Red Hook Star-Revue, May 2021 by George Fiala

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EPA SAYS CAVEAT EMPTOR IN GOWANUS,

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MAY 2021

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Kathryn Garcia and Paperboy Prince are the most genuine candidates you will ever meet. One of them should be your next mayor.

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Star-Revue wins newspaper awards

Superfund science advances in Gowanus

n its contentious rezoning proposal, the Department of City Planning reimagines Gowanus as an urban Venice—or something vaguely resembling Miami. The sketches in the Waterfront Access Plan the city presented last year show pedestrians crossing bridges with scenic views of the canal. They show children frolicking in waterfront parks shaded by trees and new residential high-rises that shine with glassy, sterile beauty. On the water, rendered in deep blue by the artist, people are kayaking. One can dip an oar into the Gowanus Canal today, but anybody who does should probably be wary of getting splashed. The canal, today more of a chocolate brown color, contains pathogens such as typhoid, dysentery, e. coli, and gonorrhea. Many of these diseases, like cholera, which has been present in the past, are found in water contaminated by human feces. There’s a lot of feces in the Gowanus Canal—millions of gallons of combined rainwater runoff and sewage flow into it every year. Over the waterway’s 160-year lifespan, the feces have mixed with the oils and tar produced by the area’s heavy industry and congealed into a toxic sludge known as “black mayo.” In some stretches, the mayo that covers the bottom of the canal is 10 feet thick. Chemical engineer Christos Tsiamis was tasked with leading the cleanup of this supra-centennial mess in 2010, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the site a Superfund, mandating its remediation. When he and his colleagues conducted an investigation into how to best go about doing this, Tsiamis explains, they discovered that simply dredging the gunk out wouldn’t suf-

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by Jorge Bello

fice. “So once you remove the black mayonnaise, you’d expect that you would have a clean bottom of the canal, right? But you don’t.” The pollutants have infiltrated the original sediment below, he says. Left untreated, remnants of the black mayo, as well as lighter toxic compounds, will seep back up into the waters in a process known as leaching. Tsiamis’s team of engineers can’t decontaminate the sediment, but they can trap the pollutants it contains, in place. To do this, they have opted for a relatively new approach called insitu stabilization, in which barges carrying drilling equipment will inject a specially crafted cement mix into the most heavily contaminated areas of the canal—usually those located near erstwhile industrial buildings.

Complicated to explain The mix causes a chemical reaction that prevents pollutants from being released back into the water. Identifying what areas of the waterway needed to be stabilized in the first place could have itself been a trickier job, he adds, had it not been facilitated by another innovative technology: TarGOST. Short for Tar-specific Green Optical Screening Tool, this equipment uses lasers to precisely map underground tar deposits. “It’s complicated to explain,” Tsiamis chuckles.

may become coated with salt crusts, making them even less permeable. Yet, while heavy contaminants like tar can be held in place by the cement, lighter ones will inevitably seep out. To deal with this, Tsiamis and his team will deploy a layer of absorbent clays and activated carbon on top of the cement-stabilized sediment. This “cap” layer, which will be applied throughout the canal, will keep the water clean for a century, says Tsiamis. Just to make sure, though, the entire sediment cake will be topped with sand and gravel for extra isolation. With the years-long testing of pioneering approaches and technologies out of the way, the EPA engineers have been gearing up for the actual cleanup. In preparation for the dredging. Tsiamis and his team have been mobilizing equipment and scouting for offsite facilities to which to send the black mayo once it’s been removed— it is eventually mixed with cement, solidified, and used as cover material in landfills. Dredging is scheduled to

begin mid-November. To ensure its remediation efforts aren’t for naught, the EPA is also overseeing the construction of two retention tanks by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection that will hold the raw sewage that currently pours directly into the waterway when it rains. Located at the top and middle of the canal, the tanks will be able to handle 8 and 4 million gallons respectively. In late July, however, Tsiamis informed the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group, a local organization that liaises with the EPA, that the city had requested federal approval for an extension of up to 18 months on the design and construction of the tanks. The city pointed to budgetary woes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for its request, but the EPA has asked for additional information before deciding whether to grant the extension. Tsiamis writes in an email that he does not expect a decision will be made for the next several weeks.

In-situ stabilization had never been tested in saltwater. To make sure it would work in the brackish Gowanus Canal, Tsiamis and his team carried out pilot tests in 2015. According to a paper published by the American Society of Civil Engineers last month, stabilization may prove to be even more effective in salty environments. The paper, authored by Tsiamis and his colleagues, found that cement-stabilized layers exposed to the canal’s waters

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September 2020, Page 11

he NY Press Association, a trade group for community media, announced the winners of its 2020 Better Newspaper Contest. For the second year in a row, the awards, normally awarded during their weekend convention in Saratoga Springs, were given out in an internet presentation. The Star-Revue is a perennial winner since our acceptance into the organiza-

tion in 2012. That year, we won a special award for our coverage of Hurricane Sandy. Other years we have taken awards for investigative reporting, education, coverage of the arts and for the tourist guides that we used to run back when there were tourists in the city. This year we took three. A prestigious first prize was given to us for Coverage of the Environment, which included Jorge Bello's ongoing coverage of the Gowanus Superfund project.

We were judged by members of the Pennsylvania News Media Association. A judge wrote of our coverage: "I read all the stories in the category and 'Superfund Science Advances in Gowanus' kept coming back to mind. The description won me over. Black Mayo. Ugh. I could just smell and feel the water. Great job." Other winners in that category included the East Hampton Star and the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. We also captured a first place in the category "Best Large Space Ad." We entered one of a series of half page ads

prepared by RetroFret - a vintage guitar shop that opened last year on Luquer Street. The judge wrote "Clean, great design, great visual. Nice testimonial at the bottom. Draws you in." Other winners included the Southampton Press and the Mahopac News. Finally, Steve's Key Lime got us an honorable mention with his monthly ad series. The category was Best Advertising Campaign. The judge wrote "I appreciate the whimsey of the business itself, carried through the ads." Other winners included Dan's Papers and the Warwick SUMMER IN Advertiser. Last year was difficult, as Steve himself wrote in one of his winning ads - we look forward to the 2021 contest!

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Earth-Friendly Sailboat with French Wine coming to Brooklyn by Erin DeGregorio Don’t be surprised to see a sailboat docked near the Brooklyn Bridge this May. What makes French company Grain de Sail’s 50-ton, modern cargo sailboat special is that it is powered by the wind – marking the emergence of a green logistics chain that relies on renewable instead of fossil fuels. The sailboat and its four crew members left France on April 16 and are expected to arrive around May 14. “Personally, as a windsurfer and paraglider or professionally as a wind farm builder, I have always been amazed by the awesome power of even a delicate breeze,” said Grain de Sail’s co-founder Olivier Barreau. “For our cargo sailboat we are retro-innovating by using ancestral wind navigation combined with modern technologies.” “Grain de Sail is not just powered by the wind—it is empowered by it,” he continued to say, noting the company’s mission to use wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and hydro generators to meet the vessel’s energy needs. The hull is designed for 26 pallets of cargo, which are secured in a hold featuring temperature and hygrometry stabilization—the world’s first purpose-built floating wine cellar under sail.

Crossing the Atlantic The sailing vessel, carrying 8,000 bottles of organic, biodynamic French wine and 500 bars of chocolate, will make a special 10-day stop at the One15 Marina in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Members of the public are welcome to apply to visit the vessel and learn more about its advanced green transit features while it is in port. A tasting of some of the Grain de Sail’s chocolate and signature wines may unfold on deck after touring the sailboat and learning more about the project adventure. “We want to showcase different regions and grape varieties and we intentionally pick bottles that reflect this approach, from famous Burgundy or Champagne to lesser-known Muscadet or Jurançon,” Grain de Sail said. “Each region is unique and brings something different, and that’s what we want to share with New Yorkers.” Additionally, all Grain de Sail wines are put through a “taste-resiliency test,” which involves placing bottles in cargo sailboats for at least three weeks at sea and tasting them at various intervals after they return (generally upon returning to the harbor, then one week later, and then another two weeks thereafter).

A Brief History Grain de Sail’s story began in 2010 when Barreau and his twin brother Jacques challenged themselves to transport gastronomic products to cross-Atlantic consumers efficiently

by sail. To achieve this, Barreau first chose to create a business that would directly benefit from the investment. Barreau set up a coffee-roasting company and facility in 2013, opened a chocolate factory three years later, and started building a sailboat in 2018. Each of these ventures, according to the company, is successful and consistent with the underlying mission – coffee and cocoa are raw organic crops that come from overseas and have high added value once processed.

Where to Next? After its stay in Brooklyn, the sailboat will proceed south to the Caribbean. Once in the Caribbean, it will pick up organic coffee and cocoa beans and then sail back home to Brittany where chocolate and coffee are produced at the company’s factory. “This will create a virtuous circle between the Old Continent and the New,” Grain de Sail said of the three destinations slated for this trip. Round trips take more than three months to complete and occur twice a year. Grain de Sail is currently contemplating a second cargo sailboat, which will be operational in 2023. But the brothers’ ultimate goal is to build a full fleet of vessels to pursue the search of highquality products within its maritime, human, and environmental adventure. To book a slot to visit the vessel (with a group of 10 people max), contact Grain de Sail for a registration link.

