Red Hook Star-Revue, September 2021 by George Fiala

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THE GOWANUS SHAKEDOWN - PAGE 3

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SEPTEMBER 2021

FREE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

BASIS School fears truck invasion by Brian Abate

here are many reasons to be concerned about Amazon's last-mile warehouses moving into Red Hook. Perhaps one of the most alarming is the threat these warehouses may pose to children. There will soon be two delivery stations in Red Hook, which combined total more than 600,000 square feet. One of those Amazon facilities is right next to BASIS Independent Brooklyn, a PreK–grade 12 private school. I spoke to the BASIS school’s Director of Communications, Jo Goldfarb, about the situation. “I think that people need to understand that no one is in control of how many of these mega-warehouses are coming to Red Hook,” Goldfarb said.“ So far they’ve been very responsible about honoring our arrival and dismissal times but we’ll need to see it happen in practice. Right now we are very focused on ensuring that proper traffic signage and enforcement of pedestrian safety laws are in place.” Goldfarb also said that the police have been really helpful about enforcing safety precautions and she has also worked with Vision Zero Safety, the Red Hook Initiative, Resilient Red Hook and Uprose to make sure that

safety precautions are in place. In addition to concerns about keeping children and others safe with trucks coming in and out of Red Hook, there are health concerns related to the pollution caused by the truck engines. Doctors have called the neighborhoods surrounding distribution cen-

“Numerous loopholes allow companies to build these facilities ‘as-of-right’" ters “diesel death zones,” and while an average of 10 percent of children in New York have asthma, in Red Hook, it's 25 percent. Goldfarb praised the work of locals like Jim Tampakis, who is working to encourage the distribution centers use greener modes of transportation. He is trying to get the City to force Amazon to utilize our waterways as part of their supply chase. Red Hook, after all, is surrounded by water.

“We would love the help of the community in reaching out to local officials about the importance of regulating these E-commerce distribution hubs, since no one has placed a cap on how many can be brought to a neighborhood,” Goldfarb said. “We’re not sure of the long-term effects of having so many of these hubs in one community, which is scary. This information is critical for all members of the Red Hook community to know before these sites are completed.”

BASIS is located at 556 Columbia Street Goldfarb mentioned that last-mile warehouses have been ties ‘as-of-right’ without the consent able to bend the rules in their favor of community boards, zoning boards, and say they’re building the facilities or the city, leaving communities with‘as-of-right’ (meaning the existing out a say in what happens in their own neighborhood.” zoning allows them to do so.) Columbia University students did a Unfortunately, that is exactly what study on last-mile warehouses and has happened in Red Hook. The warethe study reported the same alarm- houses are close to opening and now ing point: “Numerous loopholes al- Red Hook locals must figure out a way low companies to build these facili- to make them a good neighbor.

Open Studios Returns to Red Hook by Brian Abate

ed Hook Open Studios is returning on October 9th and 10th after a taking a year off due to COVID precautions. Open Studios is an opportunity for artists and makers to show their work, meet the public and make some sales. Founded by artist Deborah Ugoretz, jeweler Katie Lincoln, sculptor Megan Suttles and inventor Richard Upchurch, Open Studios is a chance for the public to visit local artist studios. I spoke to Ugoretz about the event. “Every year we try to expand deeper and deeper into Red Hook, We started out with about 25 artists,” Ugoretz said. “Two years ago we got up to 100 artists and makers who participated.” “I’d love to try to integrate

the community even more,” Ugoretz said. “It’s exciting to have people come into your space, look at your work, comment on your work and see what they respond to. I think it’s gratifying for both artists and the public. It’s also just really fun!” The work of volunteers including Ken Aronson is essential. He is in his first year on the Red Hook Open Studios organizing team, responsible for managing the registration website. “I run Feinberg Studios,” Aronson said. “Feinberg provides studio space for artists and makers. Currently we have 14 residents that create through a wide variety of media including music production, painting, textiles, woodworking and more. We

have a great group of mostly long time resident artists contributing to the artist/maker community in Red Hook!” Suttles is the owner and founder of Hot Wood Arts, which opened in 2010. It contains 16 visual art studios, a wood shop, an art gallery and a stage. Hot Wood Arts was developed to encourage collaboration, inspiration and friendship in an urban environment and has participated in Red Hook Open Studios since the first one in 2015. Red Hook has lots of great artists but many have struggled to find studio space and haven’t gotten the opportunity to showcase their work. Red Hook Open Studios brings attention to these artists. Ugoretz first visited Red Hook in the early 2000s and has

lived in the neighborhood since 2011. “I’ve been interested in art since I was a kid and I have to create,” Ugoretz said. “If I don’t create I actually get grumpy. I studied art in school and even though my parents pushed me to have a more conventional career this has always been who I am…. I found the neighborhood so interesting when I first came here because of it's amazing diversity. I think the fact that Red Hook is inaccessible has kept an authentic feel to it and I think that inspires a lot of artists. It has certainly inspired me.” When I asked Ugoretz about her hopes this year for Open Studios, she told me “I just hope a lot of people come out to enjoy a weekend of

Deborah Ugoretz

meeting artists and makers while exploring the wonderful neighborhood that is Red Hook. And it wouldn’t hurt to shop in some of the businesses too! I hope we can keep on integrating the neighborhood more and more.” Registration costs $25 per artist, is open until September 6th. Sign up at their website, redhookopenstudios.com.

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Northwell nurses sing their way to "America's Got Talent" by Erin DeGregorio

group of local New Yorkers are one step closer to possibly winning Season 16 of the acclaimed reality television series, America’s Got Talent (AGT). On August 18, New York’s own Northwell Health Nurse Choir learned they would be advancing to the semi-finals after capturing the nation’s vote to continue on in the competition. The choir’s 18 frontline nurses from across the Empire State sang an emotional rendition of “You Will Be Found” from the Broadway hit “Dear Evan Hansen,” which won seven Tonys in 2017, the night prior in the quarterfinals. “When we first heard the arrangement, it really made sense as to why we, as health care providers, were singing such a beautiful song,” said Gaelle Clesca, a pediatric nurse from Long Island who works at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center. “And that’s the message that we want to relay to the world.”

ple that we don’t know, people from all over the world – it was like, ‘Holy mackerel, we really are ambassadors,’” she said. “We are ambassadors for healthcare,” Mele continued, “to let people know that we’re strong, we’re here, and we’re going to take care of you.” When the choir shared their story about working on the frontlines during the coronavirus pandemic and sang a mash-up of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” and Ben King’s “Stand by Me” for their AGT audition this past spring, they received the first Golden Buzzer of the season. The buzzer, pressed by celebrity judge Howie Mandel at the Pasadena Convention Center, secured their spot in the quarterfinals and made them contenders for winning the million-dollar prize, as well as the chance to star in the AGT Las Vegas LIVE stage show at Luxor.

Winnie Mele, director of perioperative services at Plainview Hospital in Nassau County who has been a nurse for 41 years, piggybacked off of Clesca’s sentiments, adding that she and the rest of the choir didn’t realize the global impact AGT has.

When it came time for the results of the quarterfinals, eight choir members – including Clesca – walked onto the stage and anxiously waited to hear if they would be moving on from AGT host Terry Crews. When they heard that long-awaited “yes” on August 18, a flood of emotions washed over their faces.

