Star-Revue, September 2019 by George Fiala

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SEPTEMBER 2019 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

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Mama D's perfect night out is a perfect night in by Roderick Thomas

here are a ton of parties that spring up (and disappear) throughout the city. In New York, plenty of weekends are a tug of war between your FOMO (fear of missing out) and pestering indecisiveness. There are so many options, your bed, takeout and Netflix usually being a staple and comfortable one. If you’re too lazy to go out clubbing or bar-hopping, but feeling upbeat enough for a night out, head over to a new event that will give you all the takeout, with Netflix in bed feelings, while curing your FOMO. Imagine all-night cocktails and gourmet treats, lounge chairs and movies, its Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy.

Diana Mino is a gourmet chef, photographer, community organizer and total cinephile, but who is Mama D and what the heck are her Sneaky Speakeasies? Mama D: [laughs] Well, Mama D is Diana, that’s me. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, in the rural suburbs. They were originally farms, so there’s a tiny country girl in me. Don’t get me wrong though, the moment I could make it to New York, I said “bye! Hello NYC.” Roderick: Tell me about your Sneaky Speakeasy. Mama D: Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy is a host of

events throughout the month that brings artists, music, food and film together for a great party.

ity. On a scale of Rachel Ray to Anthony Bourdain, she’s somewhere in the middle.

My first night at Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy, I arrived at the venue, inconspicuously located in a gem of an area called Bushwood, a name for the not-so-famous Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn border. I walked up to the tall brown doors. “I’m here” I texted. Outside of the cozy establishment, I stood waiting and listening to the muﬄed chatter of guests and then Mama D opened the door. In front of me was a smiling young woman, petite but with a strong and comedic personal-

Inside was a well-decorated scene. The walls were covered with art, red brick and blackboards. I stared at the perfectly placed cocktail glasses, sprinkling light over the neon bar; it was like I walked onto a set of an HBO show. As I took a sip of my first cocktail and sank into one of Mama D’s pillowy couches, the evening was off to a great start. The DJ began her set, scratching on real records, a refreshing departure from the Youtube playlist DJ’s

(continued on page 34

SCOTT PFAFFMAN IS EVERYWHERE Interview page 25

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER George Fiala ASSISTANT EDITOR REPORTERS

Brett Yates Nathan Weiser Erin DeGregorio

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MUSIC CALENDAR DESIGN

Will Jackson George Fiala

Atlantic Antic coming September 29

Brooklyn’s long-running Atlantic Antic returns to Downtown Brooklyn on the 29th of September. The first Antic was in 1974, when Brooklyn was in the rebuilding phase. As in years past, festivalgoers can try new types of food, enjoy live performances and go shopping at local businesses at this year’s annual Atlantic Antic Festival. There will also be stages for live music

and entertainment, and a Kids Zone that is one block dedicated to familyfriendly fun. The Kids Zone will have bounce houses, pony rides and various children’s activities. The 45th Festival will be from 12 to 6 pm, rain or shine. It’ll span 10 blocks through four neighborhoods on Atlantic Avenue, from 4th Avenue to Hicks Street. -Erin DeGregorio

More ships coming

Pier 92 at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal has shut

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Liz Galvin Jamie Yates Brian Abate Fern Wallach

CIRCULATION

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MERRY BAND OF CONTRIBUTORS Roderick Thomas, Michael Fiorito, Jack Grace, Mike Morgan, Andrew B. White, Stefan Zeniuk, Jody Callahan, Piotr Pillady,

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The 2,754-passenger Sunrise will join the Caribbean Princess, the Regal Princess, and the Queen Mary 2 in Red Hook. Fol-

lowing an initial voyage to Bermuda on Monday, September 16, the Sunrise will leave the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal at Atlantic Basin on four consecutive Sundays for three trips to New England and Canada and one to the Caribbean. After October 13, Carnival will relocate the Sunrise to Norfolk, Virginia, and then to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for the remainder of 2019. - Brett Yates

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HAPPY PeTS VeTERiNARIAN’s

September 2019

Drastic change

I recently graduated from college so I’m not too far removed from high school, which is usually associated with taking the Regents, but my high school (The Beacon School) used portfoliobased assessments (PBAs) instead, so my experience was different. The only regent I had to take was the ELA one, and I remember leaving the test feeling good about myself because it was much easier than a typical PBA. A PBA could be a test, project, presentation, essay, or some combination of all of them. Most of my friends took the regents since we went to different schools, and their classes focused on preparing

for the Regents. My school felt like the opposite. Each PBA was designed based on what we were doing in class, rather than using class time to prepare us for a test. I was drawn to the idea of not having to take the Regents when I began high school, but I also think each PBA covered more material and was more challenging than the Regents I did take. In hindsight, I think my high school’s system was beneficial and helped prepare me for college. It’s possible that other schools will slowly turn to similar assessments instead of the Regents but as the article says, for most schools the Regents are all they’ve ever known, and that makes it unlikely that they’ll be willing to take a risk

send them to george@ redhookstar.com or post on our website, www.star-revue.com.

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BRETT YATES:

Last-mile distribution needs new rules

he trucks are coming, and Red Hook may not be ready for them. The good news is that the city could help, but it would require serious action by the City Planning Commission (CPC) and City Council. The increasing popularity of e-commerce, led by Amazon, has generated a new industry, “last-mile distribution,” which seeks to resolve the challenges that sellers face in transporting huge volumes of goods to customers without a brick-and-mortar retail intermediary. Same-day delivery expectations have forced merchants to move the final stages of their exurban supply chains closer to where the online shoppers live, prompting the construction of fulfillment centers (operated by “third-party logistics providers”) in Brooklyn and Queens. Red Hook is a prime destination, thanks to its acres of disused waterfront property in manufacturing zones just a couple miles from Manhattan. DH Property Holdings has begun construction on last-mile distribution centers at 55 Bay Street (82,000 square feet) and 640 Columbia Street (336,000 square feet).

ried that towers of luxury condos would soon line the South Brooklyn waterfront and forever change the character of the blue-collar area. But councilman Carlos Menchaca has resisted residential rezoning proposals, and vacant industrial parcels are attracting new tenants likely to provide jobs to people in the Red Hook Houses. In particular, UPS – the largest single employer of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters – boasts above-average labor standards and fair hiring practices. At the same time, homeowners at the Red Hook Civic Association routinely bemoan the incoming invasion of trucks in the area. For buildings in Red Hook, New York City’s post-Sandy resiliency standards discourage most ground floor uses except for parking, which no longer counts against the structure’s total floor area in a flood zone, and this regulation already has spurred the construction of smaller trucking facilities in the area. By some accounts, Red Hook’s historic wood houses shake as the vehicles rumble past, and asthmatic children cower in fear when it comes time to cross the street.

It’s easy to dismiss these concerns as NIMBYism. But Red Hook, which as one of Brooklyn’s poorest communities hosted 22 waste transfer stations (a wildly disproportionate number and an obvious example of environmental racism) before residents fought them off, has a right to some wariness regarding plans that would unfairly concentrate unappealing or unwholesome land uses on its civically neglected peninsula beyond the Gowanus Expressway. No one knows exactly how many trucks will Not long ago, a redevelopment scheme floated by visit the new UPS facility each day, but the land’s AECOM and Governor Cuomo had residents worbuildable square footage matches exactly that of the company’s new regional hub "All of the planned last-mile distribution in Atlanta, which can dismore than 280 trucks centers in Red Hook will be built as-of-right, patch at a time. (The total acreage which means they don’t need approval from of the Atlanta site, however, exceeds that of the Red Hook the local councilman or an environmental location, giving it a much larger parking area.) In May, UPS tore down the historic Lidgerwood Building near Valentino Pier to make way for an upcoming 1.2-million-square-foot last-mile distribution center. Earlier in the year, Thor Equities embraced the same trend, announcing that it had dropped its ambitions to build an office park at 280 Richards Street, which could accommodate an Amazon-style fulfillment center even larger than the planned UPS facility. For many Red Hookers, these are positive developments.

impact statement."

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Insofar as we’ve accepted a

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retail model that, by standard practice, whenever someone wants to buy a box of toothpicks, immediately sends a truck to deliver those toothpicks directly to the buyer’s doorstep instead of asking him to walk a few blocks to a store, last-mile distribution centers must exist. But as a matter of city planning, it’d be best if they weren’t all bunched up in one corner of the city, clogging the streets and subjecting nearby residents to unusual levels of air and noise pollution. All of the planned last-mile distribution centers in Red Hook will be built as-of-right (i.e., in compliance with the existing zoning), which means they don’t need approval from the local councilman or an environmental impact statement. Last-mile distribution presents particularly intense impacts, but planners as yet have few tools to guide its development in New York City.

New rules needed

That’s why the CPC should create a special use permit for last-mile distribution. According to New York State law, a special use permit is “an authorization of a particular land use which is permitted in a zoning ordinance or local law, subject to requirements imposed by such zoning ordinance or local law to assure that the proposed use is in harmony with such zoning ordinance or local law and will not

continued on page 8 September 2019, Page 3

Page 4 Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2019

District 15 rezoning may overlook 676 by Nathan Weiser

S 32, the Samuel Mills Sprole School, on a stretch of Hoyt Street that is sometimes called Gowanus and other times Carroll Gardens, has a new building sitting next to their schoolyard. It was built to address a growing shortage of educational space in what is defined as District 15, and will be open for business in a year. In the meantime, it is the center of much debate as to how the seats will be filled, occurring at a time when school segregation in the city is a hot topic. The new addition to PS 32 will have early childhood and special education classrooms, a new cafeteria and library, and a rooftop playground. A proposed rezoning in District 15 may determine who gets to use these modern facilities. Seven area schools may have to change how they admit students: PS 15 and 676 in Red Hook, and PS 29, PS 32, PS 38, PS 58 and PS 261 in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. The Department of Education’s Office of District Planning (ODP) has put forth two potential plans, over which the local Community Education Council, composed primarily of parents of neighborhood schoolchildren, will have final say. In Approach One, families would have zoned entitlement to a school in their vicinity (based in some cases on revised catchment areas), whereas Approach Two’s lottery system would guarantee each child a seat at one of the seven schools without geographical preference. As a diversity measure, Approach One prioritizes school access for students in temporary housing, multilingual learners, and students qualifying for free or reduced lunch (an outmoded category – given the 2017 introduction of universal free lunch in New York – that remains in use as a poverty index), but Approach Two gives kids across the district an even chance to attend whichever school their families like best. At 28 percent capacity, Red Hook’s PS 676, which serves almost exclusively black and Latino students, has lots of unused seats, while many of the other schools (like majority-white PS 58, which operates at 132 percent capacity) are overcrowded. The ODP, which hopes to fill up the PS 32 expansion, doesn’t seem to regard this particular imbalance as an urgent problem. Approach One would redraw some of the lines on the District 15 map to relieve congestion, but despite PS 676’s underutilization, its zone would remain the same, meaning it wouldn’t draw additional students. When asked about this, Isabelle Boundy from the Department of Education (DOE) responded, “We’re supporting a community-driven rezoning process in District 15 that will meet the needs of students and families, including that of PS 676.” The DOE says

Red Hook Star-Revue

Tracy Pinkard outside of her apartment at the Gowanus Houses.

it’s working with the CEC to develop a rezoning plan that will be responsive to community feedback. But what if the community feedback is coming from parents who live in wealthier parts of District 15 and, for reasons contrary to the ODP’s ostensibly diversity-oriented goals, want to ensure there’s no chance their kids end up at PS 676? Tracey Pinkard, who lives in the Gowanus Houses and whose child attends Summit Academy in the same building as 676, prefers Approach Two but would like to see the issue of transportation addressed. She thinks there are parents who take their children to school and might not be able to afford an extra MetroCard. She wants free train fares to reduce of the burden of the longer commutes that the lottery system would create for some families seeking opportunities outside their immediate neighborhoods. She also thinks there should be reliable buses. In the rezoning process, Pinkard wants PS 676 to be an option for everyone in the district and wants resources allocated equally. She thinks that, even though sometimes it’s said that the benefit of the community is at the forefront, that is not always what ends up happening. “I would hope that the rezoning of these schools would be able to provide equity in terms of resources among all seven schools in the district,” Pinkard said. “What you see in terms of resources in Red Hook and what you have across the bridge in Carroll Gardens is vastly different, and it should not be. Regardless if the PTA can raise one million or not, your child should be able to have access to the same quality afterschool programs, same quality teachers and same quality facilities.”

It was made clear at a recent community meeting, held at 676, that the upcoming rezoning would not impact students already attending District 15 schools. A key point that Superintendent Anita Skop brought up is that 40 percent of the students who are zoned to go to PS

"Regardless if the PTA can raise one million or not, your child should be able to have access to the same quality afterschool programs, same quality teachers and same quality facilities.” Tracy Pinkard 676 opt instead to attend PAVE Academy, a charter school whose higher test scores attract many parents. Even though PS 676 gets extra funding as a Title I school, it still has obstacles going back several years that Principal Priscilla Figueroa has been striving diligently to overcome. Without help from the ODP, PS 676 will

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continue to work to improve its reputation in the community as a means to entice new enrollees. The quantity of resources that is allocated to each school is on a per-student basis, which means little money for PS 676, and Figueroa has sought out grants and partnerships with various organizations to improve the experience for her students. Figueroa, who was born in Carroll Gardens and has been at the school a little over a year, began as an interim principal. She is passionate about her job and said that she has had a lot of support from community members. “The work we have done in the past year incorporates a lot of thinking about what the community needs and ensuring that we are having conversations with community members, parents, educators, the superintendent, and Enrollment,” Figueroa described. She is aware that test scores of students are low at PS 676, but she believes that improvements have been made in the last year. “Of course, our numbers are low in terms of student efficiency, although I believe that this year, we have made some gains,” Figueroa said. “Our science scores are now 89 percent. Many of our teachers have decided that they wanted to take their profession somewhere else, so we are in the process of interviewing new teachers, so that is what I have been doing in the last month.” She is a proponent of project-based learning and did this at her previous school, MS 88. There is also servicebased learning, where students with their community partners get the opportunity to explore outside the building.

continued on next page September 2019, Page 5

School rezoning (continued from page 5)

Skop, who has been District 15’s superintendent since PS 676 was established 10 years ago (succeeding the old PS 27 in the same location), pointed out that under Figueroa the school has teamed with Columbia University’s Teachers College and the local nonprofit PortSide New York. While working toward universal literacy, it has implemented STEAM (STEM with the arts), as well as other initiatives. Skop observed that Figueroa is a “24/7” principal and that they have had talks about the school on the weekends and at night. “They are changing the way learning is happening at the school,” Skop added. “Several of the teachers did an amazing lesson that was brought to the CEC where they took fairy tales and looked at the engineering practices. When I came to visit, a little boy talked to me about the Three Little Pigs, but also talked about his model, which included a closed circuit. This is a school that is being innovative, creative and supportive.” “We are excited about PS 676 under the leadership of Principal Figueroa,” added Boundy, the DOE’s assistant press secretary. ”Since she began as principal, she has started to use

Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue

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more rigorous curriculum, including literacy curriculum; improved teacher training; and improved training around social-emotional learning.” According to Figueroa, this year a maritime theme has been put into place, making use of the school’s location by the waterfront and the nearby Mary A. Whalen, a historic oil tanker that welcomes visitors. Additional partnerships have formed with the New York Aquarium, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, LEAP, Brooklyn Forest, Studio in a School, the New York Public Library, Music Explorers, Carnegie Hall, the Cookshop, Rising New York Road Runners, and the YMCA. “We have the YMCA afterschool program,” Figueroa said. “Last year we started a new partnership with the Y. It is comprehensive pre-K through five. I am in touch with the program director to make sure the partnership is solid and provides a choice that aligns with what we are offering during the day.” Figueroa and PS 676 have had a number of grants come to fruition in the last year, and they will continue to propose more in the future. “We are speaking to community leaders about attempting to address the schoolyard,” Figueroa said. “We proposed a grant to Borough President Eric Adams that did not get accepted this year, but we are not giving up and will continue to look for that to support the schoolyard.”

