Red Hook Star-Revue, February 2022

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Staten Island remembers Patrick Daly with an annual award. We should too.

E

by Nathan Weiser

very year, Staten Island's Borough President presents a Patrick F. Daly award to outstanding borough educators who shows ongoing commitment to their students.

This is something that should be done in Brooklyn as well.

The Red Hook community grieved on December 17, 1992, after Daly was caught in a gang crossfire while looking for a student who ran out of the school in tears. The entire city was shocked by his tragic death.

He was always doing things like that,” PS 15 parent coordinator Melissa Campbell told us in a recent interview.

“I remember him being in the trenches and putting himself on the line and overextending himself every day.”

“He was a good, very honorable man,” Campbell said. “A very kind soul. But he was very stern, he did not put up with much or tolerate things. He was a very strong individual."

Campbell was a PS 15 student in 1992, and like so many others has fond memories of him.

Daly commuted to Red Hook from his home in Staten Island. He often took his students by the hand through the violent streets to try to make sure they were safe.

Edgardo Torres, a former Marine and police officer, ran out and gave mouthto mouth resuscitation to Daly. Torres tore off the shirt and stuck it on the wound on the right side of Daly’s chest. However, it was hopeless.

“I asked him not to give up,” Mr. Torres said in a NY Times story in 1992 after the shooting. “I told him he had to breathe, and he said, “Thank you,’ before he passed away.”

The previous year Red Hook saw 20

murders, 10 rapes, 526 robberies and 364 assaults.

Daly had chances to move on to different schools but the passionate educator chose to stay here since this was where he felt needed.

James Oddo is the current Staten Island Borough President.

“I’m grateful to be able to continue this award in honor of fallen principal, Mr. Patrick Daly,” said Oddo recently. “This award gives us a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to his sacrifice and legacy, while also recognizing outstanding educators who have made an impact in our community. This year, we have seen many educators go beyond the call of duty and I look forward to recognizing two of them.”

In Staten Island, anyone who wants to nominate a teacher, guidance counselor, assistant principal or principal can do so. The nominations come from community members, parents familiar with the teachers as well as fellow staff.

When Campbell heard that there was an award in Daly’s honor in Staten Island she thought it was awesome and is in favor of a similar award in Brooklyn.

“I think it would be a phenomenal idea for us and the borough of Brooklyn to offer such an award,” Campbell said. “I mean, Patrick F. Daly did come into Brooklyn every day to work. Unfortunately, this is where he lost his life, but he loved Brooklyn.

This community was his community.”

Going the extra mile was what he did and she thinks it would make him happy to give an award to an educator who has similar goals and values that he had.

"Daly had chances to move on to different schools but the passionate educator chose to stay here since this was where he felt needed."

FEBRUARY 2022

FREE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Red Hook's "Field of Dreams" is ready, but no leagues planned

by Brian Abate

A

fter numerous delays, Red Hook's four baseball fields next to the Rec Center are now deemed safe and are open to the public. They had been closed in 2015 due to a Gannet newspaper story that tipped the EPA to look for lead in the soil— which they found.

A big change is that the natural grass ballfields have been replaced with synthetic turf. This is standard practice for the Parks Department these days. The fields were also raised a bit to alleviate flood problems in case of another hurricane.

I’ve been to the fields, and they look great, but so far I’ve only seen a few people using them. That may be because of the cold weather but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get more use in the spring either.

“Right now there aren’t any plans for Little League Baseball to return to the Red Hook Ballfields for this season,” said Viviana Gordon of the Red Hook Community Justice Center (which had helped sponsor the Red Hook Little League prior to 2015.)

“We’re hoping that it can start back up again in 2023.”

I spoke to an official from the NYC Parks Department who also told me she wasn’t aware of any plans to have baseball teams play at the fields this year. However, she said that it isn’t too late to apply for permits if anyone is still interested (these can be found by going to the NYC Parks website and searching for field and court permits.)

For now, there are no bases or baselines at the ballfields, but there are soccer nets. I’ve seen a few people playing soccer on the fields and a

few people letting their dogs run around on the turf. It is somewhat ironic that nobody planned for a season once the fields reopened.

One person who would like to change that is Ray Hall, who was involved in the Little League program for kids in Red Hook before the fields closed down. He co-founded Red Hook Rise in 1994 which sponsors local basketball tournaments.

“I want the kids here to be able to play baseball again,” Hall said. “I’m supposed to have a meeting with officials from the Parks Department and it got pushed back because of COVID, but I’m expecting to talk with them soon so I’ll find out more then.”

In addition to the ballfields re-opening, the Red Hook Recreation Center re-opened on January 24th. The recreation center initially closed when a boiler sustained damage during Hurricane Ida in September. The recreation center now has a temporary boiler and has resumed normal business hours.

During its closure, it was especially tough for some of the seniors in Red Hook, who relied on the Recreation Center for exercise.

“I have health issues that made it tough for me travel so it was really disappointing and tough for me to get to the Sunset Park Rec Center [which is located 7.2 miles away from the Red Hook one,” said David Small, a Red Hook resident. “It feels like Red Hook hasn’t gotten proper representation because other rec centers opened up while the Red Hook one stayed closed. Everything has been moving so slowly but this is good news.”

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First-Ever Disney Exhibition Enters Final Month at The Met

by Erin DeGregorio

V

isitors can have a magical time at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, thanks to a limited time-only exhibit that connects classic twentieth-century century Walt Disney films with eighteenth-century European history and artwork.

Nestled between the Greek and Roman Art gallery and the European sculpture and decorative arts gallery is “Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts,” the first-ever exhibition at The Met to explore the work of Walt Disney and the hand-drawn animation of Walt Disney Animation Studios. It allows museum goers to learn not only about Disney’s captivation with eighteenthcentury European decorative art, but how it inspired him and his production teams to create some of the most recognizable movie stills. The exhibition also marks the 30th anniversary of Beauty and the Beast (1991), which was the first animated feature film to be nominated for “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards in 1992.

Spread out across more than five gallery rooms are 60 works of eighteenthcentury European decorative arts and design—as well as artifacts from the Met’s collection (such as Jean Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing” [1768], Juste Aurèle Meissonnier’s bronze candlesticks [ca. 1745]), and “The Unicorn Tapestries” [ca. 1495-1505]—and 150 production artworks (like concept art and framed cels) from the Walt Disney Animation Research Library, Walt Disney Archives, Walt Disney Imagi-

neering Collection, and The Walt Disney Family Museum.

“Visiting The Met Cloisters in the early 1950s, John Hench, a versatile and highly influential Disney artist who later became a central figure in designing Disneyland, was awed by the tapestries’ bustling scenes and proposed them as a visual template for “Sleeping Beauty,’” read one of the in-gallery labels.

Disney was first introduced to European culture when he visited France in 1918 at the age of 16. The buildings and art that he saw across Western Europe during his visit in the summer of 1935 (especially in Paris where the Disney family saw King Louis XIV’s old home, Marie Antoinette’s “little house,” and the room where the Peace Treaty was signed) remained with him, inspiring and influencing the work he would create until his death in 1966. Gothic Revival architecture, for example, can be found in Cinderella (1950), and medieval influences are most apparent in Sleeping Beauty (1959)—which is considered “one of the artistically most sophisticated of all Disney films,” according to Wolf Burchard, the exhibition’s curator.

The Beauty and the Beast ballroom— complete with chandeliers, ceilingto-floor windows, and a beautifully painted ceiling—drew inspiration from the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, Jean Honoré Fragonard’s “Swarm of Cupids” (ca. 1765-77) at the Louvre, and Jean Honoré Fragonard’s cherubs in “The Progress of Love” (1771-72) at the Frick Collection in New York. In-

animate Rococo-inspired objects with curves, pastel colors, and gold features, like teapots, candlesticks, and clocks, were also brought to life in the movie after the Walt Disney Studios began its Rococo-related research in 1988.

“By looking at the original reference of the French decorative arts, and then being able to caricature those and simplify those into an animatable object, was a real tribute to the character designers who were able to come in and make than happen,” says producer Don Hahn in a pre-recorded portion of the exhibition’s audio guide.

“Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts” will be on view until March 6, before traveling to London’s Wallace Collection.

"Gothic Revival architecture, for example, can be found in Cinderella (1950), and medieval influences are most apparent in Sleeping Beauty (1959)"

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February 2022

Opinion: Words by George

The letter was addressed to Lisa Garcia, the new Regional Administrator for our region of the EPA. - George Fiala Dear Ms. Garcia, Voice of Gowanus (VoG), a coalition of long-standing community organizations and concerned citizens in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, congratulates you on your appointment as Regional Administrator of USEPA Region 2. We look forward to working with you and the Region 2 staff to sustain our community as the multidecade, multi-faceted environmental degradation of the Gowanus Canal and its environs are exacerbated by an unsustainable upzoning.

As an expert in the critical Environmental Justice field, VoG urgently invites your attention to the compounding injustice gravely impacting the Gowanus area and its border neighborhoods from decades of sewage discharge and backups, residual soil and water toxics, flooding, and failed enforcement compliance.

In securing support for massive City-led rezonings, such as the “Gowanus Neighborhood Plan” recently passed by the City Council, the City of New York has implemented a planning methodology that is the very manifestation of systemic environmental injustice—convince the local population to give up public water and air assets in return for unenforceable physical infrastructure promises to which the community was already entitled and that rarely, if ever, come to full fruition.

In other words, the City’s failed approach to Environmental Justice is a feature, not a bug of its zoning and planning processes. At the core of so-called community engagement on “land use” is the City’s disturbing practice of trades and giveaways of air, land, and water assets—without full disclosure of the capacity or value of assets that the community is relinquishing. Rather than starting with a realistic, quantitative assessment of how much air, land, open space, water and other natural carrying capacity is actually available for use in a given area targeted for rezoning, the City formulates massive additive uses and loads

first, and then reverse engineers faulty modeling and impact analysis from outdated, inaccurate and incomplete data sets to support its proposed redevelopment while deliberately masking true impacts and outcomes.

