Red Hook Star-Revue, January 2019

the red hook

CITY PLACES HOMELESS SHELTER IN RED HOOK-PAGE 8

STAR REVUE

JANUARY 2019 chronicling Red Hook and the world beyond FREE

TO YOUR HEALTH! Everything you need to stay healthy in 2019 is right in the neighborhood and Star-Revue tells you where!

L A I C SPE TION SEC 8-31 2 S E PAG

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Profile: Freddy’s proprietor Donald O’Finn page 19

What does Red Hook think of Michele? page 14

Local Pol makes Daily News Front Page page 8

481 Van Brunt Street, 8A Brooklyn, NY 11231 (718) 624-5568

STARªREVUE COMMUNITY HAPPENINGS email george@redhookstar.com to list your event. For more listings, check out our online community calendar at www.star-revue.com/calendar

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january events

Editor & Publisher George Fiala Advertising

Liz Galvin Jamie Yates

Arts Editor

Matt Caprioli

Music Editor

Michael Cobb

Reporters:

Nathan Weiser Erin DiGregorio Brett Yates

Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder Contributors: Laura Eng (Religion) Steve Farber Sofia Baluyut Tina Portelli Ed Littleford Robbie Giordano FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email george@redhookstar.com.

The Red Hook Star-Revue is published monthly.

Compiled by Erin DeGregorio

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Watch the Golden Globes, hosted by Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg, projected on the big screen at the FREE Sun Golden Globe Awards Screen Party, presented by The Skint, at Littlefield (635 Sackett Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues). In lieu of ballots, bingo cards will be available to play along with during the show. Doors open at 5:30 pm; red carpet coverage begins at 6 pm; and the award show starts at 8 pm. For more information, contact caitlin@littlefieldnyc.com or visit littlefieldnyc.com to RSVP. Note: RSVP does not guarantee entry, and this event is mixed seated/standing.

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Join neighbors to hear updates regarding Red Hook West and voice any concerns or ask questions of TA President Lillie Tue. Marshall at the Red Hook West Residents Association meeting. 428 Columbia Street, Apt. 1C.

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Wed.

Founded June 2010.

Community Telephone Numbers: Red Hook Councilman Carlos Menchaca (718) 439-9012 Red Hook Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (718) 492-6334 State Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (718) 643-6140 Gowanus Councilman Brad Lander (718) 499-1090 Park Slope Councilman Steve Levin (718) 875-5200 CB6 District Manager Michael Racioppo (718) 643-3027 76th Police Precinct, 191 Union Street Main phone (718) 834-3211 Community Affairs (718) 834-3207 Traffic Safety (718) 834-3226 Eileen Dugan Senior Center, 380 Court Street (718) 596-1956 Miccio Center, 110 East 9th Street (718) 243-1528 Red Hook East Dev. Office, 62 Mill St (718) 852-6771 Red Hook West Dev. Office, 55 Dwight St. (718) 522-3880 NYCHA Satellite Police Precinct, 80 Dwight St. Main Phone (718) 265-7300 Community Affairs (718) 265-7313 Domestic Violence (718) 265-7310 Youth Officer (718) 265-7314

Community Board 6’s general board meeting at New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital’s auditorium (506 6th Street).

The “5 Myths About Women & Money” workshop, led by Jeannie Jackson. It’ll take place at The Great Room (194 Columbia Street), 5:30-7:45 pm.

Pre-registration is required – email jeannie_jackson@strategiesforwealth.com.

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Join neighbors to hear updates regarding Red Hook East and voice any concerns or ask questions of TA President Frances Wed Brown at the Red Hook East Residents Association meeting 167 Bush Street, Apt. 1B.

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The 33rd Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will take place at the Peter Jay Sharp Building (30 LafayMon. ette Avenue). Civil rights activist and founder of the Me Too movement Tarana Burke will be the keynote speaker, and there will also be music performances by Oddisee & Good Company and The Brooklyn Interdenominational Choir.

Tickets for this free event are available on a firstcome, first-seated basis in the lobby of the Gilman Opera House starting at 8 am.

22 Tue.

Gowanus Canal CAG’s monthly meeting will be held at 30 pm at Mary Star of the Sea (41 1st Street). (dependent on status of government shutdown)

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Voice your concerns, ask questions and meet the police captain at the 78th Precinct Community Council meeting. It’ll Tue. take place 7:30-9 pm at the 78th Precinct th (65 6 Avenue).

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On Sunday February 3, 2019 at 3 PM, Regina Opera will begin its 2019 Sunday Concert Series at Our Lady of Perpetual Sun. Help school, 5902 6th Avenue. Enjoy a 2-hour concert of classic and contemporary Broadway tunes and operetta selections. Tickets $15 General Admission; $5 - Teens; Children - Free

ongoing

ONGOING

Red Hook StarRevue

Mondays – Jalopy Theatre and School of Music (315 Columbia St.) host their weekly Open Mic Night every Monday, 8:30-10 pm. Sign up in person by 9 pm. Performance order will be drawn at random at 9 pm sharp! Each performer gets two songs or 8 minutes.

Tuesdays – Professional dancers teach free dance workshops every Tuesday, 6-8 pm, at the Red Hook Justice Center (88 Visitation Pl.).

Wednesdays – Join Healing After Violence, a support group for women who have experienced violence in a relationship, on Wednesdays, 5-7 pm, at Red Hook Justice Center (88 Visitation Pl.). Call Red Hook CARES at 347-404-9017 to learn more.

Listen to country, rock, blues and Americana LIVE with special guests at Pig Beach (480 Union St.), starting at 7 pm on Wednesdays.

Jalopy Theater presents “Roots n Ruckus,” a night of folk, old-time and blues music. It takes place every Wednesday, 9-11 pm, starting Jan. 9 at 315 Columbia St. Thursdays – Broadly Entertaining hosts FREE Thursday Night Trivia at Rocky Sullivan’s (46 Beard St.), at 8 pm. First place winner gets 50% off their tab!

Fridays – Red Hook Library (7 Wolcott St.) offers one-on-one Resume, Cover Letter and Interview Prep from 11 am to 1 pm.

Saturdays – Saturday Activities are available for ages 13 and up – including gym, theater, weight room and computers – at the Miccio Cornerstone Center (110 West 9th St.), a program of Good Shepherd Services. For more information, call 718-2431528.

Red Hook NCOs Damien Clarke — Damien.Clarke@nypd.org; (929) 287-7155 Jonathan Rueda — Jonathan.Rueda@nypd.org — 917-941-2185

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January 2019

A large crowd attended the “Blue City” opening .

Left: poster of possibilities. Right: two of a set of models.

RETI Center Proposes Floating Industrial Center at GBX

Story and photos by Brett Yates

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n November 28, Studio 153 on Coffey Street held the opening of the exhibition “Blue City,” which inaugurated the conceptual phase of a long-term plan by the nonprofit RETI Center to build a cluster of “sustainable floating structures” at the Gowanus Bay Terminal (GBX). The development will be “the first of its kind in New York City.”

Based in Red Hook, the RETI (Resilience, Education, Training, and Innovation) Center aims to steer economic development in New York toward projects that will help the city withstand rising sea levels and extreme weather while also ameliorating the social disparities that render some communities particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. According to executive director Tim GilmanŠevčík, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, the RETI Center was “started out of interest by Pratt Institute to replicate a place that they’d found in Rotterdam called the RDM Campus,” a former shipbuilding facility in the Netherlands that now hosts cutting-edge private industry, education programs, and environmental research initiatives.

Founded in 2015 by architect Gita Nandan, RETI earned its first grant from the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery to provide solar panel installation training for unemployed and underemployed youth from the Red Hook Houses.

The training was completed last summer, but RETI has yet to find a permanent home for its operations.

To that end, RETI has formed a partnership with GBX. “Essentially, they called us out of the blue,” Gilman-Šev�ík recalled. GBX owner John Quadrozzi Jr., whose father bought and rebranded the Port Authority’s long-abandoned Red Hook Grain Terminal in 1997, rents out portions of the land to industrial and maritime tenants (as well as film production crews), but the property also encompasses 33 acres of water.

Per Gilman-Šev�ík, Quadrozzi “wanted to do something that combines social justice and sustainability and would actually

Red Hook Star-Revue

like we have in the past, for the activate their site more in terms of construction of it, so we’d be their ability to bring in the public.” teaching people to build it while RETI suggested putting a “climate building it.” He believes that change lab” directly on Gowanus this on-site assembly process, if Bay, which, owing to its remove successful, could ultimately yield from GBX’s heavier land-based a separate construction business, industry, would allow for a safe, specializing in the fabrication of separate point of entry for visitors. similar modular floating structures In 2012-2013, the Red Hook and employing community Red Hook Houses r e j e c t e d residents.

Quadrozzi’s bid The EPA has to extend the cited concerns Gowanus Bay regarding the Terminal seaward effects that by the addition permanent of cement o f f s h o r e encasements of — Tim Gilman-Ševčík structures — and toxic sludge from the shadows that the Gowanus they cast on the Canal cleanup. water — can have The Blue City plan on the health of offers a new and seafloor ecosystems, which means perhaps more agreeable means for that acquiring permits will be a GBX to take advantage of its unused challenge for Blue City as RETI acreage beyond land’s end. seeks out an environmentally “Because GBX is a concrete friendly design. Due to additional manufacturing company, our questions of funding, no firm intention is to use concrete as the timeline has emerged thus far for primary floating mechanism,” the completion of the project. A Gilman-Ševčík said. “The plan small RETI Center structure may is to build it with community appear at GBX before the larger involvement, in that we’d actually Blue City vision is realized, possibly be running training courses,

“The plan is to build it with community involvement...”

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within 18 months.

Once completed, the RETI Center’s permanent headquarters will provide job training, educational workshops, lectures, and art exhibitions, in addition to conducting climate change research and sustainable technology development, for which manufacturing will occur largely on shore to avoid problems posed by waves. The offshore structure, however, will allow for specifically aquatic activities such as mussel growing; water testing; and phytoremediation, a process that uses living plants to purify contaminated water.

“Definitely the uniqueness of it is very important in order to attract people to it and get attention and funding, because it would be very innovative,” GilmanŠev�ík commented. The project may also serve as a blueprint for a living-with-water approach to flood management, a concept whose popularity has grown as the possibility of keeping storm surge out of coastal cities diminishes.

The RETI Center expects other

continued on page 5

January 2019, Page 3

DUTCH DELEGATION VISITS COMMUNITY JUSTICE CENTER

By Brett Yates

T

employment, addiction, or inadequate housing.

RHCJC’s Alex Calabrese is an official judge of the New York State Unified Court System, hearing mostly misdemeanor cases from a catchment area that spans the NYPD’s 76th, 78th, and 72nd Precincts, but thanks to the Center for Court Innovation, the building at 88 Visitation Place also operates as a community center, providing social services like mental health counseling, job training, housing help, and GED classes. Greg Berman, far left, leads a tour of Red Hook Community Justice Center, as New Yorkers don’t need to Amanda Berman, second from left, speaks with Sander Dekker. get arrested in order to access these forms of assisempathize with repeat drug offenddisputes through conversation, and tance at RHCJC, but having them ers (“It’s not easy staying clean durYouth Court, where teenage volunclose at hand makes it easy for Caing the holidays”) and called defenteers dispense binding sentences to labrese — who may sentence ofdants to the bench to shake hands. low-level juvenile offenders who’ve fenders to drug rehabilitation or Afterward, Dekker complimented already admitted guilt. These kids community service in some cases, the judge’s bedside manner: “It was don’t have the authority to invoke using jail time as a last resort — to wonderful to see the little chitchat fines or detention centers, but they recommend many defendants to after the formal case.” He specucan demand letters of apology or Court Innovation programs in lieu lated that, by establishing personal send their peers to skill-building of punishment. bonds with the defendants, Calworkshops.

Meeting with the Dutch envoys, abrese may have decreased their For the Dutch guests, Coleta RHCJC project director Amanda chance of recidivism because they Walker and Sabrina Carter of RHBerman explained the idea of “‘pro“don’t want to disappoint” the CJC summarized the practical cedural justice,’ where, if we create judge. and conceptual underpinnings a process where people feel that As Berman showed the delegaof Peacemaking and Youth Court, they’ve been treated fairly, that they tion around the building and pointwhich seek, at least in small part, are being treated with respect, and ed out the polite, user-friendly sigto transfer the administration of they understand what’s going on nage that RHCJC had installed, justice away from a traditionally and have a voice, that means they’ll she emphasized “how you can use alienating bureaucracy and into the be more likely to comply with the the physical environment to send hands of the community. After lisoutcomes, and it means they’ll be a message” of comfort, warmth, tening to a 15-year-old describe his more likely to trust the system as and rectitude “to everyone walkexperience working in the court, a whole.” RHCJC processes about ing through the doors.” According Dekker gifted him a tin of stroop10,000 cases a year, but not all of to Berman, the challenge of an enwafels, a specialty of Holland. them go to Calabrese’s bench. terprise like RHCJC is to transform Amanda Berman also led the Other methods of resolution ina courthouse — a destination typiassembly into Calabrese’s courtclude Peacemaking, which trains cally avoided at all costs — into a room, where the judge took care to neighborhood residents to resolve place that people “want to be in.”

Peter Slort, the Counselor for Justice and Security at the Netherlands’ embassy in Washington, D.C., accompanied Dekker on the tour. He called the experience “very fruitful. In the Netherlands, we are TAX, ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL PLANNING SERVICES experimenting with ways to innovate the court system. The goals are to bring the court system closer to the people and to make it more ef• Tax Preparation and Planning fective. We were impressed by the results of the Red Hook Communi• Business Entity Formation ty Justice Center, and learned a lot.”

• IRS Representation Dekker and Slort weren’t RHCJC’s first international guests. Berman, • Financial Planning who noted that observers come “on a regular basis,” recalled previous ENROLLED AGENTS – AMERICA’S TAX EXPERTS! visits from Japan, New Zealand and Israel. In addition to its “hyperlocal “The Best Minute You Spend Is The One You Invest in Someone Else” role in working with the community here,” the Justice Center intends to 204 25th Street, Suite 201 718-855-5515 function as a “laboratory to test out Brooklyn, NY 11232 ron@ronmunoz.com new ideas and to serve as a model for other jurisdictions,” she said. “At the end of the day, our hope is that justice reform will spread far and

Dutch village of Roode Hoek has come a long way since the 1600s. But on December 11, the motherland briefly returned to Brooklyn when Sander Dekker, the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection, paid a visit to Red Hook, along with seven other officials from the Hague and a Dutch TV crew. Dekker, a politician from the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, occupies a position in his country’s government roughly equivalent to that of the United States Attorney General.

Plans to build a community courthouse in the city of Eindhoven — which will be the first of its kind in the Netherlands — prompted Dekker to take a tour of the Red Hook Community Justice Center (RHCJC), following an earlier stop at the Brownsville Community Justice Center. Both are projects by the Center for Court Innovation, a New York-based nonprofit that, through public policy research and consulting work, aims to advance the cause of justice reform and reduce incarceration. It works “in a very intimate way with government” in order to “nudge government to be its best self,” as the organization’s director, Greg Berman, put it.

The Center for Court Innovation operates in all five boroughs of New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey, but RHCJC is unique in that it combines criminal court, housing court, and family court into one experimental courtroom, presided over by a single judge. This synthesis allows for a holistic perspective that lends itself toward a problemsolving approach rather than a punitive one, pooling information to identify the underlying causes of troublesome behavior, such as unhe formerly

Ronald D. Muñoz, EA “Good Service is Good Business”

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Page 4 Red Hook Star-Revue

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December 2018

Celebrities act at P.S. 676 holiday party Story and photos by Nathan Weiser

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n Thursday, December 20, PS 676 held their second annual gift giving and holiday celebration. This year’s event was a big success.

Every student received at least one toy, got to meet Santa Claus (Councilman Carlos Menchaca) and had milk and cookies. There was also a holiday performance by the kids.

Principal Priscilla Figueroa, who is in her first full year at the school, played Santa’s wife.

Santa asked everyone to raise their hands if they had been naughty and raise their hands if they had been nice. He then told them that there is still time to get on the nice list.

Principal Figueroa puts an emphasis on the school’s core values and Santa asked the kids to tell him some of them. They then offered the values empathy, respect, integrity, curiosity and kindness and provided a definition.

“We want to make leaders in the community,” Figueroa added after the Holidays Around the World performance. “We want to teach them the core values and make sure they grow up owning them and understanding them and using them in the real world.”

The first part of the gift giving was for the PS 676 after school

program, which is administered by the YMCA, and the second part was for everyone else.

A lot went into planning this event and Figueroa thinks this day of gift giving is a very significant one for the kids in the school.

“I think it was very important,” Figueroa said. “Some of them, I am not sure whether or not they have a Christmas at home. A lot of the parents struggle but at least we can provide them with a Christmas and can give them gifts here. We were able to get extra contributions so if there were siblings or other children that came by, we were able to give them a gift as well.”

The school reached out to many different community organizations and got contributions from local churches, the community board, the district council, District 15 and Toys for Tots. Other schools in the area and the Community Education Council President (CEC) donated.

Portside, Redemption Church, Red Hook Initiative and the school’s PTA volunteered at the event.

“We want our parents to come in and see what the children are learning,” Figueroa said as many parents watched the holiday celebration. “It makes the children feel good, it welcomes the community and builds parent Below and right: scenes from the holiday party at P.S. 676

engagement.”

ESTATE PLANNING ELDER CARE SPECIAL NEEDS • Wills • Trusts • Health Proxies RETI continued from page 3 tenants to come to Blue City, believing that the waterborne development could be attractive for the purposes of recreation and urban farming. And since the RETI Center will be off-grid, using solar energy, Gilman-Ševčík hopes that the prospect of “cross-fertilization” may draw green energy companies to the site.

The exhibition at Studio 153 showcased possible designs for the RETI Center by Pratt undergrads, alongside diagrams and architectural renderings by the Dutch firms Space&Matter and One Architecture & Urbanism, which will join Oasis Design Lab, Nandan’s thread collective, and Persak & Wurmfeld in the design of Blue City. The show also hinted at the sorts of research and public outreach initiatives

Red Hook Star-Revue

promised by the RETI Center within its new facility by making room for presentations focused on potential infrastructural improvements in Red Hook’s parks and sewers, as well as a table dedicated to 3Dprinted building models by preteen Detail of RETI poster

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January 2019, Page 5

NEW ENHANCED CROSSWALKS ARE COMING TO COLUMBIA STREET By Erin DeGregorio

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ommunity Board 6 met on Dec. 12 for their monthly general board meeting, held at the Cobble Hill Health Center (380 Henry Street), with much to discuss and vote on.