September 2019

Felix Ortiz could face a real primary challenge next year by George Fiala

eighbors Helping Neighbors has been helping homeowners in Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park ever since gentrification became a threat to long term residents of these neighborhoods, in 1990.

Marcela Mitayanes has been a tenant advocate with NHN for over a decade. Her most recent fight was in Albany, helping to lobby the state legislature to pass new tenant protection laws. Her experience, for the most part successful, as some of the strongest tenant protections that New York State has seen were passed, encouraged her to become a legislator herself. Mitaynes is planning to run for the Assembly in Sunset Park’s 51st District, a seat occupied for more than a quarter century by Assemblyman Félix Ortiz. Ortiz has been in the Assembly continuously since 1994, usually running unopposed or against a weak candidate. The Assembly is elected for two year terms, with the next election coinciding with the next presidential election, in November 2020.

Councilmember Carlos Menchaca, who represents Sunset Park and Red Hook in the City Council, in 2017, and and lost.

with a HUD official.

Immigrant from Peru

Mitaynes, who immigrated from Peru as a child, got involved in housing activism in 2007 after a speculative landlord pushed her out of her rentcontrolled building. In addition to her activism with NHN, she also is head of the Housing Committee of Community Board 7, where she also tackles gentrification issues. Mitaynes wants to see rent increases associated with apartment repairs eliminated. And as a market rate tenant herself, she wants to prevent steep rent hikes for all tenants — not just those whose apartments are rent controlled. All of this, she says, will require a “fighting spirit” that Ortiz lacks, she claims.

Ortiz may proved vulnerable this time, as his office faces a scandal concerning an former chief-of-staff.

Mitaynes is seeking the endorsement of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America — which she hope to get this month. The DSA includes, among its higher-profile members, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and State Sen. Julia Salazar.

In addition, Ortiz, who had never before lost an election, ran against

Ortiz seems to be planning a vigorous race as he has already made the pa-

Red Hook Star-Revue

pers traversing the Red Hook Houses

Marcela Mitayne (center, holding the banner) protesting gentrification in Sunset Park in September, 2018. The march on Third Avenue went right past Industry City.

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September 2019, Page 7

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amilies who had already registered their children at Fort Greene's St. Francis XavierQueen of All Saints Catholic Academy were in for a shock when they were told their school would be closing on Aug. ust 31. The news came just three weeks before the start of the school year.

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The merged academy’s Board of Members and Board of Directors voted to close the K-8 school because of a 30% decline in enrollment. Catholic school enrollment reached its peak during the early 1960s when there were more than 5.2 million students in almost 13,000 schools in the US. By 1990 this was down to 2.5 million students in 8,719 schools. Between 2009 and 2019, nearly 1,300 schools closed or merged – with elementary schools being the most affected.

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In 2013, 213 students were registered at St. Francis Xavier and Queen of All Saints. This number dwindled to little more than 120 last year. The Diocese says that a demographic change in Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill has been the primary factor.

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The merger of the two schools was expected to lead to an increase in financial resources, since the academy was then designated as an Embassy School, according to the Catholic newspaper The Tablet. They were to receive a “substantial” grant from the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Trust for academic program enhancements.

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Tuition for the upcoming school year at SFX-QAS was supposed to be $4,650 per student, with actual costs totaling $13,825 per year per child. Tuition the year before was $4,320, two years before that, tuition was $3,650 at Queen of All Saints and $4,600 at St. Francis Xavier. The median household income of Fort Greene is $44,186, compared to about $60,000 citywide.

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“This decision was not an easy one to make and took much discussion on the part of the Members of the Academy. It comes after many efforts on the part of the diocesan support staff to maintain a financially viable and high-quality educational program in this section of Brooklyn. We regret that factors beyond our control led to this decision so close to the start of the school year,” said Thomas Chadzutko, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools for the Diocese of Brooklyn and Chairperson of the Board of Members.

ory the Great, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Joseph the Worker and St. Saviour. In some past closings, Catholic school and academy buildings were purchased by the Department of Education (DOE) to serve as new public school sites. As of a week and a half after the closing announcement, DOE was not sure if the now student-less building could serve as a future site. “We work closely with families, community members, and elected officials to identify suitable locations for new school buildings and facilities,” said DOE spokesperson Isabelle Boundy.

Other closings

SFX-QAS Catholic Academy wasn’t the first to close this year in Brooklyn. The Board of Members and Board of Directors of Mary Queen of Heaven Catholic Academy (Mill Basin) and Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Academy (Dyker Heights) voted to close their schools by the end of the school year. St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Academy and St. Brigid Catholic Academy in Bushwick merged for the 2019-2020 school year. The merge occurred due to declining enrollment at both schools and increased repair expenditures at St. Frances Cabrini. The new school, located at St. Brigid’s, is called St BrigidSt. Frances Cabrini Catholic Academy. It’s also been designated an Embassy School, meaning it’ll receive additional funding from the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Trust – plus technology updates to the infrastructure through DeSales Media Group, the Diocese’s communications and technology arm. Bishop Kearney, the all-girls Catholic high school in Bensonhurst, announced its closure on May 13 – weeks before the school year ended and months after incoming freshmen had already submitted their registration commitment forms and payments. Closure there was caused by declining enrollment, changing demographics, reduced income and increased expenses, as per the announcement letter from Sister Helen Kearney, the congregation’s president. There are 28 Catholic academies still operating in Brooklyn, once called the Borough of Churches.

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The school broke the news on their Facebook page, where many expressed their sadness. Some said it was a shame how the Catholic school system had diminished over the years; others were concerned about where students and faculty would go on such short notice. The Diocese hosted a parents-only information meeting on August 20, in which mothers and fathers could reregister their kids at nearby Catholic schools for the beginning of September. Academies that presented their programs and answered questions were Queen of the Rosary, St. Greg-

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September 2019

Video: ‘A Dream Deferred’ spotlights frustration and hope in NYCHA by Brett Yates

ny New Yorker who glances at the local newspapers knows something of the major inconveniences and outright horrors experienced by residents of the misgoverned and cash-strapped New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in recent years, but sometimes a visual aid helps. It’s one thing to read about a corroded pipe bursting; seeing the veritable waterfall gush – nonstop, for hours – into the lobby of a building where people are meant to live is another. Over the summer, New York City’s PBS affiliate, WNET (aka THIRTEEN), released A Dream Deferred: The Broken Promise of New York City Public Housing, a “digital docuseries” following a handful of NYCHA tenants in Brownsville’s Seth Low Houses through everyday trials and administrative upheaval. Akisa Omulepo directed the five short episodes, now streaming online, as part of WNET’s larger project “Chasing the Dream,” which explores “poverty, jobs, and economic opportunity in America” through video content. A Dream Deferred reminds viewers that public housing was not always an American tragedy. It began under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal as the product of an optimistic, activist government, based on the notion that every citizen should and could have a decent place to live – a promise in which public officials have since seemed to have lost faith. “When I came here, it was beautiful. I loved it,” remembers Sylvia Arrington. Now, when Shelevya Pearson leads a cameraperson up her building’s stairwell, she encounters used condoms and feces on the steps. Inside the units, duct tape covers rotted spots in the walls; a broken kitchen sink may sit on the floor, or a single hot plate may stand in for a stove. Pearson struggles to treat her daughter’s asthma, brought on by moldy walls when she was a premature infant. Percival Grant, a maintenance staffer, does his best, but he has 1,000 apartments to look after. He’s not a plumb-

er, but NYCHA frequently dispatches him for jobs that require one. Yvonne Davis points out that, in the old days, when the repairman visited her to fix one thing, she might point out another minor problem, and he’d gladly perform the fix impromptu: “Everything didn’t require a work order.” The situation shows how, when resources fall short, an insurmountable backlog of jobs produces additional layers of irritating bureaucracy – in the form of box tickers and flak catchers – as a means to create breathing room for an overwhelmed administration. Davis knows she deserves better: “We follow the rules. We pay the rent. So I don’t think I have to beg and plead to get the services that I’m duly entitled to.” Still, some residents have picked up their landlord’s slack. Davis’s husband has fashioned a plastic exterior window covering to reduce leakage on rainy days, which once left large puddles on their floor, but the makeshift solution means no fresh air or natural light for their apartment. Meanwhile, Arrington, sick of the neglected landscape outside her building, has started gardening. “I spent money buying rose trees and every kind of flower out there. I’ve had people tell me, ‘The reason we come this way to go to work is to admire your flowers.’ It’s just my idea of the way I want to live. I want to be part of something beautiful,” she says. Last year, when NYCHA settled a lawsuit after its lead paint scandal and agreed to federal oversight, Trumpappointed HUD regional manager Lynne Patton visited Seth Low for a public meeting and press conference. As a condition of the settlement, New York City agreed to spend an additional $1 billion on the state publicbenefit corporation, but by its own estimate, NYCHA needs an infusion of $32 billion in capital funds to remediate its properties adequately. At the press conference, Garnette Gibson stands up to complain that, when a broken wastewater line flooded her mother’s apartment the day before,

Grand Opening

NYCHA workers were too busy prettifying the courtyard’s shrubbery in advance of Patton’s visit to help. Later, as the media departs, another resident shrugs at the whole production. “It wasn’t done for the residents. It was done for y’all,” she tells the camera. In 1978, HUD spent eight percent of the US federal budget. Now it accounts for about one percent. A Dream Deferred doesn’t point its finger at any particular elected officials; a hazy sense of “political gridlock” stands in for an explanation. To be fair, both Republicans and Democrats have so fully abandoned public housing in America that it’d be tough to know where to start when assigning blame. In 1999, Bill Clinton signed into law the Faircloth Limit, prohibiting public housing authorities across the country from adding any new HUD-subsidized units from that point forward. NYCHA’s most recent development finished construction in 1997, and since then, New York City has grown by a million residents. The lack of new capacity at NYCHA has generated a homeless population in public housing’s common spaces, putting extra strain on the aging buildings. Even so, A Dream Deferred suggests that some

NYCHA residents believe there is a path forward, and it starts with sharing their stories with the public. No one should ever need a reminder that the more than 400,000 residents of NYCHA are human beings, but some people probably do anyway. Over images of dancing and basketball at the annual Seth Low Houses Family Day, Reginald Bowman describes the lively, joyful culture that exists in and around NYCHA’s brick towers. “We want people to know that this isn’t just a jungle. This is a place of human resources and everyday American life like any other community,” he comments. A Dream Deferred begins with a title card: “For a year, we followed the lives of five residents in New York City public housing.” If so, the resulting footage was subject to strenuous editing, since the final running time barely exceeds 30 minutes. It would be nice to be able to get to know Bowman, Davis, Grant, Arrington, and Pearson better, but WNET’s concise, glossy video package is a worthwhile introduction to their neighborhood. Viewers can stream A Dream Deferred for free at pbs.org/wnet/chasingthedream.

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September 2019, Page 9

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September 2019

Medicare for All comes to Brooklyn

grassroots movement to ‘fix America’s broken healthcare system’ by implementing Medicare for All showed up in Fort Greene on August 8. This came a week after CNN’s telecast of the second round of the Democratic presidential primary debates in Detroit, where candidates lengthily discussed the issue of healthcare. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (DWA) officially introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (H.R. 1384) in late February as a redrafted version of the House Progressive Caucus’s Medicare for All bill. It would establish a singlepayer system in which the government, using tax dollars, would replace private insurance companies to fund free-atthe-point-of-service healthcare for all United States residents. Here in Brooklyn, activists, nurses, physicians, patients and local constituents gathered at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, brainstorming ways on how to take action and encourage congressmen Hakeem Jeffries and Max Rose, among other holdouts, to cosponsor the bill. 12 of 27 U.S. Represen-

Last mile distribution (continued from page 3)

adversely affect the neighborhood if such requirements are met.” The purpose of zoning, when it’s working right, is to create a functional, orderly cityscape that serves all the diverse needs of the public without creating incompatible neighbors. To this end, planners attempt to determine which types of buildings – houses, factories, hospitals – sit easily side-by-side and which don’t, and they break the city up into zones, each of which allows particular uses. They can run into trouble, however, when new uses emerge, and the zoning laws don’t adjust to recognize them. Shipping goods is nothing new, but last-mile distribution, as it currently exists, is a fresh phenomenon – it dates roughly to the introduction of Amazon Prime two-day shipping. When a developer builds a last-mile distribution center, the New York City Department of Buildings classifies it as a warehouse, which is sort of right but also overlooks certain differences between the storehouses of yesteryear and today’s high-powered fulfillment centers. Whereas warehouses accommodate the long-term storage of goods, e-

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by Erin DeGregorio

tatives from New York State have not yet signed on in support. Red Hook’s representative, Nydia Velasquez, is a founding member of the Congressional Medicare for All Caucus. “Several years ago, Medicare for All was seen as a fringe idea, but now it has taken the center stage of the conversation around fixing America’s broken healthcare system. Our organizing is working,” said Lora Logan, a VA nurse. By the end of the evening, some attendees signed campaign commitment cards, putting down that they’d attend a community canvass on either August 10 or 17 (or host their own at their own convenience); drop by Rep. Jeffries’ office to let him know that they support the bill; participate in a future community meeting with Rep. Jeffries at his office; or attend a strategy meeting with the Democratic Socialists of America on August 19 in Park Slope. Speak-and-share Marina Tsaplina, a patient advocate and member of the New York Insulin4All chapter, has lived with type 1 diabetes for the last 38 years. She spoke

about how important it is for diabetics to have insulin in order to survive. But lots of uninsured Americans can’t afford it, and even those with insurance often can’t manage the additional outof-pocket prescription costs. Jose Figueroa, a young man living with HIV, said he’s limited to living in New York State because of his access to covered providers and services, and has to fight with his pharmaceutical company if he wants to have an extended stay in another country. He added that this isn’t just a fight for better healthcare, but a fight for diversity and the LGBTQ communities as well. “We need support for HIV and support plans, support for mental health and support for our trans brothers and sisters who need HRT [hormone replacement therapy] and other services that we don’t have access to,” he continued. “There’s absolutely no reason for this. Profit should not be the priority for our healthcare.” “The system we have is broken. It doesn’t work for me as a doctor – I can’t get access to my patients – and it doesn’t

commerce fulfillment centers are in a constant state of turnover. The reason is that warehouses don’t serve external customers – they facilitate transfers among manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers, which buy in bulk. Meanwhile, all the tiny individual purchases by Amazon Prime customers travel through fulfillment centers: the number of shipments per hour – all to different addresses – is unparalleled.

tricts, and sewage disposal plants in commercial districts. The problem with last-mile distribution is not that it’s trying to enter the wrong sorts of areas (all of the facilities in Red Hook will be in manufacturing zones) or that it should be automatically prohibited from any of zones that currently allow it – it’s that it carries with it concerns that call for special consideration in any area.