USEPA has previously asserted in correspondence that Region 2 does not engage in local “land use” planning decisions, yet the clear, preemptive responsibilities given to the Federal Government by the Clean Air and Water Acts belie such compartmentalization. No “land” is ever used without concomitant use of air and water, especially in New York City. The challenging realities of Environmental Justice and fair access to public air and water asset capacities can only be further undermined by keeping to these outdated jurisdictional boxes.

In Gowanus, residents are being forced by local officials to surrender air, land and water asset capacity from the public trust to first, pay again for the public sustainment services the City is already failing to deliver (livable NYCHA housing, flood protection, adequate sewerage, clean air, toxic cleanup, etc.), and second, to underwrite the demands of an estimated 31,000+ additional asset users (new residents) that will be brought to the area by the City’s unsustainable upzoning.

A key component used by the City to justify the Gowanus rezoning is a reckless plan to build a school and housing for low-income and homeless families on the Public Place toxic coal tar repository, a scenario that directly echoes the Love Canal development debacle of the last century. In a State that has just outlawed the sale of products containing coal tar toxins, no municipality should consider any construction that will require pile driving or other subsurface disturbances that, like Love Canal, create exposure pathways on toxic land. The toxic plume that runs more than 150ft deep at Public Place also continues to move beyond the borders of this site; engineering studies have shown that the contamination has spread out in multiple directions, including to the opposite side of the Gowanus Canal and towards adjacent homes and businesses.

But tragically, the important lessons learned in the Buffalo area from the Love Canal catastrophe that triggered the Superfund law itself in 1980 seem to have yet to reach Brooklyn in 2021.

In spite of heroic efforts by the Region 2 Superfund Program over the last decade to reverse the decades- long neglect of multiple Brooklyn waterways,

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the inherent injustice of environmental conditions on the ground in Gowanus and its environs only intensifies as compliance falls even further behind: The massive Gowanus rezoning has already prompted permit applications for over 5,000 residential units, the vast majority of which will be high-end and/or luxury development loading into the already stressed and consistently overflowing hydraulic capacity of the Red Hook and Owl’s Head sewersheds; The City of New York steadily stonewalls enforcement Orders for two retention tanks needed to comply with the Superfund ROD requirements, the Long Term Control Plan (derivative of SPDES requirements and the Impaired Water Listing of the Gowanus Canal), and upgraded Water Quality Standards that will apply to the Canal; Cumulative additions of gas-burning residences and businesses will interfere with environmental justice actions to curtail fossil fuel consumption, including pipelines and electricity generation facilities operating in, or being added to, stressed communities.

In light of these conditions, VoG asks for your urgent assistance in pursuing all legal and regulatory compliance actions that will prevent further injustice from the imminent implementation of the “Gowanus Neighborhood Plan” rezoning, fully restore Gowanus assets, and ultimately support sustainable development reuses consistent with conditions and capacities of those assets. These actions would include: Full compliance assurance that the provisions of the applicable SPDES permits “prohibit[ing] further connections that would make the surcharging/back-up problems worse” will be enforced, including securing the necessary findings from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Targeted enforcement of the 2016 Sewage Backup Order in and around the

BY MARC JACKS0N

“THE eLECTRiC’S BeeN OUT SINCe

LAST WEEK”

“I’Ve BEEN

YEAH, i’LL TAKe IT.

"A key component used by the City to justify the Gowanus rezoning is a reckless plan to build a school and housing for low-income and homeless families on the Public Place toxic coal tar repository."

ReADiNG IN THE DARK AT NiGHT”

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H0W DOES THAT WORK?

Gowanus area; USEPA supervised confirmation and oversight of offsite exposure pathways resulting from contamination on toxic former manufactured gas plant sites being remediated under NY State procedures (which only evaluate soils inside the site perimeter); Enforcement action that precludes further development, buildout, and additive sewage system loading of any kind unless and until the retention tanks required directly by the Superfund Record of Decision and repeat Administrative Orders, as well as effectively by the Long Term Control Plan, SPDES permits, and updated Water Quality Standards (the delayed implementation of which remains an additional exercise in injustice) are constructed; Support for a revised or supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Gowanus that includes the following: -Full assessment of the Environmental Justice impacts of additive luxury development under the planned rezoning, including direct and subsequent displacement from current affordable housing and flood risk to NYC Housing Authority residents; -Estimates of actual development levels and full accounting of all impacts, including additive loading to the sewer- and air-sheds that are cumulative to the affected Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities and the New York Metropolitan airshed attainment areas.

VoG thanks you in advance for your attention to these unjust and injurious development practices that are unsustainable in the face of grievous climate change threats to areas already suffering the effects of historic environmental damage and injustice.

Sincerely yours, Linda LaViolette Co-Chair, Outreach Committee Voice of Gowanus

I

LEARNT

mj

I am turning over this month’s column to Linda LaViolette. Among other things, she is a passionate member of the Gowanus Community Advisory Group, which has had misgivings over the plans for Public Place, a large tract of land on Smith Street near Hamilton Avenue. She wrote this letter on behalf of the Voice of Gowanus, a community group that has problems with the recently passed Gowanus reazoning.

BRAiLLe.

©COPYRIGHT 2022 MARC JACKSON AND WEiRD0 COMiCS #4

February 2022, Page 3

In Brief

Council Communication

MARK’S

Alexa Avilés, council member for District 38 (which includes Red Hook, Sunset Park, Greenwood Heights and parts of Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, and Dyker Heights) sent out her first newsletter to her constituents.

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I hope this email finds you well and enjoying Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is hardly a holiday, nor is a groundhog a binding authority. Still, New York City’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil, Staten Island Chuck, did not see his shadow this morning and thus predicted an early spring. Spring, of course, was going to begin on March 20th regardless of what any creature saw. However, like the film named after the day, I have brief items that may be similar to previous days, but, like Billy Murray’s character’s experience, there are some differences Second, one week from tonight, on Wednesday, February 9th at 6:30 PM on Zoom, we have our monthly full board meeting. The meeting will include votes on two liquor license applications, one Certificate of Appropriateness application, reports from elected officials, and other community-related items. To join the meeting, go to the following link:bit. ly/Feb9CB6.

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Florida Senate Passes Bill Naming Official State Dessert and It's Not Key Lime Pie! Is it any wonder? You won’t find one commercial bakery in Key West juicing fresh key limes, not one. But Red Hook?

HA!

Third, two weeks from tonight, Wednesday, February 16th, at 6:30 pm over zoom, our Parks and Environmental protection committee will meet. The meeting›s focus will be an update from Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Marty Maher on parks in our community district. If you›d like to register for the meeting go to bit. ly/cb6parksfeb16 While on the topic of parks, I’ll remind you that the Red Hook Recreation Center has re-

AUTHENTICITY MATTERS.

From the Gowanus CAG

At our Tuesday meeting, the Land Use Committee discussed next week’s public engagement meeting about the Owl’s Head / Salt Lot site.

We want to encourage the entire CAG membership to register for and attend on Feb 10 at 7pm.

The format for this DEP-hosted meeting is a workshop, and your participation will be instrumental in shaping the future of the site!

Public input meetings like this one have been requested by the CAG in several resolutions, and we should use the opportunity to both participate and to bring in additional members of our community to the process.

Over the past decade, the CAG has agreed upon several resolutions supporting public water access, soft edges, and other ecological restoration efforts that may be possible at this site. This is a great opportunity to communicate that in the public workshop. Here's the link to register: https://bit.ly/3L5tZlP

Cross Harbor Freight resumes

Governor Kathy Hochul and Congressman Jerry Nadler announced the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will resume preparation of a Tier 2 Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Cross Harbor Freight Movement Program. As part of the review, the EIS will look at how the Cross Harbor Rail Freight project would work in concert with the Interborough Express transit line, which was announced by Governor Hochul as part of her 2022 State of the State.

With the help of Representative Jerrold Nadler, federal funds from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have been repurposed to immediately resume the preparation of a Tier 2 EIS that will perform the legally required, more detailed analysis of the environmental effects. The EIS will also analyze potential mitigation measures for two preferred alternatives identified in the prior Tier 1 study to reduce the current dependence on trucks to move freight across New York Harbor.

"We are aggressively moving forward with the next phase of development for the Cross Harbor Rail Freight project as we look to reimagine New York's transportation infrastructure," said the Governor.

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Antonio Reynoso speaking at BAM on Martin Luther King day

Our new BP will be more than just a cheerleader

I

n June of 2021, I spoke to Antonio Reynoso about why he thought he should be the next Brooklyn Borough President. This month I had the opportunity to speak to him about his goals and outlook now that he has won the election and begun his term as Borough President.

One of the first items on his agenda has been hiring a staff. Many staff members left with previous Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, once he was elected mayor of New York City. Reynoso has hired 18 new staff members in the last three weeks but will need to hire a total of 50 new staff members.

“It’s been a tough three weeks as we look to ramp up, given that we’ve lost a significant amount of folks,” Reynoso said. “But the mayor’s office has been extremely helpful with the onboarding of new employees. They’ve provided resources to us related to land use items so that we can continue to be on the clock and abide by our charter mandated responsibilities on land use. His team is communicating very clearly to us. They’re trying their best to help us.”

Reynoso also explained his responsibilities as borough president.

“The borough president has a few mandated responsibilities,” Reynoso said. “The first one, which is the most commonly known one, is that we’re in charge of the community boards, so we’re tasked with the appointments to all the community boards and their management.

“Another thing that we’re in charge of is making recommendations on land use items within the borough. So while we don’t have the final say, we get recommendations from the community boards and then make recommendations ourselves regarding decisions.

“The last thing we do is that we receive about five percent of the city’s capital budget split between the five boroughs based on geography, popu-

Red Hook Star-Revue

by Brian Abate lation, and poverty rates. We get that in capital dollars, so that tends to be anywhere from $50 million to $65 million to invest in the city of New York.

