Village Star-Revue February 2025

THE VILLAGE STAR REVUE

West Village threatened by massive tower

by Phyllis Eckhaus

Ignoring vehement community objections and the more muted misgivings of local City Council

Member Erik Bottcher, the city is proceeding with plans for a 60-story, 600-foot-tall luxury residential spire at the current site of the Gansevoort Meat Market, on Little West 12th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues in the Meatpacking District.

The city is paying the meat market $31 million to exit the city-owned property early, in order to develop Gansevoort Square, described as a “bold redevelopment” that “will transform the approximately 66,000 square feet…into mixed-income housing units, new open space, and the opportunity to expand the Whitney Museum of American Art and the High Line.”

In plans for the project, the Whitney—which had the right of first refusal for the site—will double in size, and the Highline will build a new maintenance facility.  The plan allocates 38,471 square feet to the Whitney expansion, 6,322 square feet to the Highline, and 10,000 square feet to the 60-story residential spire.

Public opposition

The existence of the Gansevoort Square Project was announced in October. Although the city was reportedly working with a design consultant for a year, the controversial luxury spire was not revealed to the public or the community board until shortly before the public comment period.  At three public meetings during the winter holidays, speakers overwhelmingly condemned the spire—more than

a similar predicament. Hard to say when this malevolent spin of events began.

by R.J. Cirillo

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM

There is a short story written in 1841 by Edgar Allen Poe called “A Descent into the Maelstrom." It tells the tale of a mariner at sea caught in a giant whirlpool.

IMHO we ourselves are currently spiraling downward in

Was it with Reagan, the first “know nothing” celebrity president, who peddled anti-government rhetoric? Things really revved up in 2016 with the election of the comb-over low-life reality show host. His Americafirst white nationalist bent, allowed all the fringe racists to come out from under their rocks and flow into the

twice the height of the nearby Standard Hotel—with comments comparing it to a conspicuous “sore thumb” and “raised middle finger.”

Over the objections of the community, Community Board 2 (CB 2), and Council Member Bottcher, on January 29th, the city’s Economic Development Corporation issued a “request for proposals (RFP)” to private developers, seeking proposals to build the super-tall spire, with up to 600 housing units plus ground floor retail.

On January 28th, Council Member Bottcher posted online that while he “strongly believes in the need to build housing in all neighborhoods” the 60-story spire was “obviously out of scale for the Meatpacking District” and that he had asked the city to “pause releasing this RFP and instead issue one with a more appropriate height.”

He followed up with a more jocular post, his plaint posing as query: “Is it possible to be both YIMBY while also feeling that 60 stories is a tad bit tall for the West Village? Asking for a friend.”  His office declined to issue a statement following the release of the RFP the next day.

CB 2 seeks 100% affordable

In keeping with the law offering tax abatements to real estate developers who build affordable housing, the  RFP requires that a quarter of the spire’s housing units be permanently affordable, targeted to households who make 60 percent of the “area median income” or about $93,000 for a family of four. The city has expressed hope

mainstream. His what me worry attitude allowed the Covid pandemic to spread and maximize the death toll.

The downward spiral was reprieved when Joe Biden took the Oval Office in 2020. But the forces of scumbaggery were not done, they festered in the internet chat rooms and certain cable stations. The guy from Queens took on allies with names like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and returned zombie-like to become the exalted mys-

that developers responding to the RFP will propose projects where ideally 50 percent of the housing will be “affordable”—with the additional 25 percent designated  for households who make up to 120 percent of the AMI or, for a family of four, about $186,000.

A week before the release of the RFP, CB 2 passed a resolution urging the city to pause the project, and to instead pony up the money—an estimated $325 million—to construct a redesigned project where 100 percent of the housing would be permanently affordable, and potentially available to lower-income households.

CB 2 characterized $325 million as “a paltry amount” relative to the $3.7 billion the city just contracted to build a new Manhattan jail and noted that the cost would constitute a mere 1.3 percent of the $24.5 billion allocated for affordable housing in the city budget. The resolution also called on the city to consider cantilever construction and mixed use buildings throughout the full 66,000 square foot site, strategies “to maximize affordable housing and reduce height.”  Citing MoMA’s expansion in 2019, which included residential units above the museum, CB 2 suggested that the Whitney might also incorporate affordable housing as part of its expansion.

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tic ruler in 2024. And so the Maelstrom’s spin increases. The mariner of the Poe story finding his wooden ship going to splinters around him (as we find ours at the moment) comes up with a desperate plan. He lashes himself to a wooden barrel, and with the ship gone, rides down alone to the bottom. There, along with the barrel, he’s thrown back up to the surface and rescued by a passing fishing boat.

So for us going forward, the main thing, maybe the only thing to do I think is to hold on, ride it out, find a barrel of some kind, and hang on. And remember friends…. The Midterms Cometh!!

Rendering courtesy Village Preservation

Editor & PublishEr

George Fiala

rEPortEr Phyllis Eckhaus

Music Kurt Gottschalk Medea Hoar

Art Steve DiLauro Lee Klein

JAzz George Grella

FilM Dante A. Ciampaglia

books Michael Quinn

Hydration Katherine Rivard

WEbMAstEr Tariq Manon

dEsign George Fiala

Ad Sales Susan Bosworth

Merry Band of Contributors

R. J. Cirillo

Phebe Du Pont

Syd Straw

Kate Walter

Olivia Stern

Michele Herman Oscar Fock

Dana Costantino

It's not just us that are asking

More than a few of the writers in this month's paper seem to be questioning how our country got to this current place. It's of course something I've been trying to figure out as well. Lots of other people are also wondering. One of them is Bill Gates.

Bill and I are just about the same age. He got involved in the computer world a bit earlier than I did—in 1975 when he started selling his own version of BASIC. Back then I was still hanging out at places like the Lone Star Cafe.

But by the early 1980's I became fully involved in the personal computer industry when the paper I was working for (some of you might remember The Villager), was able to get one of the original IBM PC's, complete with MS DOS 1.1, dBase and Wordstar software and an Okidata 84 printer.

Since there was nobody else who could do it, I was given the task of trying to figure out how to write software to keep track of subscriptions at both the Villager, and the other paper we owned, the Brooklyn Phoenix. In those days business software had to all be custom written.

In the process of figuring it all out, I became hooked on computers, and devoured every issue of PC Magazine, PC World and Computer Shopper. I became fast friends with a publisher in Westchester who had a head start on me, already selling newspaper mailing software he wrote in BASIC.

We talked nerd talk on the phone as we were working late at night at our respective businesses, and one of the

things we talked about was Microsoft's practice of putting out an operating system, waiting to see what software smaller companies would write to fill in the features that they didn't think of, and then copying those features to add to their next version of Windows.

We decided that Bill Gates was more of a good businessman than an innovator, which ended up making him one of the first tech billionaires.

Then he retired and made friends with Warren Buffet and did things like help to eradicate river blindness in Africa. He went from being an idea thief to a do-gooder, which was redeeming.

An article in the NY Times the other day about his soon to be published memoir speaks of his' own misgivings of what his industry has wrought.

I quote:

“Incredible things happened because of sharing information on the internet,” Mr. Gates said. That much he anticipated. But once social media companies like Facebook and Twitter came along, “you see ills that I have to say I did not predict.”

Political divisiveness accelerated by technology? “I didn’t predict that would happen,” he said. Technology being used as a weapon against the broader public interests? “I didn’t predict that,” he said.

Mr. Gates is a techno-optimist but he has limits, like cryptocurrency. Does it have any use?

“None,” he said. “There are people with high I.Q.s who have fooled themselves on that one.”

Even artificial intelligence, which

Publisher George Fiala

Mr. Gates has spoken of enthusiastically, and which Microsoft is heavily invested in, produces a few qualms. “Now we have to worry about bad people using A.I.,” he said."

So it's not just my friends, writers here, and myself that can't quite figure things out. Him too.

I was talking to my friend Eliot today about how there seem to be a huge number of people who are completely disrespectful of others who are more traditional in their views of government. I mean that on both extremes. He told me that what was I was seeing (the comments pages of various online publications) were full of Russian and Chinese bots. He also mentioned that a generation growing up with Fox News has also been harmful to civil discourse. Whatever it is, what is going on right now with the federal government goes against everything I learned in economics and international relations classes I took at a graduate program at the New School. The fact that the "Deep State" has gone from being the Tri-Lateral Commission to the Federal Government shows the insidious effects that conspiracy theorists can have. But the biggest thing I learned in my economics class was the adage "follow the money."

The other day Bernie spoke about the things Trump didn't talk about at his inauguration. Then he pointed out why. Because the three tech billionaires who are worth more together than the lower 50% of the whole country were sitting right there behind him on the dais .

Carrie Does Not Live Here

When I first moved to the West Village, I wondered why people were clogging up the sidewalks on Perry Street and taking pictures in front of this beautiful brownstone. Then I learned the exterior of 66 Perry Street had been used for Carrie Bradshaw’s home in the popular HBO series “Sex and the City.” Since then, the site became a global tourist attraction–much to the dismay of the home owner and the other residents of this charming block.

People in love with the show pause in front of the building to take pictures, but it doesn’t just end there. Over the years, obsessed fans have run up the steps, peered into the windows, rung the doorbell, tried to open the door, painted graffiti on the steps, scratched initials into the door frame. This madness has gone on for two decades. The show ran from 1998-2004 but still airs in syndication worldwide.

Following the advice of the Sixth Precinct, the owner erected a chain across the steps. And she installed private property signs and other signs about keeping the noise down and not climbing on the steps. Obviously that hadn’t worked so the owner, Barbara Lorber, petitioned the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to build a steel and cast iron gate. She needed permission because

the building is in the Greenwich Village Historic District. This past January, the Landmarks Commission approved her request. Even Village Preservation testified on her behalf.

I’ve never understood the attraction of posing for a picture in front of a building that appears in a show. The interior of Carrie’s apartment was shot elsewhere. Then the fans stop at the nearby Magnolia Bakery to buy their overly sweet cupcakes. While that may be good for business, the little park across from the bakery now looks like a dump what with all the garbage cans overflowing with cupcake boxes.

When the bakery was featured in “Sex and the City” it caught the eye of designer Marc Jacobs who decided to locate several stores in the neighborhood, all now closed except one. But his arrival on Bleecker Street opened the floodgates and completely changed those blocks.

When I moved here in 1997, Bleecker Street still had a neighborhood vibe — with a pasta shop, a card shop, a new age store, the Biography Bookshop, many antique furniture stores, even a laundromat. That’s all gone now.

Today Bleecker Street is jam packed with cute high-end designer shops. I always thought the show being filmed here hastened the uber gentrification

of a historic district that was quaint and charming long before these upscale interlopers arrived.

Sarah opened a shoe store

I have not missed the irony that Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie Bradshaw, later opened a shoe store with her own line on the corner of Perry and Bleecker. It has since closed, one less stop for the tourists. The invasion of fans has clearly made life hell for the residents of Perry Street between Bleecker and West 4th Streets. I’m sure whatever the owner was paid to allow them to film there couldn’t possibly be enough to compensate for the loss of privacy at all hours of the day or night.

