Red Hook Star-Revue, August 2022

the red hook

Brian & George's Ukrainian Odyssey #4, page 7

STAR REVUE

AUGUST 2022

FREE

INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

RHAP becomes a Van Brunt neighbor

I

by Brian Abate

n 2009, the Red Hook Art Project (RHAP,) a non-profit was founded in order to provide free visual art and music classes, as well as academic and stress management instruction to children in the neighborhood.

Now, thirteen years later, RHAP is going strong and is opening up a new building on the corner of Van Brunt St. and Pioneer Street, Tiffiney Davis, the Executive Director and co-founder was kind enough to talk to me about the organization and how it has changed her life.

Though Davis did not always live in Red Hook, her father’s side of the family is from the area.

“Red Hook was my first apartment when I came out of the shelter system as I got accepted for NYCHA,” Davis said. “My children went to PS 27 and that’s how I met Deirdre Swords and we ended up founding RHAP together.”

Davis started off as the Parent Coordinator for RHAP from 2009-2014, then became Managing Director in 2014, and then the Executive Director in 2021. The organization has certainly had a big impact on Davis’ family.

“RHAP has changed my life and my children’s lives,” Davis said. “I have two kids who went to the organization. My son Tashawn, AKA Whaffle,

is a very successful artist and was also the first student of the organization. Seeing him get accepted into art school, get scholarships, and to see his work in museums is incredible.

“My daughter went through struggles and used music as a way to write and deal with her emotions. She ended up graduating from high school a year early, went on to cosmetology school, and now is a phenomenal entrepreneur. Seeing both of my children go through the organization and now become successful has made me really happy and inspired me to continue to go on and continue the work that we do.”

She spoke about a few of RHAP’s other successful students.

“We have all successful students but here are a few who stand out: Brimaldi recently graduated from Murrow High School,” Davis said. “We helped him build his art portfolio and supported him in academics as well, so seeing Brimaldi graduate was really one of the highlights of the organization.

“We helped another student, Lizbeth, build her art and music portfolio and she ended up getting accepted at LaGuardia High School and now

(continued on page 7)

Tiffiney Davis (right) visiting with some of her nieces and nephews recently. (photo courtesy of the Facebook page of Tiffiney Davis)

Addabo workers want a piece of the pandemic pie

by Brian Abate

H

ealthcare workers gathered outside the Addabbo Family Health Center, 120 Richard Street on July 28th to picket as cars driving by honked in support of their cause.

They chanted, “What do we want? A contract! When do we want it?

Now! If we don’t get it? Shut it down! If we don’t get it? Shut it down!”

“Our contract expired in September and we’ve been coming in to work in good faith since then,” said Carolyn Fortune, a nurse at the Addabbo Center and delegate for 1199SEIU, the healthcare union. “We’re here to help others but now we’re reaching out to the public for support because we need a new contract.”

A flyer the healthcare workers handed out as they picketed said “Our employer has come to the bargaining table more than once without any meaningful proposals.”

Addabbo staff pickets in front of the facility at 120 Richard Street. (photo by Abate)

Elvis appears in the Star-Revue for possibly the first time... turn to page 14 and Rock your Plimsoul!!

Healthcare workers from the Addabbo Center have another grievance too.

The flyer also said that “during the COVID-19 pandemic, management received millions of dollars from the state and federal government, not to mention local government representatives meant to continue servicing the public.”

“We continued working throughout the pandemic but we have not received any hazard pay yet,” Fortune said. “ We were given a piece of paper thanking us but that doesn’t help us pay the bills. It’s a very frustrating situation for us.”

The healthcare workers feel that the Addabbo Center is taking advantage of them and they unanimously voted in favor of picketing according to Fortune.

The flyer concluded by saying “Please call management [ask for Miriam Vega CEO] at (718) 945-7150 extension 6233 and ask her to give us a fair contract!”

I tried calling but have not yet received a comment on the situation.

“The next step for us is to take a vote on whether to strike or not,” Fortune said.

“We don’t want it to come to that but we’ll have to see what happens with the contract negotiations. We’re here and we’ve been here throughout the pandemic to serve the community and we’re also 1199 strong. We’d just like to have some appreciation and respect from management.”

the red hook

STAR REVUE

Malai ice cream is on the menu this summer

481 Van Brunt Street, 8A Brooklyn, NY 11231 (718) 624-5568 www.star-revue.com george@redhookstar.com

Editor & Publisher George Fiala News

Nathan Weiser Brian Abate

Features

Erin DeGregorio

Culture

Roderick Thomas

Overseas man Rock

Dario Muccilli Kurt Gottschalk

Jazz

George Grella

Film

Dante A. Ciampaglia

Books

Michael Quinn

Cartoon

Marc Jackson

WebMaster

Tariq Manon

Design

George Fiala

Kids Editor

Marie Heuston

Merry Band of Contributors Michael Cobb Joe Enright Michael Fiorito Jack Grace Mike Morgan Nino Pantano

“Best Community Publication”

FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email george@redhookstar.com.

The Red Hook Star-Revue is published every month.

by Erin DeGregorio Why did the reporter get ice cream? Because she needed the inside scoop!

T

here’s nothing more satisfying than having that first spoonful or lick of your favorite flavored ice cream on a hot summer day. I experienced that firsthand during New York City’s most recent heat wave during a trip to Malai Ice Cream, an ice cream shop located at 268 Smith Street over in Carroll Gardens.

Malai was the perfect respite as the heat index reached 99 by mid-afternoon on a cloudless, humid Friday last month—also coincidentally deemed National Ice Cream Month.

I spoke with owner Pooja Bavishi as kids and adults alike walked in to stay cool with a treat.

A first-generation Indian American, Bavishi founded Malai in 2015 after she discovered that the same South Asian spices of her childhood—ginger, rose petals, saffron, and cardamom—could be used to robustly flavor ice creams in a way that she had never tasted before. She set a goal as she sold her product at local food fairs and markets on the weekends. “I wanted—and still want—to make these flavors so mainstream so that it feels as typical and normal to pull a pint of masala chai out of your grocery store freezer, as it is a pint of cookies and cream,” Bavishi said while also pointing out flavors like lemon cardamom, orange fennel, and mango and cream.

In less than five years, Bavishi launched a wholesale business that began shipping nationwide and selling pints in select grocery stores and opened her local retail shop.

Soon after celebrating the one-year anniversary of the flagship store on

March 2, 2020, however, Malai completely shut down for three months due to the pandemic. Wholesale business luckily boomed, and the shop reopened for to-go sales, sustaining the business and introducing more people to her non-mainstream flavors of eggless ice cream.

“Since day one, my favorite part of the business has been providing moments of joy in people’s everyday lives when they’re treating themselves to something at Malai,” Bavishi said. “We’re doing that through South Asian culture and awareness.

I love it when I see people trying new flavors, especially one that they didn’t think they would like, and watching their faces light up.”

So, what has consistently been the most popular flavor since 2015? Rose with cinnamon roasted almonds according to sales and word of mouth.

“Rose-flavored desserts, which are very common in the Middle East and South Asia, were things that I grew up with. Because I did not go to a single family get-together without having rose ice cream, I absolutely knew that I wanted something like that on the menu, but with a twist,” Bavishi explained. “Rose and pistachios, as well as rose and cardamom, are very commonly put together [separately in pairs], but I did rose and almond and rose and cinnamon. Customers expect this floral, perfumey kind of flavor that some may think could be off putting, but when they taste it, it’s actually sweet and floral in a non-overpowering way, with the cinnamon and almonds really cutting through in a way that’s really warming and comforting.”

Summer seasonal scoops on the menu right now include sweet corn saffron (based off of a corn pudding that Bavishi’s aunt in India makes),

Pooja Bavishistands in front of her Smith Street ice cream shop that specializes in flavors unusual for us. (photo by Erin DeGregorio)

fig on fig (toasted fig leaves infused in the ice cream base and dried fig jam swirled in), and strawberry pie (a star anise ice cream base with a swirl of strawberry fennel jam and an Indian tea biscuit crust).

Malai also serves homemade ice cream sandwiches, kulfi pops, and sorbets that include flavors like cilantro mint, lychee, and my favorite , pineapple pink peppercorn.

"So, what has consistently been the most popular flavor since 2015? Rose with cinnamon roasted almonds."

Founded June 2010

by George Fiala and Frank Galeano with thanks to these guys

Page 2 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

August 2022

Opinion: Words by George Food Bazaar is a Red Hook perk We are lucky to have Food Bazaar in the neighborhood Before I ever made Red Hook my stomping ground, I had been to Fairway, Food Bazaar's antecedent. Not so much to shop, but to take various people, including my daughter, for a fine lunch of a whole broiled chicken with sides, and the Statue of Liberty in the background.

One year I took my staff there for a fun business lunch on the outdoor picnic tables. I remember passing by IKEA, which was still under construction. That was on our way to take Evelyn home. Evelyn lives on Mill Street and worked for my mailing company, which was in those days on Court Street, in a storefront now occupied

by Court Grocers.

About four years later I moved around a little and ended up starting this paper. One of our first stories looked at whether IKEA's opening had been good for local business. Writer Kevin O'Hanlon wrote "Anyone who is involved with the community will tell you that Red Hook is one of Brooklyn's oldest and best-kept secrets.

With more and more people coming to the neighborhood, hopefully the secret can be let out, which can really only benefit the community."

I think what let the cat out of the bag came a few years later with Hurricane Sandy, which put us in national headlines. There had been many reasons that kept people away, crime among them, which started back when we were a shipping town, which along with hardy longshoremen featured crime figures that feasted on them.

Another impediment was transportation. When I got here, the big complaint was bad bus service. So much so, that one of our resident celebrities, Michael Buscemi, produced a short

movie called B51.

Eventually that was fixed, and now you can see when the next one is arriving by checking your phone. Also, bicycles became more prevalent as well as the Revel, the short term rental electric scooter. All these things have made Red Hook more accessible.