“Those are three primary functions of the borough president. But I would say that a fourth one that is not a charter mandated responsibility, but is one that Marty Markowitz made very famous, is being the borough’s cheerleader, making sure that you know everything Brooklyn, all the time!”

Though he is just getting started, Reynoso said that he has already been in contact with Markowitz and that he has been very helpful. Reynoso also told me about some of his goals as Brooklyn Borough President.

“I want to address black maternal health,” Reynoso said. “Black women die at 9.4 times the rate as their white counterparts during birthing. And I want to change that. I want to make Brooklyn the safest place for black women to have babies in New York City.

It’s something that I care deeply about.

“The first thing we’re doing is we’re spending almost all of our capital money and outfitting every single public hospital in the borough with a state-of-the-art birthing center, and we’ve committed at least $45 million to do that. Coney Island Hospital, Kings County, and Woodhull are going to get state-of-the-art maternity wards. We’re working alongside the mayor on policy-driven work to empower midwives to lead in the birthing process.

“We’re also looking to task our community boards with letting us know where they believe development can happen in their districts. We want to make sure that every single community board is a part of this conversation.

“We all need to contribute to the greater good of Brooklyn and the City of New York, and that includes their development. It’s not only about housing, though we are asking them to find places where we could build housing.

We also want to know whether or not they have a need for parks or more schools, for better roads and more transit, and more libraries, community centers, and so forth. We’re going to ask the community boards to lead a process that really engages them in how they want to see their communities in the next 10 years.”

I also asked Reynoso for his thoughts on all of the last-mile warehouses that have moved into Red Hook. These warehouses include Amazon and UPS facilities that bring lots of trucks into the neighborhood.

“This is a part of the comprehensive planning work that I think is very important and that we should be paying attention to a bit more,” Reynoso said. “I think the problem we have is right now there are no regulations set forth that protect communities from being overburdened with facilities that cause harm environmentally to a community.

“I will be advocating for the mayor of the City of New York to pass a zoning amendment that prevents these warehouses from being built one after another after another right next to each other in one community.”

I told him about the efforts of Jim Tampakis of Tampco Mechanical in Red Hook to get last-mile warehouses to use the waterways to transport goods instead of relying so heavily on trucks.

“I’m all in on our waterways as a way to move goods,” Reynoso said. “I want to move away from the use of vehicles and move to barges. We do that with our sanitation work now, and most of our garbage is running through a barge. And it’s better for the streets to get 18 wheelers off of our streets and move transportation to the river.

“The thing is, we just need to invest more in our waterfront. A lot of our waterfront access is in underdeveloped, neglected areas. Should we make small investments and make these bulkheads functional and the piers functional, we could more

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meaningfully activate the East River to function as a way to move goods in and out of this borough.”

The borough president also had a suggestion to help improve conditions at the Red Hook Houses (and throughout the borough in general.)

“I’ve been a big proponent of containerized waste,” Reynoso said. “And you know, the way to get rid of rats and other infestations is to remove their source of food. We would cut off their main source of food and doing so would reduce the amount of rats that we have in this city.

“We’re one of the largest cities in the country and one of the few that still doesn’t containerize its waste. When you really think about it, the fact that we just allow for trash to be sitting out on our sidewalks for 12 hours in some cases is very, very primitive and it’s an old way of doing things. We need to move to the future and do what other cities have been doing for a long time that actually works, which is to have containerized waste.

“It’s something that I pushed for, but I was a council member and this didn’t get enough traction in the City Council. But I think this is something that could absolutely happen. I’m going to do my part and advocate for it and it is something I think is actually very doable. I think this could be something that is taken on by the sanitation committee very quickly and very early on in the new City Council.”

I concluded by asking Reynoso what he would like to say to everyone in Brooklyn.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Reynoso said. “I’m asking Brooklyn to be a bit patient while we step up and we get the team ready to go, but I’m very excited. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Brooklyn for giving me this shot, and I’m going to pay it forward and get ready to have fun and bring about meaningful work that is going to affect the lives of people in this borough. I am just very happy and very grateful!”

February 2022, Page 5

Assemblymember Mitaynes' online chats

D

uring the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become common for politicians to interact with their constituents virtually and Marcela Mitaynes, an assembly member for District 51 (which includes Red Hook, Sunset Park and northern Bay Ridge) has continued that trend by holding a series of fireside chats.

The chats were streamed and recordings can be found on Mitaynes’ Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. She gave participants an opportunity to ask questions and find out about her job and her goals. She responded to all questions in both English and Spanish.

Mitaynes spoke about her efforts to get the Good Cause Eviction bill passed.

“There are a lot of people who had leases that expired during the pandemic and have landlords that are unwilling to renew them because they

by Brian Abate owe rent or possibly another arbitrary reason,” Mitaynes said.

“They can refuse to renew the lease, which means the tenants will be evicted. This legislation would mean the landlord must provide a good reason for why the tenants cannot stay in the apartment. This bill provides protection for tenants that live in small houses or units of five or less and would also prevent arbitrary rent increases.”

There had been an eviction moratorium, which protected tenants from being evicted during the pandemic, but the moratorium expired on January 15th. According to her biography on nyassembly.gov., Mitaynes herself “was evicted from her rent-stabilized apartment of 30 years, which began her life’s work of empowering her neighbors to know their rights and find their voices to fight to stay in their homes.”

Mitaynes also spoke about where she wants to focus her efforts, saying, “I didn’t hear anything from [Governor Kathy Hochul] about the Excluded Workers Fund, which is something I want to prioritize. We got $2.1 billion last year, which was historic but we’re going to need $3 billion this year. We need to let our neighbors know that the governor has not prioritized our needs. A great way to get involved is to contact our office [(718) 492-6334.]”

The Excluded Workers Fund provides compensation to workers with lowwage jobs who lost income due to the pandemic, as long as they are not eligible for Unemployment Insurance due to immigration status or other factors.

Mitaynes also answered a question about what she thought of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and its goals.

“The governor included the home-

ownership pilot program as a priority, a small program to develop lowincome housing homeownership projects, and 421a,” Mitaynes said.

“For those who don’t know, 421a is a program that gives tax abatements to landlords and property owners. [421a] really is wasting a lot of resources. We put a lot of money into this program and the amount of units that we’re getting in return is not sufficient.”

The chats were informative and provided an opportunity for Mitaynes’ constituents to get to know her. So far, her chat from January 15th has more than 600 views. However, while technology provides an easy, safe way for people to connect during the pandemic, it does come with downsides too.

During the chat on January 15th, there was no sound for the first 13 minutes.

Mitaynes’ district office is located at 4907 4th Ave. Suite, 1A in Brooklyn. Her email is mitaynesm@nyassembly.gov.

Enright opines on the City, the State and the MTA

S

o the press has weighed in on the Interboro Express. Almost universal approval. High marks for Hochul. And yet...No follow-up on the nebulous timeline (do I hear ten years?) and no deep dive into the three alternative transport platforms: commuter train (running alongside or even sharing the existing—and eventually super-sized—freight line); light rail (electric trolley which must be separated from the freight line, necessitating a wider Right-of-Way); and electric buses which would run partially (or perhaps mostly) on street level with some (extensive?) platforming of the existing “Cut.” Given the fact that the light rail option would require much public taking of land (150+ properties) and the longstanding opposition of Boro Park/ Midwood politicos representing the ultra Orthodox community, you can bet the farm that the solution to be chosen years from now (assuming ANYTHING survives the election) is the electric bus option above ground which would of course then require much platforming of the Cut, infuriating hundreds/thousands of homeowners/residents alongside it. Ergo,

Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

by Joe Enright final solution: some express buses between Brooklyn and Queens using the Belt and Jackie Robinson Pkwy.

But wait! you complain, “Why not the commuter train option which would make any ‘takings’ minimal?” Because it would complicate the Cross Harbor Tunnel project.

The fact that the Tunnel Capo, Jerry Nadler, was up front and center at Hochul’s first presser, spouting the need for his Right of Way to be devoted primarily to INCREDIBLY EXPANDED freight operations (when no market survey has yet to be conducted—or even discussed!—of freight handlers’ willingness to abandon trucks for this pig-in-a-poke as yet unpriced option come its rollout in 2032) suggests to me that given the Tunnel’s more power-packed constituency (sand-hogs, all establishment labor orgs, NJ & NY RR companies, the PA, cement and other suppliers, high-rollers, etc.), some new express bus routes WITH PROTECTED BIKE LANES will be the eventual outcome.

Oh, why was I cursed with such a cynical soul!? Why can’t I rejoice with everyone else???

Only one pundit has wondered in print whether Hochul’s championing of the Interboro was simply an election ploy. Aaron Gordon of Vice concluded, God love him:

latest Presser on Interboro last week, proving he’s still alive! She knows if she can carry Kings & Queens, she wins the primary, given her upstate support.

“But my biggest worry about the IBX does not have to do with any of the specs or details of the plan. My concern is the IBX is yet another vacant campaign promise from a politician trying to get elected. Hochul is running for election this year. There is nothing wrong with courting voters with good ideas. Some would argue that is the entire point of a democracy. The worry is, if elected, she will no longer be motivated to see the project out. Or, if she doesn’t, whoever does will view the IBX as a “Hochul idea” and dismiss it for petty political reasons. I hope none of this happens, and whoever is governor come 2023 pushes the MTA to make the IBX real. I’ve read a lot about how New York City used to build good things.

It sounds nice. I’d like to experience that for myself for a change.” https:// bit.ly/3HuuYtD

Perhaps that’s why the MTA feasibility study, commissioned in Jan 2020, became the centerpoint of her state of the state address even though it hadn’t even been released (or even given a token nod on its web site that it existed).

Miraculously, after her address and reporters woke up and queried the MTA about that 2020 contract which they had never heretofore followed up on, the MTA suddenly released it, concomitant with her follow-up press conference a week after her State of the State thingie. Quelle chance!