I walked by on a freezing cold Saturday afternoon in January and seven or eight people stopped to take pictures within 10 minutes. I guess that’s a testament to the enduring popularity of the series, but I would hate to be living in this building or on this block. I saw tourists walking in the middle of the street as if this were a movie set and there were no cars. I watched a guy pose on the steps of a similar looking building, circumventing the chain on the steps of the Carrie house.

And though Parker and her family reside in the neighborhood, Carrie is a fictional character who lived on the Upper East Side. But that does not

stop the fans from coming to worship at the West Village shrine. I’m glad the owner got permission to erect that gate and hope Perry Street residents finally get some peace.

I laughed at the writer in the New York Post who thinks the home owner should be grateful her building is part of NYC history. He called her plea for the gate West Village whining and wildly over dramatic. I gathered his humorous rant stemmed from being peeved he’s stuck in the noisy East Village, where I lived for decades. I’m curious to see what the gate will look like. The designer is tweaking it with input from Landmarks Preservation. And will it be effective? We’ll see. In a weird twist of Greenwich Village synchronicity: I’ve been listening to old Joni Mitchell albums as I read local resident Henry Alford’s fantastic new book I Dream of Joni. As I was streaming Mitchell’s album “Clouds”, I was jolted as young Joni sang “In a Bleecker Street café, I found someone to love today.”

I pictured her chain smoking in a café that no longer exists. I felt nostalgic for the pre “Sex and the City” era when the neighborhood still lured artists and dreamers.

FUNNY SIDE UP BY MARC JACKSON

Story and photos by Kate Walter

COFFEE CORNER: Light, Medium, and Dark Roast—Exploring the Differences

Getting to know the differences between light, medium, and dark roasts can help coffee lovers make choices about what they consume as it relates to caffeine and flavor as well as appreciate the unique characteristics each roast offers. One common misconception about dark roast coffee is that it has higher caffeine content. In fact, dark roasts tend to have less caffeine than medium and light roasts. I learned about this just recently and was always (even as a lifelong coffee lover and daily consumer) under that misconception that light roast had less caffeine. I hope you enjoy learning more about the differences between roasts and how they come to be.

Light Roast Coffee:

Light roast coffee is stage one in the process of roasting, where the beans are heated until they reach an internal temperature of around 356 to 401°F (180 to 205°C). Then, the beans are removed from the roaster just as they start to “pop,” signaling that first crackling sound. Light roasts are usually light brown in color and have no oil on the surface of the beans, they are roasted for shorter periods. The main defining characteristic of light roast coffee is its bright, acid-

by Dana Costantino

ic flavor. The higher acidity results in a tangy or often fruit like taste. Light roasts tend to preserve more of the flavor of origin.

Light roast coffee generally has a higher caffeine content compared to darker roasts. This happens because the beans are roasted for a shorter period.

Medium Roast Coffee:

Medium roast coffee is often thought of as the roast for all coffee lovers. Medium roasts tend to be roasted to an internal temperature of 410 to 428°F (210 to 220°C), reaching the second crackling sound in the roasting process. The beans are a medium brown color, and they tend to shine a bit as the oils start to emerge.

Caffeine content in medium roasts is still high but tends to be slightly less than the light roasts.

Dark Roast Coffee:

Dark roast coffee is roasted at temperatures that are higher than light and medium roasts, between 464 and 482°F (240 to 250°C). The beans reach a dark brown or almost black color. The roasting process continues until the point where they release oils onto the surface, which is why dark roast beans have a glow to them. The longer roasting time tends to give the beans a

Not all traditional journalism has moved to

smoky, chocolatey, or burnt flavor.

I hope that you have fun exploring different roasts and discovering what your personal palate prefers. Remember that tastes change over the years so if it has been a while since you have tried a certain roast, give it another go, you never know! May your cup and your heart always be full of all that’s good.

In fact, dark roasts tend to have less caffeine than medium and light roasts.

GIANT BUILDING

(continued from page 1)

Yet as Eugene Yoo, chair of CB 2’s Land Use Committee, explained following a meeting with the EDC and the Mayor’s office, the city deems both the spire and its limited percentage of affordable units as integral to the plan.

“The city has told us in no uncertain terms that the height is by design…. They are hoping that the luxurious [units] at the top [will] subsidize the affordable housing that they’re going to build….That’s how they’re planning on making the math work….They expect the hyper-tall units to be generating a large amount of the rent.”

In its public presentation, the EDC also touted the “taller, skinnier building” as having “less of an impact when it comes to things like shadows,” presumably important to the High Line.

In addition, Yoo reported that the city had said it was reserving 100 percent affordable housing projects “for those areas that ‘really need it,’ which are going to be in the outer boroughs.”

According to Yoo, the city portrayed the high market rents in the Meatpacking District not as a bug, but as a highly desirable feature, an opportunity to design private development where super-luxury rents could subsidize below market rentals, without major government subsidy. What's next?

Proposals are due April 30th to the EDC, and the agency anticipates selecting a developer by the end of 2025.   Under City Charter provisions, the city’s review process then kicks in. For Gansevoort Square, this process is expected to occur in 2026 and 2027.

Of note, the Mayor convened a new charter revision commission in December, and some believe the commission will seek to eliminate the review process, which now gives the Borough President and the City Council significant power to change or halt certain development projects, including those on city-owned land.

Currently, the Borough President plays a key role in moving the project forward—and the project must ultimately secure the approval of the local Council Member and finally the full Council (the Mayor can veto, but remains subject to an override).

Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation and a lead player in the unsuccessful campaign to halt the spire RFP, told the Village Star-Revue that he is encouraged by the “several other layers of public review” that must occur before “this outrageous plan” can be carried out.  “This fight is not over,” he declared.

Charas returning to its neighbors, someday

After decades of fighting, the former PS 64 building — which for some time, following the closing of the school, housed the CHARAS/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center — on 605 East 9th St. will be restored and turned back into a building for the community. The building was sold in January 2024 to an anonymous philanthropy, widely believed to be local hedge fund manager Aaron Sosnick, through the entity 605 East 9th Community Holdings.

On Jan. 23 of this year, the consulting firm leading the restoration project held a public information session, providing an update to the community on how work is proceeding. Or, well, it wasn’t much of an update.

Quamid Francis, Founder and Principal of Q Impact Solutions, who led the presentation, told the audience there were no real news to share since the last session, a few months earlier. They had settled on a name for the project, he said: “Creative Community Collective.” The name was met with some skepticism from the community, with multiple people asking for CHARAS to be preserved in the new building’s name. “Don’t erase CHARAS. It’s already got a name,” one local resident wrote on a paper put up on a wall inviting attendees to leave their thoughts. The reason the project hasn’t moved forward is simple: there is no money. Francis explained that they are in early, informal talks with potential investors, but it’s a process that will take some time. Given this lack of financial clarity, the timetable for the overall project is uncertain, but seems to be between four and six years.

“I am having a lot of conversations with institutional investors, individual philanthropists. Very early stage conversations, socializing the idea of what we’re trying to do here: create a space that center on arts, education, public interest and access,” Francis

LEAD PIPE PROBLEMS

by Katherine Lavacca

The Village has a lead pipe problem. Who’s going to pay for it?

The tap water in New York City has for decades been touted by some as the best in the country. While the water quality may be a factor in producing delicious food, what happens if the pipes delivering that water are made of harmful materials?

There are an estimated 124,197 lead water service lines in New York City.

“Roughly 30% of pipes delivering water are either confirmed lead or possible lead,” said Josh Klainberg of the NY League of Conservation Voters.

“That roughly translates to one in 16 New Yorkers.

Last year the League published a re-

by Oscar Fock

said. “It’s super early, but there’s interest. People are signaling interest, saying, ’Let’s talk again in a couple months, let’s see where you are.’ And so that’s the positive news that people are buying into the overarching vision that I shared. And we’re hoping that some cash inflow will start to come as soon as possible.”

Some minor work has been done at the site. Because of the state of disrepair the building had been left in by the former owner, some emergency facade stabilization had to be conducted. The pigeons have also been cleared out.

Once finished, the building will house cultural activities of all kinds; while nothing is decided, Francis noted artist studios and galleries, dance rehearsal space, podcast studios, performance theater, office space for nonprofits, housing for artists, and other cultural uses are all on the table.

“There’s a lot of work ahead, but I think together as a community, if it is going to be a community building, we can do it together,” Francis said.

The building has a storied history: designed in the beginning of the 20th

port featuring an interactive map that allows New Yorkers to check their address to see if their building has lead service lines. In Greenwich Village and SoHo, the map lists 624 confirmed lead service lines and 879 possible. Lead pipes are about 2 inches in diameter so they were not typically used for larger apartment complexes. There may be more lead pipes in the Village than in other parts of Manhattan because the buildings are much older and smaller.

The history of lead pipes in New York City can be traced back to when the first water system was built.

“In terms of paint and pipes this was a self-inflicted wound,” Klainberg said.

“There was literally a lead industry association that was doing all sorts of PR about how lead was fine and makes the product even better and stronger.”

When the city’s population boomed in the late 18th century there was more emphasis on providing clean drinking water to individual properties instead

century by C.B.J. Snyder in French Renaissance Revival style, it housed PS 64 between 1906 and 1977. The community organization CHARAS took over care for the building from the city in 1979 and made it into El Bohio, “the hut,” which became a cultural cornerstone in the Lower East Side. Spike Lee showed his work there while at NYU.

In 1996, the city decided to sell The Hut. In protest, community activists coordinated to release 10,000 crickets to disrupt the auction in 1998, but the building was eventually sold to Gregg Singer. Singer evicted CHARAS in 2001, but when his plans to redevelop the site were thwarted by the city, he instead left the building to deteriorate. It was landmarked

The good news is that, according to the architects also presenting at the information session, they knew what they were doing when they built the school in the early 1900s and the structural integrity remain sound.

Some community members were concerned about the “anonymous” owner and what the leadership structure would be, citing fears that the building’s historical significance and the commu-

of having public drinking sources like wells. At the time lead piping was considered a quick, cheap way to connect properties to the larger drinking lines.

“What’s ironic and frustrating is that cities like Boston and London had ample negative experiences with the usage of lead,” Klainberg said. “Even one of the engineers at the time was advocating against lead pipes because they knew of all the dangers.”

From 1858 to 1961 lead service lines were allowed to be used. It was even mandated between 1911 and 1936 that all connections to water mains had to be made with lead pipes.

Ingesting lead has been linked to health conditions like cardiovascular and kidney damage in adults. Children can experience cognitive and behavioral problems such as learning difficulties, lower IQ, tantrums and reduced attention span.

“It goes everywhere in your body, it goes into every cell and it causes toxicity in every location,” said Doctor Morri

nity’s wishes wouldn’t be respected. But among the community members who seemed to know who the new owner of the building is, there was less concern. Ana Sepúlveda, associate director at Performance Space New York (which operates out of another former public school, PS 122), noted that other projects supported by the same philanthropist have been

“Don’t erase CHARAS. It’s already got a name.”

positively received by the community. “I am hopeful. I’m sure that they have the best intentions at heart, and figuring something like this out is not easy,” Sepúlveda said.

On it’s restoration projects website, it’s stated, “C3 is more than a restoration project—it’s a commitment to preserving the spirit of collaboration, creativity, and community service that has defined former PS 64 for over a century. The goal is to shape the building into a multi-use arts, educational, and community hub that remains publicly accessible while serving both the Lower East Side and the broader needs of New York City and beyond.