CB6 members approved Department of Transportation (DOT)’s proposal to implement pedestrian safety improvements for Columbia Street from West 9th Street to Luquer Street. This follows requests from P.S. 676 Red Hook Neighborhood School and Summit Academy Charter School to DOT and DOT’s presentation at the CB6 Transportation/Public Safety Committee meeting on Nov. 15. According to their presentation slides, “The distance between existing signalized pedestrian crossings on Columbia Street is 1,100 feet.” DOT also determined that there were 13 total injuries between Luquer and West 9th from 2012 to 2016 — four involved pedestrians and nine involved passengers inside motor vehicles.

DOT has collected data since May 2018 and conducted a study of four intersections on Columbia Street — Luquer/Commerce, Nelson, Huntington, and Verona Streets — for a traffic signal or an all-way stop sign. Though they ultimately determined that none passed federal guidelines for traffic signalization (based on pedestrian and vehicle volumes), Nelson and Luquer Streets did meet city guidelines for enhanced uncontrolled crossings with new ADA-compliant pedestrian ramps.

As a result, two high-visibility crosswalks at these two intersections will be painted and pedestrian warning signage will be added.

Fifteen-foot approaches, which will remove three parking spots (one at Verona Street and two at Commerce Street), will be installed to improve visibility. The existing pedestrian

Questions and concerns about the project can be directed toward DOT Brooklyn Borough Commissioner’s Office at 646-892-1350.

In other news, CB6 members in attendance also voted for the new CB6 Board Chair, choosing either current chairperson Sayar Lonial or longtime Landmarks & Land Use Co-Chair Peter Fleming. Lonial and Fleming each made candidacy speeches before the board members cast their ballots.

“It’s critically important that, while we ultimately speak with one voice, that one voice should be made up of many voices,” Fleming said during his speech. “That’s one

triangle at Nelson and Delavan Streets — near P.S. 676 and Summit Academy — will also be updated and expanded, which will allow for easier crossing for students, slower, safer turns and predictable vehicle movements.

Eric McClure, co-chair of the Transportation Committee, said that there are still traffic signal and all-way stop studies pending at Hicks and Huntington Streets and a study pending for speed bumps near P.S. 676. The presentation, which can be viewed online at nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/ columbia-st-nov2018.pdf, doesn’t list a proposed timeline or budget.

of the things I would like to see, as chair — that more voices get heard and that more of their opinions become part of what we ultimately say.”

Fleming, who has been a CB6 member for nearly 25 years, received the most votes. Lonial served as chairperson for nearly three years, since taking the position in Feb. 2016.

The first general board meeting for the 2019 calendar year will take place on Jan. 9, 6:30 pm, in New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital’s auditorium (506 6th Street).

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January 2019

Red Hook Health Survey completed I In 2016, NYU n December, NYU Langone Health, the academic medical center at New York University, released the Red Hook Community Health Needs and Assets Assessment (CHNAA).

The Red Hook report was compiled in October by a consortium of six local nonprofits: the Alex House Project, Family Health Centers at NYU Langone, Good Shepherd Services, NYU Langone Health Department of Population Health, the Red Hook Community Justice Center, and the Red Hook Initiative.

Initiated under the NYU Langone Health Community Service Plan, doctors and public health experts deemed this CHNAA “particularly important because readily available data for Red Hook includes more affluent neighboring communities, thereby masking pockets of poverty and need.” New York state law requires that hospitals develop community service plans every three years.

In 2016, NYU Langone marked Red Hook as “an under-resourced and medically underserved community.”

In 2014, the State closed and sold off the closest hospital to Red Hook, the Long Island College Hospital, despite Red Hook already being named an underserved health area. NYU Langone was chosen by the new developers of the hospital property to provide an emergency health facility, required by the State.

The CHNAA team began by reviewing census figures and preexisting health information gathered by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and other agencies. It then supplemented this data by conducting local surveys, holding small group discussions, and organizing seven “dot voting” events, in which participants used stickers to mark their three most pressing health concerns from a list of 12 on a poster.

In total, more than 600 respondents — people who live or work in Red Hook — took part in the project.

CHNAA polls singled out asthma as Red Hook’s top health concern, emphasized by 45 percent of survey participants, who “made the connection between housing conditions and asthma in the small group conversations,” citing “inconsistent heating and cooling, mold, and cockroaches and rats” as causes or exacerbating factors. The next biggest problems — noted by 35 percent, 31 percent, 31 percent, and 29 percent, respectively — were stress/anxiety/depression (as a single category); diabetes; smoking; and substance use, including alcohol.

“Needed home repairs, rent increases, housing insecurity, safety concerns, and over-policing” appeared to play a role in Red Hook’s mental health issues, which in turn seemed to influence the neighborhood’s substance abuse and alcoholism. The CHNAA also observed that there were “more alcohol retailers in the area

Red Hook Star-Revue

Langone marked Red CLOS ED 2 014 Hook as “an underresourced and medically underserved community.” compared to the citywide rate.”

Among the community’s needs, housing loomed large for 48 percent of survey participants, who highlighted the urgency of improvements within the Red Hook Houses and the importance of affordability. An equal number of survey participants wanted more job training and educational opportunities, while 35 percent hoped for better access to healthy foods.

Smaller numbers of residents believed that more public services should be offered in Spanish and Chinese. “The Cantonese-speaking small group reported safety and violence as a major concern” and described “being afraid to answer their doors or go out early in the morning or late at night.”

Meanwhile, the “young parent small group reported police interactions as the primary contributor to stress, anxiety, and depression.” The fear of gentrification also “came up at various points in the assessment.”

For solutions, many people in Red Hook reportedly look to “peerto-peer programs,” such as those offered by the Red Hook Initiative; “holistic strategies” that can address “a number of related issues at the same time,” like Mayor de Blasio’s private-public partnership Connections to Care; and “advocacy and organizing.” It’s not known how many respondents endorsed these approaches, as the CHNAA didn’t provide specific figures for the “Connecting Strengths + Needs” section of the report.

In its conclusion, however, the CHNAA team stated that it is “exploring opportunities to implement these strategies to address the community’s top health needs” and even “responded to needs as they came up during this year-long process. An existing education and home assessment program for people who have asthma and are on Medicaid was expanded to Red Hook. Materials

about quitting smoking and lead exposure were also distributed to residents through CHNAA team organizations.”

The CHNAA is available for public download at redhookchnaa. wordpress.com, alongside additional materials that detail the report’s methodology. These documents break down combined data sets into smaller subgroups, revealing stark differences between Red Hook residents (528 surveyed inside and outside the Red Hook Houses) and

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by Brett Yates Red Hook workers (66 surveyed), and between NYCHA tenants and those in private housing.

For instance, people surveyed outside the Houses (including workers at the non-profits) believed community-based organizations to be Red Hook’s greatest strength, while NYCHA tenants — the primary population served by those organizations — cited affordable housing instead.

A plurality of Red Hook residents (47 percent) identified asthma as the most significant health issue in the area, while Red Hook workers (45 percent) claimed it was substance use.

Residents and workers also disagreed on the services most desperately needed within Red Hook, with the former (51 percent) petitioning for “home repairs to address mold, pests, lead, and other problems” while the latter (52 percent) wanted “adult education and job training-placement” for Red Hook. Only 26 percent of Red Hook workers picked home repairs as a central need for the community despite a crisis of deterioration and lead exposure at NYCHA. Professor Sue Kaplan at NYU Langone confirmed that, of the relatively small number of workers who participated in the survey, most worked for the nonprofits that had helped put together the CHNAA.

January 2019, Page 7

DHS Opens Emergency-Use Homeless Hotel on Seabring Street

By Brett Yates

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n Friday, December 14, the New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) converted the LOOK Hotel at 17 Seabring Street into a temporary homeless shelter that will offer 152 beds for “single adult males who are employed or employable.” DHS has contracted Core Services Group, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, to operate the facility.

No estimate has been provided for how long the LOOK will operate as a shelter, although DHS has plans to phase out the practice of renting out commercial hotels for the homeless by 2023. Similarly, the use of “cluster sites” — rundown private apartments temporarily occupied by DHS — will be discontinued by 2021, as the city transitions to a system of permanent shelters, of which Mayor de Blasio pledged in 2017 to build 90. While legal battles delay their construction, however, DHS must abide by 1978’s “right to shelter” law, which requires New York City to provide refuge for anyone who “by reason of physical, mental or social dysfunction is in need of temporary housing.”

DHS alerted local elected officials and Community Board 6 (CB6) only 24 hours before the new shelter opened in Red Hook. By the following Thursday, 30 homeless men had moved into the LOOK Hotel.

That morning, PS 676 hosted a small, hastily assembled meeting of community leaders — including

Red Hook Houses West Tenants Association President Lillie Marshall, CB6 District Manager Mike Racioppo, and representatives from the offices of congresswoman Nydia Velasquez and state assemblyman Félix Ortiz — who listened as DHS Administrator Joslyn Carter and Core’s Vice President of Community Affairs Gordon Jackson sought to allay concerns about the LOOK Hotel’s new occupants. Many of the attendees had heard about the shelter only a day or two earlier.

“People who are experiencing homelessness deserve some respect,” said Carter, who hoped to dispel fears that Red Hook’s newcomers would pose a danger to nearby residents. Jackson added that seven security guards, in addition to resident assistants, would man the premises, and he promised to reach out later that day to the NYPD’s 76th Precinct to make the officers aware of the new presence in the neighborhood.

During the Q&A portion of the meeting, safety worries and the specter of “sex offenders” — whom, according to the Department of Social Services’ Special Advisor for Government and Community Relations Lori Boozer, DHS’s intake center will not send to 17 Seabring — did come up. Neighborhood residents also wondered whether the shelter could be structured to accommodate the homeless families already living within Red Hook instead of serving outsiders. Carter

LOOK Hotel entrance

Freddy Mandour, left, interviewed at Camila’s Café.

Photo: George Fiala replied that the rooms at homeless hotels, which don’t have kitchens, are better suited to singles than families, and that while preference may be given to Red Hook locals, DHS can’t withhold needed beds from others in the hope of finding familiar faces from the neighborhood to fill them.

LOCAL POL MAKES DAILY NEWS FRONT PAGE

By Erin DeGregorio

S

outh Brooklynites woke up on the morning of Dec. 27 to find City Councilman Carlos Menchaca’s picture on the bottom of the New York Daily News’ front page.

Menchaca was reported to have let three staff members go before Christmas, according to the Daily News — who ran their exclusive article online Dec. 26 and printed the same article in its Dec. 27 issue. An unnamed former staffer told that paper that the decision was “part of a trend,” believed to have been “fueled by Menchaca’s relationship with life coaching guru Gillian Kaye.” Kaye was said to have helped manage Menchaca’s employees through her consulting services, and led a one-day staff retreat for his employees in 2018, reportedly costing $4,450. Kaye was also previously recorded as a campaign contributor for Menchaca, giving $500 during his first run for City Council in 2013, according to NYS Board of Elections’ financial disclosure report from July 2013.

The Daily News also stated at the end of its article: “At the start

Page 8 Red Hook Star-Revue

of 2018, Menchaca lost a staffer a month in January, February, March and April, according to public records. Two of them had worked for Menchaca for fewer than six months.” Menchaca’s Director of Communications Anthony Chiarito emailed the Red Hook Star-Revue on Dec. 27, declining to comment about the Daily News article and staffing terminations.

According to Kaye’s LinkedIn page, she’s the founder and president at Gillian Kaye Consulting and Coaching, and has been consulting for non-profits, foundations, government agencies and communities since 1989. There she helps individuals and groups work towards transformation and change through expert coaching and consulting, retreats, training and workshop designs. Some listed clients include U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, American Cancer Society and The Municipal Arts Society. Kaye also lists community engagement and partnerships, col-

laboration and planning, coalition building, organizational development, training and facilitation as her specialties on LinkedIn and her professional website. She states on her website that coaching can take place via phone, Skype or in-person at Brooklyn and Manhat-

www.star-revue.com

The largest concern by far, however, related to the absence of advance notice or opportunity for public input before the shelter’s arrival. Natasha Campbell — executive director at Summit Academy, which sits four blocks from the LOOK Hotel — contended that the meeting’s rumbles of discontent didn’t necessarily arise from a prejudice against the homeless, and stressed the importance for her, as a school administrator, to be aware of all changes within the surrounding area: “There are almost 350 parents that send their kids to me,” she said. “We have the next generation in our hands.”

Councilman Carlos Menchaca noted the demand for greater transparency and mentioned that he was working on legislation that would require increased public outreach from DHS before the opening of shelters. He also praised attendees for their mostly accommodating attitude toward the shelter itself.

On Columbia Street, however, business owner Freddy Mandour lamented that, since DHS had overtaken the LOOK Hotel (which is no longer accepting other reservations), traffic at Camila’s Café had dwindled. Mandour’s customer base had consisted in large part of guests from the hotel around the corner.

“They killed my business. How can I stay here and make a living?” he said. “For all the stores around here, it’s the same thing.”

tan locations.

Kaye’s also currently listed as the Chairwoman of the Board for PortSide NewYork, located in Red Hook.

According to PortSide NewYork’s website, Kaye directed the Brooklyn Recovery Fund (BRF) of the Brooklyn Community Foundation in 2013 after Superstorm Sandy hit.

There she “led the foundation’s initiative to create, promote and fund disaster recovery and resiliency for Brooklyn’s coastal neighborhoods through funding, organizing and strengthening local neighborhood recovery collaboratives to promote strong social networks, increase social capital and create greater community resiliency.”

During her yearlong role as director, she also developed and promoted written action guides and policy recommendations for long-term community recovery.

Carolina Salguero, the founder and president of PortSide NewYork, briefly spoke with the Red Hook Star-Revue on Dec. 28, explaining she originally met Kaye in 2013 when Kaye led the BRF. “I don’t recognize the characterization of Gillian Kaye in that article,” Salguero said.

January 2019

Brett Yates: The Tonnage of the World

I Hate Newspaper Columns

THE 10 WORST PIECES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES’ STABLE OF REGULAR COLUMNISTS IN 2018

I

magine that you’re too dumb to be an essayist and too lazy to be a reporter but still have lots to say. Imagine that you have no big ideas, but you do have good common sense, a faultless moral compass, and a subtle wit (or so many have said — or at least thought, surely).

Imagine that you were only an OK student in college but have stockpiled a surprisingly large mental database of quotations from the great thinkers of Western culture, and often find cause to deploy them. Imagine that some medically unrecognized defect of the brain prevents you from ever noticing when you repeat yourself. Imagine that your wife has told you to please be quiet while she’s trying to watch the news, and by now you’re just about ready to burst. Imagine that you’ve mastered the art of the pithy, single-sentence paragraph.

You’re ready to be a newspaper columnist.

To inaugurate this new monthly column it seems best to acknowledge upfront that all newspaper columns are terrible. I’ll try my best to buck the trend, but just look at the esteemed New York Times, which presumably has its pick of our nation’s best political and cultural commentators and still manages, every day, to fill the bulk of its op-ed section with limp condemnations of the current president’s bad manners, Russiagate conspiracism, and stern lectures for campus “radicals” that’ll never be read by anyone in college.

Fortunately, after graduation, many of these same radicals will enter the “real world” and, in need of some trustworthy information that’ll help them understand this crazy place, will look to the Times.

Here, they’ll read the important news of the day — only to have whatever they’ve learned instantly undone by some columnist’s mangled interpretation of the journalists’ hard-won facts. Eventually, the reader will understand that the entire range of acceptable adult opinion among the educated classes in America’s greatest city lies between the principled Never Trump right and the Clintonist center-left. The world will chug happily along.

Clearly, I’m not that happy about it. But before I set out to change the world, one Star-Revue reader at a time, it may be worth reexamining what not to do here. To that end, I’ve compiled my own personal collection of the 10 worst pieces from the New York Times’ stable of regular columnists in 2018 (in order of publication). For the sake of variety, no single writer appears more than

Red Hook Star-Revue

once, a rule designed to ensure that David Brooks and Bret Stephens don’t bogart the whole list.

1. “LET’S BAN PORN” (2/10/18) BY ROSS DOUTHAT Douthat is in some ways a better writer than the other Times columnists, more adept at complicating his paragraphs with a kind of nuance, but his work is so deeply rooted in his own sexual neuroses that he’s basically useless for any reader who doesn’t share his particular high-minded terror of debauchery, his religious mania, and his fetishization of traditional WASP selfdenial. His columns are not about the world — they’re entirely about Ross’s personal shame and discomfort.

The column expresses many concerns about porn but nothing about the logistics of the proposed legal maneuver. What qualifies as porn (as opposed to, say, art)? Who decides? What’s the penalty for violating the ban? Of course, if Douthat thinks it’s actually possible to banish internet pornography in 2018, he must not know much about the internet. It’d be like trying to get rid of music. Good luck.

2. “MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT ON SAUDI ARABIA” (3/6/18)

BY THOMAS FRIEDMAN A garrulous Midwestern version of Chance the Gardener in Being There, Friedman pens foreign affairs columns that somehow read more like eager Hollywood gossip, with every factoid about Syria or Iraq seeming to have come to him thirdhand and slightly damaged in transit. But in 2017, to write his glowing advertorial for Mohammad bin Salman, Friedman went straight to the source, fawning over the Saudi crown prince in a face-to-face interview that led him to cast MBS as a brave reformer whose main goals were empowering women, pushing back against Islamic fundamentalism, and rooting out governmental corruption. It was time to start feeling good about America’s strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia!

By 2018, Friedman must have realized that MBS might be a more problematic figure than he’d realized, but in “Memo to the President,” he doubles down on his support, with the caveat that if the United States doesn’t provide the right kind of guidance, the whole situation could go south. He understands that Yemen is a problem that MBS must “defuse,” but obviously still regards the U.S.-backed, Saudiinflicted genocide of the Yemenis

as an understandable response to Iran’s geopolitical power play, necessary to some degree to subdue the rebellious Houthis (to whom Iran in fact has only loose ties). Six months later, MBS authorized the dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Donald Trump admitted that America doesn’t actually care how Saudi Arabia behaves as long as they keep buying our weapons.

allowing individuals and employers to buy into Medicare — basically a big public option. That’s really not radical at all.” Krugman is describing the early version of Obamacare, before it got trimmed down by Joe Lieberman. This is not what Medicare-for-All means. Medicare-forAll means, quite simply, Medicare for all. It’s not ambiguous in the slightest. It’s single-payer. Krugman goes on to point out that, while he doesn’t support the Jobs Guarantee,

Imagine that you’ve mastered the art of the pithy, single-sentence paragraph.

You’re ready to be a newspaper columnist.