Two possibilities: Hochul was clued to its imminent release or (much less likely) an incredibly competent policy wonk on her staff clued her to this project, which Cuomo and De Blazio never supported.

Bottom Line: Hochul was even able to get our new Boro Beep to attend her

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February 2022

The High Value Man? Self-Help experts are exploiting everyone

T

he monetary worth of something, a fair return or equivalent in goods or services, or relative worth, utility, or importance. These statements are definitions of the word value. Now, browse the web in the self-help and dating spheres, and you may come across the phrase, high-value man. The use of the term high-value man has been growing in popularity among some men, younger Black men in particular. However, disturbing themes of routine misogyny, and hypercapitalism appear in conversations of men who promote highvalue ‘dating’ and self-worth metrics. So, what is a high-value man? And why am I bored of its problematic usage?

While its origins are murky, Kevin Samuels, a popular Black online image consultant, is widely credited with coining the phrase. The term high-value man as it is commonly used today refers to a man of means and influence. The stand-alone definition isn’t problematic or new, society has always valued wealthy men. However, the accepted inclusion of misogyny as a dating technique within the highvalue conversation is worrisome.

In December 2020, Kevin Samuels’ popularity skyrocketed after a video of him berating a young Black woman for her looks went viral. The video is popularly known as the Average at Best video, and is closely tied to the rise of conversations around high-value men. The woman in the video, a sixfigure earner and entrepreneur, expressed her desire for a mate who made a similar income or more.

Kevin Samuels did not attempt to spare her feelings and said, "Those men aren’t looking for you, what would you rate your face? You are average looking at best."

Kevin Samuels has repeated this type of rhetoric, to much success and public support from quite a few Black men. Yet, he’s far from the only one, other online content creators promote high-value man, or alpha male rhetoric putting women in subservient roles. Led by many Black male content creators, much of the conversation around high-value coupling occurs without any discussion of conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, or even financial literacy.

by Roderick Thomas High-value man, alpha male videos, etc. are adjacent to, or share space with the pick-up artist community. In these communities, women are to be helpful, sexually available subordinates.

While speaking to a group of women on his Youtube show, Samuels, 57, embarked on a men vs women conversation—mature. In the video (published Feb, 2021), Kevin is seen telling a woman that women are needed for reproduction, but men are needed for protection and reproduction.

Samuels goes on to use the Marvel character Thanos, as an example.

"In the Avengers, Thanos snaps his finger and half the universe disappears. If men disappeared like that, women wouldn’t have the time to catch up.

Men are the ones working in these power plants.

What percentage of these kinds of jobs do you think are held by women?"

Samuels fails to acknowledge the complex social networks and behaviors of humans. His analysis of a woman’s value often boils down to her ability to reproduce, the end.

In a March 2021 podcast by Fresh And Fit, the controversial podcasters invited Kevin Samuels on their show and discussed gender roles, dating, and the likes. On the show, Samuels can be heard telling one female guest. “Why is fairness important in relationships? Men have always conquered other tribes. Men don’t care about fairness.”

Fresh and Fit recently came under more fire while preaching high-value man rhetoric, telling women that they, men, are the prize. On another episode of their podcast, the two Black men, Fresh and Fit, stated how they do not date Black women, or in their words, “no ‘Shaniquas.”

What’s so disturbing is that this type of misogyny and misogynoir easily finds refuge in Black menled spaces. Videos and clips of men (Black men especially) appealing to Black women’s sensibilities, titled Melanin Queens, Chocolate Goddess or Why Black Women are the Least Desirable,regularly get a lot of views. Preying on Black women is profitable.

As a group, these men are participating in some strange phallic adoration—men high fiving each

other for simply being men and misogynistic, I’m bored at this point.

Now, the hypercapitalism angle of the high-value conversation is simply a rebrand of an old idea, make more money and hold influence over others. Many of the self-proclaimed dating coaches and consultants, use a six-figure income as a starting point for measuring a high-value man. Unfortunately for most men, Black men especially, a sixfigure salary is not a current reality.

According to the US Department of Labor, the average Black American man makes around $45,000 annually, 20% lower than the national average for all men. The high-value conversation sits outside of the real-world context. The money metric excludes most people according to the high-value standard, so can we talk about quality of character now? In high-value conversations, the quality of a man’s character often gets omitted. In the high-value community, men are almost encouraged to cheat on their partners with impunity.

Men in the high-value sphere will often talk about building generational wealth. However, these men are usually only discussing the financial aspects of wealth. Therefore, resources like wealth of reputation, community and wisdom go undiscussed.

High-value metrics only account for finances and influence while ignoring an individual’s full humanity, thus ‘high-value’ relationships look overtly transactional—sex and looks in exchange for money and relative comfort. To add, there are already competent sex workers who provide those services.

Moving forward, why should anyone choose between so-called, high-value relationships and financial struggles? The dating guru-sphere could have you believing that is all there is. However, there are other factors and options to be considered, perhaps being a high-quality individual for example. In the end, everyone should choose what is valuable to them.

Roderick Thomas is an NYC based writer, filmmaker Email: rtroderick.thomas@gmail.com, Site: roderickthomas.net)

"In December 2020, Kevin Samuels’ popularity skyrocketed after a video of him berating a young Black woman for her looks went viral."

Red Hook Star-Revue

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February 2022, Page 7

“Crime79,” The Soul of Subway Art

I

was introduced to George “Crime79” Ibañez by my friend, and George’s fellow graffiti legend, Louie “KR.ONE” Gasparro.

George and I spoke on the phone and then agreed to meet in Long Island City, near where I grew up. When I stopped by his office on 23rd street, under the #7 truss, I couldn’t believe how much that area of Long Island City has changed. When I was a kid, prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers trafficked those blocks. With sometimes only a single factory on a street, there was literally nothing else going on there after dark. If you killed someone and dumped their body there, it wouldn’t be found out until the next day.

But 23rd street is fancy now. The storefronts are polished. Across from George’s office entrance is a majestic skyline, second only to Manhattan in NYC. I sat down with George in his office to talk about his career and work.

Where did you grow up? East New York, Brooklyn.

You call yourself a painter? Other graffiti artists, like Al Diaz “SAMO@” call themselves writers. There are about four to five generations of graffiti artists.

Al Diaz was a first-generation graffiti artist. Back then, they were wall writers, and subway writers. As graffiti evolved, the paintings became more elaborate.

During my era, 79-85, was what some have called the golden era of graffiti. The images were stylistic and colorful. During this time, we started being more involved in the art gallery scene.

What kind of pieces did people paint? There are three kinds of things you could do. With Subway art, you can do inside: writing on the inside of the train.

Or you can paint on the outside and do throw-ups, bubble like tags of your graffiti name which are done quickly, thus giving you the opportunity to do many of them and get your name noticed a lot. If you get a train in the trainyard you have more time and can create stylistic pieces on the outside–more elaborate.

Is that in one night? Yes, one day, or night. One session. In the trainyard or in the tunnel. You learn the schedules. Between 6 and 9 am all the trains are out.

It’s rush hour. Then trains get put in the trainyard during the day. From 4-7 pm all trains are out again.

After 7 pm they start parking trains. Graffiti artists knew where they were parked. During weekends, most trains are parked.

Once you learn the schedules, you keep the details to yourself. If you found a tunnel, you never told anyone where you painted. We used to say they’ll make it hot for you. Maybe the cops will scour it now. Not to mention that you could get your ass kicked in the train yards. I went in, did my business, and went out.

Some of the guys went in and vandalized or robbed you. They’d take your paint, your money. Whatever they could get.

You had to paint in your approved area. I couldn’t walk into places like Woodhaven. Not just the trainyard, but the neighborhoods themselves. I used to paint on Metropolitan Avenue on the M line. That yard was controlled by Siko, an Italian-American kid.

I couldn’t have just waltzed into that yard. There were a lot of other kids from the neighborhood that would

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by Mike Fiorito stroll into the yard. You needed to have cover. Graffiti artists weren’t necessarily racist. The question was: do you write? If you do, we can hang out.

How did you meet Siko? I got to meet him through another graffiti writer called Risco. I met Risco on the train platform, while I was benching. Benching is when graffiti artists sit on benches and watch the trains go by. You watch your own work on the trains, check out other people’s work, scope things out, take pictures. Just like Risco took me around where I wouldn’t have been allowed, I took him to places deep in Brooklyn, where he wouldn’t have been allowed.

When did you start writing on trains? I started writing graffiti in 1977. I wrote around the neighborhood on walls, handball courts and a lot of paper. Every graffiti writer starts earlier, begins practicing before they hit the subways. Then someone says wanna go paint trains?

Why the name Crime79? What attracted me to graffiti were names like HULK and MURDER1.

My mind would be like, what does this guy look like?

You see their names all over the place. I wanted to create a name that had shock and awe. The fact is the real reasons I got into graffiti have a lot to do with my father who left Cuba as a young child. My father was a revolutionary and bestowed upon me a revolutionary fever. He believed, as I do, that wealth should be spread. That it shouldn’t just be the rich that get all the benefits. This translated into my work. My paintings weren’t just vandalistic. I did paintings with poems.

One of the most famous was in the book Subway Graffiti. You open the first page and there’s my poem dedicated to those who run from the law to express their art. I was always pleased that when a train hit the station during rush hour, they were going to see not only a beautiful image, but they were going to see my poem.

Do you remember the poem? “Dedicated to those who run from the law to express their art…… Keep Runin.”!!!

How has being from East New York impacted your work? Looking back at it now, I think that I did graffiti because it was a cry for help. East New York was tough. When I walked out that door, everybody, and I mean everybody, was always looking to challenge you.

You had to always watch your back. Seeing murders.