During this pre-construction phase, C3 serves as the platform through which we engage the community, invite feedback, and chart a path forward together. As we continue the rebuilding efforts, we invite you to join us on this journey. Whether you’re a longtime advocate for preserving former PS 64 or new to the community and conversation, your input is vital to making sure that C3 reflects the community’s values and needs.”

Markowitz, Director of the Lead Poisoning Prevention and Treatment Program at the Montefiore Children’s Hospital. “We focus on the brain in young kids, but it isn’t limited to that organ.”

NYC banned lead pipes in 1961. The Safe Water Drinking Act passed in 1974 permitted the Environmental Protection Agency to set national standards for public drinking water.

In October of 2024, the Biden Administration released $2.6 billion to help states fund replacement programs as the latest installment of $15 billion set aside as part of a 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

New York State will receive more than $500 million from the federal government by 2026 to complete lead service line replacement programs. Governor Kathy Hochul said the state would provide an additional $90 million towards lead pipe replacement programs in 11 cities, including New York City, as part of the 2024 budget.

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The former East Village school still retains it's grandeur. (photo courtesy Village Preservation)

BOOKS: A Valentine for New York

Review

of “Days Without

Number, New York City,”

photographs by Giovanna Silva, with a text by Sasha Frere-Jones

Review by Michael Quinn

You hardly know anyone, and there’s no place you need to be, so you walk around to get your bearings. You snap pictures of whatever catches your eye. You’re trying to capture a feeling— not just the place but the mood you’re in. Everything feels new, even familiar things you’ve seen back home. You listen to the same song on repeat. It reminds you of someone special, the reason you’re here. And now, it’s the first song on a new soundtrack: your relationship with New York City.

A Puzzle of Images

This past fall, I attended a talk at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village where Milan-based photographer Giovanna Silva discussed her new book, “Days Without Number, New York City.” With her short bleached blond hair and oversized blazer, she radiated a cool confidence. Silva’s book is spiral bound like a calendar and features more than 700 photos of the city, captured over three years. Each page is filled with loose grids of white-bordered color photos—about 16 per spread. During her talk, Silva explained how she experimented with different compositions on the side of her fridge, using magnets to hold the photos in place. Some of those magnets even appear in the final layouts, which feel both studied

A Year in Books

by Kelsey Sobel

Each year, I meticulously keep track of every book I read, writing a short blurb to capture my primary feelings and responses to each book. I do this for many reasons, but mostly because my short term memory is so faulty. I also do this so I have recommendations at the ready when asked the loaded question: “What have you liked recently?” Despite or maybe because I average about 30 books per year, I often fumble for an answer.  I was inspired to share my top ten favorite (and recent) book reviews this year with a wider audience in the spirit of  The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century compilation, which has caused a ripple effect on the internet and amongst avid book nerds with readers responding in outrage or adulation.

I don’t have a particularly fastidious method of selecting what I’ll read next - it’s a mix of books I’ve eyed or come across randomly, chatting with my graduate very literary graduate school friends or listening to  The New York Times Book Review  Podcast. The list review is just that: a list of books

and casual, as if the images could be reshuffled at any moment. Her American publisher, Fort Greene-based Head Hi, calls it “a puzzle of images.” It invites viewers to create their own meaning.

Time, Time, Time

In the introduction, musician and writer Frere-Jones offers his interpretation in a short, vivid essay that feels like a Super 8 film—fast-paced, jumpy, brimming with energy. He narrates a bike ride through the city, skidding and bumping along, calling New York “the old girl” and lamenting how her 400th birthday passed unnoticed. “The city is covered with clocks, if you have time to look for the time,” he writes. Time, and the changes it brings, dominate his reflections. He observes the rise of luxury towers, recharging stations and scaffolding. At one point, his internal monologue seems to address Silva directly: “You’re new. That’s okay. We are all new each day.”

The Eye of an Architect

Some images were shot with a professional camera, others on an iPhone. But what defines a photographer—the equipment or the eye?

Silva, trained as an architect, takes striking portraits of buildings stripped of people, their energy strong and masculine. Over time, though, other

that stood out to me for their enjoyability, style, form, or perhaps I just loved a character. I have no title as a reader - I simply love to read and have been reading voraciously for as long as I can remember.

What’s fun about keeping a list: you can track your trends. On the whole, I lean towards female authors. I generally read an even balance of fiction and nonfiction. In this last year, I gravitated towards longer novels. A rough estimate tells me I read about 9,000 pages in 2024.

Following are my top ten selections of new books, written in the last two years,  complete with a quick review. Although not listed below, Miranda July’s reading of her book, All Fours, is a must listen.

I hope you find something to your liking.

The Country of the Blind: Andrew Leland (2023)

Leland’s historical, anthropologicalmemoir approaches the author’s failing eyesight through a journalistic lens where the writer is clearly most comfortable. Although the book does delve into the emotional aspect of this rare ocular disease, the book relies most heavily on a detailed history of the experiences of the blind in contemporary America.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story: James McBride (2023)

This fantastically assured novel takes readers deep into the psychology and

elements sneak into her frames: three Hasidic men crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, the bright green of leafy trees, a pair of seagulls—one facing away, the other mid-flight. Her photos capture traces of the old

city: neon signs, faded brick advertisements and water towers. Then there’s the blur of yellow taxis, a van with “God Is Amazing” written in bold letters (and, beneath it, “Great & Amazing…” as if the writer couldn’t contain their awe). We see an ad where a sultry Statue of Liberty bites a slice of pizza and Coney Island’s sun-bleached, trashy glamour. American flags, halal trucks, Chinese lanterns and rainbow flags all appear—reflecting the city’s layered history and the overlapping lives of its many communities.

Memory and Mood

Silva doesn’t organize the photos by neighborhood but by visual relationships—patterns, shapes, colors. Famil-

history of a small town in Pennsylvania occupied by African Americans and Jews, living in mostly uneasy harmony. McBride’s characters are vivid and gritty and he captures the Jewish American experience alongside the struggles of the black community with ease, insight and memorable characters.

Long Island: Colm Tóibín (2024)

The sequel to Brooklyn, set more than twenty years later, traces Tony’s betrayal of Eilis and her subsequent return to Ireland and the life she left behind. The sequel jumps around between different character’s perspectives, offering new depths and subtly to this alluring novel.

A Day in The Life of Abed Salama: Nathan Thrall (2023)

Thrall’s important piece of journalism exposes readers to the multi-layered systemic, political and religious issues that divide Jerusalem into highly separated areas, resulting in the tragic loss of life of Palestinian school children, all told through the story of one young boy’s father. Despite a clunky narrative style Thrall’s work is a must read.

Demon Copperhead: Barbara Kingsolver (2022)

This rich, full, and captivating novel can be enjoyed with or without the Dickensian background. The main character, “Demon,” a scrappy kid born dirt poor and parentless in rural Virginia charms readers with his

iar landmarks reappear across multiple spreads: the Garment District’s giant button and sewing needle, the globe sculpture at Columbus Circle. Some photos get full-page spreads: the opaque glass grid of a skyscraper rising behind an old ship docked at the South Street Seaport and the multicolored fire escapes on a row of red-brick tenements. Another page reveals a mass of beige buildings, crowding out the sky.

The lack of a strict structure mirrors our personal experiences of the city—a collection of impressions shaped by memory and mood. What do we notice, and what do we forget? For those who love walking through Manhattan, the book will evoke both recognition and the feeling of seeing something new.

A Love Story

At the launch, Silva shared that she came to New York because she’d fallen in love with a woman who lived here. The lyrics of the Sinéad O’Connor song that inspired the book’s title capture her intent perfectly: “I wanna make something beautiful for you, and from you, to show you, to show you I adore you.” When an audience member asked how the relationship had worked out, Silva blushed and admitted she was with someone new. But as “Days Without Number” shows, it’s the city that has truly claimed her heart.

self awareness, honesty and desire to live and thrive despite the world’s attempts to leave him behind.

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions: Jonathan Rosen (2023)

Rosen’s impressive, sprawling work of nonfiction not only captures a specific suburban New York Jewish boyhood, but the strong ties we form with childhood friends as a result of proximity and shared culture, closely and empathetically following his brilliant and mentally ill friend Michael’s struggle and tragic battle with schizophrenia as they grow from boys to men.

Big Swiss: Jen Beagin (2023)

This satirical, deeply comedic and self aware novel pokes fun at the town of Hudson, New York where former Brooklynites have relocated to live out pastoral dreams seeped in absurd gestures like purchasing miniature donkeys or embarking on inappropriate sexual relationships. The protagonist is deeply relatable and the narrative is tightly constructed and refreshingly modern.

In My Time of Dying: Sebastian Junger (2024)

Junger’s unexpected brush with his own mortality fuels this compact exploration of life after death and the thin screen between living and dy-

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Hanging around in Gansevoort Park

by Michele Herman

One day last August my husband and I took a walk in Gansevoort Peninsula Park and came upon the exercise station. We’d been spending our evenings on the sofa in awe watching teeny, hipless, shimmering Olympic gymnasts launch themselves into space and twist and somersault up there, and leap onto bars several stories high and spin with such velocity that surely the bars would snap in half.

For a civilian, I’m pretty fit; I lift weights, run, swim, carry my heavy Raleigh up and down my building’s stoop all the time. So I placed my unchalked hands on the orange chin-up bar and set about hoisting myself up. You’ve got to be kidding, my muscles replied. I turned my palms the other way. Same response. I went over to the parallel bars, the friendliest of the scary gymnastic apparatuses in school. I placed my hands on the armpit-high bars and took a little jump to get up. Nothing doing, said my upper half.

Oh, the shame and disappointment! I was brought right back to my chubby childhood in the era of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. But I’m a grown-up now and I know some things. I decided I would keep coming back, building up my strength little by little. I promised myself to take this lightly, like a Buddhist, but not so much like me: small exertion every day, no attachment to the outcome.

“The Hudson is sparkling,” I wrote in my journal on August 10. “The air is no longer soup, the torsos are bare, the babies are sprinkler-giddy and I’m at the fitness station, having tried every day all week to do a chin-up. Hands gripping toward me or away? Who knows? Neither one gets me where I want to be: a mere foot off the earth. I bounce on the springy ground surface to build momentum, but I can’t hoist my own weight. Have faith, self. The body is a good student if you just get

it to show up and make a daily effort.” Google taught me the proper nomenclature. Pull-up: palms facing away

I promised myself to take this lightly, like a Buddhist

and hands apart, which means your back does most of the work. Chin-up: palms facing you and hands closer together, which invites your biceps to help. Apparently both target the lats and pecs along with the brachialis, posterior deltoids, teres major, rhomboids and lower trapezius

The body builders who frequent the station were generous with advice, most of it reinforcing what my buff younger son told me: just hang for a while to build grip strength. Don’t cheat by jumping up onto the lower of the two chin-up bars.

We went to Cape Cod for our annual vacation. I biked over to the elementary school and wahoo—two chin-up bars on the play structure in the yard!

I loved my new, solitary routine. Even in the total absence of measurable progress, it did have a zen-like quality. I was wide open to nature, the comic and the tragic: a Canada goose poop that formed a perfect arch on the blacktop, a dead rabbit by the side of Schoolhouse Road wearing a bandana that, on closer inspection, was its own dried blood.

