Red Hook Star-Revue, December 2023

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POLITICS “You may be correct, but if I feel different, what does it matter?” Two cautionary tales.

by Howard Graubard Tale #1: Sometime around the turn of the century, I was in love. She may have been too. Or maybe it was just a dysfunctional period of mutually assured destruction we’d suffered together. Anyway, we made each other laugh, which is nearly always how my problems began.

Neither of us was involved with anyone else, but, because of what then passed as our careers, any relationship between us would have been a literal conflict of each other’s interests. It was the only reason we even knew each other.

Although we considered our relationship, such that it was, utterly clandestine, everyone in both of our overlapping worlds knew something was going on (probably more than actually was), although I’m not certain that we always did. And, every once in a while, someone would say something, setting us back into a tizzy until we decided to once again pretend the elephant in the room didn’t exist.

Anyway, it became a thing, though what sort of thing was a bit unclear, but it was a running thing for nearly half a year when it reached the point of this anecdote. I would call it friends with benefits, though I’m not sure what the benefits were, or who was getting them, and it wasn’t really friendship per se. You couldn’t call it the friendzone, because, much of the time, it wasn’t all that friendly. Think a less pretty, more Jewish Tracy and Hepburn film with dialogue by Sorkin instead of Gordon and Kanin. There was always this erotic tension, but it wasn’t usually very erotic. The vibe was always a bit wary.

Eventually, we began and ended every day on the phone to each other, and talked several times each day.

Our lives seemingly revolved around each other. I could not tell sometimes whether I was a friend, a boyfriend, or an emotional support animal. We circled around the topic, but never re-

ally discussed it. It just lingered. An awful lot of sparks flew, albeit sporadically, but never really ignited, Life was edgy, which may have heightened the mutual attraction. The arguments were the fights of a couple, but there weren’t the nights of a couple.

On occasion, I’d push for more, both emotionally and physically, with both lesser and greater degrees of subtlety; she generally attempted to avoid the topic, sometimes more fervently, sometimes far less so, and sometimes in an almost kittenesque manner, which probably signaled qualified agreement. At any rate, she didn’t leave. If I didn’t call, she did. On occasion, our libidos rose and fell like a volatile stock exchange, but very few trades were made on the floor. If it were solely about lust, it certainly wouldn’t have been worth the schtuss.

But, I couldn’t break away from my addiction to her; and she seemingly had nothing better to do than to keep spending the time.

After one attempt to convey my romantic feelings, she responded “I’m not that smart, I’m not that funny, I’m not that pretty, and I’m not that nice.” It took me decades to learn she had stolen the line, though I’m convinced she thought she’d made it up at that very moment. At any rate, the Hepburnesque delivery was perfect, but its effect was the opposite of what she’d intended; or maybe it was exactly what she intended; maybe she didn’t know herself.

One afternoon, frustrated with me, she yelled, “you are the most demanding person I’ve ever gone out with!”

I responded, “We’re going out?

Thanks for letting me know; it’s been five months and we’ve not yet been to bed (perhaps untrue in the most literal sense, but close enough for jazz), and I’m still here. If we are actually going out, I’m not the most demanding person you’ve ever gone out with; I’m the least demanding person you’ve

ever gone out with!”

“You may be factually accurate,” she answered, “but if I feel differently, what does it matter?”

Of course, she was right.

A MAYORAL INTERLUDE: Now, to switch topics, but not really, I’m no fan of our Mayor, but when some Democrats blamed him for last year’s New York State Democratic election losses, saying that the Mayor’s assertions about crime were playing into GOP narratives and had convinced people that crime was rising, when statistics proved otherwise, I felt compelled to respond that the mayor hadn’t gotten his narrative from the GOP, he’d gotten if from what he’d heard in the streets.

Voters didn’t fear crime because Adams told them so; Adams told them so because voters feared crime.

The Democratic critics may have been factually accurate, but the voters felt differently, so it didn’t matter.

Tale #2: As Matt Yglesias noted the other day, “the United States has had the strongest inflation-adjusted recovery from the pandemic of any major global economy and has the lowest inflation rate in the G7 this year. Since the pandemic, wages have risen faster than prices…More people are employed today than at any previous time in American history, and the share of working-age people with a job is higher than at any point in the Trump administration. New small businesses have been forming at a record pace during the Biden administration.”

But, in spite of the facts, people feel the economy and the country are going to hell in a handbasket. Economic stats show the economy is (more or less) pretty great, but if voters feel otherwise, what does it matter?

The President, a stutterer with a lifelong history of malaprops, appears frail, elderly and halting, though his ability to speak in crisp sentences is (continued on page 12)

with thanks to my folks

Page 2 Red Hook Star-Revue

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December 2023

GEORGE'S THOUGHTS More Thank You's for all!

L

ast month I thanked our advertisers who are an important part in keeping this paper going. Not simply financially, but in the fact that there are people in the community who still believe that a local publication, a printed one no less, is important enough to put their money behind it.

As a society, we are spending more and more time on our cellphones.

Here is something from a statistics webpage: The average time spent daily on a phone, not counting talking on the phone, has increased in recent years, reaching a total of 4 hours and 30 minutes as of April 2022. This figure is expected to reach around 4 hours and 39 minutes by 2024.

Understand that if you go back 25 years or more, that statistic has risen from zero. Now further understand that I began working in community newspapers here about 45 years ago. In those days, our competition was basically OTHER NEWSPAPERS! I worked for a paper that called itself "The Newspapers for Brownstone Brooklyn." Our circulation, which consisted of people who actually paid for a weekly subscription, was concentrated in Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and perhaps a few people in Red Hook.

Our competition included the Carroll Garden/Cobble Hill Courier, the Park Slope Paper, The Brooklyn Paper, The Prospect Press, The Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News, as well as local advertising magazines such as the Park Slope Shopper.

These were all weekly publications, full of local ads, stories, letters to the editor, and columns and editorials.

When election time came, all the papers were thick with political ads.

Today many of those ads are either free or paid on places like Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok. These are all media where content is created by the user, generally not journalists.

Those old newspapers were a breeding ground for writing careers. As I wrote here after my old boss at the the local paper I worked for in the 1980's passed away: "Graduates of the Phoenix include Pulitzer Prize winners, reporters and editors for the NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Business Week, New York Magazine; authors of major best sellers and major motion pictures, and contributors to publications such as the NY Review of Books and Esquire. Others have gone on to successful careers in politics, business and the non-profit world."

One of my jobs back then was to go to the post office on Atlantic Avenue and wait in line to pick up our mail. Pretty much every day I brought back a bulging sack of mail, full of press releases and checks from subscribers and advertisers. We had to use an intern whose main job was to open up all that mail and sort it into news, arts, sports and business.

The difference today is that everyone— businesses, non-profits, politicians, schools—does most of their public relations online directed to the people already indicating that they are interested. It's not that often that PR is directed to actual media outlets anymore. But when they are, they often work.

Last month we ran a story about the Tipsy Grape Wine Bar on Court Street. The only reason that story ended up in the paper is because the owners emailed us press releases and invitations, and fol-

lowed up. I had never heard of them before, but it turned out they had an interesting story to tell.

There's a famous watering hole here in Red Hook that's closing after 15 years. I and their other followers found out from their note on Instagram. You probably already know more about it than I do.

I am thankful for readers like you. You are still interesting in seeing what's going on in the world around you, not just your self-curated world. You take the risk of finding out about things that may make you uncomfortable.

One example was a story we ran about the David Prize. To most it seems like a wondeful charity, awarding grants to deserving individuals. Relatively few knew that the "prize" is named after and run by a rapacious real estate developer looking to burnish his legacy as well as continuing his family business which has radically changed the Brooklyn skyline.

Many readers told me that they had no idea. who was actually behind the prize.

To me, looking at a newspaper is an adventure. You never know what's going to be on the next page. It's maybe a little more daring than your social network feed in that there may be something that you didn't realize you wanted to know.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with social networks. I'm always looking there as well. But as I mention, it's a self curated source of information. You follow only your interests. Just like picking the kind of news you follow on TV. By being either an MSNBC or a Fox News watcher, you can avoid news that might bother you.

ments. I got to talk to ask a couple of the presidents what their concerns were, and they all mentioned engagement.

It's tough to get people to participate, whether it's voting or coming to meetings, or events.

From what I see, this is a growing problem. It seems to get harder and harder to get people to actually show up for public and community meetings. Perhaps as the smartphone becomes more and more a medium of communication and action, physical things like showing up at a meeting or reading an actual newspaper are seen as inconvenient.

So I'm very grateful to you for actually picking this newspaper up and reading it. I'm grateful to my writers, who fill the pages with facts and adventure.

I'm grateful to our printer, Trumbull Printing, in Connecticut for staying in business. Believe it or not, it's not just newspaper deserts that are becoming a problem, but now there are printer deserts as well. Some upstate papers now have to go to Vermont to get their papers printed.

Finally, while I'm not a big believer in any sort of Divinity (except perhaps for Dwight Gooden), I'm thankful for yule logs, minced meat, brisket, Byriani, and all of the cultural holiday affectations that help make life so wonderful (and tasty!)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS DEAR READER!!!

A few weeks ago I went to the Red Hook Initiative where the Borough President announced new funding for all tenant associations of NYCHA develop-

Cartoon Section with Marc and Sophie

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WON’T LAsT.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, READERS!

Red Hook Star-Revue

BY MARC JACKSON

mj

FUNNY SIDE UP

#7 www.star-revue.com

December 2023, Page 3

SHORT SHORTS:

BY STAR-REVUE STAFF

Winter Holiday Festivities

A little more sparkle, a little less stress; this holiday season we wish you the best! Join Red Hook Recreation Center in a celebration of good times with friends, lots of laughter, and holiday joy. With music, games, and toys, all are welcome to make the best memories with us. Friday December 15, 2023. 5:00 pm - 8:30 pm. Red Hook Recreation Center 155 Bay St, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (718) 722-3211

and owner of Big Dawg Party Rentals..

Committed to delivering exceptional customer service and high-quality rental equipment, Brendan has earned the trust and loyalty of worldrenowned celebrities, industry titans, and Fortune 500 companies.

Big Dawg is located at 74 Bowne Street #46. You may have seen their trucks in the neighborhood.

