Celebrating Community
Red Hook’s Community Justice Center has been an important part of the neighborhood since opening on Visitation Place in 2000. I had the opportunity to get a tour of the Center and speak to Judge Alex Calabrese, attorney Edna McGoldrick, and Director of Housing and Civil Justice, Ross Joy. I got to witness some of the housing court cases that […]
Before the February 24th Russian invasion of Ukraine, I really didn’t know too much about Ukraine. Even though the war has been going on since 2014 and I have family members who are originally from Lviv (one of the biggest cities in Ukraine), I didn’t know anything about the history of the country or the gruesome details of the battles […]
Sports have always been an important part of the Red Hook community. Melvin Goddard has been helping kids in the neighborhood reach their potential in sports. Goddard coaches basketball players ages 6-10 on his team, the Biddybros. He has also organized flag football and softball events in Red Hook. His partner Karl Sanders, who played college basketball for St. Francis […]
Believe it or not, I think COVID has given me a precious gift. It’s kind of a long story but I’ve got the room this month so here goes. It all started in December 2019, when a friend of mine who just happened to start the Brooklyn Paper back in the 1970’s, Ed Weintrob, told me that if I hadn’t […]
Cafeteria Culture is behind a 2019 award-winning documentary called Microplastic Madness. This movie documents the first Plastic Free Lunch Day, which was led by 56 fifth graders from PS 15. On that day in 2019, students counted 558 fewer plastic items and reduced total lunchtime waste by 99 percent. This year they had pizza, broccoli and oranges all served without […]
PS 676 had after school Family Game Night starting at 3 p.m. on a beautiful afternoon in their school yard. This was the first one that they school organized since before the pandemic. Many parents of the elementary school kids attended the activity filled event. Many parents were also at the harbor science fair earlier in the afternoon. At the […]
In the winter of 2020, trumpeter Wallace Roney appeared one evening on WKCR. A few weeks later, he was dead, killed, by the coronavirus. As Sharif Abdus-Salaam, who had hosted Roney, said with some shock when reporting this, “COVID does not play around.” No it does not. Nor, now with more than a million Americans needlessly dead, has it stopped […]
Have you ever seen a man play an umbrella under an iron horse? Neither had I, until I attended Mecha Sonic Sessions 2 at an undisclosed location in deep Gowanus. On Saturday, May 21 I went beyond Smith and 9th streets. Across from Bayside Fuel and a metal scrap yard stands an innocuous looking cinderblock building near Hamilton Parkway. A […]
John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which turned 60 this year, is undeniably a classic. Pairing John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart for the first time, it’s the Western that introduced Duke’s “Pilgrim” into the Hollywood firmament and gave the world the irresistible line, spoken by a newspaper editor, “When the legend becomes a fact, print the legend.” And, […]