Celebrating Community
Red Hook is currently awash in the building of new warehouses. No doubt the biggest is the massive new UPS distribution facility that starts across Valentino Park, extending on the water all the way to the Cruise Terminal. The package delivery company paid $303 million for the property, which most recently was to be the hub of a new tech […]
Community Board 6’s transportation and public safety committee agreed, on September 19, to table a proposal that involves constructing an additional entrance at the R train’s Union Street stop – that is, until more information regarding the potential Gowanus rezoning is released. Real estate development firm Avery Hall is in the process of buying the Speedway gas station at 4th […]
For the Star-Revue’s August issue, I wrote a feature about Revel, the moped-sharing app whose Vespa-style scooters have overtaken parts of Brooklyn and Queens. It wasn’t technically an opinion piece, but because most of Revel’s other media coverage had taken the form of first-person essays by intrepid reporters who, having tried out the product, had intercut regurgitated press-release info with […]
Whether we like it or not, it seems clear that the summer of 2019 in New York City will be the summer of Revel. After a discreet 10-month pilot program with 68 bikes in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, the Brooklyn-based startup suddenly unleashed 1,000 shiny new mopeds between Astoria and Sunset Park at the end of May, and now the […]
Uber announced last month that it’s piloting a new, in-app safety feature using publicly available mapping data in three select U.S. cities, including New York. The feature pinpoints where bike lanes and shared roads are in the city, and will encourage Uber drivers to safely coordinate pick-ups and drop-offs away from bike lanes. Riders will receive a push notification informing […]
Families from PS 295 and the South Slope area had the chance to explore and sit behind the wheels of more than 15 special vehicles at the school’s 9th annual Touch-A-Truck fundraiser. The vehicles lined up on 18th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues, this year included an FDNY fire truck, NYPD smart car and van, PSVAC ambulance, DOS garbage […]
One of the great misfortunes of my life is that I don’t live in Red Hook. The distance between my apartment in Bushwick (near the border of Bed-Stuy) and the Star-Revue office at the foot of Van Brunt Street is six miles. Google Maps says the journey takes 37 minutes by bike, but I can do it in 30 […]
Formula E and the NYC ePrix are reminding graduating high school seniors, who live in Red Hook and the surrounding neighborhoods, that they still have time to apply for a STEM scholarship. Formula E and Modis have partnered to create the first-ever NYC ePrix Scholarship, engineered by Modis, in recognition that future engineers, IT directors and event professionals will help […]
Since 1996, the Swift Folder – the internationally renowned folding bicycle – has assisted New Yorkers whose complicated commutes typically feature some combination of walk-up apartments, crowded trains, office elevators, and city streets. How many of them know that its inventor lives and works in Gowanus? At the time, industrial designer Peter Reich wasn’t much of a cyclist. “I grew […]
What do 19th-century dandies, first-wave feminists, commuters, messengers, deliverymen, recreationalists, environmentalists, and competitive athletes have in common? Many of them are (or were) cyclists. As the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition “Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History” shows, New York’s erratic relationship with the bicycle owes to the disparities in social status of these groups, each […]