Free Plug for our friend Tyquan Carter!

Mind Body Soul Earth Reiki Energy Healing Spa phone number (646) 727-0360 after your 1st healing session get 50% off your 2nd visit. Mention code Red Hook Star Revue when you call to get this limited time offer!

Big Dawg Jim Tampakis presents honored community plan

B r e n dan Quinlan, a Red Hook business owner was honored on November 9th at an oncampus ceremony at Syracuse University. Quinlan received the prestigious ’CUSE50 Alumni Entrepreneur Award.

The ’CUSE50 initiative identifies and commends the 50 fastest-growing businesses owned or led by Syracuse alumni. Brendan Quinlan is not only an accomplished entrepreneur but also a devoted family man and proud father of three children. Graduating with a finance degree from Syracuse University in 2007, Brendan embarked on a successful career in the NYC residential and commercial real estate sector.

Today, Brendan stands as the founder

“The Proposed Action would facilitate the development of a seven-story plus cellar, 113,557 gross square foot mixed-use building with 41 parking spaces,” said the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC.) “The New York City Department of City Planning, as lead agency, has determined that the proposed 41 Richards Street Rezoning will not have a significant adverse environmental impact.”

“I’ve been a business owner in Red Hook and my family has been down in Red Hook for over 50 years,” said Jim Tampakis of Tamco Mechanical (54

The building would be a space for entrepreneurs with the goal of bringing back manufacturing in Red Hook.

Ultimately, everybody in Community Board 6 voted in favor of the motion for the rezoning of 41 Richards St., with the exception of two members who abstained (in order to remain unbiased due to their friendship with Tampakis).—Brian Abate

Red Hook Arcade continues

El Red Hook Arcade is staying open for three more weeks this December at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC.) BWAC is located at 481 Van Brunt St., door 7 on the second floor. The arcade is part of the “Raices” Latinx exhibit. The arcade will be open for the first three Saturdays of December and a couple of games will be left out on Sundays too.

“It was a great experience seeing many people come more than once and bring friends,” said creator Matias Kalwill. “We saw some people stay over three hours and we saw friendships being made. We saw people of all ages coming out, including some really big fans under age 12. We’ll also have merchandise available.”—Brian Abate\

Dawn Skeete Wins Award The Caribbean American Center of New York, Inc. (CACNY) has announced that Dawn Skeete of Jam’It Bistro (367 Columbia St.) is the winner of the 2023 Role Model Distinction Award as a community champion.

CACNY’s mission statement says “At the core of our mission lies the unwavering commitment to empower and uplift the lives of immigrants, minorities, and veterans. Our tireless efforts revolve around ensuring equitable access to essential economic, educational, and vocational resources, as well as fostering a rich tapestry of music, arts, culture, and humanitarian services.”

Skeete opened up Jam’It Bistro in 2019 and weathered some tough times during the pandemic; she then had to adjust her business model to rely more on catering and less on foot traffic. As the award shows, her perseverance is paying off. —Brian Abate

Clean Deliveries Act

State Senator Marcela Mitaynes spoke in front of the Red Hook Farm in support of the Clean Deliveries Act. The Act would establish an indirect source review for certain warehouse operations and would require DEC to conduct a study regarding zero-emissions zones.. “The Red Hook Civic Association will work to both spread the word and help towards the passage of The Clean Deliveries Act,” said Nico Kean, a leader from the Civic Association.— Brian Abate

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If you happen to be in New York City, don’t leave without stopping in Red Hook to see one of the best sculpture gardens, art galleries and blacksmithing studios in the world.

You may see the blacksmith at work as well as some of his more than 60 metal sculptures, including a 22 foot dinosaur.

Most of the sculptures are not for sale. Free refreshments wll be provided.

Thank you, Tony Cuonzo

Sculpture Garden and Gallery

Sip, Savor, and Share the Spirit of the Season!

Blacksmithing and Antique Gates

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a tC Gif

Community Board 6 held a meeting on landmarks and land use on Nov. 30 which included an application for rezoning 41 Richards St. in Red Hook, between Seabring and Commerce Sts.

Richards St.) All of our work and ship repairs were done in Red Hook and we never had to go further than Hamilton Ave. I grew up in manufacturing and it upsets me because I’m still in manufacturing and everything that I want to buy, I have to wait for because there are components that are coming from the Far East. Why can’t we make them here like we used to? The concept with this building is to put up a new structure and make it resilient.”

(718) 964-7422 tony.cuonzo@gmail.com 102 Dikeman Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231

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December 2023

The Good, the Bad, and the Maybe from the City of Yes

by Katherine Rivard

“D

o you live on a nice quiet block with no stores, or in a corner residential building that has no stores! Well that is all about to change! Under Mayor Adams City of Yes ‘COY’ communities all over NYC will be getting a store on every corner and even inside residential buildings that exist on corners!”

On Nextdoor, a social media platform used to share local news, a Carroll Gardens resident posted a long lament on the potential negative impacts of Mayor Adams’s three proposed initiatives that make up “City of Yes.” Despite the extreme reactions, including the city’s own praise for the plans, the results of City of Yes, if implemented, are likely to be much more modest.

and all Borough Presidents, except Staten Island’s.

The second initiative, and the one which received such pushback in the Nextdoor post, is City of Yes for Economic Opportunity. In promoting the initiative, DCP highlighted just how archaic and stunting for businesses the existing zoning rules are. For example, many retail neighborhoods allow bike shops, but not bike repair or rental; any bar or restaurant can have music, but in many areas, dancing is not allowed; there are rules about where telegraph offices may be located, but not smartphone repair shops, etc.

ier to convert offices to residential buildings; allow housing above businesses on commercial streets; remove parking mandates for new housing; allow accessory dwelling units; legalize modest apartment buildings (3-5 stories) near transit; and more.

If implemented and used, these zoning changes have the potential to create 100,000 new homes over 15 years.

The public review process for this initiative will begin this spring.

DCP has worked tirelessly to showcase the many benefits of the initiatives, with long presentations to the community boards, evening meetings that inevitably run overtime. Professional groups, like the American Institute of Architects, business improvement districts, like the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, and elected officials have all shown their support.

The city’s press release for City of Yes for Housing Opportunity even includes two quotes of enthusiastic support from Brooklyn Community Board 6’s Chair Eric McClure and District Manager Michael Racioppo.

City of Yes consists of three citywide initiatives proposed by the NYC Department of City Planning (DCP). This is an important clarification, because DCP cannot open a business, build a house, or install solar panels on its own. All it can do is change regulations to make it possible for others— developers, property owners, businesses—to take these actions. DCP is the city’s primary land use agency, which means they control zoning— the rules and regulations that limit what and where things can be built. In essence, DCP hopes its three City of Yes initiatives will modernize NYC’s zoning, with the aim “to support small businesses, create affordable housing, and promote sustainability.”

The 17 new proposals within this initiative aim to remove antiquated rules, simplify others to make it easier to open or expand a business (as the Nextdoor post noted), and allow certain small-scale manufacturing in commercial areas. One of the less expected proposals within the initiative is to “Potentially enable state licensure of casinos.” In a September public meeting, this proposal was barely discussed before a DCP representative noted that there would be “more to come at a later date” and asked the presenter to move on to the next slide.

The Department of City Planning has been presenting to community boards since October as part of a 60day review period. Next, there will be a public hearing in January, 2024, followed by the City Planning Commission Vote, likely around March.

The first initiative, City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality, would make it easier to install solar and wind energy systems, energy storage, and infrastructure that supports greener forms of transportation (like electric vehicles and e-mobility). The proposed changes would also support the installation of greener technologies to heat and cool buildings, and even facilitate more rooftop food production and more composting. The initiative was approved by the City Planning Commission in September, with the support of 25 community boards (of 59),

City of Yes for Housing Opportunity is the final initiative. Almost all housing experts agree that the city’s inability to produce a greater supply of housing leads to housing unaffordability, displacement, and homelessness. Unlike rezonings that target one neighborhood at a time, this initiative has the potential to increase housing (perhaps just a small amount) in every neighborhood. DCP’s proposed changes would add a Universal Affordability Preference, allowing buildings to add 20% more housing, so long as it is affordable; make it eas-

BQE Update

BQE, which would mean all of those who live and work next to the BQE would not have to deal with the fumes or noise pollution it causes. While attendees called for leaders from the project to cap the entire BQE, Suarez and David Vega-Barachowitz, who also helped lead the meeting were unsure if they would have the funding to do so. A similar proposal from a Nydia Velazquez funded study back in 2010 made a similar unfunded proposal.

borhoods planning grant to advance ambitious, community-driven proposals along BQE North and South.

“We’re sharing a toolbox of ideas but this isn’t a place for making final decisions,” said Gretha Suarez of the DOT.

Funding might come from the Connected Communities initiative according to Vega-Barachowitz, as one of the goals of the project is connecting communities that are separated by the BQE.

“Projects studied via this grant will be those that require City-State partnership. NYC DOT will be able to pursue other projects on local streets on its own. NYC DOT expects to hear about grant awards in Spring 2024.”

Goals include making the areas around the BQE greener, connecting neighborhoods, improving traffic and safety, and capping (or tunneling) the

According to the presentation, “In Fall 2023, NYC DOT and NYS DOT submitted a joint application for a federal Reconnecting Communities and Neigh-

After reaching out to the DOT’s press email, Scott Gastel said that “shorterterm maintenance would be addressed by current NYC DOT resources.”

by Brian Abate A Zoom meeting was held with members of the Department of Transportation (DOT) updating the public on the possibility of changes to the BrooklynQueens Expressway (BQE.) More than 120 people attended the meeting on Nov. 8, and the meeting materials will be posted at BQEvision.com.

Red Hook Star-Revue

Pushback on the initiatives have ranged from distress over the potential for hairdressers to pop up in every apartment building to calls that they do not do enough. In one community board meeting, a DCP representative noted that the loosening of rules around businesses allowed in residential buildings (like hairdressers) has been met with the most concern. While these businesses would be permitted by the zoning code changes, most apartment buildings can implement or maintain their own rules.