Back home, another buff stranger told me that cheating is good: jump up on the low bar, stay as high and long as you can and slowly release yourself to the ground. A chin-down, it’s called. I slid right down like the squirrel I once saw trying to steal birdseed from

a feeder atop a pole that had been greased.

I tried manifesting a chin-up, but the gap between the picture in my head and what my internal pulley system could achieve just discouraged me. I adjusted my routine, hoping I’d find one that made all the difference. Stretch first? Low bar or high bar first? Every day or build in “recovery” days? Progress came in the usual way: when it seemed it never would.

I took to using the bars at the Jane Street pier’s playground, where the toddlers were busy mastering their own bodies; for reasons I couldn’t discern, I always felt stronger there than at the fitness station. I began to notice infinitesimal improvement. On good days, the world opened a crack and I walked home smiling. Now I could do deeper pushups, and the big cast-iron pan felt lighter. The hardest challenge has been sticking to my goal of not being goal oriented.

Puffy mittens

Then winter came, and it wasn’t kidding. Puffy mittens were necessary, but a hindrance. After each snowfall, the playground remained locked for days. I made do at the station, where I’d marvel at fitness bros doing pullup sets as if their beefy-looking bodies weren’t filled with heavy organs and fluids. No progress on the chinup or parallel-bar front. If anything, regression.

But then one day I could get right up on the parallel bars (a mount!) and stay for quite a while. Then I could swing my legs and hook my heels onto the bars in front of me the way I learned in elementary school: a micro-routine!

Another day when the playground was open, I jumped onto the low bar, got halfway to a chin-up as usual, but was able to stay for a few seconds. Needing to rest my arms but also wanting more, I walked to the station, where I found a woman hanging from

the bar: a paisana! My doctor said it’s good for your discs, she said. No, wait, she added: my yoga teacher told me this. Just as good and maybe better, I replied, excited because hanging was no longer just remedial, it was a twofer deal! I shared my accumulated chin-up wisdom and we exchanged first names. Darned if I didn’t start to notice how comfortable I felt in my own backbone.

I had hoped when I started this challenge last summer, I’d be holding my chin up high by now. I had hoped when I decided to write about it, I’d have a triumph to report in the final paragraph. Well, some stories are longer than others, and this one is still in development.

The playground is still locked, so now I admire the Hudson, which has frozen into giant lily pads of ice, each trimmed with a snowy border. Clouds roll in to the big sky and resemble other things. The Canada geese let me sidle up close enough to take notes toward poems about them. One day I have an insight: I prefer the playground because I’m closer to kid-size and the fitness station is designed— like so much of the world—for men; the bars are too big around for my hands.

One day between snows when the playground is open, a friendly dad and toddler, the sole occupants, greet me at the gate and (so they don’t think me a pervert) I explain my mission. Impressive, says the dad. Thanks, but not really, I reply, though I am proud of my increasing hang time and the new inch or so of lift I can sometimes achieve. I do my thing and wave goodbye. The dad calls after me: The first time I went for a run I could only do a half a mile.

I give him a thumbs-up. Boy are my thumb muscles strong.

Local shopping tips to help celebrate St. Valentine

Ihave dedicated my life so far to the study of love and of romantic convention. For as long I can remember, I have been a romantic: first hopeless, then reckless, now erring on the side of pragmatic. I have made a fool of myself for love many times over, broken countless hearts (my own included), and even tried and failed my hand at poetry. My undergraduate degree is in Latin, that long-suffering language; the majority of my credits came from courses on erotic Roman poetry and romantic novels of antiquity. I have penned six romances and published three. Some people are bitten by a “love bug,” but for me it’s more of a feature.

Some people are bitten by a “love bug,” but for me it’s more of a feature.

In addition to the above credentials, I am lucky enough to live in Greenwich Village, the historic home of artists and poets and amorous alcoholics— and now the president’s son’s next one-night-stand. (NYU: the gift that keeps on taking.) So, if you want some tried and true recommendations on how to spend your money locally this Valentine’s Day, read on! But before

you raise your whip or splatter me with fresh blood (as was ritual custom during the ancient Roman festival of fertility, Lupercalia, held mid-February), let me assure you that I agree: Valentine’s Day is contrived, commercialized, and the cause of much crowding, congestion, and camera flash. But it doesn’t have to be!

I am not the sort of writer who hauls her late grandfather’s tank of a typewriter to the local coffee shop and proceeds to annoy everyone with anachronistic clicks and clacks—and I don’t write out my drafts by hand, either. However, I have kept a diary, hand-

by Phebe DuPont

written in a code of my own devising, since my mid-teens. And I adore written correspondence, an old-fashioned indulgence that has resulted in my being embroiled in more than one international epistolary romance.

My go-to for writing supplies is Goods for the Study, a McNally Jackson off-shoot with two convenient locations: one in the West Village and one on Mulberry, just south of Houston. Whether you’re embarking on your own epistolary courtship, or you’ve decided your pen isn’t worthy of your paraklausithyron, or you require ink that cries out crimson as your heart’s blood, wander over to whichever is closest and test out the product in-store! If you haven’t the time, inclination, or verbosity to compose an original ode, peruse the prefabricated holiday card collection—

higher quality than anything you’ll find at the drugstore, and less likely to pale to your romantic rival’s pick.

Chocolate is a staple of the Valentine’s Day diet. For those who wish to support a historic local chocolatier, rather than bore your lover with the usual overpriced generic box—the contents of which remain inextricably tied to child labor, the climate crisis, and American imperialism—look no further than “Manhattan’s Oldest Chocolate House.” Founded in 1923 and originally located on Christopher Street, Li-Lac Chocolates remains near and dear with a storefront on Bleecker—just be wary of weekends, when the tourists descend…

Li-Lac has yet to abandon its principles (freshly made chocolates of the highest quality) so you really can’t go wrong. Enamored of a WNBA star? Reach for the life-sized chocolate basketball—the detail is remarkable. Seducing a high society sophisticate?

Dark chocolate cherry cordials and bittersweet glacé oranges. Reconnecting with your childhood crush?

Chocolate crayons in colorful packaging should earn you at least a kiss upon the cheek. And I’d be remiss not to mention my valentine’s favorite: Li-Lac’s dark chocolate-dipped graham crackers. Sweet and subtle, these stackable snacks are perfect for tired parents and young fools trying to play it cool, alike.

Fear not: if you find yourself unhappily alone on Valentine’s Day—stood up by an internet stranger or subjected to a very public, very performative, very poorly judged proposal— Li-Lac has your back. Treat yourself to a half-pound or two of “break-ups.”

These aptly named chunks of chocolate are fantastic fuel for stoop-sobbing, movie-marathoning, and texting your ex things you may or may not come to regret. When love fails you, chocolate won’t.

As I write, it remains January—but in the past two weeks I’ve seen a tenfold increase in ads for diamonds (not even the subway is safe). But love is not a diamond ring and anyway why should you or your lover settle for minimalism via mass production?

Far more original, and of a higher caliber, are the storied gems sold at Deco Jewels, on Thompson between Prince and Houston.

Whatever your opinion of diamonds—lab-grown or mined, tacky before forty or a girl’s best friend, geopolitically problematic or the right of any regent—one trip to this jewel box of a shop will cure you of your carat-lust. At Deco Jewels you’ll discover vintage costume jewelry and accessories to crown Cleopatra, adorn Diana’s décolletage, and link Oscar Wilde’s cuffs. This Valentine’s Day, honor your lover’s unique style and pay homage to their admirably complex character! Besides, the owner of this treasure trove is herself a gem: Janice has seen me through crises of accessories with the patience, wisdom, and generosity of an amalgamsaint. Deco Jewels is well-worth the (one block) walk into Soho.

As goes the adage for any commercial holiday: shop sooner than later. This

applies to all of the above recommendations. Shop too late and you may show up empty-handed to that date— or, far worse, you might be forced to fight your way through a frenzied crowd…

Finally, a few suggestions for those looking to spend less money on, but more time with, their lover: Get tickets to “Casablanca” on the big screen at the Angelika East. An erotic alternative, “Parthenope” will be showing at the theater’s Houston location. Literary? Looking for a daytime date idea? Make a list with your lover of all the local bookstores you’ve been meaning to visit—and then visit them! The Village has nurtured any number of excellent poets, my favorite being far and away Edna St. Vincent Millay, so be sure to linger in the poetry sections and steal a kiss or two…

If you are weary of love or even just wary of capitalism’s role in the construction of culture, I strongly recommend that you visit one of the many historic graveyards in this city.

A short walk south of the Village, nestled near Two Bridges, lies a tiny, triangular, raised and fenced plot. Here lie the remains of the early Shearith Israel community at Chatham Square. I love this little 17th Century graveyard for its perseverance. But there are many more, larger and landscaped, and you may find it romantic—for I certainly do—to wander the winding ways of Wood-Lawn or Greenwood, or even Washington Square Park (a potter’s field), and there to contemplate love in the quiet context of eternity. So, if you seek an antidote to the Hallmark of this holiday, spend your Valentine’s Day amidst the graves. Whatever you do on February 14th, I advise against any attempt to celebrate Lupercalia publicly—you will certainly be arrested.

1950's kaleidoscope of colors fringed 3D layered broochfrom Deco Jewels, 131 Thompson Street

Li-Lac's big season culminates on February 14, but they are actually a year-long treat.

Holiday stationery supplies are available at the two locations of Goods for the Study

Poets, dogs, and comedy: a night of creative spirit at the KGB Bar

by Laryn Kuchta

Walking on East 4th Street, one building’s name stands out from the rest. Although its Soviet-themed interiors hint otherwise, the KGB Bar doesn’t technically refer to the USSR’s secret police, but instead, to owner Denis Woychuk’s art gallery.

A former attorney, current artist, and the son of Ukrainian immigrants, Denis has a long history with the building.

“This has been Ukrainian Labor Home’s headquarters for many, many years,” he tells me. As a child, his father was a janitor for ULH. While attending law school, Denis opened an art gallery there and named it for his heritage: the Kraine Gallery. Ten years later, after ULH’s members were too old to continue running the bar, Denis took over. “They thought sundown was time to go to bed, and that’s the time to get up!” he laughs.

As Denis writes on KGB’s website, “What do you call a place that’s almost impossible to find without special knowledge or a guide, a place with a history of left wing radicalism, which I intended to establish as a legitimate counter-culture venue? KGB seemed my obvious choice.”

“The Department of State said I can’t call a bar KGB unless I justify it,” he tells me. “And by coincidence, I had a corporation called the Kraine Gallery.” In 1993, the Kraine Gallery Bar – or KGB – was born.

When I arrive at 6:45 pm, the lights outside KGB are still off. A cheery woman stands by the banister, and we begin chatting. She’s poet Sarah Sarai, who’s been reading her work there on and off for over a decade. Sarai describes her poetry as “smart, clever, whimsical, deep,” and inspired by her love of philosophy.

“She attracts a lively audience,” Sarah says, referring to the bar. “This place is crawling with readings, poets. There’s all kinds of series and poetry projects.”