However, despite the fact that a number of new homes have been built in the neighborhood since then, we still don't have a hardware store or a bank. But we are graced with a pretty great supermarket. According to Greg O'Connell, Red Hook's largest property owner who started developing these properties in 1992, it was his idea that a good place to buy food was essential for the growth of any neighborhood.

One of his tenants was an olive importer who just happened to be a part-owner of Fairway, a gourmet supermarket on Broadway and 74th in Manhattan that was a family business kind of like Zabars.

He convinced them to open up what was to be their third location and Fairway came here in 2006. It soon become their largest grossing store. They continued to expand, and the family which was by then into their third or fourth generation of ownership, began to think of leaving the business (with a lot of cash, of course).

And then, the hurricane happened, right before their planned stock offering. Reopening was very important in the corporate sense, and they were able to do so by March 2013. They sold the stock and the family members left, and in my opinion the store, now operated by a corporation, lost something.

In 2016 they declared bankruptcy, and by 2020 they had to sell. Initially, nobody was interested in the Red Hook location, but some bargaining

by Greg O'Connell Jr, according to

his own social media post, brought us Food Bazaar, a chain known to me by advertising on baseball games, and to others in NY by their big selection, meats especially, and a large seletion of ethnic food.

The Star-Revue office is directly across the street from Food Bazaar, and so I am there just about every day. In fact, right now I'm eating a bowl of Barbara's Puffins with some cold fat-free milk that I just bought there.

In the old days, when I patronized Pathmark, a cheap and similarly large supermarket on the other side of Hamilton Avenue, I would have probably bought something more ordinary, like Rice Krispies. Food Bazaar is just as home selling Krispies as they are selling Puffins, which is a way to say that they really cater to the neighborhoods their stores are located in. maybe another name of Red Hook could be Puffin Krispy, representing our diversity.

So anyway, getting back to the theme of this essay, for a relatively slightly populated neighborhood, we are graced with a great place to buy food, not to mention have lunch (or breakfast or an early dinner).

A year or so ago, there was some social media grousing about not so fresh fruit and vegetables that they were selling. The response that I kept to myself at the time was that no matter where you shop, it's a good idea to always check dates, when there are dates, check smells, textures and color when there aren't. That would even go for the fancy places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, were I to shop at those places.

My girlfriend is one of those who patronizes Whole Food, and sometimes

me

I have to go with her. That experience makes me appreciate Food Bazaar that much more. I'm old now, and grew up in different times, when a supermarket was simply a supermarket.

When I go to Whole Foods I feel like I'm in some kind of fancy night club where everybody goes to be seen and show off how organic and healthy and eco-friendly they are. I'm more at home in a regular kind of store.

One last thing - I noticed a sign a while ago advertising free trips on the weekend from both Mill and also Lorraine Streets to Food Bazaar every half hour. I know it must be a pain to lug a shopping cart from there to go food shopping. I've seen people do it.

I asked the manager whether they still do it, and he said no, because hardly anybody took the mini-bus, which the store paid for. I asked him how he let people know about it, because I really didn't see many posters aside from the one on the store. Paul Lee, the manager, told me that they tried to let people know on social media.

Well, I told him we have unsocial media, but I'd let people know. He said that if there is a demand for it, he'll bring it back. So in case you want a free shuttle to Fairway from the Houses, let Manager Lee know. He's a nice guy.

Red Hook has two ways to market your business - print and mail. Tried and true.

THAT’s ROMANCE, CAT STeVENS! BY MARC JACKS0N

KRUNCH!! CTRHAWSHA!CKW!OP!

sHHCHUNKA!

MARCMAKeSC0MiCS.CO.UK

Red Hook Star-Revue

mj

AiiiiiEEEE!!

AHHHH...

M0DERN ROMANCe.

©COPYRIGHT 2022 MARC JACKSON AND WEiRD0 COMiCS #3

George Fiala, SELECT MAIL THE RED HOOK STAR-REVUE 481 Van Brunt Street, 8A Brooklyn, NY 11231

www.star-revue.com

gbrook@pipeline.com

August 2022, Page 3

Red Hook Regatta returns to Valentino Pier

T

he sixth annual Red Hook Regatta took place at Valentino Pier on July 23 and it is the only 3D printed boat race in the world.

It was a hot summer day and many people came to enjoy an array of activities and watch the 3D printed homemade boats compete in the flowing water.

They was a place where where people could tie dye Red Hook Regatta shirts.

There was an oyster shucking workshop with The Real Mothershuckers.

The Brooklyn Public Library and RETI Center had tables with information and the event was DJ’d by Bene Coopersmith, Van Brunt Street's world famous musical empresario.

The boats raced in some choppy waves that came in. There was a massive oil tanker cargo ship and NYC Ferry boats that went by in the distance.

The Red Hook Regatta is organized by Pioneer Works and produced by Noah D’Orazio.

Other Pioneer Works staff did lots of community outreach to make the event happen the way it did this year.

D’Orazio’s main focus was on the boat building aspects and tying everything together at the end. He was the boat mechanic and focused on teaching classes to Harbor School students.

The general DIY race started at 2 pm with four boats and it lasted for 15 minutes. The second heat started at

by Nathan Weiser 2:35 with a five second countdown.

Each boat received a point after their teams’ fishing rod from the pier picked up a brick, supplied by Pioneer Works, from the boat.

The First official 3D printed race started at 3:05 pm. The winner in this category won three points.

There was then a halftime show on the beach from a band called Bombayo, an African music and dance tradition developed in Puerto Rico. People danced to the music.

“It is never too hot to dance, that is our medicine,” the drummer said.

After the performance, another 3D printed boat race took place, this time with five boats. The announcer said before this heat that “it’s the coolest summer of the rest of your life.”

Each team tried to get as many bricks picked up as possible from their boat in 15 minutes. The Gowanus Roadsters, who won in 2017, won the overall competition with eight points and Everything Must Go came in second place with five points.

All of the boats that were still intact and survived the previous races participated in a need-for-speed race at 4:35. After a countdown all the boats took off.

Pioneer Works paid for gift cards from Ample Hills Creamery. Gowanus Roadsters won a $100 gift card and two others were given out to the second and third place winners.

Niels Brouwers, who won the competition with the Gowanus Roadsters boat, was looking forward to ice cream.

There was a young kid who wanted to know the date of next year’s Regatta since he was really looking forward to participating again.

Anyone is encouraged to participate in the Regatta.

It was a regal Regatta in Red Hook! (photo by Weiser) “Everything is free,” D’Orazio said. “We D’Orazio said. “I worked with a class try to keep everything free so anybody of Harbor School students for six can do it and we want to encourage weeks on 3D design and 3D printing.” people of all ages and all walks of life to D’Orazio worked on teaching the stuparticipate in the Red Hook Regatta.” dents about constructing the boats The teams could get creative with their with the creator of the event, Dave design and one that stood out was the Sheinkopf. He is really good with 3D post office team. Their entry was a DIY design. one and it had a strong aesthetic and They mapped out the curriculum so was built using a basket. they could be done with the 3D dePioneer Works reached out on Instasign concepts in three weeks. They gram to get participants involved and then did 3D printing, had a day for many also came from their partnerbuilding, a day for electric and a day ship with the Harbor School on Govfor testing. ernor’s Island where they were taught about the process. The Harbor School During the Regatta, Brouwers most students raced in the event right be- enjoyed meeting all the other people at the event. He likes the energy durfore the need for speed race. ing the afternoon. The other person “They have a lot of nautical engion his team was controlling the boat neering classes in their curriculum,” from the pier.

"I have been a Red Hook neighbor for over 25 years"

Deborah Buscarello REALTOR®

Cell: 917.578.1991 Cell: 917.578.1991 Office: 718.766.7159 Office: 718.766.7159 Email: dbuscarello@kw.com Email: dbuscarello@kw.com KELLER WILLIAMS® STATEN ISLAND

1919 HYLAN BLVD., STATEN ISLAND, NY 10305

KELLER STATEN ISLAND EachWILLIAMS office is independently owned and operated 1919 Hylan Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10305 Each office is independently owned and operated

ORDER ONLINE AT

WetWhistleWines.com FOR PICK UP OR DELIVERY OR DOWNLOAD OUR MOBILE APP

Open Seven Days

WINE & SPIRITS

718-576-3143

357 Van Brunt St.

Advertise in this newspaper!

Write to:

george@redhookstar.com

Page 4 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

or call 917 652-9128

August 2022

Formula E celebrates our neighborhood

by Nathan Weiser

F

ormula E, which is the only all EV race car series, was at the Cruise Terminal in Red Hook for the fifth time with the Statue of Liberty in the background and they were a positive impact with many in the community again.

phone calls and put our team together,” Hopper said. “Our first people started last Friday in the credential center and then we have added more team members as the week has gone on and then race weekend is when 200 people will be working.”

Formula E races in cities all around the world including Mexico City, Jakarta, London, Berlin, Rome and Seoul. You might say it is like NASCAR on batteries.

Formula E works with the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative and the New York City Parks Department to do tree plantings in Red Hook in the vicinity of the race track.

The E Village is a fan zone adjacent to the track with food and entertainment. Formula E has again partnered with Red Hook establishments to supply food and refreshments during the two-day event.

“There will be tree plantings with our partner DHL taking place at Valentino Pier,” Hopper said. “There is a triangle on Columbia Street by PS 676 that the Parks Department oversees. There will be tree plantings in each of those locations and then we are also going to do a tree planting on Imlay near Pioneer Street.”

Red Hook Lobster Pound and Jam’It Bistro are back again this year. The Lobster Pound has been with Formula E each of the previous four years (there was no event in 2020) and Jam’It Bistro joined for the first time last year, according to Michael Hopper, who is with Advance Brand Consulting which handles local relations with Formula E all over the country.

They are planting 10 bigger trees and 40 smaller trees in collaboration with DHL to improve the local area.