Furthermore, according to DCP, Brooklyn Community District 6’s vacancy rate hovers around 13%. With so many storefronts already failing to find tenants, it seems unlikely that a swarm of disruptive businesses will open on every corner and in every building as the opening Nextdoor post suggested. The zoning changes will likely not do much beyond making opening or expanding a business slightly easier, by allowing businesses to operate in a wider range

“Working together, the agencies will review projects identified through the current BQE North and South Corridor Vision process for feasibility and alignment with Reconnecting Communities objectives. Then, the agencies will prioritize a minimum of two projects to advance to conceptual design.

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The 17 new proposals within this initiative aim to remove antiquated rules, simplify others to make it easier to open or expand a business and allow certain smallscale manufacturing in commercial areas. of locations.

As for City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, in November, Politico published comments from Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, pushing back on the initiative for its lack of boldness and ability to transform. Although some of his criticism may be motivated by his own interest in taking over for Mayor Adams, some housing experts agree that these are very modest efforts.

Given the mixed reaction of residents being concerned by drastic changes to their neighborhoods, and experts demanding more drastic transformation, it seems that DCP may have gotten these initiatives just right—advancing important changes, while not immediately cutting themselves off at the knees. Still, there is time for continued feedback on the economic opportunity and housing opportunity initiatives. Stay tuned by checking on when DCP will be presenting to Community Board 6, or learn more on DCP’s website.

In the meantime, they wanted to focus on some short-term goals and some areas that are receiving consideration for capping. They include the entrance by Hamilton Ave., some of the areas on Hicks St. (many attendees called for capping between Sackett St. and Kane St.), and there were also calls to make the area by West 9th St. which connects Red Hook and Carroll Gardens safer, and to potentially add in artwork or plants. There is also a possibility of adding markets or green spaces in some of the areas.

While these plans sound great, it is still unclear if and when they will actually take place. Many of the attendees at the meeting called for the entire BQE to be capped. John Leyva, a local leader said that those who are interested can reach out to capthetrench@ gmail.com for more information.

December 2023, Page 5

Local politico looks to change truck routes here

by Brian Abate

A

bill that would re-design New York City’s truck route networking and help Red Hook deal with the increasing number of trucks coming into the neighborhood will hopefully be signed by Mayor Adams in the coming weeks.

Introduction 708-A, sponsored by District 38 Council Member Alexa Aviles “would require the Department of Transportation [DOT] to redesign the city’s truck route network to improve safety, increase visibility, reduce traffic congestion, and reduce vehicle miles traveled.

The bill. passed by the City Council, would require DOT to consult with city agencies, community boards and business improvement districts, and representatives from businesses, environmental and climate justice organizations, street safety organizations, and the trucking, logistics, and lastmile delivery industries.

It would would also require that DOT assess whether daylighting or daylighting barriers which increase the visibility of pedestrians crossing the street should be implemented at intersections on the truck route network, and review and replace truck route signage where necessary.”

The bill would be especially significant in Red Hook given the influx of last-mile distribution centers which have opened in the neighborhood in

recent years. These distribution centers rely heavily on trucks and there are lots of trucks going through Red Hook every day.

“Large corporations cannot continue to exploit our land and roadways without addressing resident needs,” Aviles said. “Communities like the ones I represent should not be forced to bear the weight of the e-commerce boom alone. I’m grateful for the Speaker’s support in making 708 a priority and I look forward to seeing it signed into law.”

On the City Council website, Intro 708A, says “Mayor’s Desk for Signature,” which means it was sent to Mayor Adams but hasn’t been signed yet. According to Aviles’ communications director, Emmet Teran, it is “expected to be signed in the next couple of weeks.”

The community’s feedback regarding the current truck routes and changes that can be made will be significant once this legislation is enacted. This is an issue that the Red Hook Civic Association has already been addressing. I attended a meeting on Nov. 22, in which attendees talked through some of the key issues stemming from the ‘Truckpocalypse” that has hit Red Hook as well as some ideas to mitigate those problems.

“One barge can take 114 tractor-trailers off the road, reducing congestion on our highways, bridges, and our

neighborhood,” said Jim Tampakis of Tamco Mechanical (54 Richards St.) in the Civic Association’s position paper on the “Truckpocalypse.” He has been calling for last-mile warehouses in Red Hook to rely much more heavily on the waterway to transport goods, and now others are doing the same.

“The people of Red Hook deserve safe streets and clean air,” said Matias Kalwill, one of the leaders of the Civic Asso-

ciation. “This can be achieved through an abundance of cargo bikes, improved trucks and vans routes, electrified freight fleets and active waterways.”

Getting Intro 708-A signed into law would be a step in the right direction and may happen soon. This community can play an important role in implementation. The Civic Association is already working to come up with ideas and solutions.

Rocky Sullivan's to get a new look

C

Mark Snyder of the Red Hook Winery and Billy Joel fame.

Last month, before a sparse audience that included only one member from the community (this reporter), an application to re-open Rocky Sullivan's, under the historic name Lundy's, was approved by the committee, led by Karen Broughton, formerly with Assistant Speaker of the NYS Assembly, Felix Ortiz.

In addition to the bar and what they call acoustic music and jazz, they plan a full menu including clams, oysters, clam chowder, hamburger ($26 for a 12 oz grass fed burger on a toasted bun), steak and blue fish in season.

ommunity Board 6 has a small committee to look into new liquor license applications in the area. Their recommendations are sent to the State Liquor Authority who actually grant the licenses. In their process they look to see what the local board has to say.

The presentation was made by new owners Sandra Snyder and Frank Chiaramonte. Snyder is the wife of

Snyder has access to the name, and also recipes from the once famous Lundy's Restaurant of Sheepshead Bay. The proposed plan looks like they will be keeping Rocky's bar and stage. They also plan outdoor tables on two sides, plus they will be operating the garden in the back, as did Rocky's when they were there.

It was mentioned that they are working with the O'Connell Organization, who has an interest in the building.—Fiala

2023

Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

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December 2023

Rundown of latest Civic Association meeting

by Nathan Weiser

T

he Red Hook Civic Association had their November meeting at the Red Hook Rec Center on the 27th.

Formed earlier in the year, the new Association includes a number of committee so more could be accomplished outside of the general meeting.

Each committee meets once a month.

There is the organizing committee, an infrastructure committee, a services committee (public and private) and communications.

At redhookcivic.org there is information about a discourse forum where ideas are discussed. There is a newly created Facebook (Red Hook Civic Association) and Instagram (@RedHookCivic) page.

A vision statement had been discussed at organizing committee meetings and it’s a first step in forming structure. “We see a caring and united Red Hook that celebrates its diversity, and provides a green and healthy urban environment for all its citizens. This includes well maintained housing, equal and ample educational and cultural opportunities, clean air and water, high quality parkland for physical and recreational activity, and flood protection.”

Imre Kovacs, who is on the Service Committee, gave a library update. The old library is being refurbished and the committee has had contact with the construction company.

“On the schedule it was promised to be completed in two years to make it open in March of 2025 but only recently in talking to them did it become clear that even after the construction work is finished there is still inspections, permits, furniture, the electrical and putting in computers, desks and books,” Kovacs said. “The estimate from the construction people is that it will take an additional three to six months.”

There is an effort to have an interim location to provide some services.

Library update

Emmet Cerna, from Councilmember Aviles' office, said that it has been difficult to find an site. One space they are trying is Visitation Church.

“It’s across the street from Coffey Park so it’s centrally located,” Cerna said.

“We have been having conversations with them to make that a site. Until we get to the finish line, it’s still not where we want it to be.”

The library has said that if an interim space is secured they can bring carts of books.

While the old library has been closed, the library has been offering a book mobile, a tech mobile as well as programs at Pioneer Works and RHI.

Express Bus

Nico Kean talked about the effort to get a direct bus from Red Hook into Manhattan.

He pointed out that any approach

Red Hook Star-Revue

to Atlantic Avenue has a lot of traffic most of the day and going the other direction to Smith & 9th St. is the highest access point to the subway with no elevator.

“We need a direct bus through the tunnel, which is right here,” Kean said.

“We need a bus that makes a loop through Red Hook, that makes a few stops around the Houses, Van Brunt, Union or anywhere along that part of Red Hook.”

This proposal has been shared with a lot of elected officials. Seven or eight community organizations, including the Red Hook Business Alliance and the Red Hook Star-Revue, signed on as part of this new coalition supporting this direct bus to Manhattan.

“We shared our version of the document with Alexa’s office because she was interested in the issues,” Kean added. “We don’t care if it is an addition to an existing line as long as it goes into Manhattan. Congressman Goldman was on this early and we are happy because that is federal.”

Kristen Rouse, the Goldman representative, said the congressman wrote an advisory request letter to the MTA regarding what should be done with revenue generated from congestion pricing.

The letter identified Red Hook as an existing transit desert that demands investment. It advocated for expanded bus service and it identified specific bus routes that the community boards have identified needing improvements or restoration of.

There is an effort to think about how to approach water and freight distribution to take trucks off the road.

They are trying to put ideas out there to improve traffic and one way is organizing walks through Hamilton Ave to share and listen to problems as they want this avenue improved.

Hamilton Avenue

This statement was read: The Hamilton Avenue corridor is presently a multi lane speedway for heavy vehicles that merges into quiet 19th century neighborhood streets. It is a hell scape of noise, pollution, and dangerous driving.

These are 10 recommendations for a more calm and rational Hamilton Avenue: A better second truck route through Red Hook including the Halleck Street proposal, camera speed and noise enforcement, implement a 2014 DCP design, make the West 9th Street/Clinton Street pedestrian crossing better than it is, build a buffered bike lane, redesign the tunnel plaza turnabout so it’s not a crazy intersection, new and improved pedestrian street crossings, study and pedestrianize Hamilton Ave, reverse Imlay Street’s direction to accommodate more traffic to the Cruise Terminal and finally to fix the port.

zoning application at CB6 on November 30 at 6:30. The building application is at 41 Richards Street.

The Councilmember supports the application since the building will have industrial use.

Cerna said there was recently a call with the Port Authority and elected officials about the Red Hook Container Terminal. The Port Authority says the pier and port was too big to save since it would cost too much money.

“Alexa's position is how can you say that when there is not even a plan that articulates what can happen,” Cerna said. “We want real investments into the port and a plan that actually sustains a working pier and that prioritizes industrial use.”