Violence. I needed to express myself. Maybe if there was a city or federal program where I was invited to paint, I would have gone that path. Or if the neighborhood had a swimming pool, some kind of social uplift, it would have decreased the crime rate. I had nowhere else to release the energy. We were left to our own devices. All of this impacted me, how I painted, the name that I chose, which, at the time, was a form of armor. But I didn’t know it then.

Have you had to defend your name? That was the worst thing about the name Crime79. As I painted more and more, people wanted to try me out. In 1982, At the height of my writing career, I tended to paint by myself or with very few people.

How has your formal training influenced your work? When I went to Franklin K. Lane High

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"The fact is the real reasons I got into graffiti have a lot to do with my father who left Cuba as a young child."

School in Brooklyn, a few teachers pulled me aside and said, “what you’re doing some adults are not even doing.” They saw that my work involved composition.

Some teachers said “you gotta do something with your art. That’s your ticket out of here. Take it to the next level.”

A few teachers took me under their wings, took me to places like the Art Students League. Another teacher took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Going to the Met really opened my eyes. I started thinking about what I was going to do after high school. On the advice of a guidance counselor, I studied graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. Ironically that was a struggle. Here I am doing murals, typography, shading (darks, highlights) since I’m thirteen or so and now I’m with people that are just starting out. I learned so much doing graffiti.

You have to remember that we got our ideas from things like advertising, billboards, and cartoons. Think Batman: BAM ZOOM BANG. Or Brillo ads using traditional graphic design with arrows and cartoons.

Teachers would say “do a logo” and mine would have a graffitiesque touch to it. Now this stuff is taught in schools. But we were way before our time. Very few artists are celebrated and collected in their time. I was frustrated and left the School of Visual Arts. In hindsight I should not have left. Although I was talented, the school would have refined me. Taught me how to better use the correct color palette, apply precision, perspective, and so forth. When I was younger, people that had that degree became my boss.

How did you break into the mainstream? I developed a portfolio–no graffiti–and headed out to Madison Avenue. I pounded doors until I found a job.

They paid me peanuts, but it was my foot in the door.

I started out doing graphic design. Then I wanted more money. Someone told me that I should get into photography. I started doing special effects, composing images together. This was before Photoshop. I did my work in the darkroom. Then the computer came.

I learned Quark, Photoshop and, lo and behold, that’s how I built my business. One brick at a time. Today I’m a learner. I deprived myself as a kid, so now I’m thirsty.

What is something people would be surprised to know about you? Corporate people don’t know about my graffiti background. In the corporate world you wanted to be taken seriously. There are different codes.

It’s not that I hide it. I just don’t mix the worlds unless they happen to mix naturally.

George “Crime79” Ibañez https://www.crime79.com/ index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ibanez Mike Fiorito www.mikefiorito.com www.fallingfromtrees.info

February 2022

entirely of recordings of fire. That album came out in 2002 and has now been reissued in expanded form as Fire Music Reloaded by the German label aufabwegen.

Tomasin also has an extended network of collaborators, including Japanese freak-out rockers Acid Mothers Temple. The two bands met in 2017 and recorded enough material for two albums, released as Acid Mothers Temple and fitting titled Vol. 1 (Vert Pituite La Belle, 2020) and, as of January, Vol. 2, via Hive Mind Records. The new volume is a glorious chunk of mayhem, entrenched in Krautrock and drenched in psychedelia with some smattrerings of free jazz, and all three albums can be streamed on Bandcamp.

My favorite pop stars are all pop stores. Rumors continue to circulate about the next Warner Bros.

Prince deluxe reissues in online communities. 2021 came and went without a new box (although the first issue of the shelved Welcome 2 America was a happy surprise). Diamonds & Pearls was a prime contender, the 30th anniversary of its release passing last October; an early version of the album that leaked from the famous vault has been bootlegged and it packs way more of a punch than the final version, making for a natural bonus disc. 1986’s Parade is also likely contender, which would be more than welcome as its one of Prince’s best, and worst-sounding, albums.

Meanwhile, the David Bowie estate set up shops in Soho and London from October until the end of January, a bit of venture enterprise I huffily avoided until closing weekend, and in truth it was a good bit of fanboy fun.

Both Prince and Bowie estates have been, for the most part, refreshingly classy in their rehashing of product. The Bowie camp has been plenty busy with reissues and unreleased demos, and one which shouldn’t be missed is the triple-disc Toy (ISO/Parlophone). The album is comprised of new versions of Bowie’s earliest songs, recorded in 2000 with his working band, including longtime associates pianist Mike Garson, guitarist Earl Slick and bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, who’s one of the finest singing partners Bowie’s ever had in a band. It was finally included in the 11-CD/18-LP box set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) last year, but the new, 3-CD Toy box set includes yet more bonus fodder: two discs of alternate versions of the songs from the same sessions. They’re not demos and drafts, the set is a primed band trying out different things, resulting in three finished and sequenced versions of the same album. Much of it is a bit too anchored to its nearly-still-the-‘90s pedigree, but the third disc, “Unplugged & Somewhat Slightly Electric,” makes it worth the modest price—or at least searching out online. (It is, as of press time, still available on a major if seemingly rapidly tanking streaming platform.)

Tanya Tagaq’s sharpened tongue. In 2017, the Nunavut vocalist Tanya Tagaq gave an unforgettable performance at Jazz at Lincoln Center as a part of the American Songbook series. It was a bold booking.

Coming from Canada’s Northwest Territories, Tagaq is certainly American, but her extended throat-singing improvisations (at that point with bandmates violinist Jesse Zubot and drummer Jean Martin) weren’t what many people might call a “book.” The high point of the set had Tagaq with her back to the audience,

Red Hook Star-Revue

looking out the Appel Room window and growling “colonizer.” It took me a minute to sort out that she was singing to, or condemning, the statue of Christopher Columbus in the circle below.

The 2022 Reynols agenda holds a book and more recordings, including a previously unreleased album with the late sonic spiritualist Pauline Oliveros (their third). Maybe most notably, last month Tomasin received the 2021 Henry Viscardi Achievement Awards for increasing “the visibility of artists with disabilities” as “one of the most successful musicians with Down syndrome in the world.” The award is named for Henry Viscardi, Jr., who was born without functioning legs and went on to serve as a disability advisor for eight U.S. presidents. Maybe the world is starting to catch on to the power of Reynols.

The Residents not unmasked, their story not told.

This month’s issue of Texas Monthly contains an article unthinkable just a few years ago: a profile of a member of the longstanding, anonymous San Francisco band of cultural outcasts the Residents. Hardy Fox, a founding member of the band, had outed himself

Tagaq has apparently kept that trick in her book because the colonizer incantation plays a recurring part in her new Tongues. While her performances can be long streams of thought, her albums are usually broken into song-size chunks. The new Tongues (Six Shooter Records, streaming in full on Bandcamp) features two versions of “Colonizer,” adding up to a nine-minute indictment. There aren’t many words, more threatening throat rumbles, but the message is clear. On “Teeth Agamp,” the hit is more direct: She assumes the role of wolf mother, menacingly intoning “touch my children and my teeth welcome your windpipe” over a cold synth beat. Tagaq’s music has grown increasingly pointed over the years, and her targets aren’t always direct. Following her on social media can provide instructive sourcing, but the background isn’t necessary for listening. Tongues is a fierce and fearless album, suggesting a new kind of American songbook.

The return of the most important band in the history of rock. Way back in 2020, I declared in these pages that the Argentinian band Reynols is most important band in the history of rock. At the time, they were releasing their first record in 17 years. For being the most important band in the history of rock, they weren’t much known before their hiatus—or after, for that matter—but 2022 is looking to be a busy year for the unparalleled ensemble.

The band is the brainchild of Miguel Tomasin, whose passions drive the band. Tomasin often suggests unorthodox projects, due at least in part of the fact that he has Down syndrome. He also has musicians—chiefly Roberto Conlazo, Pacu Conlazo and Anla Courtis— ready to realize his ideas, for example: a record made

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in 2018 in the final months of his life, so it was likely only a matter of time before someone decided to follow the trail. Andy Beta’s piece is a worthwhile read.

But the Longview, TX, born Fox was only a quarter of the original band, and an uncertain fraction of the unknown number who have counted themselves among the mysterious ranks. The band itself was obscure legend in the ’70s with its own mail order record label, and in the ’80s, when they managed to get their cartoonish, unsettling videos into regular MTV rotation. The fact that they’ve kept up the façade and the artistic vision for so long is truly remarkable.

The full story of the tuxedoed and eyeball-masked oddballs still isn’t told in The Residents: A Sight for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1, a fancy, 364-page coffee table book.

It’s more or less a scrap book, filled with photos and ephemera with brief exposition by famous (or somewhat famous) artists and entertainers who knew (or kinda knew) the infamous Residents. The photos are a treasure trove for those who care, but the stories, brief though they are, make for sweet little portraits of weird adolescence. Zach Hill of Death Grips identifies their trademark eyeballs as the “weirdo kids’ Mickey Mouse.” Miroslav Wanek, who founded the longstanding dissident band Už jsme doma, writes about getting records by the Residents and other Western rock experimenters through a cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Soviet-ruled Czechoslovakia. And Paul Reubens relates being shown their music videos as he was pulling ideas for The Pee-Wee Herman Show. “I felt such awe that the music and the visuals—every aspect of every moment of what they were doing—was artistic. I don’t think anyone’s been more artful than them, before or since.”

As much holds true for the book as well. The hardcover volume carries an art-book price tag, but every page is a joyful overwhelm of visual information.

February 2022, Page 9

“Fight Club” In the Age of the Great Resignation

A

strange Vice headline recently crossed my feeds: “Cult Classic ‘Fight Club’ Gets a Very Different Ending in China.” Thanks to Tencent Video, Fight Club, director David Fincher’s searing adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, finally made it to China! Only took 22 years. Thing is, it also came with a new finale.