“The people that we touch – healthcare workers, people from other healthcare systems, people that we know, peo-

“I started crying and later we had to redo my makeup,” Clesca said with a laugh. “For me, it was magical. I mean,

it was as if we won the lottery – we were just so happy.” Mele was sitting in the audience with nine other choir members when the results were announced live. “Just waiting for those words that you’re moving on was, like Gaelle said, magical,” she said. “It was just another affirmation that what we’re doing is good.” Before they boarded on a plane back to California for semi-finals rehearsals on August 28, Clesca and Mele reiterated how proud they are of their group and how grateful they are to have the opportunity to perform for millions all over the world – especially after a very difficult year and a half. “I’ve never felt this level of gratitude and am just overwhelmed because this is bigger than me,” Clesca said. “I’m just really really honored and grateful for America’s Got Talent welcoming us, as well as Northwell Health being very supportive of us and our talents.” “We’re nurses and now we have an opportunity to get together and make music,” Mele added. “And sometimes I think we’re really blown away by our own talent because I get the chills.” Viewers can watch the Northwell Health Nurse Choir sing live at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on September 7 for the second round of semi-finals.

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September 2021

Opinion: Words by George

Parsing Eric Adams on the Gowanus rezoning by George Fiala

BP ADAMS FORMALLY RELEASES RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENSURE CRITICALLY-NEEDED FUNDING FOR TWO NYCHA DEVELOPMENTS AS PART OF GOWANUS REZONING That's the headline. He is saying that the reason we need luxury condos is to help public housing. Back in the 1930's, regular housing was too expensive for the working poor. The money to build public housing came from government as a public service. According to the BP, erecting tall luxury condos are necessary in order to maintain those buildings. Brooklyn, NY – Today, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams formally released recommendations on the proposed Gowanus rezoning as part of his Charter-mandated role in the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) that will secure the needed capital investments in the two New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments and ensure a better quality of life for residents of the developments. OK - here we go... there is nothing

about the actual rezoning itself, which is objected to by many people that currently make up the existing Gowanus neighborhood. The recommendations, part of a broader vision for the future of the Gowanus community amid a proposed City rezoning, underscore local leaders’ commitment to prioritizing the needs of public housing residents. It also provides a model for future rezonings throughout the City that include public housing developments with significant capital needs. As Congress continues to debate the appropriate level of federal investment in public housing, Borough President Adams believes it is critical for the City to find creative ways to meet New York City Housing Authority's (NYCHA’s) capital needs. His recommendations, developed in consultation with local tenant leaders, center around the needs of public housing residents, who have been subject to decades of disinvestment, and they seek to ensure those residents have a seat at the table when it comes to determining the future of their community.

"If the Mafia or the private sector would do this, it would be called blackmail or protection money." These recommendations were actually created by the Fifth Avenue Committee, one the real estate developers that will profit from the rezoning, in partnership with Councilman Lander, who likes to be seen as a progressive champion for social justice. “As we look to re-envision the Gowanus community, public housing residents cannot be left out of the equation. For too long, we have neglected people living in NYCHA, forcing them to live in substandard conditions. By leveraging public and private investment in the area, we can finally fulfill the City’s commitments to our NYCHA residents and ensure they have a real voice. I thank Council Member Brad Lander, the tenant association presidents, and all the community advo-

cates for making their voices heard in this process,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. This is wrong. The City's commitments to public housing have no legal connection to rezonings or luxury condo buildings. In his recommendations, Borough President Adams stressed the need for the City to meet its commitments to fully fund the capital needs for Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens. He calls for the following steps in his Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) recommendation to secure these investments: Here is my biggest problem with this scheme. Adams and Lander are setting up a situation in which they divide and conquer NYCHA. By allowing just some developments to become fully funded without sharing the spoils with the 30 other developments, they are dividing and conquering— creating a precedent for connecting gentrification to public housing. The incentive for every other public housing project throughout the city will now be to demand luxury housing in THEIR neighborhoods in order the receive funding. This is instead of the City demanding money from the State and Federal governments to fully fund all NYCHA developments. Dedicating five-year upfront capital funding for Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens, based on NYCHA physical needs assessments, estimated at $274 million and ongoing consultation with the tenants of both developments; and ensuring that the resulting Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens capital projects prioritize NYCHA tenants and low-income residents. If the City cannot commit to the level of funding needed for capital improvements at the two developments, Borough President Adams recommends capping allowable maximum heights and floor-area-ratio (FAR) for certain areas the City is seeking to upzone, unless the developers of buildings that fall within those areas are willing to purchase development rights from NYCHA. By recommending that increased allowable heights and FAR should be contingent on the purchase of such rights, Borough President Adams is signaling his commitment to ensuring NYCHA gets the capital resources it needs, whether from the public sector, private sector,

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If the Mafia or the private sector would do this, it would be called blackmail or protection money. “We believe what we are doing here in Gowanus can serve as a model for future rezoning processes throughout the City, particularly those that are expected to attract a significant amount of private investment,” said Borough President Adams. “Every rezoning must take into account the needs of long-time residents, and deliver real results for those with the greatest need. These recommendations lay out a path for achieving that.” There it is - the incentive to allow real estate developers to fully build out the city with luxury condo skyscrapers. The sky will only be for the penthouse dwellers. Further, Borough President Adams recommends that public housing residents in Gowanus be given priority for housing in new affordable housing developments in the area, including Gowanus Green, a 100 percent affordable site along the Gowanus Canal... That makes no sense - why spend money to fix up apartment buildings only to incentive people from leaving them? The Gowanus rezoning is expected to foster greater diversity in the area. The neighborhood is currently one of only 10 districts in the City with more than 60% white residents. A recent report estimates that 20% to 25% of the new lottery apartments under the rezoning would be rented by Black households, and 25% to 37% of them will be rented by Latino households. That recent report, used by Adams to justify his half-baked ideas, was commissioned by Brad Lander and created by Lance Freeman, a Columbia University professor who believes that gentrification is a wonderful thing. Last year, in a NY Daily News Op-Ed, he wrote: "If working-class communities are asked to be open to new development, this should be a team effort, with wealth and privilege not allowing some communities to exempt themselves. Upzonings in wealthier neighborhoods, such as that proposed for SoHo send the right message." The right message should be that government provides decent housing using progressive taxation, not by selling out to rich developers.

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few months ago in this column, I examined the community board's recommendations regarding the Gowanus rezoning plan that allows real estate developers to build 30 story luxury condos in the formerly arts and industrial (and polluted) Gowanus neighborhood. After the community board's approval, the next step is the approval of the Borough President. We still actually have a borough president, despite the fact that he's already acting like the mayor of the whole city. Not that it matters all that much, because what Eric Adams says is advisory for now, the real power comes from Brad Lander, who has been shepherding the whole process since even before he became councilman, as head of the Fifth Avenue Committee. However, it's fun to point out the hypocrisies from our supposedly progressive Democratic legislators, whose elections are funded by conservative real estate capitalists. In this case, those who have poured billions of dollars into buying up blocks of Gowanus where they will place their lofty towers. One of the players being Jared Kushner. The other day the Star-Revue received a press release from the BP. We are reproducing it below along with out comments. Enjoy!

www.star-revue.com

September 2021, Page 3

Frank's RED HOOK - BROOKLYN

Fifteen Story Red Hook building application to be heard by the Board of Standards and Appeal in the first week of October. Public comments are due by September 15.