They worked directly with the Parks Department and the chosen trees are native to New York and ones that will help with rain water uptake and C02.

La Newyorkina, which sells homemade cold treats of authentic Mexican tradition over on Commerce Street, will be at the event for the first time. Lobster Pound will have their food truck, Jam’It Bistro will have their own stand and La Newyorkina will have their pushcart with their frozen creamy popsicles.

Goodie bags at Cora

The catering at the event that takes place at Red Hook’s Brooklyn Cruise Terminal is through a New York based company called Krisp that hires predominantly Brooklyn residents to be the waiters and chefs.

“The goodie bags had miniature Formula E cars and as well as hats or tshirts,”

They worked hard to recruit locals to work during event weekend. Hopper's team put up flyers all over Red Hook.

“They let us know any previous experience they have with our events, and then we went through and made

Formula E will be giving out goodie bags to worthy places this year, one in Red Hook and one outside of Red Hook. A portion of the goodie bags went to The Brooklyn Children’s Hospital and on July 14 there was a party at Cora Dance where the gave out the rest of them.

Formula E was one of the title sponsors of Cora Dance’s Red Hook Prom this year and they try to do a lot with that organization.

Susan Saunders of NY Printing and Graphics, located at 481 Van Brunt Street, informs us that they silkscreened some Formula E Vest, and embroidered some hats, as well as

Formula E was a major sponsor in Cora Dance's fundraiser this year.

printing some post cards.

Formula E continued their community ticket donation program this year providing over 1,000 complimentary E Village passes to community residents.

They worked with local organizations including Red Hook BIZ, (a new business coalition) Red Hook Initiative, Red Hook Art Project and Portside.

These organizations publicized the link that had information about obtaining the complimentary passes for residents to enjoy.

A new and exciting feature of the E Village this year was a raised viewing platform so that the people in the E Village can get an elevated position to see the race. This improved view of the race was not available to people with E Village tickets in years past.

“We are really improving that experience for anybody that is going to be in the E Village this year,” Hopper said.

Another new addition for fans to partake in is a feature called inside the garage where they recreated what a Formula E team garage looks like. Fans got to go inside and get that unique experience.

Besides those aspects of the E Village, the fan zone featured live entertainment with a DJ playing music, the gaming area with driving simulators where fans can test their skills on a virtual Red Hook Formula E racetrack and lots of activities for kids to challenge their imagination and encourage their curiosity around sustainability.

Formula E and UNICEF. “We have a global partnership with UNICEF on all of their global climate related work,” Hopper said. “We started the partnership with UNICEF 18 months ago but that is something we are really trying to develop especially in the United States market.”

The partnership with UNICEF was showcased throughout the race weekend. There were UNICEF ads that were visible on TV in the attack mode, which is where the drivers could get a power boost.

“It has been designed in partnership with UNICEF children to showcase the partnership and to showcase the importance of climate change and social justice."

Formual E holds carbon conference

by Nathan Weiser Formula E organized a roundtable where executives talked about the past, current and future of electrification, sustainability and how Formula E fits into all of this.

In New York, Formula E has always concentrated on eliminating single use plastics and on waste management. They also have a strong social inclusion and progress program.

Attendees included Julia Palle, who is the Sustainability Director of Formula E, Adam Lake, head of Climate Week NYC, Christine Weydig, Sustainability Director of the Port Authority and Asaf Nagler from ABB, an electrification company.

The Port Authority said they have a net zero greenhouse gas reduction goal across everything that they oversee.

Formula E is the only racing circuit that is fully carbon neutral. They achieved this back in 2020.

In the New York area locally their impact includes having a land fill gas project that gets the hazardous gases and turns them into renewable energy and puts it back into the grid. They also have wind farms.

Red Hook Star-Revue

Lake spoke about Climate Week.

“We bring together business leaders, government leaders and activists to talk about various things that we can to to tackle climate change,” Lake said. “Also, I lead communications for climate group in North America so that brings together EV 100, RE 100 and many other interesting areas like concrete and steel.”

Formula E’s mission is to increase the awareness of EV and electrification on the streets of the world. Palle talked

about racing in New York.

“If we go to the US, which is a major automatic market in terms of production and car manufacturers, but also in terms of consumers, you have a lot of vehicles,” Palle said. She said the electric vehicle outlook and capacity has really increased in the eight years they have been around, which has led to many benefits.

confident that they were sending the right message.”

Getting each car to run the entire race had a positive impact on their footprint since they transported less around the world.

The Gen 3 car will be even faster and more powerful in terms of battery and they will be improving the charging.

Every four years the technology of the Formula E cars change. For the first four seasons, each driver had to race two cars per race because of the capacity of the battery.

“Obviously, if you drive an electric vehicle, your first questions is where am I going to charge, especially for long distances,” Palle said. “What we have worked on with ABB is the introduction of an ultra fast charging solution.”

“Those four years were about us working the range issue,” Palle said. “In four years, we doubled the battery capacity when we introduced Gen 2. Car manufacturers came into the championship at this time because they were

There has been a narrative that you had to do less travel and fly less to be more sustainable but Palle thinks that is wrong. Nobody would agree to go back on progress.

www.star-revue.com

August 2022, Page 5

SLAVA UKRAINI! Monthlong Ukrainian Film Festival

by Brian Abate

T

he Ukrainian Film Festival at the Ukrainian Institute of America (2 East 79th St. in Manhattan) began on July 26th and will end on August 31st. All screenings take place at 7 PM. I saw the movie Kruty 1918 (filmed in 2019,) which depicts events that are similar to the modern-day Russian invasion of Ukraine. They just happened to take place in 1918 instead of 2022.

The film focuses on a group of young men who are forced into service as the Bolshevik Army (the Soviets) advances toward Kyiv. The men are all students, including one who is a choir singer and they don’t have any experience in the military. One is a pacifist who decides that it’s his duty to fight for the independence and freedom of Ukraine.

They only have one week to train be-

fore they’re forced into battle.

All of them are likable people and they all enter the battle expecting to survive and go home despite their lack of training. One of the students is given a wool scarf knit by his father and some candy from his sister for his birthday and he keeps both with him as the students take the train and prepare for battle.

The Ukrainian unit consists of about 400 soldiers (mostly students) and they have to hold off a Bolshevik Army of about 4,000 soldiers. The students battle courageously and are able to hold off the Bolsheviks for a long time but the majority are later captured.

The captured students are told they are fighting for a hopeless cause and almost all of them are executed. The film ends with modern-day Ukrainian students learning about the brave stu-

dents who were killed fighting for their freedom 100 years earlier.

It’s a sad but touching movie and I recommend watching it, especially given what’s happening in Ukraine right now.

The Russians used propaganda and tried to prevent people from learning what truly happened in the Battle of Kruty. Today, the Russian government is trying to prevent anyone from finding out what Russian soldiers are really doing in Ukraine and calling it a “special military operation” rather than what it really is: an invasion.

Another similarity between the battle depicted in the film and the war currently taking place in Ukraine is that so many of the people fighting for their freedom aren’t soldiers. They’re students, doctors, teachers, etc. who were forced to take up arms to defend

their homeland. Like the students in the film, those who have lost their lives defending Ukraine from Russia’s most recent invasion should be remembered as heroes.

UPCOMING FILMS ARE SHOWN AT 7 PM AT THE UKRAINIAN INSTITUTE OF AMERICA (2 E 79TH ST. IN MANHATTAN): Slovo House – Unfinished Novel (2021) / Thursday, August 18: In the 1930’s Kharkiv, an ambitious young poet happily settles in at the new luxury “Slovo” House, built specifically for artists. He is part of a generation of creative Ukrainians, who do not realize the high price they will pay for their success under the totalitarian regime.

Toloka (2020) / Tuesday, August 23: In an adaptation of Taras Shevchenko’s romantic ballad, three Kozaks fall in love with beautiful Catherine, This tale of rivalry can be seen as a metaphor for Ukraine’s history, spanning some of the most epic moments of its struggle for freedom against invaders.

Forebodings (2020) / Thursday, August 25: The slow life in a provincial Ukrainian seaside town is suddenly disturbed by scandal when a resident passes away. Only his wife and his friend know where he is buried. They refuse to tell the others, who are seeking answers to their own questions.

Another Prayer or 87 Children (2017) / Tuesday, August 30: In this true story, a Crimean Tatar woman saves orphaned Jewish children during the Nazi occupation. In doing so, she faces the moral dilemma: should she try to help them or save herself by refusing?

The Guide (2014) -In Ukrainian with English subtitles / Wednesday, Au-

gust 31: In the 1930s, an American boy visits Kharkiv with his father, only to become entangled in the Soviet campaign to murder hundreds of blind minstrels (kobzars) as well as millions of Ukrainians.

UKRAINIAN EVENTS IN AUGUST:

Stronger Together: A fundraiser benefitting Ukrainian Refugees in NYC. Please join us on Friday, August 5th, 2022 (4-6 pm) at the Coney Island Brewery at 1904 Surf Ave. to support our fellow Ukrainians who have fled their war-tormented country seeking refuge in New York. Tickets range from $50-100. Come to enjoy great beer, delicious food, live music, and the Coney Island fireworks!

2022 Race for Ukraine Virtual Run Events powered by Moon Joggers on August 7th. Sign up now for $15 instead of $20. This is a 1M, 5K, 10K, 13.1, 26.2 virtual run (or walk) to help our friends in Ukraine. You choose which distance you want to complete!

Complete your race any time between now and August 24, 2022 (The Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was adopted by the Ukrainian parliament on 24 August 1991.

The Act reestablished Ukraine’s state independence). We will split and donate all proceeds equally between these two charities: World Central Kitchen and Care.org.

“Silent songs”. Charity concert and art sale for Ukraine on August 13th from 7-9 PM at 330 7th Ave. (The Na-

tional Opera Center) in Manhattan.

Tickets are $30. Classical and contemporary music concert and art exhibit with the program centered around the music of Valentin Silvestrov, one of the most prominent living Ukrainian composers.