3. “BARBARA BUSH: FAKE PEARLS, REAL HEART” (4/21/18)

BY MAUREEN DOWD One of countless examples of the liberal project to rehabilitate the blood-soaked but relatively courtly Bush clan in the tacky era of Trump, Dowd’s column celebrates Barbara for being a mean-spirited snob, passing off the icy aristocratic backbiting of a woman constitutionally incapable of empathy as wit. Dowd notes that Barb and H.W. were awfully disappointed to see their poor naïve son George’s presidency “hijacked” by Dick Cheney, a man of whom they disapproved very much, even though H.W. had made him Secretary of Defense.

4. “RADICAL DEMOCRATS ARE PRETTY REASONABLE” (7/3/18) BY PAUL KRUGMAN When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley, you may have wondered why pundits who had despised Bernie Sanders actually seemed pretty positive about her, despite a near-identical platform.

The answer is that, as a lone socialist congresswoman, she didn’t seem to pose that much of a threat to the Democratic establishment, which quickly formed plans to capitalize on her popularity while gradually watering down her policy proposals to the point where they intersected with its own.

Here’s Krugman, who rather likes her: “Medicare for all is a deliberately ambiguous phrase, but in practice probably wouldn’t mean pushing everyone into a single-payer system. Instead, it would mean

www.star-revue.com

some federal spending to generate employment in lean times (perhaps in the form of public-private partnerships, like the Obama stimulus?) can be useful.

5. “AIRBNB IS THE NEW NATO” (8/3/18)

BY ROGER COHEN A techno-utopian, deregulationist meditation on how apps, not governments, will change the world for the better, Cohen’s column postulates that Airbnb — a service that allows landlords to turn their properties into illegal hotels, thereby removing homes from the rental market and accelerating the housing crisis in America’s gentrifying cities — will (via bringing people together) defeat racism and xenophobia. Ironically, a 2016 study showed pervasive discrimination against black guests at Airbnb, with hosts denying their reservation requests at alarmingly high rates.

6. “MELANIA TRUMP COULD BE OUR GREATEST FIRST LADY” (8/21/18)

BY FRANK BRUNI A former food critic who got reassigned to politics due to a clerical error that no one at the Times is willing to own up to, Bruni presents an insane fantasia that reimagines Melania Trump as a saboteur, working to take down her husband’s presidency from the inside. Using as evidence a few stray moments that looked a little like passiveaggressive marital snubs, Bruni

Continued on page 11 January 2019, Page 9

EDITORIAL

The Cover of the Daily News W

hile 2018 proved to be a pretty benign year when it comes to threats to our neighborhood, 2019 might prove a bit more dangerous.

There will be three huge industrial projects going on in our little town. The first is already happening, the transformation of the defunct Kohnstamm ink factory into giant warehouses. That’s a full block right between the Red Hook Ballfields and the BASIS school.

Then, over next to IKEA, another giant warehouse is scheduled for construction.

Finally, to replace Snapple and a lot of the other properties that were bought by Estate4 a few years back, UPS just paid upwards of $300 million for what will no doubt be another warehouse/shipping operation.

There are two questions we have.

First, why has nobody that we know of asked the environmental stewards who have shut down a number of Red Hook parks because

of toxic contaminants, to check any of these areas for similar toxins. Is it right for new construction to be built on top of what might be contaminants? Some of which might be released into the air as we speak?

Second, where is a DOT plan to deal with future truck and traffic situations that might develop as a result of this activity.

Red Hook is surrounded on three sides by navigable rivers. What’s wrong with building a pier so that the new owners of warehouse space might have another option besides big semi’s rumbling through our crumbling streets?

Jim Tampakas, for one, has begged the Parks Department to think about barging away some of the many tons of dirt that they will be moving out of the ballfields.

Parks seems to think this is some way-out, weird idea and won’t really consider it. Parks does things the Parks way. We’re still waiting to find out how they plan to construct a bathroom in Valentino Park in a

Red Hook way.

These are all questions that start locally, and then need to be taken up by our representative in the city council. Traffic and pollution are all things that are generally dealt with

by NYC agencies, and monitoring city agencies are one of the duties of a councilman.

Speaking of our Councilman, we were quite surprised to see him prominently featured on the cover of one of our metropolitan daily newspapers recently.

We’ve been a big fan of Councilman Menchaca since his election back in 2013. His work on the Oxford Nursing Home and the NYC Ferry terminal in Red Hook has been much appreciated by us. Big real estate developers think twice before planning a neighborhood changing project in Red Hook. They know that residents, backed by our representative, will present a formidable opposition to anything out of scale.

Teaching Feminism at Yeshiva My Mom, born in 1959, speaks passionately about the feminist movement. Prior to Trump’s election, my sister and I rolled our eyes when Mom proudly recalled her days as a “women’s libber.” Mom’s generation had done the hard work. I was smug in my privilege. I had rights. I didn’t feel like opportunities had been denied to me based on my gender or that I’d clawed, fought, or even struggled much for equality. Feminism felt like a hazy history lesson I hadn’t paid attention to. I was vaguely literate in feminist theory from a few courses during college but I wasn’t being held accountable. There wasn’t a reason for me to take up arms.

Then Hillary Clinton lost the Presidential Election. When I woke up the next day, to a barrage of fearful indignant messages and panicked calls, Mom’s experiences and memories became instantaneously relevant. The American administration is currently run by a man who openly disparages women (and anyone he’s in the mood to target) and as a result, I no longer feel the same smugness I did before the inauguration in 2016. Like most of us living in America, I find myself constantly sorting through the reverberations of Hillary’s loss and what it revealed about the American psyche.

A year after Trump was sworn in, I started teaching at a Jewish Yeshivah, where gender roles are highly

Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue

regulated. I was unprepared for the difference in treatment between boys and girls. Most of my female students will not go on to college.

Most of my students are married by 19 or 20 and will likely have multiple children by 25. When studying Torah, girls and boys engage in different paths of learning. Boys

By Kelsey Liebenson-Morse

granted as I did, while also remaining alert and engaged? How does one teach feminism to sixth graders at Yeshivah?

What has occurred to me is to teach the story of my hyphenated name, which generates a high amount of curiosity all of its own.

“But why do you have two last

THE TEACHER SIDE OF ME WANTS TO SHARE WITH MY STUDENTS AS I’M LEARNING. have gym. Girls learn Israeli dance.

Girls and boys lead markedly different lives, even during the course of the school day. They’re headed for much different futures.

The hostile environment from the top down in this country, paired with my daily experience working in a religious setting which controls gender roles has propelled me into greater awareness. I’m embracing increasing feelings of frustration and anger without immediately editing my responses. It’s fair to say I’m drifting towards a more overt feminist identity.

The teacher side of me wants to share with my students as I’m learning. How can I prevent these girls from taking their freedoms for

names?” my students ask, genuinely puzzled.

“Did you get married this summer?” they ask, as if this is the only possible explanation.

I explain how when my Mom got married, she didn’t want to give up her name. She felt attached to her heritage and didn’t want to part with that aspect of her identity. I say, “My Mom is a feminist.”

I can’t teach my sixth-grade students about Florynce Kennedy or the Women’s March. But I do think there’s a chance my students might one day recall their teacher, the one whose Mom didn’t give up her name when she got married, the one who held on and defied a system. I acknowledge that this is optimistic,

www.star-revue.com

We were kind of looking for big things in Carlos’ second term, freed from the constraints of having to run again, but so far things have been kind of quiet. It was kind of a shock to realize that a homeless shelter can be placed in a neighborhood without any community input. Menchaca says he will work on legislation in the Council to address this, but really, that might have been started a while ago.

Carlos has always been an advocate for NYCHA tenants, but in the end it seems to us to be the work of the Daily News that has finally gotten the city to publicly admit failures, and hopefully something will finally be done to treat public housing residents like any other tenants in the city.

What did Carlos do to get on the front page?

Fire half his staff right before Christmas.

A little disappointing.

and furthermore, self-important.

It’s likely these students will forget I exist. They’ll grow up, get married, and take their husband’s names.

But there are precious moments every day, small moments in the classroom that feel significant.

This year, my students are reading Amal, Unbound, a young adult book loosely based on the story of Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist and Nobel Prize winner who fights for women’s rights in that part of the world.

“But why can’t she go to school?” my students ask. I feel lucky to witness the cogs turning in their brains as my students are faced with the ugly truth of inequality. Maybe my students will come of age in a world that continues to grow, evolve and question. A world that makes the best of dark period in history and moves forward.

Gloria Steinem has said hope is an unruly emotion, but hope is also a precursor to change. Hope allows me to dream of a place where my students can go on to achieve whatever it is, they dream--outside of the confines of societal, familial or religious pressures. Hope allows me to imagine my female students going on to do what they love.

But for now, I’m content in imagining someday soon my female students will have the option to choose gym instead of dance. I know they want to play basketball, just like the boys.

January 2019

LETTERS FERRY RIDERSHIP

RAE’S LOST LEASE

These numbers are off. The average ridership is double this easily.

I ride the ferry all the time. This is growing. Hence the reason for bigger boats. Next 3 areas of expansion for NYC Ferry is to expand the Astoria or Soundview lines to Northeast Queens, add a line going up the Hudson River from Brooklyn to the Bronx and extend the Bay Ridge line to Include Coney Island and Canarsie.

— Tom

I’ve been shopping at Rae’s since the day she opened!!! My entire wardrobe is mostly from that little gem of a store! Raina is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met!

We had endless conversations! We developed a lifetime friendship! I will miss this place! Needless to say, I’m heartbroken! - Nancy D’Orazio

EDC COMES TO CB6 WITH NO INFO What was the reason for this meeting — is NYC Ferry considering eliminating the Red Hook ferry stop?

The Atlantic Ave stop ridership numbers are actually lower than Red Hook.

— Allison Reeves

GOWANUS SMELL The DEP expenses for the holding tanks is the one part of the superfund cleanup that taxpayers will pickup the tab for. It is very important that news coverage on DEP decisions includes discussion on what DEP is proposing to spend.

— Randy from FROGG

Newspaper Columns cont. from age 9 speculates earnestly that Melania’s “increasingly clever” tactics could “set us free” from Trump’s regime, though he doesn’t specify how.

“I’m not sure what to make of that ‘I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?’ jacket that she wore on her way to a detention center for migrant children in Texas. It’s the ‘rosebud’ of our time. But what if the message was that she didn’t mind if we interpreted her behavior as a rebuke of her husband’s?” he writes. It must have been a slow news days for the Mueller investigation.

7. “THE MATERIALIST PARTY” (10/22/2018)

BY DAVID BROOKS Most people think that the problem with politicians is that they’re all talk and that they don’t actually do anything to help the average person. David Brooks realizes that the problem with the Democratic Party is the exact opposite: they’re distracted by pragmatic issues like healthcare and the economy when they should be focused on moralistic rhetoric. “Their basic political instinct is that you win votes by offering material benefits,” he laments.

Brooks knows that what truly ails Americans isn’t poverty or disease; it’s a sick culture, defined by spiritual undernourishment, dysfunction-

Red Hook Star-Revue

My special friend Raina has one the greatest stores on Court St. Love her loved her clothes. Wishing all the best for the next chapter. Let’s see what Raina comes up with now.

— Barbara Ferrara

NPR MOTH CONTROVERSY A rehearsed story is a performance, a story only in the intellectual sense it has a beginning, middle, and end.

Curated performances or “stories” lack the emotional appeal and connection we make through personal narrative. Real stories have real emotions, real feelings. A performance may spring into existence from a more humble beginning of a true story, but here it’s stated perferctly. It becomes commodified. It’s easy to separate the hack standups using popular storytelling outlets as a free stage from the average person whose willing to share a

al relationships, and mistrust. Any wrongheaded attempt to use policy to alter the supposedly “oppressive structures of society” would further erode our national unity. The only solution is an aggressive campaign of sanctimonious posturing of the kind that Brooks himself undertakes every day.

In order to shame Donald Trump and win back the public, Democrats must uphold “norms of honesty, decency, compassion and moral conduct” while offering absolutely nothing in terms of concrete proposals. “These days, culture is more important than economics,” Brooks wisely asserts.

8. “FORGET EXCUSES. WHAT COUNTS IS WINNING ELECTIONS.” (11/7/2018)

BY NICHOLAS KRISTOF Sad that the Democrats didn’t retake the Senate during the midterms, Kristof observes in his painfully banal that the problem was too much leftism and that, as usual, Democrats must move to the center. This will always be the prescription, in all circumstances, forever and ever.

“One problem: Many Democrats live in an urban blue bubble, without a single Trump-supporting friend. Ever since the 2016 election, a progressive wing has tarred all Trump voters as racists, idiots and bigots. Not surprisingly, it’s difficult

private, personal experience. One is background noise with no ability to attract attention, the other keeps the listener capitavated, prioritized to the story above other input. Those are the stories where we work out a bit longer, stay in our car a few extra minutes, shed tears, laugh out loud, emote, react.

No one seems to be able to do that because it doesn’t sell. Human connection doesn’t sell. Mass quantities, that’s all that sells in America.

Even in art. Sad, really. — Amateur Storyteller

OH YEAH???

Baloney. Romanticizing *not* rehearsing buys into the pernicious notion that “real” art is some kind of magical thing that happens instead of the product of rolling-upyour-sleeves, hard, painstaking work, which artists of all kinds (in this country, at least) have to do for little or no pay, for exactly the reason that comments like yours exemplify: People don’t believe that those moments of magic you describe and say you crave are the result of hard-earned, long-honed skill.

Whether or not you respond to a particular style of performance— and there are a lot of them—is

to win votes from people you’re calling bigots,” he remarks. Right, Nicholas: it was the progressive candidate, not the centrist one, who called Trump voters “deplorables.”

It was the progressive wing that willfully abandoned white, rural, bluecollar voters in the Rust Belt. We’re the ones in the bubble.

9. “ELECTION’S OVER, LET’S HAVE A RANT” (11/9/18) BY GAIL COLLINS Gail Collins is a lady who likes chatting about the news. Her perspective is a default New York liberalism, but her columns aren’t very ideological. Her real point is that news happens, and it’s fun to talk about it. But one position she does have is that voting for third parties is a bad idea. In November, it may even have cost Kyrsten Sinema her House seat! (It didn’t.) It isn’t worth litigating all of Collins’s bad arguments, but her column is notable for its apparent unawareness of the Times’ preexisting archive of roughly 10 million op-eds about the folly of third-party voters and for its refusal even to attempt to put a fresh spin on this trite, infantile take.

10. “ARMISTICE DAY AND OUR ‘FOREVER WARS’” (11/15/18)

BY BRET STEPHENS

entirely separate from whether it takes long hours of writing and rehearsal to create a moment onstage or in the studio that captivates an audience. You may think your comment is supporting “real” art, but it’s not. This kind of thinking is what makes it so easy for society as a whole to disrespect art, justify not paying artists, cut arts education programs, etc. I mean… why should society pay some people who are just lucky enough to have had some magic fairy-dust sprinkled on them, when everybody else is out there doing real work?

So…well played. You just made it harder for everyone. — Julia Polk

It’s not too late to advertise in our February issue! ª Drink Specials ª Valentine Specials ª Sales ª Special section on home repair & design!

Contact Liz 813-486-6950 liz@redhookstar.com

genuinely a monster. His column begins with the startlingly ahistorical notion that the Allied Powers’ failure to insist upon a brutal, decisive victory over Germany in World War I empowered the latter, two decades later, to initiate World War II — when, of course, it actually was resentment at the humiliating terms of surrender imposed upon Germany in WWI and the severe economic burden it carried as a result that informed Hitler’s ambitions of European conquest.

From there, Stephens makes the case that, in order to achieve a lasting peace today, the United States and its allies (like Israel) must, for the benefit of all, put an end to their civilized wartime leniency and become willing to crush their opponents absolutely. The problem with America’s wars in the Middle East isn’t that they’re immoral and unwinnable; it’s that we’re not killing enough people — we chicken out too easily and forget that, if our enemies had the means, they’d gladly murder all of us (therefore we, who do have the means, should be able to do the same to them). Similarly, Israelis must embrace a full-scale genocide of the Palestinians if the two groups are ever to coexist happily.

(Editor’s note — If you don’t agree with the above, well, that’s the whole point of a column)

Most of the Times’ columnists are just doofuses, but Stephens is

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January 2019, Page 11

STARªREVUE ARTS

By Kelsey Liebenson-Morse Of the very few bookstores in Red Hook, Pioneer Books stands out for its smart curation and clear visibility along Van Brunt. Here are a few titles currently stocked at the humble storefront that we couldn’t help reviewing.

Pioneer Books hosts regular events and book clubs. Check out their website, swing by 289 Van Brunt St, or call (718) 596-3001 for more information. The bookstore is open Wednesday through Sunday, 126pm.

Silent Spring: Rachel Carson 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s ecological masterpiece, Silent Spring. The new edition feels no less powerful today.

You might’ve read excerpts but Silent Spring is well deserving of a read or a reread as we welcome the new year. Part biology, chemistry, field guide and history, Silent Spring is the type of book best read with post it notes and a pen; each page contains a high volume of dense scientific information.

You might find yourself asking why you didn’t pay better attention in science class. Despite the density, Carson’s voice remains a delight with her seemingly effortless oscillation between matter-of-factness that is tempered by poetic levity with lines like, “In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines.”

This type of beauty offsets the desperate and dire message running throughout Silent Spring: We’re ruining everything. Carson, who battled a vicious and fast moving cancer as she finished Silent Spring persisted in relaying her horrific discoveries even as she rapidly lost physical strength.

Chapter titles range from the benign “Earth’s Green Mantle” to the blunt “Rivers of Death” and feature beautiful sketches of birds nests, raccoons and wildflowers.

The entire book is held together by

Red Hook Star-Revue

BOOK LIFE 2019 photo: torange.biz

What to Check Out at Pioneer Books

art, culture, books and more fun stuff from brooklyn and beyond

FEATURE

Area opinion on Michele Obama’s “Becoming” page 14 the accuracy of Carson’s findings and this back and forth, between light and dark is what makes Silent Spring terrifying and compelling.

For more information on Carson’s life, look no further then Jill Lepore’s luminous profile (March 2018) from The New Yorker, “The Right Way To Remember Rachel Carson,” which provides fascinating biographical information about Carson’s nonconventional life and love of the sea. As the Trump administration continues to turn a blind eye to the preservation of the natural world Carson’s warnings remain a sobering and clear eyed

REVIEWS

“Wartime Sisters”, Facebook Watch and more! pages 16&17 analysis of the ongoing damage humans inflict on the environment and ourselves.

Silent Spring is a reminder to the American people to remain vigilant about matters of public safety.