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May 2021

GARCIA AND PRINCE FOR MAYOR by George Fiala

he loves to hear himself say?

retty much by accident, I was right there when Bill de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign came to life.

Which is when the idea of this endorsement began. And then, a karmic thing happened – I saw the advertisement Paperboy's Food Insecurity fundraiser, featuring Kathryn Garcia. I was excited to go, but honestly had no idea what to expect.

Lightning may have struck twice as I think I might have been at the beginning of another candidate's rise.

It turned out to be the most heartwarming political event I have ever been to, with both candidates up close and in person proving to be real, genuine and sincere in everything they did and said.

That first time, I was covering a protest meant to save Cobble Hill's Long Island College Hospital, when a mayoral candidate given little chance showed up. A political ploy meant to put Bill onto the front pages of the tabloids worked for him but unfortunately not for the hospital.

Even though it was a political event – politics was not really part of it. There was no ideology, no platitudes, just two people there to have a conversation about what they each thought important to bring to the city.

I came upon Garcia by accident as well. At a January Zoom debate, she was given a question that I had submitted asking whether there was some way to improve the way that city agencies work. Here in Red Hook we see how slow things go when it comes to parks or traffic, for example.

“Oh… yes! I’ve been on the receiving end of the bureaucracy trying to move capital projects. The amount of oversight that is not necessary is overwhelming. We can audit on the back end. There is no need to have mocks, and OMB and the comptroller, and everyone else that make it take literally nine to twelve months to procure anything. That is wrong. I would make sure that it would be wiped out, whether it be through legislation or executive order. That would be the first piece. The second piece is that we need to have incentives in our contracts for speed. Because speed is money in capital construction. We know what

works and we tend to go through this process where it is so painful to get anything open. A 12-year construction plan is insane! When I’m mayor, I know where all of the real challenging places are in the bureaucracy, and how to get rid of them.” Yay! – somebody who knows what the problems are, because, in her case, she’s lived them having worked in at least four city agencies over the past 15 years, including as boss. We've seen here how the incentives to do, say, a park renovation, are to drag it along as long as possible, causing projects to go over budget - making more money for the contractors. So, while I still wasn’t all that invested in the race -being a local paper we

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cover local as opposed to citywide contests, she stayed in my brain. I’m not exactly sure how Paperboy entered my cranium. I have one of the campaign postcards on my desk, and one day I spotted his Love Bus on Myrtle Avenue. Paperboy Prince is nothing if not flamboyant! I had it in my head to support these two candidates, but I meant to keep that to myself until recently, when Andrew Yang began leading the polls. Is it possible that what is supposed to be the more rational blue part of the country would copy the less rational red part and elect someone with no government experience – someone with off-the-top of his head ideas that

THeN WHY DO YOU HAVE Y0UR

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It wouldn’t be the worst thing for both of them to play leading roles in the city. Kathryn Garcia would make us a better run city as we march headlong into a precarious future, Paperboy Prince would make sure that the ride was both fun and filled with love.

H M

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iT’S NOT

UMBRELLA,

IT’S YOURS!

M mj

Garcia came to life with a smile as she answered:

Paperboy is an accomplished entertainer, but at the same time a serious thinker who sees the city from the bottom up. Garcia is an accomplished city manager who knows what the problems are. Perhaps she discovered that she could also be an entertainer, as Paperboy's challenges included dancing and drawing, and she got into both.

May 2021, Page 3

PS 676 hosts autism awareness day by Nathan Weiser

PS 676 held their first autism awareness day on Thursday, April 8, in the middle of World Autism Month. The PTA was excited about being at their first event since the pandemic began. Thursday was a beautiful spring day and many different neighborhood organizations and NYC based developmental and community groups came to the Huntington Street schoolyard. The United Nations-sanctioned World Autism Awareness Day is on April 2. Throughout the month, the non-profit Autism Speaks focuses on sharing stories and providing opportunities to increase understanding and acceptance of people with autism. Principal Priscilla Figueroais looking forward to making their Autism Awareness Day an annual event. It was the idea of safety officer Myriam Sekera, who has been working at the school for three years. She wanted to organize this event partly because of her autistic 6-year-old daughter. “I just wanted to represent for her,” Sekera said. “They do breast cancer awareness but there is not a lot of awareness for kids with autism. I heard on the news the other day that one in every 54 kids are born with it.” Her goal was to assist in helping people with autism to find a community. “You are going to need help,” Sekera said. “It is going to work for us. My daughter is six. She goes to PS 372 in Clinton Hill, which is a District 75 school. They help her so much.” She hopes people learned that there might be more to a child not understanding. “Just because your kid might not be able to understand that does not mean it is because they are bad, they just don’t understand, it has to be told a different way,” Sekera said. “My daughter specifically, she does not speak, it took some time for her classes and everything to pick up what is right and what is wrong.” She thought it could be helpful for other parents to understand that if their kid has autism it could just mean that they learn in a different way and at a different pace. She received helpful information, so she wanted to be able to pass it on to others. A woman representing Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield had a table centered on nutrition and healthy eating. She found out about the event from parent coordinator, Marie Hueston. Empire Blue Cross is involved in the community as they have supplied food for the Redemption Church food pantry that takes place on Fridays and they gave supplies for the PS 676 back to school event last fall. Sarah King, who works at Advance Care Alliance, also had a table. ACA/NY is an organization that is particularly relevant to this event since they deal with and help individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities. The Office for People with Developmental Disability (OPWDD) is ACA/NY’s governing agency that assists individuals who have developmental or intellectual disabilities with getting services. According to King, once a kid is three or older, if they are determined eligible to get services and it is determined that they have a disability, then OPWDD can provide services to the individual. A care manager at ACA/NY can assist with supportive employment or after school respite. The “respite” is a helpful program that keeps kids busy after school while giving parents relief and allowing kids to be around individuals that have a similar disability. Red Hook Initiative and The Red Hook Community Justice Center also had tables and they had information about various programming. It was a collaborative effort between the parent coordinator and Sekera to organize the event for the community. “She knew some organizations, so we reached out to them, they said they were willing to help us out, so they came,” Sekera said. “It was a team effort.

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May 2021

SUPERFUND SAYS BUYER BEWARE ON GOWANUS REZONING

t the end of March, the EPA filed an Administrative Order making specific demands of the City of New York regarding their unkept promises at the Gowanus Canal cleanup. Christos Tsiamis, Chief Engineer of the project, has said many times in the past that the Federal government, of which the EPA is part of, has sovereignty over city government, which is the city we live in. The City has been fighting the Superfund process from the beginning, initially trying to prevent it from ever happening. The Bloomberg administration maintained that it could clean the Canal and prevent recontamination using a combination of tree planting and sticking holes in the ground, enabling stormwater to seep into the ground instead of overflowing the sewers and send waste materials into the canals during storms. A big reason NYC was against the Superfund designation was money. The Superfund was originally funded by the federal government through special taxes, and for many years it was that funding that paid for cleanups. However, that funding ended and was not renewed, and instead the perpetrators of the pollution were called upon to pay for the costs of cleanup. It turns out that after the gas company, whose pollution of toxic compounds

by George Fiala was the most egregious poison, the City was the next biggest polluter, using the Canal to dump sewage overflows into. The master Superfund plan, called the Record of Decision, was issued at the end of September, 2012, and called upon the City to end that practice, or at least diminish it, by building two giant storage tanks into which sewage would be diverted in a rainstorm. At the end of a storm, the sewage could then be released and travel to the appropriate treatment plant. Tsiamis suggested that the larger tank could be placed under a public swimming pool at Thomas Greene Park. The pool had to be dug up and toxing removed as part of a cleanup plan. The tank could then be built and the pool replaced on top of it, and the city wouldn't have to dig a hole or buy any land, since they already owned the park. The cost estimate for the plan was $70 million. The DEP and Parks Department didn't like that idea and chose instead to spend money to buy nearby buildings to build a more elaborate system, in the process displacing a film studio, pushing the costs to over a billion dollars. The city agreed in 2014 to begin working on plans for both tanks. The EPA has been very strict about making a timeline and keeping to it, so that the

cleanup would be done as quickly as possible. The City however, has not even started work on one of the tank designs, which the EPA only recently found out about, which was the reason for this most recent Administrative Order. At the regular April meeting of the Gowanus Community Advisory Group (CAG), EPA's lawyer, Brian Carr, who has been on the case since the beginning, seemed to have a message to the group concerning the just released Gowanus Rezoning Plan. For many years, various members of the CAG tried to question the EPA about the rezoning—basically wanting to know what how the cleanup could be planned without knowing exactly what would be coming to the neighborhood. Tsiamis and Carr were always reluctant to say anything, as rezoning was not part of their business in NY—just the Canal cleanup. However, part of their responsibility includes preventing recontamination. Why should anyone pay to clean something that would just get fouled again? This was the first meeting since the release of the actual rezoning. "The EPA fully intends to review all the information in the draft EIS (the rezoning plan) to ensure that all of this (both tanks) is constructed and actually works in the way that it is intend-

The EPA lawyer Brian Carr ed. In recent years, our relationship with the City has not been ideal,"Carr said.

