolling Stone magazine. It was eventually published the next year as The Book of Rock Lists (updated in 1994 as The New Book of Rock Lists). Full Disclosure: I am mentioned in the acknowledgments before the late-great music journalist Chet Flippo only because the names were in alphabetic order. The Book of Rock Lists was obviously a seminal work of the 20th century but frankly it could have
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January 2020
Earth Riot, with Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir by Mike Morgan
I
arrive out of the concrete cold into the warm foyer of the tabernacle. My pals Tom and Joe are deep in conversation. I catch the end of the back and forth and hear “the Blood of Christ.” I ask what this is all about. I am let into the secret and told that they are thinking of an appropriate name for a cocktail, one worthy of drinking at Joe’s Pub during a church service on a Sunday afternoon. I nod in agreement and have only one question: “Gin or vodka?” Because we need to prepare for what comes next. We want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not of the Holy Trinity variety, but from the source, Tanqueray.
For this is not an ordinary gathering of churchgoers. We are about to bear witness to a command performance from the Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. This holds the promise of guerrilla theater, a Broadway musical without too much of the Broadway and a different kind of music. Mingling with the parishioners nearby is a character all decked out in a bright pink linen suit, wearing a black silk shirt and a priestly white dog collar. He sports a steel gray pompadour hair-do, a Jerry Lee Lewis look. Nicknamed ‘The Killer,” I remember then that Jerry Lee Lewis is related to another infamous preacher, Jimmy Swaggert. No Jimmy Swaggert here though – this is none other than the Reverend Billy working the crowd, saints and sinners alike. If you have hung around even the edges of the protest movement in the New York City area, you should be familiar with the Stop Shopping Choir. They are street activists and stand hard against capitalist consumerism and the deadly strategies of the earth wreckers. They regularly confound the business of banks, megastores like the Disney (Mickey Mouse is the anti-Christ) or Walmart ones, Starbucks and other fast food outlets, the energy and chemical conglomerates such as British Petroleum (BP) and Monsanto, and lately the immigration police (ICE), especially since one of their collective was recently arrested at an action and thrown into the immigration hoosegow. Arrests are a common occurrence for members of the choir. They come with the terrain. The choir’s activities include exhortations to customers and shoppers to desist from playing ball and going along as if everything is normal and all right. They do this through performance, direct action and by engaging bystanders. We are set at our table in the club with our Bloody Marys (a relative of the son of God). There is a commotion on the stage and a drummer and a barker musician behind the keyboards are making noise. The piano man is Nehemiah Luckett, and he is an important figure in the whole unfolding spectacle. He calls the faithful to prayer. From the topside entrance a host of folks sashay their way towards the front. The choir has arrived as a merry group of pranksters. They dazzle the audience with a kaleidoscope of vivid costumes that shimmer in
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the bright lights of the stage. The members are of differing ages, genders and colors. There are old geezers with beards, extremely attractive women, what look to be student-age kids, and some in their middle years, a regular polyglot of humanity. I’m not one to be enthused by the multi-cultural veneer, usually presented by those who don’t want to fess up to the iniquities inherent in a society controlled by class and race, but this seems like something else. It might be an actual rainbow coalition, not a made-up one. It certainly looks impressive. Assembled on stage, I count over thirty individuals. They are in full voice, and they all hold up placards, which read a single word “Riot.” Billy is the last to saunter past our spot. He winks down at us and mutters, “How’s that for a fucking intro.” He makes his way into the belly of the choir and the show is on. There is even a sign language person, just like de Blasio at his bad weather press conferences. It is visually spectacular and our threesome is in tears with laughter. Billy Talen and his wife Savitri Durkee have been running their choir operation since the late 1990s. Savitri is the musical director of the program. She hails from proud hippy stock; her parents ran a legendary commune in New Mexico during the KoolAid LSD days. The likes of Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead and other well-known zonkers of that era passed through its gates. Billy and Savitri’s daughter Lena, not yet a teenager, is also a member of the choir. At our performance, Savitri’s face is covered in a pale veiled shroud, lending a sense of mystery to the proceedings. This is both unsettling and comedic. Meanwhile, she is singing and dancing up a storm. Billy comes straight out of a Joseph Mitchell story, the saloon preacher kind. He grew up a Dutch Calvinist in the middle of this country. That’s directly related to the Dutch Reformed Church. I was born in South Africa and that outfit was the true church of apartheid. Billy manages to turn all of those notions upside down. He uses his invented persona to spread the gospel of carny disobedience. It’s extremely smart and very American. And Billy doesn’t limit himself to acting out. He is a published author too, including the books What Would Jesus Buy? (2007), and The Earth Wants You (2016). My friend Tom lives a few doors down from Billy and his family in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Tom has a ton of funny stories about thi Reverend Billy’s Choir of Stop Shopping s. On occasional summer nights, Billy and Savitri host choir practice, and a multitude of voices wafts from their upstairs apartment into the backyards below. This is a pretty sedate residential block. American flags are not uncommon here. And yet in their midst is the white Reverend Ike of the counter culture. Block Association meetings must be a treat. Tom is our access to the Reverend Billy. They are good friends.