The Chosen Comedy Festival: A benefit for the Ukrainian emergency performing arts fund. Tuesday, August 16th / 6:30 PM at the Coney Island Amphitheater.

“Independence Day of Ukraine on boat” Charity Event on August 24th at 7 PM. Circle-Line Sightseeing, Pier 83 Manhattan NY (12th Ave. and W 42 St.) Boat sails at 8 PM. 21+ w/ID.

SLAVA UKRAINI! Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

August 2022

RHAP (continued from page 1)

she’s graduated from high school and college. She and Brimaldi have both come back to be co-facilitators and teach some of our younger students.

We actually rely on a lot of our former students to come back and help out newer ones, and they’ve done a great job.

“Another successful student is Jeylani who is also a phenomenal artist. She has so much courage and grit, and she’s a leader in the classroom for other students.”

Davis told me about some of her toughest challenges.

“One of the biggest tasks is we’re trying to uplift a lot of black and brown children who are coming from difficult situations and it’s been a challenge to find volunteers, especially volunteers who look like the children that they’re helping,” Davis said.

“I’ve managed it by having a lot of former students come back to help out. RHAP’s board of directors also includes former students as well as members of the community who appreciate what we’ve done and wanted to get involved.

“Unfortunately, not being able to pay stipends or pay hourly wages makes it difficult to find people because so many people are struggling financially, especially since the pandemic.

“COVID also created some additional challenges. We always knew that food was an issue in our community but once the pandemic hit, we had to

shut down and pivot. The first thing I thought because I grew up hungry was ‘how are people going to eat’ with basically everything shutting down in New York City.

“I was in a fortunate situation and I didn’t want to watch less fortunate people suffer. We pivoted to work with local people and businesses to give food and PPE supplies to community members. Also, about three or four days into the pandemic, we shifted our classes to virtual to be able to lead a lot of people safely, while still being on the ground, serving the community.

“I think sometimes people say there are two different sides of Red Hook but I think there’s one side and the pandemic forced us to come together and work to uplift each other.”

Davis also gave me some updates on when RHAP returned to in-person classes and what to expect at the new location on Van Brunt.

“We stayed mostly virtual until September of 2021 and then we got a

shared space at Summit Academy Charter School so we were able to go there and start having in-person classes again,” Davis said.

“We’re really excited to have our home now at the new location on Van Brunt. We already have a class where students are learning to A recent RHAP project was to decorate skateboards. build and design their own skateboards. We also space where community members have our portfolio prep class going on can set up pop-up shops and use the now. space for community meetings.”

"I think it’s a great spot for us. Students will be able to have their own art shows, develop entrepreneur skills and give students a chance to make and record music. We plan to have a

"We plan to have a space where community members can set up pop-up shops and use the space for community meetings.”

Even though the former bodega is already being used for a few classes, Davis is expecting the new location to officially open up this October.

They’re still working on adding a kitchen where students can eat and a recording studio, and also plan to fix up the floors and ceiling. Right now, the plan is to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 1st and have classes there on October 4th.

“I’d just like people to know that RHAP is a small organization and we’re here to serve the community,” Davis said. “We’d appreciate it if the community can continue to support us in such a great way. It makes a big difference.”

• NYC’s expanded speed camera law took effect on August 1, 2022.

• The law allows NYC to issue speed camera violations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year-round. nyc.gov/dot #SpeedCamerasSaveLives

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

August 2022, Page 7

A Baedeker of the countries that were once Yugoslavia

by Dario Pio Muccilli, Star-Revue Foreign Correspondent

O

nce all part of the socialist Yugoslavia, countries in the Balkans are so different from one another that you feel the changes instantly as you travel through them. I did just that this summer, crossing the border between Italy and Slovenia, then headed to Croatia and eventually down to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The more southward you go, the poorer those countries are, but difference is not only economic. You can see culture, environment and people changing kilometer after kilometer. It's not surprising that after the fall of the socialist regime, they all felt the need to seek independence which drove them to the bloody wars of the 90s.

Ljubljana Slovenia was the first country to secede from Yugoslavia. It didn’t take them much time to gain recognition, as the war against the central government based in Serbia lasted just ten days. If you go in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital city, you may understand why they were the first ones seceding: they were the richest.

When you walk in the city center you will see German-style palaces and beautiful churches. Everything there is clean, and while I was there I was told that this country has always been known for being the Balkans’ Switzerland. Later, in Zagreb, capital city of Croatia, K., a Croatian sculpture student, explained the origin of this name. “Much of the savings of Yugoslavians were in Slovenian bank accounts, their region was powerful, and after they gained independence they took all the money”.

Slovenian integration process with the West was hard. “They went on their own way and when Croatia struggled for independence, they didn’t help, they left us alone. My father, then a soldier in Croatian army, kind of hated them for this thing, he lost friends in the war, like the one after whom I’m named”. I can trust K. for his truthful view of Slovenians just wanting to go on their own, but at the same time I don’t know if I can blame them, what would I have thought if I were Slovenian and war lasted few days and not years as elsewhere? It’s pretty difficult to judge them. Ljubljana doesn’t show any wounds from the past, life goes here as nothing happened, and the warfare is just something you can look at memorials or museums, like the

middle age castles, not on the streets or on the eyes of people there.

Zagreb In Zagreb, Croatia, you can feel the war much more and the Socialist regime as well, all the way down the city river, the Sava. The castles are harsher, made with grey stone and somewhat decadent. But tracks of the war decadency can be found in the city center as well, even if the tourist industry wants to hide it. The Lower Town in the city center is pretty Germanic, as Ljubljana, but you can see there’s not the same care about aesthetics.

The Upper Town is like a jewel, with astonishing spots like St. Mark’s Church, on whose roof there are heralds of Croatian historical regions, or the City’s Cathedral, with its Gothic style spires, heavily damaged by an earthquake that took place in 2020.

But yet, even in the Upper Town war takes the stage, as if you enter Radiceva Ulica rom central Jelacic Square, you will see a tunnel, called Tunel Gric, opening its doors on your left side. Used by civilians during the war for shelter, today it’s open for tourists, but you can still see vestiges of the past with the word Voda written, which means water.

If you lose yourself in the tunnel, there are many exits, and some of them are covered outside by graffiti, made by local artists. I actually met one of them. L.P. teaches K, the sculpture student. We met him on the street and he invited us to his studio. As I saw his visual art I soon recognized in them the style of a piece of graffiti art I saw hours before.

I asked him about the art scene in Croatia and he told me that it is really free because basically there’s no market for art, so if you want to be an artist you can live by teaching at academy and be completely free to express your creativity everywhere else.

I felt his need to express himself freely in the big canvases he showed me, sometimes abstract, other times not.

His biggest theme was motion and this is pretty much the best way to define Zagreb as well, always moving, never firm. I went to a major exhibition with paintings hanging like in an XIX Salon. Everything is always in the flow, on the top of a wave of creativity that dates back from the Yugoslavian era, when Zagreb was the center of a

Cartoons’ studio, known worldwide, that mingled local eastern and simple graphics to a smart storytelling. Simplicity and creativity are the best words to define the city, which is not elegant like Paris, but one that’s growing instead towards a brighter and brighter future.

Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina Sarajevo and BosniaHerzegovina could totally deserve an entire book or a saga.

The country›s recent history is pretty sad. Being a crossroad of cultures, Islamic-Bosniac, Serbian and Croatian, the country was the hardest hit by violent nationalism during the war that lasted here from 1991 to 1996.

The country was the stage of the largest attempt at genocide since the Holocaust. Serbian military invaded the country, laid siege to cities, committed mass rape and killings of Islamic-Bosniac people, with Srebrenica manslaughter (1995) being one of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed by an army. In order to find a balance among ongoing ethnic conflicts, the Dayton peace agreements shaped an odd form of government for the country, which is divided in two republics, the Serbian Srpska Republic and the Federal Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in three communities, representing the three ethnic groups mentioned above.

Each community has a president, and all the three of them are the heads of the Bosnia-Herzegovina state. When you cross the border from Croatia, after pretty serious document inspection, you can see how national pride is still a thing in the Srpska Republic, where there are Serbian flags almost everyplace. In recent months the Serbian president raised claims for the Republic to have its own army, now deployed at federal level, and he expressly posed threats of secession.

You may never know here when things are going to escalate. The roads towards Sarajevo are long, and makes its way across mountains, where there are speed limits which almost no one cares about, despite the canyons and really narrow roads. The freeway starts just one hundred and a half kilometers away from the capital, and when you arrive there the first thing you may notice are palaces with large holes on their facade. “Those were made by grenades and bullets,” says the cab driver as he drives through Zmajaod Bosne avenue, once populated by snipers shooting at everyone crossing the road.

Now those streets are the main area where government buildings and embassies are which is somewhat astonishing. You can still see on the ground red resin covering holes made back then by bullets and grenades, creating sort of a conceptual art work commonly known as “Sarajevo’s roses.”

Page 8 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

As you get closer to the city center you can see Sarajevo changing shape from a Socialist-style capital to an Ottoman Muslim town. Indeed here most of the population is Muslim, being in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

There are mosques everywhere, with the oldest and most beautiful ones dating back mostly to the sixteenth century, when the city was an important trade and political spot in the Ottoman empire.

As you go deeper into the narrow streets of the central market near Sebilj fountain you kind of feel you’re in the Middle East. That's not what most Europeans are used to, it’s like another world. I realized that since the first night, where during a gig of local music I meet D., an Italian guy that has lived here for a couple months and has has told me lots about the city.

“There is no neighborhood where I felt unwelcome here”, he says. “Here they’re Muslim but till 30 years ago religion was not really strictly followed.

After the war they’ve become more and more religious as a reaction to Serbian nationalism and as a way to assert their own identity. Now they even greet each other using the typical Muslim salut Salam Aaikum, which was pretty uncommon years ago.”