Referring to the city's uncooperative attitude with the EPA timetable, Carr said: "There are years that are lost here, and it is in the context of the rezoning very important that the things that the public is being told here, about the infrastructure being put into place are actually going to occur." What he is basically saying is that while the EPA has the backing of the federal government and a legal team to ensure that the City does what it is supposed to do under EPA law, who will make sure that the City will comply with the promises they make to the public in their own Gowanus rezoning plan.

Driving isn’t easy, but saving a life is.

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May 2021, Page 5

Addabbo workers picket for hazard pay

since we had never done one before and she made it happen,” Price said. According to Price, 32 people signed up. A total of 31 pints of blood were donated to the NY Blood Center.

On May 5, a group of nurses and administrative workers who are represented by 1199 Healthcare Worker's union, protested in front of the Addabbo Center on Richards Street. The protest, led by former LICH nurse and Red Hook resident Carolyn Fortune, was held to demand extra hazard pay for Addabbo workers, who have worked throughout the pandemic. Fortune claims that Addabbo was given FEMA money from the government, but hasn't shared any of it with their workers.

Remembering Linda Mariano Linda Mariano, a lifelong advocate for the Gowanus community, shown above as Miss Gowanus on the 100th anniversary of the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel in 2011, passed away last month.

The group picketed throughout the rainy lunch break, and were fed with pizza donated by Mark's of Van Brunt Street. The demonstration took place the day before National Nurse's Day,

EMERGENCY MEDICAID

Art show at Sunny's

Neddi Heller's paintings are in “Welcome Back Home” a curated art exhibit by Erin Treacy and Krista Dragoner now hanging in the back room at Sunny’s. The show will be up through May 18. Last year Heller had a solo show at Sunny’s which opened on March 6, and it, and just about everything else ended up closing about ten days later due to the pandemic. The reopening of Sunny’s and this group art exhibit reaffirms the happiness of a hopeful return to normalcy.

Brad Vogel, who we know from the Gowanus Dredgers, wrote these words in memory of her full life: "Linda and I served on the Community Advisory Group together (she helped get Gowanus designated a Superfund site in 2010). We helped get city landmarks designated as part of the Gowanus Landmarking Coalition. We pushed to save archaeological artifacts and Gowanus Station together. We fought the Gowanus rezoning together. As a fellow fan of Walt Whitman’s poetry, she was a core part of the annual Centenarian’s Story reading along the Canal. She lived robustly."

The benefits of donating blood include helping people injured in accidents, people undergoing cancer treatment and people battling blood diseases. Just one donation can save up to three lives, and the average red blood cell transfusion is three pints (or three whole blood donations). Nathan Weiser

Community healthcare

Summit Academy Charter School hosted a Community Healthcare Day on April 17. It included a blood drive, which took place in the school’s gym, and also Covid tests next to the auditorium.

COPE WITH BULLYING

Tremaine Price, the school's theater director explained that it was Diana Rangel's idea. Rangel is head of the Summit Academy Honor Society. “She wanted to do a blood drive

TENANT PROTECTION

Outdoor Barbecue Returns

The Food Bazaar, which has been hard at work improving the Red Hook market they took over from the bankrupt Fairway, is bringing back a Fairway tradition this year. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Food Bazaar will be offering barbecued chicken and ribs cooked fresh in their scenic backyard patio. Diners can also enjoy both meat and meatless burgers, corn and Mexican corn on the cob, and even hot dogs, replete with gorgeous views of the Stature of Liberty. Food Bazaar has shown that they are taking their new Red Hook location very seriously, as it is very well stocked with all kinds of meats and specialty items, many of them at really competitive prices.

FOOD ASSISTANCE

SUPPORT.

COVID-19 TESTING, VACCINE AND CARE

NOT FEAR.

FREE LEGAL HELP

All New Yorkers can access health care and social services regardless of immigration status, ability to pay or employment status. Learn more at nyc.gov/immigrants or call 311. Questions about immigration and use of public benefits? Call ActionNYC at 1-800-354-0365 for connections to City-funded, free and confidential immigration legal help.

Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

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May 2021

Election 2021: Spotlight on Erik Frankel by Brian Abate dock builders, the construction workers in Brooklyn. In the 1970's the piers closed down, a lot of them moved to Jersey, a lot of the business moved to Jersey, but we stayed here. I’m the fourth generation retailer and my father was the third, and they say the third generation is usually the one that messes up, so I’m good (laughing.)

And then you lived in Vietnam for a while. Could you talk about that? I did work in Vietnam for 20 years teaching people how to create sustainable businesses through e-commerce.

Frankel does not have a political background but is frustrated with the direction Red Hook and Sunset Park have gone. He is unhappy about some of the big companies that are moving into Red Hook, including Amazon and UPS. He wants to see small businesses thrive and believes he has ideas that will make that possible if he is elected.

What are some of your goals? What we need is public safety for our undocumented workers, for our undocumented residents. We need safety for everyone. And they’re not getting it right now. I want to feel safer than this, I mean, even the biker gangs who live in Brooklyn say they don’t feel safe right now.

rik Frankel is a fourth generation family business owner in Sunset Park. While he has spent much of his life in Sunset Park, Frankel has also spent 15 years living in Vietnam.

We spoke to Frankel for an hour, here are some excerpts: Could you start off by telling a little bit about yourself. My family emigrated to Sunset Park in the 1800’s. We were here before the Norwegians. My son came to Brooklyn from Vietnam one year ago at the start of the lock down. I can take the experience of a fourth generation New Yorker combined with the father of someone who emigrated here. That’s why I am the perfect candidate. You’re from Sunset Park, right? Yes, well years ago, 1890, we opened up a clothing store. We supplied most of the piers, the longshoremen, the

What are some of the other issues you plan to focus on? You know, the idea of defunding the police is an issue that everyone talks about. And now I know it seems like in Sunset Park, in Red Hook, you don’t get votes by saying it’s dangerous to defund the police. But I think Sunset Park is a dangerous neighborhood. It’s incredibly dangerous. We need to be better. We need we need safety. One thing we can do is open more charter schools. I’m for charter schools. If our public schools did a better job, we wouldn’t have young people crying out for socialism in our public schools. We need alternatives. Opposition is good. My choices are good. So I want

to enable a further a system. My goal is to further a system that encourages diversity and more choices in education as well as in the community. I’m not a shareholder but I do like eBay. I think they should teach eBay, Etsy, the online sales in our curriculum so people can learn to create sustainable businesses. We must focus on the positive and ways for people to lift themselves out of their economic situation. I think we spend too much time on trivial matters rather than the important ones. And that’s because people are afraid to talk about it, because they’re afraid to turn away voters. What message would you like to give to our readers? Do not believe the politicians except for me! No, no (laughing.) My message is that, you know, people have more similarities than we have differences. We have to stop electing people who focus on our differences and try to unite our communities because we work when we are united. And now that every every year it seems like we keep on electing these wonderful people, we check all the boxes as politicians. Yet Sunset Park and Red Hook remain two of the most economically depressed, depreciated areas in Brooklyn. If we’re OK with that, it’s crazy. My goal is to address home ownership. Anything else? I find that New Yorkers are the most loving people in the world because they’re willing to take the time to tell you what they don’t like about you. That is a backwards way of saying

we’re all equal. No one’s above being insulted. I can’t tell you how many names I’ve been called throughout the years by various ethnic groups. And I smile. I say I respect that because I respect the right for them to insult me. As long as it’s not physical, it’s OK. How do you lift up a community that’s been denied education and home ownership? There’s no easy way to put it but I have a plan. I want to defund the New York Economic Development Corporation, take all the land, sell it to developers and use that money to knock down the BQE and build affordable houses for people. That’s going to piss off a lot of people, but it’s a solution. I think it’s tragic that the same people who are against Amazon are also against rezoning. Right where I live on Third Avenue in the industrial section, I have pawnshops on my block. A lot of people are dead. There’s drug abuse that’s rampant. They say they want to keep it industrial but when you keep it industrial, this is what happens. I feel like if you don’t want houses, if you elect politicians who are against rezoning and building homes and I say for homes, not just for the wealthy but affordable homes, which that term is… it’s only applied when renting, but not with ownership. We need to build affordable homes for people to own. So when you deny rezoning, you are encouraging the Amazons, the Teslas, the UPS’ so they won’t live in your district, but they will own the companies in your district and then they will own you!

Election 2021: Spotlight on JacquibyPainter Nathan Weiser

acqui Painter is a Red Hook native who is running for city council.

She has advocated for people for many years, which makes her think she is the right candidate. Some of her goals include: “I will enact a budget and bring funding for food justice because I was on the ground and I know the issue,” “I will work on our resilient waterfront because if we do not make drastic moves now we will all be under water again soon. I will fight for housing, affordable housing, it is so desperately needed after the pandemic.” Another goal of hers is to fight for a comprehensive climate change plan.