Congressman Goldman is very invested in the port.

“He has been a strong advocate for the continued maritime use of the port and is continuing in dialogue with the Port Authority and with EDC,” Rouse said.

“To continue the maritime use, to keep those maritime jobs and to ensure that it is a hub for seeking solutions to the truck congestion in Red Hook.”

Alexa Aviles’ district office will have office hours in Red Hook at the Red Hook Initiative on December 7 and 21 from 11 to 3 pm.

Cerna said there was going to be a re-

The Services Committee has expressed a vision that can make the quality of life better.

Their goal is to create one weekend a month that will bring everybody in the neighborhood together.

“There are other organizations also considering this and we are working together,” Kean said. “The vision is to have it spread throughout Red Hook.

The Red Hook Business Alliance is interested. Now we are on the same page about it.”

Matias Kalwill added that they are basing this on an existing practice that smaller communities have within cities where local businesses might have an idea round a single weekend.

The Record Shop, Mark’s Pizza, Basin Gallery and Red Hook Open Studios have also been in dialogue about this once a month event. The plan is to have a brochure to say when it is happening.

Kalwill gave an update on the infrastructure committee. There was a recent NYC DOT meeting about the future of the BQE. Traffic issues came up about the coastal resiliency in regards to the possibility of creating an alternate truck route through Halleck Street.

Kalwill added that they do not want the alternative truck routes to go through residential streets, the housing complexes, through schools or through parks.

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December 2023, Page 7

Helmsley Trust invests in mental health program

by Nathan Weiser

T

he Institute for Community Living (ICL) launched an innovative $2.3 million three-year pilot program funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust aimed at addressing the mental health crisis in Brooklyn and NYC.

The goal is to address gaps in support for people who experience serious behavioral health challenges and housing insecurity while clearing waiting lists for Mobile Treatment Programs.

Individuals will now be able to continue their path towards stability utilizing a right-sized level of IMT services,” said Tracy Perrizo, Program Officer.

The pilot, STEPS will help individuals who are ready for and can benefit from less intensive services.

There are more than 1,300 individuals waiting for placement in IMT and ACT, and STEPS will move people off the wait lists while providing current ACT and IMT participants with more appropriate services.

The planning for this STEPS program started six months ago, according to Bridgette Callaghan, Vice president of the IMT programs at ICL. “This idea floated to the top and seems to have some teeth to it,” Callaghan said. “We knew Helmsley Charitable Trust was looking to do some grant

There are more than 1,300 individuals waiting for placement in IMT and ACT funding and they loved the idea. Thus we were awarded with the grant.”

ICL is a NYC nonprofit mental health and shelter provider with their hub and programs based in Brooklyn.

Their hub is in East New York located at 2581 Atlantic Avenue.

At the Hub in East New York, there is a food pantry, all of the ACT team, care coordination and a Community Healthcare Network medical clinic.

They are hopeful than when people come to the hub that they will be able to link them to other services that might be useful even if it is just the food pantry.

“We are city wide, we have services in the Bronx and Queens and so on but the majority are in Brooklyn,” Callaghan said. “The bulk of the work will be staff going into the community to meet folks where they are.”

The IMT program, which has only been around five or six years, works

with harder to engage folks who have a history of violence.

ACT is for people who are in shelter placement and their 1,000 person waitlist helped lead to the need for STEPS. The long waitlist for IMT and ACT not getting services or not getting the appropriate level of services made STEPS necessary.

“It flowed into this conversation of how can we move people from our current program to bridge the gap between the level of intensity that we were servicing folks at and just traditional out patient, what can that look like,” Callaghan said.

Until now, IMT and ACT clients ready for less intensive services have not had the option to reduce their service levels to the scale they need to continue to build independence and maintain stability. While they remain on the limited number of high-intensity IMT and ACT program rosters for longer than needed, the waitlists for new IMT and ACT clients grow longer.

Many folks involved with IMT and ACT are on injection medication that they need once a month, which helps keep them stable and focused.

Some of these people aren’t ready for a clinic based level of care, which is another way STEPS will try to be a

Bridgette Callaghan

benefit.

Those people might just need staff to continue showing up once a month for the medication appointment, which is what they will do if that is the level of support that works for them.

“Right now, in New York City, the shelter system is the most likely place for someone experiencing mental health issues and housing insecurity to end up. Our city desperately needs more options for people to receive critical care and support,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif. “The new pilot from the Institute for Community Living will provide supportive housing and care options to many of our neighbors in need. These are the types of programs our city needs to invest in to ensure we’re building a true economy of care.”

What the war looks like in Italy

by Dario Pio Muccilli, EU correspondent

T

here are strong feelings about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Universities have been occupied by students, mostly left partisans, across all the boot: Florence, Pisa, Trieste, Naples, Rome, Bologna. Those students feel the struggle in Palestine pretty much as an internal matter, condemning the government for its support towards Israel.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has indeed proved herself as Atlantic as she was in the Ukrainian crisis: total support for Tel-Aviv. That pushed many students to express accusations of fascism directed at both Israel and

the Italian government. The latter did not choose a strong stance—letting demonstrators protest everywhere without any major restrictions. Even though some minorities in universities called for police intervention the latter didn't intervene, due to the Ministerial orders.

The university left support for Palestine is historical, although support for Hamas now falls within more blurred lines). On the other hand, it is astonishing that Giorgia Meloni and mostly her party does not.

Brothers of Italy is the direct descendant of the Fascist Party and its spin-

off in the Italian Republic, that being the Italian Social Movement.

The latter distinguished itself for its anti-Semitism, as its leader, Almirante, was a senior propagandist during the regime against the Jews.

It wasn't rare not so many years ago to see Palestinian flags all around the headquarters of the youth organization of the Party, nor in other party-affiliated areas.

Being in charge is different

But actually leading the Government, we know, is a heavy burden and Meloni, as well as her establishment, had

to force the change among the lower grades of the party. One cannot say that Meloni has ever been anti-Semitic, but neither can say that her political galaxy has ever been pro-Israel.

What we see is rather a Machiavelli-style transformation, aimed to get credit in Europe and abroad.

Meloni is a far-right underdog and she needs recognition. Her strategy works–Politico declared her the most important politician in Europe–but it's always staggering to see a similar calculus in the predicament of a war.

in my underwear I say to myself ning the water. A minute later I see tering. I open both doors to give him NYC Wildlife Encounters hall my spider in peril. I scoop him up and freedom. Soon he bursts out in the “It’s either him or me.”

by Gene Bray

I

n 1980 I moved to a rooming house in Manhattan. Three feet of my room was below ground level.

One morning I woke up, opened my eyes, and saw a cat staring at me from less than a foot away. Our eyes lock.

I’m terrified. Afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. It's calmly studying me. Is it the Devil?

When I finally inhale, it explodes like a rocket onto the radiator and out the door.

A few weeks later I hear something plop down on the floor, turn, and see a rat walking along my wall. Now I explode out the door. Standing in the

Page 8 Red Hook Star-Revue

I take a breath, quietly open the door, tiptoe back inside, grab a 6 ft solid iron bar, and start pounding the floor.

He comes out from under the dresser, calmly backtracks along the wall, climbs up the radiator and leaves.

Bam! I slam the window so hard it nearly breaks, and I say to myself "You are one badass dude.”

There are 3 rooms on my floor. And a bathtub outside my door. I’m the only one who uses it. My neighbors go upstairs for showers. The bathtub is all mine. Well, me and a spider. I always make sure he isn’t in the tub before I turn the water on.

One day I’m rushing and start run-

blow on him. Time and time again.

Nothing. He’s gone. I feel so guilty.

Like a murderer. I get some tin foil and gently wrap him up, to keep his body from the roaches, and tuck him in a tiny crevice. Buried in the bathroom he loved.

The female Black Widow spider is 3 times the size of the male. After mating she tries to eat him.

That bitch. I wonder if there’s a lot of gay Black Widow spiders.

The female must have some good stuff. I like that stuff too.

I don't think I like it that much though.

One morning just before dawn, I step into the hallway and see a moth flut-

www.star-revue.com

fresh air. Just at that moment a sparrow swoops in and gets him.

Geez. I shoulda just minded my business.

Months fly by. Then one morning as I’m getting in the tub, I catch the tiny crevice out of the corner of my eye. My spider. Let me see if death has changed his appearance. I carefully unfold the foil and drop him in my palm. He looks just the same. I gently blow on him. Again and again.

And even again. What!. He jolts. Again and again I blow. It seems each blow is making his movements stronger.

Soon he’s his old self. I gently put him down and he walks off.

Wow. That little guy is hard to kill.

December 2023

The story of Steve's Key Lime Pie is also the story of the neighborhood

by Brian Abate

T

he Barnacle Parade has become an annual celebration in Red Hook, which began on the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in 2013. The parade celebrates the community’s resiliency and a tradition of the parade is that it ends at Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies (185 Van Dyke St.,) where the family business gives members of the procession free key lime pies and drinks.

I spoke to Steve and Victoria Tarpin along with their son Derek about their beginnings, making it through some challenging times, and the changes they’ve seen in the neighborhood.

Victoria gave me a tour and I got to see how the pies are made.

Steve opened up the business 25 years ago and “it originally started after my dad couldn’t find a pie that was up to his standard,” Derek said. “He’s originally from Florida but he moved up here.”

feet at the entrance to the business.”

since moving to the neighborhood.

“I saw someone come in earlier in the day with a raft and I just said ‘I’m out of here’ and I took Derek and left,” Victoria said.

“You used to be able to find places that were much more affordable,” said Victoria. “Not such expensive rents. I remember coming from Columbia over to the pier with Derek and he would take his shoes off and just run around.

He would go see the neighbors and everyone would take care of him. We got to know everyone, and we’d go home at the end of the day. His feet were so dirty but he was always so happy. We could never do that today.”

“I remember driving down Ferris St. and Greg O’Connell was stuck and said ‘You’ve got to get me home,’” Steve said. “We actually didn’t get hit as hard as the people on Beard St. I think they were eight feet underwater and we were around four or five feet when it was at its worst. It felt like the damage was done and it was time to get to work but we were without electricity for at least a month if not longer.