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My point is that despite this outsized reputation with arrest records and all of that, Billy and Savitri have to take out the garbage and bike the kid to school, just like the neighbors do. The choir is now in full swing and banging it out. They do a version of “War”, the Bob Marley tune with the Haile Selassie speech off the “Exodus” album. Various choir members take solos on different songs. Other numbers have titles like “The Beyond Song” and “Earth Riot.” And then the Reverend Billy delivers his sermon. Like most street preachers, he has the gift of the gab. He says, among other things, that in the choir’s experience acts of protest have come to be expected, not just by the police and the other side, but by many who witness them. This country demands a resistance movement that disobeys and defies acceptable standards of protest. They are acceptable because, in the main, they can be controlled and co-opted. The Reverend has spoken. The show is over, and the choir boogies off the stage, going out the same way that they came in. There is a lot of glad-handing and hugs. Billy leaves the audience with a final announcement. The choir will be gathering a few blocks down the road at Swift’s, an Irish bar. Swift’s serves one of the better pints of Guinness in the city. We have intentions of going there anyway. Let it not be said that this religious community has poor taste. We are uplifted. There is something very amusing about all of this. I am reminded of an incident that made the news years ago. The New York Yankees had scheduled their home baseball opener of the season for 3:00 pm one Friday in April. The problem was that particular Friday was Good Friday. The Cardinal was apoplectic, and he let George Steinbrenner have it. The New York Post, exhibiting a rare instance of what some of their readers might have perceived as heresy, had a field day on the back sports page. Their headline blared, “Sermon on the Mound.” This elicited chortles from our quarters. I have the same reaction to the Reverend Billy, Savitri and their choir. They are irreverent, relevant and hilarious in a righteous way. At Swift’s, Tom and I sit facing the window onto the street, nursing our pints. Outside, it is pelting with rain, the late dark afternoon seems even rawer and colder than it was at lunchtime. Billy, Savitri and the rest of the choir are kicking up a ruckus in the back room of the pub. Tom goes back there and hauls the Reverend Billy up front. I ask Billy if he is interested in some reportage of his effort in the Red Hook Star-Revue. He is chewing on a bowl of Swift’s french fries, not nearly as enticing as their Guinness. “Please do,” he says. See, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and that day he wanted us to tell it like it is, before putting us on the subway all the way home to Brooklyn. The Reverend Billy’s Choir of Stop Shopping will re-appear at Joe’s Pub on January 12.
January 2020, Page 31
REVUE MUSIC DECEMBER West Village Mezzrow, 163 W. 10th St.
1/2 Peter Bernstein, Miki Yamanaka & Omer Avital, Pianist Spike Wilner; 1/3 Melissa Aldana & Kevin Hays, Pianist Miki Yamanaka; 1/4 Melissa Aldana & Kevin Hays, Pianist Jon Davis; 1/5 Jamie Reynolds, Steve Wilson & Orlando Le Fleming; 1/6 Charlie Sigler, Vince Dupont & Alvester Garnett, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 1/7 Brenda Earle Stokes, Evan Gregor, Diego Voglino, Vocalist Naama Gheber; 1/8 Camille Bertault & Leo Genovese, Pianist Tuomo Uusitalo; 1/9 Rachel Z, Mino Cinelu & Matt Penman, Pianist Spike Wilner; 1/10 Ben Wolfe, Yotam Silberstein & Aaron Kimmel, Drummer Bob DeMeo; 1/11 Ben Wolfe, Yotam Silberstein & Aaron Kimmel; 1/12 Randy Ingram, Drew Gress & Jochen Rueckert; 1/13 Brandon Goldberg, Luques Curtis & Donald Edwards, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 1/14 Geoffrey Keezer, Joe Locke & Michael Mayo; 1/15 Geoffrey Keezer, Gillian Margot & Nicole Glover, Clarinettist Stefano Doglioni; 1/16 Roberta Piket, Virginia Mayhew , Mike Fahn & Billy Mintz, Pianist Spike Wilner; 1/17 Jeb Patton, David Wong & Rodney Green; 1/18 Jeb Patton, David Wong & Rodney Green, Pianist Jon Davis; 1/19 Bennett Paster, Ed Howard & Joe Strasser; 1/20 Pianist A Bu, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 1/21 Jesse Harris, Jon Dryden, Kenny Wollesen & Tony Scherr; 1/22 Tyler Blanton, Drew Gress & Johnathan Blake; 1/23 Drummer Bill Goodwin, Pianist Spike Wilner; 1/24 Aaron Diehl - Solo Piano; 1/25 Aaron Diehl - Solo Piano; 1/26 Tom Guarna, Joe Martin & Clarence Penn; 1/27 Ryan Keberle & Vic Juris, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 1/28 Nate Radley & Gary Versace; 1/29 Guitarist Vic Juris; 1/30 Mike Longo & Paul West, Pianist Spike Wilner; 1/31 Drummer Billy Drummond
Smalls Jazz Club, 138 W 10th St.