She grew up with her parents on Conover Street, which ends on the pier, and she spent a lot of time enjoying the waterfront. Her love of the waterfront was influenced by her father, who helped found the Red Hook Boaters.“ “There is no better view or place to be in my opinion than on Red Hook’s waterfront looking at the Statue of Liberty. There is nothing like it.” Another passion of hers when she was growing up in Red Hook was volunteering at Added Value Farm. She was one of the first non-adult volunteers that the farm had. Because her father got a job at the United Nations, she went to the private

Red Hook Star-Revue

United Nations International School. “It really is no wonder that climate change was such an influence on me,” Painter said. “Being able to go to Manhattan everyday showed the vast disparity of our city. You go into Manhattan and over there by the FDR Drive is a totally different world.” In high school, she met like-minded people and she became one a founder of the Green School Alliance. “It is now an international organization of schools around the globe that teach climate change and how that relates to racial and climate justice,” Painter said. She studied environmental design at the University of Colorado. She was student government president.“ I ran around school and organized a bunch of protests. After Green School Alliance, I really kept learning how to fight and organize for the people.” After graduation, she landed a job at a design firm centered around luxury products called Skaggs Creative. In the lead-up to the 2016 general election, Painter joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign. She went to Iowa and organized in Black Hawk county. She helped flip the county blue. When she came back to NYC after that campaign she continued her activism. “Because Trump was president for the next four years, I knew I couldn’t

stop,” Painter said. “I was organizing in the street every week for immigrant rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.” She took a job with a political consulting firm. Through this firm, she worked with the Red Hook Senior Center and that led her to start Red Hook Relief. She is the vice president of Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, she is a member of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, a NYC Parks Department Super Steward and a member of New Kings Democrats. “The government failed its duty to care for the most vulnerable. This is why we need a strong fighter in city hall that has worked to meet the needs when it counted during the pandemic.” “This is something that is the job of the city,” Painter said. “The mutual aid work around the city is great, and I would not change it for anything, but this is the job of government, to step in and make sure that we are caring for our most vulnerable. NYCHA is committing human rights violations.” “In Red Hook, buses are pretty much your only option. We need to prioritize this and make sure the city isn’t spending superfluous money on things like machines that tell you the time the bus is coming. We need to make sure they run on time and that

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there are more of them.” She also thinks more should be done to decriminalize fare evasion.“ It was very good that they made the bus free for a while but I think we should have kept that up,” Painter said. “The tickets that happen for people that jump the turnstile disproportionally affect the working class and people of color.” To further protect and improve the waterfront, in Sunset Park, an off shore wind power plant was recently approved near the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and she thinks more should be implemented throughout the area. “This new green infrastructure can be great green jobs for our residents of the district,” Painter said. They can be union jobs and for local workers to help bring us out of our economic crisis. The wind turbines allow the city to get renewable energy that helps move away from fossil fuel. This is so obvious that and should have been done a while ago.”

May 2021, Page 7

How participatory is PB anyway?

Random street survey taken by Brian Abate of the Red Hook Star-Revue during the month of April, 2021

by Brian Abate and George Fiala

At the beginning, there were a number of projects created by community members who had fun ideas, and both Lander and Menchaca held public meetings where the projects were displayed, as you might see at a trade show. That only happened a couple of times, and since then the projects have turned into funding of things that are or should be normal responsibilities of government. For example, in the current year, just decided last month, the projects included the following: Plant 100 New Trees on Third Avenue ($180,000): This project would plant 100 trees along Third Avenue in Greenwood Heights and

New Trees with Tree Guards ($260,000): This project would plant trees with protective guards across the district. Security Cameras along 7th Avenue ($600,000): This project would install surveillance cameras along Sunset Park’s Seventh Avenue, pending a study from New York’s Finest. We have always wondered how many people actually participate, so our reporter Brian hit the streets for a couple weeks in April and asked people at random if they had ever heard of Participatory Budgeting.

75%

50% 40% 30% 20%

1 2 0 % 16% 7 % 16%

10%

Most hadn't, but many remarked that it sounded like a good idea. The results are summarized at the right. The actual figures are 7 out of 44 in Cobble Hill; 9 out of 58 in Red Hook's back (Van Brunt Street and Valentino Pier); none out of 24 in Red Hook's front (by Public Housing); and 2 out of 27 in Carroll Gardens.

RED HOOK BACK

Participatory Budgeting was supposed to take a significant portion of this money and let locals pick the projects and then vote on them.

Summit Academy Charter School and PS 676 AV Room and Speaker System Upgrade ($650,000): This proposal would upgrade the intercom system at the two Red Hook schools.

RED HOOK FRONT

Every City Council member has about $5 million each year to distribute in their district as they please. This usually takes the form of grants to groups that may or may not support the politician, such as a Lion's Club or a dance studio.

Sunset Park to reduce air pollution 100% from the Gowanus Expressway.

CARROLL GARDENS

round ten years ago Councilman Brad Lander helped take an idea from Brazil and brought it to New York.

COBBLE HILL

HOW MANY PEOPLE EVER HEARD ABOUT PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING.

RANKED-CHOICE VOTING

RANK YOUR CHOICES NYC

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NYC RANKED CHOICE VOTING

May 2021

LGBT rights still a fight in Italy by Dario Pio Muccilli

Italy's LGBT community is in turmoil because of a great controversy a would-be law is causing. The DDL Zan (DDL stands for decree) is a bill which would create new categories of crime based on sexual and gender discrimination, adding to the already existing hate crimes punished by the Italian state. Alessandro Zan, the signatory of the law and an MP, has pushed all the people from the LGBT community to publicly support his efforts. As a result, students, TV anchors, broadcasts, writers, artists and musicians have created momentum in favor of what would be a historic law. Opponents to this would-be revolution are the right-wing parties including the Brothers of Italy and the League. They are strong in the Italian Senate are filibustering in every possible place. The traditionalist electorate claim the law is against liberty and promotes a “gender ideology”. The issue of free-speech, a basic value for any democracy, is disputed by both sides. An article was added by Zan’s side in order not to punish those who believe traditional family is the only one possible or that a gay couple is not able to raise children. What is striking is that the usual Italian gay organizations played only a minor role in the whole scenario. ArciGay and GayLib are the organizations that usually represent gays of the center-left and the center-right. ArciGay is actually way more older and well-structured than GayLib and the LGBT community in the country is mainly leftist, but ArciGay failed to play the role of protagonist. This, according to Davide Betti Balducci, former GayLib coordinator, is due to the “fact that both the groups have become very political and are more interested in moving LGBT voters to certain parties rather than those parties to the LGBT voters, leading to an erosion of the trust towards them.” As a consequence, many gay activists went it alone or directly through center-left parties. Today in the Italian scenario it is possible to see different LGBT activists separated by political divisions across the community. While that might be easily regarded as normal in every community and indeed witness the evolution of it, there are some activists who last January founded the Gay Party. Davide Betti Balducci was one of them and in his mind it is clear why they had to do so. “What we aimed to do is lobby, as in every civil nation. Many times they (the traditionalists) accuse us of having built a secret lobby to influence the media and the parties in favour of gay rights. They’ve said such lies for ages to such an extent that eventually we decided to do so, but publicly. You may say that other organizations still exist now, but being politically committed they represent

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in my opinion almost the 2 or 3% percent of the LGBT people, as regarded as the politicized one, that is not our would-be-electorate”. Indeed one of the catchy sentences the party uses for its campaign is “who are secretly gay will have the opportunity to do their coming out at the polls” and the party’s efforts seem to be directed towards a centrist LGBT electorate who often does not even come out as gay. “In the future we may reach 6% of the votes” Balducci says. However, despite the calls for unity “LGBT people should not be divided because they’re a family,” Betti Balducci doesn’t hide a certain discontent towards the usual LGBT associative realities which he portrays as “those who will be more in difficulty with our liberal revolution, because we will prompt them to work properly as they didn’t for years”. This hostility is also visible by the lack of direct support to the Party from ArciGay or GayLib, whose silence has been incredibly loud. Betti Balducci argues that the main difference is that his party wants to change the way LGBT community communicates to the heterosexual or traditional public by using a more moderate and compromised language “because those Italians will be otherwise scared”.

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Indeed, Italy is a country where gay marriage or gay adoption is not yet legal and gays still suffer prejudice in society, especially in the lower classes. The strategy according to Betti Balducci should not be disruptive, but moderate, even if he totally agrees that both marriage and adoption should be achieved. Obviously the political outcomes of such a practical commitment are a bet, as many Gay activists still prefer to be part of great parties rather than go on a party which, in Betti’s own words, houses people nonetheless of their political thoughts. That’s probably the reason why the party has not a precise economic policy, as it is clear when, asked about how the State should spend money coming from the European Union, Betti decides not to answer the question.

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The danger in creating a party labelled gay is to ghettoize a community regardless of divergent political views. Being gay is not a parameter for a common political view as it is not so being heterosexual, and creating a lobby is far different from being a Party with political responsibilities. Anyway, the party may effectively manage to have success. Italian politics has housed hundreds of parties in the latest decades and there’s plenty of space for another one, but it is indeed a pity for the LGBT community itself that during such a crucial period of its history a division is set between different activists about how to attain their civil rights.