“The neighborhood was great though, everyone came in and helped out,” Victoria said. “It was people of all ages.”

“I made the pies growing up and I’d been making them for friends and family for years before moving here,” Steve continued. “I saw what was around here and didn’t think it was up to snuff so I thought I’d throw mine into the mix.”

One of the important points is that there is no secret formula that makes the pies so tasty. It’s a matter of not cutting corners, putting in the hard work, and using the right ingredients.

Key West Lime Juice is very different from the juice that the Tarpins use.

One of the keys to Tarpins’ success is using real key limes for their juice.

“The majority of what’s sold on the market as key lime juice isn’t even really key lime juice,” Steve said. “The packaging is very deceptive. That stuff is great for stripping paint and removing rust but it doesn’t belong in food!”

Though Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies has always used authentic ingredients, the business came from humble beginnings and Steve actually started out at a studio apartment on Smith St. for a few years. At first, he relied on “An oven which was held shut with a bungee cord, and at one point I was using three studio-sized refrigerators. I had very helpful neighbors who would let me use their walk-in fridge.”

The Tarpins also talked about Hurricane Sandy which devastated Red Hook.

“It was a shit show,” Steve said. “I was down at the pier and I was holding out until the water started lapping at my

Red Hook Star-Revue

“If someone did that today, their kid would be taken away from them,” said Steve. “The thing I always said about Red Hook when I came here was you don’t choose Red Hook; it chooses you.

“Back in the day there wasn’t all this traffic along Van Brunt St. There could be two cars stopped in the middle of the street and no one honked because once they finished their conversation and they went on their way, then it was your turn to have a conversation.

They say the definition of a New York minute is the time from when the light turns green to when you beep your horn. You just can’t do that anymore.

Back then everyone knew each other.”

I also asked them about any predictions they had for the neighborhood.

One memory is the six bottles of mezcal that got scattered in the flood.

Neighbors came over and were helping clean and every time they found one of the bottles, they would take a break from searching.

“The turnout from those initial first few days and then later on when we opened the doors to the public was amazing,” Steve said. “It was weird because a lot of the people from the surrounding neighborhoods weren’t really affected at all but lots of people came here just to look and see how bad the people on the other side had it.”

The big response helped inspire the tradition of giving away key lime pies at the end of the Barnacle Parade.

“It was a way to reciprocate to the neighborhood because we always get the help when we need it,” Victoria said. “It’s so nice to see all of the neighbors and the kids at the parade.

Steve would also always have a cooler with beer, some tequila, and some whiskey. Now, in the last few years Wet Whistle Wines has donated the drinks. It’s just really nice to reciprocate the good intentions and the love we’ve felt from our neighbors.”

Steve and Victoria also spoke about changes they’ve seen in Red Hook

“Now you have the big Amazon facilities and it’s become a place for the lastmile distribution centers,” Steve said.

“The distance to the LIE and the tunnel makes it a perfect spot for them.

I’m not sure what that means for us for the future but it seems to be the direction the neighborhood is going. ” As to Steve’s future, they are getting a new machine to squeeze the limes.

“The old machine that we’re retiring, I’ve had that thing for over two decades,” Steve said. “It’s been rebuilt two or three times and it has been a real workhorse. It would be great if we could get another 20 years out of the new one, which is a little different in that it’s made specifically for smaller fruits so we’re very excited about it.”

The machines use brute force to squeeze the limes and do not waste any juice. While the key lime part is obviously what they are known for, the graham cracker crust is also excellent.

Both Steve and Victoria said they were thankful for the companies who supply their ingredients. They use NY's Birkett Mills to supply wheat and they use honey which is also locally sourced. They get their ingredients from local businesses when they can.

www.star-revue.com

It’s a matter of not cutting corners, putting in the hard work, and using the right ingredients.

“We know we charge a premium for our product but we really try as hard as we can to at least stabilize our prices,” Steve said. “The best way to do that is with savings in-house with the process or with materials. Fortunately, we’re able to buy key limes by the pallet. Our milk comes from a dairy in Wisconsin and we try to buy direct and cut out the middleman as much as we can. Other times we’ll save costs with stupid stuff like fewer napkins.

“Another thing is not using a fancy bag with a label, just using a plain bag,” Victoria said. “We try to economize in some ways but never in the ingredients and the pies.”

They also try to be environmentally friendly which is why they sell boxed water instead of water bottles. The little things can add up to make a big difference.

“I detest the plastic packaging so that has to go and we’re trying to source that out,” Steve said.

“Another thing is using recyclable spoons even though they’re a little more expensive because we try to be conscious about the planet,” Victoria said.

I also asked the Tarpins about their favorite pies. Derek said his favorite right now is the Victoria (a key lime pie dipped in chocolate with a spicy kick,) and added “It’s an underrated choice but the spiciness and sweetness go together really well.”

Sometimes I’m in the mood for the tart and then other days I’m craving the chocolate so for me it changes depending on the day,” Victoria said.

“I really try to encourage first-timers to try the tart,” Steve said. “The swingle (a key lime pie dipped in chocolate) was more of an afterthought. It’s more of a novelty and I get that people love it, and for good reason, it’s freaking amazing, but I think if people visit us, they should start by trying the oldschool pie. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”

December 2023, Page 9

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Opinion: Dan's disappointing vote

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A

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Call or text George at 917 652-9128 or email gbrook@pipeline.com Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue

lot seems to escape Dan Goldman. When the writer and Red Hook resident Sousan Hammad stood in front of his office decrying the war that has claimed the lives of dozens of her family members, Goldman didn’t seem to notice.

The letters delivered to him pleading for an end to the violence in Gaza, signed by more than a thousand of his constituents, have gone similarly unremarked upon. As for the rally last Sunday at Grand Army Plaza, where a peaceful gathering had hoped to engage him in conversation, Goldman managed to ignore that too.

Despite possessing this clever knack for avoiding the people in his district, Goldman does occasionally stick his head out to release a prepared statement. A recent one, dated November 27, gives some insight into why Goldman has so little time for those unfortunate souls grieving over lost loved ones. In asking for continuing military aid to Israel “without conditions,” and for all Americans to “unite in support of our close ally without any domestic political brinkmanship,” Goldman implies that if you don’t like this war, you’re dishonoring the country by saying so. His statement makes no mention of the more than fourteen thousand people, almost half of them children, killed in Gaza so far.

Many of his constituents are opposed to Goldman’s bellicose stance. “We don’t believe there is any military solution,” said Megha Barnabas, an artist, dancer, and mother living in Park Slope, and co-founder of the NY-10 Neighbors group advocating for an immediate ceasefire. “A lot of us are just very heartbroken, not only by what is happening but also by [Goldman’s] refusal to acknowledge the energy we’ve all put in. He’s not even saying anything.”

Dan Goldman will never agree with NY-10 Neighbors’ calls to, in Barnabas’s words, “address military aid to Israel” and its further goal of “ending the occupation and apartheid.”

And he’s of course entitled to his own viewpoint. But a Representative’s job is to listen to reasonable dissenting ideas from the people who elected him. Killing children is always unacceptable and never justified. That Goldman can’t even countenance this opinion with a response is unfathomable.

What has Dan Goldman been doing since October 7, if not engaging with the concerns and pain expressed by the people in his district? For one, he voted to censure the only PalestinianAmerican in Congress, a fellow Democrat no less.

As the death toll in Gaza was first beginning to mount, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib posted a video on X (Twitter) calling for a cease-fire.

Among the featured footage was a

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He voted to censure the only PalestinianAmerican in Congress, a fellow Democrat. group of protesters using the phrase, “from the river to the sea.” When pressed about why these words had appeared in the video, Tlaib tweeted, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”

Goldman disagrees, and says the phrase is “widely understood to call for the elimination of Israel and all of the Jews living there.” Again, Goldman is more than entitled to his opinion. But he is far from justified in taking the extraordinary step of siding with the extreme right members of Congress in their hit job on Tlaib.

If Tlaib, in calling for an end to violence but using the wrong phraseology, is worthy of censure, then what about Congressman Max Miller, who went on Fox News and said of Palestine: “we’re going to turn that into a parking lot”?

Or Senator Marsha Blackburn who accused Tlaib, without any evidence, of having “alleged ties to Hamas?”

Dan Goldman hasn’t commented on either of these statements, let alone advocated for a formal censure of those elected politicians.

“Your vote in favor of this censure of Congressmember Rashida Tlaib was out of step with your constituents, and is nothing short of a betrayal of the leadership we expect from elected officials in our district.” So reads a letter delivered to Goldman’s office

by NY-10 Neighbors. No counterargument has yet been put forth.

It is surprising for a freshman Congressman, elected in a primary with 25.9% of the vote, to take a position so out of step with his peers. Only about 10% of his fellow Democrats joined the Republicans to censure Tlaib. Less surprising is that NY-10 Neighbors are considering launching a challenge for Goldman’s seat.

“The vast majority of the votes actually went to more progressive candidates than him,” Barnabas said about last year's primary for the newly created congressional seat. “That’s something we can leverage.”

She added that the group’s current focus continues to be getting Goldman to do “all he can to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”

December 2023

pastime than essential listening, but it’s a good reminder or a better excuse if you missed Crease the first time around.

am I to cast doubt on a good old revival? If Jackson’s efforts get Robert Plant to record a cover of Leslie Sarony’s “Ain’t it Grand to be Blooming Well Dead,” it’ll all be well worth it.

A step ahead at looking back. In April, I wrote about Joe Jackson’s 1981 album Jumpin’ Jive in a review of Taj Mahal’s recent album of early jazz songs. Since then, Rickie Lee Jones has issued a respectable collection of crooner tunes, and countless rockersof-certain-ages have done so before, generally with far lesser results than Jackson, Jones and Mahal (special dispensation given to Bob Dylan’s Shadows in the Night). It’s hard to imagine a rush to take on the Music Hall songbook, but Jackson was already ahead of the retro curve once. His new Mr. Joe Jackson presents: Max Champion in ‘What A Racket!’ delves into the distinctly British tradition with a set of songs purportedly salvaged from the dustbins of musical history.