1/2 Chet Doxas Trio, Pete Malinverni Group, Malick Koly; 1/3 The Zebtet, Mike DiRubbo Quartet, Corey Wallace DUBtet; 1/4 The Zebtet, Mike DiRubbo Quartet, Mimi Jones and The Lab Session; 1/5 Mike Mullins Quintet, Alex Hoffman Quintet, David Gibson; 1/6 Ari Hoeing Trio, Joe Farnsworth Group, Sean Mason; 1/7 Malik McLaurine; 1/8 Emanuele Cisi Quartet, Simona Premazzi Quintet, Andrew Kushnir; 1/9 The Hayes Greenfield Trio, Joris Teepe Quartet, Davis Whitfield; 1/10 Mike Rodriguez Sextet, Phillip Dizack Quartet, Brooklyn Circle; 1/11 Mike Rodriguez, Phillip Dizack Quartet, Eric Wyatt; 1/12 Mike Karn Quartet, Bruce Harris Quartet, Hillel Salem; 1/13 French Quarter Festival-Geraldine Laurent, French Quarter Festival-Anne Paceo, French Quarter Festival-Plume, French Quarter Festival-Jonathan Jurion, French Quarter Festival-EYM Trio, Ben Barnett; 1/14 Gerry
Gibbs - Thrasher People, Steve Nelson Quartet, Jon Elbaz; 1/15 Gerry Gibbs - Thrasher People, Francisco Mela Trio, Neal Caine; 1/16 Gerald Cleaver Violet Hour Sextet, Ameen Saleem Quartet, Malick Koly; 1/17 Kenny Davis Quartet, Jean-Michel Pilc Trio, Corey Wallace DUBtet; 1/18 Kenny Davis Quartet, JeanMichel Pilc Trio, Mimi Jones and the Lab Session; 1/19 Nick Hampton Group, JC Stylles/ Steve Nelson Quintet, David Gibson; 1/20 Sam Newsome Quartet, Joe Farnsworth Group, Ben Barnett; 1/22 JD Allen Trio, Frank Lacy Group, Malik McLaurine; 1/22 Matt Pavolka’s Horns Band, Tomas Janzon Quartet, Kyle Benford; 1/23 Orlando Le Fleming Trio, Stafford Hunter & Continuum, Davis Whitfield; 1/24 John Bailey Sextet, Paul Nedzela Group, Wallace Roney Jr.; 1/25 John Bailey Sextet, Paul Nedzela Group, Brooklyn Circle; 1/26 Chris Byars Original Sextet, Johnny O’Neal Trio, Hillel Salem; 1/27 Ari Hoenig Group, Giveton Gelin Quartet, Sean Mason; 1/28 Taru Alexander Quartet, Steve Nelson Quartet, Jon Elbaz; 1/29 Ronnie Burrage & Holographic Principle, Nicole Glover Trio, Neal Caine; 1/30 David Liebman Group, Tom Hegarty Quartet, Malick Koly; 1/31 Scott Wendholt/Adam Kolker Quartet, Joe Farnsworth Group, Corey Wallace DUBtet
Joint Saturday; 1/19 Ellen Winter; 1/21 Lee Taylor, BLUESday TUESday’ 1/24 House of Creation, Fred Thomas Late-Night Funk-N-Soul Dance Party; 1/25 Workshop, The Freelancers, DJ C-Prod-G; 1/26 Obsolete Cinema Monthly; 1/28 Judd Nielsen, BLUESday TUESday
Barbes
1/2 Gyan Riley; 1/3 The Crooked Trio, Kill Henry Sugar, Rana Santacruz; 1/4 Marika Hugues, Banda De Los Muertos; 1/5 Stephane Wrembel; 1/6 Brain Cloud, Tropical Vortex; 1/7 Slavic Soul Party; 1/8 The Mandingo Ambassadors; 1/9 The Pre-War Ponies; 1/10 The Crooked Trio, Super Yamba; 1/11 Marika Hughes, Curious, Unusual and Extraordinary, Tokala; 1/12 Stephane Wrembel; 1/13 Tropical Vortex; 1/14 Slavic Soul Party; 1/15 Brandon Seabrook Trio, The Mandingo Ambassadors; 1/17 The Crooked Trio, Regional De Ny, Zemog El Gallo Bueno; 1/18 The Erik Satie Quartet, Marika Hughes, Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet, Locobeach; 1/19 Mike Neer’s Steelonious, Stephane Wrembel; ½ Brain Cloud, Tropical Vortex; 1/21 Slavic Soul Party; 1/22 Dida Pelled: The Lost Women of SOng, The Mandingo Ambassadors; 1/23 Rufus and Sheila, Arthur Vint and Associates; 1/24 The Crooked Trio, Big Lazy; 1/25 Innov Gnawa, Marika Hughes;
Agababayev; 1/16 Big Chief Donald Harrison, Spontaneou Creativity with Duane Eubanks & Company; 1/17 Newpoli, Gregorio Uribe, Zeynep Bastik; 1/18 4th Mediterranean Jazz Festival, Zeynep Bastik in New York; 1/19 4th Mediterranean Jazz Festival; 1/21 Silver Arrow Band; 1/23 Ruth Koleva; 1/24 Schtick A Pole In It - 7th Anniversary weekend; 1/25 School of Rock NYC, Schtick A Pole In It, Nasza Sciana; 1/26 School of Rock NYC; 1/29 Tamara Jokic: Where East meets the West, The Secret Trio; 1/30 Ultrasound; 1/31 ZARA
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St.
1/2 Thank U Next: Ariana Night NYC; 1/3 One Direction Night NYC; ¼ Reggaeton vs Hip Hop Night NYC; 1/9 Mark Guilliana Beat Music, yMusic with special guests, Taylor McFerrin, 1/10 Afternoon Men, Wild Manes, Sean Carroll, The Good Few; 1/11 They Might Be Giants Present 30th Anniversary Flood Show; 1/12 Red Molly, Birds Of Chicago, Teddy Thompson, Mary-Elaine Jenkins; 1/15 Futurebirds Record Release; 1/16 Magic City Happens; 1/17 Pomplamoose; 1/18 Ron Pope; 1/22 J Roddy Walston Presents: A Single Dose Of Strangeness; 1/23 Moon Hooch; 1/24 Goose; 1/25 LAUNDRY DAY; 1/27 Lauren Alaina; 1/28 Phora - Love Yourself Tour; 1/29 Ali Gatie
Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery
Spin Doctors still around! Brooklyn Bowl, January 30 Celebrating their 30th anniversary, ’90s jam band the Spin Doctors are doing a show in Williamsburg's Brooklyn Bowl. Phish fans will like this band who sold millions of albums, but not for a while. Pocket Full of Kryptonite was their big record.