In order to plan more effectively, the CPC could study last-mile distribution patterns in order to distill more precisely the differences between warehouses and fulfillment centers and then could create a separate land use classification for the latter within the New York City Zoning Resolution. Warehouses exist in C8, M1, M2, and M3 zones, which means any manufacturing zone and even some commercial areas; however, for fulfillment centers, the CPC could, within the Zoning Resolution, set out the terms of a special use permit that would give the city an additional measure of control over their placement.

For this reason, a zoning amendment designed to address last-mile distribution might, somewhat oddly, resemble the section of the Resolution that determines “Special Provisions for Adult Establishments,” like strip clubs and porn shops. Adult establishments can exist in a multitude of commercial zones or even, depending on the type of building, in a manufacturing zone. But wherever they are, they must abide by certain rules, which vary a bit from zone to zone but in each case ensure that no such business should come within 500 feet of a school, a house of worship, or a residential area.

This mechanism might have to differ slightly from the special permits described within the current Zoning Resolution, which allow the CPC or the Board of Standards and Appeals to grant exceptions for the construction of certain buildings outside the zones to which they normally belong, given that they comply with particular rules – like hotels in manufacturing districts, student dormitories in residential dis-

In states that legalized recreational cannabis, planners recognized an emerging use category – dispensaries – and amended city zoning ordinances to establish similar provisions, as well as to create buffers between the dispensaries themselves to make sure that there weren’t multiple pot shops in the same commercial strip. In that case, they were catering to a certain kind of moralism, but the same buffer

Models exist

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work for me as a patient – I can’t get access to the doctors or hospitals I want,” said Donald Moore, keynote speaker. Racial justice issue As per a September 2018 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured, and at least 41 million covered adults are considered underinsured, meaning that they can’t afford the costs of their co-pays and deductibles. While some healthcare conversations have revolved around access and money, others have connected to racial injustice as well. “Not only are we pressuring our elected officials to support Medicare for All as the only proposal that takes profiteering out of the healthcare system, but we’re raising this as a racial justice issue,” said Darius Gordon, the Center for Popular Democracy’s National Field Organizer, who facilitated the evening’s assembly. “Over half the people who are without insurance are black and brown people between the ages of 26 and 64. Having a plan that would include them is something that we tremendously need.”

mechanism could be useful for other purposes: for instance, to limit the number of last-mile distribution centers within a particular square mileage so as to spread traffic more evenly. The special use permit for last-mile distribution would not hand over the right to build fulfillment centers to the discretion of capricious city administrators. It would not force UPS to stand before City Council for a ULURP. Instead, it would create a fair, consistent formula – factoring in questions of size, utilization, and proximity to residences, schools, and other fulfillment centers, possibly with particular guidelines for each zone in which such structures might be built – that would grant companies permission to build in each case where they’ve met all the conditions. The terms of the permit would have to be crafted with great care so as not to prevent investment in useful infrastructure where it’s likely to cause minimal harm. It would, however, force last-mile distributors to submit detailed applications for review by the CPC or the Board of Standards and Appeals, and if the process works as it should, it might prevent Red Hook from turning into Maximum Overdrive. All changes to the Zoning Resolution require some political capital – approval not only by the CPC but also by City Council – but good planning is worth the fight. If we don’t act now, it might soon be too late for the streets of Red Hook.

September 2019, Page 11

No big news from the Parks Department by Nathan Weiser

he Parks Department came to Red Hook in August for a community update regarding the long-closed Red Hook ballfields.

Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Marty Maher led the sparsely attended proceedings, held at the Rec Center on Bay Street in the middle of a driving rainstorm. “The good news is that none of the time frames are affected,” Maher said. “We started construction; the completion times are the same. Phase One is in construction and Phase Two is going to start this coming fall. I don’t think we have any bad news.” Eric Mettes, who was the Design Chief for Brooklyn but has moved on to Queens, summarized the current anticipated cleanup timeline. According to Mattes, during Phase One the fields will be raised above flood elevation and new perimeter fencing will be put on raised curbs. In this process, in Fields 5 through 8 there will be 62 new trees, 900 shrubs, and 5,000 or more perennials and ornamental grasses. Phase One will include four synthetic turf fields with similar material as professional ballfields. There will be ramps with handrails, a planting bed and permeable pavers with bonded aggregate.

So far, in Phase One, the construction has included contractor mobilization, site clearing, tree removal, and soil stockpiling, as well as installing the sub-surface support piles. The next part of Phase One will include soil removal and disposal, installation of drainage and utilities and grading of protective soil cap that will serve as the foundation of ball fields. Several public safety measures will address dust monitoring during construction. According to Mattes, there will be soil pile tarps, frequent spraying of exposed areas with water, and perimeter fencing to create a dust curtain around Fields 5 through 8. There will also be an equipment decontamination area where vehicles and the equipment on the vehicles will be washed before leaving the site. Along Hicks Street there will be a construction fence and a stabilized construction entrance, and just inside will be the decontamination area. The issue of trucking was been brought up many times. The announced route is along Bay Street, away from residential buildings. Trucks will be able to come to the site on Court Street, then make a left on Bay Street and turn right on Hicks to enter Fields 5 through 8. To leave the

THE REBIRTH OF THE COOL

The ballfields in happier times

site, trucks will exit on Hicks, take a right on Bay Street and then turn left on Smith Street. In response to a question from maritime business owner Jim Tampakis, Maher said that it will not be possible for equipment to be brought to the site via ships. Phase Two will also include an equipment decontamination area where vehicles and equipment will be washed before leaving the site. There will be one decontamination area and stabilized construction entrance on Bay Street, closer to home plate of Field 9, and another decontamination area off of Clinton Street.

The truck route for Phase Two will entail trucks going down Court Street, making a left on Bay Street and then entering the site near Henry Street or on Clinton Street. When leaving the site, trucks will turn right on Bay Street and then turn left on Smith Street. Phase Three will include synthetic turf that will be able to be used for softball, baseball and soccer where Fields 1 through 4 currently are. In what is now Soccer Field 3 there will be synthetic turf that can be used for football, soccer and rugby. Surrounding the field will be new bleachers, a refurbished track, new adult fitness equipment, new handball courts and a comfort station.

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September 2019

Does the landmarks commission care about industrial New York?

by Brett Yates

n June, the Gowanus Landmarking Coalition, an advocacy group for historic preservation, earned a significant victory – albeit an incomplete one – when the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) agreed to calendar five buildings in Gowanus. This decision increased the likelihood that, in the form of longstanding anchors like the American Can Factory and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Powerhouse, some of the blue-collar history of one of Brooklyn’s most maligned and polluted neighborhoods would outlast a rezoning-spurred invasion of condos. The announcement stirred interest in Red Hook, too, which in recent months has lost two of the most significant elements of its built environment: the Lidgerwood Building at 202 Coffey Street and the S.W. Bowne Grain Storehouse at 595 Smith Street. Only two buildings in the area – the circa-1859 Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Works Storehouse at 76 Van Dyke Street and the WPA-constructed Red Hook Recreation Center at 155 Bay Street – bear the protection of landmark status, and some Red Hookers would like to see more. As residents well know, Red Hook is not the Upper East Side. It’s a traditionally working-class neighborhood of maritime industry, and it doesn’t have mansions, cathedrals, or skyscrapers. Utilitarian structures can be beautiful, too, but they rarely catch the LPC’s eye, and over the years, changing industrial practices – which in turn tend to alter the buildings that house them – can compromise their claims to historic merit. Still, these buildings tell stories, and New York City’s distribution of landmarks (the majority of them in Manhattan) can bring to mind questions of equity – about whose stories and memories seem to matter, and which of the city’s denizens seem to have a right to the comforts of continuity and a recognizable sense of place within the churn of growth, decline, and redevelopment.

The Pepsi Cola sign in Long Island City is one of the relatively few industrial structures that are officially landmarked. This picture is from a time when there were not large apartment buildings in the background.

sites of fabrication; warehouses; and certain types of public works and hard infrastructure, like sewage treatment plants and power stations – but not, for example, bridges, train stations, or garages. The goal was to isolate the constituent parts of the sometimes unadorned and often unnoticed network of steel and concrete that undergirds and facilitates modern life: the noisy, smelly machinery that makes things easy for all those who never have to come into contact with it.

My list consists of structures developed for industrial purposes, even if they now serve other ends or even had already undergone conversion by the time the LPC appraised them. Older buildings presented a challenge: before the 1916 Zoning Resolution, New York didn’t segregate land uses, and in the old days, merchants usually co-located their warehouse and retail "Occasionally regarded as a possible operations. Manhattan holds a number lifeline for communities under of landmarked storethreat by private interests, the and-loft buildings, LPC does not, however, operate many of which contained offices, storindependent of the politics that in age, sales, and light many cases enable those interests." manufacturing all at the same time. The LPC classifies these structures as “commercial,” but some The LPC safeguards 150 historic dis(especially those that primarily actricts and 1,431 individual landmarks commodated small factories) made in the five boroughs. Of those indithe cut here, while others didn’t, devidual landmarks, residences make pending on the dominant historical up the lion’s share. According to my use per the LPC’s designation report. own analysis, only 34 individual landmarks are industrial structures. That’s 18 of New York’s industrial landmarks are in Manhattan: the IRT Powerabout 0.2 percent of the total. house, the Excelsior Steam Power The definition of “industrial” is to some Building, 41 Worth Street, the F.W. Dedegree subjective. For my list, I includvoe & Company Factory, the Wheated factories, mills, refineries, and other

Red Hook Star-Revue

sworth Bakery, the Brown Building, the Avildsen Building, two Croton Aqueduct gatehouses, the Joseph Loth & Company Silk Ribbon Mill, the Starrett-Lehigh Building, the Robbins & Appleton Building, the Fleming Smith Warehouse, the Municipal Asphalt Plant, the DeVinne Press Building, 193 Front Street, 191 Front Street, and the High Bridge Water Tower. This collection includes a former watchcase manufacturer, an old freight terminal, and the site of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Five industrial landmarks (the Estey Piano Company Factory, the American Bank Note Company Printing Plant, the Bronx Grit Chamber, and the High Pumping Station) belong to the Bronx. Two (the Sohmer & Company Piano Factory and the Pepsi-Cola sign from Long Island City’s demolished bottling plant) lay in Queens. There’s just one (a remainder of the Standard Varnish Works factory complex) on Staten Island. With eight industrial landmarks, Brooklyn has received better treatment than the other outer boroughs. The Kings County notables are the Empire State Dairy Company Buildings, the M.H. Renken Dairy Company Buildings, the William Ulmer Brewery, the Domino Sugar Refinery, the Hecla Iron Works, the Thomson Meter Company Building, the aforementioned Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Works Storehouse, and Dry Dock #1 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Brooklyn’s most recent industrial landmark, the Empire State Dairy Company Buildings at 2840 Atlantic Avenue in East New York, is an instructive case. In 2016, the Department of City Planning (DCP) authored