Carson writes, “For mankind as a whole, a possession infinitely more valuable than individual life is our genetic heritage, our link with past and future.” We owe it to Carson to bear witness.

CALENDAR

What is happening at Red Hook, Greenpoint and more page 7!

A Salt Spring Nor A Horse,” Waplington turns his eye towards trees and women paired with a series of oil paintings he calls “Poseidon.”

The title references a line from Greek mythology referencing a competition between Athena and Poseidon at the Acropolis.

Neither A Salt Spring Nor A Horse: Nick Waplington

Waplington opens the book with a brief description of the showdown between salt and olive tree; gleefully informing readers Athena and her olive tree prevailed. Published

by Pacific in 2018, the striking blue cover leads way to an interest-

In Nick Waplington’s book “Neither

Continued on page 15.

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January 2019, Page 13

Michelle’s Memoir: Brooklyn’s Take We scoured Red Hook and its surrounding areas to ask women within the community what they felt about Michelle Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Becoming.”

By Carly Quellman 2018 has proven itself to be a monumental year, reeking of political devastation far more significant than ever deemed possible. Yet in light of these events, there has been an unmistakable amount of positivity surrounding a particular political figure.

On Nov. 23, former First Lady Michelle Obama released her first book, “Becoming.” The memoir is a coming-of-age story about Michelle’s evolution as a Black woman ingrained in her Chicago roots — who also happens to be married to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The news of Michelle’s book release populated headlines on

It seemed as if “Becoming” was following each of us, much like its words follow Michelle through the twists and turns of her own life.

One cannot walk down the street without seeing “Becoming” sitting upright in its light-blue binding, placed directly in every bookstore’s window front.

As a result, I decided to set out for myself to learn what others thought of “Becoming.” Over the next two weeks, I interviewed women in community spaces, book clubs and on the street, asking what they felt about, “Becoming.” By inquiring the minds of New York’s locals, I hoped to seek answers to the many questions I had about the book.

For some, the thought of picking up Michelle’s memoir was a mere afterthought, and not necessarily a pleasant one. For others, like Tiffiney Davis, “Becoming” serves as representation of her existence in the world.

Davis, the founder of Red Hook Art Project, received her copy of “Becoming” from a friend. At the time, Davis didn’t know how special her copy of “Becoming” was.

The book found itself in Davis’ possession — but with a distinction she didn’t know was personal to her. Inside the book, there was a signature from Mrs. Obama herself. Her friend was one of 500 people granted entry into Union Square’s Barnes & Noble where Michelle was signing books, just days before.

“I always liked Mrs. O but never drooled over her like I saw many others around me do. Hearing her story and seeing her raw authentic self at the book tour brought me to tears,” Matthews said. “I was moved by this woman’s resilience and ability to connect, impact and influence.” — Morgan Matthews both national and local levels. Even with its much-anticipated debut, the success of “Becoming,” was astounding. Numbers did not (and could not) lie.

According to Penguin Random House, “Becoming” sold 1.4 million copies in its first week and crossed the 2 million mark by day 15. With a sold-out book tour to follow, Michelle’s memoir was literally becoming an entity. As a woman myself, witnessing the popularity of this particular body of work left me increasingly intrigued.

Ahead, females within Red Hook and its surrounding areas weigh in on the first-time author’s memoir.

Was the female community of Brooklyn, New York, as head-overheels for Mrs. Obama’s words like the rest of the world seemed to be?

The reviews were actually mixed.

Around the Red Hook Library, patrons offered no commented, exclaimed they weren’t interested, or said they’ll get around to reading it when they had time.

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“I’m honored to have Michelle’s signature,” Davis said. “It definitely inspires.”

learning more about oneself? More importantly, was “Becoming” not about Michelle Obama’s life, but rather, her life experiences that we could relate to?

Uli Beutter Cohen, a writer and creator of Subway Book Review, hosted a book club Dec. 18 to discuss “Becoming.” Beutter Cohen said, “I love how Michelle Obama describes the many roles she inhabits, but that she is never defined by her title. She has faith in her own story and is led by an action rather than a noun.”

Selena Brown, a Youth Speaker & Yoga Instructor who attended Beutter Cohen’s book club, said that she loved how Michelle Obama was brave enough [in “Becoming”] to speak to the taboo parts of her life.

“It is so powerful to read about a powerful black woman.” Brown said.

Davis, like Michelle, is also from Chicago, and found herself relating to moments within Michelle’s life as if they were her own.

What I concluded as I gathered my notes and sat down to transcribe interviews, was that “Becoming,” was a direct interaction between reader and writer — and an intimate one at that.

“As a woman of color, as a Black woman, “Becoming” is a self-made identity, learning who you are and owning it,” Davis said.

To question the popularity of “Becoming” in comparison to a specific geographic location, developed both unattainable and unnecessary results. My answers lived on the other side of the memoir’s 448 pages, understanding what ensued after the reading finished.

A similar message resonated with Morgan Matthews, a Diversity & Inclusion Analyst and DJ, who attended the “Becoming” book tour at Barclays Center, a 19,000 person (sold-out) venue, Dec. 19.

“I always liked Mrs. O but never drooled over her like I saw many others around me do. Hearing her story and seeing her raw authentic self at the book tour brought me to tears,” Matthews said. “I was moved by this woman’s resilience and ability to connect, impact and influence.”

While some may disregard Michelle Obama’s book entirely, those that interacted with the book felt personally connected to the words on the page. At the end of my twoweek-long research, I was left with other questions, dissimilar to the ones I had asked before.

Was “Becoming,” once opened and consumed, a passageway to

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“It’s a breath of fresh air, it enlightens you,” Davis said. “We did it as one.”

“In order to be a force in this life I have to understand mine similar to how Michelle did in writing her memoir,” Matthews said.

“Becoming” was successful because of individual relation, not sales or numbers. The memoir was supported because of an undeniable truth that lived inside, much bigger than any best-selling title could reveal. “(Michelle) is a role model among role models teaching the most essential lesson of all,” Brown said.

“One must be willing to stand her own truth if she is to live a life that is authentic to her true self.”

January 2019

tion with bodies, both Asghar’s and others with lines like “my sister’s pussy/hairs” or “my nipples lighthouses/in a swollen ocean.”

Pioneer Books continued from page 13 ing juxtaposition of landscape and portrait mixed with the bright and insistent colors of abstract paintings in a kaleidoscope of pinks yellows and blues.

The monochromatic series, “Olive Trees” (2013) was shot between the Jewish settlement Har Homa south of Jerusalem and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. The trees seem to represent the tenacity and history of the desert despite continued unrest in the Middle East, the bright blue of the sky in some of the shots both fresh and pristine.

Waplington refers to the area as “no man’s land” but the knotted trees and white hued villages in the backdrop hint at life. In most of the photographs the tree dominates the shot, and the eye is drawn to the green of the leaves against the subdued browns, the dustiness of the landscape fairly tangible in the still photographs.

The portraits are of women at a midrasha, or Jewish religious boarding school, in the settlement of Shvut Rachel. Each woman stares at the camera, framed by a doorway.

A Salute to “The Wartime Sisters”

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

The first shots were fired the day Millie was born.

“You’ve finally got yourself a beauty,” was the word in the Kaplan’s Brooklyn neighborhood, where older sister Ruth would be known solely for her intellect.

As grown women during the Second World War, the two main characters in The Wartime Sisters (St. Martin’s Press; January 22, 2019; hardcover), prove that not all battles were fought overseas.

Because both my mother and her sister are members of the greatest generation, I grew up listening to stories about World War II. Hence, I was drawn into the trials and tribulations of the Jewish siblings whose rivalrous upbringing is told in flashbacks.

Whereas my mother and aunt lived pretty much the same lives as outer borough, married, working women, Millie and Ruth could not be more different, and not just in the looks department. Only the Allied and Axis powers fought more than these two, and they drag into their drama everyone who comes in contact with them. To quote their father: “Small children don’t let you sleep; big children don’t let you rest.”

Red Hook Star-Revue

Some of the poems threaten to read as overly dramatized or sentimental with lines that feel obvious: “she’s holding my unborn baby/in her arms, helping me pick a name.”

Others like the somewhat selfexplanatory Oh Pussy, The Things I’ve Pulled From You feel predictable with somewhat inexplicably graphic lines: “cotton cheese discharge.”

Pioneer Books .

Photo by Pacifica

But the intensity of their gaze is challenged by their modest dress, knees elbows and necks covered.

Their facial expressions are simultaneously open and enigmatic.

Somehow the shapes of the trees become similar to the statuesque women and one is left desiring of such focused concentration on living objects.

If They Come For Us: Fatimah Asghar The opening line from Fatimah Asghar’s 2018 collection (One World/ Random House) If They Come For Us from the poem, For Peshawar

After Ruth gets married, she puts both Brooklyn and Millie in her rearview when her husband Arthur’s job relocates them to Springfield, Massachusetts. There, she reinvents herself— after, of course, getting used to a place without crowded streets, rows of stores, and knish carts.

However, contention is rekindled and old patterns emerge, when Millie and her five-yearold son show up in the Commonwealth.

Half a decade ago—the last time the sisters spoke—the younger of the two reported that her husband, Lenny, a handsome and charming neighborhood bad boy, had enlisted. Now, the latest news is that he’s gone.

With their parents deceased, and nothing to any longer tie Millie to the BK, she has only her sister, who offers a temporary place to live and a recommendation for employment.

The tables have turned, though.

Millie, who according to their mother was destined for New York society and a millionaire husband, becomes Rosie the Riveter, while Ruth, her nose no longer buried in books and a mother as well, attends afternoon teas at elegant homes.

Despite that the pretty one vs. smart one theme is as timeworn as a WW2 vet, author Lynda Cohen Loigman has found a refreshing

reads, “From the moment our babies are born/Are we meant to lower them into the ground?” This plaintive questioning and awareness of violence both past and pending pervades Asghar’s highly personal poems held together by the overarching theme of the India/Pakistan Partition along with Asghar’s continued quest for a sense of identity and belonging.

The title itself speaks of the bitter and tactile fear of persecution.

One poem opens with a line taken directly from Trump’s recent ban on Muslims in 2015. Many of the poems demonstrate a preoccupa-

way to tell the story of these polar opposites, especially by broadening the tale to include other home front women: military wife Lillian and big band singer Arietta, who befriend the estranged sisters.

And what female-driven narrative would be complete without a mean girl? Grace looks as though she’s stepped out of the pages of Harper’s Bazaar. She hobnobs with Ruth in a noblesse oblige way, and is suspect of young, beautiful war widow Millie and the effect she might have on everyone’s husbands, particularly her own.

Just when you think the novel is nothing more than the sisters’ bickering antics, the plot takes a complex and intricate turn into suspense novel territory. Lillian and Arietta become more useful than a Swiss Army knife to the ever-vulnerable Millie, who needs protection because her past catches up with her. When tragedy strikes, a guilt-ridden Ruth realizes she should be her sister’s defender and finally admits to her own past sins.

But will Millie even need or want to reconnect with her sibling?

A few of the poems experiment with form like Microaggression Bingo set in a grid and filled with lines like “All the actors in a movie about Egypt are white” or “Get called a FOB & told you smell like curry.”

One version of several poems entitled Partition is designed like a blank mad lib, underneath each line is either “country” or “proper noun” and Map Home is a clever crossword with the clue to 3 down reading: “despite it all, there’s a path to love.” If They Come For Us is a hip, young and self-aware voice with lines like “gold acrylic nails” “granny panties” or “Call it eyeliner/so crisp it could kill a bitch.”

A hybrid work of experi-mental fiction, dumb young-adult paranormal romance, and coming-ofage realism, TEEN SEX TRAGEDY is a comedy-horror novel about the adolescent terror of remaining a virgin forever. Written by The Red Hook Star-Revue’s own Brett Yates. Published by marygreenpress.com Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Etsy and Lulu.

This historically accurate and enthralling read is less about which Kaplan will win each conflict, but how living a life free of secrets is the way to win one’s personal war.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novels “Fat Chick” and “Back to Work She Goes”

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January 2019, Page 15

REVIEWS

Queen America on Facebook Watch

By Matt Caprioli

In retrospect, it was inevitable: Facebook now streams original content that is actually good.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans have a Facebook account, and the whole platform is made to like, watch, and share “content.” With the fog light of hindsight, it’s amazing that Facebook didn’t capitalize on their captive audience sooner.

erything up separately to watch a home video when you can stream your own life on your own TV via Facebook?

If you suspend the justified social and political concerns over this conflation of personal and consumable scripted content, it’s fun to look at Facebook’s latest offering, its artistic birthday-suit, if you will, into the ring of scripted content from streaming services lead by Oscar winners.

“Queen America” First up is “Queen America.” Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the world of beauty pageants, the series stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Vicki Ellis, a chain-smoking, vein-popping, arms as solid as the state’s love of guns pageant coach. Not just a

of feminine self-possession. She’s a force of nature yet turns to Jell-O at the volatile affection of her niece (for various reasons I won’t spoil), is powerless around a teenage flame, has dreams of her own that cause use to ache, even if by and large she is selfish, manipulative, and screams at a nine-year-old for eating too much candy.

yet unhappy maidservant to Vicki, whom she idealizes an occasionally hates for being in culture of her self-esteem. Mary is a supplemental coach to Vicki, the pusher to the visionary. She tells Samantha of the “science” to the pageant walk, that she’s to give the impression that she “inspired the music into existence.”

When her star pupil Hayley Wilson, Miss Tulsa (Victoria Justice) ends up compromised after being crowned Miss Oklahoma, she’s forced to turn to a nobody from the small town of Claremore.

The star power is a key ingredient the success of Facebook Watch.

Along with the spitfire of the “Chicago” star, we’re offered Judith Light as Regina, Vicki’s old benefactor who took her from trashy darling to quasi-socialite. Tom Ellis, the star of “Lucifer” and engaged to the show’s creator Meaghan Oppenheimer, appears as a prospective partner, single-parent, and man about the kitchen.

Samantha Cole (Belle Shouse) is a 19-year-old who works at a bakery, has no remotely wealthy parent(s) as the other contestants (top pageant coaches charge around $1,000 a day) but does have a thigh

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Vicki Ellis and Belle Shouse as Samantha Cole in “Queen America” Photo courtesy of Facebook.

Jones makes remarkable use of cut shows, lighting, and close-ups to make the actors make the most of the propulsive script. Entire histories are conveyed in a single shot. In a show whose characters obsess over the perfect walk, “Queen America” comes close to transcendence.

Amazon and Netflix both set sail with scripted TV in 2013. Facebook Watch launched 2017 but has focused on sports and 10-30 minute talk or reality shows, i.e. stuff Facebook didn’t have to pay for, until late 2018, when the company cast its bean counter into the basement and spend handsomely to launch the drama “Sorry for your Loss” and renew the comedy “Strangers.”

That these shows are all free to access for anyone with a Facebook accounts hints that the platform will only steamroll through 2019.

As younger audiences shift to Instagram (already owned by Facebook) it makes sense that the social media’s grand dame should beckon its original audience back with smart programming. Lord knows they’ve captured enough data from us to figure what we gravitate towards.

Unlike Netflix or Amazon, Facebook is already set-up for sharing.

If one watches “The Real Bros of Simi Valley” for instance and you actually like the bro-culture satire, you can instantly see how many people agree with you in the form of shares, views, and likes. And Facebook is already a repository of personal videos. Why record on another platform and hook ev-

Another show about pageants?

coach, but a living legend whom mothers beg to work with, and whose platform is to make girls better versions of themselves, even as she commands tanning spray up their butt crack, prays a blood test shows her star to be “just the right amount of sick,” has them run to the point of near-hurling, or commands them to perform in-front of a pageant board with “the confidence of a frat boy on trial.”

The dark comedy would turn ridiculous if it weren’t for the incredible dimensions in Zeta-Jones’s Vicki Ellis. She hails from trailer country (still inadvertently uses “ain’t” when visiting her sister) but has built herself into an impregnable fortress

gap like the Pont du Gard. She’s unschooled, but sweet and determined to succeed. Shouse manages to be naive without the saccharine flavor typical of an ingénue.

Her faux-pas aren’t manufactured as so many stories do with young people seemingly out of their element.

As Vicki reluctantly coaches Samantha, the show’s look of class, ambition, and sincerity comes into relief. Its most incisive moments come when Vicki fights to keep her own trailer history submerged.

One regrettable aspect of “Queen America” (beside a few Roswellian accents) is that its people of color are kept as entertaining side pieces. Teagle F. Bougere plays Nigel Hill, a stalwart black man in a heavily red state who’s the hair and makeup arm to the Vicki Ellis machine. His main story of resigned loneliness in a sea of heteronormativity seems tired, as does his covert relationship with a white suburban dad. Yet Nigel’s challenges (not struggle—he’s set on being too cool to struggle) ties into the show’s look into the maintenance of appearance and secrets, as well as the deep cost of both.

Rana Ray plays Mary Clark, a 25-year-old former Miss Tulsa who (of course) has a drinking problem.

The laconic beauty is a devout

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

With 8 of the 10 episodes so far out, Oppenheimer’s vision, clever writing, and evolving matrix of each character makes the show binge-worthy. Director Alethea

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Beauty pageants have garnered scorn and intrigue since Miss America started in 1921. The competition seems to mix everything Americans admire — self-improvement, beauty, wholesomeness, youth, stability, talent. But underneath each of those perks is a web of racism, consumerism, superficiality, sexism, classism.

Thanks to the infamous “Rule No.7,” anyone of non-white ancestry was forbidden to compete until 1970. Contestants have been jettisoned for rumors of pregnancy, intoxication, or secret husbands.

On the whole, it seems obvious that beauty pageants are bad for everyone. Yet bad situations often make for great stories. Pageants are an inherently dramatic arena that’s lend itself well to major films like “Miss Congeniality”, “Little Miss Sunshine,” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous.”

It’s like we know it’s all bad but can’t help watching. We like to compete. We like winners. We like our feelings churned by losers and our blood simmered by betrayal. Could it be that pageants, with their winner takes it all structure, mirror the world we willy-nilly call home?

There’s been an uptick in streaming content about beauty pageants.

In Aug 2018, Netflix launched its controversial camp-delight “Insatiable.” The show follows an obese

Continued on page 25 January 2019

REVIEWS

‘Bitches Talkin’

by Will Drickey

To get into Bitches Talkin, the collaborative exhibition at Black Ball Projects by Eileen Quinlan and Tamar Halper (ET, collectively), you have to call Joe, who’s glad to answer any questions you have, he’ll just be behind the wall over there. It seems fitting that one has to contend with this strange combination of absence and presence just to enter the building, given its pervasiveness throughout the show itself. It’s no accident that the image of Ms. Havisham, a woman for whom Compeyson’s absence became a presence, features prominently in several of the artwork.