If it’s been a while, a quick refresher: The Narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) start up an underground fight club, attracting men like themselves who feel disaffected and cast off by an increasingly inhuman and debased consumer-capitalist culture. The club expands, spawns national franchises, and leads Tyler to think bigger and bolder. Fight Club becomes Project Mayhem, a series of increasingly destructive acts culminating in a plot to destroy America’s credit card companies. “If you erase the debt record, then we all go back to zero,” the Narrator tells police when trying to stop the plan. “You’ll create total chaos.”

Fight Club ends with the Narrator and girlfrenemy Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) watching bombs topple one skyscraper after another. It’s an indelible image and a fitting conclusion to Fincher’s grungy, puckish middle finger to conventional studio filmmaking. (It was released by 20th Century Fox, which is now owned by Disney. I wonder if it’s quarantined from the middlebrow junk in the Mouse’s vault.)

But what Chinese viewers got was wholly different.

After the Narrator shoots himself in the mouth (long story), the film fades to a title card: “Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

Besides being cinematic vandalism, this authoritariancoddling corporate censorship spits in the face of what Fight Club is: an anti-authority, anti-conformity primal scream of the underclass that slays American culture’s sacred cows. Tencent’s ending (which, ac-

by Dante A. Ciampaglia cording to Vice, was edited by the “copyright owner”) deflates the film into a whimper, ensuring law and order retain their rightful place as China’s dominant cultural hegemons.

When Fight Club was released in October 1999, it connected with me in a deep, lasting way. I was just out of high school, frustrated with everything and feeling utterly out of step with and disconnected from our consumption-driven economy. It could be too clever and lean too hard on the kind of simple philosophical posturing that seemed everywhere at the time, from Internet chat rooms to WTO protesters.

But I loved the film then and love it still. I hadn’t seen

it in years, but when I read Vice’s story I went back to Fight Club — partly in solidarity, but also because I had a feeling it would be particularly resonant in this age of pandemic and the Great Resignation. And, boy, is it ever.

Besides being a fantastic movie year, 1999 yielded a bumper crop of “work sucks” films, from Best Picture winner American Beauty (suburban dad-in-midlifecrisis Lester Burnham napalms his career by blackmailing his boss) to The Matrix (pre-Neo Thomas Anderson is a corporate nobody in some characterless cubicle farm), and Office Space (90 minutes of low-level tech workers plotting a way out of their dead-end jobs with the literal tagline “Work Sucks”).

Fight Club is in that group, too, the Narrator’s malaise brought on by a soul-sucking routine of risk analysis

for a compassionless auto manufacturer, reporting to a do-nothing paper-pushing middle manager, and filling his condo — in a building he describes as a “filing cabinet for widows and young professionals” — with junk from the latest IKEA catalog. The plot turns on his apartment exploding, which gets him living with Tyler; the destruction of all his worldly possessions putting him on a path, like Lester, to corporate extrication, albeit in a more hilariously bizarre (and bloody) way.

What set Fight Club apart from its peers, turned it into a cult classic, and makes it even more resonant today is its deeper prodding of the cultural currents driving the Narrator’s disaffection. Fight Club’s world is populated by overeducated workers wasting away in underskilled meaningless jobs for diminishing pay and vanishing respect. Welcome to America, right?

But the film pushes beyond the trope into an explicit critique of late-stage capitalism’s fetishizing gross inequity and working class punishment. White collar, blue collar, no collar — we’re all batteries powering wealth generation for an increasingly exclusive elite class. Our role is to work and consume, consume and work. Keep putting in the hours to get the paycheck to become “a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct” and don’t think too hard about what you’re doing or why or what it amounts to. You have a yin-yang coffee table! What else do you need?

“An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars,” Tyler says at one point. “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man, with no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression.

Our Great War is a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives.”

Even then, that last bit was maudlin. But it resonated with certain viewers because it spoke a truth everyone else seemed unwilling or unable to acknowledge. The end of the Clinton ‘90s, with its overheated free-trade economy generating fabulous fortunes while gutting American industries and middle-class lives, felt like

"The end of the Clinton ‘90s, with its overheated free-trade economy generating fabulous fortunes while gutting American industries and middle-class lives, felt like the ideal moment for a conversation about who has been left behind, and at what cost."

Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue

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February 2022

Mayhem. It’s an underground force in the film, as it was in real life two decades ago. But no longer. It went mainstream in 2020 and 2021 — how could it not? “Essential workers” were forced to risk their lives, not simply so other people could maintain some semblance of their lifestyles (the wealthy, yes, but also those who could work from home) but to protect the economy. Frontline healthcare workers created their own PPE. Retail employees acted as bouncers keeping the unmasked out of grocery stores. Delivery drivers, transit workers, line cooks, meatpacking laborers, anyone in the service industry — all on the economic front lines, all in immediate danger of infection and death. If they didn’t get sick, they knew people who fell ill. They saw friends and family die. And when the wave crested? They were thanked with angrier customers, more callous managers, and reduced pay checks as hazard bumps were phased out. American capitalism said the quiet part — what was given some cover in 1999 — out loud: You matter only as a tool for someone else’s prosperity.

1999, its fight scenes intimately brutal, bordering on body horror; its language tough and uncompromising; and we’re never meant to sympathize with the Narrator or Tyler, nor are we expected to celebrate their cult or its increasingly anti-social terrorism. All of that remains true today — maybe more so, post-9/11.

But its marrow-deep anarchy and existential angst has new urgency. Society has gotten worse, not better, especially for the kinds of characters at the center of the film, making Fight Club more relevant, not less — in both disconcerting and rousing ways.

says. It’s a message his acolytes embrace — and one that feels central to our ongoing, long-delayed Great Resignation moment.

increasingly aristocratic and nihilistic. It gives the film, already great, a kind of morbid timelessness. And it makes it necessary viewing — the real version, not the Tencent monstrosity — especially in this time of existential upheaval driven by Covid-19, nature’s own Project Mayhem.

Difficult to imagine going through that and not deciding enough is enough. “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything,” Tyler

It’s hard not to see the blind devotion, grievance, and increasingly destructive prankish violence of Tyler’s Space Monkeys in the perpetrators of the fascist January 6 insurrection. (We see a folder in Project Mayhem’s war room labeled “Disinformation.”) Similarly, it’s impossible to ignore that the agency and selfworth Tyler instills in fight club members has manifested in workers finally saying “Enough!” to a system that devalues them, their families, and their friends.

That central contradiction — between self-defeating violence and righteous self-actualization — is what makes Fight Club so challenging and alive. That tension only gets tauter as America becomes both

the ideal moment for a conversation about who has been left behind, and at what cost. Unfortunately it was smuggled into a film about dudes beating on each other before blowing up buildings, so it was lost on many filmgoers and critics.

Watching it now, though, it feels more relevant.

Consumerism is worse. Inequality is worse. Corporate power is worse. Prior to the pandemic, wages for most people have stagnated or declined. And the people who fill underclass jobs — those celebrated as “essential” and rewarded with poverty wages, no benefits, and unreliable schedules — are arguably more undervalued and invisible than they were in 1999.

At one point in Fight Club, a police commissioner vows to crack down on the underground group perpetrating Project Mayhem’s stunts, pranks, and crimes.

Attending a banquet staffed by Tyler and his cronies, posing as waiters, he’s cornered in a bathroom, held down, and threatened with castration if he doesn’t call off his pursuit. “The people you are after are the people you depend on,” Tyler tells him. “We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls.

We drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep.”

Marginalized workers driven by nothing-left-to-lose rage are the force behind Fight Club’s fictional Project

French Politics

by Dario Pio Mucilli, dateline Turin France had been since the early 19th century a major occupying power in Africa. Its Empire ended mostly after WWII, but Paris has never totally left alone its former colonies and still exercises strong control on most of them through the International Organisation of La Francophonie.

Not all the formerly occupied nations are in the organization and it is striking that the main absence is Algeria (North Africa), colonized by France in 1830.

Anger and hatred of the French colonizers grew and in 1954 an war for independence war broke out, causing hundreds of thousands of fatalities, but eventually giving Algeria its long wished independence in 1962.

The war caused an exodus of the Pied-Noirs, the French people who settled in Algeria. 800,000 were evacuated to France and since then have been a fertile ground for the right-wing parties. Their political stance became often a sort of a reaction to the discrimination they experienced in their motherland, as a living memory of a national disaster.

As April Presidential Elections are looming, President Macron, seeking reelection, made a move that aimed to gain Pied-Noir support.

On January 26th, during a meeting with the representatives of the former French settlers, he called the 1962 exodus a “tragic page of our national history”, stressing how mistreated were the refugees.

But Macron’s previous statements on the Algerian

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Fight Club will never be for everyone. Good. Part of what makes it so potent is its total refusal of focusgrouped maximum appeal. It was a rough watch in

Occupation are still alive in the Pied-Noirs’ memory. Ahead of the 2017 Presidential Election, Macron, then a candidate, said on TV that occupation of Algeria was a “crime against humanity.” Indeed more than a few think French colonialism gave the natives more advantages than disruption, despite the mass killings during the 1954-1962 war.

The latest words about Pied-Noirs seem to uphold a view of a Macron changing ideas according to the change of public opinion. Now that polls say the three right-wing candidates are to gain more or less 50% of ballots in the elections, he’s moving his position and its party, La Republique en Marche, rightward.

Sympathy shown towards Pied-Noirs is just a piece of a puzzle where Macron is trying to court the farright voters through the most different ways, such as denouncing an Islamo-leftism bias in the universities.

And there again the Algerian War plays a major role in French public consciousness. The idea of an Islamic invasion of the country, grown in France after ISIS terrorist attacks, lays its roots in the 1954-1962 war and specifically in the justification the then President Charles De Gaulle added when asked why he didn’t go on with the conflict.

He replied: “Because I do not want Colombey-lesDeux-Églises (Colombey The two Churches, De Gaulle’s native town,) to become Colombey-lesDeux-Mosquée (The Two Mosques)”.