Tune ups Overhauls Flat tire repair/change Accessories Bicycle sales and Frank’s Bike Shop T-shirts

PARTICIPATION:

FRANKS BIKE SHOP 80 Delavan St., Brooklyn NY 11231

The Board will use Zoom, which allows applicants and members of the public to participate using either the Zoom app or by telephone, using a dial-in number and meeting code. Video tutorials for the Zoom app are available online. Participants should expect to watch the live stream and dial in when the Board calls a specific calendar number. They will automatically be placed in a waiting room until it is their turn to speak, but participants should only call in when the Board is discussing the calendar item for which the participant wishes to testify. Because of time and technological constraints, testimony given by applicants and members of the public will be limited in duration; however, the Board encourages the submission of written materials electronically to submit@bsa.nyc.gov. Applicants’ late submissions (or attempts to submit materials during the hearing) will not be considered by the Board until the following hearing, unless the Board directs otherwise. For assistance participating, please direct questions to Emanuel Jones at emjones@bsa.nyc.gov or (212) 386-0009.

Page 4 Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2021

Red Hook locals miss their ballfields by Brian Abate

he expected completion date for construction on the Red Hook ballfields has once again been pushed back, according to last June's update from the Brooklyn Parks Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The majority of ballfields have been closed since 2015 due to lead contamination from the 1930's that was just discovered lately. The timeline for when the fields can re-open keeps getting moved back due to a variety of issues including the coronavirus pandemic, and of course the general slow way that city agencies work on capital projects. Phase one, which includes baseball fields 5-8 and soccer field 9, is now supposed to be completed this fall. Phase two, which includes baseball field 9 and soccer field 2, is expected to be completed next spring. Phase three, baseball fields 1-4, soccer fields 3-5 and the track around the fields, is now planned for 2023. Walls have been built around everything. I grew up playing baseball and soccer in Red Hook and I’ve been hoping they can re-open so new kids can do the same. I went out in the neighborhood and spoke to people to get their opinions on the fields remaining closed. Nobody gave us their names or permission to take their photos their names or allow us to take their photos, perhaps because this is not Facebook. I saw a father and son carrying baseball equipment and they told me they

were on their way to the batting cages to practice. “It would be great to have the fields open again,” the father said. “It feels like they’ve been closed forever but I guess the main thing is making sure the fields are safe. Most of the games are now in Prospect Park so it would be great to be able to have them right here again.” I spoke to Anthony, who used to play baseball in Red Hook and now works in the neighborhood. “I kind of forgot about the fields here because they’ve been closed for so long,” Anthony said. “It sucks though and now that you reminded me of them, I hope they’ll be open again soon. It would definitely be nice for the kids here, especially with coronavirus, to have the fields right here in the neighborhood.” To get a feel for what people in Red Hook were thinking, I walked around the neighborhood. I went to Valentino Pier Park, the Red Hook Recreation Center, through the Red Hook Houses and down Van Brunt Street, talking to people along the way.

“Maybe they would’ve liked playing baseball or soccer if the fields were open," she said. “My son always plays basketball because it’s easy for him to play. There are hoops right on our block. There’s no place to play baseball near where we live.” The Rec Center and outdoor basketball courts provide local kids with a place to get exercise but it’s frustrating knowing that there are so many fields that are closed. Each time it seems as though progress is being made, there’s another setback. Nearly everyone I spoke to said they’re hoping the fields can re-open again soon but many said it wasn’t something they’ve given much thought to recently.

“I think if the fields can open again, people will use them,” Joseph said. “It’s like the movie Field of Dreams. ‘If you build it they will come.’”

"It would definitely be nice for the kids here, especially with coronavirus, to have the fields right here in the neighborhood."—Anthony

One mom said that she was grateful to have the Red Hook Recreation Center just a few blocks away from where she lives because her kids always want to go there.

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The ballfields which were once a very big part of Red Hook have now become an afterthought after years of remaining closed. However, that may change if some of the fields really do open this fall.

“I remember it was a really big deal when they first had to close all the fields,” said Joseph, a Red Hook resident of more than 20 years. “Everyone was talking about it at first but now I think people got used to not having them anymore. Now with the pandemic, I think people are more up-

A few families were on their way home from the Red Hook Pool and the kids told me that they loved going to the pool and couldn’t remember the ballfields ever being in use.

Jamie@redhookstar.com

set about other things so there hasn’t been too much attention given to the fields. I think it’s a shame to have them but not be able to use them.”

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357 Van Brunt St. September 2021, Page 5

The Star-Revue Goes for a Walk in Brooklyn Bridge Park Photo Story by Brian Abate

I’m fortunate to live only a few blocks away from Brooklyn Bridge Park, which has become one of my favorite places in the city. It’s right on the water and has great views of the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. crowded and the games are competitive. I just played here with some friends from college who were visiting New York City and they loved it. Some of the courts are under a roof so you can play there even if it rains and there are lights so you can keep playing even after the sun goes down.

There is a little pond at the end of the park that I always like to look at after I take a walk. There are always animals to see including ducks, brightly colored fish and turtles. I think the plants that grow in the water are also pretty cool looking. It’s a part of the park that almost makes me feel like I’m out in nature while still being in the middle of Brooklyn.

There’s a little beach in the middle of the park, which is a nice place to sit and eat food. It’s a very calm, peaceful spot. A few people were out reading on benches nearby and one woman told me she always tries to come here to watch the sunset.

The park is a very dog-friendly place and I like to take my dog here. He loves to play in the sand. Most people are friendly and not in a hurry so they let the dogs greet each other. There’s also a little dog run and some of the local businesses leave water bowls and treats out for the dogs. I think this is one of the best places in the city to play basketball. It’s always

Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

A lot of people barbecue in the park once the weather gets warm. I spoke to a few of the people that were barbecuing and they told me they try to go as much as they can during the summer and that it’s a great way to get the family together.

There are also some really nice soccer fields at the park. I came here almost every day towards the beginning of the pandemic to kick the soccer ball around or play catch. It got me through some rough times and I’m happy to come back without having to wear a mask here anymore. The soccer fields were closed for a few months to put in new turf but the job was finished sooner than expected.

Brooklyn Bridge Park has become an important part of my life and I spend a lot of time here. When most places were closed and everyone was working from home during the pandemic, the park was one of my favorite places to go and get fresh air. There are basketball courts, beach volleyball courts, table tennis courts, handball courts, a roller rink, places to have picnics and places to barbecue. There’s always something to do and I’m really grateful to live in walking distance of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

There are lot of flowers blooming in the park right now. No matter what season it is, the park always looks pretty. I like when the leaves are changing color in the fall and when there’s snow on the tree branches in the winter.

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September 2021

Hollywood’s Forever War on Terrorism

ll of it was inconceivable — the scale, the carnage, the optics. To watch the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in real time, especially on television, was to thrash desperately for order as everything fell away. For many of us, that tenuous toehold was Hollywood. “This is like something out of a movie” was a natural first reaction. With more than a century’s worth of images and exponential growth in special effects technology, we’re used to massive scenes of destruction that defy disbelief. But on that Technicolor blue morning 20 years ago, the script flipped. Two decades after 9/11, the entreaty “Never Forget” feels redundant. The attacks imprinted themselves on a generation the way the Kennedy assassination did 38 years earlier. We couldn’t shake those memories even if we wanted to. What’s easy to forget, though, is it was more than a one-day event. We live in the world September 11 made, from our fractured politics and surveillance economy to our Forever War foreign policy and militarized local police forces. And, yes, our movies.