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May 2021, Page 9

mind. It doesn’t much sound like Join Hands. Siouxsie Sioux’s backing band had a huge sound, but it was just three people plus some effect pedals and overdubbing. Olin Janusz’s band for Black Out includes three additional vocalists, two guitarists (one playing lap steel), cello, piano and drums, in addition to his own guitar, bass, mandolin, organ and synthesizers. He also employs someone for support and emotional maintenance, whom one would hope was well compensated because the album is an emotional dredging.

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GOWANUS NIGHT HERON A FREE, ONE-NIGHT OUTDOOR POP-UP ART EXHIBITION Staged on the banks of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal Featuring 19 Local Artists

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Sat., June 5, 2021, 6-9 p.m. rain date: June 6 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gowanusnightheron/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gowanusnightheron/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gowanusnh Tumblr: http://www.gowanusnightheron.com

Music by Kurt Gottschalk New Songs for Old Wars

Siouxsie and the Banshees released their second record in 1979, after a quick rush to fame and acclaim (in England, anyway) with their first single and debut album the previous year. Join Hands didn’t do much to capitalize on earlier success. The album was tense, unhinged, unnerving, built from the unexpected inspiration of the first world war and informed by military aggressions of the current day. Unlike some of the group’s albums, Join Hands hasn’t aged, in sound or lyrics. Off Black, the second album by Bare Wire Son, brings that Banshee classic to

Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue

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The British-born Janusz wrote the album while living in Poland, basing much of it on diaries of mothers whose sons were fighting in World War I. (The journals of German expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitzn, whose work graces the cover, provided further source materials.) Like Join Hands, Off Black isn’t a period piece. Neither album sounds quite like something of its own time or of the period it concerns. In that regard, the albums are more like movies, aiming to conjure a feeling, to plunge the listener into the darkness of war rather than depict it in any literal way. Lyrically, the albums address their subjects only passingly. They’re not documentaries or history lessons, they’re sequences of scenes, and they’re both decidedly bleak. Off Black is certainly dark and moody. Through gradual, orchestral swells and creeping guitar riffs— mastered like a cut diamond by Doug Henderson, who has added sheen to the sound of Swans, Metallic Falcons and the Necks—Janusz emits grim poetics (“put your sorrow in the bellows,” “these trenches run hollow with the crow”) from a voice buried deep in his throat. But it’s not altogether a funeral dirge. Occasionally a slow groove will drag itself to the surface, almost like an accidental Dirty Three song. Those moments don’t last long, but they do provide a few moments to breathe during what is an otherwise beautifully mournful album. It’s streaming in full on Bandcamp and other platforms as of May 14 and is available for download or on cassette (in an edition of 33) through the Russian label Sination.

May 2021

Lil Nas X the bad guy... by Roderick Thomas

hen genre bending musician Lil Nas X debuted his single Montero (Call Me by Your Name) in March 2021, no one could have predicted its accompanying video, nor the outrage that would quickly follow. When the music video debuted, the reaction was reminiscent of early 2000’s pop culture shock –– Janet Jackson’s nipple gate at the 2004 Super Bowl, or more recently Miley Cyrus’ twerking while tongue out, at the 2013 MTV VMAs. Nas’ highly stylistic and colorful visual used religious themes such as the Garden of Eden, angels, and of course, the connective stripper pole lodged between heaven and hell. Outrage over pop culture’s use of religious symbols is nothing new, it’s actually predictable. So, why did the Nas X video still garner such a strong reaction? Perhaps for the same reasons why some folks (like myself ) believe the video didn’t go far enough –– three words, Black, gay, religion.

In 2019 Lil Nas X rose to popularity as a musician from his Columbia Records re-release of Old Town Road, he was almost omnipresent. Old Town Road catapulted him to peak success, Nas X had millions channeling their inner cowboy. His blend of country music and hip hop was a unique sound that set him apart from his peers, which eventually led to a feature from country music veteran Billy Ray Cyrus. Old Town Road would have a record breaking stay at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, surpassing Mariah Carey for the most consecutive weeks at number one. However, despite his popularity and boynext-door image, Nas X was still subject to several challenges surrounding his race and participation in country music. Lil Nas X was met with hostility and racism from a noticeable swath of angry country music fans. The critics stated that Old Town Road was too ‘hip hop’. The double standard for Nas X was quite obvious. Country musicians like Niko Moon or Sugarland Band have been allowed to incorporate aspects of other genres without much fuss. Truthfully, Old Town Road’s only hip hop element was some of its percussion. The song would be shut out of winning any country music awards at the CMAs. During the height of the racial controversy Nas did

receive plenty of support from the Black community and other communities as well. Then came his sexual orientation. In June 2019 (Pride month), Lil Nas X revealed on Twitter that he was gay saying,

[Some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone fuck with me no more, but before this month ends I want y’all to listen closely to c7osure.]

Shortly thereafter, Lil Nas would go into more detail about his sexuality in a series of interviews. Reaction to his coming out ranged from indifference to disdain. While Nas X didn’t receive a George Micheal response to his own orientation, it was interesting to notice homonegative comments coming from some of the same spaces that supported him during his Old Town Road race controversies.

It’s no secret that queerness is a touchy subject in the Black community. Historically speaking, Black Americans tend to be socially conservative on the topic of homosexuality, while also being relatively religious. For his Montero video, Nas X chose to portray gayness, or queerness, as a sexually liberated, feminine character. The Montero video is filled with pastel colors, pinks and soft blues, thigh high boots, body hugging underwear and suggestive dancing. The combination of explicit gay sexuality and religious figures was sure to stir up conversation within the Black community (and other communities). Nas’ presentation definitely broke barriers for Black gay artists, especially Black queer men who are fem (feminine) presenting. Within Black LGBTQ spaces, dark skinned, full featured and kinky haired feminine men are often subject to all of the same colorism, texturism and featurism seen throughout society at large. Lil Nas X, while arguably at the height of his fame, chose to explicitly portray himself in a way that was unmistakably gay, Black and fem. Had he chosen to present as traditionally masculine in the Montero video, his full features, kinky hair and dark skin would be seen as an asset to his desirability–– the Mandingo effect. Rather than be fetishized for stereotypical Black masculinity, Lil Nas X chose to pedestalize one of the most poorly represented types of people within the Black community –– dark skinned, Black, gay fems.

The significance of Nas’ Montero video cannot be understated. Nas X is not the first popular Black male musician to come out as queer, but he certainly is the most public, and transparent popular Black gay singer today. In contrast to millennial queer artist Frank Ocean, who has been more vague regarding his sexuality, Nas X leaves little to interpretation, a marker of his generation (Gen Z) –– more exhibitionist, and even more progressive. For many viewers the Montero video was a major milestone in Black queer represent ion. At times the visuals are quite beautiful, some frames even reminiscent of Lord of the Rings (wide shot of pole dance into hell). However, for others who are privy to Black LGTBQ spaces (like myself ), the video may not have delivered completely. Though Lil Nas’ pole dance into hell is likely to be remembered as an iconic moment in pop culture, the video overall is lacking a trueto-life quality, and at times comes off as a parody of Black gayness.

Despite all its raunchiness, Montero lacks the ferociousness, and spirited execution one could see at almost any Black gay club in America. From the wigs, to the dancing and costuming, the video didn’t fully bring to life the beauty and vibrancy of Black gay culture, and perhaps that wasn't the goal. In addition, what Lil Nas X didn’t lack was a budget, so why wasn’t the representation of the underworld more grand? Or the display of raunchy Black gay sexuality more masterful? It does make me wonder, were there Black gay folks working closely with him? One unfortunate perspective is, Nas X could be seen as an archetype for future Black gay misrepresentation, backed by a major label, foreshadowing highly diluted, but well funded Black gay content.

Critiques aside, the visibility Nas X has given to Black gay artists will open the door for more Black gay representation in popular music, especially for gay Black, dark skinned and feminine artists. Lil Nas X has certainly accomplished that very difficult feat with Montero. Byline: Roderick Thomas is a NYC based writer, filmmaker, and Host of hippie By Accident Podcast. (Instagram: @Hippiebyaccident, Email: rtroderick.

"Historically speaking, Black Americans tend to be socially conservative on the topic of homosexuality, while also being relatively religious." Red Hook Star-Revue

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May 2021, Page 11

How Comic Books Can Save the World

by Mike Fiorito

.H. German, founder of Sigma Comics, whose family emigrated from the Dominican Republic, has said that comic books were not only key to helping him learn English, but also inspired him to overcome bullying in his tough Northern Bronx (Pelham Bay) neighborhood in the 80s.

dous. They’ve chosen to focus most of the resources to mega-million-dollar movie productions, which make them billions. That’s not an opinion. Do a Google or YouTube search and you will see endless articles, blog posts, and videos discussing the sorry state of current comic books. This has left a green field of opportunity. Our comics have great artists, and we’re telling a very compelling story, which we believe the public has been waiting to read. The Japanese, who have the largest comic book industry, with their worldrenowned “manga” titles, have been studying the American market and have seen the recent shortcomings of the Big Two, and have begun pumping their manga titles into the U.S., which now account for the bulk of comic book sales. Even though the traditional American comic book market is smaller than it was, competing with not only Japanese manga, but also indirect competition from things like video games and streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, there’s still a market. Comic books are an American institution, and we want to do something special with CALICO.”