In a few words he suggested that keeping Algeria would have meant that sooner or later Arab natives,

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because of their high rate of births, would have replaced the Catholic French.

That perspective still nourishes fears as immigration increases in France and Macron, with a disapproval rate around 58%, tries to ride the wave of islamophobia in the country.

The Pied-Noirs community is hence a perfect spot to offer a new image of himself as a herald of the Catholic and conservative France, one that has pretty much always prevailed in the ballots and without which it is hard to govern, even if elected.

However, playing with history is always a dangerous task, and Macron, who started as a liberal and progressive candidate in 2017, is unlikely to gain rightwing voters through this risky game, because they will choose the original right rather than someone who apes it.

Far from defusing tensions, such an ambiguous attitude towards a sad page of history could easily trigger new anger and hatred, two feelings that are not missed today.

Of course Pied-Noirs suffered from the war but the same did Algerians, they’re not two sides to court occasionally when necessary, but the victims of the wrongdoings of someone in the past.

Politics should seek conciliation, a necessary step to move on towards the future, because as French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once wrote: “The important thing is not what we do with us, but what we ourselves do with what they have done with us”.

February 2022, Page 11

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February 2022

Talking to the the owner of a Yia Yia's Taverna, a Greek restaurant in Bushwick

I

f you ask Adan Muñoz what makes his food special, he’ll tell you that his philosophy on cooking isn’t something that they teach in culinary school.

“It’s about consistency,” he explains to me over a plate of stuffed grape leaves.

These grape leaves, it should be noted, are remarkable. Served warm and less densely packed than typical canned grape leaves, they were well worth the fifteen minute walk from my apartment on the other side of Bushwick.

While generally humble, Adan did not disagree when I told him that his was the best presentation of this traditional Greek dish that I had ever seen.

They’re made from scratch in-house, just like every other dish on the menu.

Adan refuses to compromise on any aspect of his business, and his dedication to tradition is clear when I ask him about the mini-fridge full of beers with brightly colored labels, none of which look familiar to me. He explains that all of them are from Greece, which sometimes throws off some of his less adventurous customers.

“People have asked me why I don’t stock Heineken,” he says, with a dubious look on his face.

Clearly this question offends him, and I can see why. Adan has created a bright, airy oasis of a restaurant on one of the more desolate streets in the industrial section of Bushwick, which is no small feat. Every aspect of the decoration and ambiance has been thought out, from the window that looks into the kitchen to the simple, unpretentious presentation of the food. And in order to keep his collection of foreign ales well-stocked, Adan has opted to do business through a small, family-owned Greek importing company.

Adan learned how to cook traditional Greek dishes while living in Lefkada, an island on the West Coast of Greece, from his grandmother. That’s why he chose to name his Bushwick restaurant Yia Yia’s Taverna, which translates to “Grandma’s Tavern.” Unlike instructors in culinary school, Adan’s teacher placed less emphasis on exact measurements and more on perfecting the flavor of dishes that have been passed down for generations.

“Olive oil in Greece isn’t the same as

by Katie Schulder-Battis

the olive oil you might find here,” he explained. “Produce that is imported or grown here is completely different.”

Adan doesn’t let that stop him from recreating his favorite dishes from back home. By constantly tasting his food and tweaking recipes, Adan ensures that his customers are never disappointed. And when certain ingredients are difficult to come by, Adan still refuses to take items off of the menu. He isn’t afraid to cross the city to find specialty items, and regularly makes trips to the Bronx to visit his favorite produce markets. After having worked in the restaurant industry for years, he has developed personal relationships with the vendors, often bringing them coffee and treats from the restaurant.

Adan’s dedication to his customers may have been the factor that allowed the fledgling business to thrive during the pandemic. When indoor dining shut down, Adan was determined to continue serving the neighborhood by supplying takeout orders. He fondly recalls meeting some of his best customers in person for the first time when indoor dining reopened, and being pleasantly surprised by their knowledge of the menu. Many of his customers are regulars, and the restaurant’s clientele grows largely due to word of mouth recommendations.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Adan says apologetically, as he stands up from the our table to greet an incoming customer. He isn’t just being courteous—I immediately realize that he actually knows this customer by name, and asks her how her day is going.

Probably pretty well, I can presume, because she is standing in extremely close proximity to the best stuffed grape leaves in the tristate area.

Adan doesn’t just treat his customers like family, he also has a close relationship with his staff. He speaks fondly of his team members, describing his complete trust in their ability to run the restaurant when he isn’t there. Perhaps this bond has formed in part due to the challenges that the

Adan Munoz doesn't stock Heineken in his Greek restaurant. staff faced together over the course of moved to New York and began workthe last two years. ing in the restaurant industry. It is When the pandemic hit, Yia Yia’s Tav- clear from the action in the kitchen erna was still emerging as a new busi- that the restaurant is starting to beness. Looking to fellow restauranteurs come busy from the afternoon rush, and friends for advice, Adan recalls and phone calls begin pouring in for phone calls in which he was offered takeout orders.

advice, some of which he took, and much of which he ultimately decided not to follow.

“Other restaurants were cutting staff,” he recalls gravely. “And it was more difficult to find certain ingredients, so they were also shortening their menus.”

Adan chose a different route: he offered all of his employees the opportunity to continue working. In the end, every employee chose to hold onto their position, and the restaurant was able to retain its entire staff over the course of of the pandemic.

Adan introduces me to each member of his staff by name, and his admiration for them is immediately obvious.

He describes the dynamic in the restaurant as both familial and professional, which makes perfect sense considering that one of his own sons is a manager at the restaurant.

Pointing in through the window in the kitchen, Adan directs my attention to a man chopping up herbs with impressive precision.

“That’s my right hand man,” he says, explaining that the two had met more than eighteen years prior when Adan

Adan takes me on a tour of the restaurant’s backyard, which is in the late stages of renovation. The outdoor space, like the restaurant, is full of sunlight and potted plants. Bright blue tables invoke the Mediterranean Sea, and a single string of blue and white lights outlines the periphery of the semi-enclosed structure. Adan is looking forward to unveiling the space when the weather warms up, and I share his excitement.

I can imagine sharing one of these blue tables with a few friends, and sipping a Mythos lager and enjoying the ambience of the restaurant’s carefully curated soundtrack, which Adan himself has created from both classic and modern tracks by Greek musicians.

For a moment, it might be possible to think that I’m actually sitting in peaceful cafe in Lefkada, instead of the busy intersection of Wilson and Flushing Ave. And if my imagination needs a little extra push, another order of those grape leaves will do the trick.

Yia Yia's Taverna is located in Bushwick at 1035 Flushing Avenue. Their phone number is (718) 821-5900.

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February 2022, Page 13

Books by Quinn Quinn on Books: Room Service Review of The Hotel by Sophie Calle Review by Michael Quinn

Although the popularity of Airbnb has skyrocketed in recent years, many people still enjoy staying in hotels. One of the reasons is having someone to clean up after you. But what if that person had another reason for being there?

For three weeks in 1981, Sophie Calle worked as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel. While cleaning 12 rooms on the fourth floor, the French artist also “examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed, through details, lives which remained unknown to me.”

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Calle documents her discoveries in The Hotel. Recently released in English in celebration of its thirtieth anniversary, Siglio’s gorgeous hardcover edition has pages edged in gold and a cover striped by the rooms’ over-the-top floral wallpaper. Like much of Calle’s work, it’s a combination of images and text that gravitate toward and take a deadpan delight in the absurd. As in all of Calle’s work, she’s made a game for herself and takes its rules very seriously.

Calle divides the book by rooms. Each section is introduced by a color portrait of its bed. The surroundings are almost tackily ornate. Oriental carpets underfoot. Embroidered coverlets on the beds. Gold sconces on the walls. The furniture is wood and presumably old.

Phone cords snake around the spindly legs of bedside tables.

Calle makes brief, factual observations (into a tape recorder she keeps hidden in her bucket). In the beginning, every discovery feels like a treasure. “An elegant nightgown that I had not seen before is thrown across the two unmade beds like a bridge,” she writes. The sight of a crumpled up pair of pajamas on the bed “does something to me.” Armoires hold wool suits and silk blouses. Spirals of orange peel molder in a trash can.

Stubbed-out cigarettes stink up an ashtray. In one room, Calle immediately opens the window to air out the musty smell.

Shoes seem to be an important clue.

Sometimes in her notes, Calle records their sizes. (A German guest has an “enormous” pair.) Once, finding a discarded pair of heels in the trash and discovering they’re her size, Calle takes them for herself.

She rummages through closets and rifles through drawers. If a suitcase is unlocked, it’s open game. Calle samples an untouched stash of chocolates, tries on makeup, and spritzes herself with perfume. She polishes off a half-eaten croissant. She reads different versions of the same message across various postcards, flips through an address book, and loses herself in a travel diary.

Hearing a key in the door, she flings the book back in the suitcase where she found it and rushes out, eyes averted.

Calle seems to avoid contact with the guests—it might be one of the unspoken rules of her game—yet they sometimes collide. “I will try to forget him,” she writes of one man. One presses a

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284 Van Brunt St | Brooklyn NY

tip into her hand. With single men especially, Calle’s fantasies about their lives take flight. She imagines running away with one—maybe home to Paris.

Calle is clearly less interested in couples (although she eavesdrops on their conversations. One woman complains, “Modern art! Oh no, not modern art!”).

Calle couldn’t care less about children.

Seeing a photo of little pairs of shoes, you know it’s over for her. “I am already bored with these guests,” she confesses.

The photos of the things Calle finds— dentures, a vibrator, a little hammer, pornographic magazines—are shot in black and white. These are not beautifully composed shots. Calle works with a deliberate aesthetic detachedness.

She uses her camera to record detail in a factual way—like evidence from a crime scene.