Park Slope Freddy’s Bar, 625 5th Ave
1/2 Cashank Hootenanny; 1/3 Simultaneity, Bashful, Ben And Friends; 1/4 The DeLorean Sisters & Friends; 1/5 Ellen Winter; 1/7 BLUESday TUESday, Binky Griptite!; 1/9 Home Brew Opera; 1/10 BlacKingCoal, Funk-NSoul Dance Party W Fred Thomas; 1/11 Bluegrass And Dust Bowl Blues, Harry Says Hello, DJ C-ProdG’s Spin-In The Best Jams; 1/12 Happy Hour Piano Bar with Sarah Mucho; 1/14 Freddy At Freddy’s, BLUESday TUESday; 1/16 Hippie Johnny; 1/18 Workshop, Yellow Rainbow Album Release Show, Juke
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1/26 Stephane Wrembel; 1/27 Brain Cloud, Bulla En El Barrio; 1/28 Slavic Soul Party; 1/29 The Mandingo Ambassadors; 1/31 The Crooked Trop, Cumbiagra
Lower East Side Drom, 85 Avenue A
1/3 Labros Filippou, Underground Horns Los Cumpleanos; 1/7 Silver Arrow Band; 1/8 MajorStage; 1/10 Mundial Montreal & DROM Showcase; 1/11 Secret Planet 2020; 1/12 Mayers Consulting All-Ages Music Showcase; 1/13 APAP: Cadence Arts Network; 1/15 Elif Sanchez, Ismail Lumanovski Ruslan
1/2 Back From Zero, Annie Nirchel & Union Street, Kat Lively; 1/3 Tall Davis, Chazzy Lake, Parker Dulany; 1/4 Nic Hanson, Linda Diaz, The Age & Gerald Wicks, Lenina Crowne, Laveda, Donnie, Evan Issac; 1/5 Itstherealko, Real; 1/6 Prettier In Person; 1/8 Joey Wit, The Definition, Moon Kissed; 1/9 Jukebox Jamboree Game Show, Jake Clemons; 1/10 Coach Z & Jon Buchberg’s Almost Dude; 1/11 Young Harbor Album Release Show; 1/12 Just Like Heaven, Scott Krokoff, Rock Lobster; 1/14 Phantom Wave, Low Maintenance, The Trip Experience; 1/15 Live Band Pop Punk and Emo Karaoke; 1/16 Freaks Showcase Feat. Gregory McLoughlin, Satoblues, Lava Party, Music for Enophiles; 1/18 My Hero Zero; 1/19 The Kings, Skarliy, Ruby Wave, Liam Torchia, Fay Kueen, Gideon’s Army; 1/22 Souvenir; 1/23 Lukka, LKHD, ZYKR; 1/24 Saddlemen; 1/25 Andy Cook Single Release; 1/26 Paperweight; 1/29 Caitlin Cisco with Charlotte Jacobs and Halsey Harkins; 1/30 The Dog Star; 1/31 John The Martyr & Holy Vulture
Mercury Lounge, 217 E Houston
1/2 Texarcana, Uncle Skunk, Janet LaBelle, Samoht; 1/3 iEzra, Edon, Bedroom, Dry Reef, Dusfunktone; 1/4 Josh Yavneh & The Culprits, Paulina Vo, Aesthetic Nights feat. Pad Chennington; 1/5 Steve Shiffman & The Land of No, Famous Logs In History, John Snow, Kathryn Gallagher, Wyndham Baird, Patrick Sargent, Maxi; 1/6 Whitney Woerz,
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Danny P, Sarah Kang; 1/7 Patrick and the Swayzees, The Loud Soft Loud, Violent in Blackl 1/8 Mikey Erg Band, Strangerpride; 1/9 The Unlikely Candidates, Tempt, Takeover; 1/10-11 Winter Jazzfest; 1/12 The Racquets, West End Blend; 1/13 Luke Winslow-King, Making Movies, Bad Faces, The New Administration; 1/14 Cleopatrick, Mani & the Wildflowers, Jordan Carter; 1/15 John K, Spirits of Leo, Strange Neighbors, Uruguay; 1/16 Jordy, Jack Symes, Eva B. Ross, Koi Sound x Soundquest, Psymbionic, Zebbler, Encanti Experience, Cosmal, Kyo Uchida; 1/17 Emily Claman; 1/18 Matthew Gross & Kathryn Kitt, Xiuhtezcatl, The Dark Eighties NYC; 1/19 Lina K.O., Stathi, Chrisy Mc Cullagh, Billy Woods; 1/20 Jake Benjamin, Morgan Reilly; 1/21 K Roosevelt, Trevor Daniel; 1/22 Lucidious; 1/23 Sub Urban, Peaer; 1/24 Ryan McMullan; 1/25 Teddy Swims; 1/26 Tredici Bacci, Godcaster, Eyes of Love, Starla Online, Mr. Transylvania; 1/27 Proto, Octopus; 1/28 Tribe Friday; 1/30 Sammy Miller and The Congregation: Leaving Egypt Tour, Poetic Thrust; 1/31 Marteen, Hello Halo
Williamsburg Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St.
1/3 Lonesome George; 1/4 Evergreen Soiree, Tyler Berd & Jonee Earthquake, Jack McKelvie and The Countertops, Kam Ryn, Jeremy Dannerman and the Down on Me; 1/5 Quarterly, Mines Falls, Caitlin Pasko; 1/6 Reid Jenkins, Divining Rod, Tubey Frank; 1/7 Emily Zimmer; 1/8 Knyves Escobar, Luke Wesley; 1/9 Nickcasey, Lokomoko; 1/10 Pete’s Big Salmon, Gabby Borges, Timi Kendrix; 1/11 Anni Rossi, FIsherman and Farhang, Mira Cook, Bad Reputation, Taarka; 1/12 My Dentist’s Son, Jason Loughlin, Bonehart Flannigan, Oakes and Smith; 1/13 Greenpoint Songwriter’s Exchange, Benjamin Furman Solo Show, Aviva Oskow, Eric Ryrie; 1/14 Now Hear This, Nic Marco, Belle Shea; 1.15 Josie Toney Stringband; 1/16 Rosa Tu, Will Leet, Northern Ramble; 1/17 Cassidy Andrews, Dor Sagi, Matt Jaffe; 1/18 Masino, Kyle Sparkman; 1/19 Stardusters, Manana, Rue Snider; 1/20 Grey Watson, Variousound Sessions; 1/21 Now Hear This, SUGARSUGAR; 1/22 Drinking Bird, Thor Jensen; 1/23 Eugene Tyler Band, Katmaz; 1/24 The Eddie Barbash Quartet, The Love Howl, The Library Band, Elora Lin; 1/25 Ricky Stein, Robert Irish, Sister Lovers, Everything Must Go, Kudu Stooge; 1/26 Meghan Pulles, Jonahp; 1/27 Anika Dara, Sean Spada; 1/30 ChamberQUEER; 1/31 Abrielle Scharff, Sham Sundra
Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe St.