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the East New York Neighborhood Plan, a comprehensive rezoning intended to increase density and create housing. City Council approved the plan in April, and three months later, the LPC held a public hearing for the Empire State Dairy. The landmarking secured six interconnected structures between Schenck Avenue and Barbey Street, but it left undefended the southern portion of the lot, where a developer now plans to demolish two associated buildings to make way for a 14-story residential tower. Occasionally regarded as a possible lifeline for communities under threat by private interests, the LPC does not, however, operate independent of the politics that in many cases enable those interests. Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. created the agency in 1965 with a mandate to watch over structures of architectural, historic, and cultural significance, and ideally, perhaps, the LPC would make its rulings on these grounds only. Of course, from an urban planning perspective, it would be irresponsible not to weigh the opportunity cost when considering giving over permanently a piece of city land to one particular building, which, if its usefulness has expired, might interfere with desired growth or renewal in the area. But the City Charter delegates the pragmatic questions to the City Planning Commission (CPC), which must compile a report regarding possible impacts on development following an LPC designation, and to City Council, which subsequently must evaluate these impacts and then vote to approve or reject the designation. (The mayor also has a veto option.) In the real world, however, City Coun-

continued on next page September 2019, Page 13

Landmarks (continued from page 13)

cil very rarely votes against an LPC designation, and the mayor has never had to shoot one down. Councilmembers prefer not to be put into a position where they’d have to reject a new landmark publicly. Instead, the LPC coordinates with City Council, the DCP, the CPC, and the Mayor’s Office on the front end. The 11 mayorappointed commissioners generally won’t designate or even calendar a potential landmark unless the other city agencies and the elected officials are on board, and this approach covertly incorporates planning priorities into the LPC’s ostensibly aesthetic or scholarly assessment. The most important elected official is the local councilmember – who, in some districts, may be hostile even to concept of historic landmarks, regarding them as an encroachment on property rights. As a result, some parts of the city (particularly in Queens and Staten Island) have few or no landmarks, but it’s not necessarily because the architects and historians of the LPC don’t believe that any of the buildings there have merit. In other words, the LPC did not, in June, forcibly wrench a portion of Gowanus from Bill de Blasio, Brad Lander, or the DCP’s Gowa-

nus Framework. Instead, it worked with other parts of city government to determine which buildings could be spared from demolition without compromising the larger aims of the rezoning. The LPC has no power to overturn development goals. Whichever buildings in Gowanus ultimately earn landmark status, they’ll surely deserve it on architectural and historic grounds, but the designations will serve first as a political maneuver. As community givebacks in exchange for a host of other possibly unappealing changes, they will, if all goes well for the city, offer just enough local stability to appease residents. (Soon after the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning of 2005, the LPC landmarked the Williamsburg Bridge-adjacent Domino Sugar Refinery – whose exterior, as a decorative ruin, will soon enclose a new glass office tower – but the surrounding neighborhood nevertheless became unrecognizable.) Whether Red Hook can garner LPC attention without accepting a total overhaul by DCP first remains to be seen. The LPC is an underfunded, understaffed agency, and bringing buildings to the top of its pile – no easy feat – tends to require serious activism by groups like the Historic Districts Council. An element of danger (that is, an imminent possibility of demolition or serious alteration of a significant building) can jumpstart the LPC, but only if the politicians haven’t specifically created or en-

dorsed that danger. Red Hook’s councilman, Carlos Menchaca, has spoken in favor of landmarking. But historic preservation here wouldn’t come cheap: the potential cost of landmarking a massive disused warehouse that might otherwise become a last-mile distribution center for Amazon vastly exceeds that of landmarking a fancy Manhattan townhouse in a row of other fancy townhouses for the purpose of preventing a homeowner from making any tacky renovations. Beyond issues of taste and familiarity, this partly explains the dearth of industrial landmarks in postindustrial New York: while the city’s old houses still have people in them, many of its factories don’t, and one doesn’t necessarily want to deprive an abandoned factory of the chance to become something new. Adaptive reuse is possible, but it’s relatively expensive, and in some cases a mandate against demolition could discourage new investment in the property. If Red Hook wants to see new landmarks, the community would likely have to rally together to make them happen. As it is, different residents have different priorities. NYCHA problems take up most of the time of Red Hook Houses tenants. In the Back, some hope to see residential growth, while others want to retain and reinvigorate Red Hook’s manufacturing. And then there are those who’d mostly just like things to

stay the way they are. All four groups are bound to have different views not only of the value of preserving Red Hook’s industrial heritage but of the meaning of such an endeavor. Is it about holding onto the buildings that serve as monuments to industry of the past, or is it about keeping blue-collar jobs on the waterfront? Historic preservation of industrial buildings is mostly unrelated to the preservation of living industry, except when it actually presents an obstacle to the introduction of new industry by embalming the unusable industrial infrastructure of an earlier era. This isn’t always the case, but by my count, only seven of the 34 industrial landmarks in New York remain in use by industrial tenants. An old mill or historic warehouse may lend itself more easily to residences or offices. For proof, one can look to the landmarked DUMBO Historic District – or to the foot of Van Brunt Street, where the Fairway supermarket shares the former Red Hook Stores with upperlevel apartments. Alongside the Merchant Stores and the Beard and Robinson Stores, the Red Hook Stores belong to a beautiful complex of waterfront warehouses owned by the O’Connell Organization, where artists and artisans maintain studios next to the Red Hook Winery and the office of the Star-Revue. The area remains not only attractive but vibrant, and it’s hard to imagine any real need to tear it down. The LPC may notice it someday.

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September 2019

VFW Bash

The Red Hook Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Memorial Post 5195 will have their annual reunion bash on September 21 from noon until 6 pm. The VFW is located at 325 Van Brunt Street. All you can eat food, free tap beer, raffles and music. Admission $20.

Columbia Street Fair

The annual Southwest Brooklyn Fall Festival will be happening on September 14 from noon until 5 pm. There will be live family friendly performances, local food, local artists and artisans selling their goods. Southwest Brooklyn Fall Festival is presented by Apple Bank, Merchants

Capital, NYU Langone Health, SAV/ Procida, Maimonides Medical Center and is organized by the Carroll Gardens Association.

Taste of the Waterfront

Also, on September 14, will be the Tastes of Columbia Waterfront in partnership with the Southwest Brooklyn Festival. This will be from 2 to 6 pm in the Columbia Street Waterfront District. Tastes of Brooklyn will be exploring their fifth neighborhood and will be spotlighting culinary talent in this waterfront neighborhood. Walk on Columbia Street south of Atlantic Avenue and along Union Street and sample food and drink in this foodie

destination. The streets will be closed for the Southwest Brooklyn Fall Festival. The proceeds will benefit a charity, Seeds in the Middle, which empowers underserved Brooklyn children to get access to healthy food and fitness. Walk around for free. The Tastes tickets start at $20 for four tastes and the deal of the day is 11 tastes for $50. For more information call 917-697-3745

Cop meeting On Thursday, September 12, there will be a 76th Precinct meeting at the Red Hook Community Justice Center (88 Visitation Place). The meeting, which will have refreshments will begin at 6:30 pm.

On Thursday, August 15th, the Red Hook Recreation Center hosted a back to school bash for local students, capped off with a celebrity basketball tournament. The day included free food, free supplies and lawn games for students of the nearby elementary schools. Joining the cause was the 76th Precinct, The U.S. Army and Affinity. In addition to basketball, locals participated in a dominoes tournament.

The goal of this meeting will be to identify policing and public safety needs in the community. You will have the opportunity to voice any questions or concerns you have about the community.

Sea Change at the river

Sea Change, an evening of music, film, poetry and art takes place at the Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover Street on September 8 at 4 pm. There will be presentations from Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and NY Youth Climate Strike. The goal of this event is to inspire and foster connections. A schedule and lineup can be found at www.fourcornersmedia.net/seachange.

Yes, that's Stephon Marbury with Redhook Recreation Center Manager Isiah Forde and Recreation Supervisor Gilbert Gonzalez

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Exercise tips to try before you hit the tennis court by Erin DeGregorio

Help Your Child Love to Read and Write Literacy Tutoring with Eleanor Traubman Bank Street College of Education Alumna with 25 years of experience available to help your K-2nd grade child develop more ease, confidence and joy as a reader and writer. Eleanor Traubman Tutoring www.EleanorTraubman.com etraubman@gmail.com facebook.com/brooklyntutor

With the US Open in town, it’s not uncommon to get caught up in the exciting matches and maybe pick up a racket yourself. Tennis players are considered “overhead” athletes who use their upper arms and shoulders in an overhead throwing or swinging motion – but the work and power actually starts in the lower body. According to sports health experts from NYU Langone Health, the root of upper extremity injuries that tennis players may experience (i.e. shoulder joint, scapular and rotator cuff issues) can be linked to repetitive stress and a lack of lumbopelvic strength and stability conditioning. Proper preparation is vital to ensure long and healthy careers – whether you are a tennis prodigy, like Venus Williams or Roger Federer, or just like to play for fun in friendly matches. Heather Milton, an exercise physiologist at NYU Langone Health, develops specialized programs to help athletes reach their maximum potential and ability and designs injury prevention programs for at-risk athletes. She spoke with us before the US Open began in late August and provided some advice on how to improve personal tennis performance. RHSR: What are the best ways to avoid those injuries? HM: It’s more so about making sure your body is best prepared for the exercise you’re doing – making sure the shoulder joints are stable and able to withstand what you’re asking it to do [i.e. serving and hitting]. A lot of times we’ll see people, specifically more recreational players, that will not play all winter and then, as soon as the spring hits, they’re going out and doing more than their bodies are ready for. That’s when we tend to see the most injuries. In terms of what to do to avoid it, be consistent with training and make sure you’re not adding too much [training] volume too quickly. So if you haven’t played for a while and are now on the courts, it’s making sure you’re not doing multiple hours in a row or multiple days in a row – that you’re giving your body enough time to recover in between. As you do that, the tissues and all the stabilizing structures have enough time to recover and become stronger. RHSR: How can players improve ball velocity? HM: It’s twofold. One – there’s research that tells us that [after] starting a pretty standard strength and conditioning program for as little as eight weeks, two to three days per week, you can see an increase in ball velocity. So that’s doing lunges, squats, rows, chest presses [to ensure whole body conditioning], and again that hip, knee and ankle flexion and extension in the lower body. The other thing you want to consider is what your sequencing of movement is for anything – whether it’s football, tennis or [baseball]. We want to see that the force is actually starting to be initiated, not only through the lower body, but at your hips. Then that transfers to movement at the torso, [which] transfers up the arms. We do a lot of drills and more neuromuscular training and really condition that. RHSR: Anything else that’s important to consider? HM: Doing a dynamic warm-up is something that for all sports is super important, and I think more people are learning that now. There is an older mantra of doing static stretching before you start exercising to prepare, and we really want to see people doing things that are more dynamic to activate all the muscles that ought to be working. For instance, working from the ground up and doing [muscle] activation patterns for cores, glutes, lower bodies and shoulders. [It] benefits your performance and also decreases injury risk.

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September 2019

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Krok delights the palate with delectable Thai cooking

ocated in the Columbia Street Waterfront District, stop by Krok at 117 Columbia St. for delicious Thai Esan street food. The inside of the restaurant is colorful and exotic with a bar that has wine and beer. Krok’s unique menu offers a variety of options including beef, chicken, seafood, soups, salads and desserts. If you love spicy foods, Krok is must-try, but the goal is to cater to customers, so the spiciness of dishes can be adjusted upon request and there are also non-spicy options. Many gluten free options are also offered. Krok is well-known for offering dishes with their own sauces and sea-

by Brian Abate soning that can’t be found anywhere else, including tamarind chili dip, homemade sweet chili sauce, and many more. One of their most popular dishes is the Tom Zabb Leng, a Thai soup with spicy Esan pork rib in Thai bird chili broth. It is a rare Thai Street Food, that goes well with beer and is gluten free. Other specialties include Som Tum Thai, a spicy green papaya salad Gai Yang Buriram, a chicken based dish, Weeping Tiger, Krok’s unique fish sauce wings, and Khao Soi Gai, a curry dish. Serving family-style dishes, this is a great place to bring loved ones and share a wide range of food in a ca-

sual, easygoing environment with friendly service. Generally, each person eating will order their own food, but meals are shared amongst friends and families. Krok offers authentic food from all regions of Thailand, where most dishes are served with sticky rice or jasmine rice. In place of chopsticks, Krok encourages you to use your fork to push your food onto a spoon. In addition, some dishes are traditionally eaten by hand, including grilled meats and sticky rice. Thai cuisine is a blend of four seasonings (salty, sweet, spicy, and sour.) Most dishes combine all four of these tastes. There is also an em-

phasis placed on using fresh fruits and vegetables. Prices range from $10 to $42 and all dishes are served family-style, so they can be shared amongst parties. You can order traditional Thai beverages and try Khao Hneaw Sung kha ya, a traditional Thai dessert. Krok is open from noon to 10 p.m. every day and also offers delivery from noon to 9:45 p.m. Order online at www.k-r-o-k.com and using the code KROK10 to receive 10 percent off your order. Credit cards are accepted. Reservations can be made by calling Krok at (718) 855-8898. All catering is approved.

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September 2019, Page 17

Summit Academy stays in Red Hook by Nathan Weiser

ummit Academy got good news from the New York State Board of Regents in May.

and 350 students and expects the same number again this year. But Campbell has plans for expansion.

Earlier in the spring, the future of Red Hook’s Summit Academy Charter School (grades six through 12) was unknown, but a new partnership with the Center for Education Innovation (CEI), a self-described “non-profit education organization and recognized leader in advancing meaningful reforms in public education,” has earned Summit a five-year charter extension.

“We have all these things that we believe are going to attract more families, so the goal is to grow our school and enrollment,” Campbell said. “That comes with showing the community and families that we have something special to offer.”

“We were thrilled to get the five-year, and we were thrilled to be renewed because we know how much this school brings to this community,” Summit founder and executive director Natasha Campbell said. A five-year renewal is the longest contract granted to charter schools in New York. Campbell reported that she’s excited to be able to continue to build responsible young adults and support families at Summit Academy. Despite rising test scores since its establishment in 2008, Summit hasn’t outpaced standard public schools in the district in student performance – a requirement for New York charter schools. In order to avoid closure, the administration agreed to a restructuring process, with a new organization at the head. According to Chief Academic Officer Alice Bartley, New York-based CEI has operated for more than 30 years with a mission to help schools in urban districts, chiefly in the United States as well as Chile and Puerto Rico. “We have the pleasure to come to Summit with the founder, Dr. Campbell, and to support her vision around the school and what we believe is best for scholars who are in grades six through 12,” stated Bartley, who will temporarily serve as Summit’s principal.

For example, based on research showing that school attendance drops when kids don’t have clean clothes to wear, Campbell secured a grant during the 2018-2019 school year to install a washer and dryer on school premises. “We went so far as to purchase laundry bags that look like book bags, so they will not be stigmatized, but they can get a need met in the school building without others knowing about it,” Campbell noted. Through New York State, Summit offered free dental services to students last year, and Campbell hopes to establish a food pantry in the future. On September 28, Summit will have its ninth annual health fair, with free fruits and vegetables donated by Fairway. Bartley believes that CEI’s resources will allow Summit to offer even more “wraparound services” to kids who need additional supports outside the home. At the same time, Summit works with students’ families through monthly workshops – the Confident

School founder Natasha Campbell speaks to a group of students.

Parent Series, administered with PS 676 – which helps parents navigate their kids’ homework assignments. This year, there are some teachers who are new as a result of the CEI partnership and many who are returning. “We are really shoring up the professional development, so that teachers in the building are 21stcentury ready,” Bartley said. About half of Summit’s students live in Red Hook, and the rest come from all around the city, with a few who live outside city limits. There have been many athletes who have been drawn to the school.

The girls and boys basketball teams both had successful seasons last year, advancing to the playoffs. Campbell is excited that the volleyball team will now be coached by Summit’s first college graduate, Destiny Jennings, a former player. “I think this is going to be a great year,” Campbell said. “Athletics and arts are going to be our standouts, but we also are aiming to make our performance on all of the state assessments, whether it be Regents or state assessments in middle school, to be outstanding as well so that we become a model school.”

"Despite rising test scores since its establishment in 2008, Summit hasn’t outpaced standard public schools in the district in student performance – a requirement for New York charter schools."