Before 9/11, Hollywood was no stranger to terrorism. Terrorists were reliable plot devices, both during the Cold War and in the following years. They were typically European, like Hans Gruber (Die Hard) or Ivan Korshunov (Air Force One). They could be freedom fighters striking at the heart of the West or soldiers of fortune striking at the heart of capitalism. Sometimes they were disaffected U.S. servicemen (Die Harder, The Rock) trying to make America great again. In the end, they were all cannon fodder in stories glorifying the rugged true-red-white-and-blue bravery and optimistic ingenuity of the gun-toting, freedom-loving authority figures protecting us all from invading forces of fear, chaos, and doubt. By 2001, we’d become so inured to danger that it’s no wonder when a made-for-Hollywood crisis happened for real, no one knew how to process it. Moviegoing is a national pastime often challenged, occasionally left for dead, but essentially durable. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested its resilience unlike any event since 9/11. But the threat was greater 20 years ago. In the pre-smartphone/social web era, the public square was the multiplex. After the attacks, we weren’t just worried about safety, we asked existential questions about what we wanted out of movies — and what movies even were in a world gone mad.

Viewer concerns were real, but Hollywood found itself enmeshed in the picayune crisis of scrubbing shots of the Trade Center from every project yet to be released and generally altering movies made months before 9/11 lest anyone be offended or, worse, be reminded of the tragedy outside. For instance, a scene of a plane hijacking was deleted from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage (2002) before its release. The plot — a firefighter seeking vengeance on terrorists who killed his family — didn’t seem to bother anyone. Sony’s Spider-Man (2002) was a microcosm of the early-days absurdity. Its first trailer, where SpiderMan spins a web between the Trade Center towers to catch some crooks, was pulled. The studio tried revising a shot in the film where the buildings reflected in the eyes of Spidey’s mask but couldn’t pull it off. And during a climactic fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, New Yorkers — who up to this point weren’t so cool with the superhero — come to his defense, with one exclaiming, “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!” A well intentioned, I’m sure, nod to national solidarity with New York (remember that?), but it has always felt empty and asinine.

Red Hook Star-Revue

by Dante A. Ciampaglia The industry eventually got its act together and over the last 20 years churned out material that spoke to and capitalized on the nation’s terror fears and the nebulous War on Terror. There are biopics, like W. (2008), Snowden (2016), and Vice (2018); potboilers, like The Kingdom (2007); Very Important Dramas, like Lions for Lambs (2007) and Rendition (2007); even a franchise, which began with Olympus Has Fallen (2013). But Hollywood’s favorite, by far, was the ripped-from-the-headlines dramatization: World Trade Center (2006), United 93 (2006), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Lone Survivor (2013), American Sniper (2014), 13 Hours (2016), and 12 Strong (2018), to name a few. There are a lot of stinkers in the bunch — Hollywood has rarely been accused of prioritizing authentic emotional experience over the empty-calorie cynicism of maudlin spectacle. But there were a few classics.

One is Spike Lee’s The 25th Hour (2002), arguably the best American film of the aughts, a last-night-offreedom drama set in post-9/11 New York, infused to the marrow with the uncertainty, anger, and fraternity that coursed through the city after the attacks, and a capsule of a traumatized country in the early throes of grieving. Team America: World Police (2004), by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is another. Made three years into the Afghanistan War and a year into the Iraq War, the marionette puppet satire relentlessly skewers self-righteous Hollywood liberals, toothless international bodies, North Korea, and, most pointedly, the hubris of an America bent on perpetual, endless revenge. I t was and remains the most cogent mainstream argument against allowing fear, retribution, and empty piety to reshape the nation. And then there’s Kathryn Bigelow’s Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker (2008), an incisive dissection of the psychology (and pathology) of our conflict-addicted politics and culture. Bigelow uses an adrenaline junkie bomb disposal soldier ( Jeremy Renner) in Iraq to reflect who we are as a country: exceptionally skilled, nihilistically brave, and selfishly reckless. It’s a beautiful, anxious film that speaks directly to where America was five years into the Iraq War, and where it would remain for the foreseeable future.

The War on Terror gave a rudderless Hollywood an instant font of material. But when 9/11 sucked all the air out of America’s movie theaters, it was replaced with the fumes and exhaust of endless, incomprehensible violence. The War on Terror was never a genre; it was a genetic modification. There were movies explicitly tackling the subject, but it manifested in every film. Outside threats were omnipresent; surveillance a given. The Dream Factory became the Nightmare Mill. For nearly a decade that seemed to be 9/11’s lasting cinema legacy. And then came the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before the turn of the century, superhero movies felt like expensive versions of, well, comic books. From Superman (1978) to Batman (1989), the good guys wore homemade costumes, the bad guys were bent on property and wealth, stories were city-bound, and threats were local (even for a strange visitor from another world).

Spider-Man sent up flares that change was coming, but the turning point was Batman Begins (2005). Christopher Nolan’s reimagining of the Batman mythos is explicitly a terrorism story — a clandestine group of foreigners committed to cleansing the world of decadence and depravity poison Gotham City with an aerosol-based fear toxin — centered on a vigilante

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equipped with experimental, bleeding-edge military gear. Nolan’s Gotham is a city choking in a miasma of smoke and dread, a deliberate evocation of 9/11 that Nolan returned to in the subsequent sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). His Batman trilogy is dark, brooding, and an explicit commentary on the War on Terror, from the urban attacks in Begins to rendition and surveillance in The Dark Knight to the nowhere-is-safe pathos and economic anxiety created by a decade of war in Rises. Batman Begins was a smash, changing the calculus of cinematic superhero storytelling and creating an opportunity for Marvel Studios to begin an experiment. Iron Man (2008), a comparatively bright, quippy, action-heavy, character-driven adaptation of a B-level superhero, hit theaters with minimal expectations. It too was a hit — fun and rousing with characters we wanted to hang with and the tease of a connected universe of characters. It also showed an American beset by terrorism — and repelling it.

Over the course of 22 films in the Infinity Saga, Marvel turned the superhero film into Hollywood’s most lucrative enterprise. And it’s not just thanks to fanboys. Loud as they are, they can’t sustain an entire genre. What turned even the most comic book-hating jock into, well, Marvel nerds is the dedication to a complicated world where victory is possible against all manners of threats: jihadists, corrupt businessmen, alien swarms, intergalactic ecoterrorists. Heroes get beaten up and challenged and tragedy befalls them, but in the end, they come out on top. They save the world — and, by the conclusion of the Infinity Saga, the universe — from terrorist megalomania. And while these films are international hits, there’s no doubt that America — or, rather, the promise of America — is the paragon. After all, the leader of the Avengers, the first Avenger, is Captain America. While there’s a lot of hoo-hah about Infinity Stones and superpowers and time travel and multiverses, these films are, at base, wish fulfillment, collective therapy, and pure escapism. That aggravates a certain viewer. A lot of these movies can be dumb and superfluous, especially as they get darker, and the stink of authoritarianism is omnipresent. The criticisms are well taken. But in this moment of perpetual crisis, it’s hard to fault viewers flocking to a bright, optimistic fantasy of witty good guys kicking ass the way Depression-era audiences desperate for a reprieve demanded snappy screwball comedies and highkicking musicals.