Despite Halper and Quinlan describing the exhibition as “a shared

experience, an exchange, a conversation . . . me, myself, and I become us, ours. Disintegration of self,” their respective selves are indeed quite integrated into the show. While most of the works are credited to “ET,” their two-humped collaborative camel, there are three pieces authored individually: two by Quinlan, one by Halper.

You can trace each artist’s contributions to their collaborative works through the “fingerprints” they seem to have left behind.

The arrangement of several of the pieces—perpendicular to the wall, allowing you to view it from either side—seems to facilitate this effort to assign credit individually, to split their partnership after the fact.

At first, it seemed to me that Quinlan held the dominant role in the collaboration—the motif of a sinewave deep-blue textured duvet in “Laura” is visible in the majority of ET’s pieces. But as I stepped past (not through; this author does not have an extra $30,000 just lying around) the gauzy curtains of “My

ARTS CALENDAR

Jan 2

Start 2019 right with a visit to Peninsula Gallery. Curator Johnny Mullen has put together a smart exhibition of upcoming artists. “Strange Form of Life” features Lars Fisk, Clare Grill, E Hause, Matt Kleberg, Jim Lee, Meg Lipke, and Graham Wilson.

Open weekends 1-7pm.

Through Feb 3. 352 Van Brunt St. And while you’re in the vicinity, Pioneer Works continues its “Disassembler” exhibition by the Greek artist Maria Antelman. 159 Pioneer Street.

Jan 3

Jalopy Theater hosts Alaskan fiddler Ken Waldman for “From Red Hook to the Real Alaska.” While coming from the great north, the evening will mostly be an exploration of Red Hook’s own folk music, past and present. Waldman will be joined by Max Hatt & Edda Glass Hen’s Teeth (Janie Rothfield & Nathan Bontrager) DuoDuo Quartet (Maeve Gilchrist, Nic Gareiss, Natalie Haas, Yann Falquet) Mark Kilianski, Nate Sabat, and others. Waldman aims for a “festival feel,” so active (and spontaneous) collaborations are encouraged.Performance is at 8pm. GA is $15. 315 Columbia St Red Hook Star-Revue

Jan 4

Through Feb 10, Kentler International Drawing Space features the sui generis artist Meridith McNeal. “A Portrait of My Mother” collects recent watercolors of objects once owned by the artist’s mother. 353 Van Brunt.

Jan 4

Through Jan 20, The Heights Players launch a production of Ed Gracyzk’s classic “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (1976). It’s 1975, and six women in a James Dean fan club reunite after 20 years to reminisce and confront their youth and buried secrets. The curtain rises at 8pm for the two hour play, and GA is $20.

26 Willow Pl

Jan 6

Soloway gallery closes its exhibition of Elizabeth Bonaventura’s “What About Standing People and Animals?”

“Bonaventura’s new work depicts creatures and personages traveling through schematic hilly landscapes in saturated hues of blue, red and green. Partly dressed people and animals parade along the strong horizon stopping occasionally to talk, play or fight. Bonaventura’s people, tattooed, blue

“Bitches Talkin” at Black Ball Projects.

Photo courtesy of artists and gallery.

Blood Flows Satanic,” Quinlan’s individuality began to fade from the art, and likewise how I saw it.

Many of the pieces on display at Bitches Talkin are very similar—to the point where I had trouble differentiating them in the program I had in hand—but more than repetitive, the artwork is iterative. As you walk through the exhibition, the markers of individuality fade as they are refracted through each artist’s eyes, until the work becomes so like them both that it is at the same time like neither.

haired, oddly proportioned and costumed might have deserted a circus sideshow, while her monsters appear to have made their way from the outer edges of an early map of the world onto center stage…348 South 4th Street

Jan 8

The artist-archiver Jason Simon shows three, rare 16mm French films from the 50s and 60s at Light Industry on Jan 8: “Les Enfants du musée,” by Agnès Varda; “Le Mystère de l’atelier quinze,”

by Alan Resnais; and “Olympia 52,” by Chris Marker. The films starts rolling at 7pm, and GA is $8. 155 Freeman Street

Jan 12

Greenpoint Terminal Gallery closes its “Weird Flex” exhibition on Jan 12. Featuring Michael Dotson and Royal Jarmon, who play with popular images from Disney and NASCAR to look at the dynamics of marketing, art-world pretension, and the manipulation of perception.

67 West St #320

Jan 13

It’s the last day to see “1Ensemble,” a minimalistic group show “intuitively arranged” at Cathouse Proper.

There are somes beautiful or intriguing works www.star-revue.com

I think it’s no accident that the piece “Red Dead” stands out most at the show. Its color palette is much more vibrant than the muted blues and greens of its surrounding work, and it bears almost no resemblance to the others in terms of subject, representation, even medium. Its shapes are almost hallucinogenic, shouting at you as you leave that, just like Ms. Havisham, just like “artistic identity,” it’s time for the ego to die. “Especially because of these difficult global times.”

by Shari Mendelson, Aga Ousseinov, and Danilo Correale. Friday-Sunday, 12-6pm or by appointment. 524 Court Street (enter through Huntington Street, 2nd fl)

Jan 17

Pioneer Works hosts Wikipedia executive director Katherine Maher, author of “How to Be Black” and comedian Baratunde Thurston, and the marine biologist and in-house science scholar Ayana Elizabeth Johnson for a discussion on knowledge and power. 159 Pioneer Street.

out kanestreet.org/film/ biff2019/ or call 718-8751550 for various times.

Jan 25

The Solomon Guggenheim launches its first phase of a major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe 30 years after the artist’s death.

Through July 10, the first phase shows early Polaroids and iconic selfportraits. 1071 5th Ave, Manhattan.

Jan 27

Black Ball Projects finishes its run with “Bitches Talkin,” a dual exhibition by Tamar Halpern and Eileen Quinlan. See our review of the show

by Will Drickey. Open weekends 12-6pm. 384 Bedford Ave.

The children’s musician Amelia Robinson, who performs as Mil’s Trills, spearheads the 9th annual Mil’s Trills 9th Annual Winter Bash at ShapeShifter Lab. Expect full-scale bands as well as performances by budding 7-9 songwriters. 3-4pm. $10 in advance, $15 at door, family rate is $45, and babes in arms are free.18 Whitwell Place

Jan 24

Jan 27

Jan 20

From Jan 24-27, Kane Street Synagogue hosts the 15th annual Brooklyn Israel Film Festival.

The three featured films include “Siege”; “Echo”; “Operation Egg”, then on Jan 27, the festival wraps up with three half-hour short films: “Strings,” “Across the Line” and “Welcome and Our Condolences.” Single tickets are $18. Festival passes are $36. Check

Kentler International Drawing Space celebrates the life’s work of musicians Herbert Brün and Frederic Rzewski with “Time and Truth: 50 years of music for Percussion.” In the small gallery space, percussionist Allen Otte will combine electronics and marimba in tandem with the Meridith McNeal, “Portrait of My Mother.”

353 Van Brunt.

January 2019, Page 17

Page 18 Red Hook Star-Revue

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January 2019

STARªREVUE MUSIC

reviews, previews, happenings in the neighborhoods you love

DONALD

O’FINN ARTIST Photo courtesy of Donald O’Finn

REBEL PROPRIETOR OF FREDDY’S BAR

BY MIKE COBB

T

FREDDY’S BAR is one of the great, lost places in Brooklyn. Once a rumored to be a speakeasy during prohibition, it later became a key, cultural hub and ground zero for the resistance to the assault on Brooklyn by real estate developers.

HE ORIGINAL

The dark front room featured an outstanding wooden bar, red pleather booths, cheap drinks, and a fish tank full of frogs. In the dusty, cobwebbed corners one could find humorous oddities like cans of “Spotted Dick”, a British culinary monstrosity that looks as appealing as it sounds. A bag of Shark Chum flanked a TV whose strange images assaulted the senses. The graffitied walls of the bathroom contained a collective wisdom as deep as those of CBGB’s. In the subterranean backroom, there were concerts, poetry readings, art exhibits, and above all a space where creatives could connect.

The man at the helm was and is Donald O’Finn, a brilliant artist whose surreal video montages illuminate the inner space of the bar and the brain. Donald’s work is comprised of found footage spliced into bizarre mashups guar-

Red Hook Star-Revue

anteed to catch you off guard. One minute you’re enjoying your drink, the next your attention is pulled towards T.V. monitors strategically placed throughout the bar.

O’Finn was born and raised in San Francisco. He enlisted in the army and later took advantage of the G.I. Bill. He landed a scholarship at the San Francisco Art Institute and earned an M.F.A. in painting.

After graduating, he came to New York expecting to “take it by storm”, didn’t, and survived by designing patches, particularly popular with inmates.

In his own words, O’Finn had always been a “hard core bar guy and a drinker.” Missing the old man bars of San Francisco “with Sinatra on the jukebox” he dreamed of opening a saloon. He took a job at the now defunct O’Connors on 5th Avenue in Park Slope. While

tending bar, he noticed that many of the old timers started to die off and become replaced by a artists and writers. But Patrick the proprietor didn’t like this crowd of new bohemians and threw them out.

Concurrently, O’Finn was asked to work in a bar formerly popular with Daily News reporters, now “a dangerous place filled with cops and criminals.” It’s worth remembering this was Park Slope in the early 90’s where the now charmingly gentrified 5th Avenue was home to bodegas with two-inchthick plexiglass surrounding a cash register that sold more “crack than milk” recalls O’Finn.

While contemplating what to call it, they received a glowing review dubbing the bar “Freddy’s” after its then owner. The name stuck.

Determined to provide a space for his talented friends, O’Finn began booking the backroom. “I’ve always attracted the artists and creative types. I love what they do, and I want to support it.”

This approach added up to a winning formula and O’Finn was able

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to expand his core of people. “Our regulars are just a touch special.

Everybody’s a bit damaged. These are insanely talented people who always fell just short of making it.

There’s a bit of tragedy to everybody, which means that they’re hilariously funny and witty. It’s like a dark, dark Cheers.”

In terms of the offbeat vibe, O’Finn

Continued on page 20

UPCOMING

New Andalucia page 20

PROFILE

Matt Statler Part 2! page 20

CALENDAR

more stuff to do! page 21 January 2019, Page 19

O’Finn continued from page 19 says, “I can’t help it; I’m an artist. So, anything I do is going to be different because I’m a little bit different.

And I’m obsessive about it. It seems to work. I’ve taken three failing bars and turned them into critically acclaimed best bars.”

In fact, the Sun has lauded Freddy’s as “one of Brooklyn’s most important cultural institutions.” Examples of excellence include “The Cringe”, a reading series where audience members are invited to share painful memories from teenage diaries, which has spawned a national tour and several books by the founder, and “Opera on Tap”, a night where professional opera singers belt out arias and are often joined on cho-

New Andalucia at The Brooklyn Maqam Hang

By Stephan Zeniuk

Tuesday, January 29th, Sisters, (900 Fulton St.), 8-11pm: New Andalucia will be the spotlighted band at the bi-monthly Brooklyn Maqam Hang, a series that cultivates, celebrates, and explores Arabic music, and music of the Middle East. Each week

Statler Brother Part 2

By Mike Cobb Originally hailing from St. Louis, Missouri, Matt Statler’s Americana sound is rooted in country, blues, and folk. The structural simplicity of his music provides a platform for ideas that range from love to the apocalyptic effects of climate change. His songs are cerebral, soulful, and generally optimistic, but occasionally veer into darker realities.

RHSR: Tell me about your different musical projects.

MS: I’ve been writing songs and performing under the name Campbell’s Atlas ever since college. My middle name is Campbell, and when I was a kid whenever a question came up about Missouri geography my Grandma Statler would propose to “look it up in Campbell’s Atlas.” That was the name of the first geographic survey of the state, and it’s kind of a twisted anagram of my middle and last names, so it has served me

Page 20 Red Hook Star-Revue

ruses by audience members. “You get a room like you’ve never seen in your life!” raves O’Finn. “There are so many talented people in New York are. I just had an opportunity to let them show that. It just goes to show, you give people a chance, a little space and support, and amazing things can happen,” he adds.

If the success of such events proves the validity of his philosophy of creating community and having a space where people can “let go” in order to realize their creative vision, Freddy’s also works hard to maintain a cool crowd. “We have a rule. If someone’s being an asshole, we get them the ‘F’ out,” states O’Finn.

Freddy’s also served as the focal point for the resistance to the they feature a guest band, followed by an open jam session, cultivating connections between the ancient and beautiful Maqam tradition, and modern, chaotic, urban New York City. Musicians from the Middle East, who have steeped themselves in the music their entire lives, jam with musicians coming from many other different traditions and backgrounds but who share a love and respect for the music. It’s truly one of those beautiful “only in New York” series that opens cultural currents and dialogue, rather than closing them.

New Andalucia, the featured band for this show, explores the music

well as stage identity.

Then a few years ago I was reading my hometown newspaper and there was an article about the local turkey hunters’ association, and they called themselves the Bootheel Boss Gobblers. I thought, man that’s a great name for a band, and then a week or so later I was watching a YouTube of Ray Wylie Hubbard speaking about how when Willie Nelson came to Austin back in the 70’s he was able to play music that allowed the hippies and the rednecks to hang out together.

Apparently, they called it “hipneck” music. So, the Bootheel Boss Gobblers was born as a political art project, a musical collective playing hipneck music because now is a time in our country when the hippies and the rednecks need to learn how to hang out and have fun together again.

My most recent ensemble is called Sons of Astro, and it was inspired when a guy showed up to one of our gigs with a couple of big dogs that started howling along in the chorus to a song. So, we asked the guy what’s up with the dogs? and he said they were named Cosmo and Retro, and they were 100% cloned from DNA from their father, Astro. After Tom Petty died, we

development project that was the Barclay’s Center. The battle lasted for well over seven years. “It was terrifying and difficult,” says O’Finn.

Together with blocks of beautiful brownstones, Freddy’s lay directly in the footprint of the proposed development, and the community looked to O’Finn to stop it. “We had people who had lived here for generations.

Forest City Ratner needed to throw or buy out the neighborhood. They were then able to call it ‘blighted’ and get the go ahead for demolition,” recalls O’Finn emotionally. “I knew we might win the battle but not the war. But I also knew that others after us might learn from the debacle. Eminent Domain is an ongoing issue for New York.”

of Andalucia, the southern tip of Spain, where, in 711 A.D., Arabs crossed the strait of Gibraltar and began eight centuries of cultural dialogue in that region. A region of immigrants, cultural ambiguity, and musical dialogue. As New Andalucia themselves say, “Thirteen centuries later, six musicians and dancers,

had been playing lots of cosmic Americana, and we thought that Sons of Astro was a great name for a harmony-driven folk-rock duo.

RHSR: What are some of your goals for the future as a musician?

MS: I’ve never really had the patience or the money to sit down and record my music properly. It always just seems like more fun to keep playing rather than stop and put on headphones or look at a screen. But I’ve written seventeen songs in the past year, and there’s a lot more in the back catalog. So, my goal for the future is to be more diligent about producing and distributing my music, starting with the stuff that’s up on SoundCloud, but hopefully going on to record a proper album in a studio.

RHSR: Anything else you’d like to add?

MS: I feel so lucky to live five minutes walking distance from Jalopy. The scene there is so rich, so diverse, so evergreen. And while the festivals and touring headline acts are consistently top-notch, I also really like the amateur feeling of the open mic, the slow jam, the classes and workshops. It’s a folk art that we’re cultivating, and sometimes when people are stretching themselves to perform it can transcend beauty and be-

www.star-revue.com

After nearly a decade of resistance, Freddy’s was finally forced to close and make way for the behemoth Barclay’s Center, an unsurprising fiasco. Thankfully, Freddy’s reopened in South Slope and continues today as a cutting-edge cultural venue including its original bar, fish tank, and other random items of weirdness. With events happening every night of the week, Freddy’s lives on as a distinct destination for cutting edge performances. Find out more at www.freddysbar.com.

Mike Cobb is a Brooklyn based musician, writer, and multimedia producer. Check him out online at www.mc-obb.com

who have been working together for a decade, strive to recreate this era through their music as immigrants in New York City. Both the time and the place of this encounter are significant as New York becomes the New Andalucia with an evening of “convivencia” or “coexistence.”

come sublime.

To hear some of Statler’s remarkable songs, look for him live at Jalopy’s Tuesday night open mic and check him out online at www. soundcloud.com/campbells-atlas Mike Cobb is a Brooklyn based musician, writer, and multimedia producer. Check him out online at www.mc-obb.com

Matt Statler.

To read part 1, visit starrevue.com

January 2018

Hank Roberts Trio at The Owl Music Parlor

by Stephan Zeniuk

Friday, January 18th, The Owl Music Parlor (497 Rogers Ave.), 7pm :

Calendar The New Year is upon us and there’s nothing like picking up and dusting off that guitar, keyboard, or trumpet that has maybe laid in wait too long. Did you know that Red Hook has many opportunities to play with your neighbors and friends? Bene’s Record Shop, Jalopy Theater, Rocky Sullivan’s, and Sunny’s all offer jam sessions of varying genre and skill level to let loose and play. Pioneer Works even has a build your own theremin workshop this month — time to get space age. I’m not always one for New Year’s resolutions, but I am always a strong proponent of playing an instrument, no matter how long it’s been. So pick up that bass, or lift your voice and sing and I hope the best for everyone in 2019!

—Jaimie Branch * critics pick Bene’s RECORD SHOP* 360 Van Brunt St. 718-855-0360 All Shows 8:30PM, unless noted.

Check local listings!

Hank Roberts will be performing with his trio featuring Vinnie Sperrazza (drums) and Jacob Sacks (piano). If you’re not familiar with Roberts, he is one of the true iconoclasts of the cello, using it to invoke the heart of Americana folk with the openness of free improvisation.

Instrumental in the 80s “downtown” music scene, recording regularly with Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, and Marc Ribot, his compositions are

Jefferson Hamer

Aaron Irwin Sextet at IBeam Jan. 19

SUN 1/13, 8PM Charlie Judkins TUES 1/15, 8PM The Hip Trendersons WED 1/16, 8PM Hannah Lee Thompson

IBEAM 168 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave. ibeambrooklyn.com

JALOPY TAVERN 317 Columbia St. 718-625-3214 jalopytavern.biz

shows at 8PM unless otherwise printed.

Every FRI, 9PM Papa Vega and the Rocket 88’s

WED 1/9* Chasm Tim Berne - saxophone Ryan Ferreira - guitar Dave King - drums

Every SAT, 9PM Wyndham Baird and Band 50s/60s rock’n’roll. blues, and soul.

