Celebrating Community
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 […]
It was a year of downs with slight upturns that suddenly veered into downs that seemed to bottom out, only to tumble violently downward again. – Happily, the murder rate was also trending downward, yet most citizens reported feeling unsafe as mental illness, addiction and homelessness were visible everywhere, especially on the F, D, 2, 5, B, 1 and A […]
I was working the Red Hook-Amagansett-What-Have-You news desk on a slow day, trying to recover from the year-end Star-Revue party the night before. Things had been kind of slow at Sam’s on Court Street until George threw down a wad of bills with presidential mugs I wasn’t familiar with, whereupon Louie kept those drinks coming. Being free and all, how […]
On a beautiful Saturday morning in June, a long-delayed street renaming ceremony took place at 379 Columbia Street to honor the late Dan Defonte, the former proprietor of Defonte’s Sandwich Shop. The large Defonte clan and their friends and fans gathered from near and far to celebrate, donning tee shirts honoring the new Daniel Defonte Way. The usual speeches were […]
On April 2nd Barbara, a retired New York City school teacher, parked her silver 2021 Hyundai Tucson SE in a spot that had miraculously opened up, right across from her Park Slope home. Sadly, that night her car joined the ranks of the Hyundai TikTok Challenge. For numbskull young-ins, that Challenge is pretty easy to conquer. You see, Hyundai models […]
My brother Jerry, who’d been battling Parkinson’s for the past six years, died last week at the age of 84. He leaves no heirs, no inheritance, no smartphone, and no debts. He lived and worked his entire life in Brooklyn, but there will be no street dedications in his honor. A proud member of Teamster’s Local 237, a weekly contributor […]
UFOs are much in the news lately, rebranded by the Pentagon as UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), but I learned all about them early in life, thanks to Hollywood…and a rather odd neighbor. In the Flatbush of my youth, a movie theater sat across the street from our house, The Farragut. On many a Saturday morning, equipped with a quarter for […]
My pal Vinny is writing up a storm about his early years, most of them spent at the foot of the rickety Carroll Street Bridge amidst a tight-knit community of proud Italian-American strivers. Some thrived, many didn’t. Mezza Mezza. More on that later. I first met Vinny in 1961 when we were both freshmen trying to avoid getting whacked by […]
I was manning the Insights Desk at the Star-Revue on a gray late afternoon when Howard, the politics guy, exploded. “Damn it, I was trying to send my story about George Santos to George Fiala but this iTypo spell checker emailed it to George Santos instead! And now Siri wants to know if I’m his new campaign treasurer!” “But Howard,” […]
On January 23rd, Mayor Eric Adams, frustrated by news outlets refusing to install his cronies as City Hall reporters, announced that from now on, gosh darn it, he is going to deliver the news directly to the people with all the technology he can muster. “It’s just not fair,” the Mayor explained, wandering off-script at a press conference called to […]