From the guests’ possessions, she surmises things about them. Each morning is a fresh opportunity to test out a hypothesis about their habits. She observes which beds have been slept in, which haven’t. It’s a relief to find some of the order she restored the day before still intact: “For once, the pillows have remained as I arranged them.” Yet she’s more interested in absence than presence: stray hairs, a single sock, a forgotten lipstick. Calle photographs empty hangers facing in different directions and an indentation in the mattress where a guest slept the night before.

Having little to do in a room gives Calle more time to snoop, yet the rooms are often a mess. Wet towels on the floor, the water left running, panties hanging over the shower rod. One couple takes down a mirror and stashes it in the cupboard. Calle stubbornly puts it back in place and is relieved to find it still hanging there the next morning.

Maintaining order might be another rule of her game. It’s certainly part of her job as a maid. She doesn’t complain, but you can see how challenging a job it is. The contents of suitcases seem to explode across a room. Venetian masks dangle from the sconces. How do you make up a bed when pajamas are left tangled up in the sheets? How do you clean the tub when a pair of periodstained panties is left lying in it? (In one room, discovering a dirty pair of underwear in a sink basin, Calle covers it with a towel.) Yet she’s startled when the mess has been packed up and carried away: “gone is the jumble I was already getting used to.”

Over the course of her employment, the monotony of her labor begins to weigh on her: “a strange feeling of déjà vu comes over me.” Sometimes the

February 2022

Jazz by Grella Angel of the Resurrection

L

by George Grella

ast month’s Winter Jazziest 2022, such as it was, was disappointing for all the wrong reasons. This had nothing to do with jazz and everything to do with America writ large, and the destructive nihilism of self-proclaimed conservatives and the political class overall. There are too many people with everything they need in life who can’t even conceive of enduring the most negligible inconvenience for the sake of strangers, much less ones with less money and less whiteness. Even in New York City, the rush to act like the pandemic was all over and the impatience to return to a normal that will never again exist—beyond weekend brunch and real-estate porn in The New York Times—meant we had to go through it all over again. Again! And omicron was as bad as it’s ever been.

And so the return of an in-person Winter Jazziest was postponed and replaced by streaming sessions. Jazz, the music that has always been deeply about America and integrated into the fabric of society, suffered because so much of society is so fucked up. That wasn’t the festival’s fault. What was its fault, though, was how poorly the streaming was arranged and implemented. Nearly two years into this, there’s no more excuses for just a single, static camera in front of performers, nor for mediocre sound quality. Yet that was the state of the festival’s streaming “marathons” that replaced their regular weekend marathon—multiple sets in multiple venues—and special events. While it was great to see musicians playing from Chicago, St. Louis, Switzerland and South Africa, the inconsistent quality was distracting. Musicians who got to play from places like the Yamaha Studio were lucky, others from random live venues, not so much.

This was exacerbated by ridiculously short sets— sometimes just one or two numbers—and intrusive, mawkish, long-winded remote introductions from various hosts associate with WBGO. Reimagining the festival as a series of streaming events began and ended with flipping the streaming switch. Surely the festival has more robust technical and imaginative resources available to it.

The one exception to all this, though, was an incredible exception, the large-scale performance from Jazzfest artist-in-residence Angel Bat Dawid, on Martin Luther King Jr Day (it is available, along with the other streaming sessions, at www.winterjazzfest. com). For two hours, Dawid led the Cosmic Mythological Ensemble in a performance she’s titled Afro Town Topics, a combination of instrumental music, with grooves and free playing, call and response communal singing, ceremonial form and process, and dance. It is stupendous.

Dawid is one of the artists whose music is released on the International Anthem label, which is based in Chicago but is mapping out, album by album, a kind of new continent of music. Imagine a place created

visits seem to overlap. Cleaning a room for a certain guest for the last time, she notices that the “future occupants’ baggage has already been brought into the room.” She thinks “of the man who stayed in this room yesterday with the same sense of privacy”—after all, from the moment we check in, we think of a hotel room as our room. How would we feel if someone else was in it? Going through our things?

The Hotel raises ethical concerns. Yet it still feels like a small, precious time capsule. Today, we carry so many of the intimate details of our lives on our phones.

What would there be to discover in a 21st Century hotel room? Sneakers and leggings?

by people from all over the world, with their own local traditions, and each one sympathetic with all the other cultures they encounter. Modern jazz is where International Anthem starts, music with familiar jazz phrasing with rhythms that have swing but emphasize the rock, soul, funk and hip hop thinking that jazz has been assimilating for 60 years. Like other artists on the label, Dawid plays jazz (she plays the clarinet, keyboard, and sings) in a way that brings together qualities of the music from the turn of the 20th century with the cries and shouts of free jazz and neosoul. Dawid in particular is hauling free-jazz roots into the context of contemporary politics and society.

America may be failing its music—atomizing the very interaction with music into track-by-track streaming, “fuck-your-feelings” virtue signaling through the likes of Morgan Wallen, dismissing the social concerns of artists and audiences with the “I’m over COVID” expectation that the world exists merely to entertain the safe and the comfortable—but Dawid builds a small but very real society every time she makes a record or plays a concert.

That is what happens with Afro Town Topics, with Dawid directing the ensemble, singing and calling them to action, and leading them through the performance space to the stage. There are dancers, and the performers wear a variety of colorful and sequined costumes.

Those elements will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the Sun Ra Arkestra in person. The music follows in the Arkestra tradition too, in the way that it seems anarchic in style and form but is absolutely grounded in organized ensemble material and consensus.

The performance explodes with joy, it is sprawling and thrilling, and unlike the usual streaming experience you can’t take your eyes away from it. It’s too much to take in through one viewing, there’s not just music and dancing, but video project, spoken word, even a and more about a lonely young woman in a foreign country making a game of work that’s a kind of drudgery. “A strange atmosphere of silence hangs over the hotel,” she observes. Every day is spent alone, cleaning up after a stranger. For all their particularities as individuals, guests become indistinguishable in the collective. Not people, but a category: mess-makers.

Facing another overflowing suitcase, Calle confesses, “I’ve had enough.” The Hotel well documents Calle’s interest in observing and knowing: not the guests whose possessions it records, but the limits of her patience and the boundlessness of her imagination.

communal call at the end for everyone, from the camera crew to the viewer at home, to pause and all sing a tone together. The “journey to Afro Town,” as Dawid calls it at the very end, is just that, the music creating a real community in the moment. All the things coming together, the ebb and flow of choral singing and rock and funk, Dawid’s pauses to comment on the state of things in the world, right now, is like watching the life of a street pass by while you gaze out the window from the comfort of your own home, glad to be in a place full of these good people.

This is only slightly a metaphor, because the way this is done, you are there. The camera is right in the middle of everyone and everything, it’s not standing in for the audience but part of the performance, the part that is transmitting the audio and visual information to the viewer. It’s on stage with the instrumentalists and right there with the dancers, so watching the stream is closer to being a performer than even being seated in the audience at a concert. It’s documentary in the way it is absolutely a “making-of ” kind of experience, except that, if you happened to watch it live, it was happening live, it was being made right in front of you.

Dawid is something of a magician who directs your attention to everything she does, and still pulls of an astonishing and inexplicable illusion. Except Afro Town Topics is the real thing, like she got up on stage and said she was going to recreate Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady and then, like Borges’ Pierre Menard, does the thing and somehow does it better. By herself she saved the 2022 Winter Jazzfest, and her creation should be an example to every single jazz organization of how to make virtual connections into a real society, when the rest of the world is fall apart around us.

The sight of a crumpled up pair of pajamas on the bed “does something to me.”

Seen another way, The Hotel is less about voyeurism

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February 2022, Page 15

Marie's Craft Corner

Recycle magazines and catalogs into Valentine collages!

by Marie Hueston

This year, create one-of-a-kind Valentines for friends, family, and significant others using the art of collage and the printed materials you have on hand. It’s fun, easy, and inexpensive. Here’s how to get started: old trick of folding the paper in half, drawing half of a heart, and cutting along the line.

Collect magazines and catalogs. To find collage materials in our part of Brooklyn, you don’t have to spend any money. Many people put magazines out on a stoop, in a trash room, or by the curb when they’re finished with them, and street corner newsracks offer free copies of Brooklyn Parent, Brooklyn Family, and other publications. Add to this any catalogs you may receive in the mail and you’ll be able to accumulate a good stack to work with.

Prepare paper hearts. You can either buy pre-cut hearts (Paper Source on the corner of Smith and Pacific Streets sells a packet of 10 cardstock hearts for $7.95) or you can cut your own out of construction paper using the

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

Arrange your materials on a table.

Once you have your magazines and paper hearts ready to go, you’ll need scissors, glue sticks, and markers or crayons to add written messages to your Valentines. Consider covering the table with a tablecloth or newspaper to keep glue off the surface. Chocolates or conversation hearts can be a nice addition to the table as well, especially if you’re inviting friends to join you!

and the other is words and letters.

Words we associate with Valentine’s Day are natural choices, like LOVE, FRIENDS, SWEET, and TRUE, as are the letters B, F, O, and X because they can be used to make BFF or XOX. You can even find names—an ad for Ralph Lauren, for example, can be used to personalize a card for someone named Ralph or Lauren.

other side of construction paper but will probably not be visible through cardstock. Experiment with a spare piece of paper before you begin.

Share your creations. Send pictures of your collages to our editor at george@redhookstar.com. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Look for images with personal meaning. Keep an eye out for pictures that hold special significance for you and your Valentines, like a favorite food, hobby, or pet. Landmarks from the places you’ve lived or travelled to—or hope to travel to someday— also work well.

March Preview: Start saving your take-out chopsticks!

Play with placement before gluing things down. Once you find the words and images you want to use, place them onto your heart and move them around until you find a composition you’re happy with, then glue them in place one by one.

Start cutting! There are two main categories to look for when making a Valentine collage: One is decorative objects like flowers, jewelry, or hearts

Add a written message. You can write on the same side as your collage or on the back of it. Consider the thickness of your paper before writing anything.

Markers may bleed through to the

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February 2022