Identity, it’s such a tough word here, where wars have been done in its name—as I was in Bosnia-Herzegovina there were clashes at the SerbiaKosovo border. But yet you cannot deny how beautiful each identity is, from the Orthodox Serbian churches to the crowded smoke-friendly Bosniac music clubs, passing through Croatian marriage ceremonies in the countryside with tens of flags displayed.

Everything here is staggering not just at first sight, but always. As a Turkish girl, B., told me during my stay in Sarajevo, the cool thing here is to meet local people, talk to them, hear their stories and not just stop yourself at the surface of things, because you need to go as deep as you can, as in Sarajevo streets or on the surrounding mountains, cause it’s the only way to get yourself at the top of them and take a look at the whole city, and with your fantasy of the entire Balkans, with all their history, with all their wounds, with all their astonishing and fantastic people.

August 2022

The Son of Sam & Bonnie Charlie

Back then, I was a Brooklyn probation officer again. My first go-round ended on July 1 of 1975, when 40,000 cops, firefighters, sanitation workers, teachers, and me got fired. We were not alone: between 1969 and 1976 NYC lost 600,000 jobs as employers relocated or went belly-up. Conversely, the population of African-Americans who had fled the Jim Crow South for a new life in the City rose from 460,000 in 1940 to 1.7 million in 1970, just as the unskilled jobs that had sustained generations of European immigrants before them evaporated. The City was broke.

But I was fortunate. A laid-off cop friend clued me to a job opening as a New York State inspector of adult homes.

Alas, corruption was so rampant at that agency (deservedly long defunct), that one sleazy owner, five minutes into my recitation of his violations, expressed astonishment that I was not yet shaking him down. So, yeah, when the City offered me my job back in late 1976, I readily accepted.

I was bequeathed a caseload of 250 unattended felons, most of whom had been rampaging their way toward tabloid headlines as “unidentified perpetrators.” One of my charges, located in his immigrant mother’s tempesttossed Pennsylvania Avenue apartment near the Belt Parkway, readily admitted he had never reported to the Probation Department, but seeing as how I had gone to the trouble of visiting him and such, why, he would certainly return the favor by dropping by my cubicle at 345 Adams Street on the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.

His name was Charlie. A little chunky and on the short side, he had racked up multiple arrests for Grand Larceny Auto long before it became a video game, followed by commercial burglaries, an eventual felony conviction, some jail time, and a slot on my caseload at the age of 23. A Catholic grammar school graduate who had gone astray according to his mother (‘Twas a bad crowd he fell in with come high school, she explained with the slight trace of a Scots accent), Charlie was then working for a local handyman.

He defended his prior thievery by concluding, in a peculiar manner on multiple occasions, “I was merely trying to escape the sewers of New York.”

Then in late April my supervisor, Bill Blasko, a beefy ex-Marine, convened a unit meeting in his cramped Adams Street office to discuss the .44 Caliber Killer, who’d been shooting young White people in Queens and the Bronx for the previous nine months. Blasko would often wander off on odd tangents, usually to complain about all the non-Marines who surrounded him, but this day he solemnly announced

Red Hook Star-Revue

that the Killer, a White male, in his 20s, about five-foot-eight, had left a note for the police at the last murder scene, indicating he was Scottish with a father named Sam. When Blasko ran out of stuff to yell about, I rushed back to my cubicle and read through the file. Bonnie Charlie’s father was named Joseph, not Sam. Thank you, Jesus! Still, Charlie was kind of odd, so in an abundance of caution, exercising situational awareness, yada, yada, I reached out to the Task Force— Operation Omega the PD called it—at the 109 Precinct in Flushing. Surprisingly, the Detective who took my report was enthusiastic. Charlie’s parochial school education was important, he explained, because the Killer’s note was grammatically correct with good penmanship and as fellow Catholics, we both knew the Nuns and Brothers drilled those skills into us with occasional smacks upside our skulls to assist their drilling.

But as the weeks passed, absent any feedback from Omega, whenever Charlie reported I had to press him for an answer to a standard condition of probation: “Were you questioned by law enforcement since your last report?”

Charlie coolly responded each time, “Of course not,” seemingly offended I would ask such a dastardly question.

Then on June 5th, Jimmy Breslin’s Sunday column in the Daily News began with a letter he’d received from the .44 Caliber Killer: “Hello from the gutters of NYC…Hello from the sewers of NYC.” OK, that’s interesting, I thought,

Jimmy Breslin hard at work in the Daily News office.

In White Park Slope and Midwood, food stores gave out melting ice cream for free, while citizens directed traffic with flashlights. In Black Bushwick and Crown Heights, stores were looted and burned. Why? Reference the 2nd paragraph above and discuss amongst yourselves. Me? I got reacquainted with my caseload, many of whom were among the 3,000 arrested by the NYPD that night. Remarkably, Charlie somehow avoided getting nabbed.

Sam leads. Now John Falotico, James Justis, and the rest of the squad joined in, led by Sergeant Jim Shea. But Detective Sergeant Joe Coffey from Project Omega had the best overview of all the details of the case. After arriving in the Coney Island squad room, Coffey reached out to the two uniformed officers from the adjoining 62 Precinct who patrolled the Bath Beach area that night. Had they written any parking summonses? No, Sarge, they said.

Given the Violation of Probation proceedings I had to arrange, Son of Sam was the last thing on my mind. Until July 31. That’s when Stacy Moskowitz, 19, and Robert Violante, 20, were shot in the head after they got into their car at about 2:10 AM in Bath Beach. Moskowitz died while Violante lost most

In fact, they had. The officers later claimed they had forgotten about a very important ticket in all the excitement, being the first to respond to the scene and all. Coffey, a legendary investigator and a straight shooter, wrote in a riveting 1992 memoir that the cops probably lied to him out of fear they’d be reamed for not spotting the Killer, so close in time and distance to the shooting.

"Breslin would later describe it this way: “The inside of his car looked like the inside of his head.” the whole sewers thing. And the grammar and spelling were impeccable.

However, Charlie could not be the Son of Sam, I assured myself, desperately trying to banish the thought of being featured in an upcoming Jimmy Breslin column. Why, he had a complete lack of violent crimes, almost an outstanding citizen, aside from, you know, his hundreds of burglaries and larcenies.

And he was the Son of Joseph, not Sam. Case closed.

As June ended, the Killer struck for the seventh time, shooting teenagers parked in a car at 3:30 AM near Northern Boulevard in Bayside. Lovers’ Lanes were quickly depopulating as No-Tell Motels rejoiced. Around that time I recall having a beer in a Court Street bar with a couple of colleagues who were experiencing a rare prime-time-crime moment in which fellow Blacks were neither the perps or vics. Then, as if to punish such hubris, on Wednesday, July 13, 1977, at about 9:30 PM, the entire hot sweltering City went dark.

of his vision. It occurred in a deserted stretch alongside the Belt Parkway, the first .44 Caliber homicide in Brooklyn.

Charlie lived near the Belt Parkway.

Uh-oh.

Detectives working out of the old 10th Homicide Zone squad in the 60 Precinct on West 8th Street, a short walk from the Coney Island boardwalk, got busy – Ed Zigo and his partner John Longo had already been working some

Coffey thought their crucial parking ticket was turned in only after he grilled the officers. In any event, the officers didn’t walk it over to West 8th Street.

They just stuffed it among all the rest of the tickets in their Precinct’s receptacle. (After Son of Sam was sentenced, the Police Commissioner, who never cared much for Detectives, insisted, much to Coffey’s disgust, that the two lying uniforms get gold shields anyway.)

Thankfully, a witness emerged four days after the shooting who remembered seeing patrol officers that same night, at 2:05 AM, place a summons on a car parked at a hydrant along the Belt Parkway at Bay 17th Street. Out walking

(continued on next page)

Advertise in our award winning newspaper!

Write to: george@redhookstar.com or call 917 652-9128

the red hook

I

opened an old friend’s email the other day. It read, “That was a time it was…wasn’t it?” Attached was a copy of the Brooklyn DA’s felony complaint against David Berkowitz, sworn to by Detective John Falotico, dated August 11, 1977.

by Joe Enright

www.star-revue.com

STAR REVUE August 2022, Page 9

It wasn't Bonnie Charlie, thank God (cntinued from previous page)

John Folatico (L) & Ed Zigo (R), Two Unsung Heros. Berkowitz in the middle.

her dog, she also saw a man walk past her, holding – halfway up his sleeve – what might have been a gun. Minutes later, as she got to her house, she heard shots ring out. Breslin subsequently reported the witness was an illegal alien who had hesitated to come forward for fear of deportation.

And so, a week after the Moskowitz homicide, Detectives followed the immigrant’s lead and found the summons amidst a mound of unsorted tickets in the basement of the 62 Precinct on Bath Avenue. It was issued to a 1970 Ford Galaxie. A DMV check traced the Galaxie to a five-foot-eight White male, age 24, David Berkowitz. A postal worker and Army vet, he lived in a 7th-floor apartment at 35 Pine Street in Yonkers with a nice view of the Hudson River. Berkowitz was one of the few White tenants—make of that what you will—and his apartment overlooked the backyard of Sam Carr, who had a daughter named Wheat and a Labrador named Harvey.

Wheat just happened to be working the dispatch desk at Yonkers PD when the call came from Brooklyn. Berkowitz was a possible witness to a homicide, Jim Justus explained, wanting to be put through to Yonkers’ Detectives. The dispatcher exploded, “Berkowitz? He shot Wheat, my father’s dog! The guy’s a nut!!”

The 10th Homicide Zone descended on Yonkers. Detectives Zigo and Longo spotted Berkowitz’s Galaxie parked on the street below his apartment house.

Visible inside the car – amidst clothes, bottles, papers, and what-have-you, strewn hither and yon, was an Army duffel bag stenciled “D. BERKOWITZ” with the butt of a sub-machine gun sticking out. An envelope lay nearby with the distinctive, large, printing style of the Son of Sam. Breslin would later describe it this way: “The inside of his car looked like the inside of his head.”