CEI’s signature program is project Building Options and Opportunities for Students (BOOST), which creates access to cultural enrichment, academic guidance, test prep, and community service. CEI will also bring robotics and coding classes and an e-sports club to Summit. To prepare soon-to-be graduates, CEI offers virtual college tours as well as trips to actual college campuses. “We have changed a lot of students minds [about college] through that program,” Bartley said. Campbell likes what CEI does and thinks it’ll be a natural fit for Summit. “We have been taking kids on college tours; now we get to expand that program,” Campbell said. “Our kids performed on Broadway with [theater director Tremaine] Price; now we are able to expose more kids to those opportunities. It’s an enhancement to our school community, and that’s what we are most excited about.” Summit typically has between 330

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September 2019, Page 18 September 2019

Fall 2019 Community Theater Preview

Community theater is a labor of love. Across the country, in churches and civic halls, accountants, bus drivers, and software engineers use their scarce free time between work and family to produce the works of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Simon, and Sondheim, as well as brand-new plays and musicals. From lights to costumes, theater means sweat, which, on its smallest stages, its practitioners spill in unselfish tribute to their cherished art form. Community theater may employ a mixture of professionals and nonprofessionals, but outside of Broadway, they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do it for the money. For the fall season, the Star-Revue has highlighted some of the community theaters in our area. These venues create opportunities for young actors; affordable, thought-provoking entertainment; and a chance for Brooklynites to get together with their neighbors.

Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2019, Page 19

‘A View from the Bridge’ returns to the Red Hook waterfront by Erin DeGregorio

ack by popular demand after a sold-out run, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge will be performed again in Red Hook through Brave New World Repertory Theatre. But unlike your conventional theatergoing experience, the play takes place on a floating barge. Claire Beckman, Brave New World’s producing artistic director and cofounder, explained that View was a play that she had wanted to do for years and was only able to obtain the rights in 2018, a few years after the Broadway revival ended. In the meantime, while waiting to see if he would get those rights, Beckman heard about another play from the Waterfront Museum’s president David Sharps called The Hook and, with playwright Ron Hutchinson, adapted it for a U.S. premiere aboard the Lehigh Valley Barge #79 this June. Originally an unproduced 1947 screenplay by Miller, The Hook anticipated the classic film On the Waterfront, which the company also previously performed in a stage version. “This summer, it was really about a deep dive into Miller’s relationship with Red Hook and, specifically, his fascination with longshoreman and their world,” Beckman explained. “He was drawn to the waterfront because of these graffiti and poster signs that he saw all over the Red Hook area about Pete Panto. This [story] is important to us because of the social justice issues.” Panto was a longshoreman who contacted authorities about the poor working conditions on the docks run by unions with mafia ties. He disappeared in 1939 and was later found dead in a New Jersey lime pit. Beckman said by the time Miller wrote The Hook eight years later, corrupt unions had murdered many, which he felt was an important story to tell. After a Hollywood deal fell through, he used The Hook’s setting for a new stage drama, A View from the Bridge. “Miller had took all this research he had been doing about Red Hook and made a more domestic, intimate story, which is part of, I think, what

makes him such a masterful playwright,” she added. “He brings the macro and the micro together. Most of his protagonists have a struggle between themselves and the world.” Beckman sees parallels between this play, set in the mid-1950s, and today’s political climate, which is why she thinks it did so well last year and stuck with many audience members. “Everybody was shocked to listen to Miller’s words and feel how they resonated, including the cast and the director,” she said. “I [performed in] the play myself 30 years ago as Catherine, the niece; now I play her aunt. Even as well as I knew the play, I was still astounded by how it resonated.”

Red Hook lurks in the background in this production of the Arthur Miller play. Photo by Doug Barron

View is the 1950s story of Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman who lives and works in Red Hook with his wife Beatrice and her 18-year-old orphaned niece, Catherine. When Beatrice’s undocumented relatives arrive from Italy to work on the docks, problems arise between Eddie and cousin Rodolpho. Without giving away too much away for those who’ve never seen it, there’s drama and comedy that speak to relatable life situations and feelings. “The tension and the momentum is the most unbearable because it just hurdles like a train towards this inevitable conclusion, inevitable crash … you know that it’s coming, there’s no stopping it. That’s the power of Miller’s writing, but it’s also very funny,” Beckman explained. “His ear is so in tune with the human comedy – it’s the drama of being a human being.”

Location, location, location

Brave New World is a nomadic company that scouts out ideal, natural locations that fit with productions’ storylines and settings. They bring theater to the doorsteps of Brooklyn, instead of asking Brooklyn to come to them. For example, their first site-specific production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird took place on six West-

minster Road porches in Ditmas Park in 2005, attracting over 2,000 people. Four years later, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was performed on Coney Island’s beach and boardwalk near the aquarium. Miller’s The Crucible had a 10-day run a year later at the Old Stone House, where only candle-lit lanterns were used as light sources. “You hear Eddie and the other characters speak about Red Hook and talk about particular streets, places and piers and you’re there. And to be on a barge, a vessel that carried cargo from the ship to the shore where a man like Eddie Carbone worked every day, is magical. It’s about as close to getting in a time machine because of the world that we create [with] the costumes, props and feeling the boat rock,” Beckman said in reference to the View production. “I think people right now crave opportunities that are more organic, more spontaneous and less happening within the little frame of their computer screen.” She also emphasized the fact that a night out to Manhattan to see a Broadway show adds up between the ticket purchase, transportation, dinner and other factors (like buying

merchandise or hiring a babysitter). By having theatre available here in Brooklyn, people can see quality work for a fraction of the cost in their own backyards.

Social justice issues

The work of Brave New World always tries to take a hard look at social justice issues, while still being entertaining, because those are what attendees can relate to. Beckman attributes this social justice theme and focus to the social upheaval that’s occurred around the world over the last decade. “It’s not often that an artist has an opportunity to really effect change in the world, but we try in our own little humble way to get people thinking, so that maybe we can build empathy,” Beckman added. “We tell stories that we hope have some significance, some intentionality in the world we’re living in.” A View from the Bridge will be at the Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover St., for three weekends in September with multiple evening performances. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit bravenewworldrep.org.

"She emphasized the fact that a night out to Manhattan to see a Broadway show adds up - between the ticket purchase, transportation, dinner and other factors (like buying merchandise or hiring a babysitter). By having theatre available here in Brooklyn, people can see quality work for a fraction of the cost in their own backyards."

Page 20 Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2019

‘Elf’ coming to Bay Ridge in time for the holiday season

arrows Community Theater (NCT), most known for its summertime kids’ theater performances, has been staging musicals in Bay Ridge for nearly 50 years. In that time, it’s offered opportunities for the public to learn stagecraft, acting techniques, dance, teamwork and the business of show business. Having produced popular titles like Mamma Mia! and Into the Woods within the last year alone, it’s no wonder the volunteer-run NCT has continued to draw in an audience. “Our audience members seem to lean toward the classics and love musicals that include expert dancing,” said Steve Jacobs, NCT’s president. “However, through our youth program, we are attempting to add more modern classics that appeal to a broad range of audience members.” After just completing a summertime run of Peter Pan the Musical, Jacobs spared some time to talk about NCT’s next fully staged production and how company markets itself to the local community. RHSR: How and why did you come to the decision to do Elf as the holiday show this year? SJ: We haven’t done a holiday show in a couple of years and we had a couple of members express an interest in Elf, as they loved it from when it was at Madison Square Garden. The board votes from the members’ nominations and Elf was the overwhelming choice. Its combination of classic themes and dance are a winning combination for Narrows Community Theater.

Red Hook Star-Revue

by Erin DeGregorio

RHSR: What are you most excited about for audience members to see or hear with this production? SJ: I’m excited to have a popular show that is extremely well written and funny, written by the team that wrote The Prom, which just closed on Broadway. I think some audience members will come for the classic holiday feeling and leave with an appreciation for the most recent of Broadway musical writing.

is combine popular shows with artistic integrity, and find what works for our audience. Additionally, we look for exposure in all types of media outlets, from church bulletins to Instagram and everything in between.

Elf the Musical will be performed on November 15, 16, 17, 22, 23 and 24. For more details, visit narrowscommunitytheater.com.

RHSR: What’s the importance of having staged productions with children in the cast, when perhaps they might not have the opportunity to participate in theater programs or clubs through school? SJ: In our recent production of Peter Pan, parents loved having a summer outlet where the area’s serious theater kids (8-18 years of age) could participate in a production with a tremendous amount of professionalism. Additionally, all of our frontline tech staff were students guided by experienced tech designers. RHSR: In this day and age, when people tend to be more glued to technology, how do you appeal to audience members to get them in seats? SJ: Figuring out what’s appealing to audience members could be a full-time job. What we attempt to do

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September 2019, Page 21

The Heights Players kicks off their 64th season with the musical 'Gypsy' by Erin DeGregorio

rooklyn’s oldest self-sustaining theater for the community is planning a jam-packed season of fan favorites, comedies and classics. To understand what exactly goes into curating a season, we spoke with members of the Heights Players. The company’s membership, Board of Directors and eligible Heights Players directors choose the next season’s nine shows – from an original pool of about 150 – in a lengthy process that begins in the winter of the current season. “A lot of times [eligible directors] put down these very good, classical, heavy pieces – but you’re not going to have an audience who’ll sit through nine different productions of, say, Ibsen,” said Thomas Tyler, the company’s president. “It’s just not the climate for that in this day and age.” So, with titles like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for example, slated in the mix for the upcoming season, there’s sure to be a show for everyone to be interested in and enjoy, according to Vice President Corrine Contrino. “The fact that a bunch of people come together as volunteers, put together shows and put their heart and soul into it is amazing,” she said. “We’re so proud of our directors and the work that they can do with actors [some who’ve previously performed with the company and others who’re joining for the first time]. I’m just excited for audiences to see what we can do.” While the Heights Players offer nine main-stage productions, theater for children productions, three directors’ workshop weekends and an end-ofseason fundraiser gala throughout the

Page 22 Red Hook Star-Revue

year, we have the inside scoop about two of the company’s fall 2019 productions.

ways of ] incorporating them into the dance numbers,” Tyler said without giving too much away.

‘Gypsy’

The Heights Players previously performed Gypsy in 1987 and 2001.

Tyler will be directing the first show of the season, Gypsy. He joined the Heights Players nearly 35 years ago when he moved to Brooklyn Heights, and has pretty much directed one show (typically a musical) every year. “It’s good to open the season with something big because it draws the people in,” Tyler explained two weeks before opening night. “People like the fact that we open with [a musical] and, also, you can use more people in it too, with bigger casts than if we were doing a non-musical.” The cast includes 35 people, who range in age from four to 74, due to the variety of roles that are required for the storyline. Tyler even noted that some cast members, who haven’t been in a show for a while, decided to come back and audition specifically for this musical. Gypsy tells the story of the dreams and efforts of one hungry, powerhouse of a woman to get her two daughters into show business. It’s loosely based on the 1957 memoir of famous striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, entitled Gypsy: Memoirs of Americas Most Celebrated Stripper.

‘A Raisin in the Sun’

Ted Thompson, who’s been directing at the company for the last 20 years, will be in charge of the creative vision for “A Raisin in the Sun.” He said Tyler originally suggested the play to him last year as something he should direct, given its important plot. After learning more about the play’s backstory, Thompson was excited to take it on and feels fortunate to observe its 60th-year anniversary here at the Heights. “The play is still extremely relevant because it’s not just talking about housing,” he added. “It’s really talking about the American Dream, the dream for everybody.”

While Tyler couldn’t pick a personal favorite number, he said the wellknown Mama Rose songs are dynamic hits and that “You Gotta Have a Gimmick” will be a definite crowd-pleaser. He also noted that the two choreographers have made this production more of a dance show than usual.

A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry, became the first play by an African American woman on Broadway in 1959. It tells the story of a black family’s experiences in Clybourne Park, a fictionalized version of the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood, as they try to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of their father. According to the Chicago Public Library, Hansberry drew upon the lives of the working-class black people who rented from her father and who went to school with her on Chicago’s South Side and also used family members as inspiration for the characters.

“A lot of times the ensemble people don’t really do that much, but in this show we’re figuring out [different

For the Heights Players’ upcoming lineup, Thompson said the main theme could be “looking back.” A

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Raisin in the Sun looks back at the problems black Americans faced in the 1950s. The Last Night of Ballyhoo is a look back at what Jews encountered in the South during the rise of Hitler. Gypsy looks back at the problems burlesque performers had – “or the problems people had with their mothers [that are] still relevant today sometimes,” Thompson said with a laugh. Later in the season, Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina takes place at a Catskill Mountains cross-dressing resort where married men dressed and acted like women on the weekends in the 1960s. But no matter the production, audience members can expect to have a much different theater experience in comparison to seeing a Broadway show. “I think that being able to go and see something in a smaller setting makes it more immediate sometimes to you,” Thompson said. “You don’t get as carried away with the grandeur of Broadway productions and you can truly focus on the playwright’s words and themes and perhaps their relevancy to your life as they become clearer.” Gypsy will be running from September 6 to 22; The Last Night of Ballyhoo from October 4 to 13; and A Raisin in the Sun from November 1 to 10 – with weekend matinee and evening performances held at the John Bourne Theater (26 Willow Place). There are six other productions slated for the rest of the season, which runs until June 2020. Individuals can purchase a season subscription until October 31, saving up to 65 percent off regular ticket prices. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit heightsplayers.org/theater/home/.

September 2019

Lorinne Lampert reprises the role of Fritzie, a dancer at the Kit Kat Club, the 1930's club that is the centerpiece of Cabaret

The Gallery Players love the stage! by Erin DeGregorio

he Gallery Players, a 99seat theater in Park Slope, has staged revivals of works first seen on and off Broadway for more than half a century. It’s also one of the few nonprofit theaters in the borough that operates with an all-volunteer staff. The Gallery Players’ mission is to nurture and provide opportunities for theater artists, to bring professional-quality theater to Brooklyn audiences at an affordable cost, and to instill the appreciation of theater in future generations. “Theater is more than just entertainment; it’s a form of expression that can have a profound effect and positive impact on both the artists who create and the audiences who experience,” Rhiannon McClintock, the Gallery Players’ board of directors secretary and development and marketing manager, told us. McClintock and David Thomas Cronin, director of Cabaret, gave us a peak into the contemporary classics that make up the fall portion of their 53rd season RHSR: How and why did you come to the decisions to do Cabaret and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof this fall?