The doors to KGB open, and I walk upstairs to the bar with Sarah and her fellow writers. It’s a cozily-lit room with red walls and some fascinating art. Alongside Soviet-era photos and memorabilia hang three distinct paintings: parodies of famous artworks, featuring dogs in place of humans. They’re by Denis, who tells me he started painting two or three years ago.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine, I

didn’t know what to do with myself,” he says. “I started to paint Ukrainian flags on window screens, because that’s all I had available at the time. And I did a lot of protest painting, a lot of expressionistic paintings.”

“I recently stopped doing so much expressionistic stuff,” Denis says. Previously, his art consisted of expressionist spray paintings on window screens. “I called them ghost soldiers because they were translucent. You could see through them, but you could also see the soldier, representing dead soldiers.”

Chihuahua mix

“The one in the middle is Jack,” Denis says. “He’s like a chihuahua mix.  And I just thought he was perfect for ‘Jack With the Pearl Earring.’”

The painting – 2.5 x 4 feet large – “was a new level of expression for me,” Denis explains, “because it’s much more precise and measured than the kind of work I had been doing.”

The painting on the left features Jack’s stepbrother Iggy as D’Artagnan of The Three Musketeers. The rightmost painting is a play on Louis XIV’s portrait. The dog: Denis’ late Dachshund mix, Howie Doing. “I call that one ‘In the Shadow of the Sun,’” Denis explains, referring to Louis XIV’s nickname: The Sun King. “You can see, in the shadow of the Sun King, is another painting of Howie Doing – the Wonder Dog. And to me, that was just interesting.”

“What I found interesting about doing these things was the folds in the cloth,” Denis says. “I mean, that was something that I’d never done before.  Doing that, and having it work as a two-dimensional illusion of a three-dimensional object, was fun, inspiring to me.”

“I used to have a lot more,” Denis says, gesturing to the memorabilia around the room. “I’ve taken out some of the Soviet stuff – and all the Russian stuff – because of my resentment. We used to have a big Soviet flag, but I now have a Ukrainian flag, and a Ukrainian flag hanging out the window.”

As the more mature adults read their poetry and short stories downstairs, comedian Emily Wilson plays piano and sings an intro to her weekly standup show Tuesdays at the Red Room.

“I hope this song has given you enough time to catch your breath from the stairs!” she sings, before telling a few jokes and introducing her fellow comedians to the stage.

Emily has been hosting Tuesdays with her best friend Sam – AKA DJ Good Attitude – since summer 2021. Before COVID, Emily and Sam ran a monthly show together. After lockdowns lifted, she revisited live comedy and decided to up her schedule to a weekly show. Her and Sam researched cabaret rooms in the East Village to host the show, and when KGB’s Red Room came up, the two – who frequented the KGB during their time as NYU students – took the opportunity to host here.

“We got this spot,” Emily says, “and the show became its own thing. It’s like, our favorite place ever.”

Tuesdays “is literally still my favorite thing I do,” Emily tells me enthusiastically. And it shows: aside from the singing Emily cracks jokes in between four other comedians’ sets, picks on the audience, and advertises the karaoke night that follows each week’s show with contagious excitement.

When Tuesdays started in 2021, Emily was writing an hour-long show: her now-released comedy special FIXED. Tuesdays became a space for her to practice writing the special.

“Once I was done with that, it just became a playground for new material,” Emily says. “So now it’s really just about testing out new material and just having fun.  And then I get to watch all these comedians!”

Emily finds comedians through word of mouth, submissions, and friends or comedians she’s heard of. This week’s show featured all female comedians –a welcome change, but slightly unusual for Tuesdays, which generally features a mix of genders. Emily decided not to mention the all-female cast to the audience, explaining, “there’s so many times with comedy shows where it’s all men and they don’t say anything. So, this can be normal too.”

“It’s a really casual, yet fun, environment,” Emily says. “I think me and Sam have something special. A lot of people who come to the show often, I think, come back for that. They’ll hear me tell the same jokes, but me and Sam’s stuff is different every time. So, I think that’s our little hook.”

“It just sort of calls to all the artists and other creative people in the neighborhood,” says writer, musician, and painter Blake Sandberg, who’s used KGB as a space to experiment with different art forms. After mov-

ing to the East Village in the 90s, Blake started visiting KGB to see occasional readings or performances. More recently, he’s started performing his own work there, and even hosted his own show in the Red Room in 2018: a night of reading poetry and playing music with friends.

“I’d written many poems and stories for years and made little books sometimes,” Blake said. “But I had never read a poem out loud, in front of people…it surprised me, because people were really reacting to what I read.”

During COVID lockdowns, Blake started self-printing books of his work. When business opened back up, he began looking for places to take them.

“One of the first places I went was to KGB, to see Lori and Denis and everyone there and just say hi,” Blake says. Lori encouraged him to read more of his work at the bar. Since then, he’s done multiple readings and published his work in the KGB Lit Journal.

“When I started playing songs…I started pulling from my writings and then sort of figured out how to make a song. And then I realized that it all relates to writing in a way,” Blake said.

“The music and the painting. They’re intertwined in a certain way.”

“You know, I think that God wants you to be yourself, and you choose to figure it out,” Denis says, looking at the paintings of his three dogs in KGB’s second-floor bar. “And I think the creative spirit is how many of us find out who we are.”

Tuesdays at the Red Room is hosted at KGB every Tuesday at 7pm. The Easy Paradise Open Mic is hosted Mondays at 8 pm, and open to comedians, musicians, writers, and other performers. KGB hosts many other art events; for more information, visit kgbbar.com.

Blake Sandberg, poet, artist, musician.

David Lynch: Memorializing the Mysteries

by Kurt Gottschalk

David Lynch sat in a strange seat of power during the 1990s. He had put a tale of psychic terror about a victimized cheerleader addicted to cocaine on network television. He then retconned the notion of Elvis Presley movies to include shocking levels of physical and sexual violence and took it to Cannes. And he syndicated a comic strip that repeated the same three panels with each installment, only the text changing from strip to strip. And all of this in the waning days of the Reagan/Bush conservative revolution.

That comic strip, “The Angriest Dog in the World,” depicted the titular canine on a taut line in a suburban back yard, growling. The only “action” that occurred is caption bubbles coming from inside the house, often in the form of puns or minor domestic concerns. The dog was angry, but the strip wasn’t. It was absurd. Tethered behind a dream home somewhere in America, however, the dog may have been right to be angry.

The cheerleader story was, of course, Twin Peaks: three seasons of some of the most surreal television the world has ever seen spread across three decades, plus a brutal feature film depicting the incestual rape and eventual murder of the heroine Laura Palmer. It will be the lasting legacy for the filmmaker, visual artist and visionary, who died in January just days before his 79th birthday. (Lynch co-wrote Twin Peaks with TV veteran Mark Frost, who was an important part of what made the series great. My concerns here, though, are with Lynch and what the show can tell us about him. I will refer to the show as a part of his cinematic work, without being overly concerned about movies

versus television.)

Lynch’s work was extreme unnerving, graphic and confrontational. It understandably divided people. In the days following Lynch’s death, author Rebecca Solnit posted to social media an excerpt from her 2020 memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, calling out the violence toward women in the work of Lynch and others. “In the arts, the torture and death of a beautiful woman or a young woman or both was forever being portrayed as erotic, exciting, satisfying, so despite the insistence by politicians and news media that the violent crimes were the acts of outliers, the desire was enshrined in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Lars Von Trier, in so many horror movies, so many other films and novels and then video games and graphic novels where a murder in lurid detail or a dead female body was a standard plot device and an aesthetic object.”

Author Courtenay Stallings also took to social media following the news of Lynch’s death. Stallings has written extensively about Lynch’s work, notably the book Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks, which addressed the catharsis some victims of sexual violence have found in Lynch’s work (and which I wrote about in the Red Hook Star-Revue in 2020). “David Lynch provides us room to dream,” she wrote. “He’s inspired me to write essays, interview artists and write poems about his work. His work has connected me to some of the best folks around. He has passed on to the cosmos, but we will continue to celebrate him down here on earth.”

In an essay published that same month in the LGBTQ+ cultural jour-

nal Them titled “‘Fix Your Hearts or Die’: David Lynch’s Work Has Always Been Deeply, Powerfully Queer,” Lex McMenamin championed Lynch for not just writing a trans character into Twin Peaks but defending her right for acceptance. “Is David Lynch’s work queer or trans?” McMenamin wrote. “Is water wet? From  Eraserhead onward, Lynch was obsessed with the fragmentation of the self and with dreams; with death and sex, faith, shame, abuse; doppelgängers, cross-dressing, hyperfemininity and violence against women.”

Such division of opinion might mean he was onto something. Or it could mean he was shoveling mystic mumbo jumbo at the masses. But Lynch didn’t seek to answer our questions or absolve our sins or assuage our fears. He didn’t seek to put our anxiety and despair on screen. He put his own up there for all to see. His dreams and introspections were there to be questioned and analyzed, things it seems he didn’t always understand himself. But his dread had a lot to do with worries for the fate of humanity as well, and he believed in happy endings.

In an early episode of Twin Peaks, FBI agent Albert Rosenfield speculated matter-of-factly about the evil

incarnate at the center of the story that “maybe that’s all that Bob is, the evil that men do.” The foul-tempered Rosenfield announced elsewhere in season one that “I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation.” And it was hilarious, especially given Miguel Ferrer’s dry-asbones delivery. But both lines were also genuine exposition. Rosenfield was speaking to the heart of the show, and to the heart of its maker.

In a later episode, town resident and USAF Major Garland Briggs said that his greatest fear in the world is “the possibility that love is not enough.” Briggs and Rosenfield frame the philosophy of the series and of much of Lynch’s work. Unlike most makers of shocking cinema, Lynch believed in the inner goodness of people. His 50year devotion to transcendental meditation and advocacy for the practice through his David Lynch Foundation speaks to such affirmation.

But people, men especially, do horrible things, things which Lynch depicted unflinchingly in his cinematic work. Bob and the other vicious entities from some other dimension who

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From Eraserhead onward, Lynch was obsessed with the fragmentation of the self and with dreams; with death and sex, faith, shame, abuse; doppelgängers, cross-dressing, hyperfemininity and violence against women.”

THE MEDEA HOAR'S MONTH OF MUSIC FORE AND AFT

Hey, Good Lookin’! Hello! howdy! aloha! shalom! hola! bonjour! salve! Welcome to the February edition of “Tits Up Big Apple” where we explore the multicultural, multi-talented and inclusive music of Manhattan. All are welcome, and always will be, to enjoy all that this muse-sical muse has to offer. I’ll never let you gentle readers feel “Alone and Forsaken” or so lonesome you could cry. This month we are going to take a look back at January and look to the future at the same time, like Janus the god of beginnings and transitions. Our adventure starts on Day 1 of 2025, January 1, at the infamous Hank-o-rama!

Hank-o-rama 21, a tribute and celebration of Hank Williams, whose untimely passing occurred on January 1 more than 70 years ago, was held at the Bowery Electric. This phenomenal show would not have continued for as long as it has, since 2004, without the fine folk of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs, specifically Heidi Lieb and Steve Strunsky.