H.H. German’s Here Comes CALICO is a series that introduces “CALICO,” NYC’s newest anti-hero, who fights against animal abuse. The series is highly controversial for its graphic depiction of animal abuse. Reception, however, has been overwhelmingly positive, with legendary Marvel and DC comic book writer, Chuck Dixon, referring to it as “a pretty cool comic book series.”

I spoke to H.H. in February 2021 about Here Comes CALICO and what inspired him to create its hero. “Where did you get inspiration for CALICO?”

“Growing up in The Bronx in the 80s was definitely a factor. Pelham Bay was a mostly Italian neighborhood. No Latinos or African Americans. I was darker skinned than most of the kids. Though some of the Italians were dark, too. The Bronx is like the Sparta of this country; it throws so many things at you at a young age. There was a lot of miscommunications, fights, and territorial shit. People like to get nostalgic and paint beautiful memories but, if you thought The Bronx was rough now, it was much rougher back then. While the trains coming in from The South Bronx were loaded with incredible graffiti art, they also wreaked urine. And finding bullet holes was not uncommon. New York City ends in The Bronx, like it was the end of the world. The last train stop is Pelham Bay. You rarely saw any cops back then because everything ran the way it was supposed to. If anyone got outta line, they were quickly dealt with.” “Were you bullied?”

“Early on, but I eventually learned to not take shit from anyone. I witnessed a lot of bullying and, when I was the recipient, I dealt with it right then and there. I learned how and when to run, negotiate, communicate, and fight. Most of the time, if you stood up to someone, you earned their respect.” Then he added. “And I learned boxing and martial arts.” “What made you interested in martial arts?”

“I was a fan of Bruce Lee. I loved his scientific approach. It was very practical. From his example, and daily experience on the street, I learned how to maintain a level of comfort in the face of violence.” “Why the focus on animals in your comic book series?”

“Most people don’t realize that The Bronx is the greenest of the boroughs. A lush world of flora and fauna looms amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. Not only do people have a lot of animals, but there are also many animals on the street: dogs, cats, squirrels, skunks, and more. I grew up seeing things, terrible things. People open fist hitting their animals, towering over a defenseless creature. Animals don’t choose to be with you. They don’t really have control in the human/pet relationship. Therefore, Sigma Comics is quite graphic in its comic book descriptions and depictions. Two things I feel really make this comic work are the spectacular artwork and the realism. The artwork is excellent, and Javier Orabich has a talent for capturing facial expressions, which is extremely hard to do (in my opinion). The combination of color work by Daniel Grimaldi, and bold line work by Orabich, expertly depict the natural expression of emotion that is often missed in contemporary comic book art. Furthermore, this is a real-life concern, unlike rabid vampires stalking the city streets or zombie attacks across the globe. Who’s fighting for the animals? Well, now we have CALICO, a superhero for animals.”

“Why does the character live in Red Hook?”

it is one that needs to be more widely addressed. According to the Humane Society there are over 144 million pet dogs and cats in this country. Many of those animals that are abused are often found in homes where there is spousal or child abuse present. According to the website www.humanesociety. org there is a commonality between those that abuse humans and those that abuse animals. This is presumably due to the personality of the offender, meaning that a person who is compelled to exert and impose their will over other people physically is probably comfortable doing the same to a small, helpless animal. As a comic book genre, it’s considered less superhero and more of a true crime and real-life horror, and I do feel that this comic book is a great way to open a dialogue about the issue. This is a medium that is becoming more popular to get various messages and information across to people of varying ages all over the world. Creatively, it is a much less limited medium than a TV or movie screen.” “Who’s your target reader?”

“Our core target is really comic book fans…and animal lovers, too. The Big Two (comic book companies) have focused on movies. Because the big players two have creatively checked out and all but left the scene, the quality of the writing and the art is horren-

“I’m a New Yorker, through and through. I’m from The Bronx, but I wanted to show another part of New York. Being in Red Hook, CALICO gets to move around more covertly, as he’s on the edge of town, and can connect into other parts of the city at night.” “What do you see as the future?”

“I’m certainly hoping to do our part in bringing animal abuse to the mainstream. We have a wide age audience, from late teens to people in their 50s (and older). Comic books are stories that continue, unlike a book. Comics adapt to new social phenomena. If I learned how to solve problems through comics, I hope other kids, other people, can also learn the same way. The CALICO stories are hard-hitting and direct. This comic hits you right in the face, and in the gut, which appeals to today’s generation, who want the truth. I’m a Gen X’er, and our generation was given sugar-coated messaging and such. The problem of drug addiction, for example, was addressed by cracking two eggs on a frying pan. That won’t fly these days, and we won’t insult our fans by feeding them watereddown stories. Here Comes CALICO will continue to speak to people in a powerful and unique way. It will continue to evolve. I have great hopes.” Sigma Comics https://sigmacomics.com to purchase individual issues or subscriptions Mike Fiorito www.fallingfromtrees.info https://www. pw.org/directory/writers/mike_fiorito

“Do you think the graphic nature of the comic book will offend some people?” “Although it is an emotional and sensitive subject,

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May 2021

FILM The Long Overdue Return of Melvin Van Peeble’s Essential Debut Feature “The Story of a Three Day Pass” by Dante A. Ciampaglia

When Melvin Van Peebles moved from San Francisco to Hollywood to make movies in the late 1950s, Tinseltown power brokers took one look at the young Black Air Force veteran (and director of a few short films) and offered him a job — running an elevator. When he pushed for something more, let’s say, creative, they said he could be a dancer. He said they could go fuck themselves. Van Peebles soon decamped for Europe after someone at the Cinémathèque française saw his first three short films and invited him to France, where he wrote three novels and earned a temporary permit to direct films. He promptly adapted one of his books, La permission, into a feature, which got Melvin Van Peebles on Hollywood’s radar — for the right reasons — and ignited a trailblazing career that included Watermelon Man (1970) and, a year later, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, ground zero for blaxploitation. He only directed four more features through 2008, and for many moviegoers the Van Peebles name might be familiar because of his son, Mario, a brilliant actor and director (New Jack City) in his own right. But American cinema — mainstream, independent, and otherwise — would be a very different place without Melvin Van Peebles, a multi-hyphenate Renaissance man whose films, often featuring all- or majority-Black casts, are racy, raw, and alive to the world, often unflinching, occasionally uncomfortable, and always entertaining.

Sweet Sweetback will undoubtedly be his legacy, but none of Van Peebles’ career would have been possible if not for that first feature, the French-made adaption of La permission, The Story of a Three Day Pass. Released in 1968, it has existed in recent years as a cult object, difficult, if not impossible, to see in anything but grainy, copy-of-copy bootlegs. But thanks to a new 4K restoration by IndieCollect, supported by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and supported by Van Peebles, Three Day Pass can be rightly given the consideration and due it deserves. (New Yorkers comfortable with returning to movie theaters can see it in its ideal presentation during a run at Film Forum that opens May 7.) At 87 minutes, Three Day Pass is a lean film, focused on a Black American serviceman, Turner (Harry Baird), given a three-day leave as a reward from his paternalistic captain for being promoted to “Assistant Orderly.” Stationed in France, Turner naturally takes

off to Paris, where he wanders in an alienated remove, hits up a nightclub, and meets the similarly disaffected — and very white — Miriam (Nicole Berger). The English-speaking Turner and French-native Miriam awkwardly connect over the course of the night and decide to spend the weekend together in Normandy, where they make love, have fun, and pledge grand promises to one another about their lives together once the pass expires and Turner returns to base. It’s the kind of loose narrative that scaffolded much of the French New Wave, and like Godard, Truffaut, and Rivette, Van Peebles uses the story’s openness to experiment with form, style, and time. He makes liberal use of the jump cut. He leans so hard into splicing together different perspectives of the same interaction that the scene could be a Futurist painting come alive. He places dialogue and narration over shots of bucolic nature, views of the road from inside moving cars, and languid ocean vistas from beaches and bluffs. He even cast a New Wave star, Berger, who broke through in Trufaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, in one of the major roles.