Red Hook Star-Revue

SUN 1/20, 8PM Eli Smith WED 1/23, 9PM The Golden Horseshoes

SAT 1/12 Amanda Ekery - vocals Allison Burik - alto sax/bass clarinet Andrew Boudreau - piano Magdalena Abrego - guitar Lim Yang - bass + Womni Jung - vocals Nathan Reising - alto saxophone Chase Morrin - piano Isaac Levien - bass Lesley Mok - drums

SAT 1/19, 8PM* Home Audio Presents: Tingue & DiáSPORA visuals by: Tara Nichols & Ilaria Bochicchio

FRI 1/11 Adam Caine Quartet Adam Caine - guitar/synth Bob Lanzetti - guitar Adam Lane - bass Billy Mintz - drums + Carol Liebowitz Quartet

THURS 1/17, 9PM Audra Rox Presents!

Carol Liebowitz - piano Nick Lyons - alto saxophone Kim Cass - bass John Wagner - drums

SAT 1/19 Aaron Irwin Sextet Aaron Irwin - woodwinds Peter Hess - woodwinds Matthew McDonald - trombone Emily Wong - horn Jeff Miles - guitar Gary Wang - bass + Bryan Murray - saxophone Dan Monaghan - drums

DE-Construkt 41 Seabring St. de-construkt.com

thoroughly unclassifiable, and he has continually carved a unique place in the jazz idiom. In the

mid 90s, Roberts retreated from heavy touring and recording.

Though he continued with sporadic recordings, he relocated to Ithaca, NY. In the last few years, he has reemerged with a flurry of recordings, new bands, and new, exciting ideas. Roberts has reconnected with his old friends, releasing music with Frisell, Jim Black, Marc Ducret, but has been working with a slew of the younger generation of improvisors in New York, including Sacks and Sperrazza for

Music for Aardvarks

Music classes for infants to 4 year olds

Musical Theatre Classes for 3 to 5 year olds

THURS 1/3, 9PM Dime Store Romeo’s

Birthday Parties Book yours in advance We do a rockin’ roll “city kid” party

SAT 1/5, 9PM AVO + Skalopy!

TUES 1/8, 8PM Fatboy Wilson and Old Gambler Smith

Locations in DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook

THURS 1/10, 9PM

www.star-revue.com

For more info visit audrarox.com January 2019, Page 21

THURS 1/24, 8PM Frankie Sunswept JALOPY THEATRE 315 Columbia St. 718-395-3214 jalopytheatre.org Every Tuesday Night, 9PM Open Mic Night, sign up by 9 sharp!

Each performer gets 2 songs or 8 minutes.

Every Wednesday, 9PM Roots n’ Ruckus - hosted by Feral Foster.

Real deal folk music in NYC. Free!

FRI 1/11, 8PM Isto CD Release Show: Mamie Minch + Tamar Korn SAT 1/12, 8PM Record Release for Hannah Lee Thompson’s “Birthday Girl” SUN 1/13, 3:30PM Oldtime and Folk Slow Jam with Hilary Hawke 8PM: Mile Twelve String Band + Ginny’s Kitchen SAT 1/19, 8PM Erin Durant + Billygoat + Rose Thomas Bannister

Bowie Tribute Dance Party SUN 1/13, 10AM Brooklyn Music Factory: Winter Band Party THUR 1/17, 8PM Raya Brass Band FRI 1/18, 7PM Noelle Tannen, Sol Liebeskind, Darian Thomas FRI 1/25, 8PM Death Cults, Labor Hex, Blood Built Empire, Let it Rot SAT 1/26, 11PM DJ Dredy, By Far Mega, Jr Cruiza, Mad Russian, Kevin Crown

Workshop ROCKY SULLIVAN’S 46 Beard St. 718-246-8050 rockysullivansredhook. com Always three sets on Fridays!

THURS 1/10, 8PM Swing Jazz Jam FRI 1/11, 9PM Red Hook Roxx Presents: Milf and Dilf, The Arms and the Legs, Ruse de Guerre

THURS 1/3, 8PM From Red Hook to the Real Alaska Nine Performances!

SUN 1/27, 11AM Family Fun with Suzi Shelton

FRI 1/4, 8PM Katie Martucci, Rachel Sumner, Ian Fitzgerald

LITTLEFIELD 635 Sackett St. littlefieldnyc.com

PIONEER WORKS 159 Pioneer St. pioneerworks.com All Shows 7PM unless printed.

SUN 1/6, 11AM Little Laffs

SAT 1/5, 11PM Reggae Retro 1st Saturdays Party

SAT 1/26, 1PM Mixed Level Theremin Workshop

FRI 1/25, 9PM Red Hook Roxx Presents: Union, Dan Gitlin, Tidal Channel

FRI 1/11, 10:30PM Loving the Alien: David

SUN 1/27, 1PM* Build Your Own Theremin

SAT 1/26, 9PM Alegba

1PM: Vocal Harmony Workshop with Don Friedman & Phyllis Elkind

SUNNY'S BAR JANUARY 2019 ALL SHOWS 9PM UNLESS LISTED OTHERWISE

SAT 1/12, 9PM Alegba FRI 1/18, 9PM Red Hook Roxx Presents: Lupo, Christian Botte, Paul Anthony Band

SUNNYS 253 Conover St. 718-625-8211 sunnysredhook.com all shows 9PM unless otherwise printed.

EVERY WED Smokey’s Round-Up* A late night Raucous Western Swing dance party with virtuoso guitarist, Smokey Hormel. Three sets.

The 4 O’Clock Flowers will play Sunny’s Jan. 10.

Paul Spring TUES 1/15 Will Scott & Glenn Spivack THURS 1/17 Ryan Scott & The Kind Buds FRI 1/18 Tubby SUN 1/20 3:30PM: Harry Bolick Old Time Jam 6:30PM: Frankie Sunswept TUES 1/22 Mike Robinson THURS 1/24 Smokey’s Secret Family Album Release FRI 1/25 7PM: Stevie From St. Lou 9PM: John Pinamonti SUN 1/27, 5PM Honky Tonk Heroes

TUES 1/29 Will Scott & Trip Henderson THURS 1/31 Jason Loughlin: The Essex Three

EVERY SATURDAY TONE’s Bluegrass Jam Bring your axe!

SUPERFINE

THUR 1/3 Rick Snell & The Brand New Babies

EVERY SUNDAY Bluegrass Green Chile Brunch / Evening Jazz and Americana Noon - 3pm / 6 - 8pm Unless Otherwise Printed

FRI 1/4, 7PM Mark Anselm & The Cell Mates Stevie from St. Lou SUN 1/6, 5PM Joanna Sternberg MON 1/7, 8:30PM Mara Kaye Sings Other People’s Blues TUES 1/8 Will Scott & Trip Henderson THUR 1/10 The Four O’Clock Flowers FRI 1/11 Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout

126 Front St. superfine.nyc

SUN 1/6 Abby Hollander Bluegrass Band / Curtis J, 9PM SUN 1/13 The Haggard Kings / Will Scott with Trip Henderson SUN 1/20 Hilary Hawke & the Good Sports / Beat Kaestli Jazz SUN 1/27 Barry Clyde & friends / Ernie Vega & Miss Maybelle

SUN 1/13, 5PM

Page 22 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

January 2019

New Brown Church Gives Music Scholarships Story and photo by Brett Yates

O

n December 15, New Brown Memorial Baptist Church at Clinton Street and Center Street held its annual Christmas concert, performed by the Sister Helen Lee Keyboard Ensemble and Drum Corps. The concert showcased youth talent honed in the church’s music program, led by the internationally acclaimed author James McBride and fellow instructor Damon Due White.

Founded in 1954 by McBride’s parents, New Brown started its music program six years ago “with five gallon drums and buckets. The program didn’t get really good until Mr. Due White came on board as our drum teacher three years ago,” McBride recounted. He and Due White hold classes on Saturday mornings; rehearsals for the two yearly concerts, winter and spring, take place on Friday evenings.

“This music is an avenue to success for young people because it teaches them discipline; it teaches them focus; it teaches them teamwork,” McBride said.

The program takes its name from the church’s late organist, Helen Lee of the Red Hook Houses, whom McBride called “one of the finest gospel organists in New York City.” She was “never recorded, but she was deeply talented.” McBride, Due White, and four other teachers aim to provide rigorous training in jazz and gospel for children in Red Hook. For parents who say they can’t afford to pay, New Brown makes the lessons available for free.

18 kids, from ages seven to 14, are currently enrolled.

Pageant TV Continued from page 16 teenager, Patricia Bladell (Debby Ryan) who enters pageant competitions for revenge after a jaw-accident leaves her svelte and Raquel Welch-ready.

In December 2018, Netflix launched another take on beauty pageants, a far more familyfriendly film called “Dumplin,” starring Jennifer Aniston. Like “Insatiable,” the locus of competition (Willowdean Dickson, played

by Danielle Macdonald) is obese and seemingly beyond the possibility of ever winning. In fact, she doesn’t win. None of the movies or TV shows actually feature a winner.

The message seems to be that in the vortex of impossible standards, it’s the striving that matters, the push for self-improvement. Each show dangles out the carrot, confident that it will never be reached. Paradoxically, we are to appear content without ever being fully nourished. “Sing at

Page 24 Red Hook Star-Revue

Hollis Rivera, Erick Lopez, and Helen Lingaard receiving music scholarships on Dec. 15.

“The way the whole art thing is set up in New York is really unfair,” McBride observed. He noted that kids from families that don’t have the resources to enlist personal instructors typically find themselves edged out of elite ensembles by a more privileged class and thus “can’t continue to play the music that was once intrinsically a part of their culture.”

New Brown sits seven blocks from BASIS Independent Brooklyn.

“We know that down the street they built a big old private school. That school looks like a prison,” McBride opined during his remarks before the concert. “I don’t know any kids from Red Hook who are in that school. But I know that if you put music in front of kids in this program, they can play as good as any kid in this area, including kids that come from that school that costs

them,” Vicki Ellis commands Samantha Cole, not “sing for them,” as if talent is to only be used to forward appearance rather than connection.

What if a lead in one of these shows actually won? Would our sympathy vanish? Would these well-written shows suddenly seem like a fairytale? We’re helplessly aware that winning one of these races is fiercely improbable and would only happen in a passing cine on Hallmark.

All of these pageant shows require a substantial layer of comedy. We can’t take this sort of competition seriously. It’s hard to think of beauty pageant drama being successful as say Natalie Portman’s ballet-drama, “Black Swan.” Those that have tried, like Sally Field’s earnest 2000 drama “Beautiful,” have fallen flat.

Perhaps it’s too on the nose. We all care about appearance, but caring to that extreme calls attention to the preposterous nature

$40,000 a year, which is more than what most people in the projects make for a living.”

The Sister Lee Music Program doesn’t apply for grants. “This church was made by working people,” as McBride put it. “When the bass goes out of tune, it’s not because of the bass player. It’s just because it’s a cheap, lousy bass.”

Even so, the Christmas concert featured an award ceremony that dispensed $2,500 in music scholarships to three hardworking pupils: an “unprecedented” sum for New Brown, gathered from the church fund, the church members, private donors, and parents. The recipients — Hollis Rivera, Erick Lopez, and Helen Lingaard — “practice the most and show the kind of moral excellence that New Brown represents,” according to McBride. Primarily, the scholarships will “help

of caring about something that is as de facto as the weather. For shows about beauty pageants to be palatable, they have to be coated with a fair amount of humor, especially dark humor.

They also have to continue that Protestant ethos of hard, honest, striving. It’s telling that Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” opens both Facebook’s “Queen America” and Netflix’s “Dumplin.”

“Queen America” is more cognizant and serious (dare I say respectful) about the dark side of perfectionism. Under its strains, the common reactions are alcohol, depression, eating-disorders, chain-smoking. The opening series to “Queen America” is a sepia-infused montage of white women shrinking their waists, injecting their lips, practicing a morbid walk in-front of a mirror.

It’s all flashed while a few women make eerie, open-mouthed chants, as if they’re ready to let their bodies be carved into the picture of success.

www.star-revue.com

defray the cost of private lessons outside our church program” with “top professional pianists.”

Rivera, Lopez, and Lingaard performed in the show alongside 13 other young musicians, who played jazz renditions of Christmas standards, classical pieces, and spirituals. Tunes like “Deck the Halls” and “Für Elise” interpolated the sounds of Charles Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie. McBride, with his saxophone, and his bandmate, cellist Trevor Exter, joined Lingaard for “A Child Is Born.”

“Our long-term aim, with God’s help, is to keep our church tradition alive at New Brown, and to preserve the art of gospel music and African American music, which has helped keep our church vibrant for 65 years,” McBride stated.

More than its competitors, “Queen America” is aware of pernicious side of the American dream, i.e. an obsession with self-improvement and a winner takes all mentality. It’s a ridiculous dream, as each of these shows candidly admits, but there’s also some validity. The winners are nowhere to be found, but there’s always something more personal to claim: self-esteem, self-acceptance, a sort of patience with a deeply unjust and superficial world. And above all, there’s always the chance of winning.

For a world ruled by neoliberalism, beauty pageant flicks, with all the criticisms of pageants built-in then placated, are an understandable object of fascination. We know these competitions are ludicrous. As several of these characters say; we may even hate the system we’re allured to. Yet every day we choose to enter the competition.

December 2018

The Healthy Geezer by Fred Cicetti Q. When seniors gather, it doesn’t seem to take long before we get to our aches and pains. You must get more than your share of that My friend, Pete, has instituted a colonoscopy rule. He insists that, if a bunch of us geezers are talking about aches, maladies and visits to the doctors, everyone has to change the subject as soon as someone uses the word colonoscopy. Usually we switch to grandchildren, which is a lot more fun.

But, while we are on the subject of colons...

Colorectal cancer—cancer of the colon or rectum—is a leading cause of death from cancer in the United States. Early detection of colon cancer is especially important because, if it is found in its early stages, it can be cured nine out of ten times.

Who’s at risk? The chances of getting it increase with age. But other risk factors include polyps, your history, diet and whether you’ve had ul-

Religious Services Christian

River Of God Christian Center

110 Wolcott Street, 646-226-6135, Secretary, Sister Roslyn Chatman. Sunday- Family Worship 11- 1 pm Scripture, Wednesday- At The Gate 12 noon, Prayer 7-7:30 pm, Bible Studies 7-8 pm, Thursday Prayer 7:30-8:30 pm, Fri. Youth ABLAZED Ministries 6- 7:30 pm, Senior Pastor, Donald Gray

Visitation Church

98 Richards Street, (718) 624-1572. Office open Mon-Thurs. 9 am- 3 pm. Sat. Mass at 5 pm English; Sun. 10 am Spanish, 12:30 pm English.

Community Prayer on Tuesday and Thursday at 8 pm. Call to arrange for Baptisms, First Communion, Confirmation and Weddings.

New Brown Memorial Baptist

609 Clinton Street, 718 624 4780 Pastor A.R Jamal. Sun. School at 9:30 am. Sun. Worship at 11 am. Bible Study-Wed. at 7:30 pm. Communion every first Sunday

Redemption Church Red Hook

767 Hicks Street (Red Hook Initiative), (347) 470-3523, RedemptionRedHook@gmail.com Pastor Edwin Pacheco Sunday Service at 10:30 am, Children’s Bible Study provided.

RH Ministries

72 Van Dyke Street (Corner of Richards Street), 718-624-3093, rhministries@bgtintl.com, Senior Pastor: Rev. David W. Anderson, Rev. Dr. Linda D. Anderson Sunday Worship Service at 11:00 am, Mid-week prayer on Wednesday at 7:30 pm, Pantry every Saturday at 9:30 am

St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church 157 Montague St., Brooklyn Heights.

Phone: 718-875-6960, office@stannholytrinity. org, Fr. John Denaro, Rector.

Sunday Worship-Early Church at 9:30 am, Sunday School and Playgroup at 10:15 am and Holy Eucharist at 11:15 am, Weekday Worship on Wednesdays at 6 pm.

Stretching Far and Wide Global Ministry, Inc.

382 Hamilton Avenue, Studio B 1-800-948-9042 Archbishop Dr. Barbara Jackman, Overseer Rev. Dr. Dwayne Barnes, Pastor Services are held every Sun. @ 10 am Communion every First Sun. stretchingfar.webs.com stretchingfar@aol.com

St. Mary Star of the Sea Parish

cerative colitis.

Polyps are benign growths on the inner wall of the colon and rectum.

Not all polyps become cancerous, but nearly all colon cancers start as polyps.

Colorectal cancer seems to run in families. And, someone who has already had colorectal cancer may develop this disease a second time. So greater vigilance is a good idea if you or your relatives have had it.

This form of cancer is more likely among people on a diet high in fat, protein, calories, alcohol, and both red and white meat. Low-fat, highfiber diets seem better for the colon.

Ulcerative colitis is a condition in which there is a chronic break in the lining of the colon. Having this condition increases a person’s chance of developing colorectal cancer.

The following are some symptoms of colorectal cancer: blood in the stool, diarrhea, constipation, stools that are narrower than usual, frequent gas pains or cramps, unexplained weight loss, unrelieved fatigue, vomiting.

Go to your doctor if you have symptoms. The medical profession has many detection tools. These include: a test to check for hidden blood in the stool; a sigmoidoscope, a lighted instrument for examining the rectum and lower colon; a colonoscope, a lighted instrument to examine the rectum and entire colon; a barium enema with a series of x-rays of the colon and rectum; a digital rectal exam to feel for abnormal areas.

Two recent studies showed that colonoscopy can find many pre-can-

cerous polyps that sigmoidoscopy misses. Another major advantage of the colonoscopy is that it enables the doctor to remove any polyps found during the procedure.

There is a virtual colonoscopy, a minimally invasive procedure. Doctors are able to see the entire colon using 3-D computer graphics from a computerized tomography scan, or CT scan.

Known as CT colonography, this exam is an alternative for patients who are at risk of complications from colonoscopy such as patients who are frail. If a virtual colonoscopy finds significant polyps, they have to be removed by conventional colonoscopy.

All Rights Reserved © 2018 by Fred Cicetti

Hours: Monday-Thursday 9 am- 11:30 am, 1 pm-4 pm, Fri. 9 am- 12 noon. Masses: Sat. 4 pm, Sun. 10 am, Monday- Thursday, 9:30 am.

Saint Paul Saint Agnes Parish

Church Office 433 Sackett St (718) 6251717 Hours: M-F 2 PM-5 PM. E mail: stpaulandstagnes@gmail.com. Saint Paul, 190 Court Street- church open daily for prayer and meditation 7 am- 8 pm. Sat. Vigil Mass 5:30 pm, Sun. 7:45 am, 11 am (Spanish). St. Agnes, 433 Sackett St. Sat. Vigil Mass 4 pm (English), Sun. 9:15 am (English), 11 am (French), 12:30 PM (Spanish). M-T-TH-F-S 8:30 am St Paul’s Chapel 234 Congress St.; Wed. 8:30 am St Agnes.

Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary- Saint Stephen RCC

125 Summit Street at Hicks Street, (718) 596-7750, info@sacredhearts-ststephen. com Office Hours: Monday-Thursday 9 am- 5 pm, Fri. 9 am- 3 pm, Sat. 9 am- 1 pm Sat. Vigil Mass at 5:30 pm, Sun. Masses at 8 am, 10 am, and noon (Italian/English) Weekday Masses Mon. at 12 noon and Tue. thru Sat. at 8:30 am. Confessions: Sat. at 4:45 pm and by appointment. Baptisms every third Sun. 1 pm.

St. Paul’s Carroll St (Episcopal)

199 Carroll Street, 718-625-4126, info@stpaulscarrollst.org, www.stpaulscarrollst.org, Sun. Mass at 11:00 am, Weekly Morning Prayer Mon.-Thurs. at 7:30 am, Weekday Mass on Fri. at 9:00 am, Church open for prayer on Sat. from 2-4 pm. Holy Days as announced.

Jewish Kane Street Synagogue

236 Kane Street, 718 875-1550 http://kanestreet.org/ Fri. night services, 6 PM Shabbat services, 9:15 AM Sun. Services 9 AM

Congregation B’nai Avraham/ Chabad of Brooklyn Heights

117 Remsen St., 718 596 4840 x18 www.bnaiavraham.com, www.heightschabad.com Morning Services: Sunday: 8:45am Monday- Friday: 7:45am Holidays (during the week): 8:45am Saturday: 9:45am Evening Services: Sunday: Shabbat candle lighting time Monday- Thursday: 9 pm Friday: Winter: 5 minutes before Shabbat candle lighting time Summer:

Congregation Mount Sinai

250 Cadman Plaza West, 718-875-9124, info@ cmsbklyn.org, www.cmsbklyn.org, Rabbi Hanniel Levenson Fri. services at 6:30 pm, Sat. worship at 10:00 am with Kiddush at 11:30 and Bible Study at 11:45. All are welcome.

467 Court Street, (718) 625-2270 Rectory

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

January 2019, Page 25

Art: Jane Wingfield olysketcher.com

Leftovers By Kelsey Liebenson-Morse

A

recent Sunday in Red Hook begins with a trip to Baked.

Overheard conversations include thoughts on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (it’s excellent) and compliments to the manager, Frank, on his impressive display of the day’s baked goods. “I spent some time,” he admitted proudly in response to the continued praise from a trio of three I could only label regulars based on their proprietary sprawl. Another man dressed in a jacket and tie sat down with a scone and a piece of cheesecake. It was around 9 am. I admired his disregard for rules about appropriate breakfast foods. After eating a frittata, I brought my plate up to the counter. “Thank you. We appreciate you,” said the friendly bearded flannel wearing man behind the counter. His sincerity was apparent. I felt appreciated.

Page 26 Red Hook Star-Revue

I continued to the laundry portion of the day, a task no New Yorker without an in-unit washer/dryer enjoys. However, the laundromat on Van Brunt is clean and only two blocks from my apartment. Quarters don’t jam. There are a few lovely women who energetically wash and fold, seemingly at all times. A teen boy who works there is usually trying to cajole a friend into delivering him food, or cheerfully complaining about homework.

By this point it was pouring rain but my boyfriend, Eli, wanted to take a walk. We bundled up and strolled down Van Brunt towards the water, undeterred by slashing rain and gray skies. We passed no one on the streets. After walking to the end of the pier, (we were joined by a tall photographer) where the skyline was nearly invisible through a thick layer of fog, we popped into

Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies. We chatted with Michael, (not Steve) about the destruction of lime trees in the Keys and the possible deportation of Vietnamese Americans. Having lived in Red Hook for 3 months, it felt sacrilegious that I’d yet to try the pie. And the pie is certainly good ­— cold tangy and just sweet enough, but the assortment of yellowed photos (notably a map of Florida’s fish based on geography) palm trees and Christmas lights is worth every bite. On a dreary day, stepping into the pie shop felt like a trip to the Keys.

Returning to the laundromat, we stopped to admire the cats perched on a bale of hay, Red Hook’s version of the baby Jesus, most attractive being a plump tabby who contently groomed herself as if sensing an audience. “It’s like we’re at the zoo,” I remarked, peering through the bars at the animals as Eli tried to coax a cat close enough to pet. On our way back home we passed by Michael from Steve’s Key Lime Pies. He waved.

We waved back.

After completing the near Herculean event of folding sorting and remaking the bed in a small space, we journeyed back down Van Brunt to The Good Fork for dumplings and a scallion pancake. The outrageously cozy and intimate atmosphere at The Good Fork encourages romance and we found ourselves dining with three other couples. If you’ve never sat in a round booth by the window, you’re missing out. The married couple next to us kissed with the gusto of young lovers and another older couple held hands across the table. When the older couple left, they hugged their

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server (dressed in a kilt and high socks) goodbye, wishing him a safe trip. “See you when you get back,” they said affectionately.

Walking back home Eli remarked that we hadn’t left the neighborhood all day, and we also hadn’t gotten into the car, onto a bus, ridden our bikes, or used the train. Today we’d achieved true local status in our own neighborhood.

Like many people with an average salary, living in New York can be difficult financially. As a teacher it’s about as likely as me voting Re-

Today we’d achieved true local status in our own neighborhood. publican that I could ever afford to buy an apartment. Eli keeps his skis in the car because we don’t have enough room in the apartment. I dread needing something from our overhead storage space as it requires avoiding anything from a backpacking pack to a laundry basket falling on my head while balancing on a ladder.

It’s inevitable that someday we’ll move back to New England, seduced by open spaces, less people and green trees. When we leave Van Brunt behind, another couple similar to us will move in, chasing dreams that only exists in the city. When we go, that new starry eyed couple will trace our Sunday route from Baked to the pier and back home. But when we move, I’ll take the memory of quiet Sundays in Red Hook with me, a series of images and memories unique to New York where sometimes, with the right mindset, even the trash strewn streets can contain poetic appeal.

January 2019

GRAPHIC DESIGNER SAMANTHA DION BAKER DISCUSSES HER “DRAW YOUR DAY” BOOK

B

rooklyn Heights artist Samantha Dion Baker published her first book last August. She is a BASISschool parent, and has been holding student workshops there.

“Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal” is an instructive guide that delves into Baker’s creative process and provides ways to develop and master a daily illustrated journaling practice. The 144-page book offers recommendations for materials, prompts and helpful tips and tricks.

Its companion piece, “Draw Your Day Sketchbook: Making Ordinary Days Come to Life on Paper,” is a mixed-media sketchpad that helps get imaginations and creativity activated. Baker believes drawing is not as commonly practiced nowadays and encourages readers to draw in unexpected ways.

“You can draw by playing around with colors or lines and doodles, and express yourself through writing,” she told this paper. “Note taking, drawing, doodling — the brain remembers things through these practices. I know that’s how I learned.”

Baker went to The Cooper Union School of Art and studied graphic design, pursuing the profession for the next 20 years of her life.

“I picked up my journal around five years ago, drawing every day.

One thing led to another, [and] I started illustrating my days,” Baker said. “Every day is totally different.”

She would reflect on and record all the things she did, saw and experienced in her daily life, like drawing animals, what she ate for breakfast or even a New York City scene for example. Baker said she hasn’t counted how many pictures she’s drawn through the years, but she estimates there are between at least three years’ worth of illustrated days in her collection.

BECOMING INSTA-FAMOUS Baker began to share her illustrations on Instagram in 2014.

She quickly amassed thousands of followers. Baker never imagined becoming so popular and that an agent would approach her

Red Hook Star-Revue

one day about her drawings.

“Because of sharing the pages, people [were] enjoying my approach,” she said. “I got a book deal and then I sort of transformed myself into an illustrator.”

She and her agent then worked on a book proposal — with Baker writing the book, helping to design it and putting the artwork in. The process took a year and a half.

As of late December 2018, she has more than 78,800 followers — many who like and comment on her illustrated, colorful posts and want to see more. Since becoming Insta-famous, she said it feels like a responsibility to post as often as possible. Baker also added that it’s interesting for her to share her private journal with so many people. She must be careful with what’s shared to protect a certain amount of personal privacy.

“I don’t know if I signed up for that, but I also love it,” Baker said.

“I wouldn’t be doing the work that I’m doing without it, so I’m very thankful for it.”

CONNECTIONS TO RED HOOK Baker holds art and writing workshops every so often at BASIS. Her most recent hour-long workshop was held Nov. 29, in which she talked about the importance of handwriting and the lost art of letter writing. She enjoys playing around with lettering and typography. She explained that while handwriting is a form of communication and an art form, it’s also a tool for learning and for remembering details that are taught in class.

“I know that without cursive it’s hard for kids, and I see it with mine, for them to get their thoughts out very quickly,” she said. “That’s one of the benefits of cursive writing — that you don’t have to lift up your pen and you can write much faster. Without knowing how to do that, note-taking is more timeconsuming.”

Baker also taught those in attendance how to embellish their natural handwriting, making it look pretty and fancy when addressing an envelope for example.

WHAT’S NEXT? After finding much success with “Draw Your Day,” Baker said she’d like to continue down this path and make another book. Plus, she’d love to get more comfortable drawing individuals for future illustrations.

Her next “Draw Your Day” workshop will be held on Jan. 10 at CW Pencil Enterprise (15 Orchard Street), 7-9 pm. It’ll focus on using handwriting, lettering and typography to enhance journal pages — with a sketchbook and supplies provided. Limited seats are available, and tickets can be purchased at cwpencils.com/ collections/events.

“Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal”

www.star-revue.com

Author photo by Angela Cappetta

By Erin DeGregorio

Cover and pages from Draw Your Day and author Samantha Dion Baker. Photos courtesy of publisher. and “Draw Your Day Sketchbook: Making Ordinary Days Come to Life on Paper” can be purchased at local bookstores or online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s. For more information about Baker, visit sdionbaker.com and check out her illustrations on Instagram (@sdionbakerdesign).

January 2019, Page 27

STAR REVUE HEALTHY LIVING Briefly Swapping the Pen and Paper for a Pair of Kickboxing Gloves at a Class

RED HOOK STAR WRITER TAKES A SHOT AT KICKBOXING. BELOW WITH ROSA MARTINEZ. PHOTOS COURTESY OF CKO KICKBOXING.

By Erin DeGregorio

Honestly, I was nervous during my Monday morning commute as I headed to CKO Kickboxing Carroll Gardens (562 Court Street).

Not nervous to kickbox for the first time, but a little nervous because I hadn’t been in a gym-like environment in nearly three years. I played three sports during grade school and high school and went to the on-campus gym once a week during my college years. I decided after college that I would minimize my exercise to jogging outside during the warm weather. But now, I was ready to head back to a gym and try something new.

My worries subsided as soon as I entered the CKO facility and introduced myself to Adriana Zito, one of its co-owners, and Rosa Martinez, who would be instructing the 10 am class I was taking. Martinez provided me with a quick orientation of the basic kicks and punches we’d be using, which is available for participants who arrive early or aren’t sure of what to expect. When class was about to begin moments later, different kinds of people approached the heavy bags in front of them (30 bags in total at this facility) — there was Zito to my left, who has been kickboxing for more than 15 years; a Manhattan-based cardio dancer, on my right two

bags down, who said this was her second kickboxing class ever; and a couple of CKO members across from me, who looked like they come here often.

I remember thinking there was nothing like an hour full of jabs and uppercuts to kickstart my week, as I put on my boxing gloves and tightened the Velcro at the wrists.

The kickboxing classes are geared for participants to go at their own paces during the 50-minutes. Instructors, like Martinez, repeat the combinations over their microphone headsets and make rounds around the room to check on participants. Whenever I would forget a sequence or couldn’t keep up with the moves, Martinez, who’s been kickboxing since 2011, would sometimes demonstrate the combinations again on the empty heavy bag beside mine. Though I was messing up the sequences every so often, I wasn’t embarrassed or worried about any of the other boxers judging me since we were each in our own little worlds. Going at my own speed helped me

feel more comfortable with my body and its capabilities.

Martinez’s playlist of upbeat songs from Jennifer Lopez, Pitbull and other pop stars made the time go by so quickly as our class alternated between kickboxing moves and other exercises like crunches, squats and push-ups. Plus, since there’s no sparring, combinations with repetitive moves (like jabs, uppercuts, hooks and ducks) helped me get into a rhythm. My favorite move in a combination was the roundhouse, in which you pivot on the ball of your front foot — turning your toes outward and your heel toward the bag — and raise your back leg up and around your

body in a smooth arc motion, hitting against the side of the bag with your shin for the most power. I felt pretty good by the end, albeit I was catching my breath and chugging water after removing my sweaty gloves. And while I felt a bit sore later in the day, I still felt that the workout was worth it for me.

CKO Carroll Gardens has monthly and annual membership options and is currently offering three classes (with boxing gloves to keep) for $19.99. For more information or for class scheduling, call 718-2221822 or visit ckokickboxing.com/ ny-brooklyn-carroll-gardens/.

GETTING TO THE POINT OF ACUPUNCTURE With Carroll Gardens Expert Christina Morris

By Erin DeGregorio

Acupuncturist/herbalist Christina Morris founded Element Natural Healing Arts (518 Henry Street) in December 2001, to provide care and holistic therapies for those seeking to improve their health and well-being. Morris said that she’s always been interested in women’s health and infertility, and had wanted to pursue obstetrics and gynecology before deciding to study Oriental Medicine at the International Institute of Chinese Medicine in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

“While working on my undergraduate degree [in biology pre-med at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville], I experienced some truly amazing and inspiring results from acupuncture for the treatment of pelvic pain,” Morris explained.

Page 28 Red Hook Star-Revue

“At the time, over 20 years ago, acupuncture wasn’t as commonly practiced.”

Morris later moved to New York and started practicing and working with doctors, including ob/gyns, reproductive endocrinologists, general practitioners, sports doctors and other specialty practitioners. It was then that she realized that this type of work was her passion.

“I loved helping people reduce their pain, get pregnant, lower their anxiety, improve digestive issues and lessen their stress,” she said. “I was able to really make a difference in helping people achieve a better quality of life, which inspired me.”

Morris’s Carroll Gardens location, with 15 treatment rooms, offers a variety of holistic therapies,

i n c l u d i n g r e f l e x o l o g y, acupuncture, massages, herbs and supplements, facials and skincare.

Its other services also include Thai bodywork, shiatsu, Maya abdominal massage, rolfing, private yoga and more.

Morris said that some of the most popular services at Element Natural Healing Arts are massages, facials and acupuncture — in which all treatments are tailored to individuals’ specific concerns.

She explained that common conditions that attract people to acupuncture, for instance, are muscular pain, headaches and

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migraines, stress and anxiety, digestive concerns and fertility issues.

Acupuncture treatment can be effective in improving energy and concentration; boosting the immune system; increasing blood

Continued on page 30 January 2019

STAR REVUE HEALTHY LIVING The Great Room Is a Hit With Local Caregivers and Children

By Erin DeGregorio

The community has welcomed The Great Room, a haven for caregivers and children alike, warmly since it opened in the Columbia Street Water District in June 2018. The prenatal and parenting wellness space, co-owned by local mothers Susannah Gersten and Jessica Rich, is meant for kids and adults to explore, find solace and share joy.

“We’re both therapists, and we both have always had a bunch of families come to us that are really in crisis, so we wanted to provide a space that was more like supportive help for people,” Gersten said.

Gersten explained that she and Rich actually ‘met’ on a Facebook parenting group, before becoming friends over their shared love for community social work. She found that asking questions online could sometimes be hit-and-miss, as she would get non-expert advice with some answers and receive some critical responses with others.

“We’re really striving to create a place where we are here to support you in doing whatever is going to make your life better … as opposed to on the Internet where people feel very free to judge you,” Gersten said. “To me it’s really invaluable to have just a warm, beautiful, welcoming face that’s judgmentfree.”

The Great Room offers community d r o p -

Some programs for all ages and stages at The Great Room

“Baby in Tune” classes for babies ages 8-24 months and 0-7 months will be on Tuesdays at 10 am and 11 am respectively, beginning Jan. 1

Starting Jan. 8, Dynamic Kids BK!’s 10-week-long afterschool breakdancing programevery Tuesday ages 3 ½ to 5 4:30-5:15 pm

Starting Jan. 8, Dynamic Kids BK!’s 10-week-long afterschool breakdancing program, Tues. 6 and up 3:30-4:30 pm

“Family Yoga, Ages For toddlers, “Imag- 4-7” on Jan. 19 at 10 ine That! With Child’s am Play NY” for twoand three-year-olds (and their caregivers) will be held on Thursdays at 10 am, beginning Jan. 10.

in times for kids and parents, which allows them to congregate in a 1,000-square-foot living room and backyard (weather permitting). People have access to free coffee, tea, books, lists of local resources, a work space, a play space for kids and a rotating calendar of experts to consult with informally. Community drop-in rates are $10/daily at the door, $120/monthly membership ($60 for summer months), and $650/ six-month membership. The duo also offer their room for free every Wednesday night — as a way to give back to the community, according to Gersten — for local organizations and non-profits who would like to host a meeting, workshop or event.

The space also offers a variety of support groups, classes and workshops that deal with birthing, breastfeeding, music, art and more.

Gersten says that a wellness collective just for

Middle schoolers (ages 11 and 12) can partake in an 11-week-long photo/ video student course on Thursdays, 4:306:30 pm, until March 28.

grown-ups, featuring therapists, lactation consultants and doulas for example, is in the works for 2019.

“The whole point of starting this was to make it parent-centered, but we found that parents are less likely to spend money on

“Diet Starts Monday: Finding the Right Diet for You” on Jan. 8 at 7 pm “5 Myths About Women & Money” on Jan. 9 at 5:30 pm (covering life events that affect women’s finances; hosted by Jeannie Jackson); Getting Messy with First Time Eaters” on Jan. 12 at 10 am

themselves than they are on their kids,” she said. “So we’re trying to make this wellness collective so it’s sort of like a one-stop place for all different kinds of help for parents.”

The Great Room (194 Columbia Street) is open every day from 9 am to 8 pm. For more information, call

48 Sullivan Street, Brooklyn Phone: 718-576-3443 Fax: 718-576-3840 learningwheelchildcare@gmail.com

Above: Susannah Gersten.