Music Hall was a particularly working class pastime from the middle 19th century into early in the 20th. The songs in a music hall show might run bawdy or morbid, but were almost always catchy and cheeky. The Beatles (or at least Paul McCartney) dabbled in the style with such songs as “Honey Pie” and “Your Mother Should Know.”

More recently, the Vaudevillian tradition was namechecked in the movie Mary Poppins Returns with the song “A Cover is Not the Book” and The Royal Doulton Music Hall.sequence. But those are sanitized versions of what could get pretty caustic for its day.

Jackson hews true to the spirit with these eleven songs (coming Nov. 24 from earMUSIC on CD, LP and download) and all in good fun. He puts on a thick cockney and the members of his 12-piece orchestra chime in on sing-along choruses. There’s a lot of bemoaning one’s lot, a soppy dedication to a hardworking mum and enough boozers and bangers to keep it on heavy rotation. The title track might be about London but it’s as fine an urban anthem as when Ralph and Ed sang “My Love Song to You” (“The garbage cans go clang / the radiator goes bang / and the vacuum cleaner makes a racket, too”) in one of The Honeymooners finer moments. Interestingly enough, it’s hard to find any information on Champion, but who

Red Hook Star-Revue

Another decade, another blast of Bassoon. It’s hard to say just what a bassoon power trio should include, maybe hurdy-gurdy and viol de gamba. Brooklyn’s Bassoon’s got none of that, though. The heavy prog-metal Brooklyn band put out their debut in 2012 and somehow only now have decided to follow it up with Succumbent (Nov. 17, Nefarious Industries, CD and download). The band was formed in 2006 by guitarist Stuart Popejoy and Harvey Milk bassist Steve Tanner with a drum machine, but by the time of the first album (which actually included bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck on one track) had reconstituted as Popejoy on bass with guitarist Sean Moran and drummer John Mettam.

They all have chops honed and sharpened on the NYC jazz scene, but they don’t let that get in their way. The new album blasts through a half dozen instrumentals in just over a half hour with pinpoint accuracy and pounding rhythms. They make complexity sound easy.

Nonbinary punk anxiety. Way back in 1978, when punk meant guitars, back before genders were fluid and before a self-proclaimed “all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger” named Phranc was making ambiguous waves in identity certainty, somewhere on the periphery of the L.A. punk scene, was born a band called Nervous Gen-

der. They were part of the city’s initial thrust of weirdo punk, the initial DIY freak-flag wavers that generally precedes the punk conformity to prescribed notions of nonconformity.

Phranc, in fact, was an early member.

Later members in the band’s early history included Paul Roessler (who went on to play with Nina Hagen), Don Bolles (who later played with 45 Grave) and an 8-year-old drummer named Sven Pfeiffer. In 1981, Nervous Gender released their first album, Music From Hell, on Subterranean Records. On Halloween, 2023, that album got an expanded reissue (double LP, CD, download from Dark Entries Records), swollen to 31 tracks with added covers of songs originally by the Sex Pistols, Lou Reed and Carly Simon. There’s nothing comfortable about Music From Hell. The music at times can be quirky and camp, almost with a show-tune sensibility. At other times, it can recall early, creepy DEVO or the atonality of fellow Los Angelenos Flipper. But song titles like “Regress for You,” “Exorcism” and “Bathroom Sluts” make clear that there’s little cute about it. Nervous Gender sang about depravity, maybe their own but more so society’s. It’s not for everyone, but they were early proponents of queercore and electropunk and are still active under the name “Nervous Gender Reloded.” It’s good to have them back on the map.

Recrease, remodel. Montrealer Kee Avil’s 2022 debut Crease was all over the place in the best of ways. It was a fascinating record, intimate but expansive, sort of electro-postpunk with a PJ Harvey vibe. She’s promising a follow-up for 2024, but as a holdover has released a remix EP (Nov. 15, Crease Remixed, Constellation Records, download and streaming) that’s as surprising as was the fulllength. The four tracks seem to strip the songs from the songs while keeping the sentiments in place. The strongest are Ami Dang’s reworking of “And I” and Claire Rousay’s dreamy “I, too, bury,” both ethereal settings that only hint at the originals. The EP is more

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Effed again. Toronto’s Fucked Up keeps rolling out the hardcore microdoses. With three songs totaling 10 minutes, the new Show Friends (Nov. 7, self-released, digital and streaming) shows them at one of their most likeable influence states, a mix of early Who and Husker Du, taut and a little more complicated than it needed to be. The third track, “What the Sun Saw,” is a glorious piece of reverberation and repetition, recalling the earliest days of psychedelic rock. I’m still waiting for the next in their epic Zodiac series, but in the meantime, I’ll take every morsel they decide to drop.

Dolly can do what she wants. Her version of a rock star is full of bombast and that’s what she wanted. She didn’t call the album Rock Singer, after all. She’s shooting for the arenas.

Dolly Parton loves a good costume and for Rockstar (Nov. 17, Butterfly/Big Machine, 2CD, 4LP, download) she’s all gussied up like a can of Rockstar energy drink. Her own “World on Fire” is an affective example and a high point of the album of mostly classic rock covers that come off as rote, amped-up exercises. Her “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (with Pink and Brandi Carlisle) means little in a world where we can still look up the cover Björk and PJ Harvey did at the BRIT Awards in 1994. And her version of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You” (with REO singer Kevin Cronin guesting) can’t hold a candle to the cover of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” by the Peruvian band Thank the Lord for Satan that hit streaming services at the end of November. But it’s her album, and if she wants to interpolate “I Will Always Love You” on two different tracks, she can damn well do so. Parton playing dress-up games immediately pales against Parton being sincere. She also does a version of “Stairway to Heaven,” joined by Lizzo, but the version she included on her 2002 album Halos & Horns was better by a mile because she was doing the song, rather than copping the style. If it gives her more money to buy books for kids, support AIDS, COVID and cancer efforts and protect animals, then by all means. I’m not sure it deserves to be the highest charting album to date, though. Halos & Horns and the other two folk/bluegrass albums she did for Sugar Hill around the turn of the century are all available on streaming services. That’s where she’s the real star.

December 2023, Page 11

HOWARD

(continued from page 2)

only incrementally worse than it has ever been, and his health and stamina are remarkable for a man of his age, especially with his daunting work schedule.

By contrast, his likely opponent, only four years younger, spent his White House years lounging in “executive time” while binge watching Fox and other junk-TV; he is grossly obese and out of shape, and his sentences, though sounding less halting, are usually just nonsensical streams of incoherent word salad, when they aren’t cribbed from the speeches of the Fuhrer and Il Duce (and sometimes, even when they are).

But, in spite of the truth, voters feel the President is a doddering old man, while his predecessor is seen as the picture of vim and vigor. If voters feel the truth is not truthful, what does the truth matter?

The President, faced first with his party’s paper-thin Congressional majorities subject to the whims of iconoclasts, and then with a House with no majorities at all, managed to push through major legislative victories by practice of the art of the possible (of which he is a patient Zen master), while restoring America as leader of the free world. And yet, he is perceived as weak and ineffective.

Contrast this his likely opponent, a man whose major legacy is the curtailment of women’s right to control their own bodies, and who prepares to return to office promising to ruthlessly crackdown on dissent with armed force, to jail or financially ruin his enemies, to replace the professional Civil Service with partisan ideologues and blind loyalists, while

taking away people’s healthcare. The only reason not to expect him to fulfill his nightmarish promises is the blithering incompetence he has demonstrated previously.

But, while this is all factually accurate, even factoring out my own ideological biases, such as they are (mainly, that, as an election lawyer, I can only make a living if we continue to be a democracy), if the voters feel otherwise, what does it matter?

Joe Biden may arguably be the best President of my 65 year-old lifetime.

Reluctantly, running, while implying a promise of a caretaker administration to restore our national dignity out of the depths of depravity and degradation in which it had been dragged, he has succeeded admirably and gotten us through a pandemic into as soft an economic landing as was manageable under the circumstances.

But, except for his Vice President, he is probably the potential Democratic nominee most likely to go down to defeat, putting our government solidly into the hands of a Party headed by a fascism-adjacent madman and controlled largely by ultra-right wing ideological fanatics.

TALE #1; THE DENOUNCEMENT: Shortly after the argument which forms this essay’s leitmotif, my turn of the century inamorata and I did proceed further in our relationship, but we ultimately, and somewhat rapidly, moved on. Perhaps the considerable erotic tension we’d suffered could never hope to survive the reality of the fulfillment of the expectations that tension had generated, but, when I think of it all these days, I still credit the nosy and noisy bystanders, who could not mind their own business, and had once again intruded, providing us the excuse we needed to call

half a year a day. Though, at the time, I was less than thankful, and more than a bit furious, it was almost certainly for the best. A bit more than a year later, I was engaged and she was with child. I certainly don’t regret my marriage, and she certainly doesn’t regret her children, and I wonder whether we’d have gotten there if we’d not first survived each other.

And mostly, what I got left with was a deep and penetrating observation, which almost, but not quite, made it all worthwhile: “You may be factually accurate, but if I feel differently, what does it matter?”

TALE #2; THE DENOUNCEMENT: Perhaps perception is more important than reality after all.

And that is what I fear is the case in our national politics.

Specifically, l worry that, in contrast to the personal rebounds I’ve documented for the protagonists of my other story, the denouncement of our national story will be far less happy.

Nearly every national Dem won’t say publicly what they know in their hearts and minds.

Voters’ perceptions of Joe Biden may not be factually inaccurate, but voters clearly feel otherwise, so what does it matter?

Not to mention one factually accurate factor, which anyone with very elderly parents doubtless already knows. At a certain age, old folks, no matter how sharp and healthy, can turn awful frail, awful fast. Actually, as Hemingway noted about bankruptcy, it happens gradually, then suddenly.

Yet, for intra-party opposition to this impending disaster, Dems are presented with an eccentric, well-meaning, but out of her depth, self-help author (Marianne Williamson) and an unknown Democratic Congressman

from Minnesota (Dean Phillips), who, fearing the dawn of authoritarianism on the horizon, attempted to ask every prominent national Dem to run in the President’s place, and getting the cold shoulder everywhere, when he was even acknowledged at all, finally decided to run himself, in the hope that it would open up the field.

