Celebrating Community
The newly reconstituted Red Hook Civic Association moved from P.S. 15 to the Red Hook Recreation Center for the June meeting. A healthy and lively crowd of 26 showed up. Attendees voted on whether or not Civic Association meetings would be held this summer and the vast majority voted in favor of having the meetings throughout the summer. There was […]
11 people showed up for last month’s Gowanus “Build the Block” meeting. It began with neighborhood coordination officers Davaughn Clinton and Jerry Antoine introducing themselves and providing updates. Antoine said that there has been an increase in major crimes. Clinton said that there have been a few recent shootings. “We have also been taking a more aggressive approach to removing […]
Silvio Berlusconi is dead, long live Silvio Berlusconi!” As the four times former Italian Prime Minister passed away last June 12th, most of the Boot’s press has started an apologetical narration on his life, portraying him as a statesman that, even though he had sparked outrage and polemics throughout all his life, eventually had always been caring towards his country. […]
Here’s a thought: I could die at work. Although the internet assures me school shootings are statistically rare, if you follow the news, they don’t feel rare. I’ve been in a classroom since 2017, and as time goes by, Columbine feels less like history and more like a recurring weekly nightmare. Although my logical brain knows I’m more likely to […]
Recycling has long been touted as an easy way to cut down on waste and to create a more sustainable city. In practice, about 18% of trash from homes in NYC is diverted to recycling, according to NYC’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY), and it is likely that a much smaller portion is actually recycled. In 2022, Greenpeace published a report […]
The largest Public Housing Project in Brooklyn. I moved here in 2001. I was 46. Oh, I’m a white guy. My first Saturday night there, I got home around midnight. There’s a bunch of young guys in front of the building. Alright, I cant show any fear. And I don’t. I just take a deep breath….. And slip around to […]
Cindi Mayweather succumbs to pleasure. Anyone who caught Janelle Monáe’s 2018 concert in Prospect Park (and reportedly thousands didn’t and were turned away once the bandshell grounds were filled to capacity) knows what a dynamic performer she is. She seriously enjoyed herself, putting on a tight show, copping moves from James Brown and Michael Jackson and gleefully admitting defeat in […]
Sometimes, things just come together. I’m writing this on July 4th, at the end of a long holiday weekend which saw the conclusion of the HBO series The Idol and, this day, the first of two birthday broadcasts on WKCR—89.9 on your FM dial, or wkcr.org if you insist—for Louis Armstrong. Yes, there are two birthday broadcasts for Louis, who […]
Review of Maud Martha, by Gwendolyn Brooks Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) was an American poet and the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Her award-winning book of poems, Annie Allen, focused on the life of an ordinary Black girl living in Chicago’s South Side. Brooks returned to this subject in the only novel she ever published, Maud […]