1/2 Zoso; 1/3 The Skatalites; 1/4 The Felice Brothers, DJ Akalepse; 1/5 Starchild & The New Romantic; 1/8 Sailin’ Shoes; 1/9 Lee Fields & The Expressions; 1/10 Slick Rick: The Ruler, Four
Horsemen; 1/11 Export Nola ft. Stooges Brass Band, Water Seed; 1/12 Hooteroll; 1/14 The U.S. Americans, Funkrust Brass Band, Teen Girl Scientist Monthly; 1/16 Amendola vs. Blades, Skerik, Mari Guiliana Space Heroes, DJ Talib Kweli; 1/17 Kung Fu, Felix Pastorius & Social Experiment, Kendra Morris; 1/18 Ghost Light; 1/19 Umphery’s McGee; 1/21 Drown Your Boots, Cold Weather Company; 1/22 Silver Sound Showdown Music; 1/23 G. Love; 1/24 Too Many Zooz; 1/25 Cory Wong; 1/26 The Zen Tricksters; 1/28 Blackalicious; 1/29 Dopico, Herbivores, Cross Culture; 1/30 Spin Doctors; 1/31 Bruce In The USA
Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave
1/2 Whale In Wasp, The LoFi’s Vermilions, Haku Leaf; 1/3 Boom Vang, Miku Daza, Typhoid Rosie; 1/5 Bobby Hawk, Kate Prascher, Larry Legend; 1/6 Aaron Waldman Residency; 1/7 Best Baby, Jessica From High Waisted, Tender Heart Bitches, Jeerleader; 1/8 Sweet Boy. Eephus Band, American Fever; 1/9 Major Stage: Deetranada; 1/10 Jennifer Denali, Tangina Stone, Leah Capelle; 1/11 A Shadow of Jaguar, The Rizzos, Ovareasy; 1/13 Guru Chris, Ben Beal, Babyrellz; 1/14 Keema Patra, Bknott Baylen, Philly G, Trece Vee; 1/15 New Rock City, Damn Jackals, Radiant Reveries; 1/16 Major Stage: Dutch Revs; 1/17 Gangstagrass; 1/18 The Values, Grayhunter, The Living Strange; 1/19 Olivia Jean, Screamin’ Rebel Angels, Joey Slater; 1/20 Violent in Black, Post Game Press, Anneliese McCarthy; 1/21 Blue Boat, Black Frazier, Perfect Title; 1/22 Shamarr Allen; 1/24 The 69 Eyes, Wednesday 13, The Nocturnal Affair, The Crowned; 1/25 Freddy Todd, Moniker, Smokeyboiis, Flo-pilot; 1/28 Union Street, Winner Camp, Rachel Yohe and Goldye Horan, Zoos; 1/31 Kate Yeager and Melt Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N 6th St. 1/8 Yola, Amythyst Kiah; 1/17 Winter Jazzfest Brooklyn Marathon; 1/18 Stella Donnelly; 1/21 The Glorious Sons with special guest Des Rocs; 1/25 Goose; 1/31 Nada Surf, Aaron Lee Tasjan
Union Pool, 484 Union Ave.
1/4 A David Berman Tribute Show; 1/7 Aaron Dilloway Container; 1/11 Myrna, Catastrophie, Frog; 1/14 Country Western, Unknown Sender, People’s Court; 1/15-17 Michael Hurley; 1/19 Virginia Plain, Plates of Cake, Pale Lights; 1/21 Frankie Rose, Brandy; 1/23-24 The Sadies; 1/28 Pinocchio, Twisted Thing, Headsplitters; 1/29 Daniel Higgs, Ezekiel Healy; 1/30 WOLF EYES, Foster Care, Blazer Sound System, WOLF EYES, Paul Flaherty, Bill Nace, DJ Brian Turner
Elsewhere
Nowadays, 56-06 Cooper Ave 1/3 Friday: Theo Parrish All Night; 1/4 Anthony Naples and
January 2020
REVUE MUSIC DECEMBER
Four Tet; 1/10 Working Women and DJ Marcelle; 1/11 Umfang And OK Williams; 1/12 Barbie Bertisch, Paul Raffaele and Sadar Bahar; 1/17 Stud1nt, Mary Yuzovskaya and Mortiz Von Oswald; 1/18 Aurora Halal and Ben Ufo; 1/19 Galcher Lustwerk All Night; 1/24 Josey Rebelle All Night; 1/25 Seltzer and Shannen SP; 1/26 Soul Summit
Trans Pecos, 915 Wyckoff Ave
1/10 Bethlehelm Steel, Thin Lips, Nervous Dater, Strangepride; 1/11 Fern Mayo, Jackie Mendoza, Yohuna, Halfsour; 1/14 Claire Cronin with Matt Bachmann; 1/17 Wume with Ka Baird, 1000 Yard Stare, Activity; 1/18 House of Feelings: A New Year, A New Label; 1/23 Water From Your Eyes with Sean Henry, Shadow Year, Sourdoe; 1/25 Sweet Static 4 Year Anniversary with Pop. 1280, Public Practice, Weeping Icon; 1/28 Julian Lynch, Ezra Feinberg, Cimiotti
Bar Chord, 1008 Cortelyou Road
1/3 Fu Mos; 1/4 Tinto Frio; 1/5 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 1/7 David Lefkin; 1/9 George Ingmire; 1/10 Jake G & The Soul Vibrance; 1/11-12 Cortelyou
Jazz Jam
The Sultan Room, 234 Starr St.
1/3 ThatHousePartyTho; 1/4 No Bra NYC, DJ, No Bra, Joselo; 1/5 Ethan Iverson and Chef Jack Riebel; 1/9 The Shivers, Sarah La Puerta, Robert Kennedy; 1/10 Foxanne, Powerlines, Laura Wolf, Katie Glasgow, Nails & Wax Presents: Reka and Roman; 1/11 James “Blood” Ulmer, Harriet Tubman, Bae and Brooklyn Gypsies; 1/12 Kris Davis’ Diatom Ribbons, Terri Lyne Carrington, Val Jeanty; 1/13 Mark Guiliana, Golden Valley Is Now; 1/14 Mark Guiliana, Billy Martin, Soul Gnawa, Special Guest Jason Lindner; 1/17 NYC Winter Jazzfest; 1/18 Erelid Kid, Jonny G and O Wake; 1/18 Tempo: Lixxo x Billie Eilish; 1/22 Alpenglow, Office Culture, Golden; 1/24 Hannah COhen, Renata, Zeiguer, Uni Ika Ai; 1/28 Sessa, Stefa; 1/31 Torres
Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles
1/3 Los Stellarians, Jungle Fire, Strata; 1/4 Autumn Knight, Aurora Vice, Brothers Beard, Tiffany Madadian, Burbia; 1/9 Miette Hope, Willow Stephens, Lucy Walsh,
Michelle Vezilj; 1/10 Chadwick Stokes & The Pintos; 1/11 Kid Giant, Little Dume, Emily Hackett, Mike Stocksdale; 1/12 Jonathan McReynolds; 1/14 Leif Vollebekk, Rebecca Foon; 1/15 Your Smith: In Between Plans Tour, Chelsea Jade; 1/16 7Horse; 1/17 The Dales, Skyler Day; 1/18 Romance & Rebellion, Evaride, Animal Sun, Fames; 1/19 Nada Surf, Apex Manor; 1/20 Nada Surf, John Vanderslice; 1/26 Aidan Gallagher; 1/30 City of the Sun, Kiltro; 1/31 Rouxx, Sleeptalk, Cappa
John T. Floore’s Country Store, 14492 Old Bandera Road, Helotes, TX
1/10 Two Tons of Steel; 1/11 Dylan Wheeler, Tanner Fenoglio; 1/16 Micky & The Motorcars, Bri Bagwell; 1/17 Helotes FFA Dance; 1/18 Josh Weathers, Grady & the Work; 1/24 Reckless Kelly, Jeff Crosby & The Refugees; 1/25 Kolby Cooper, Chris Colston; 1/31 Bart Crow, Jordan Robert Kirk
See your listing here, send to will.goyankees @gmail.com
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Another good season for Summit basketball
R
ed Hook’s Summit Academy Charter School boys basketball team moved to 5-0 in the B division after they dominated Leon M. Goldstein High School for Science on their home court on December 11. Summit’s previous home game had been a threepoint win over Adams Academy. They are 2-2 in non-league games. “We beat two A division schools,” Summit coach Phil Grant said. “We beat a tough Erasmus team. They were in the Final Four of the A division last year. They had a real tough team this year and we beat them. Then we beat Port Richmond on Saturday. They are another A division school that was in the playoffs last year.” Grant has seen the team get better as the season has progressed. One of his seniors was not available the first two games. “Donte has come back, so that has helped us,” Grant said. “He’s back, I have some more leadership. We are looking better. I don’t want us to be at our best right now, so I am OK with us working through our problems.” Summit dressed nine players for the game and had four players finish in double figures in scoring. Seniors Jordan Council and Nicholas Mickens led the team with 21 points each, while