For all their faults, superhero films brought something like life back to the movies. Dreams, imagination, and enthusiasm replaced nightmares, hopelessness, and dread. But after 20 years of endless war, hapless politics, dire economics, fractured civic life, and now a pandemic, is it time for something more? And at what cost? Marvel has no fewer than 25 projects, movies and TV shows, on its slate. And folks are surely hard at work on big-screen versions of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the humanitarian disaster occurring at the Kabul airport. We need a break — from crass cash-ins on tragedy and franchise sequels. There is more to cinema than that binary. But this-or-that, with-us-or-against-us, is another legacy of 9/11, nationally and in Hollywood. Unless we’re willing to give up the movie theater, we must choose: superhero escapism or cynical despair? I’m not ready to let cinemas become another casualty of the Forever War. So make mine Marvel.

September 2021, Page 7

The 7th Annual Brooklyn Americana Music Festival comes to our neighborhoods The Brooklyn Americana Music Festival is scheduled for September 16 -19. Fifty live music events at seven iconic locations including the DUMBO Archway Plaza under the Manhattan Bridge and Pier 6 Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park on September 17th, 18th, and 19th. Nightly concerts will be held at Jalopy Theatre and Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook; and Superfine and 68 Jay St Bar in Dumbo.

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This annual festival is a celebration of folk, roots, country blues, bluegrass, and jazz and attendees of all ages can enjoy banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and three part harmony renditions of original and traditional songs performed by a majority of women-identified artists. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York) · Fri, Jun 27, 1919 · Page 4 Ticketed concerts Downloaded on Aug 20, 2021 include the festival kickoff on September 16th at Jalopy Theatre, and September 17th in the Dumbo Archway Plaza, and are followed by thirty FREE live music events for all ages.

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Opening Night Concert

Thursday September 16th at Red Hook’s fabulous Jalopy Theatrewith performances by W ashington, D.C. resident Crys Matthews is among the brightest of the new generation of social justice music-makers, and has been compared to Woody Guthrie. Jalopy regulars M Shanghai, reunite to play their first show since prepandemic. The Village Voice has called them “One of the best acts who usually play monthly, proving that New York, nay, Brooklyn is as country as Tennessee.”

2021 Festival Highlights:

Friday, September 17th The DUMBO Archway a full lineup of six bands with highly anticipated new releases in the spectacular 7,000 square foot cobblestone cathedral-like plaza beneath the Manhattan Bridge.

Featuring Jesse Lenat (RENT, Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid). Mike Younger, whose new release “Burning the Big Top Down’’ features Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi All Stars) and Levon Helm; Eleanor Buckland: one-third of Lula Wiles, the Smithsonian Folkways folk-rock trio; Rising stars from WFUV’s On Your Radar Bobtown, and Emerald Rae kick off the festivities which continue in the Dumbo Archway

Saturday September 18th

Walter Parks, sideman guitarist to Richie Havens; Maggie Carson, a songwriter, banjo player and member of old-time Americana band Spirit Family Reunion; Samoa Wilson “The essence of unaffected musical storytelling’ Nat Hentoff - sings gospel, blues and honeyed renditions of rare tunes; Emerging Americana artists Edan Archer, and multi award winner UK Americana artist Danni Nicholls. Saturday and Sunday September 18th and 19th performances are backdropped by the sweeping vista of downtown Manhattan and feature two days of FREE live music on Pier 6 Plaza in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Artists include: Joanna Sternberg (Fat Possum Records) who recently opened for Conor Oberst; Fifteen year old Nora Brown (TED Talk) “Top Ten Young Banjo Players You Need to Know.” - Bluegrass Situation / Violinist and composer Mazz Swift who recently appeared on the Late Show and the Tonight Show with Valerie June; Q ueen Esther who heads down from Harlem to sing songs from her TED Talk ‘Black Americana’ ; and Taiwanese songwriter Treya Lam whose song Dawn is featured on the Resistance Revival Chorus’s album “This Joy’’ released on Ani Difranco’s label Righteous Babe. Superfine“Best Live Brunch Spots” - Brooklyn Magazine - hosts Americana artists every night of the festival from 8pm “‘til late” and a special rendition of Brooklyn’s longest running Bluegrass Brunch (since 2001) on Sunday, September 19th. Full schedule and more info about all the artists, visit www.bkamf.org.

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September 2021

tions with disco rhythms and undermining them with one of the biggest electric guitars rock has had the pleasure to know.

They were always artful, making the big 77-81 seem not utterly inappropriate. As the name implies, it only covers the band’s first four years, the two albums and two EPs made by the initial line-up, a previously unreleased live recording and 90 minutes of demos. The upsell is 100-page, hardbound book with band history and reminiscences, along with testimonials from the bands they toured and played with, all put together— down to the design and proofreading—by the band, and dedicated to guitarist Andy Gill, who died in February, 2020, as they were compiling the set.

Truth, Prince and the American Way. Last month, the British newspaper The Guardian proudly declared Welcome 2 America the best album of Prince’s last two decades. They’re hardly alone in praising the record Prince shelved in 2010 and, fair enough, Prince never managed to surpass his remarkable album-a-year run from 1984’s Purple Rain to 1988’s Lovesexy. But Prince’s final years (or decades) shouldn’t be dismissed so readily. That 20-year span notably includes The Rainbow Children (2001), Musicology (2004), 3121 (2006), Plectrumelectrum and Art Official Age (2014) and the two volumes, or phases, of HITnRUN (2015), all great albums by any measure.

But something else has happened in the rush to praise W2A. In June, Sony Legacy Recordings and the Prince Estate gave The Truth its first vinyl and first standalone issue as a limited Record Store Day release. The album had been buried in Crystal Ball, a ragtag box set of unreleased tracks, in 1998. It’s one of the many mysteries surrounding Prince’s release decisions (for example, not releasing Welcome 2 America when it was completed in 2010). The largely acoustic but heavily produced album could have made waves in 1998 with a proper release. He was working (if sparingly) with Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow and Joan Osborne in those years, and his smart, sweet, unplugged set could easily have found fans in those crowds. It might have made waves in 2021, too, but unfortunately, The Truth was buried again. Nevertheless, Welcome 2 America holds its own against the best of Prince’s later works. What made his unparalleled 1980s run so amazing was that there was never a throwaway track. That rule didn’t hold in the following years, but W2A has more than its share of memorable songs: “Running Game (Son of a Slave Master),” “Born 2 Die,” “One Day We Will All B Free” and the infectiously incendiary title track make it a significant addition to the catalog. As ever, he’s a brilliant arranger, and his use of the backing vocalists—especially Liv Warfield—define the sound of the session. Both can be found on streaming services, and both are among the best albums of Prince’s last two decades. Gang of Forever. A posh, oversize box set with a sticker price of $60 for CDs or $140 for LPs is a fine hot-do-you-do coming from a bunch of old Marxist punk rockers, but if any band from the initial explosion of British bands circa 1976 is deserving of coffee-table treatment, it’s Gang of Four. They were the smart ones, clean and chaotic, setting expecta-

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Gang of Four has outlived in importance its wave of early 00’s imitators (cf. Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand). Back in June, a tribute album—the industry way of monetizing homage—came out on the Gill Music imprint. The Problem of Leisure: A Celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four is respectable, even occasionally admirable, but it shows (like the 2005 Return the Gift remix album) that the original Gang left no room for improvement. 77-81 only has so much value-added to offer those who already albums, but it’s a great set for the fetishists and completists.

had witnessed her force in person. I was surprised, a bit confused and more than a little disappointed by the awkward, emotional set, her first appearance in years and shortly following the loss of her brother and her husband, MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. I respected the turmoil, but didn’t get the Patti Smith I’d heard on record. Every time I’ve seen her since then, however, she has more than delivered, and it’s been more than a few. The fragile sincerity of that first show has proven to be part of a resiliency no less genuine, as evidenced by her 1988 song “People Have the Power” (written with her husband), a fairly trite protest anthem that becomes absolutely inspirational in concert. She and her band will be returning, in full power, to Summerstage Sept. 19.

