Celebrating Community
On March 13, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso delivered his State of the Borough speech in front of a packed crowd of hundreds of people at New York City College of Technology. Reynoso spoke about a variety of issues including how to move freight throughout the city in safe, sustainable, and efficient ways. The problem is one that Jim Tampakis
The Red Hook Civic Association met on March 26 at the Red Hook Recreation Center. The March meeting was the group’s first anniversary. According to Nico Kean, the April meeting will consist of a special celebration with a party and a progress report, and will be held at the Red Hook Coffee Shop on Van Brunt Street. A name change
PS 676 Harbor Middle School held a family fun STEM night in the cafeteria for the students and parents. There was a special focus on women in science as March is Women’s History month. There were also hands-on math and science activities at tables and outside organizations at the event. There was a women’s history coloring table. A drawing was
Council Member Shahana Hanif, her staff, several artists from the nonprofit Arts & Democracy Project, and a handful of volunteers all gathered in the Old Stone House in Park Slope on a Monday evening last month. At the start of the meeting, each person introduced themselves and stated their artistic skills, before being assigned a project and getting down to
It has been a busy year for the Department of City Planning (DCP). The city has seemed weighed down with budget cuts, constant media attention on crime in the subways, and sexual assault allegations against the mayor, and yet DCP has continued its work, publishing Principles of Good Urban Design for New York City (a tool for creating better neighborhoods)
Many people might not realize it, but in 2006 a British utility bought the Brooklyn company that had been providing gas heating and lighting for the borough since 1825. Yes folks, if you pay a National Grid bill, you are adding to the profits of a London based company. Way back in 1776, the British defeated us in Brooklyn when
Usually I spend a month trying to figure out what momentous topic I will be making pronouncement about in this column. But for this month at least, I’m going to tackle a bunch of possibly less momentous issues that have been on my mind. Law and Order My office is inside the warehouses on Van Brunt Street across from Food
On January 29, the Elmo account posted a simple tweet that said, “”Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” and nobody could have predicted the response this would get. There was a wide range of responses with people revealing how mental health is very much an issue. “I’m at my lowest. Thanks for asking,” one person replied. “Elmo,
On March 2, the family of Allan Feliz and politicians including District 38 Council Member Alexa Aviles gathered outside of City Hall despite pouring rain to demand that Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Edward Caban fire police officer Jonathan Rivera. The officer shot and killed Feliz six years ago after stopping him because he thought he was not wearing
Summit Academy’s girls basketball team won its first citywide championship last month as it pulled away in the 4th quarter to win the 1A girls basketball playoffs over Manhattan’s School of the Future, 53-45. The game at Long Island University’s Steinberg Wellness Center was packed with fans from both teams. In the semifinals at Queensborough Community College, Summit beat No.
Stan Mack is one of the most prolific story tellers of the 20th century. He’s told over 1,500 tales using thick white paper, a pen and black ink to create comic strips about ordinary people, sometimes in extraordinary locations. A thousand were published in the Village Voice every week for two decades. Now 275 of the best of those will
Jean-Paul Sartre was right! (maybe) We’ll skip the millennial interview and let a Boomer rant this month. The main threat to society, from my born in the ‘50s point of view, is the trending reduction in human contact. The millennials I have spoken in the past few months don’t seem to be bothered by this, i.e. the dating apps and
Sweden is to Europe like the Amazon is to South America. It is a land full of lakes and forests that hug you the very moment of your arrival. Getting on the bus to leave the airport you are driven through a nature scenario, with snowy trees extending miles. If you were sweating in the plane because of your ski
Tim O’Brien’s 1990 auto fictional novel based on his time as a young soldier in Vietnam remains a popular choice in high school curriculum across the country. Teaching at a rural school in northern New Hampshire, the average student is removed from the horrors of war and mostly, blessedly, from extreme levels of violence. Although some students do have grandparents
Old timers might remember an urban gardener from the last century. Adam Purple, who dressed in purple and drove a purple bike, created a large spiraling garden on the lower East Side which became famous as it was threatened and eventually destroyed by real estate developers. These days, many community gardens in the city are safe from development due to
I happen to love adventures, and unexpected treats are always a highlight of life. However, being surprised at discovering a great evening at the Regina Opera is akin to kids from Manhattan attending an event at the Kings Theater and telling their friend’ parents, who grew up watching baseball at Ebbets Field, that they’ve “discovered” Flatbush. I’m probably the last
You’re reading this right now, so you likely recognize the importance of the Red Hook Star-Revue. Do you know how lucky we are to have a neighborhood newspaper? It reports on local events, holds our elected officials accountable to their campaign promises and supports our neighborhood businesses through advertising. Who else looks out for us like this? This paper is
Are you ready for the country? Cowboy Carter, the latest epochal event from Beyoncé, is a culturally defining moment if only because making culturally defining moments is what Beyoncé does. She’s hardly the first Black singer to venture into country music. DeFord Bailey, Ray Charles and Charley Pride were there decades ago. The underrecognized Linda Martell appeared on the country
Call it “Rhythm Prejudice,” and blame it on Bach. His genius with harmony and forms like canon and fugue set the foundation of modern Western music and established the keyboard as the basis for both composition and analysis. That has meant that vertical harmony—chords—has been privileged across the board, from garage band rock to academic musicology. It wasn’t always this
Nearly two years ago, it seemed like Vera Drew’s debut film was doomed. Not because it centered on and was made by a trans woman — a twice-over target in this era of escalating anti-trans bigotry — but because it poked a Hollywood giant. The People’s Joker, billed as a “queer coming-of-age superhero parody,” Jokerizes Drew’s coming out experience. Its main
Music making is a social activity. Anyone with a laptop and a bedroom can make an album, but there’s limits to that, not the least how far one’s imagination can go without the stimulus of other personalities. When musicians get together to play it’s a social activity, they make something together whether or not they’re in front of an audience.
A step ahead at looking back. In April, I wrote about Joe Jackson’s 1981 album Jumpin’ Jive in a review of Taj Mahal’s recent album of early jazz songs. Since then, Rickie Lee Jones has issued a respectable collection of crooner tunes, and countless rockers-of-certain-ages have done so before, generally with far lesser results than Jackson, Jones and Mahal (special
A-Zal, the rising musical artist who navigated NYC in pursuit of his authentic sound and success, now stands in the spotlight. Today, we dive into A-Zal’s journey from a dreamer to a dazzling star, right here in the heart of the Big Apple. Roderick Thomas: Glad to finally speak to you A-Zal. A-Zal: Thank you, R.T. It’s a pleasure
A band everyone should like. There was a time, back in the distant 1980s and ’90s, when recording and distribution outpaced the spread of information. The post-punk DIY movement encouraged artists and fans to seize the means of production and make their own records and zines but there was no guarantee they’d end up in the same places. As a result,
Pianist Matthew Shipp has had such a consistent, sustained career, nearly 40 years as one of the foremost free jazz players, that it’s easy to lose sight of what he’s done as a musician. His built a grand discographical forest through his own albums and those on which he’s part of another ensemble—coming up with the important David S. Ware
If you Google “rock clubs, Brooklyn,” you’ll see more than a dozen, most of them in Williamsburg, Bushwick, Gowanus or nearby. But before any of them were there, Lauterbach’s, at 335 Prospect Ave. in the South Slope, had a thriving scene featuring original rock bands. None of the Lauterbach’s bands – Frank’s Museum, Chemical Wedding, Cryptic Soup, Formaldehyde Blues Train,