Phillips has even foresworn his safe relatively seat in Congress. A profile in political courage for our times, and like all such profiles, he’s the object of scorn, when he is noticed at all.

The Dem establishment response to this cry for a clarifying moment, when not dismissive laughter or ad hominin attacks, has been to join arms to stop it. In Michigan, Phillips’ ballot access is being challenged based upon technicalities stemming from his attempt to participate in the party-forbidden New Hampshire primary; in Florida the Party’s State Committee decided not to have a primary based on its conclusion Biden is unopposed. .

In New York, some Democratic political operatives approached to conduct Phillips’ ballot access work have looked at the significant money being offered and turned it away, for fear of the consequences to their business if they dare to take it.

It is as if establishment Dems consider Joe Biden to be a frail hothouse flower who cannot be exposed to the cold, harsh air of intra-party competition, lest he wither and die, requiring that he be protected at all costs.

They may be right about that, but if they are correct, then that is not, as they seem to believe, an argument for Biden’s renomination.

Rather, it is an argument to rethink.

When someone tells you, “You may be factually accurate, but if I feel differently, what does it matter?,” maybe you should listen and learn.

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Reserve a table via RESY

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158 BEARD ST, BROOKLYN, NY 11231

December 2023

Can I say enough good things about this store? (no–it's great!)

T

essa Williams isn’t your average business owner. In a world focused on maximizing profits and efficiency, she centers her work on art and community. Recently, she was packing a pair of delicate vases to be shipped when she noticed that the online order was from a nearby address. She called the customer, explained the situation, then refunded the delivery fee, hopped on her bike, and delivered the vases herself. With a curly mop of soft auburn curls, and a ready smile, she is approachable and fun—the type of store owner you’d imagine a TV show protagonist stopping in to say “hi” to while leaning on the counter. And her store, Brooklyn Collective (212 Columbia Street between Union and Sackett Streets), is exactly the type of charming business you want in your neighborhood, a cozy store filled with handmade pieces of art ranging from vintage clothing to handmade placemats.

Williams has the style of a designer (she worked in J. Crew’s design department for several years), the kindness of a mother (she has two sons), and the cool girl quality of your best friend (picture cheetah-print booties, artful silver rings, and an even-paced, calm manner of speaking). She started Brooklyn Collective in 2004 with a friend—Rachel Goldberg of Union Max (another eclectic shop, just down the block at 110 Union Street).

by Katherine Rivard with the goal of creating cool, affordable dresses. A few years using a tiny storefront to sell pieces from her, Rachel, and five other artists were followed by an ill-fated lease in the back of an antiques shop. Then Williams opened Brooklyn Collective in its current location and bought out her friend,

The store is open for limited hours (Thursday and Friday from 5 pm-8 pm; Saturday and Sunday from 1 pm-7 pm), though Williams is known to give out her email or phone number and to open the store for anyone who’s interested in a private shopping date. When she isn’t manning the store, Williams manages the back-end of the business and supports her husband’s men’s jewelry brand (LHN Jewelry) with invoicing and customer relations.

Between supporting both businesses and raising her children, Williams has found little time for marketing, instead relying on word of mouth, and about one advertisement per year in the Red Hook Star-Revue. (Note: this article was not sponsored!)

The majority of sales come from passers-by who notice her signs. “Having the scaffolding [in front of the shop] was

At the time, Williams had her own label

hell. It just came down two weeks ago.

That was really tough for business. You couldn’t even see the sign or what it was.

The second it came down, I had new customers…” Once they stop in, many visitors are hooked on this art gallery cum store cum community center. “I just met this really nice couple tonight that came in and bought a candle,” Williams gushed, “They just moved in across the street… I spent like half an hour telling them all the good restaurants to go to because I’m a huge fan of this neighborhood.”

While Williams’ persona draws in customers, her store’s eclectic mix of artists and designers have kept sales continuing for almost 20 years. The store currently displays work from about 25 artists and designers. Each member pays $200 a month and 10% of any sales to help cover rent. In exchange, Brooklyn Collective provides them each with an area of the store to display their goods, in addition to promoting their work on its website and social media platforms.

While many of the designers have been showing their art at Brooklyn Collective for years, six new designers will be joining this February. Whether new or old, all artists in the Collective update

"Designers and artists must be kind... we are working together with & for our community.”

This past Thursday night, forty years hence, I returned to Butler Street below 4th avenue. It was opening night of THE OTHER ART FAIR, where 120 artists were showing their work in a reconfigured wooden beamed warehouse. The average cost to of a booth here is $2,500. I joined the line of art enthusiasts, got my “ok to drink” wristband and was waved in with a digital press pass. The $55 admission fee didn’t seem to deter anyone in the crowd happily flowing in.

The Other Art Fair and the Evolution of Butler Street

by R.J. Cirillo

This writer hadn't been on Butler Street since 190, when he was driving night shifts out of a yellow cab garage on Bergen Street. After returning his cab at 3 am on a winter night, he walked two blocks to his car, parked on Butler just before 4th Avenue. As he opened the door two bodies in the back seat suddently sprang to life. A real WTF moment as they exited the car in a flash, , with startled screams all around. It was a cold night so I couldn’t blame two of the local homeless for seeking shelter.

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Different than going to a gallery opening where there is white wine and a subdued air, THE OTHER ART FAIR has a wide open vibrancy. There is a DJ pumping out some solid music (not blasting), a four-sided cash bar with some great looking small plates available.

I was soon wandering through aisles of high quality art sipping a 19oz Six Point Pilsner.

photos by Katherine Rivard

their spaces every 2-3 months with new pieces in order to keep the shopping experience interesting for regulars.

Visitors to the store will find an enchanting variety of art—the space is a treasure trove of unique pieces: a soft denim tote labeled “Goddess bag,” nostalgic pennants with contemporary phrases, still life paintings, a chandelier made of curled pipe cleaners, all types of jewelry, fanny packs (both leather and fabric), a soft pink beret that reads “Snack Expert”. Rarely does one find a store in New York whose goods are both handmade and affordable.

The store will be hosting events and parties for shoppers to enjoy all December, including an ornament making workshop (check the website for details). Williams also hopes to provide more events and classes in the new year.

Past events have included everything from book launches and fashion shows to sewing classes and a recent birthday party for a group of 11 year olds.

audience.

I left the fair slightly buzzed from the 19 oz pilsner on an empty stomach. On my way to catch the R train at Union street, I passed one of the new,mostly glass, high-risers on the corner of Butler and 4th. There was a uniformed doorman standing guard, in a lobby lined with large colorful abstract paintings, similar to some of the work I had just viewed.

Continuing down 4th avenue I passed a brightly lit “Smoke Shop”where outside was a small crew, standing and sitting on milk crates, smoking weed and sipping beers in brown paper bags. I brought me brought me briefly back to my cabbie days. I love fuckin’ Brooklyn!

I spoke to Emily Jean Alexander the art fair’s director: “This is the 12th edition of THE OTHER ART FAIR, we have one in the spring and one in the fall.

The show features 120 independent artists showing their work here, selling at prices from fifty dollars to several thousand. We anticipate a thousand works of art will be sold over a four day weekend.”

Making it in the art world, or just making a living doing art is, putting it mildly, difficult. IMHO, THE OTHER ART FAIR is a good resource for the hardy souls who choose this path, or at least a chance to have it viewed by a large snd seemingly receptive

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December 2023, Page 13

Quinn on Books Like Something out of “Harry Potter”

"Brooklyn Arcadia: Art, History and Nature at Majestic Green-Wood,” by Andrew Garn, Review by Michael Quinn

Cemeteries freak some people out. My mother, who grew up in Queens, is still traumatized from an experience she had as a little girl. Her family visited dead relatives every Sunday.

Once, she peeked into a mausoleum window and saw a baby carriage. She never got over it.

I grew up differently. Perhaps as a result of my mother’s unhappy memories, my family had no traditions around honoring the dead. We only occasionally went to a cemetery for a funeral. Yet, as an adult, I find cemeteries peaceful and seek them out wherever I go.

Several years ago, I visited Paris’s famous Père Lachaise. While many flock to the final resting place of musician Jim Morrison, I was almost hypnotically drawn to a particular, unremarkable-looking mausoleum. Through the ancient glass, I could make out the names Henri and Alice—the names of my maternal grandparents. A coincidence?

As it turns out, Père Lachaise inspired the creation of a cemetery closer to home: Green-Wood, whose 478 acres border many Brooklyn neighborhoods, including South Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington and Sunset Park. In 1838, Henry E. Pierrepoint set aside Green-Wood’s original 175 acres while plotting the city’s grid. Crowds soon flocked to its green hills and glacial lakes. The place proved so popular for day trippers and picnickers that it, in turn, inspired the creation of Central and Prospect Parks.

While first and foremost a working cemetery, Green-Wood is also a National Historic Monument (with stunning examples of nineteenth-century architecture), an accredited arboretum (with thousands of trees) and an arts hub (offering site-specific installations, concerts, lectures, films and more).

Green-Wood is open 365 days a year. While there are four different entrances, enter through the iron gates on Fifth Avenue for the grand experience. Walk up a sloping hill and look up as you pass through its gothic archway. Bright green monk parakeets, rumored to have escaped a JFK shipment decades ago, have made their twiggy home there. Seeing Green-Wood for the first time, a friend marveled, “It’s like something out of ‘Harry Potter.’”

Still skeptical? A gorgeous new book might convince you to make the trek.

“Brooklyn Arcadia,” a stunning coffee table book by fine art and editorial photographer Andrew Garn, celebrates Green-Wood’s 570,000 permanent residents (including artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, composer Leonard Bernstein and journalist Pete Hamill) and honors its art, history and nature.

Garn has grouped his photographs by theme (architecture, trees, animals and so on), all of which seem sorted by a larger cycle of life, death and rebirth.

Maps, architectural drawings and archival photographs round out the offerings, accompanied by detailed, informative captions and brief, insightful essays by historians, tour guides, urban naturalists, conservationists and the like, all seemingly gobsmacked by how incredible this place is.

Garn got the idea for the book wandering around the cemetery during the pandemic. Each time he visited, he discovered something new. Battle Hill (the highest point in Brooklyn), with breathtaking views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Stone angels crumpled in grief or raising their arms heavenward.