ON STAGE

DPAARFSUM ..

Black Remembrance. I attended a Rooftop Films preview of two episodes of Spike Lee’s HBO miniseries NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½ and haven’t been able to bring myself to tune in for the rest. I was impressed, but it was too raw, too much emotion for me to take in. I may get back to it, but I’m planning on marking the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center Attacks with Onyx Collective at Abrons Arts Center in lower Manhattan. The jazz-leaning aggregate first caught my ear in 2018 when they played a set at the Eldridge Street Synagogue with saxophonist Roy Nathanson and guitarist Marc Ribot in the lineup. A few months later, they crossed my radar with an inspired cover of “Within You, Without You” on the enjoyable Beatles tribute album A Day in the Life: Impressions of Pepper. They’d already been around for four years at the time, though. I’d just missed the boat. With saxophonist Isiah Barr as the only constant, it’s hard to know what to expect, but they usually work a convincing blend of r’n’b grooves and jazz in ways that Heroes Are Gang Leaders and Standing on the Corner have taken to more recently. There’s not much advance word on their Holy Ground: Land of Two Towers, but I’m putting my trust in them for a mix of perspective and diversion. Patti Has the Power. The first time I saw Patti Smith in concert was at Central Park Summerstage in 1995. I’d known her records since adolescence but never

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September 2021

The Dukes of Snyder, Part 1 by Joe Enright George was surfing the Internet again. Uh oh. “Enright, I’m sick of your memories, I need some Brooklyn history...Wait, here’s something! It says in this 1946 Times obit that John Jacob Snyder was buried in Green-Wood as the ‘Mayor of Flatbush’ but I never heard of him. See what you can dig up!” “George, if you want some grave-digging, that’ll cost extra.” “Get out of here and get busy!” My first stop was GreenWood. This time the graves were close to Flatbush, just inside the Fort Hamilton Parkway entrance, near Gravesend Av e n u e . . . o o p s . . . G r a vesend was renamed McDonald Avenue in 1933 to honor a 40-year veteran of the Brooklyn Surrogate Court who choked to death on a chicken bone. Residents and businesses from Park Slope to Coney Island were against the change, but back then it was Tammany Rules. By all accounts John McDonald, who lived five blocks east of Gravesend Avenue, was a kind, decent, charitable man. But honoring him wiped out a street name that had stood for 267 years. I mean, Nathan Hale rode down Gravesend! Why not rename East 5th Street instead? Apparently, the clinching argument was that “Gravesend” was “too morbid a name.” Wow. But here’s an interesting postscript: McDonald had a son named Miles, born 1906, who would become the U.S. Attorney for Eastern District and Red Hook Star-Revue

then in 1945, be elected Brooklyn District Attorney. Clean as a hound’s tooth, he launched an investigation into allegations that NYPD enforcement against gambling was compromised. And he discovered a large gambling ring protected by scores of police at the highest levels of the NYPD and by (GULP!) the Mayor himself! If this were the plot of a sequel to Z, the 1969 Costa Gavras thriller about monstrous political corruption, McDonald would have been assassinated (if you’ve never seen it, put down this foolishness and stream Z immediately – hell, watch it again anyway, no matter how often you’ve seen it). Commissioner Bill O’Brien and Mayor William O’Dwyer – a former cop, judge, and District Attorney of Brooklyn! – fought back, blasting McDonald and the Grand Jury judge, “Hanging Sam Liebowitz,” the only non-Irishman in this saga. But after hearing wiretaps detailing his graft payoffs, the Commissioner resigned and Mayor O’Dwyer quickly secured an appointment as Ambassador to Mexico, remaining there for several years, safe from New York prosecutors. As a result, 22 policemen were convicted, and 240 others were dismissed or resigned. And the next DA, Commissioner, and Mayor did not have McDonald assassinated because 1) this is America, God damn it; or 2) maybe they didn’t have a good address for him. O’Dwyer’s blithe exit reminds me of another cor-

rupt NYC Irish mayor, Jimmy Walker. As he took the stand during a corruption trial in the Roaring Twenties, he elicited chuckles from the packed courtroom when he announced: “There are three things a man must do alone: be born, die and testify.” So where was I? Oh yeah. The Snyder Family plot in Green-Wood is extensive. I jotted down the names and did some research to track down any descendants who might give me some juicy quotes. Alas, I found the last direct descendant of “the Mayor of Flatbush” passed away in 2013. There was only one thing left to do. Make up some descendants and quotes. Just kidding, George, LOL. Here now the facts: John Jacob Snyder, the father of the “Mayor of the Flatbush,” was born in Germany in 1830, boarded a steamer in Rotterdam in 1850 bound for Manhattan Island and ten years later set up shop in the Dutch Town of Flatbush as a carpenter. He would remain the only German there for the next 30 years. From his marriage to a Scottish immigrant from Glasgow, there sprang three brothers and a sister who will become the stars of this series. First some scene setting. Back in 1860 Flatbush was centered around the Dutch Reform Church, its third iteration built in 1793, which still stands at the southwest corner of Flatbush & Church Avenues. Before a steam railroad arrived in 1870 (now the Brighton line), only a

horse-drawn trolley connected the village to the up-slope metropolis of Brooklyn, sitting atop the terminal moraine which separated the City from its hayseed southern neighbors. Most of Flatbush consisted of farms, whose mercantile needs were serviced by shops straddling for a block or two in either direction the old BIPOC road, Flatbush Avenue. In 1871 John Jacob Snyder created a small carpentry/hardware shop a block south and a block east of the old Dutch church, at the corner of Locust Street & Union Place. Four years later Union Place was renamed Grant Street to honor the sitting President, General Ulysses S. Grant. As the years passed and the population of Flatbush grew, John J. Snyder successfully pushed for the southward extension of Bedford Avenue down from Crown Heights to obliterate the miniscule Locust Street. And then in 1904, as Snyder grew long in the tooth, and as his hardware store prospered, the commercial powers that be decided that Grant, dead now for almost 20 years, should bow to progress and Grant Street was renamed Snyder Avenue. COMING NEXT MONTH IN PART 2: Snyder’s youngest son arrested for jilting a working girl! Snyder’s oldest son corners the lumber market in Gowanus! Snyder’s middle son is dubbed “Mayor of Flatbush.” Who are these people?

New York Daily News

Daily News (New York, New York)

https ://nydailynews .news papers .com/image/416064933

· Sun, Apr 23, 1933 · Page 88 Downloaded on Aug 20, 2021

New York Daily News https ://nydailynews .news papers .com/image/414543535

New York Daily News

Daily News (New York, New York)

· Sun, Mar 26, 1933 · Page 82 Downloaded on Aug 20, 2021

Daily News (New York, New York)

· Sun, Mar 11, 1928 · Page 90 Downloaded on Aug 20, 2021

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September 2021, Page 11

Page 12 Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2021

The Death of Merit: A Do Nothing Fame Culture

y earliest entertainment memories include the likes of Boys II Men, Eddie Murphy, Micheal Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner and many more. Growing up I remember watching these entertainers and adoring their undeniable talent. The culture that I was raised in applauded talent and skill, to the extent that most could not ascend to the heights of recognition without it. Of course, popularity and wealth have always been a way to measure the success of the most revered people, but it almost always came with some distinct and laudable measure of skill. Today, with the help of technology, popularity and wealth have pushed out the need for skill, expertise, or talent when qualifying success.

