The
Red Hook StarªRevue
Thru Feb. 22 2013
SOUTH BROOKLYN’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FREE
The importance of Tyquan’s “hook”
by Nic Cavell yquan Carter’s black sweatshirt shrugs as he clicks down the wooden steps. In the basement’s nadir, he walks past brass cups, a power sander and toilet paper. He pauses, then dusts a canvas bag from the top before he can reach it: his pile of recording equipment—each piece fought for, each piece won. They include a Sony Handycam, a microphone, a filter screen for recording, a microphone stand, a midi keyboard, a full-HD Canon T2i, and an Mbox recording interface. Together with speakers and a laptop, they cost him over $1700, but he’s split the costs and distributed them over the past two Tyquan, who performs under the name “Haps,” has lived in Red Hook his whole life. He records his songs years. at Home/made. (photo by Cavell) When he has what he needs, Tyquan mounts the steps back into the restaurant where his he explains. mother, Judy, helps clean up. It’s 7:30 pm, While he peers at his songs’ multitudinous layers and which is well after hours. He sets the equip- their assorted sound levels, Tyquan’s voice disappears ment down. He nestles one large speaker from the conversation. From this angle, a green waagainst a green watering can at one end of tering can sprouts above his head and white quince the bar, and another against a chrome pot flowers bloom from spidery branches like synapses. several feet further down. He tilts them so For Tyquan—whose family’s home was destroyed by their vantages intersect with a third point: Hurricane Sandy—Van Brunt’s Home/made is a “good himself, seated at a wooden table and his studio, even if it’s not really a studio” for his rapping, beat-producing and video-editing. laptop. “This way, I get all the sounds coming into A Typology of Hooks me. I mix them down, tighten the song’s As Gary Burns noted in a 1987 Popular Music article, beat and then add some sounds to fill it up,” Delson’s Dictionary defines a “hook” as “that part of a
T
Hillary Chicken is one of four chicks who live in a clean coop at the Urban Meadow. Her roommates are named Black Betty, Chicky Menage, and Cookie Dough. Hannah (their owner) and the four were forced to relocate following Hurricane Sandy (photo by George Fiala).
(continued on page 3)
NYCHA a no-show at their own meeting by Nic Cavell
O
Jose Clavell, pointing at the flyer, identified himself among a contingent of residents who’d foregone the January 16 meeting for this one because of work obligations.
n January 30, about 50 residents of the Red Hook Houses gathered in the PAL Miccio Center for the next of the New York City Housing Association’s (NYCHA) biweekly meetings to discuss progress with posthurricane repairs. A few copies of the organization’s newsletter—now more than one month out-of-date—peppered tables in the lobby. In the auditorium, Miccio Center Director Tyrone Lewis had rows of chairs for the tenants set out at center court. Tables at which they could file personal complaints with NYCHA staff were placed in the back, just like they had been at the January 16 meeting.
Community members, blue with cold
“There are other places for [NYCHA] to be working. No one’s coming because they’re pretty much caught up with the repairs. There’s nothing more we can tell them,” she said.
This was the scene that housing residents saw when they entered the Miccio Center, January 30th for a scheduled meeting with NYCHA heads. (photo by Fiala)
from what they reported as on-again, off-again heating in freezing overnight temperatures, flushed with confusion and anger at what NYCHA Director of State & City Legislative Affairs, Brian Honan later called a “miscommunication.”
The Red Hook Star-Revue 101 Union Street Brooklyn, NY 11231
The only things missing were the NYCHA personnel.
Lillie Marshall, the Tenants Association President of Red Hook Houses West, quickly denied that the flyer was circulated by NYCHA staff, or that the organization had scheduled a meeting that evening at all.
Residents, including Henrietta Perkins, clutched flyers printed on yellow stock issued as reminders of both the January 16 and January 30 meetings.
Residents including Clavell and Irma Rivera demurred. “This is a joke—but really, it’s not even funny. When is the work going to be done?” Rivera asked. (continued on page 4)
Valentine’s Day (pages 9-12)
Presorted Standard Rate US Postage PAID Brooklyn, NY Permit 84