Right: The Kid’s room. Below: the livingroom. Photos courtesy of The

Infant-Toddler Program Now Accepting Preschool Applications for ages 3-5 We accept ACS & HRA vouchers Enroll today & receive your first month of diapers and formula FREE Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 7:30 am-6:30pm Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner Extracurricular activities vary by day!

Spanish • Arts and Sciences • Music • Cooking • Sports

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

January 2019, Page 29

STAR REVUE HEALTHY LIVING Passion for Pilates Jen Nelson on Red Hook Pilates

By Erin DeGregorio Pilates, named after a physical trainer, is a method of low-impact exercise and body conditioning performed on a mat. It strengthens muscles and joints, and improves posture, flexibility, balance, body alignment and circulation. The combination of breathing techniques and stretching help to reduce stress and can create an overall sense of well-being.

Jen Nelson operates Red Hook Pilates, on Van Brunt Street. “It’s really about how to use your mind and control your muscle groups, and to really understand your alignment and how things are moving between your muscle groups and your skeleton,” she says.

Pilates targets the core muscles (e.g. abdominals, pelvic floor, lower back muscles) while simultaneously strengthening and improving the mobility, stability and alignment of the spine, pelvis and shoulder girdle. While Pilates is known to be an exercise for strengthening and working out, it’s also helpful with rehabilitation and becoming more

body-aware. Nelson said she always hears from her clients that they find themselves standing a little bit straighter or being more aware of their shoulder posture.

“A lot of times we’re taught bad habits with exercise and sometimes you can take what you learn in Pilates and transfer it to something else that you do, if you’re physically active,” Nelson explained. “It can make a difference with your endurance, strength and preventing injuries from happening if people are athletic or lifting weights.”

Classic Pilates mat work is a series of exercises performed in a particular order and work the full body.

The classic mat exercises entail a combination of breathing, stretching and movement to improve body alignment, muscle tone, core strength, balance and flexibility.

More modern methods of Pilates mat work focus on the basic principles of classic Pilates, but utilize props like stability balls, foam rollers and yoga blocks. These props often enhance the intensity of the workout by adding resistance and

balancing challenges to the exercises.

Nelson’ Pilates classes, which are a combination of classic and modern, can be modified and adapted for people of all levels of fitness, age ranges and body types. Private Pilates sessions, individually tailored to suit each client’s personal goals, are a perfect introduction to the exercise for beginners, or can add to a more intermediate or advanced client’s practice, according to Nelson’s website. A private session with equipment for 55-minutes costs $80, and a private mini-session with equipment for 30-minutes costs $40.

Before the longtime Red Hook resident opened her studio in Dec. 2013, Nelson took Pilates in a gym after a hip injury and fell in love with it. Soon after, she got her own Mat certification and rented out spaces from venues like Cora Dance and Cobble Hill Ballet to teach classes.

Once she began to build up her clientele, she decided to get another Mat certification, so she could work with a variety of people and their injuries.

“I ended up going to a small studio in Park Slope [Indigo Pilates] that offered certification and the owner convinced me to do the entire certification with the machines and everything. As I was finishing that certification, I fell into an opportunity to open my studio in Red Hook,” Nelson explained. “It just seemed like a great opportunity at the time. I felt like … everyone was

Acupuncture continued from page 28 circulation; triggering the activity of the body’s natural painkillers; and stimulating the body’s natural healing response.

“Studies indicate that acupuncture releases endorphins that bind to opiate receptors, which decreases pain and inflammation.

Acupuncture can help manipulate both the connective tissue and motor neurons in muscle tissue affecting the contraction and release of muscles,” Morris said. “This form of manipulation with the needles helps to reset muscular balance.”

A common misconception people have about acupuncture is that it hurts, as thin needles are inserted all over the body. While acupuncture shouldn’t hurt if needles are properly inserted, Morris said that it can sometimes be a little uncomfortable. She explained that some people can experience itchiness, achiness, numbness, heat, electrical tinge, tingling or a heaviness — also known as “Qi” sensations.

But she reassures her clients that

Page 30 Red Hook Star-Revue

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A student demonstrates equipment at Red Hook Pilates.

Photo courtesy of Jen Nelson and Red Hook Pilates

going to think I was crazy to open a Pilates studio here.”

About a year and a half into opening the business, Nelson was diagnosed with breast cancer and managed to keep the business up and running. She explained to this paper that she took a breast cancer exercise certification course with the Pink Ribbon Program towards the end of her treatment, in order to learn more about working with breast cancer survivors. Along with her regular local clients, Nelson has since formed a community of cancer survivors, those of multiple different stages and those newly diagnosed.

“I decided to start a breast cancer support group [in September 2017] that I hold once a month,” she said. “It’s been really great for everyone attending to find a casual space to meet and talk - not only to share stories, but information as well.”

For more information about Red Hook Pilates (414 Van Brunt Street), contact Nelson directly at redhookpilates@gmail.com or visit redhookpilates.com/.

they are in control during the treatment, being able to let her know when to stop or when to remove a needle at any time.

Another misconception is that acupuncture only includes the insertion of needles. Acupuncture treatment comes in many other forms, including: acupressure (pressure to acupuncture points), moxibustion (an herb used to heat specific acupuncture points), tui na (a style of bodywork/massage), gua sha (scraping the skin with a specialized tool), cupping (glass or plastic cups placed on the skin to create suction), TDP lamp (therapeutic heat therapy), press tacks and ear seeds (used for continuous pressure to acupuncture points as a take-home treatment) and electrical stimulation (a mild electrical current applied to the needles for continuous stimulation to acupuncture points).

Element Natural Healing Arts is open weekdays (9 am-9:30 pm) and weekends (9 am-8:30 pm). Visit elementhealing.com for more in-

January 2019

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STAR REVUE HEALTHY LIVING Cholesterol: The Latest, Official Erin DeGregorio interviews Dr. George Fernaine

I

n Nov. 2018 the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association released new guidelines on managing cholesterol to minimize the risk of heart attack, stroke and death. This is the first time the guidelines have been updated since 2013. They recommend a more detailed, personalized approach in risk assessments and advocate for more aggressive treatment with statin therapy and getting low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C, or commonly referred to as “bad cholesterol”) to target level — generally less than 100 mg/dL; and, for those with risk factors, less than 70 mg/dL. As stated in the guideline’s preamble, “Guidelines are intended to define practices meeting the needs of patients in most, but not all, circumstances, and should not replace clinical judgment.” This document is available on the websites of the American College of Cardiology (www.acc.org) and the American Heart Association (professional. heart.org).

Dr. George Fernaine, chief of cardiology at NYU Langone Hospital — Brooklyn, spoke with us and discussed what LDL-C levels people should strive for; the use of statins; and how people can control their cholesterol levels with lifestyle modifications.

RHSR: In layman’s terms, what are the biggest changes to the guidelines, and what can people do to better adhere to them?

GF: I think the big take-home message is that you really have to reduce your cholesterol in order to reduce the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, the potential of having strokes, heart attacks and aneurysms. So what you can do is eat a healthier, prudent diet — try to stay away from salt, fast food, fatty meats; concentrate more on fish, chicken [and] turkey. Increase your exercise activity to five times a week and cardiovascular exercise more so than just lifting. It’s important to see a doctor, even as early as the age of 20 to see whether

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you’re at risk for heart disease and to have your cholesterol checked.

Cholesterol issues start happening at an early age, even before you’re a teenager, so one of the best things parents can do is to teach kids how to eat properly at a young age so they don’t develop bad habits.

RHSR: How often should people check their cholesterol levels?

GF: It depends on your risk profile. You should check it once [a year]. If it’s normal and your risk profile isn’t too bad, [check it] every 12 months or a little over every 12 months.

If it’s high and something that requires medication or dietary modification, you may have to check it every three months until you get it under control.

RHSR: What LDL-C levels should people strive for?

GF: Again, it all depends on your risk profile. For example, sometimes the goal is just to reduce it by 50% of what you started off with, depending on your risk profile. If you’ve had a heart attack or a stroke, the hard number is 70 or less. It’s definitely a moving target. People don’t understand that they can see their doctor and their cholesterol is fine — and that’s absolutely true.

But within that year, if you develop diabetes or you’ve had a heart attack, all of a sudden what would’ve been a normal cholesterol for you, without those conditions, becomes extremely abnormal.

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January 2019, Page 31

STARªREVUE SPORTS SUMMIT BOYS CONTINUE THEIR WINNING WAYS

By Nathan Weiser The Summit Academy boys basketball team continued their winning ways as they defeated the Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance (Bedford Stuyvesant) 110-78 on December 17.

After the decisive win over the Bulls, who are in the Brooklyn B North division, Summit is now 11-1 overall and 7-0 in the Brooklyn B division. Five of their seven B division wins have been by at least 10 points.

Monday’s game, in front of a partially filled bleachers at Summit, had five Eagles score in double figures with two players leading the way. Junior point guard Jordan Council scored 38 points with five 3-pointers, junior Donte Howard scored 29 points with 22 points

in the second half, senior Shamal Grant Jr. scored 10 points, junior Amere Ward scored 10 points and junior Dylan Rawlings scored 10 points with eight coming in the second half.

The Summit Eagles previously beat Brooklyn College Academy 6645 on Saturday 12/15 and defeated EBC/Bushwick Leaders 70-57 on Friday 12/14.

Summit has now won four games in a row since their only loss of the season to A division William E. Grady High by nine points.

The game between Summit and Grady was close until the end when Summit had a few turnovers towards the end of the 4th quarter in the away game.

Council and Howard, who were the two leading scorers for Summit, have a family connection and

Summit practice.

Photo by Nathan Weiser the coach was proud of how they stepped up in the second half.

“They are actually cousins,” Grant said. “They both played well, especially Jordan. He took control.

Jordan took control and settled us down. Both of them made a lot of shots in the second half. Those two played really well today.”

The score was 51-27 at the half but the coach emphasized better overall defense after committing 15 fouls in the first half.

Council, who scored a team-high 38 points and averaged a team-high 16 points per game last year as a

PAVE BASKETBALL MIXES SPORTS WITH BRAINS Charles Escalante is the basketball coach at Red Hook’s PAVE Charter School, which educates kids through the 8th grade. He is in his second year with PAVE “I used to coach, with the principal here, in prep school in New England,” Escalante said. “We were in the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) and a lot of kids who played in that league went onto play in the ACC and get scholarships to good schools. I have tried to expose our kids to the hard work that they need to do and how much school and their grades matter and that they can’t just be athletes.”

A major change that the secondyear coach has made has been expanding the team to include all grades of middle school as opposed to just seventh and eighth grade.

“I am trying to build an actual program so kids get a little more competitive,” Escalante said. “Some kids know that their role on the team isn’t necessarily a lot of playing time, but more that you are going to practice, you are going to get better, so that by the time you are an 8th grader you have been doing this for four years instead of ‘hey I am a 7th grader, this is my first time on the team. This is the approach I have taken.”

He has emphasized holding the kids accountable during the school day with consequences for the team if individuals slip up. If a kid has to go to detention the entire team will pay it for during their next practice through extra conditioning drills.

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SKILL DEVELOPMENT “A lot of them love to play playground basketball where it is just get the ball and see what happens,” Escalante said. “We practice basics which is get the ball, slow down and think about what you are going to do. We are teaching them to find the point guard, slow down and run the play.”

Escalante has tried to implement more of a “program.” This entails having the kids play basketball year-round and having the kids know that progress reports are expected.

“Sports taught me a lot,” Es-

By Nathan Weiser ginning, he was able to participate locally, with the Miccio Community Center to participate in their tournament as well as be in the CSAA, which starts in January.

One of the schools that the play against in the CSAA is BASIS and the rest are spread all around Brooklyn Pave is the only school in the Miccio tournament. The other teams, in which there are about seven, are composed of kids involved in Miccio programs.

PAVE Basketball Photo by Nathan Weiser The emphasis on not getting detention as well as performing in the classroom is new to PAVE athletes.

“The habits they pick up in the school day and in class also translate as an athlete,” Escalante said.

“If you are lazy in the classroom you are lazy on the court. I want to instill in them that you have to come to school in order to play.”

sophomore, had high expectations from his coach coming into the season and he is living up to them.

“This is what I expected from him (Jordan),” Grant said. “I expected him to be our leader. He is doing a great job being our leader.

Whenever it gets out of hand he comes in and settles us down. He makes some big shots. This is what I expected from him in his junior year.”

Summit’s next game is on January 4.

HIGH SCHOOL calante said. “It is supposed to be fun but it’s also to learn life skills. If you can set a foundation for that it would be easy for someone to come in and take over if I am not around.”

An aspect of getting the kids to play year-round entails setting some of them up with AAU teams.

“Middle School principal Geoff Fenelus helped me set up one of the kids to get on the AAU team New Heights.” Escalante said. “He is an alum from that program.”

CSAA Last year Escalante’s got the kids more exposure by having them participate in a Harlem league.

The coach thought this was a beneficial experience for the kids because many of them had not been to Harlem or left the borough before this 10-game stint in upper Manhattan.

This year, since Escalante knew he would be serving as Athletic Director and had more of a say in what would happen from the be-

www.star-revue.com

Escalante believes that three of the four 8th graders on the team this year will play basketball in high school if the trend of working hard continues.

The director of high school placement, Ms. Myers, works diligently with every 8th grader on placing them in the best high school that meets their academic needs whether it be private, catholic or public.

“I had the pleasure of working with her last year and got to know her,” Escalante said. “From the moment they become 8th graders in July until the moment they graduate, Ms. Myers is working with them to find the best possible fit. She contacts every family, she is in touch with everyone, she sets up testing and does whatever she needs to do.”

About 10 of the 15 players live in Red Hook. The other five had their parents grow up in Red Hook and live elsewhere now and but sent their kids to Pave because they are still involved in the community.

January 2019

Star Revue 

Focus

Evergreen Liquor Store

E

e Evergreen Liquor Stor

vergreen Liquor Store, located in the Columbia Street Waterfront District, has breadth and depth of spirits and wines for any upcoming occasion. The store manager said Bulleit Bourbon and Jameson Irish Whiskey are the most popular brands of dark liquors there. Additionally, Tito’s Vodka, an original Craft Vodka produced in Austin, Texas, is the number one brand purchased in the store. And, of course, sparkling champagne is the most popular purchase for New Year’s Eve. Evergreen Liquor Store can be found at 196 Columbia Street and can be reached at 718-643-0739. Business hours are the following: Mondays through Thursdays 11 am-10:30 pm; Fridays and Saturdays 11 am-11:30 pm; and Sundays 1-9 pm.

Lil Larry’s Liquor and Wine

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Lil’ Larry’s Liquor and Wine

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Page 12 Red Hook Star-Revue

arry – owner of Lil Larry’s Liquor and Wine (54 Lorraine Street) – told this paper that Hennessy is the neighborhood’s number one cognac and that Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey is “growing fast” in popularity. Bacardi Rum, according to Larry, is the most popular rum purchased to make coquito – a coconutbased Christmas drink, similar to eggnog that originated in Puerto Rico. And speaking of eggnog, he also said that while it’s a seasonal drink that’s generally made and consumed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, he’s found that it’s a favorite all year round.

Lil Larry’s Liquor and Wine, which can be reached at 718-624-0200, is open Mondays through Thursdays 8 am-11 pm; Fridays and Saturdays 8 am-11:30 pm; and Sundays noon-6 pm.

Scotto’s Wine Cellar

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cotto’s Wine Cellar, which originally opened in 1909 prior to Prohibition on Hicks Street, reopened in February 1934 at its present-day location of 318 Court Street. Current owner James Benedetto purchased the store from Grace Scotto, the original owner’s granddaughter, in 1989. He told our newspaper that wines from California, France, Italy and South America are most popular for gift-giving during the holiday season.

He also said champagne and prosecco are most commonly bought for New Year’s Eve celebrations. The store carries a variety of wines Scotto’s Wine Cellar that are imported from Photo: instagram around the world, as well as other spirits, including – but not limited to – tequila, rum and whiskey (most popular being Rye, Scotch and Bourbon, according to Benedetto).

Scotto’s Wine Cellar, which will be celebrating its 85th anniversary this year, is one of the oldest wine shops in New York. It’s open Mondays through Saturdays 9 am-9 pm, and Sundays noon6 pm. For more information, call 718-875-5530 or visit its official website at brooklynwine.com.

Big J’s Wines & Liquor

B

ig J’s Wines & Liquors recently opened up on Clinton Street, after a successful run in the Parthmark Mall on the other side of Hamilton Avenue. Unfortunately, Pathmark closed and mall traffic died.

An employee told us that their most popular wine brand is Robert Mondavi – specifically Heritage, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon to name a few varieties.

He also said Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Red Moscato, Pink Moscato and Moscato from Barefoot are other popular choices. In terms of whiskey, Maker’s Mark, Bulleit Rye and Jack Daniel’s are fan favorites.

Big J’s Wines & Liquors is located at 581 Clinton Street and can be reached at 718-499-0606.

Il Vignetto Fine Wine & Spirits

A

s the name suggests, Il Vignetto Fine Wine & Spirits is most known for its sparkling wines and port wines, which come in a variety of sweetness and colors and types of ageing. The store manager also said bourbon is a popular purchase by the neighborhood’s residents. Fun fact: Did you know all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon? Il Vignetto Fine Wine & Spirits is located at 145 Union Street and can be reached at 718-422-1145. It’s open Mondays through Saturdays noon-10 pm, and Sundays noon-9 pm.

www.star-revue.com

Story and photos by Erin DeGregorio

January 2019

Red Hook Star-Revue

Wet Whistle Wines

W

et Whistle Wines has been selling different kinds and brands of wine since opening in Red Hook last year on January 19. Co-owner Cory Hill, who has more than three decades Wet Whistle Wine experience in the hospitality business Photo: wetwhistlewines.com and has spent the past decade in wine and spirits sales, told the paper that red wine is most commonly purchased during wintertime and that sparkling wine is most commonly consumed during celebrations.

According to its official website, Wet Whistle Wines carries wines that are “perfect in a variety of situations – an everyday bottle to drink while cooking dinner or to have with that dinner, wines for a snowy day stew, special wines to take to parties, and some nicer wines as gifts for friends and special occasions. And there will be wines for holding on to, that will try MA C AND improve over C the years as they Passe HEESE with age.” rina Ita

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The store offers the following discounts: 5% off any purchase of six wine bottles or more, 10% off any wine case purchase, and 15% off of two or more cases.

Located at 357 Van Brunt Street, Wet Whistle Wines is open every day: Mondays 4-9 pm; Tuesdays through Thursdays noon-9 pm; Fridays and Saturdays noon-10 pm; and Sundays noon-8 pm. For more information, call 718-576-3143 or go online at wetwhistlewines. com.

Big J’s Wines’ & Liquor

www.star-revue.com

January 2019, Page 25