RM: We want to offer variety by presenting some humorous works to balance out the heavier dramas, but we also want to include works that are timely and relevant, that challenge audiences and create dialogue. Cabaret is a popular musical that was revived in 1998, featuring Alan Cumming as the Emcee – this is the version Gallery is producing. While no doubt an entertaining musical with popular songs, there are deeper themes examined in the production including ignorance, self-involvement, bigotry and oppression, and what happens when you ignore the evil lurking outside – which, unfortunately, are problems we’re still faced with today. Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof takes place on a plantation in the mid-1950s but it’s also still very relevant today. The play deals with complex layers of family conflict – greed, superficiality, mendacity, sexual desire and repression, and death. Both productions are powerful and expose the darker human psyche that’s often-

Red Hook Star-Revue

times uncomfortable for us to watch, as an audience. RHSR: Has anything been changed from the original Cabaret or updated in a modern way? DTC: The creative team hopes to provide a fresh perspective, while also paying homage to this masterpiece of American musical theater by drawing correlations between the political and cultural climate of 1930s Germany and that of the one in 2019 of our own country. Although we haven’t changed any of this iconic material from the licensed libretto or score, we’ve been able to reinterpret moments throughout, in order to better frame the storytelling for our audiences of today. For theater to be a catalyst of cultural growth, we have to be willing to ask uncomfortable questions of both ourselves as artists and of our audiences. Our production doesn’t make an effort to downplay the raw human issues and emotions that this piece deals with.

the playwrights with the revising and expanding of their plays, up-andcoming playwrights are given a rare opportunity to get the exposure that they need to fully develop a new work for a larger audience. A large number of audience members and donors are from the Park Slope neighborhood and other New York City boroughs, but many come from New Jersey and Connecticut (and beyond) to attend performances, based on Gallery’s reputation. Our actors are a mix of local community actors and professional actors who are on their way to Broadway, and we welcome anyone to attend our auditions, and

strive to have a diverse group of actors and designers working on our productions. We also rely on local volunteers to assist with set building, ushering and other opportunities, in a way that encourages active participation from anyone with a desire to get involved. Cabaret (recommended for those 18 and over) will be running from September 7 to 29 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will be running from October 26 to November 10, with various matinee and evening performances. There are six other productions slated for the rest of the season, which runs until July 2020 at 199 14th Street

RHSR: What are you most excited for audience members to see with Cabaret? DTC: Cabaret, from its origin, has always been a piece intended to challenge audiences. One way we’ve aimed to do this is by accentuating the queer culture of the Weimar cabaret scene in 1930s Berlin. The team’s curated an inclusive cast of storytellers in an effort to reflect the community we live in today. In our production, this historical material becomes a mirror we can hold up to ourselves and ask, “In what ways are we still facing and navigating these same issues today?” RHSR: What’s the importance of having and providing local community theater and creating that kind of community outlet for Park Slope and adjacent neighborhoods? RM: We’re one of the only local theaters to premiere ambitious new plays and musicals through the Black Box New Play Festival and Overtures: A New Musical Reading Series [which debuted in 1997 and 2014, respectively]. Gallery’s new play initiatives fulfill the need to provide a workshop environment for playwrights to work in collaboration with directors, actors and producers. By facilitating readings of these new works and assisting

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September 2019, Page 23

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About 80 percent of strokes are ischemic strokes; they occur when blood clots or other particles block arteries to your brain. Hemorrhagic stroke occurs when a blood vessel in your brain leaks or ruptures. During a stroke, brain cells are deprived of oxygen and nutrients and begin to die. The earlier a stroke is treated, the better the results. In the USA, stroke is the third-leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. It is the leading cause of adult disability. The most common stroke symptoms include: sudden numbness, weakness, or paralysis of the face, arm or leg — usually on one side of the body; trouble talking or understanding; sudden blurred, double or decreased vision; dizziness, loss of balance or coordination; a sudden headache with a stiff neck, facial pain, pain between the eyes, vomiting or altered consciousness; confusion, or problems with memory, spatial orientation or perception. The following can increase your risk of a stroke: a family history of stroke or TIA, aging, race (blacks are at greater risk), high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, cigarette smoking, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, previous stroke or TIA, heavy alcohol drinking and uncontrolled stress. Your doctor has many diagnostic tools for stroke. Among these are: physical exam, blood tests, carotid ultrasonography to check the carotid arteries in your neck, arteriography to view arteries in your brain, a computerized tomography (CT) scan of the neck and brain, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, among others. Treatments are varied and include drugs to fight clots, and medical procedures to keep blood vessels open.

Page 24 Red Hook Star-Revue

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September 2019

STAR REVUE

September 2019

SECTION

Scott Pfaffman has seen a lot of things!

Scott Pfaffman is a familar figure to anyone who walks around in Red Hook. He can often be seen sitting on a bench outside of Bene’s Record Shop, where he happens to be the landlord. Our photo file is full of images of Scott taken at local meetings through the years. One memorable photo shows Scott leafing through a pile of soiled art books that he was throwing out the day after Sandy. When I asked whether he was upset at losing his library, he kind of did a Scott smile and told me it was quite the opposite, it was a good chance to start a new collection. He lives in his house in back of 360 Van Brunt with his family. Red Hook artist John Buchanan did a great job getting Scott’s words on paper. His interview follows:

John Buchanan: So you and your wife at the time, Florence Neal, came to Red Hook together? Scott Pfaffman: Yes in 1984 we put together a proposal for an artist housing project at 353 Van Brunt Street. It produced about six citywide artist housing projects. And we were the lucky recipients of one of them. I was summoned to the city for a press conference; Ed Koch was the mayor at the time. I was told I was only there for appearances; in other words I was the designated artist. I just needed to be there to prove that there was this person. But instead, when the press conference began, a woman named Janet Langsam, an assistant commissioner, came to the microphone and said, “We’re very pleased today to have one of the artist housing recipients present. His name is Scott Pfaffman. He’d like to come up and say a few words.” And that was the first I’d heard that I would speak. I went up to the microphone, and basically said

Star-Revue Section 2

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that in New York we have an abundance of creativity, and when we have problems of housing, or crime, or hunger, or whatever it may be, we approach the problem creatively. Because that’s what New Yorkers do, we’re creative. And then I thanked everybody and sat down. And then a succession of politicians, including Ed Koch himself, parroted my words. The refrain went “New York is where creative solutions occur. We believe in creative initiatives to solve our problems. And our advantage is our creativity,” and so forth and so on. And it was a valuable lesson to see how starved the political class was for content. And it, you know, was probably an opening I should have capitalized on, but of course I had other things to do. So the press conference closed, and I went to the bathroom. Back then, before City Hall became a fortress, you never knew who you’d run into. As I was using the bathroom, these two old City Hall reporters came in. They didn’t see me. One of them said to

(continued on next page) September 2019, Page 25

capitalization of New York is now complete. And we have to deal with what that means to our urban environment, but basically there is not much we can do about it. JB: How did you come to New York City? SP: I was living in Alabama, my home state, and where I was in a relationship with Florence Neal. We were both determined to get to New York; she was already there living at the Pickwick, a women’s boarding hotel on 51st and Lexington. I was accepted to Hunter College for grad school; so I moved up and found a loft on the bulletin board at Food, Gordon Matta Clark’s place in Soho. The loft was in Dumbo; it was a giant 5,000-squarefoot space for $300 a month. Pretty soon, a few other people we knew from the south came to join us. Within six month or so Florence and I had a full household of people who were willing to pull up roots and move to New York just on the basis of having a place to stay. At any one time we might have eight or nine people living there.

Scott Pfaffman’s long strange trip (continued from previous page) the other, “So what did you think about that kid’s creative crap?” The other guy says, “Ah, I don’t know, probably just more bullshit, right?” And the first guy responds, “I don’t know, it was kind of catchy!” But that was the attitude in New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was a different place than it is now. JB: How was New York different then? SP: Well the players were more seasoned, and they were better. I think in some ways they were more familiar with the political apparatus as it existed then. That political apparatus evaporated by the mid-80’s to early 90’s when Giuliani came in and basically just turned the whole table upside down. And turned the media too into an adversary for any kind of progressive political or social movement. Everything was characterized as corrupt. Those were the waning days of Mayor Lindsay liberalism; as the conservative movement really grew legs, it began to dismantle liberal institutions. But to give the reactionary right some credit, the concept of an artist housing program is a little farfetched. At the time it got all kinds of bad press. People would say, “Why not housing for taxi drivers?!” And so forth and so on. JB: But back to your housing victory… SP: It took three years of continued negotiations with the city to finally close on the property. And during that time our neighbors in Red Hook completely trashed the place. You know, it was kind of a lawless sprawl. There were very few city services. The police were concentrated in the housing projects trying to battle basically a crack epidemic, and the Van Brunt area was left to its own. We had abandoned cars, some junkies, and petty crime. Not too much major crime. There were a few shootings of course because there were plenty of guns around. We had a couple of drug dealing turf wars; one of them played out right in front of our windows. A carload of kids was chased down and shot through the windows at the corner of Van Brunt and Dikeman Streets in broad daylight. But those were setbacks to what was already under way — the wide scale gentrification and recapitalization of New York City. Which began with the financial crisis of ‘74 and ‘75. In other words the big capital started getting aligned to come back into the city, and buy it up cheap, and make a lot of money. And now, some 40 years later, the re-

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JB: How was that? SP: It was fun. We were young, 22, 23 years old. It was 1977 and the art scene was really still tiny. You could take in the whole thing in an afternoon basically, or two afternoons. And there was a lot of excitement. I quickly met a whole array of artists through my contacts in grad school and then through my friendship with this painter and artist named Richard Mott, who I met in Art Park in 1977. I subsequently met sculptor Lyman Kipp and he hired me to help him fabricate a couple of pieces at Art Park in Lewistown, New York. He’d received a commission there. So we set up a studio to build these big sculptures. Richard Mott had also received a grant and was there holding court. He brought in all these extraordinary people from New York, who were mind blowing. Under their influence I quickly jettisoned one world to embrace another. It introduced me to the Time Square Show, and all kinds of “downtown aristocracy.” They weren’t aristocracy; they were all punks. But they turned out to be the beginnings of the Lower Manhattan scene. JB: Like who? SP: Oh, like Basquiat, later on. Tom Otterness, Kiki Smith, Cara Perlman, and Jenny Holzer, the whole crowd. There was a vibrant scene going on, basically; the Time Square Show was 1980. By luck I happened into it, although part of my luck was having a vehicle, which was rare in that time and place. Having a van that I could move stuff in made me a prime player in the downtown art scene. In fact when we opened the Real Estate Show, it was my step-van that we used as the staging operation for breaking into 123 Delancey Street. Ann Messner had the bolt cutters inside the guitar case. One thing led to another, and you know, I found this park out on the waterfront in Dumbo — The Empire Fort and Ferry State Park — which was in disuse. I put it to use, curating what might now be called “installation art”. In 1980, I put in a big piece of sculpture I’d built myself, and publicized it. It was my first one person show in New York City. It didn’t get much press, but it did get a little buzz, largely due to the professor I was studying with, Tony Smith.

for artists’ stipends, or publishing, or publicity, or anything. And they were very stubborn. If you do something for nothing one time then they’re not inclined to pay you the next time. It’s just the mindset. There is no value somehow. JB: So where did this Red Hook real estate project fit in? SP: I guess you could say I became a public art player. I was opening outdoor sculpture projects all over. I did one on the Williamsburg Bridge, in Bryant Park, in Central Park, in Queens Bridge Park, and another in Houston, TX. The money was peanuts, but it was exciting. Taking on the project in Red Hook took so much energy. And it definitely distracted from my sculpture production, even though I was able to put together a studio and continue working. By ‘92 it kind of eclipsed so I decided to decamp, and move to Amsterdam. And I did a show in Cologne, and in Vienna. I was trying to jump ship kind of and restart my focus in Europe. A classic American artist strategy. All this coincided with the end of my marriage to Florence in ‘92. As part of the divorce settlement she got the artist housing project. And now she is the steward of that, and of course the director of the Kentler International Drawing Space, the exhibition space we co-founded in 1991. And that’s still an ongoing success, I’m very proud of that. It was a kind of an anchor in Red Hook in a lot of ways, certainly one of the first. JB: Who were the others? SP: Richard Mott did a show, Earth Remembers, in ‘84 or ‘85. Richard Van Buren had some kind of open studio show down here in the ‘80s. Also, Chris [Gilbrith] was down the street, and [Bob Grenier], [Brent Barker], John Morton, and all those artists had arrived on the heels of the musicians who had first pioneered Red Hook. JB: Like who? SP: [Howard Colins], and Janet, and Olga Bloom, they’re the ones who came down here in the early 70s when the neighborhood was really forlorn, and still looked like Selby’s book, Last Exit to Brooklyn. They didn’t have to do much set dressing when they did that movie. Musicians discovered these disused industrial spaces because they lead improvised lifestyles, and they can make music in them. You cannot play music at five o’clock in the morning in an Upper West Side apartment, right? A musician doesn’t care where they live, as long as they can make music. So they’ll live in some pretty run down circumstances, you know, an improvised toilet, maybe bathing with a bucket. They’ll forgo all the other creature comforts in order to have a place to perform and make their art. Artists on the other hand will sleep with anyone. And so one morning one of those artists woke up in one of those musicians lofts and said, “Say, do you mind if I use that corner over there to do a couple of paintings?” And that’s how artists found Red Hook, or Soho. They should not be given much credit for discovering it. JB: When you moved to Red Hook was there any kind of art scene in Red Hook itself? SP: Oh for sure, yeah. We piggybacked on to stuff that was already here. JB: And what was that like, the scene?

Tony was very supportive of my work, and was the first person to create that buzz that is essential to establishing a career as an artist in New York. Things began to coalesce. And I was subsequently encouraged to curate an outdoor sculpture show in that space for about 10 years, from 1982 to 1992. I had a show in that park every year with 18 or 20 sculptures in it, and it was a herculean task.

SP: Brent Burger had been on Union Street, and then he moved over to Luquer, bought a place for maybe $15,000. Richard Van Buren was in that firehouse on Van Brunt Street with [Bacha Zamir]. Bob [Brenier] lived in the bagel shop. Richard (Mock?) was over on Commerce Street, he was a late arrival in ’84. And so by the time we got here in ‘87 it was kind of old news, except that we were at the tail end of the crack epidemic.

It took a tremendous amount of energy, and Florence was very instrumental in that. She did all the graphic design for it, built us our catalogues and so forth. I would try year after year to get funding

SP: It was still pretty heavy, and so the police were completely overwhelmed and pre-occupied with that; it seemed to be where the biggest damage

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JB: Yeah, well, it was going on.