If I have to pick a genesis of this modern do nothing fame culture, I have to point to reality TV. The early 90’s brought us MTV’s Real World, a show featuring young attractive strangers placed in a house together, with drama sure to follow. The reality TV show grew into more seasons of the Real World and inspired many other reality shows. By the early 2000’s shows like the Real World had become TV staples. New shows like The Simple Life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Riche, and BET’s College Hill were ratings gold. People tuned in to watch regular people do nothing spectacular, except experience drama, have sex and fight.

Some reality shows like American Idol focused on showcasing talent, however the lion share of reality TV had little or nothing to do with talent. Most reality TV shows were simply meant to exploit it’s cast’s desire for attention. Today, reality TV can catapult you to wealth and super stardom for no other reason than, we saw you on TV, ie. Cardi B from Love and Hip Hop NY, and of course the Kardashian/Jenners. It’s hard to unsee how reality TV influenced a capitalist culture that was already focused on money and wealth, to care less about merit. By the late 2010’s social media had become a media mainstay. Social media picked up the reality TV baton and bolted across the fame for nothing finishing line. Open up Instagram and you’ll be inundated with the exhaustive use of the word ‘influencer,’ translation: I have many followers, so pay me for it through ad money

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by Roderick Thomas or brand association (clout). In essence, the app has become an overflow of not so talented people monetizing their lack of talent. I’m not a prude, as someone who works in media and marketing, I too participate in the exploitation of a particular self-image. However, I’m actually a writer and cinematographer. Social media apps like instagram and Tik Tok have become spaces for the cringiest mini reality shows. Everyone gets to live out their ego fantasy. I have never seen so many people willing to omit talent from their shameless display of self––– cringey, cringey, cringey Tik Tok dances. Truthfully, all of this would be fine if it wasn’t accompanied by the gradual murdering of skill and talent as necessities.

When it comes to music, autotune is by far the biggest culprit in the omission of talent as a necessity. When Whitney Houston sang Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” it sent a message across the globe because of her voice, not simply because of how popular she was. Autotune is a pitch corrector that allows music producers and engineers to automatically correct vocal errors. It allows even the most unskilled singer to sound reasonably good on a song. It’s true that music engineers had always enhanced vocal performances, however, many of today’s musicians aren’t simply enhancing their voice, they simply cannot produce music without autotune. To add, the general public doesn’t seem to be able to discern the difference or care that much at all. I think the most unfortunate outcome of this more money, less merit culture, has been the effects on politics, news and science. News networks prioritize AD sales to the detriment of actual news reporting and facts. Recently, in federal court, Fox opinion news reporter Tucker Carlson and his attorneys went on to admit that he in essence wasn’t a real reporter, rather an opinionist. Carlson at the time was being sued for defamation by none other than Karen McDougal, Donald Trump’s alleged mistress. Regarding politics, Donald Trump is perhaps the best representative of meritless high status––– a reality TV star and NYC rich kid who became the president because of his popular and polarizing opinions. Yet

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his presidency was only possible because the general society itself was prime soil for a person like him to be president––– we reward popularity, just as much or more than merit. Today we have mini Trumps in high office who spew fact-free rhetoric with increasing demand (see Marjorie Taylor). To make matters worse, in today’s society, there seems to be an expectation of recognition for doing and achieving less. People can’t seem to tell the difference between merit and popularity––– weird. The entertainment washing of news and politics has had an adverse affect on American culture, and it appears to be getting more extreme. January 6, 2021 for example, saw folks take popular misinformation and entertainment news as reality, to hysteric proportions. Yes, folks really did bum rush the United States capitol and try to harm congressmen and women, like some dystopian Jordan Peele film. Part of why I write and am a cinematographer, is because of the skill needed to enter these spaces. You can’t sort of write for a publication, nor can you kind of know how to use your camera, lenses, or understand lighting and composition. While it’s commendable that some of the aforementioned celebrities and reality stars have transformed attention into lucrative business, I think there is a distinction between money making prowess and classic artistic skill and talent. And yes, like many others I participated in the rise of reality TV, social media, entertainment news and auto tuned music. I am not exempt from critique in that regard. However, I never did away with my reverence for dexterity, and I never will.

Will we ever again witness seismic culture shifts like an “I Will Always Love You” (Whitney Houston), or a Micheal Jackson moonwalk live on television? Will a president who is caught lying ever be successfully impeached again if necessary, or are we stuck in meritless limbo? The answers are unclear and that’s very frightening.

Roderick is a NYC based writer, filmmaker, (Instagram: @Hippiebyaccident, Email: rtroderick. thomas@gmail.com, Site: graemediallc.com)

September 2021, Page 13

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Jonathan Ames, author of several books (including You Were Never Really Here, adapted into a film starring Joaquin Phoenix), creator of two television series (Blunt Talk and Bored to Death), and sometimes boxer (fighting as “The Herring Wonder”), continues building an eclectic body of passion projects with his latest work, A Man Named Doll. This novel focuses on the improbably named Happy Doll, a fifty-something, down-on-his-luck, L.A. private eye. Happy is also a romantic. Admiring the sound of his wooden-heeled shoes, he observes, “it’s like out of a movie, the sound effect of a man in a city late at night, alone and in danger. It’s a romantic sound.” It’s also a noir-ish one. A Man Named Doll is an affectionate, playful tribute to the hardboiled detective genre. Set in the present day, with swarms of butterflies making sudden, unexpected appearances across L.A.’s environmentallybattered landscape, its story is narrated by Happy in short, staccato sentences (“It was rainy season. An old-fashioned one. An anomaly”), and contains all of the noir genre’s classic elements: the fiercely independent investigator; a beautiful, mysterious woman; bad guys; an urban location; a complex plot; and existential underpinnings—whatever case Happy happens to be investigating, what concerns him most deeply is the meaning of life. At the story’s opening, Lou Shelton, an old mentor, bursts into Happy’s office. He’s in bad shape. In failing health, he’s desperate for a kidney. Would Happy consider giving him one of his? What remains unspoken is the unpaid debt between them; back when they were both cops, Lou had taken a bullet for him. That night, working his part-time job as a security guard at an Asian massage parlor, Happy considers his obligation to his old friend. Just then, a customer goes berserk, attacks one of the women, and Happy intervenes. He spends the rest of the novel with a bandage on his face—very Jake in Chinatown. How these plot points come together is the work of this very short novel. But I’d argue you don’t read (or watch) anything Ames for plot. You don’t even read him for voice. What Ames delivers in spades is sensibility. Like the film director Wes Anderson, Ames is a mood guy. The self-awareness Ames instills in Happy is what distinguishes him as a narrator. He knows what his issues are, most of them stemming from feeling responsible for his mother’s death (she died in childbirth). He’s slowly working through them through years of therapy, “the only ex-cop I know in Freudian analysis.” Happy is often anxious and awkward, but he’s always selfaware. With self-knowing comes self-acceptance. For example, Happy seems perfectly at home in his little inherited Spanish bungalow in the Hollywood Hills, which he greets by name each day. Fixing a plate of food for himself (smoked fish and marijuana gummy candies are mainstays of his diet), he observes his “odd but healthy” eating habits. While nursing a broken heart, Happy has discovered that the real love of his life is his little rescue dog, George. “Unlike most dog owners, I don’t project onto him that’s he my child, my son. Rather, it’s a more disturbed relationship than that. I think of him as a dear friend whom I happen to live with. In that way, we’re like two old-fashioned closeted bachelors who cohabitate and don’t think the rest of the world knows we’re lovers.” Competing with George for Happy’s undivided attention is Monica, a languid and beautiful bartender whose long hair fails to mask the scar across her face; as a child, her father pushed her through a plate-glass window. For all its romance and its nutty, neurotic sense of humor, A Man Named Doll easily and often erupts into this kind of violence. It’s only afterward that you realize how close to the surface it was all along. Happy’s go-lucky style suddenly seems less like posturing, more like a coping mechanism. He draws on the past as a way to live in the present, when “you had to be patient because time was different then. It lasted longer.” What doesn’t last long is A Man Named Doll. You’ll zip right through it. Happily, it contains a teaser for the next volume, called The Wheel of Doll. Here’s hoping for many Happy returns.