There are times when Three Day Pass feels oppressively indebted to the New Wave — the nightclub scene where Turner and Miriam meet comes instantly to mind, which is propulsively jazzy, jumpy, and Godardian. But unlike an acolyte leaning on movement grammar as a crutch his first time out, Van Peebles wields it with confidence, if not always precision. There are numerous moments when a scene begins a frame or two too early or the montage is a bit creaky, but those stand out less as mistakes and more as the kinds of seams that show when shooting on a tight schedule and tighter budget. And while they can be distracting, they don’t distract from Van Peeble’s burgeoning virtuosity. Back to that nightclub scene. Turner enters as if he’s floating into a world swirling around him, a clear precursor to Spike Lee’s signature double dolly shot. It only lasts a moment and is a bit inelegant, but it’s dazzling all the same — especially because, in 2021, we know how that kind of shot will evolve and who will come to own it. Once Turner’s at the bar, he spots a woman he imagines falling in love with, and Van Peebles shows Turner’s spirit leave his body and move toward the woman’s table as the mass of clubgoers parts like the Red Sea. Later, when Turner is back in his hotel room, Van Peebles pulls an unexpected and audacious trick. Turner lays on his bed, a neon sign blinking oppressively in the dark room; the lighting shifts to indicate morning; and, in two shots stitched together to create the illusion of a single take, Van Peebles swings his camera in a semicircle to show Turner get up, change clothes, gather his bags, and walk out the door to meet Miriam. Whether done as an experiment or out of cockiness, the shot is something of a breathtaking show-stopper. That New Wave spirit permeates the whole of Three Day Pass, even when it slows down after reaching Normandy. (Van Peebles crafts a sweet nod to French cinema past and present when Turner and Miriam ride on the back of a farmer’s hay wagon; the couple, looking like they stepped out of Masculin Féminin; listening to a philosophical farmer who could have stepped out of a Jean Renoir work.) But the film isn’t an empty experiment by an expat in Paris, nor is it an existential treatise on ennui and the hopelessness of love in a conflagrated world. For one, the film is far more sardonic — more Ishmael Reed than Albert

Camus — than anything you’ll find in the New Wave canon. But more importantly, Van Peebles directs all those jump cuts and time loops and direct audience addresses toward a confrontation with the signal concern of his career: race.

Turner and Miriam are indeed doomed lovers, but not because the universe is conspired against them — they’re condemned because he’s Black and she’s white. When Three Day Pass was released in 1968, the concept of a Black man and white woman romantically engaged, never mind the actual sight of a mixed-race couple together, was the height of scandal. Van Peebles pushes it further by showing the couple in bed, naked, together, before, during, and after sex. They confess their undying love, but there’s never any question about what will happen to this union by the end of the film. Instead, lingering over it like an acid mist is what will lead to the inevitable dissolution. Is it the self-loathing voice in Turner’s head, calling him an Uncle Tom for being in the Army or perpetually preparing him for disappointment? Is it the internalized racism of Miriam, who imagines, during their lovemaking, that she’s being taken by an African tribesman complete with a bone in his afro? Is it the institutional racism of the flag Turner has pledged to defend — the captain who looks at Turner and sees little more than a dim child; Turner’s white Army buddies shocked at the site of Miriam and Turner together; the scenes of Jim Crow protesters we see flash through Turner’s thoughts? The answer is yes. For Turner, race isn’t something you overcome; it simply is. And it’s complicated by the differences between the racism Turner experiences everyday as a Black American and the way it manifests in an old-world nation like France. At one point, Turner gets fights a Spanish singer in a restaurant after he thinks the singer calls him the n-word. (It’s a question of the singer using the Spanish word for “black,” but even this is freighted by Van Peebles with layers of interpretation.) Turner’s ready to fight to the death, but Miriam soothes him and guides him toward the hotel, telling him the singer was trying to be complimentary. As the scene ends, Turner says, “How can anyone think that Black is a compliment?” More than 50 years later, that line still lands like a haymaker. And for all its scrappiness and roughness, so does The Story of a Three Day Pass. Sweet Sweetback might be Van Peebles’ calling card, but his first film throbs with the energy, potential, and fuck-youHollywood attitude that birthed not only his career but a universe of possibility in American cinema. It’s impossible to imagine Spike Lee, John Singleton, Robert Townsend, or, indeed, Mario Van Peebles without Melvin Van Peebles. And it’s impossible to imagine Melvin Van Peebles without The Story of a Three Day Pass. The Story of a Three Day Pass opens at Film Forum on May 7

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May 2021, Page 13

Jazz by Grella Is It Safe?

hose who lived through the ‘70s may recognize the title of this column as the signature line from the harrowing torture scene in the movie Marathon Man. Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) drills into Babe’s (Dustin Hoffman) teeth, without anesthetic, while asking, “Is it safe?” Beyond the sheer pain, what makes the scene that much more excruciating is that Babe doesn’t know the answer.

Not that this is torture, but there’s something of the same fraught confusion facing the world of live jazz. The vaccination process is working its way through the population (your correspondent will be fully, safely inoculated while you are likely reading this) and New York City has already achieved impressive numbers, though at the edges there are troubling hints that the pace is slowing and that some people are foregoing their second dose, which I have to say is one of the stupidest, most antisocial, and destructive things I’ve seen in awhile—and yes I was awake during 2020 (for the record, my second dose of Moderna left me feeling zonked with low-level aches and fever the next morning, but that was nothing a nap, some ibuprofen, and lots of water couldn’t take care of ). Why write, again, about a pandemic in a jazz column, isn’t that a medical issue butting its way into a musical matter? It’s more than a medical issue, it’s a social issue, and the reason the pandemic has been so terrible here is that the United States, as a society, has decided to spend insufficient money on public health and the overall social safety net, and for a long time has committed to the ethos of “I’ve got mine, screw you,” and lest you think this is only the motto for people who watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News, the New York Times has so deeply internalized a stance against public spending that it regularly assumes, without any objective reasoning, that the budget deficit must

determine every macroeconomic course of action.

Are we safe? Is it safe? Is it safe to head down to a tiny basement club like Smalls, or step into a cramped room like I-Beam, and catch a set of live jazz, which may include singers and horn players breathing in and expelling long, strong lungfuls of air at the listeners? It seems that, with some caveats, it will be; get vaccinated, wear a mask still, enjoy the tunes. Capacity will still be restricted at least through the end of this month—the relatively large (in jazz club terms) concert hall Roulette is selling limited numbers of tickets for jazz shows and other performances. There’s already been some test cases during the periods last year when limited indoor dining allowed some venues to present live music, as long as it was possible to classify it as accompaniment to a meal, like jazz brunch. There is no apparent data on whether these situations spread COVID-19, but indoor dining in general turned out to be a bad idea, which was easy to predict for everyone except politicians. There’s a big question about another kind of safety; is it safe to remain in business? I-Beam still has a website, but it hasn’t been updated since March of last year. Shapeshifter Lab, another excellent Gowanus venue, is in danger of closing, and is fund-raising to either maintain their current lease or find a new performing space. There’s a pandemic venue relief fund, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant from the Small Business Administration, but it was late getting going and when the website was finally up for applications, in early April, it crashed.

As much as the new administration has been pushing the case, people and places need cash, lots of it, more of it, and as fast as possible. The macroeconomic picture is showing some small improvements, in the ambiguous sense that, while people are still filing unemployment claims, the pace of that has started to slow, finally dropping below the same levels experienced during the Great Recession for the first time in a whole year. This past year destroyed huge amounts of cash and people and places still need money, as hard as that may be for certain US senators to see. You need cash, I need cash, musicians need cash. If we had cash, we could go to the club and some of our cash

would end up in the pockets of the musicians. I have tried in earnest to buy music from Bandcamp this past year during their monthly Bandcamp Fridays, when the site waives fees and all the proceeds go to the musicians—I like to know the money I can spend is going to someone who is making something, and in the absence of live music that has been the most direct means this past year. As a substantial jazz aside, I recommend you check out two duo albums available at Bandcamp, Some Kind of Tomorrow by Mark Helias and Jane Ira Bloom, and Thunda, from Noah Preminger and Kim Cass. Both are sax/bass duet albums, both recorded entirely across the internet, with the musicians playing with each other from remote locations, and both are musically impressive in a way that you don’t take note of the circumstances. The gorgeous, meditative Some Kind of Tomorrow is one of the most emotionally expressive albums I’ve heard in a long time.

But back to the cash. As has historically been the case during economic calamities, those who have ended up having more, and those who don’t have ended up having less. When the landscape clears, Jazz at Lincoln Center will still be standing, as it very much has, but there will be no more Jazz Standard. Perhaps the club can resurrect itself someplace, but that’s going to take more of that cash. Where will Shapeshifter Lab be, will there still be a Shapeshifter Lab? What about I-Beam? The Vanguard, Smalls, Mezzrow, have managed to hang on, that’s good news. But just as the jazz question here is a social one, so is it also a real estate one—who can afford to operate here?

Square footage matters, because there’s more jazz musicians per square foot in New York than any other place in the world, and they are the crème de la crème of the genre. If there is a lot of pent-up jazz action ready to explode in the city over the summer and fall, where will it be, where will it go? The nonprofit Giant Steps Arts has been putting on live music in Central Park on Saturdays in good weather, and that you can stroll into the park and catch the likes of Jeremy Pelt, William Parker, Chris Potter, and James Brandon Lewis, for free, is a testament to the mind-boggling talent drawn to play jazz in New York City, and also an indication of just how hard it might be for these players, and hundreds more, to get gigs in a shrunken landscape. As long as live music can return, the musicians will likely find a way, as so much of their income comes from doing things in music other than playing at the Vanguard. But the wonderful and much-missed Red Hook Jazz Festival was gone long before the pandemic hit, and that loss, and others, is felt acutely now. Will there be enough cash to go around to make this all happen? Will there be enough space? Will it be safe?