September 2019

was being done. So we were kind of ignored. But as a result of this artist housing program, our building at 353 Van Brunt Street became the first significant project in the neighborhood to achieve a code compliant renovation. The work in this neighborhood on all the houses had always been done without permit, without license, and just ad hoc. The neighborhood had been decimated by the extraordinary efforts by the Port Authority back in the late ‘60s and ‘70s to claim the whole area for a container port. Then came the waste treatment facility proposal for where the sugar plant was. There was a whole succession of urban renewal projects, which would have been the death knell of the neighborhood. But somehow we managed to dodge it, largely because of John McGettrick’s efforts frankly; he’s sort of the patron saint of Red Hook. JB: When did he move here? SP: John McGettrick got here on the heels of the musicians. He knew Jonas Mekas, and some of the musician crowd. I think he might have even known Howard Collins. Howard was an unrepentant racist, but a brilliant jazz guitar player. And he lived in 190 Coffey and owned 192. He owned those two buildings at the end of the block on Coffey Street, and that’s where Richard Gins and I ended up living in ‘92. JB: Was Greg O’Connell having pier shows at this point? SP: No, Greg’s pier shows didn’t start until ‘91 or ‘92. And that was through the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition, Fred Skelinger, and [Brian Yost], and I did a huge collaborative project in one of the old bays down at the end of the block. Giant, it was 8,000 square feet we consumed with a giant fucking installation and performance piece. JB: A lot of big installations were happening there. SP: Yeah. Brian called it A Bridge Too Far. We did a big project in the vacant lot where Tony, the sculptor who has the crazy sculptures on Dikeman Street, is now. That whole lot was empty, and I managed to convince Tony to let me put a outdoor sculpture show there too. I did a thing called Picnic Mass. I think that was ‘91. And that had I think eight or ten people in it, including Brian. And [Jennifer Protis], myself, John Borba did a piece, a pyrotechnic piece, Gary, what was his name? Anyway, but I don’t think other than the Earth Remembered show over on Commerce Street that there had been an art show in the neighborhood per se. So when the Kentler opened in ‘91 we did a thing called Red Hook Remembered. It was an archive of a local who had collected photographs of Red Hook through the years. He even had some of the photographs of the old Hoover Town, which was on the parade grounds near the swimming pool. And of course the swimming pool wasn’t there then, that was all WPA. JB: JB: What did the Kentler Gallery look like then? SP: The first Kentler gallery was just a little tiny room in the front. The rest of that floor was my studio and fabrication place. I had a job working for [Steven Wills] over on Duane Street in that little triangle where Richard Serra’s studio is. He provided most of the capital for the renovation of 353 Van Brunt Street. JB: Who was Steven Wills? SP: Steven Wills was a butter and cheese distributor on Duane Street. His was a profitable organization, and he needed facilities management. One of his workers recommended me. I worked for Steven for seven years. We did all kinds of improvements on the place; I cut my teeth in construction there. We built elevators, and loading docks, and bathrooms; huge big renovations. JB: You’ve always had community spirit or maybe it’s

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that artist’s spirit. You went to art school. You knew tools. You could do things. If people needed houses, you helped them build. And at a certain point you seemed to commit to Red Hook as a community and seeing it that way. SP: I think you’re right. Once we got the Kentler up on its legs and I realized I wasn’t going to be part of it, I knew I still wanted to stay in the neighborhood. And I did. I found a place. I bought a place over on Beard Street where Allan Bladder lives now. And I bought this place here at 360 Van Brunt Street. But I’m not sure how much it represents a commitment on my part, other than the kind of serendipity of what’s presented, what’s available, what resources you have. I committed to Red Hook but would I have moved to Buffalo if somebody had offered me a big studio there? Probably. JB: Well how do you think Red Hook, the community, the art scene, real estate scene are all developing now, and how do you project into the future? SP: Red Hook has always attracted eccentrics, probably from the first waterfront carbuncles that settled here in the 1600s. It’s sort of a remote location surrounded by water. Not all people are attracted to it or find its rough maritime industrial landscape charming. You’re surrounded by people who don’t have money. So the neighborhood has consistently attracted eccentric people. But now the eccentric people have a lot of money. There is no rule that says eccentrics can’t be wealthy. In fact as you know many famous eccentrics are wealthy. JB: Give me an example. SP: Howard Hughes, Edward James. Dustin Yellin is a great example. He came to the neighborhood, appreciated all these qualities, like I say this distressed maritime industrial landscape, found that appealing. Had the means to purchase a couple of buildings at deep discount, because the owners didn’t recognize the potential. And he managed to buy the Pioneer Works and another one down the street. So we’re seeing it now, the new neighbors tend to be well heeled and slightly eccentric. You see them walking their pedigree dogs in their $600 loafers. That’s the new reality. JB: And how are the old-timers handling it? SP: Frozen in amber in the state when they went to their first orgy. It imprints in your mind that everything has to stay as it was when you were 23 years old. So I can understand that resistance. But I think it’s unfounded. I think the pessimism about New York’s losing its soul or something to the overarching influence of commercialism and capitalism is probably misplaced too. The city is continuing to develop all kinds of extraordinary venues, create relationships between artists, and between artists and communities that had hitherto not existed. Think about Bushwick. Bushwick is unprecedented. There are 40 times the artists in Bushwick than there were at Soho at its peak. ‘Cause Bushwick is that much bigger and that many more artists are involved. The scene has grown exponentially. JB: What do you think those Bushwick artists think of their predecessors in Soho and such? SP: I think young people are probably preoccupied with market strategies and politics that I wouldn’t understand. And they’re also involved in a dialogue with culture that’s more advanced than mine, I mean I have stayed in a kind of retarded state of 1970s formalism as far as I can tell. I did for a long time believe that I had political, social direction in my work. And the public sculptures that I did were almost like giant political cartoons in some ways. But that’s not the case now. I’ve retreated into a much more private studio practice that is not really political and doesn’t share much with contemporary art.

SP: I find it pretty rewarding. I enjoy doing my drawings. I’ve had some limited success with them. I’ve done enough of them now I might begin to think I need to take another turn. It would be a little absurd to have more than three or four thousand of these. I do a back of an envelope kind of calculation, where I say well let’s see, I sell about six drawings a year now, so I can do some quick math and see how much inventory I have to satisfy demand. And right now I have enough inventory to satisfy demand for almost 2,500 years. JB: Well, good retirement.

“John McGettrick got here on the heels of the musicians. He knew Jonas Mekas, and some of the musician crowd. I think he might have even known Howard Collins. Howard was an unrepentant racist, but a brilliant jazz guitar player. And he lived in 190 Coffey and owned 192.”

JB: Is your work here satisfying?

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September 2019, Page 27

My only true friend

by Michael Fiorito

y oldest friend Lan comes into New York City about once a year nowadays. He’s lived in Orlando, Florida, for the past 20 years.

into it. Then the guitar player starts singing. He has long hair, like a real rock star. But he doesn’t just look the part. This guy can do it all.

doing. That, as he leans forward, incorporating new styles into the blues, his music is brimming with the past.

Who is this guy?

One night, three years ago, he insists that we go out. But it’s a cool summer night in Brooklyn. He didn’t come all the way from swamp Orlando to sit in my air conditioning.

I look his name up on my phone. I can’t believe it. It’s Scott Sharrard, musical director, co-writer and guitarist for Gregg Allman. I’m afraid to admit that I don’t know who he is. But this is beginning to make sense. Bar Chord’s a great place, but this guy is Greg Allman’s fucking guitar player! Greg Allman can have anyone as his guitar player. He’s played with some of the best electric blues guitar players of our time.

The song “My Only True Friend” is written from the perspective of Duane Allman, as if Duane had written it for Greg. I realize why I had been so moved that night by Sharrard’s playing. He embodies the spirit and the abiding love that brothers have for each other.

“Let’s just go for a walk,” pleads Lan. Even though we’d been out a few nights in a row, we both know we’re going out.

After sliding down a rollercoaster of joys and sorrows, because that’s what this music does to us, the set ends on Sharrard’s version of “Melissa” by The Allman Brothers. Motherfucker.

What kind of friend would I be if I said no?

Lan and I are blown away. We’re not even stoned. This is simply miraculous.

“It’s late. I’m tired,” I say, feeling lame.

“Let’s go grab a beer at Bar Chord.” “Is this some kind of hipster bar?” he asks, making a face. Laughing, I say, “Shut up, man. You’ll like it.” Bar Chord is a local bar on Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park where I live. They have terrific jazz ensembles, blues bands, and acoustic acts. Sometimes I’ll go there just to have a few beers by myself and listen to the music. It’s nice to be able to pop in casually. When we get to Bar Chord, the band is on break. I’m almost glad they’re not playing. I’m pulling myself through this. After we order beers, the music starts up again. I don’t know who is playing, but it’s a blues group. In just a few seconds, it’s clear that this is a great band and that the guitar player is amazing. Not just good. It’s like he’s taken off on a rocket ship with his solos. He’s playing a Bobby Bland song that I recognize. Not only can he rip the shit out of his guitar, he can sing, too. Now I put my drink down and look over at Lan. He’s digging it. I’m kind of stunned. This guy is just too good. He’s tearing up his guitar playing soulful blues licks, sometimes pulling on long notes with his slide. I’m getting chills. He’s dialing in guitar phrases that I’ve heard before. The bell-tones. Slide riffs, thick and slow like molasses. Like a radar signal has gone up my spine and turned my brain on highline mode. Lan and I are shaking our heads in disbelief. “You see,” he says. “I told you we should have gone out.” His eyes are watery. “I know, I know,” I say. It’s like someone woke Duane Allman from the dead and put him up there on that stage. The screaming slide notes. The blues riffs packed with tears and pain. “Now I’m going to play something from my new album,” says the guitar player, during a brief pause between songs. The drummer trots into an R&B rhythm, the band follows. The song is funky and soulful. Some people start dancing to the tune. The small crowd at Bar Chord is totally

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I now know that the R&B song Sharrard played is on his 2018 album, “Saving Grace.” I now know that “Saving Grace” was recorded with the Muscle Shoals music elite. And, to channel Duane Allman, Sharrard played Duane’s storied 1957 Les Paul Gold Top.

I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul When I’m gone Please don’t fly away and find you a new love I can’t face living this life alone I can’t bear to think this might be the end But you and I both know the road is my only true friend As Lan and I head home, we are shocked into silence. Lester and Paul’s spirits are there with us. To say, hey, remember when we listened to this music. People can you feel it, love is everywhere. The love that keeps you going on this road we call life. The love of true friends.

“Saving Grace” also features “My Only True Friend,” which was co-written with Gregg Allman. It is Gregg’s last known original song, originally planned for Allman’s Southern Blood album. Allman’s health prevented him from recording it. Their song now lives in Sharrard. In fact, so much of The Allman Brothers lives in Sharrard. Sharrard’s playing calls to mind the first time Lan’s brother, Lester, plays Eat A Peach for us. Stereo on full volume, making every organ in my body shudder, Lester talks about how much he loves this album. Though at that time he was a born-again Christian, Lester tells us that The Allman Brothers had to be listened to while tripping on acid to get the full impact. He doesn’t realize it, but I hear him saying you need to do acid and listen to this record now. Because he’s passionate about the music and the myths surrounding the music, Lester essentially establishes our musical taste. And because we venerate the ground he walks on, we listen to his favorite records, trying to hear them like he hears them. Years later, when our friend Paul and I listen to Mountain Jam on LSD, in fulfillment of Lester’s prescription, our minds become one. We become eternal. This music speaks to you about the history of the cosmos, about love, and friendship. In 2001, Paul is taken from us in the World Trade Center tragedy. Then, a few years later, we lose Lester to a sudden stroke. As Sharrard is playing, Lan and I share a space where Lester and Paul continue to exist. They are in the music, in the notes. Crossroads, will you ever let him go? The gypsy flies from coast to coast. It dawns on me that Paul was always the gypsy of that song; that while he lives in an infinite blue sky, the rest of us are growing old and gray. That we would never let him go and yet he must forever fly away. The joke is on us, as usual. And Sharrard’s music, his playing, his singing, is bound up with all of this. He knows what he’s

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September 2019

Samoa Wilson has recorded with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. She will be playing the main stage Sunday at 6 pm

What Is? The 5th Annual BrooklYn Americana Festival is by Jack Grace

he fifth annual Brooklyn Americana Festival is September 19 to 22 in several spots primarily surrounding the East River in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by Jan Bell (who has several albums and toured the United States and Europe in her own right), the Brooklyn Americana Festival is quickly establishing itself as a major artery of the Americana music establishment. Brooklyn, named after the Dutch village of Breukelen and bordering the borough of Queens at the western end of Long Island, was once the home of Woody Guthrie, and his son Arlo Guthrie was born and raised here. There was a Brooklyn Country Music Festival that ran for 10 years, the Brooklyn Folk Festival is approaching 10 years and the list goes on. So when the New York Times and other New York journalists do their predictable “How ironic! Rootsy country music in New York City?” stories… well, knock it off already. This music is well established here. Americana, as defined by the Americana Music Association (AMA), is “contemporary music that incorporates elements of various mostly acoustic American roots music styles, including country, roots rock, folk, gospel and bluegrass resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. While acoustic instruments are often present and vital, Americana also often uses a full electric band.” In other words, Americana covers a lot of ground. Nowadays, the entire ‘70s singer-songwriter movement of James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, etc., can retroactively be deemed Americana as well as most country, folk, blues and all of bluegrass. Rock, hmm, well a lot of it can be, but oft angrier musical styles can be less acoustic as a total generalization. So, rap, metal and punk seem to have a smaller album collection that can fit under this Americana blanket. Pop music of this 2019 era seems to have

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little in common with Americana. But now let’s remember, all of the rock, pop, rap, metal, funk and punk that doesn’t fit, can all be recorded ironically by any Americana band. So, no song is safe!

The Cottonwood Tree, where Jane’s Carousel is now; in 45 Main St., where the Fleuvog show shop is now. When Dumbo Art Festival folded six years ago, it was a natural step to keep the live music aspect going.

We sat down with Americana musician Jan Bell, and she let us know how this festival got going, what it is and where it is going.

Would you like to throw us a few acts that have been getting a little extra buzz this year that are playing?