The show opened rather ominously with the reading of Hank William's untimely demise and obituary by Jeff Ward, bathed in the blue lights of the Bowery Electric, followed up a few delightful Hank Williams songs by the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. The Lonesome Prairie Dogs, with Lenny Kaye on pedal steel and the Lonesome Horns, holding down the stage, brought down the house with “Jambalaya” “Mind Your Own Business” and “Luke the Drifter” (Lenny Kaye on lead guitar) while also welcoming a broad array of talent to the stage. The stage was also blessed with the presence of none other than Stephanie Marie, the Tennessee MC, who also

DAVID LYNCH

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populated Twin Peaks weren’t a way to let people (men) off the hook. It was Lynch’s attempt to explain something he didn’t understand: why good people do bad things. Did he believe that nonhuman forces were responsible for the evil that men do? Not any more than ancient people believed that the world was balanced on the back of a turtle or that an elephant-headed deity brings us good fortune. Twin Peaks repeatedly referenced spirituality and mythology, Tibetan practices and indigenous American beliefs. Religion and mythology begin as ways to explain what can’t be known. Twin Peaks was Lynch’s attempt to explain the horribly inexplicable.

While Briggs and Rosenfield may, at times, have spoken for Lynch, he had his own character in the show as well.

FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole went from comic relief in the first two seasons to leading the investigation (which now stretched across multiple

added her lovely voice to the mix.

The first of the guest vocalists was Jack Grace, who while living upstate, still travels to routinely perform throughout the boroughs at local watering holes. Other vocal local talents that evening include Alan Lee Backer, Tammy Faye Starlite, Sean Kershaw, Boo Reiners, Elena Skye, Cliff Westfall, Monica Passin, Karen Hudson and Nikko Lieb. The night was brought to a close after over 2 hours of tunes, but only after a raffle winner had her chance to hop up on stage and warble “Hey, Good Lookin’” to an appreciative audience who all sang along with her. “I Can’t Help It” if I’m still in love with Hank Williams’ music and the annual Hank-o-rama showcase every year.

BUT this lady is the lucky one, because even though I didn’t win the raffle, I get to enjoy all the performers at Hank-o-rama again, ‘cause they all got gigs in the city, solo, with their own bands or as part of other ensembles. Here’s a few tasty tidbits:

states and killings) in the third. In season three, Lynch (as Cole) says that the incidents under investigation are “something really interesting to think about” and allows that “I hate to admit this, but I don’t understand this situation at all.” Lynch himself was trying to unravel the mystery, not of the fictional crimes but of humanity. I am, perhaps, hiding behind quotes here, maybe as a way to avoid the fact that I don’t really know what it is I want to say about the loss of one of the most profound storytellers I’ve shared time on this planet with. The Twin Peaks triptych alone is an indulgence in form, crossing genres from soap opera to crime drama to psychological horror while being resolutely like nothing else: charming, profound and frightening. But it is also, I feel, a deeply philosophical fable, a morality play, and something really interesting to think about. The clues to the mystery of Twin Peaks weren’t in the objects, the playing cards and magic rings; the clues were in the characters, as were the clues to understanding Lynch. He made his final public statement at

Sean Kershaw, the one and only singer to be part of all 21 Hank-o-ramas, has a Johnny Cash Tribute Show on February 15 at the Bowery Electric. A chance to sing Folsom Prison Blues will be raffled off too.

The Jack Grace Band is setting up shop at the 11th Street Bar on February 18, and every third Tuesday of the months ahead. Put it in yer’ calendars.

The lovely Tennessee MC Stephanie Hall has her second show, Serve the Song, a Songwriter Swap, on February 19 at Sid Gold’s Request Room. I think this is gonna be a thing and kudos to Stephanie!

And that’s just the local Manhattan festivities. There are other boroughs ya’ know beyond the isle of Manhattan. In fact, there’s a whole world of music and talent out there to be discovered. I hope everyone, musicians, artists, creative folk of all backgrounds are able to continue to feel welcome, as I have been welcomed by all of you. This may be a crazy ole world, but you can count on this muse to raise her

a September 12 Jazz at Lincoln Center fundraiser for his foundation, announcing the launch of Meditate America, an initiative to promote and support meditation practices for healthcare workers and first responders. He ended the address with the words he regularly used in his talks on meditation: “May everyone be happy. May everyone be free of disease. May auspiciousness be seen everywhere. May suffering belong to no one. Peace. Jai guru dev.” He wished just as much, I think, for the people he made up.

In Lynch on Lynch, a 1997 book of interviews conducted by Chris Rodley, Lynch is asked to describe the figures depicted in his fairly inscrutable paintings. “You know what dogs are like in a room?” he responds. “They’re bouncing this ball and chewing on stuff and they’re kind of panting and happy. Human beings are supposed to be like that. We should be pretty happy. And I don’t know why we aren’t.” Even the angriest dog in the world is deserving of happiness and peace. Sadly, the world doesn’t work that way.

fist and voice in defiance shouting for all to hear, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

With that I leave you my muse-ical friends, until we meet again on the streets of the Big Apple, between the pages of news or maybe even between the sheets, be well and be loved… It is February after all, the month to celebrate luv in all its forms. Sending you love, sweet candy kisses and may you get all you desire and more. I remain as always, your musical muse, Medea Hoar. #bkmuses

Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery, NYC

Sid Gold’s Request Room, 165 W. 26th St., NYC 11th Street Bar, 510 11th Street, NYC

BOOKS

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ing through philosophy, science, and his experience. Compelling, insightful and masterfully written a brief but worthwhile read.

Consent: Jill Ciment (2024)

Ciment returns to the page to examine her marriage which began when she was seventeen and her husband was in his forties in this self aware and beautifully rendered memoir - a bold revision to her original work in the post Me Too era.

Matrescence: Lucy Jones (2023)

This gorgeous book, part memoir, part scientific exploration, plums the largely untouched world of the maternal brain. Writing with nail sharp honesty about her own experience becoming a mother, Jones reminds us all of the sheer magnitude of becoming a mother through personal essays paired thoughtfully with anthropological, psychological and cultural commentary.

Starting with the left photo: Heidi Lieb and Steve Strunski of the Lonesome Prairie Dogs; Steve Strunski and Tammy Faye Starlight; The Lonesome Prairie Dogs; Lenny Kaye on pedal steel. (photos by Deb Noble)

Drinking with Katherine: Peculier PUB

by Katherine Rivard

Ihave a peculiar form of delayed hypochondria. As a 30-something, I’ll happily sip two cocktails (an amount of alcohol that seemed the equivalent of a drink “funsized serving” in my early 20s), then spend the night sleeping poorly due to the alcohol, followed by anxietyinduced Google searches like “Which organs are most affected by alcohol?” and “What are the symptoms of cirrhosis?” I may be extreme in my teeter totter between living on the edge and being trapped in a deep pit of fear about my health, but a growing number of people are finding their own reasons to reconsider their relationship with booze.

In the past few years, the medical world has amplified its warnings about the risks of drinking (even moderately), culminating recently with the Surgeon General recommending that alcoholic beverages have warning labels about the risk of cancer, much like the ones on cigarettes—last ditch reminders before you crack open a beer: “There’s no way this is a good decision.” Many persist in imbibing, perhaps believing that in moderation the benefits (taste and inebriation?) may outweigh the risk (death?), but a growing number are now dabbling with sobriety, especially during Dry January. Perhaps surprisingly, Peculier Pub has managed to be a safe haven for all, from beer snobs to college bros, and even the sober. Standing alongside a row of grimy bars on Greenwich Village’s Bleecker Street, Peculier Pub is a bit of an institution. One might expect Budweiser and little else at a slightly subterranean pub located so close to NYU, but instead, Peculier Pub, which opened in 1981, proudly stocks a shockingly wide variety of beers from around the world—hundreds of different

types of beer, including 27 on draft. Many of them are international beers (from Barbados to Sweden), and a Rare Finds page on the menu includes harder to find Pale Ales, sours, stouts, and more. According to their website, Peculier Pub’s owner hoped to “broaden the beer drinking experience of [their] customers.” The bar’s popular drinking challenge highlights this desire to spread pleasure through the world’s beers. Visitors can request a business card-size stamp card that corresponds to one of three difficulty levels. Each level requires patrons to try multiple types of beers in order to get the necessary stamps. After you’ve filled all three cards, you can have your name placed on a plaque and added to the bar’s Hall of Fame.

A safe place for sobriety

Despite the Hall of Fame and walls mosaiced in bottle caps, teetotalers can feel just as welcome. This starts with the bartenders. Every time I visited in January, I was served by kind young women—all of whom wore hoop earrings, and none of whom were ever judgmental about my 0% ABV selections. This isn’t always the case in bars, as some bartenders don’t appreciate non-alcoholic drink orders (which usually mean fewer tips); one bar near my apartment has even started using its sidewalk chalkboard to make disdainful jokes about Dry January.

Riding the sobriety wave, many cocktail bars now offer fancy mocktails. But who can enjoy the equivalent of a zhuzhed up lemonade with a $16 price tag?

Peculier Pub, on the other hand, offers a few less common alternatives that better mimic your spirit of choice (e.g., Guinness Zero, Lussory 0.0% wine, and Avec mixers). Plus, a couple of water tanks located around remind everyone they can always hydrate more, no matter what other drink they’ve ordered. Sometimes though, water is not enough. In these cases, sobriety can be improved with a little snack (or a full meal). Mozzarella sticks, burgers, multiple types of french fries, corn dogs, dumplings, bowls of chili, carrots and celery: this list only begins to name the Pub’s pubby fare.

two poems by syd straw

Like the types of food served, the bar itself is nothing fancy. A visiting Londoner who happened in for a pint described the place quite well for me: dark, with white ceilings that reminded him of stamped clotted cream (he was really leaning into being British), pew-like booths dappled throughout the large space, a rounded wooden bar that doesn’t quite allow you to lean comfortably, and a “torso mirror” (placed at a slant above the bar, so you see little else besides your torso).

Just before the Londoner arrived, a man came up to the bar, returned two tall cans and ordered two more. I confirmed that they were non-alcoholic. “Best we could do,” he said with a sheepish grin. Many patrons, including regulars have been trying Dry January or non alcoholic alternatives. Judy, one of the bartenders, who has

Many persist in imbibing, perhaps believing that in moderation the benefits (taste and inebriation?) may outweigh the risk (death?)

worked at the Pub for 10 years, and is as knowledgeable as she is personable, acknowledged the trend towards sobriety: “A lot more people are doing Dry January, but even before this month we had an upswing in non-alcoholic orders. I don’t know when it started, but throughout 2024, nonalcoholic beers have become a lot more popular.” On another evening, a couple sitting next to me were enjoying a hot cup of tea and a ginger beer. When asked about their thoughts on drinking and dry January, they both agreed that now, at 32 and 36, they were both increasingly aware of alcohol’s negative impacts like how friends who drank heavily looked much older or how easy it was to slowly drink more over time without recognizing it.

This couple encapsulated two of the three groups you’ll find at Peculier Pub: groups and regulars. They first became familiar with the bar through Couchsurfing meet-ups. Groups often settled on the Pub for meet-ups, perhaps because of the somewhat large space and plentiful seating. Reddit community members also meet up at the bar, as do smaller friend groups who have selected this as a go-to spot. Now, the couple have become regulars, stopping in, even on evenings when there isn’t a Couchsurfing meet-up. They aren’t alone. During my visits, the bartenders seemed to know at least a quarter to half the patrons. From a young woman stopping in for pre-dinner reading at the bar to a retired couple coming in for their weekly dinner and drink, people settle in as regulars at Peculier Bar and never look back. As for the third group of patrons, those are the college kids. But fear not, they don’t come out until quite late.