by Nathan Weiser
senior Soumana Sylla contributed 14 points and senior Jeremiah Hewitt scored 11. Summit fell behind early after Goldstein sunk a deep three and then made a short jumper to create a 5-0 lead. However, the Eagles got some momentum after a steal and Council made an and-one layup to make the score 7-5. Goldstein would take an 8-7 advantage on a 3-pointer, but Summit ended the first quarter with a small lead, 1312. From this point on, Summit increased their level of play. “We turned our defensive intensity up when Kle [junior Klejdi Bajrami] came in,” Grant said. “Kle came in and gave us a real good spark with defense. Kle was at the top of our press and forced a lot of turnovers.” The head coach also credited the improved passing the team displayed, starting with the beginning of the second quarter. “Once the ball started moving better, we got better shots,” Grant said. “In the first quarter, all our passes were being deflected. When we started making better passes, and got rid of the deflections, we started getting wide open shots. That was the difference.”
Blues
(continued from page 23)
we? Blues is protest on an individual level, it’s almost libertarian, and that might not make it right for any kind of mass movement. But it is sorely good for fortifying patience and endurance, the day-to-day fuel of life. The music’s two main subjects are suffering and the escape from suffering, which are of course inseparable. Things are bad, so you turn to the bottle, and now the bottle is going to do you in, or was it the devil who brought you the good things in life and now presents the bill? Life was sweet with that woman, but now she’s gone, either she left or she died, and how do you keep on going, going on? The perfect blues song may be the great John Lee Hooker’s “It Serves You Right to Suffer”: “It serves you right to suffer / It serves you right to be alone / It serves you right to suffer / It serves you right to be alone / Because you’re still livin’ / The day done packed and gone... / Your doctor put you on / Milk, cream, and alcohol / Your doctor put you on / Milk, cream, and alcohol / He told you that’s why / You can’t sleep at night / Your nerve is so bad, yeah ... / You’re still living in a day done packed and gone / And memories / You can’t live on / In that way / In the past / Them days is gone.”
Council sank a corner three-pointer to make the score 22-12, and later on Hewitt made a jumper to give Summit a 29-12 lead, capping a 14-0 run. Summit’s lead lessened a little as Goldstein went on a 7-0 run to bring the score to 35-22 later in the second quarter. However, the Eagles used great ball movement with two consecutive assists to take a 40-22 lead at halftime. Hewitt made a layup after about two minutes had gone by in the third to give Summit a 20-point lead, 44-24. Summit had a commanding 53-32 lead at the end of the third, thanks in part to Mickens’s aggressive defense. “Our backline on that pressure, they did a great job anticipating the pass and got a lot of steals out of it,” Grant, who played NCAA Division One basketball at Iona College, said. “That’s what really turned the game around.” The Eagles started the fourth quarter with an 11-0 run. Mickens made a corner three later on, and after Grant told the team to slow down the pace, the game ended with a 74-39 victory for Summit. December also saw Summit playing three games at the Bobcat Classic, a national tournament in Greensboro, North Carolina, marking the first out-
non-, but between reality and illusion. Bourgeois society titillates itself with sensations of danger while keeping itself safe, via roller coasters, haunted houses, horror moves, and conspiracy theories. Even impending climate catastrophe seems immaterial – though like a nightmare – rather than something for which to prepare.
Before the trip, Grant said that he was looking forward to the games but predicted that the overall experience his team would have in Greensboro would be even more valuable. “Most of my guys have not played much AAU, so they are not used to traveling out of town, staying in hotels and hanging around the guys 24/7 for four days,” Grant said. “We get to play against different teams from out of town. I want my guys to get that experience traveling to another state, meeting kids from different places, seeing how they play in different places and getting acclimated to the culture.” Anticipating the upcoming trip, Grant recalled his own school days as a basketball player. “We traveled a lot,” Grant said. “We stayed in hotels with other schools. We got to meet players from different teams, build friendships with other people, so I think this is going to be a great experience for my guys.” Grant noted that the girls team would in Greensboro as well. The girls will play before the boys, so each team will be able to show support while the other is competing.
The Red Hook Star-Revue is the community newspaper that goes both ways.
Another thing that’s scary is freedom, especially the freedom to think for oneself and keep an independent spirit. In the media, those who talk most often and loudly about freedom want a boss to tell them exactly what to do and take care of them. In 21st-century terms, though, what the word means is having no more fucks to give. Have no more, and listen to the blues.
We work hard to present you with an informative and entertaining package of news, events and advertising that makes living in the big city a little more intimate and friendly.
For a taste of modern blues, you can’t go wrong with one of the featured shows of the Winter Jazzfest, Harriet Tubman and James “Blood” Ulmer at the Sultan Room, January 11. Ulmer made his name playing Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic concept and has become an increasingly deep blues player – Ornette never left the blues behind, so Ulmer completes the flat circle. Harriet Tubman is guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer JT Lewis, and they make visceral, beautiful music by digging into and electrifying the roots of African-American music.