Elaborate urns. Gnarled and twisted lichen-covered trees. Tiffany stained-glass windows. Towering obelisks. Ornate metal gates. Wildflower meadows dotted with beehives (a beekeeper told me the pollen from Linden trees gives the honey its distinctive minty flavor). Koi fish. Skunks.

Garn’s camera takes us into mausoleums (above-ground tombs), vaults (built into hillsides) and catacombs (“a sort of apartment house for a middle-class clientele”)—Green-Wood hosts concerts in one of these because the acoustics are so incredible. It also offers trolley and walking tours, nature walks and birdwatching. Is there anything this place doesn’t do?

That expansive sense of possibility seems hugely important to Green-Wood’s president, Richard J. Moylan, who wrote the book’s foreword. His father cleaned and repointed monuments, and Moylan has worked here pretty much his whole adult life, cutting lawns during law school and working his way up through the ranks. He writes, “Like New York City, Green-Wood is evolving while still honoring its past. (Actually, I would say Green-Wood has done a much better job with that second part.”) So, it seems he believes there’s even more that GreenWood can become.

Even after 50 years, Moylan still feels inspired walking through Green-Wood’s arch. I feel it, too. A few steps in, and I just breathe easier. Is it all the trees or something more? As Garn writes, Green-Wood provides a “respite for the living, history for the curious and a moving sense of the human belief in some experience existing beyond death.”

If you’ve never been, Green-Wood is worth a visit. And “Brooklyn Arcadia,” a special book about a special place, is a perfect way to commemorate your first trip. It would also make a lovely gift—for a nature lover, a history buff or a mom, who might be surprised at all the beautiful things a cemetery can be.

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December 2023

Jazz by Grella Best Jazz Albums of 2023

’T

is the season of the list, and for your local man in jazz that means putting together what were, for me, the best new and archival recordings I heard this year. And I mean “heard” seriously; I listened all the way through something like 250 albums released in 2023, and at least partially through an additional 400plus (those are records I started and didn’t finish, meaning they didn’t strike me as worth hearing). Not all of these were jazz, but most were, or at least involved extensive improvisation. It’s a good sample size.

Lists like this are, of course, subjective. These are the records that I responded to strongly, and that response is always something somatic, a deep feeling in the body that mixes excitement, pleasure, satisfaction, complex emotions, and so much more. I am sensitive to what my hips want or something that gets my foot tapping, I’m sensitive to what to my ears are beautiful sounds that give me a feeling of powerful emotions in my torso, I’m sensitive to words and sung phrases that tickle the pathways that were formed by pop music and obsessions and heart aches from my youth.

It’s all instinct, the critical part comes in when I try and explain it to myself and articulate that to anyone else.

Everything on the list then is something that hit me in the body, even ravished me. I have my values when it comes to balancing respect for the past with exploration of the future, and while I don’t need jazz to swing, fantastic swing will always get me, it’s something my body always responds to—rhythm in general, but great, hot swing, man …

I try and spread the love around; both Jason Moran and James Brandon Lewis put out two album this year, both of which are among the best, but I don’t want them to crowd out everything else that deserves attention. That’s also why this is a baker’s dozen—why just ten? Why not one a month, or more? This is also unranked. There are critics polls I submit to that require rankings, but as the best albums of the year these are all great and depending on mood some will be, temporarily, more attractive than others. The one exception is the very first album on the list, which is indeed the single best jazz album of the year, not just because the quality is so high and the pleasure so rich, but because it illuminates the past with new thinking and uses that foundation to create an entirely new space in the music. It doesn’t just accumulate music, it moves jazz and its entire history further along.

Best New Releases:

Jason Moran, From the Dancehall to

Red Hook Star-Revue

by George Grella

"As the best albums of the year these are all great and depending on mood some will be, temporarily, more attractive than others." the Battlefield (Jason Moran): Moran released this album January 1, and at the time I predicted it would be the album of the year, and as good as so much of the music has been, nothing has surpassed it. No one before has made such a clear case for how the early 20th century bandleader James Reese Europe is one of the ur-figures in jazz, and absolutely no one has shown how modern Europe was and can be. Brilliant, intellectually rich, joyful, and beautiful, this is a new classic of the jazz discography.

James Brandon Lewis, Eye of I (Anti): I predict that Lewis’ For Mahalia, With Love (Tao Forms), will be a consensus critics’ pick for one of the best of the year, and it is great. But this tremendous album just hit me a little differently. Perhaps it’s my 2023 mood, I will go for something that threatens to tear apart the status quo.

Hatch): This is a suite of compositions for a medium sized ensemble, and is beautifully crafted. Sickafoose eschews the kind of compositional flourishes I hear too much of, sticks with the jazz idiom and trusts his material and his ear, both of which are formidable.

Kris Davis Diatom Ribbons, Live at the Village Vanguard (Pyroclastic): Davis’ ensemble has a special guest here in guitarist Julian Lage, but the real star is turntablist Val Jeanty, who moves what is strong modern jazz into a whole new dimension.

Mendoza Hoff Revels, Echolocation (AUM Fidelity): Punk-edged jazz rock that is fun, hip, and smart.

Adam Birnbaum, Preludes (Chelsea Music Festival): Subtle and deep: Birnbaum selects details from Bach’s Preludes from the Well-Tempered Klavier and turns them into intriguing Latin jazz improvisations.

Wadada Leo Smith, Fire Illuminations (Kabell Records): Every time Smith puts the trumpet to his lips, something brilliant comes out. Here it floats over vintage electric-Miles sounds.

Christian Dillingham, Cascades (Greenleaf ): Bassist Dillingham is a young veteran on the jazz scene, and this is his debut album. His leadership and composing are both excellent, and the band is stylish.

Best Reissues

Sonny Clark, The Complete Sonny Clark Blue Note Sessions (Mosaic): A full demonstration of Clark’s importance.

Matthew Shipp, The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp (Mahakala): Concentrated, lovely, endlessly deep solo piano improvisations.

Sun Ra, Jazz in Silhouette (Expanded Edition) (Cosmic Myth): The one Sun Ra album to have if you can have only one, fully restored and complete.

Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Continuing (Pi Recordings): Sorey, who also happens to be one of the finest composers in contemporary classical music, has been rethinking the piano trio, and this second release keeps the outline of classic jazz while completely reworking the insides.

Derek Bailey & Paul Motian, Duo in Concert (Frozen Reeds): A late in the year revelation, improvised duos from two of the greats, something no one had ever imagined existed until November.

Heikki Ruokangas, Karu, (577 Orbit): A dark horse: solo guitar improvisations that show a fascinating, personal approach to what you can do with the instrument.

John Blum, Nine Rivers (ESP-Disk’): A new release of an older performance, from a musician new to me. A thrilling solo piano improvisation set, bracingly uncompromising. Just at the edge of being too much, but just enough.

Emilio Solla & Antonio Lizana, El Siempre Mar (Tiger Turn): Based around Lizana’s incredible vocals, this is an excellent small group modern jazz album in Latin jazz disguise.

Todd Sickafoose, Bear Proof (Secret

From the Dancehall to the Battlefield, Jason Moran

tions that are a must for any serious jazz fan; Saxophone Colossus by Aiden Levy and Easily Slip Into Another World by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards. The former is an extensive biography of Sonny Rollins, our last titan. It’s a deeply researched personal narrative, with amazing material and stories from the subject himself. It doesn’t open up compete insight into Rollins’ incredible musical thinking, but that should be buttressed by his Notebooks that New York Review Books is publishing in early 2024.

The latter is Threadgill’s memoir, and in a way it’s the opposite of the Rollins book. There are plenty of personal stories and and outline of his life, but this is a book about how a musician listens and learns and thinks and practices their art. This is exciting and meaningful to read, especially from Threadgill, one of the great modern composers and the kind of musician that is hard to find in today’s conservatory bred era—not just that he served in Vietnam, but that he never got a PhD, he learned by doing, doing everything, failing and getting up again, and turning it into beautiful music.

This was also a good year for books on music and on more than just jazz.

The best book on music that I read on a subject other than jazz was High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape, by Marc Masters. This is an excellent and concise look at the cassette tape in music culture. Those of us lucky to be old enough to have painstakingly made individual mix tapes, or put tape over the tab openings on a crappy prerecorded album to tape something else over it, know the inimitable pleasures of the cassette. And any one who never lived through this will be astonished to discover the very real cultural importance of the cassette. It’s no exaggeration to say that without cassettes there would have been no real musical underground, on a global basis.

There were two important publica-

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December 2023, Page 15

Marie's Craft Corner

Turn toilet paper rolls into holiday candle decorations!

by Marie Hueston and Sage Hueston No matter what holiday you celebrate this month— such as Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa—candles often play a role in decorating your home. Toilet paper rolls have a similar proportion to candles, and because it is so easy to change their look, we decided they would

Measure the height of the roll. Once you decide what colors to make your candles, lay the toilet paper roll onto your paper and use a pencil to mark the top of the roll. Then cut a strip of construction paper from the height of your mark across the page.

be perfect base for a seasonal holiday craft. Here’s how to make your own!

Cover your rolls. Evenly roll your paper strips around your toilet paper rolls. Secure with either glue or tape.

Create your flame. Using your choice of yellow craft material, cut a flame shape approximately three inches tall and one-and-three-quarters inches wide. If you need help making a flame shape you can look for inspiration online. Next, tuck the bottom of your flame into your candle and tape or glue in place. (Remember, these candles are for decorative purposes only.)

Holiday variations. Tinfoil is a great material to add silver details to a Hanukkah candle. For Kwanzaa candles, use red, black, and green construction paper. We decorated our Christmas candle with holly leaves cut out of construction paper. Get creative and add your own festive flourishes!

Share your designs with us! Send photos of your creations to our editor at gbrook8344@gmail.com

December Preview: Save ribbons from your holiday gifts for a winter craft.

What you’ll need. In addition to toilet paper rolls, you’ll need construction paper, tinfoil, scissors, tape, glue, and a pencil. For the “flame” we used yellow felt but you can also try yellow tissue paper or construction paper.

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

Wishing you and your families a very Happy Holiday!

www.star-revue.com

December 2023