Project Omega reinforcements flooded in. A stake-out began while Zigo pursued an arrest warrant in the labyrinthine bowels of Westchester County’s criminal justice system.

At about 10:00 PM Berkowitz approached the car holding a paper bag containing a .44 caliber revolver. His intention was to drive down to River-

Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

dale to find his next victim, then wander out to the Hamptons, do the Hustle, and spray a disco dance floor with large caliber projectiles. As Berkowitz stepped into his Ford, Detective Falotico rushed forward and pointed his .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver at Berkowitz’s head. Longo and Gardella pointed their service revolvers from the passenger side while police cruisers rolled up behind them. Whereupon Berkowitz said, “Well, you got me.” Questioned that night at Police Plaza by Coffey and others, Berkowitz confessed to all the shootings, claiming that Sam was a demonic spirit who spoke to him through Harvey, Sam Carr’s dog. Obviously. So the .44 Caliber Killer wasn’t actually a son of Sam. But he wasn’t Scottish either. He was arraigned the next morning in Brooklyn Criminal Court for the Bath Beach shooting, with my old pal in attendance.

When Charlie reported to my cubicle a few days after the Berkowitz takedown, he complained mightily. “Some cop was hassling me last week, man, asking about my car.” I smiled knowingly, leaned forward, motioned Charlie to move closer, and confidentially whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that for you.”

That Fall, I met Ed Zigo at the wedding of mutual law enforcement friends. I told him about Charlie. He laughed and said they’d been swamped with all sorts of leads. “There’s just no shortage of people in this City,” Zigo sighed, “whose neighbors think they’re serial killers.” Zigo served in the Pacific during WWII aboard the Battleship Missouri, launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard in January 1944. He died in 2011. Falotico, a WWII Army vet, had passed away five years earlier. Coffey died in 2015 and Breslin followed him in 2017. As for Charlie, he became an electrician, got married, and moved to Florida. For all I know, he might be running for Congress. But I’ll give the last word to Jimmy Breslin: “Berkowitz is the only murderer I ever heard of who knew how to use a semicolon.”

POSTSCRIPT: In researching this piece, I learned that the Son of Sam’s biological father had the same first name as Charlie’s dad. Cue the woohwooh music, maestro.

August 2022

NY Printing & Graphics Celebrating 20 Years!

Thank you to all of our customers who supported us through the years

Full Service Print Shop Offset, Digital, Letterpress, Large Format Screen Printing, Embroidering

Books/Booklets

Color, Black & White Copies

(Perfect Bind, Saddlstitch,

Business Cards, Postcards, Posters

Spiral, Comb, Closed Loop)

Invitations & Announcements

Custom Diecutting/Letterpress

Carbonless Forms

Signs, Banners

EDDM Mailing

481 Van Brunt Street 8A • Brooklyn, NY 11231 info@nyprintinggraphics.com • 718.858.6777

100% Woman Owned

Red Hook Star-Revue

www.star-revue.com

August 2022, Page 11

Meet Jacq: The comedian who taught JLO and Keke Palmer How to Strip

by Roderick Thomas Nightlife and New York City are almost synonymous. People from all over the world come to America’s most populous city to jump start their dreams or establish careers —- Jacq ( Jacques) Frances was no different. Known as Jacq the Stripper, Jacq traveled to New York City, transformed into a nightlife guru and stripper, then worked with Jeniffer Lopez and Keke Palmer in Hustlers. Today, she’s a touring comedian and author. While speaking to Jacq, I learned about her days as an NYC stripper and her experience with Jennifer Lopez. Learn more about the interesting life of Jacq the Stripper below: Roderick Thomas: Hi Jacq! Pleasure to speak with you.

Jacq: Thank you, glad to be here.

RT: How are you?

Jacq: I’m good thanks for asking.

RT: Where are you from originally?

Jacq: I grew up in Ontario outside Toronto, Canada.

RT: How’d you find your way to NYC? Jacq: Well, I’d been stripping for a year in Australia, and I was told that NYC is where you have to be, and America is the place to be a stripper. So I came to NYC. RT: When did you arrive in NYC?

Jacq: I settled in NYC in 2010, and was there for ten years.

RT: Who was Jacq the stripper in 2010?

Page 12 Red Hook Star-Revue

Jacq: I was so into money, getting money, investing money, seeing what my money could do. I was also into show business. I’ve always loved making my own money. I guess I was chasing the American dream.

RT: What was life like as a stripper?

Jacq: Stripping for me was about money and freedom. When I got to NYC that changed and it became more about money. All the girls had to look a certain way—-Victoria’s Secret models.

So, I changed my look to get what I wanted.

RT: The dinero

Jacq: The money, correct.

RT: Any stories about your stripping days you may want to share?

Jacq: So many. One thing was that you were never supposed to refuse a drink.

It was sort of a rule. I would sip on a drink the whole night.

RT: Interesting. Stripping has become more mainstream, but there is still a stigma around strip clubs.Thoughts?

Jacq: Its how we view sex and women, its misogyny. This society asks you to be this hot thing all the time. There are real resources tied to sex, priveleges tied to beauty, and those who can make themselves a commodity from sex and beauty.

Jacq: You want this body? Pay me.

RT: You made a name for yourself in night life, were you trying to become famous?

Jacq: Honestly, no. I didn’t want to be known, I was after money, but opportunities just kept coming.

RT: Ok, so you’re no longer in the stripclub world, what made you leave?

Jacq: I was sort of forced out to the world of stripping. Also, New York allowed me to be an artist in a different way. I realized I hated the drinking, the

loud noises and all the finance guys at the club.

RT: What was next after the club scene?

Jacq: I had already begun doing comedy, and I knew I wanted to make just as much money as I did stripping.

RT: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from the strip club?

Jacq: That the whole world is a strip club [laughs]. Everything I’ve learned in the club I’ve applied elsewhere, and now I’m an author and comedian.

RT: In your new book and comedy tour, Divorced in Paradise, you elaborate on your life in NYC and your divorce, how have they affected your comedy and personal life?

Jacq: As far as my show goes, I’m having fun roasting behaviors but not anyone’s spirit, mine included. The show is how I’m processing life and grief and what to do when the show is over.

Jacq: The book contains a ton of my visual art in chronological order. Art saved me many times—it’s a peek into my life.

RT: You’ve also discussed the concept of toxic femininity. How did toxic femininity show up in your life?

Jacq: People pleasing. Toxic femininity showed up in my life through wanting to please everyone, and doing what I could to prevent others from exploding or being upset. Now, I know I have to be true to my own needs.

RT: Well said. And being yourself got you a small role in the 2019 hit film Hustlers, alongside Jennifer Lopez and Keke Palmer. How did that come about?

Jacq: I also became a consultant on the movie as well. I coached the girls, and helped them be more authentic. I felt like my opinions were valued on set.

RT: Teaching Jenniffer Lopez some moves, that’s a moment!

Jacq: I know! This movie was about these bad ass women doing bad things.

I was like I belong here. I’m very grateful for the experience, now I’m making my own films.

RT: Really?

Jacq: Yes, I made a short film called Tuesday’s with Brian. It’s about a guy who goes to the strip club and does everything wrong.

RT: So what most men probably do in the strip club [laughs].

RT: Jacq, you really are living life your way and making it an adventure. Congrats on your book and comedy tour.

Jacq: Thank you.

RT: How can people follow you and keep up with you?

Jacq: They can follow me on social media at @jacqthestripper.

RT: Awesome! Jacq, thank you for sharing your stories, it’s been a pleasure.

Jacq: You’re welcome, thank you.

RT: Stay up to date on Jacq the Stripper, her book and comedy tour by following @jacqthestripper.

Roderick Thomas is an NYC based writer and filmmaker | roderickthomas.

net

Jacq: Hustlers was the coolest opportunity that I’ve received to date! I got an email and it changed my whole life. I knew there was a small role and I went for it and got it.

www.star-revue.com

August 2022

to survive the ballistics of most any beat programmer, but even still, her Tongues North Star Remixes (Six-Shooter Records, July 22), featuring remixes of cuts from January’s Tongues, tends

Lucifer on the dancefloor. A new of Montreal album is always a time of revelry—nobody does dark disco quite like Kevin Barnes. For a while, though, the albums have run thin fairly quickly for me. That’s not necessarily a problem; there’s far too much pop in the world for all of it to be permanent. But for a songwriter who sings so relentlessly about himself, it has grown hard in recent years to get where he was headed. Maybe he didn’t know. In any event, I have been trying to temper my excitement for the new album (with a title that may challenge Star-Revue obscenity standards), Freewave Lucifer fck f^ck fck (out July 29 on Polyvinyl Records), but no can do. Every of Montreal album is a tawdry love affair.

Some last a week, some you can’t shake for years. But this one might take a while. Barnes hasn’t indulged his every mad instinct on an album in quite some time. Freewave Lucifer is full of all the ego-driven magic and bipolar genre-hopping that made our confused seducer a star, replete with riffs on Prince and Marc Bolan and the Wizard of Oz. In “Modern Art Bewilders,” when he sings “Falling in love with you all over again inveterate troublemaker,” it’s hard not to think he’s singing to himself, which is the kind of indulgence that made the best of Montreal records so good. More importantly, though, he’s back to making psychedelic pop pastiche with dancefloor drive. I hope the infatuation lasts.

Northern beats. Remix albums tend to be clubbier than Kevin Barnes on a sugar high, so much so that they often lose the impetus of the original.

Tanya Tagaq’s voice is strong enough

keeper here, though, is the epic-length (3:42!) “The Price of Smokes,” a punk econ lesson in which 75% of the lyric is “The price of smokes has gone up again” repeated over a midtempo grind until its replaced by the repeating “Those bastards in Parliament ought to be hung by their necks.” It’s pretty much perfect.