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.
We are also here to listen to you. You can send us letters to the editor, which 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!
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Publisher george@redhookstar.com Asst. Editor brettayates@gmail.com Music Editor michaelcobb70@gmail.com Advertising liz@redhookstar.com jamie@redhookstar.com George Grella george@georgegrella.org Erin DeGregorio erin@redhookstar.com Nathan Weiser nathan.weiser@yahoo.com Music Listings will.goyankees@gmail.com
Hooker sings that on an album of the same title and also a great live record, Live At the Cafe Au Go Go (And Soledad Prison). That opens with “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” – Johnny Cash was playing at being bad when he sang “Folsom Prison Blues,” but when Hooker sings “I’m Bad Like Jessie James,” about how he’s going to kill a friend who was “goin’ ‘round town / Tellin’ ev’rybody that he / He got my wife,” it’s personal and real (even if it’s fiction).
Circulation george@redhookstar.com
The blues is real, and maybe reality is too much to take. It’s a part of what I hear as the great divide in musical experiences – not between high and low, art and commerce, white and back, Western and
Page 34 Red Hook Star-Revue
of-state contests for the boys team in Summit Academy’s history.
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January 2020
The Healthy Geezer by Fred Cicetti
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Q. How serious is angina? Angina pectoris – or simply angina – is the medical term for chest pain or discomfort usually caused by coronary artery disease. Angina is a sign that someone is at increased risk of heart attack, cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death. If you get angina, you should get medical attention immediately. Angina (pronounced “an-JI-nuh” or “AN-juh-nuh”) hits when the heart doesn't get enough blood. This usually happens when there is a narrowing or blockage in one or more of the vessels that supply blood to the heart.
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“Stable angina” comes on with exertion and then goes away easily. You can have this kind of angina for a long time. When the pattern of angina changes a lot, it's called “unstable angina.” This is a danger sign. Unstable angina may be the first sign of a heart attack. Then there is “variant angina pectoris” or “Prinzmetal's angina.” It usually occurs spontaneously and almost always occurs when a person is at rest. It doesn't follow physical exertion or emotional stress, either. Variant angina is caused by transient coronary artery spasm.
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Physicians have a variety of diagnostic tools. An electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) can tell a doctor if your heart has been damaged by a heart attack. If the EKG is done while you are having chest pain, it can also show if your angina is caused by a problem with your heart. A stress test is often done while you walk on a treadmill. Your doctor will look at your EKG to see if it's abnormal when you exercise. Your doctor may also have x-rays of the heart taken before and after you exercise. These pictures can show if an area of the heart is not getting enough blood during exercise. A cardiac catheterization involves inserting a long, thin tube into an artery in the arm or leg and then guiding it into the heart. Dye is injected into the arteries around the heart. Xrays are taken. The x-rays will show it if any of the arteries that supply the heart are blocked. Most people diagnosed with heart disease have to take medicine. Medicines called beta blockers, calcium channel blockers and nitrates can help relieve angina. There are surgical options. Angioplasty uses a tiny balloon to push open blocked arteries around the heart. The balloon is inserted in an artery in the arm or leg. A stent (a small tube) might be put into the artery where the blockage was to hold the artery open. In bypass surgery, the surgeon uses a healthy blood vessel taken from your leg, arm, chest or abdomen and connects it to the other arteries in your heart so that blood is bypassed around the diseased or blocked area This increases the blood flow to the heart. All Rights Reserved © 2019 by Fred Cicetti
Red Hook Star-Revue
www.star-revue.com
January 2020, Page 35
THREE PAGES OF STORIES AND PICTURES, STARTING PAGE 34
Exclusive Interview With Folksinger Greg Brown
What happened to all the protest songs? Jack Grace wonders Long Ryders, Don Dixon and Marti Jones, Highwomen, Les Sans Culottes and Nick Lowe George Grella on Jason Moran Show
Does NYC really need graveyards page 19 and golf courses? ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Yates, page 3
Special Home Improvement Section pages 32-35
THE INSIDE STORY BEHIND THE RISE OF THE FORTIS TOWERS PAGES 3,4,5,6
FREE
HOTD0G AND MUSTARD BY MARC JACKS0N AND THEY WeT-NOSED PAL, H0TDOG. CALL Me
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H
TH0UGH.
A critical review M M starts page 33
pages 15-26
Meet the New Pioneer Works Residents! page 13
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INSIDE: GOING ORTHODOX … ON THE QUEER WATERFRONT … JULIUS CEASAR MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE … THE BIG LINGUINI … THE QUESTION AUTHORITY BROOKLYN FOLK FEST … IAN FELICE … THE SADIES … OZARK HIGHBALLERS
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#1
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE THAT’S N0T BECAUSe HE’S
iT’S BeCAUSE eACH PANEL IS 0NLY TWO AND HALF iNCHeS HIGH SO THeRE IS LiTERALLY N0 R0OM FOR HiM!
eMBARRASSED IN A C0MiC OR ANYTHING...
TO BE
M
Irish Parade at Rocky’s page 37
M
BQX Lobbying page 9
Mama D's perfect night out is a perfect night in
2019
©COPYRIGHT 2019 MARC JACKSON AND WEiRD0 COMiCS
STAR REVUE T
AUGUST 2019
INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
by Roderick Thomas
here are a ton of parties that spring up (and disappear) throughout the city. In New York, plenty of weekends FREE are a tug of war between your FOMO (fear of missing out) and pestering indecisiveness. There are so many
options, your bed, takeout and Netflix usually being a staple and comfortable one. If you’re too lazy to go out clubbing or bar-hopping, but feeling upbeat enough for a night out, head over to a new event that will give you all the takeout, with Netflix in bed feelings, while curing your FOMO. Imagine all-night cocktails and gourmet treats, lounge chairs and movies, its Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy.
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Diana Mino is a gourmet chef, photographer, community organizer and total cinephile, but who is Mama D and what the heck are her Sneaky Speakeasies?
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page 30
Mama D: [laughs] Well, Mama D is Diana, that’s me. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, in the rural suburbs. They were originally farms, so there’s a tiny country girl in me. Don’t get me wrong though, the moment I could make it to New York, I said “bye! Hello NYC.”