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Review of A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames Review by Michael Quinn

Michael Quinn | Review of A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames, 2021, Little, Brown and Company, 208 pp mastermichaelquinn@gmail.com

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September 2021

Jazz by Grella Return of the Titans

here’s lots to love when it comes to Blue Note records, not the least of which is that the combination of the consistently fine music they recorded and released and the distinctive and influential graphic design of the record albums were some of the most important elements of creating what “cool” meant in American culture, before it was coopted and perverted by the idea that making money and buying things—rather than standing askance to square, consumerist society—is somehow cool. Put on a Blue Note disc and you’ll be digging the music. Pull back into the mountain-top view, and survey the landscape of recorded music, and you’ll see that every record is a document of some historical moment, which can be as fine grained as an afternoon in Rudy Van Gelder’s studio or as complex as the personal and social circumstances that inform the moment when a musician steps up to the mike and their human experience pours out through an improvised solo. Then take all those Blue Note discs and put them into a quilt, and you’ve got one of the most important and informative aesthetic narratives in 20th century music and culture. Now open up that quilt for two more new archival issues from major voices in that story, and relive both the moments and see the panorama with greater detail, depth, and clarity.

Out as of this late summer are, on Blue Note, The Complete Live at the Lighthouse, from trumpeter Lee Morgan, and The Complete Blue Note Joe Henderson Studio Sessions, in limited release, licensed from Blue Note, on the specialty Mosaic Records label (www. mosaicrecords.com). Mosaic producies deep-dive, limited edition box sets with excellent remastering and large-scale, comprehensive booklets full of essays, analysis, beautiful photographs and detailed discographical information. The Henderson set is up there with their usual standards and is full of one great track after another, across five CDs. But there’s one major caveat to this collection: this is nowhere near the complete Blue Note studio sessions from Henderson, and I have no idea why it’s titled as such. The set runs from trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s Una Mas album, recorded April 1, 1963, through Henderson’s Mode for Joe, featuring Morgan in a group that sounds like a modernized version of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, though with Joe Chambers on drums and the addition of the great vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. That session took place January 27, 1966. Bob Blumenthal writes in the booklet that, “This

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by George Grella collection contains all of Henderson’s own Blue Note albums and the pair he made with Dorham, plus a sampling of the original compositions he contributed while recording with others.”

That last clause explains the absence of great albums like Grant Green’s Idle Moments and Andrew Hill’s Black Fire, and Morgan’s own The Sidewinder, one of the great jazz albums of all time. But it confuses things also, because Henderson doesn’t have any writing credits on Una Mas. The saxophonist also released two Blue Note albums, Page One and Our Thing, beforeInner Urge, from 1964, which is in this set and is a mid-‘60s classic and highly influential. This is far from complete and the explanation is frustrating in the way it obfuscates both the truth and its own logic.

That aside, there’s nothing but musical pleasure in here. Like Henderson, Dorham is perhaps in the second rank when it comes to name recognition but remains one of the all-time greats. The pleasure of hearing these two together is that they were both smart and tough-minded players, constructing sophisticated musical ideas on the fly with power and a respect for sensation, the epitome of great jazz playing. Henderson has one of the most distinctive sounds in jazz, punchy, warm, light and quick as a jab but with the weight of a haymaker. The capsule journey from Inner Urge, and the elevated blues of the title track, to the whole of Mode for Joe, is one of the stories of modern jazz in the ‘60s, with hard bop expanding, through the influence of free playing on the one hand and composing that moves away from standard 12-bar blues and AABA song forms and assembles more complex rhythms, harmonies, and shapes (listen to Jackie McLean’s and Wayne Shorter’s Blue Notes from the same period for more of that story). The harmonies and forms on Mode for Joe are expansive, the players are willing to stretch outside linear phrases into musical gestures that reach into raw emotion, but the swing and swagger of hard bop are all there. There’s never a dull moment in this set, and while the gap between what the title promises and the contents deliver is too wide for it to tell us anything new about Henderson, the music is so good that it’s a major release. Lee Morgan was a real star in the 1960s. He made his debut recording sessions the first week of November, 1956, when he was 18 years old, and two years later is a dazzling presence on John Coltrane’s Blue Train. He is all over the Blue Note catalogue in the decade,

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with giant hits like The Sidewinder and The Rumproller, tremendous artistic statements like Search for the New Land, on the frontline, with Shorter, in the Jazz Messengers, and as the kind of featured sideman who helped make albums from musicians like Clifford Jordan, McLean, Hank Mobley, Shorter, and Jimmy Smith part of the central story of jazz.

Morgan was fiery, fluid, absolutely on top of postCharlie Parker idioms while also deep in the blues and funk. He didn’t experiment with the avant-garde, but he did move his own music forward as jazz incorporated rock, soul, funk, and other pop ideas as the ‘60s came to a close. Until now, there were only hints of that in his discography (his story ended February 19, 1972, when his common-law wife, Helen, shot him to death at Slug’s Saloon—the culmination of the 2017 documentary film I Called Him Morgan). He left behind a final session and a tantalizing live doublealbum, Live at the Lighthouse. Blue Note has now put out the complete version of that, eight CDs with 12 sets across four days at Hermosa Beach, CA, club. It’s stupendous. Morgan was right there in the center of the music, in the summer of 1970, pulling together hard bop, latin jazz, pop ideas (he quotes “Eleanor Rigby”) and rock rhythms, and some gorgeous, rich harmonies. Some of the styles may sound dated, particularly the arrangement of “I Remember Britt,” but the intelligence, strength, and explosive excitement of the playing are timeless and eternal—the mainstream of modern jazz still sounds like this record, 50 years later.

Morgan plays exceptionally well, no surprise there, even when he was struggling with drugs he always played with energy and had meaningful things to say. The revelation is getting to hear so much of Bennie Maupin, who plays tenor sax, flute, and bass clarinet. Maupin is a central part of some of the most important jazz albums of the last half century, including Bitches Brew and Head Hunters, but outside of those records it’s hard to get to hear his playing. This release cements his status as a musician of substance. His muscular, leathery tenor sound is as distinctive in jazz as Henderson’s, and his sophistication and power are just as fine. He’s a great ensemble player on all his horns, and when it’s time to come to the fore, his soloing is probing and full of the propulsive excitement of the moment. This is a massive amount of tremendous live jazz, and Maupin is as responsible for that as Morgan.

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