"Is it safe to head down to a tiny basement club like Smalls, or step into a cramped room like I-Beam?"

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Books by Quinn Over Before You Know It Review of Another Day’s Begun: Thorton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century by Howard Sherman Review by Michael Quinn

“What is trivial and what is significant about any one person’s making a breakfast, engaging in a domestic quarrel, in a ‘love scene,’ in dying?” asked Thorton Wilder, reflecting on the question at the heart of his play, Our Town. Set in the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, its central characters Emily and George meet as children. Despite differences in temperament, they fall in love as they mature, and marry. A few years later, Emily dies in childbirth. A remarkable thing then occurs:

She’s given the chance to revisit her life, any moment of her choosing. After picking her 12th birthday, the joy upon seeing her mother and father again is quickly swallowed up by the rush of daily living; Emily can’t get anyone to stop and really look at her. Overcome, she begs to once again be released from the world of the living: “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave.”

Opening on Broadway in 1938, Our Town won the Pulitzer and has been continuously staged ever since. In his fascinating new book, Another Day’s Begun: Thorton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century, author Howard Sherman analyzes the play’s meaning and explores its continuing impact on audiences across the globe.

production, recalls that “I’ve seen my mom cry a handful of times. One of them was after we lost our home in Katrina…I’ve never seen her cry at a movie, or a book, or a TV show, or anything like that. She came the opening weekend and she was in the second row. I saw her. As soon as Emily slams her hands down on the table and she goes, ‘Look at me! Can’t we just look at one another?’ my mom was crying and that’s when I broke.” For whatever ails us as a people—9/11, a suicide bomber at an Arianna Grande concert, mental illness, and incarceration are just a few examples Sherman explicitly addresses—Our Town seems to be a potent remedy.

He writes, “Thornton Wilder was rather explicit in what he wanted us to take from Our Town. It is not hidden or oblique. If anything, it is a charge to each and every audience about how to think about how they approach life, to appreciate life and appreciate others while we have them.”

However alert we each are to the fact of it, life is something that happens to all of us just this way, just this once. Another Day’s Begun gives us the chance to reflect on just how singular and special that experience really is.

Oral history

Despite its enduring popularity, Our Town carries a whiff of “sentimental, old-fashioned, golden-hued, sepia-toned, done-to-death nostalgia”—unfairly, Sherman believes. Yet this reputation clings to his book’s opening, which recounts the play’s early production history. This part will be a bit of a slog for readers with fuzzy memories of having read the play in school—or maybe even having acted in it— and especially for those unfamiliar with it. Instead of feeling intrigued, you might get impatient—but stick with it.

The book really comes alive when Sherman unveils an oral history from over 100 directors and actors involved in both amateur and professional productions from 2002 to 2019, from Sing Sing to Broadway, including multiracial, deaf, and bilingual versions, to understand why and how this story about white people in a small, sleepy New England town can possibly continue to resonate in today’s world.

First of all, it’s not as Pepperidge-Farm-folksy as we might remember. “There’s just a coldness to the story that I think is hard for people,” director David Cromer points out. The play is usually set on a bare stage, with a minimum of props, and doesn’t carry a feel-good message—it carries a warning: We don’t notice or appreciate life as it’s happening. Too often, we miss each other in the moment. (This is what’s so painful to Emily that she chooses to return to the dead.)

A character called the Stage Manager narrates the play, and professional and amateur actors alike share their impressions of how playing that role caused them to engage with the play’s deeper meaning. Helen Hunt, who starred in two of Cromer’s productions, says, “[Wilder’s] not selling a religion or faith, he’s not telling you it’s all going to work out, he’s simply saying it’s an unnamable something that has something to do with human beings.” Marielle “Théo” Lambert Scott, who played the Stage Manager in a Louisiana State University

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May 2021, Page 15

Lancers, Assemble! There were only 157 “Lancers” in my class and a few years later, the school closed down. We called ourselves Lancers because the school emblem was a knight with a huge lance. I always imagined it was a Christian Brother underneath all that chain mail ready to pounce if we stepped out of line. Over the years classmates still living in the metro area would plan to gather in mid-December at some Bay Ridge watering hole and reminisce about getting beat up by the Brothers, but only a dozen or so would show up. In the Spring of 2015, we decided to track down all our fellow graduates and summon them in November to a grand 50th reunion feast at Carroll Gardens' Marco Polo Restaurant. As the months passed, we learned that at least two dozen Lancers had fallen from their steeds over the decades, while others were ailing, leaving us with a pool of only 125 to invite. But our plans weren’t going too well. Many claimed our correspondence and phone calls had aroused dormant PTSD nightmares of various torture routines they had endured on Park Place. One classmate vividly recalled a sermon delivered in December 1960, on the first anniversary of the plane that crashed on Sterling Place & Seventh Avenue, a little over a block away, a disaster that took 134 lives in all. The freshman class had been herded into St. Augustine church to pray for those departed souls, whereupon the priest who administered last rites at the site of the wreckage described horrific details of strewn body parts, wondering whether the decedents had committed masturbation prior to their last confession which would

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

Spring 2009

n 1965 I graduated from St. Augustine High School, on Park Place in the Slope, an all-boys slaughter mill run by the Catholic Diocese.

by Joe Enright

L ance the

St. Augustine DHS Alumni Association

St. John Baptist De La Salle. pray for us!

Live Jesus in our hearts, forever!

100th Anniversary Celebration | page 4 Also In This Issue • Lancer Hall of Fame • Reflection of Brothers Boys • Reunion Recap • Lancer Legacy • Scholarship Program • Golf Outing

have, of course, qualified them for a one-way ticket to…HELL! “Don’t let that be your fate, boys!” he thundered from the pulpit. There was only one thing left to do: bombard the class with social media! We created a Facebook page and began speculating that Charlie Purpura, the deceased Brooklyn-born screenwriter of the 1983 Hollywood movie, Heaven Help Us (Donald Sutherland, Kevin Dillon, Andrew McCarthy, Wallace Shawn) was kicked out of Augustine, just like me, although I got reinstated after promising to stop masturbating. The flick, filmed in Sunset Park (St. Michael’s) and Gowanus (Carroll Street Bridge), was about the impact a sadistic Brother at a school just like Augustine had on the students’ bodies. We reached out to his widow and announced she would address the Reunion. In the grand social media tradition, very little of this was true but it got us some RSVPs. Then we began posting a mini biography of every classmate. Themes emerged from the postings: a quarter of the class had seen military service during the Vietnam war years. Many had forged careers in public safety, and just as many in education.

Those who had achieved great success in other professions often were generous in giving back. We created slideshows featuring some of these lives of service and honoring the deceased. After gaining access, we also shot videos inside Augustine, recalling notable beatings. We posted all of this on Facebook and YouTube and emailed the links. More RSVPs! My last task was to create a piece to elicit nostalgia for our teenage years. So, I uploaded to YouTube a 20-minute slideshow, featuring a musical score of 60s jazz and Simon & Garfunkel, consisting of hundreds of Brooklyn photos, most from the 1960s, as well as images of the Flushing World’s Fair, Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Shea Stadium, news headlines, 45 RPM record sleeves of the Four Seasons, Temptations, Beatles, etc. I also threw in stills from Heaven Help Us. As a result, some fence-sitters showed up and in the end, 50 Lancers attended the reunion along with their significant others. A glass half-full. Ok, Ok, 40% full.

early 70s, not the 1960s, so thumbs down for you.” Some complained I didn’t show enough Black people, others complained Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Martin Luther King Jr. “were not from around here.” BTW, arguably the most successful member of our class was one of its few Black members, Jeffrion Aubry, a NYS Assemblyman for the past 30 years. (The most notable Red Hooker was John McGettrick.) But most of the comments lamented the “disappearance” of their old neighborhoods. Some were explicitly racist, others more accepting of the sad truth that time waits for no one and nothing ever remains the same. Realizing I had spent much too much time swatting away stupid comments and consoling ex-Brooklynites grieving for their youth, I finally found the page to disallow comments. Except YouTube is still sending them to me so their button must have broken. Or I’m still an idiot. In any event, I’ve been to confession, so take me now, Jesus, quick, I’m ready!

And there I thought my work was done. But alas, my slideshow got caught up in the swirl of YouTube algorithms. Those who began watching one of the hundreds of videos about Brooklyn would eventually be fed my opus, “The 1960s in Brooklyn.” 41,000 views and angry comments by the great unwashed ensued.

"In the grand

Failing to read my description explaining that many photos in the slideshow were not shot in the 1960s or in Brooklyn – the title image for the video is the picture sleeve of Telstar by the British group the Tornados for Pete’s sake – they excoriated me for including “at 9:53 a photo of the World’s Fair, which is in Queens, you idiot!” Or “you show Yankee Stadium at 10:22, which is in the Bronx, moron!” Or a shot of Stillwell Avenue that was “definitely the

very little of

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social media tradition, this was true but it got us some RSVPs." May 2021