Peculier Pub began with the hope of offering patrons new types of beers to try and enjoy. Quietly, its offering of non-alcoholic beverages has grown, while its plentiful food menu and considerable seating and space have remained constant. No one, not even the bar’s many regulars, could name what was so special about Peculier Pub when asked. Instead, what sets it apart is that it somehow manages to cater to everyone without much effort at all.

the stiffening i had it in my hand i had it in my mouth i pulled out all the stops every trick in the book did that little twist thing right at the end nothing happened i was trying to fuck a ghost the past is always around the hellhound on my trail it’s been dogging me that time I was mean to you when I didn’t think I had a mean bone in my body

Syd Straw is an American rock singer and songwriter. The daughter of actor Jack Straw (“The Pajama Game”), she began her career singing backup for Pat Benatar, then took her gorgeous soaring unusual voice to the indie/alternative scene and joined the Golden Palominos (also including Michael Stipe, Matthew Sweet, and Anton Fier). In addition to performing with a pantheon of musical greats, she has released three albums of her own material and for many years presented Heartwrecked, an eclectic evening of song and sadness every Valentine's Day.

Katherine Rivard

photo by regan kelly

THEATER: the macabre Giggling Granny at TNC

by Olivia Stern

It’s not often you hear the story of a female serial killer, let alone one from the early 20th century. “The Giggling Granny,” which ran from Jan. 9-Jan. 26 at Theater for the New City, gave audiences a firsthand account from famous serial killer Nannie Doss herself as she regaled how she murdered four of her husbands to “a reporter at Life Magazine” (read: the audience).

Written by Marsha Lee Sheiness, this one-woman show starring Drama Desk and Obie Award-winning actress Marilyn Chris, was both unsettling and entertaining. Chris, who has a long acting career, is still compelling at 86.

As soon as Chris emerged from behind the curtain with Doss’ signature Southern drawl, it was clear she was portraying a woman with a storied past and a zany personality.

I went in with a limited knowledge of who Doss was — she killed four of her husbands across four different states between 1927 and 1954 — but other than that, I thought it would be best to hear the details from Nannie her self. I’m satisfied I did so, as the play outlined most of the major details — I

Kenny Scharf at the Brant Foundation by

Lee Klein

With the very recent passing of David Lynch “Pop surrealism” seems to have gone fluorescent in the art cognoscenti mass consciousness. and Kenny Scharf’s opus as on display at the Brant foundation study center is a non-stop escapist essay in the quasi-genre.  Enter the biggest retrospective of Scharf since a 1995 exhibition in Monterey starting atop the four story rise of this landmark building and one is in full blast off with George, Judy, and Elroy Jetson in a sudden retro space cartoon fantasy vacation     The exhibition is housed in a fourstory building that was once a Consolidated Edison power station and later the studio of land artist Walter De Maria. The space is ideal for showcasing Scharf’s large-scale works, which transport viewers to a world of cartoons and what was once considered street art fantasy. While Scharf’s work may initially seem one-dimensional, it reveals its complexity and depth upon closer inspection. His use of bold colors and artificial versions of sunsets creates a sense of energy and joy that is infectious. The exhibition also features a stunning array of portraits of downtown and Hollywood scene figures, which Scharf created after moving to Los Angeles in 1999. His famous painting, “When Worlds Collide,” owned by the

didn’t feel anything was missing from not knowing her full backstory.

Sheiness wrote an artful script, weaving Doss’ life story into an intricate 90-minute tale, beginning with Nannie’s most recent husband, Samuel Doss.

Nannie and Sam were married three months — “the longest three months of [her] life.” After Nannie was fed up with Sam’s controlling ways, she poisoned him enough to send him to the hospital, where he was treated and sent home. After that failed effort, she poisoned him again, sprinkling rat poison in his stewed prunes. His untimely death raised suspicion to the doctor who had just treated him and he eventually pushed for an autopsy, which led to Nannie’s demise. The autopsy found massive amounts of arsenic in Sam’s body, and Nannie was arrested and charged with murder.

Her previous three murders— Frank, Arlie and Richard — also got their

raping Nannie. The next day she puts rat poison in his whiskey and kills him. Arlie Lanning and Richard Morton were Nannie’s third and fourth husbands, and were also poisoned.

The audience got a glimpse into Nannie’s childhood traumas that contributed to her criminal activity and lifelong need for attention — a severe head injury at seven years old left her with chronic headaches and an abusive father who had her working on the family farm at five.

Chris captures the crazy essence of “The Giggling Granny,” with no shortage of attention-seeking maneuvers, spontaneous intermissions to sing a line or two from Doris Day or Nat King Cole, and — obviously — many giggles along the way from both her and the audience alike. Most of all, she painted the picture of how Nannie wanted to be seen — a woman seeking genuine love like the stories in her

romance novels, and if she received some attention at the funerals and life insurance money along the way, that wouldn’t hurt, right?

Even still, as Nannie was living out her prison sentence and dying of leukemia, she continued looking for love, whether through her suitors via snail mail or in her “private prayer” time

Whitney Museum, is also on display. Scharf’s work is often compared to that of his contemporaries, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. However, his unique blend of pop surrealism and cartoon sensibility sets him apart. Stylistically, Scharf draws inspiration from Henri Rousseau and has influenced a younger generation of artists, including Alexis Rockman.

If Scharf’s work has a shortcoming, it is the flatness of some of his paintings. However, this does not detract from the overall impact of his oeuvre, which is nothing short of electric.

Overall, Kenny Scharf’s exhibition at the Brant Foundation Study Center is a must-see for anyone interested in pop surrealism and the art of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond to a collective pop dream vison of the stars.

The Brant Foundation is at 421 East 6th Street. Runs through February.

LEAD PIPES

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However, there is still a huge funding gap for cities. The answer of who’s responsible to foot the remainder of the bill is still a bit murky.

An EPA report put the cost at $5,000 replace a single line. Replacing all the confirmed and suspected pipes in the city comes to $1.25 billion.

“We only have a down payment for like 6% of the project,” Klainberg said.

“The fight always comes up as to who should pay for this. Our position is that it should be the responsibility of the public water supplier, in this case, the city of New York.”

Councilmember Erik Bottcher says the matter of replacing lead service lines is not just a matter of public health, but a commitment to the future.

Theater for the New City

FEBRUARY

EVENTS

THE SHINE CHALLENGE 2025 by Ishmael Reed JANUARY 30- FEBRUARY 16

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

WHEN GOLD TURNS BLACK by Ron Wilks

JANUARY 30- FEBRUARY 16

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

SHELLEY & LOVELACE NEVER MET by Becky McKercher & Sarah Thuswaldner

JANUARY 30- FEBRUARY 16

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

THE BEST BROTHER by Victor Vauban Júnior

FEBRUARY 6- FEBRUARY 23

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

THE SIX PATHS by My Le

FEBRUARY 6- FEBRUARY 23

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

CAN YOU HEAR THE PIGEONS by William Electric Black FEBRUARY 27- MARCH 16

THURS. to SAT. @8PM, SUN @3PM

Marilyn Chris as Nanny Doss in "The Giggling Granny" by Marsha Lee Sheiness, directed by Jim Semmelman. (photo by Jonathan Slaff)

Ghosts in the guitar. The wonderfully inventive Jules Reidy has been going through a period of transition of late. Affairs of the heart, a change in gender identity and a renewed interest in mysticism have all, it seems, led to Ghost/Spirit (CD, LP, download out Feb. 21 from Thrill Jockey). While they’re often heard in more experimental and freeform settings, the Australian-born, Berlin-based sound sculptor is also a songwriter, and the new album is a 14-track meditation on rebirth and finding peace. The songs were written almost certainly as a form of self-help, and may well provide solace to others, but it’s Reidy’s music that makes Ghost/Spirit such an exceptional album. The wistful songs are placed atop unapologetically abstract settings that float asynchronously with occasional, abrupt beats, bringing some of Björk’s best work to mind. Reidy builds the songs from multiple guitar tracks, often looped and processed, and folds in ambient sounds. Recordings of Berlin’s regional train system wash through the mix, and samples of cello, bass, trombone

ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST TURNS INTO A PIANO (almost)

by Stephen DiLauro

Anthony Haden-Guest turned 88 and, as part of the celebration, he got body painted in the middle of the dance floor at the world-famous Copacabana nightclub. The literati and the downtown glitterati turned out in droves. Since this is a Village paper, I’m not going to explain the piano reference. If you don’t get it, please ask any piano player or jazz musician.

Lorraine Leckie, who co-wrote the songs for the CD collection Rudely Interrupted with Haden-Guest, sang one of the tunes from the record. Then she was joined by Tiffany Ambassador Tony Vaughn – who knew the luxe jewelry maison even had an ambassador? – and they led the assembled crowd in a rousing rendition of the traditional Happy Birthday song. Lorraine’s ever-attentive hubby, Billy LeRoy was also present and accounted for.

The Roosevelts were there. Phil Roosevelt and his lovely wife Jenny Merino were all smiles, as always. Jenny, a native of Peru, is one of Manhattan’s leading dealers for contemporary Latin American art.

Maxine Hoover, a downtown superstar curator and artist, was there. She’s

and drum lines softly augment individual tracks. It all feels a bit off-kilter, uncentered, and beautifully so. The arrangements are unusual mixes of fragility and assuredness, like holding out hope in the face of uncertainty.

Another sifting of strange beauty comes from the metal-adjacent Chicago duo Wrekmeister Harmonies

The band has gone through numerous permutations over more that 15 years of operations, and on Flowers in the Spring (LP, download out Feb. 21, also from Thrill Jockey), they’re stripped down to the drum-free duo of JR Robinson and Esther Shaw. The four instrumental tracks, adding up to a 52-minute playtime, are couched in drones and slow, looping guitar figures that seem to stretch on forever. Obvious parallels could be drawn in the orbit of Sunn O))) and other deeply downtempo electric drone acts, but Flowers is an unexpectedly pretty record. Electronic melodies shimmer in the mist of distorted guitar figures. It’s a dark record, but perhaps closer to dawn than midnight.

Thunder and other rumbles. Land-

slated to be the first artist on Mars. Elon Musk already had her fitted for a spacesuit, which makes sense. She’s also a fashion model. Who better to make a spacesuit look good? Meanwhile, between now and liftoff, she’s the subject of a solo exhibit at MORA, the Jersey City museum. Likewise, she’s a major presence this month at the Art Bound Miami Charity Sparkle Gala in Chelsea.

Of course, every good club party needs a party promoter and that’s one of the hats Lee Klein wears. He also wrote a surreal micro-play about a lady from Florence who was drinking chianti when she turned into a bottle of Barolo. Film, stage, and TV actress Anna Maria Cianciulli was the lady from Florence, which she also is in real life. At Klein’s insistence, I strummed some chords on my ukulele in the background. (Later in the evening, I read Jazz Is My Country and a couple of sonnets.)