Mystery of Beard Street
Lady Terriers and PAVE Squash back page
Roderick: Tell me about your Sneaky Speakeasy.
and
Mama D: Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy is a host of
events throughout the month that brings artists, music, food and film together for a great party.
ity. On a scale of Rachel Ray to Anthony Bourdain, she’s somewhere in the middle.
My first night at Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy, I arrived at the venue, inconspicuously located in a gem of an area called Bushwood, a name for the not-so-famous Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn border. I walked up to the tall brown doors. “I’m here” I texted. Outside of the cozy establishment, I stood waiting and listening to the muffled chatter of guests and then Mama D opened the door. In front of me was a smiling young woman, petite but with a strong and comedic personal-
Inside was a well-decorated scene. The walls were covered with art, red brick and blackboards. I stared at the perfectly placed cocktail glasses, sprinkling light over the neon bar; it was like I walked onto a set of an HBO show. As I took a sip of my first cocktail and sank into one of Mama D’s pillowy couches, the evening was off to a great start.
Interview page 25
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The plan pledges public subsidies to spur the transformation of shopping malls into offices, indoor recreation centers, or schools. (In 2014, Highland Mall in Texas became an Austin Community College campus.) Yang explains that, due to the prevalence of e-commerce, 300 malls will likely close in the next four years, leaving behind millions of square feet of blight. The text of the proposal begins in an elegiac tone, describing an apparently bygone era: “Malls used to be a hub for socialization and commerce in many American communities. They were where families would go shopping for school supplies before grabbing dinner and catching a movie. Teens would have their first jobs working retail there and spend their Friday nights with friends.”
IAL SPECTION SEC S 28-31
Beer at Svendale, page 19 PLUS Garland Jeffries and lots more in our new
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by Brett Yates
n television, the Democratic candidate Andrew Yang has for the past year run a single-issue campaign for president in 2020, centering a promised universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month for every adult in the United States. His website, however, lists about 200 additional policy proposals, the most novel of which may be the American Mall Act, which aims to find new uses for defunct suburban retail space.
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In a way, the Yang campaign’s nostalgia for shopping malls is more striking than any statistic about tough times in the Amazon-dominated retail market. Not long ago, these sleek consumerist temples symbolized America’s disquieting future of sterile corporate capitalism. Built on the outskirts of cities, they hollowed out historic, mixed-use downtowns, replacing them with false town squares – reachable only by car – where teenagers, mistaking them for public space, contended with private security forces whenever they asserted their right to exist without buying something. Main streets shuttered; local cultures died.
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Now we have a new dystopia to worry about: robot-powered fulfillment centers, operated by an all-powerful megacorporation that looks to control every single retail transaction in a country where, thanks to online shopping, going outside and interacting with other humans have become optional. To some, shopping malls feel quaint and communal by comparison.
Primark is an Irish-based low cost fashion retailer with a big presence in Brooklyn's only 3 true indoor mall. (Photo by George Fiala) za – at Brooklyn’s southeast corner, in as I wandered its incomprehensible low-density Mill Basin – operates as geography for a couple hours. a destination unto itself, with a mas- Alongside the notable additions of sive parking garage attached. In other European fast-fashion retailers Zara Brooklyn is all about words, it doesn’t complement a tradi- and Primark (which, for instance, tional pedestrian shopping district; it sells faux-leather chukka boots for theblending cultures. exists instead of one. frighteningly low price of $24),We’re theall about blending
Kings Plaza is the largest indoor mall in Brooklyn. In the suburban sense of term, it’s the only true indoor mall in Brooklyn: while newer multi-level urban retail developments like Atlantic Terminal and City Point situate themselves within the cityscape, Kings Pla-
Having not shopped at a mall in years, I visited Kings Plaza to see what one looks like in the year 2019. To my surprise, it looks almost exactly like the shopping malls where I used to hang out as a teenager: eerily so, in fact. It brought back plenty of awful memories
Global Cuisine at Jam’It Bistro same old clothing stores from 15 years ago – American Eagle, Aeropostale, Express, Hollister Co. – are still blasting pop music and perfume at adolescent shoppers. The salespeople at Foot Locker are still costumed as referees.
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(continued on page 7)
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SEE PAGE 33 Profile: Freddy’s proprietor Donald O’Finn page 19
What does Red Hook think of Michele? page 14
Local Pol makes Daily News Front Page page 8
Don't miss a single 2020 issue...
Mail Subscriptions now available!!! T
he Star-Revue was first published in June, 2010. That means that we are in our 10th year! We started out as the local paper of record for Red Hook, a community that seemed to be very underserved by any sort of media at all. Which seemed strange since it is one of the city's more interesting neighborhoods, with a rich history and diverse population. We did our job, we think, as now Red Hook is well covered by all sorts of media: blogs, other local newspapers and mainstream magazines and newspapers. This is the publisher, George writing this, and I would like to say that I grew up reading newspapers and listening to record albums. One thing I never switched over to as technology advanced was buying single songs on iTunes (I never bought 45's either, actually). I believe that albums were often generally well thought-out pieces of music meticulously arranged by the creators to be heard in a certain order. So I always bought the complete mp3 albums, and listened to them that way. In much the same way, I believe that a newspaper can have a personality and a rhythm to it. When the Village Voice completely ceased publication, I felt that the city experienced a loss. The Voice was kind of a cool publication that appealed to a certain type of native New Yorker and actually helped defined NYC coolness. I'm not saying that this paper comes anywhere close to the Voice in its heyday, but that's the general idea as we evolve from a strictly local neighborhood publication. I've been hearing some nice comments lately about our slow transition, so I'm thinking that some of you might actually feel like paying to make sure you get each issue in the mail. So that's why we're now offering mail subscriptions. And as always, thanks for reading!!!
Please send me one year (12 issues) of the Star-Revue. I understand that each issue will be mailed in an envelope via first class US Mail. I enclose $35 for each subscription ordered.
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Please make your check out to the Red Hook Star-Revue and send to Star-Revue, 481 Van Brunt Street 8A, Brooklyn, NY 11231. You could also write your credit card number on the back if you wish.
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email your request to gbrook@pipeline.com
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Page 36 Red Hook Star-Revue
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OR and we will start your subscription and send a bill.
January 2020