The Brian Eno Award. At the time of co-producing David Bowie’s 1995 album Outside, Brian Eno wrote in his diary, “I wish it was shorter. I wish nearly all records were shorter.” I’m in full agreement and would like to commend the above artists for releasing new albums under 40 minutes in length.

to get weighed down in postproduction more often than not. There are a few ambitious standouts, though. The album opens with composer Paola Prestini’s wonderful reimagining of “In Me,” adding the New Century Chamber Orchestra to Tagaq’s vocal track.

Joel Tarman takes a deep dive into “Colonizer” with strings provided by the Kronos Quartet. And Ash Koosha makes a sonic feature film out of “Earth Monster.” Opinions will differ. Find a stream and see which way you drift.

The new thunder from down under.

Way back in 2020, the Chats staked a serious claim. Their song “AC/DC CD” champions their fellow Australians as the second greatest band in history. The 103-second song ends with the assertion “and we are first” and I got no bone to pick. The Chats are perfectly dumbass punk, from singer Eamon Sandwith’s ginger mullet to picking a name for themselves that suggests about zero-level caring what they’re called. They’ve released a string of singles and EP’s since 2016, and as with most punk, that’s the better format for them. But their second full-length—this one sure to trip editorial policy wires—Get Fucked (out August 19 on Bargain Bin Records) is a fast blast, 14 tracks clocking in at less than half an hour. “I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbane,” one of the lead singles, represents one of the bands primary recurring concerns. The real

Reed remembered (redux). One of the biggest revelations of the 1995 Velvet Underground box set Peel Slowly & See box set was that beloved songs featuring some of the biggest noise rock had known began life as folk tunes, replete with acoustic guitars and harmonicas.

Turns out there was more where that came from. And while the Caught Between the Twisted Stars exhibit of the Lou Reed archive at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center should be on every summer bucket list (I wrote about the show last month; it’s up through next March), some of the best of it is being made available for home play. Words & Music, May 1965, coming Sept. 16 from Light in the Attic, makes available for the first time a set of songs Reed committed to tape with future bandmate John Cale and mailed to himself as a way to establish copyright.

It’s a remarkable set, incredibly clean for a 57-year-old home recording, with the two young friends focused on laying down the permanent record. A

Advertise in our award winning newspaper the red

Write to Red Hook Star-Revue

number of the songs, generally in more raucous renditions, would end up on the Velvets releases. The album is advertised as “the inaugural title in Light In The Attic’s forthcoming Lou Reed Archival Series,” which is more than a little enticing.

www.star-revue.com

Viva la gonzo. What I didn’t mention last month regarding the essential Caught Between the Twisted Stars exhibit at the Performing Arts Library is the recreation of Reed’s friend and collaborator Hal Willner’s home studio, which is a little museum of pop culture ephemera. Willner was the master of the tribute album. Alongside his productions of music by Thelonious Monk and Kurt Weil and songs from Disney films sits a brilliant realization of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” The audio-play, with a score by Bill Frisell, a band of downtown jazz all-stars and Tim Robbins masterfully playing the role of Thompson, was released on 2012. It’s been remastered and reissued by Shimmy-Disc, out July 15 on (in another challenge to Star-Review editorial) “two-tone horseshit brown vinyl.” The new pressing is a great way to indulge in the all-time king of gonzo journalism, and a fine memorial to Willner, who died of COVID complications in 2020 at the age of 64.

Willner’s memory might also bring to mind the fact that the pandemic is far from over. You don’t need a mandate to wear a mask. Keep yourself, and those around you, safe. It’s still the right thing to do.

STAR REVUE August 2022, Page 13

Celebrate the King by Skipping “Elvis” and Streaming “Flaming Star”

by Dante A. Ciampaglia When was the last time you thought about Elvis Presley? When did you last think about breathing?

Elvis is everywhere and nowhere — in music and marriage, camp and cliché, a singular entity who inspired countless imitators and reshaped nearly every facet of American life. Forty-five years after his death, his endurance is something of a paradox — more complicated and confusing, more bloated and bewildering, yet more lasting and lucrative. (He was seventh on Forbes’ 2021 list of Highest Paid Dead Celebrities, earning $30 million.) Love him or/and hate him, this much is indisputable: The King of Rock and Roll isn’t just part of the national firmament; there’s a strand of our cultural DNA that wears a spangled jumpsuit, pompadour, and curled lip.

Baz Luhrmann’s gaudy biopic Elvis, an extravagant, and extra, jukebox extravaganza drags Presley — the persona, if not the man — into the zeitgeist in a way we’re unaccustomed. This isn’t a film about Elvis impersonators or pilgrims seeking Presley’s ghost. It’s a take on the hip-shaking Earthshaker from Tupelo, Mississippi, himself, inexplicably told from the perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, the parasite who, for worse or worse, did as much to shape Elvis as Elvis himself. (Even in death the Colonel robs the King of his agency.)

Centered on such a multifaceted and refracted artist, Elvis has offered many contemporary critics many opportunities for takes: on the songs, on the persona, on the Parker-Presley relationship. Some have even tackled his films, arguably the most mystifying aspects of his career. Not that he made them — the economics are crystal clear. It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be much there. After all, how much can someone say about Viva Las Vegas (1964) or Girls!

Girls! Girls! (1962) or, um, Tickle Me (1965)?

The King’s filmography is anything but regal. We’ve got the good Colonel to thank for that. Like every other part of Elvis’ career, Parker had an iron grip on what roles his client could take and what would be detrimental to his “image.” From Love Me Tender in 1956 to Change of Habit in 1969, Elvis starred in more than 30 films, with seemingly just as many roles that were never realized. (Elvis as Tony in West Side Story?

Tom Hagen in The Godfather? Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy? The mind reels.) The movies he did make tended to follow a formula: a handsome singer, a beautiful woman, a madcap scenario of light conflict and romantic mishaps, the handsome singer and beautiful woman get together at the end. Cue cheering audiences and, most importantly, chart-topping hits. Something like Viva Las Vegas or Blue Hawaii (1961) makes sense in that spirit and helped shape how we see Elvis today: a casino main room selfparody. Four years earlier, Jailhouse Rock (1957) helped conjure the image the slightly dangerous sex symbol with the thousand-watt smile and vocal cords of gold.

But regardless of the time or visage, it was clear the films were more a way to line someone’s (read: the Colonel’s) pockets than showcase Elvis’ acting.

That makes Flaming Star — a tough Western, directed by Don Siegel and released in 1960 — such an

Page 14 Red Hook Star-Revue

anomaly, and a gift.

Presley stars as Pacer Burton, a half-white, half-Kiowa at the center of a frontier war in 1870s Texas. On one side are white ranchers scratching out a meager specter of the American Dream; on the other are Native peoples displaced by Manifest Destiny. Pacer’s father ( John McIntire), is white, as is his half-brother Clint (Steve Forrest); his mother, Neddy (Dolores Del Rio), is Kiowa; and the Burton homestead is located, physically and symbolically, between the settlers’ tumbledown clapboard town and the Kiowa camp. After friends are brutally murdered by a group of Kiowa raiders, the Burtons’ multiracial home becomes a focal point for the war: the townspeople implore Clint, “the only real white man in the family,” join their posse, while Buffalo Horn (Rodolfo Acosta), the new Kiowa chief, demands Pacer join “his people.”

Flaming Star is fairly rote as Westerns go: things go bad for everyone, and as you’d expect from a Western of the period, it traffics in pretty ugly stereotypes and representations of Indigenous peoples. But Siegel is no mere journeyman director, and he elevates what could be a rickety episode of television into something approaching art that exists in conversation with Fred Zinneman’s 1952 High Noon (one man abandoned to face certain death), John Ford’s 1956 The Searchers (blinding racist vengeance), and Howard Hawks’ 1959 Rio Bravo (youthquake pop star Ricky Nelson as a gunslinger). When the posse comes for Clint, for instance, Siegel lets the camera pan methodically across the faces of eight rugged men atop their horses, capturing the range of emotions — anger, fear, sadness, regret, bloodlust — coursing through the town. Later, during a hilltop funeral, Siegel frames one of the most beautiful shots in a Western: five people gathered around an open grave, the Burton homestead down below in the background, each person standing at a different plane but all in focus, the shot radiating with a golden, earthy glow. He also imbues the film with the kind of intimate violence — during the opening raid, one farmer gets a tomahawk in the face, which we see in a fairly shocking closeup — that would come to shape New Hollywood, including Siegel’s later film, Dirty Harry (1971).

Clearly this is not typical Elvis fare, starting with the fact that he gets to act. “This is a very demanding role for Elvis,” Siegel told the New York Times for an October 4, 1960, set report. “He is playing a part that was supposed to have been for Marlon Brando.” Indeed, Elvis is quite good in the film. And while his is still a pretty face, it exists in an extremely ugly world. No New Frontier glitz here; just cruelty, racism, and murder. Oh, and he dies. (Spoiler alert, though it’s in the title, which refers to the “flaming star of death” Kiowa see before the end.) This might all help explain why Flaming Star isn’t exactly in the Elvis cinematic canon. It barely broke even at the box office, and its bleakness is a stark contrast to the comparative triviality of G.I. Blues (1960). That helps explain the increasingly silly films that followed, a

www.star-revue.com

reflexive response to “give Elvis fans what they want.”

Did it matter that they increasingly avoided theaters and the young people who did go wanted nothing to do with something like Clambake (1967)? Not a lick.

These kinds of neglected jewels are always fascinating. But what makes Flaming Star even more of a treasure is that, despite the shabby aesthetic and grim tone, there’s quite a bit here that’s favorable to Elvis’ image. For starters, he’s tough as nails and arguably the most decisive character in the film. His hair is also outstanding, a pomaded pompadour that hints at an oil discovery somewhere out on the trail. After a sweaty, knock-down fist fight that leaves the other party bloodied and hobbled, nary a hair is out of place on Pacer’s head. (When Clint gets a mirror for his birthday, Pacer says it will make his brother “the prettiest fella in Texas.” Pretty sure Pacer holds that title.) The film opens with Elvis singing the title song, over footage of Pacer and Clint bounding home; 90 seconds after the opening credits end, Pacer is strumming a guitar and singing to friends and family in the Burton home. Eighty-one minutes into the 101-minute film, Elvis takes his shirt off. I don’t know what fans thought 62 years ago, but from here this is a solid Elvis outing.