Did I mention that Haden-Guest was body painted? Andy Golub – who else? - began the process. But soon something odd happened. Women, including artist Sunhe Hong and writer Ronnie Norpel, began to shoulder Golub aside as they slathered their hands in the paint and began to fingerpaint the octogenarian kickboxing writer and cartoonist. He did not object. Kickboxing? Haden-Guest has prac-

ing a bit closer to rock in its igneousest form is Karla Kvlt, a familial triad out of Hamburg. The patriarch of the outfit is guitarist Markus E. Lipka, part of the 35-years-running death metal band Eisenvater. His Kvltmates might be younger than his primary musical project; his son Johann Wientjes plays drums and daughter-in-law Teresa Matilda Curtens is heard on bass and vocals. Easily outpacing the Wrekmeisters, the Kvlt’s Thunderhunter (coming Feb. 21 from Exile on Mainstream as download or bundled CD and LP) is solidly mid-tempo, heavy but catchy grinds. The seven tunes pound with a singular power, offset by Curtens’s unaffected voice rippling in the wind.

All we need is a drummer for people who only need a beat. The British duo Rattle find complexity by keeping things simple. Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley both plays drums and sing, and don’t clutter up their infectious songs with any other needless instruments. The drum parts are taut and tidy, the vocals complementary and melodious. “All Burning,” the first of four tracks on Encircle (CD, LP, download Feb. 28 from Upset the Rhythm) is built around variations on a vague but urgent chant: “doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, hold your own, hold your own, hold your own, hold your own,” replacing “doctor” with “daughter” and “horses” as the song progresses. It doesn’t quite seem urgent but it’s something,

ticed boxing and kickboxing pretty much all his adult life. A couple of years ago he was knocked out in a bout. He might have a British accent, but he’s still a genuine tough guy. As a writer, he has had a storied career. For example, one time he was in Lebanon to interview Carlos the Jackal for Vanity Fair. He was kidnapped and held hostage by a warlord for several days. Tom Wolfe modeled a character in Bonfire of the Vanities on him.

David Friend, the VF editor who assigned the Carlos the Jackal story, showed up. Likewise, long-time Village Voice writer Mark Jacobson, who was AHG’s colleague at New York magazine, was there with his lovely daughter Rae. There was quite a gaggle of art students there. Ah, youth!

Jim C (aka James Love Cornwell III) came from Woodstock with a large portrait of the birthday boy. Jim C ran the Nada gallery on Rivington Street in the 1980s. His video documentation of the downtown art scene served as much of the footage for the awardwinning film Make Me Famous.

Peace artist Jon Tsoi was there, of course. He’s the subject of HadenGuest’s latest piece in White Hot, the online art magazine, not be confused with White Box art space on Avenue B. Juan Puntes, director of White Box, and Yohanna Roa, curator of performance art there, also attended.

somehow, very important. Most of the time, however, they sing without lyrics, plaintive tones projected against rhythmic progressions. At the same time, tightly tuned and well recorded drums bring out the musical resonance of cymbals and skins. Encircle ain’t no drum majorette record. While it’s essentially acoustic (the fairly prominent reverb was likely added in the mix), it’s reminiscent of OOIOO, the long-running, tribal trance, largely electronic side project of Boredoms drummer Yoshimi. Forty minutes of drum duets might sound like a headache in the making, but Rattle is a surprisingly smooth endeavor. Wax and heartstrings. Oakland’s Shannon & the Clams recently announced a deluxe, digital reissue of last year’s The Moon Is in the Wrong Place (due Feb. 28 from Easy Eye Sound). The reissue will include four songs released last year as singles and one new song, which can already be found online and is worth the easy effort. “Wax & String” was inspired by the 1969 Shocking Blue hit “Venus” but more than that by personal tragedy. Following the tragic death of Shannon Shaw’s fiancé Joe Haener (also a fixture in the Bay Area indie scene) in a car accident in 2022, Clams guitarist Cody Blanchard was tasked taking care of plants and household duties until Shaw could face returning to their home. Blanchard wrote “Wax & String” about the experience of going through Haener’s possessions and thinking about the loss felt by Shaw. That said, it’s an upbeat and fuzzedout raver, and Blanchard turns some poetic lines: “Just hide your love inside a thing / You’ll see it’s all just wax and string.” Seems like a good reminder to focus the important things, and tell the important people that they are.

I could go on, and so I shall: Rivington School heavy metal sculptor Linus Coraggio, painter Ford Crull, and Christopher Hart Chambers, who just had his current exhibition at Crossing Art gallery on West 23rd Streetthey were there. Shalom Neuman, the founder of Fusionism and recent winner of the Premio Galileo in Florence, was just back from Prague and came straight from the airport to the club. Colette Lumiere was dazzling, as always. Rick Prol was his always unassuming self. Artists Joe Coleman and Mike Cockrill also made the scene. Did I mention that Haden-Guest was body painted in the middle of the dance floor at the Copacabana and the women mobbed him, and he turned 88 years young. All true. Another night out in Manhattan.

Portrait of Anthony Haden-Guest by James Cornwell

Jazz by Grella

”Evil is Always a Bad Stylist”

by George Grella

Spend time on social media, especially text-based sites like Bluesky (that’s what I use— and enjoy—now after deleting my account at the neo-Nazi’s site) and you eventually find people decrying a lack of media literacy. What they mean by that is the ability to see the difference between assertion and fact, to know what’s reporting and what’s stenography, to tell when a headline for a story is misleading. And that’s important for all of us, especially as the federal government, supported by many excited voyeurs in the news media, starts waging its war on a American society.

I’ve realized that since January 20, I’ve been arguing a complementary complaint, which is for cultural literacy. The thing about social media is that political takes are more prominent than anything else—it’s often like being at a bar where no one’s talking about the weather or sports, and also there’s nothing to drink—and so political writers and thinkers are more prominent than most other people. Those people have their cultural takes too, almost always confident and superficial and uninformed in the same manner as the media illiteracy they decry. Hey, we all have our knowledge and experience, we all have the time and effort we spend researching and understanding, we can’t be experts in all things.

But we can be literate. That’s the media-literacy point, which is that readers should have skills that journalists claim to have but only infrequently demonstrate. This is even more acute for cultural literacy, which is the foundation for media literacy, and not vice versa Think of it this way: a newspaper story reports certain things, but how do you know those are facts? Within the story—especially the contemporary manner in which political stories often ignore context and history—you can’t, you have to go outside that, find other sources, research and compare. That’s exercising media literacy. But there’s another way, the culturally literate way. The great poet Joseph Brodsky got at this in his 1987 Nobel acceptance speech (Brodsky was a great Russian poet under Soviet rule, defected, learned English, and became a great poet in his new language). In it, Brodsky talked about developing literary taste, and what it can do for a person:

"Every new aesthetic reality … can in itself turn out to be, if not as guarantee, then a form of defense against enslavement. For a man with taste, particularly literary taste, is less susceptible to the refrains and the rhythmical incantations peculiar to any version of political demagogy. The point

is not so much that virtue does not constitute a guarantee for producing a masterpiece, as that evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist. The more substantial an individual’s aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer – though not necessarily the happier – he is.

That is cultural literacy, and with it you can tell inside a news article if it’s fact or propaganda. Read good writing and you’ll recognize good writing and the good thinking behind it, and you’ll know bad writing—bad style—by the bad thinking behind it. When you know good writing, you know immediately when you read AI slop that its pure, brute force predictive auto-complete (and trained on bad style), and despite the wasteful energy and money behind it, no more intelligent than the paper these words are printed on. That’s reading, and it’s fundamental, but what about music, what about jazz, which I’m supposed to be writing about. Like good writing, the cultural literacy that comes through good music helps you cut through ersatz product, garbage, phoniness, not just the literally phony AI music that has been injected into streaming services but the endless hype for the newest poptimism package. Jazz, as one of the greatest styles, something that demands the greatest style from its practitioners, is a defense against evil.

Linchpin between blues and pop

On the issue of our own national nightmare, jazz is essential to our cultural literacy. Made by Americans as a uniquely American thing, it’s both a linchpin between the blues and, via Louis Armstrong, the foundation for every single second of modern pop music around the globe. Jazz is one of the most important cultural products in human history. Jazz is both a popular art and a high/abstract art simultaneously in a way that no other medium or genre can claim, not even film. If you’ve got jazz in you, you have the best defense and offense against the bullshit, the bullshit they want to do to you, and the bullshit they want to sell you, the bullshit they want to put over on you.

Let’s talk jazz literacy then, as a component of cultural literacy. I’m not going to recommend or argue for specific musicians or styles, because the thing about jazz is that if you start getting into it, you find all the big names, because they’re big for a reason. It’s not like The Strokes or Jason Aldean or Lana Del Rey. Musicians like Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald built jazz because they were giants, and, standing on these shoulders, the music is

monumental and spectacular. It is free of hype and bullshit, immune to political winds and consumerist fashions. It has roots laid deep in time and is always of the present moment. This starts with the fundamental question, can you play? To play jazz well, you essentially have to be a motherfucker, it’s the merit-based music par excellence. Stance and packaging will get you nowhere. Then, once you can play, do you have something to say? And this is where I want to specifically focus on the mainstream of jazz, the playing. We don’t need high concepts or the heroic quests of free jazz, or even specific political arguments, just having something to communicate, and being able to articulate it. A brand

Jazz, as one of the greatest styles, something that demands the greatest style from its practitioners, is a defense against evil.

new example of this is the excellent new album Tippin’ (Cellar Live) from drummer Carl Allen. This is a trio session for Allen, saxophonist Chris Potter, and bassist Christian McBride (with pianist John Lee on one track), the group plays standards and originals and every moment is stellar, not a moment of palaver, everything these guys play is not just interesting but full of gripping vitality.

That is the fundamental point and process of jazz, playing together, improvising a conversation, creating a spontaneous consensus. Consensus is the key term: jazz is important in how the foundation of improvisation, with various degrees of structure (call them songs), focuses around building a consensus through a series of shifting moments in time. The lead voices, playing melodies and improvised solos, are never free of the rest of the band, which improvises along with them in a supporting role that can develop into complex and thrilling collective music making. It’s people working together and also with leadership. I could write a million times on a chalkboard that music making is a social activity, and jazz like this is the ne plus ultra of that activity, going back to the first roots of humans making music together, collapsing the most ancient past with the present.

Building social consensus from the ground up is fundamentally American. One of the perverse advantages that jazz has in the marketplace is that since there’s no money in it, there’s essentially no commercial pressure to be packaged, to conform, to follow, to pander to the mediocre and infantile taste of our contemporary cultural arbiters. To quote a true nonconformist musician, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Choose that consensus.

To get back to cultural literacy, and defense against evil (or the mediocrity of capitalism, which is the same thing), jazz makes you hip, helps you see what’s around you, and is a great marker for who to associate with and who to say away from. People who don’t get jazz aren’t going to help you, or us, people who dislike it, well, the context and history is that in 1938 the Nazis mounted a public exhibition of Entartete Musik (Degenerate music), with the notorious poster of a racist caricature of a Black man wearing a Star of David and playing a saxophone. That’s the side that delivers Nazi salutes on live television, the other side is jazz, humanism, America. Start from Tippin’ and proceed fiercely into the future.

Joseph Brodsky