But Flaming Star was a flame out, as far as the Colonel (the film’s “technical adviser”) was concerned, and Elvis was retrenched in frivolity. You can almost hear that charlatan panderingly telling Elvis as the film ends, “Well, you got that out of your system.

Now back to my way.” And for six decades, it has largely been a cinephile cult curio, at best. (The film got a slight bump eight years ago thanks to a limitededition Blu-Ray release). Though most people know it, without actually knowing it: Andy Warhol’s series of silver Elvises, silkscreens of the star pointing a gun that command hundreds of millions of dollars at auction, began as a Flaming Star publicity still.

The film deserves a better afterlife than Pop Art footnote. It’s a solid Western that punches above its weight, whose warning of racism’s total physical, spiritual, and civic destruction is as urgent today as it was in 1960. That it stars Elvis Presley as the surrogate for this existential crisis in a morally gray genre picture — there are no clear-cut bad guys; everyone, save the Burtons, is some degree of despicable — should seal it as some kind of classic. But even if all that proves unconvincing, Flaming Star is worth salvaging from the dustbin of film history simply because Elvis didn’t make another movie like it. He somehow snuck an interesting picture past the Colonel, showed glimpses of a fuller acting life… and was rewarded by never having the chance again.

Anyone who counts themselves an Elvis fan owes it to the King to give Flaming Star a chance — and to stick it to the Colonel.

Flaming Star is available on various streaming services. There is also a now-out-of-print Blu-Ray from Twilight Time that’s worth tracking down.

August 2022

Jazz by Grella What’s New?

by George Grella

T

here is nothing new under the sun. Not to mention, you’ve heard that line before.

How often? Well, Ecclesiastes was written about 3,000 years ago, so imagine the level of boredom it took to have someone mention it in the Old Testament. And they didn’t even have records back then.

As surprising as it has been to admit this to myself, I’m a little bored with jazz this summer. Oh, The old records are good, they have been around for a reason, listening to them is like hearing that specific and personal language you share with someone when the two of you are in love with each other, it fires up the synapses of pleasure and well being. Some new and recent music approaches that, it flirts with me, and even if we don’t connect on everything all at once, we’ll have a few more dates and see where it goes—things look promising! While few of us are truly cut out for polyamory, I suspect, records are a different thing, like having lots of lovers who ask nothing of you but to receive their pleasures. We should all indulge.

But as a whole, jazz seems to be stagnant so far in 2022, with exceptions I’ll discuss below. There is no one prevailing 21st century style of jazz, but there have been some informal movements that have expanded the music and enhanced its vitality, like the skronky, post-Zorn style, with its extroverted energy and irreverence, and the way musicians took back rhythmic innovation from both IDM and hip hop, and started building smooth, deep groves out of complex meters.

"Breath of Air uses musical time as a journey, and builds some intense, even abrading experiences while ultimately bringing you safely through to the other side, breathing deeply and feeling, like the music on all these albums, renewed."

Red Hook Star-Revue

Advances tend to get incorporated into the mainstream, and so those ideas became standard, especially the latter. I’ve heard so many records over the past five years that have a strong, odd-meter over deep pedal tones in the bass and left-hand of the piano, usually in a minor key, that when a new CD comes my way I’m either turned off by hearing this idea yet again, or shocked into attention by not hearing it, at last on the first track (it usually shows up on the second ).

This is so prevalent, and has been so for over a decade, that I worry about hearing anything fresh. Jazz, and non-pop music making in general, is so dominated by music schools and curricula that not only is the music—like classical—mostly off-limits to people without the economic resources to pay for lessons and music education, much less have access to instruments, that not only is the music missing out on an incalculable amount of talent but it’s established a conformity that determines what/who gets heard and who gets shut out. The academicization of jazz, through conservatories, is doing to the music, I fear, what it has done to things like classical composition, turned it into a guild system (thus both atavistic and decadent) that produces results acceptable to the bland consensus of the guild. Knowing the right people and going to the right schools is how anyone gets a job in mainstream, prestige cultural and media institutes, with obvious results, and I do fear that for the music. Jazz is meant to be remade, and renewed, each time it’s played, and the musicians are out there, who knows if they’ll ever get the chance.

There are, thankfully, exceptions—the other thing that’s not new is that there will always be individuals who tack against the winds of prevailing notions, and some of them actually, in the end, make it to land.

There’s a small handful of recent recordings that are very much renewing the music and do so by striking out on their own, ignoring the current consensus of modern jazz. It’s not ironic to point out that some of the leaders on these records are teaching in the academies themselves, instead it’s a point of optimism and hope that there might be a consensus of no consensus, or many, in the future:

The great Tyshwan Sorey is back, as a drummer (his composing life is an entirely different subject), with the trio album Mesmerism, featuring pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer. Like Sorey’s previous, and incredible, album Unfiltered, this one is selfreleased (on his new Yeros7 Music label). But unlike anything he’s done before, this is in a way a classic piano trio album, the material comes from other sources, like Horace Silver, Duke Ellington, Paul Motian, and songbook classics like “Detour Ahead.” The playing is very much in the jazz tradition—song forms, swing— but the details are fantastic, with the trio rethinking melody, harmony, and rhythm, from the group up. The titles are identifiable, but they sound completely new, as if they had independently imagined and come up with the same songs as the original composers had, the same inside but wearing totally different clothes.

Refreshing and remarkable.

Another musician I’m always eager to hear, and an old colleague of Sorey’s, is saxophonist Steve Lehman.

His new album on Pi Recordings is Xaybu: The Unseen, his second collaboration with MCs HPrizm and Gaston Bandimic (from Dakar) under the name Sélébéyone (the Wolof word for “intersection”). The music starts in jazz and hip hop but abstracts both and goes beyond each. The album has a concept of exploring the connection between Islam and creativity, but it’s so much more than that. Sonically kaleidoscopic, at its core it’s a subtle and complex

www.star-revue.com

Moor Mother, photo by Samantha Isasian

emulsification of jazz, hip hop, electronic beats and signal processing, and the technology of the recording studio. And it absolutely resists interpretation, even as it’s constantly intriguing, something too infrequent in our culture of commodified obviousness.

I have the same reaction to Moor Mother’s music, that it’s compelling and also resists easy explanation, which makes it more compelling. Her latest is on the Anti- label and is titled Jazz Codes. I hear her in the same way I hear Lehman, in that both musicians do incredible things with the tools of music production, and I often don’t understand how they even thought of these things, their imaginations are so personal and so outside the contemporary mainstream of pretty much all music making. The spirit of Jazz Codes is embracing, it opens up to the listener. This is a newjazz/poetry album, with Moor Mother enlisting singers like the wonderful Melanie Charles (and herself speaking), with lush sonics, almost like a soul lullaby in that it is full of beautiful feelings, but with enough sharp points to keep you alert.

Phil Freeman’s Burning Ambulance label has an eponymous release from the new trio Breath of Air. Newly formed that is, but veteran, with guitarist Brandon Ross, violinist Charles Burnham, and drummer Warren Benbow (sort of James Blood Ulmer’s Odyssey trio with a different guitarist). This is heavy on improvisation, but not completely free, as the players organize themselves around drones and always have a direct line on the tradition of blues and Black string music. Though very different than Jazz Codes, this record is equally as beautiful, but with a very different emotional quality. Breath of Air uses musical time as a journey, and builds some intense, even abrading experiences while ultimately bringing you safely through to the other side, breathing deeply and feeling, like the music on all these albums, renewed.

August 2022, Page 15

Marie's Craft Corner

Turn Paper Plates Into Animal Wall Pockets!

by Marie Hueston In these final weeks of summer, you will probably go to a few more BBQs. While you’re there, put aside some white paper plates to create cute and useful wall pockets when you get back home.

For me, the plates’ circular shapes called to mind animal faces and the white background color inspired the panda and dog I chose to make. Follow these instructions to recreate them.

Gather your materials. In addition to the paper plates, you’ll need a pair of scissors, a ruler, a pencil, a stapler, a glue stick and construction paper in black, brown and white.

Build your pockets. Using the ruler, draw a pencil line across the midpoint of one plate and cut it down the middle. Place the half piece on the bottom of a full plate so that the smaller piece

Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue

ears to the back edge of the plate.

arches out in the opposite direction from the full plate, creating a pocket.

Staple the two pieces together around the edge.

Add facial features for the panda.

To make the panda, take black and white construction paper and cut out two black semi circle ears, two black ovals slightly narrower on one side, two small white circles, two tiny black circles, a black triangle slightly arched on one side, and a black smile shape.

Glue features in place to resemble the picture. I glued the ears to the back edge of the plate and I placed the oval patches at a slight angle with the narrower edges meeting a little higher at the center.

Hang up your creation! Use a push pin to hang your pocket on the wall or a bulletin board. You can also use a strong magnet to display it on the refrigerator. Then place pencils, markers, stationery, shopping lists, or what-

\Add facial features for the dog. To make the dog, take black and brown construction paper and cut out two floppy brown ear shapes, one large brown circle, two small black circles, a black triangle slightly arched on one side, and a black smile shape.

Glue features in place to resemble the picture. Like the panda, I glued the

ever you’d like inside. You might even decide to use your wall pocket as a decoration without storing anything.

September Preview: Do you have composition notebooks from past school years that are mostly unused? Don’t throw them away!

We’ll repurpose them

Share your designs with us! Send photos to the editor: george@redhookstar.com We will print them in the next issue So far nobody has sent us anything :( www.star-revue.com

August 2022