You are a musician who has toured all over. Why did you decide to start a festival? I was that school kid that put on plays and would get everyone involved, like even the shyest kid could be in the play as a tree or a flower. I went on to study theater and storytelling. When I started traveling America with a folk musician, everywhere we went there was this whole folk tradition, campfire song circles, sitting on a porch playing music into the wee hours... and there was a bond because of the great American songbook. A few years later, when I first came to Dumbo, my friends at Superfine had taken over the kitchen in the Between the Bridges iron workers’ bar. They had a line of customers out the door and asked me to help organize live music. It was 1998; the neighborhood was mostly empty warehouses, and a lot of us were living one step above squatting, really. I started a weekly open mic, and that gained some traction pretty fast – Elyas Khan and his outfit Nervous Cabaret started out there. A good way to find common ground between folks from different walks of life is a tribute show. The first one honored Patsy Cline, then Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Dolly Parton. What’s not to love? The bar was so packed that I moved the show outside and put the band on the back of the chef ’s ‘64 Ford pickup truck. The following year Joy Glidden, the director of the Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival, offered me a loading dock to put bands on for the festival weekend. I did that for the next 13 years all over Dumbo – the Tobacco Warehouse where St. Ann’s Theatre is now; Under

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Leila Jane from Dublin just played a great stage at Glastonbury. A bunch of great songwriters from Austin, Texas: Jaimee Harris, Graham Weber and his band Western Youth, Rich Russell and his band Lonesome Heroes. Katy Rose, who used to be in the Maybelles with her new band, Tiger Alley. Queen Esther always raises the roof, and recently did a TED Talk on the origins of country music and black Americana, Sabine McCalla played solo last year and is bringing her band The Dew Drops up from New Orleans, where Offbeat Magazine named her “emerging artist of the year.” The Dew Drops are named after a speakeasy where black and white folks would gather during segregation. Ana Egge, who’s been described as a folk in a Simone, will play songs from her new album which Iris Dement is a guest on; Maggie Carson (Spirit Family Reunion). Jackson Lynch plays double duty with old-time trio The Down Hill Strugglers at Powerhouse Arena, and later on his rock n’ roll soul band on Saturday night at Superfine. The Wild Goats – Hilary Hawke, banjo player in Oklahoma on Broadway, and the intrepid actor and songwriter Jesse Lenat on guitar. Little Nora Brown kicks off the women’s stage on Pier 6 with Stephanie Coleman. Nora might be the youngest person to ever give a TED Talk and played banjo tunes from East Virginia. How do you handle all of the submissions? I imagine it is hard to balance the artists you know personally along with all the other musicians from the US and abroad. The hardest part is saying no to a band. I’m a longtime member of Folk Alliance International

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Jan Bell’s Americana continued from previous page

and have learned a lot from my elders and my peers in that community and have seen tons of brilliant musicians there. I almost never book a band before I’ve seen them live. The way they engage with the crowd – or lack thereof – is very telling. Anyone with deep pockets can have a fancy video or polished studio album. But what are you like offstage as well as when you’re in the spotlight? How are you with the venue staff and audience? The sound person? I try and reply to everyone who sends a well-crafted inquiry. But honestly, if you’re asking me if you can play the festival less than three months out, that’s just plain annoying. I’d never get anything done. Some folks even wrote asking me today. Has it changed the way you see your own music? The fact that I can play guitar and sing at the same time is something I will always be working on, and practicing to do better by my band – especially leading one of my new songs. They’re the ones doing all the hard work. My mantra is: sing the song for the sake of the song. I try to be true, honest, and brave. As far as booking, sometimes my stuff just isn’t a good fit for a place. It’s important not to take it personally if a club says no thanks – or doesn’t get back to you; a lot of bookers are like me, with at least three jobs, and maybe they are an artist too, or a new parent trying to work from home. What makes the Brooklyn Americana Festival different from other Americana Festivals? This year we have close to 70 per cent artists that identify as women. It’s an urban music festival taking place in what were once considered out-ofthe-way, dangerous neighborhoods. Now it’s hard for us artists to be able to afford to live any place even close to the waterfront. The audience is really a mix of all walks of life, all ages and it’s free. Everyone involved is paid a fair wage. That takes some doing, and it’s really the community I’ve been part of the last 20 years that supports this endeavor. How do you think the high rents and cost of living in Brooklyn has affected the Brooklyn country and roots scene?

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

Well, in Dumbo, the visual artists were the first to go – the ones who had giant spaces with tons of light. Most of those have been divided now into way smaller studios, and a new wave of artists have moved in, willing to pay the same rent for a shoe box. Us musicians can split the rent four or more ways for a dumpy dark basement rehearsal space. But as rents have tripled and quadrupled, musicians are being paid around the same as we were five, even 10 years ago. When The Maybelles first went to Europe, I asked The Wiyos for advice. They said CD sales were a huge part of earnings, and they were right. That was 10 years ago... and nowadays folks often don’t have any cash anymore to tip the band. So, some bands are on top of that with signage that makes it easy for fans to tip online. The festival venues have all cultivated a tradition of tipping the bands in cash, and I’ll be sad to see that go as we move toward a cashless society. If someone wants to tip big, I think that’s a private exchange of their own free will, and nobody else’s business really. Americana was not considered a genre in the ‘70s, ‘80s. Now they are calling Neil Young’s Harvest Americana and anything by Gram Parsons; they used to be called country rock. So, what the hell is Americana? Americana involves a high level of original songwriting, even a love of poetry, or at least an awareness of it – not as an exclusive academic art – but as another platform for the people’s voice. There are upright basses rather than electric ones; a full drum kit is not a must. There is an understanding of the roots of folk, blues, bluegrass, a genuine interest in the history and the lives of the ones who have gone before us down the road. Are The Eagles Americana? Hmm... well those harmonies put them in the running, but I’d still say they are classic American folk rock. The Grateful Dead? No, they are their own genre. Brad Paisley? No, commercial country. What would you like to see differently for the 10th Annual BKAMF? I’d love to have a solar-powered and wind-powered stage. I’d love to see stationary bicycles for parents and kids by the stage that power up electric equipment – like the little girl’s bike powers up the bass amp, dad’s bike powers the foot lights or something like that. I would like to see great attendance but not crazy crowded. I have a lot of friends I met along the way, starting out around the same time who have gone on to play the Royal Albert hall, Lincoln Center, and command main stages worldwide. I’d bet my bottom dollar some of the artists playing this year will rise to that level. And I hope they come back in year 10 and I can gladly give them their going rate. For tickets and information go to http://www.bkamf.com

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September 2019

The Root Cellar: John Pinamonti & Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook

ohn Pinamonti and his band have been performing as a regular combo at Sunny’s Bar on Conover Street, Red Hook, since the year 2000. The history of Sunny’s Bar is wonderfully told in Tim Sultan’s book Sunny’s Nights: Lost and Found at a Bar on the Edge of the World (2016). I have no intention of competing with that; indeed I don’t believe I can. To my knowledge, nobody has yet written a book about John Pinamonti. So at least I can go there. Leave Sunny’s Bar and Red Hook for a minute and travel deeper into the bowels of Brooklyn’s drinking past to a bar that unfortunately has fallen off the edge of the world, O’Connor’s. I first met John Pinamonti at O’Connor’s Bar in the fall of 1996 during the Yankees’ playoff run. Watching a baseball game there was a surreal experience. The publican Pat O’Connor (R.I.P.) would wobble on the stepladder, vainly attempting to position the rabbit ears for improved reception. The patrons would yell instructions to him, like “Stay there” “A little to the right” or “No.” Luckily the sound on the television set worked somewhat better than the visuals, so whenever the crowd at the stadium would cheer as a blurred and snowy flurry of activity took place on the screen, this would have a domino effect on the O’Connor’s viewers, verbalized by the universal query, “Wha’ppen?” Pat O’Connor introduced me to John Pinamonti. John had just released his first record. Pat, who would butcher any name that was vaguely foreign-sounding sans an Irish one, would stick the John tape on the music machine and proudly announce, “This is James Palo Alto. I know him.” He would make everyone in his saloon listen. The drinkers became fans. Now, almost 24 years later, O’Connor would have been proud of his kid, Johnny Provolone. Or was it Joey Pastrami? John Pinamonti’s music springs from the waterway that irrigates the soil of the Americana roots tradition and struggle. It helps keeps this hallowed ground rich and fertile. The original fettered ones and jazzmen ploughed these fields first, ensuring an abundant harvest. This is what entices a Bruce Springsteen to record the Seeger Sessions, what makes young white city-dwellers adherents of old black Delta blues pickers and hillbilly fiddlers, and what pays righteous homage to the variety of Hanks, Mels, Merles and all of the Kings (Freddie, B.B. and Albert). It’s what the young Elvis Presley listened to, and, if he hadn’t left us so soon, what the old Elvis Presley would still be listening to. It’s what Bob Dylan never freewheeled too far away from, and what Dion DiMucci always wandered back towards. It’s what fueled Maybellene’s Coupe De Ville, and drove big bad Bo Diddley’s bus. It’s the music that recognizes the sheer beauty of a Phil and Don Everly harmony, the forlornness of a Townes Van Zandt, the remoteness and lonely yearning of a Butch Hancock, a Joe Ely or a Roy Orbison, the twang of a Jesse Taylor, the poetry and hope of a Woody Guthrie to chronicle and survive grim times for poor people.

John’s material is another tributary of this mighty body whose waters sustain life, the whiskey river. We listeners are happy campers, safely settled ashore in the warmth of the whiskey tent. A wee bit of advice here, stay in the tent. Remember the saying about the river being made up of whiskey and the individual on the riverbank acting like a duck. It’s the diving to the bottom and never coming up again part, that’s what’s on the dangerous side. Like many of his peers and those who came before

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by Mike Morgan

him and will no doubt follow after him, John Pinamonti remains in large part an unsung hero, a best-kept secret, locked out by the all-consuming blandness of what passes for popular culture. This is through no fault of his own. It’s the nature of the beast. John remains undeterred. He soldiers on. John Pinamonti’s own songs are parables and tales, stories of his experiences, the micro-macro of his vision of our neighborhood, the borough, the city, the country, the world and relationships, brought to you with swing and a honky-tonk beat to boot. They are often about the things that we should see clearly and comprehend, but usually don’t. They can be topical or obscure. They are clever without him being a smarty-pants, sometimes funny (ha-ha, not peculiar), and sad without being maudlin for the sake of jerking a tear. Hell, now and again the words even rhyme. They are not put out there for everybody to agree with or feel good about. But they certainly provide food for thought. And these are hungry times for a lot of people. A typical John Pinamonti show will consist of a stripped-down band, drums, bass and another talented guitar picker, with John doing all of the singing. The songs themselves will mostly be his own, with a healthy smattering of tasty covers by the likes of Snooks Eaglin, Tom Waits, Mickey Newbury, Jimmy Reed, Neil Young, even the Ramones, to name a few. If there is a visiting musician acquaintance in the house, John will always invite him or her up to join in. The audience is a participant at a John Pinamonti performance. Inclusion, rather than exclusion and elitism, is the order of the night. That’s downright refreshing. For years, Sunny’s Bar wasn’t quite up to snuff with regard to the licensing crowd, so the tavern was unofficially referred to as a “Yachting Club.” Comparing Sunny’s Bar to a yacht club lounge is like calling the tiny square of faded green and dirt in the rear courtyard of my apartment building a golf course. Like any respectable yachting club, Sunny’s Bar only opened on Friday evenings, or at the occasional whim of its Shaman-like owner, Sunny Balzano (R.I.P. too). Smalltime mob men might congregate there as well as original residents of Red Hook, a dying breed. It is now a popular venue, drawing people from as far away as Manhattan. John remembers when this demographic shift finally hit him. The way he tells it, he arrived on a gig night back in 2014 and the joint was jumping, unusually full to capacity. A television show had been filmed there earlier in the day. Seated in a corner normally taken up by one of the cigar-chomping concrete-shoe characters was none other than Amy Schumer, comedienne and cousin of the Democratic Party stooge and poobah from Brooklyn, Chuck. She seemed to be enjoying the limelight. It’s hard to get rid of those Schumers. They’re as sticky as white on rice.

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Sitting in the Sunny backyard

John was also playing at Sunny’s Bar the night when the yacht club cover was finally blown and the beefy City Marshalls arrived to padlock the doors. They meant business, and their business that night was to put the kibosh on Sunny’s business. Sunny immediately transformed himself from his swami/guru persona to a man of action in the marketplace, the hot items one, not the stocks and bonds one. He hustled a possibly too young woman bartender out from behind the stick, stuffed an envelope in his pocket and greeted the gendarmes openly, all before you could say “Fuck Chuck Schumer.” The opposing parties retired outside to parley. Whatever happened out there on the street remains a mystery. But the lawmen allowed the place to stay open that evening, which was not their original intention. That particular incident marked the swan song of the Sunny’s Bar sailing era. The ex-commodore Sunny had to temporarily call it quits for a year in order to straighten out the bar papers. Lately on occasion, John has added a guest piano player to his outfit, namely Charlie Giordano, who is currently a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. That’s not too shabby. Charlie often accompanies John’s band at his Sunny’s Bar gigs. Check out John at Sunny’s Bar. Perhaps then you’ll agree with Mr. Patrick O’Connor and have another exotic glass of Pina Monti for his pal, John Pina Colada. The John Pinmonti Band nights at Sunny’s Bar are worthy of top-shelf hooch, even if it comes from the cellar of the bar at the edge of the world. The John Pinamonti Band will be performing at Sunny’s Bar on Friday, October 4, at 9 pm. Charlie Giordano will play with the band that night. John’s CDs are available for sale at his shows, or visit his website at www.pinamonti.com. Tim Sultan’s book can be found at any respectable Brooklyn bookstore that might still be left standing and from book vendors on the internet.

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Lasers and Lace at the Knitting Factory

RED HOOK BROOK

LYN

OPEn STUDIOS 2019: Call for artists and makers FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO WWW.REDHOOKOPENSTUDIOS.COM

NEW event DATE for 2019: OCTober 12th & 13th, 1–6 PM Page 32 Star-Revue Section 2

By Andrew B. White

ednesday, September 11, sees Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory host a night of original international synth acts. Co-headliners Parallels (Canada) and Nina (UK) are joined by New York artists Czarina and Bunny X, all of whom are leading female artists in the burgeoning synthwave scene. The term “synthwave” broadly defines several styles of music heavily influenced by 1980s culture, from music to aesthetics, video games to movies. Synthesizers are up-front as are visual cues and styles. The music from the 2011 film Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, is often cited as the flashpoint for synthwave, with recent shows such as Netflix’s Stranger Things and Glow also picking up on the nostalgia vibe. However, rather than just being a throwback to the ‘80s, synthwave brings that decade’s influences into the 21st century, as the four acts on the lineup demonstrate. Toronto’s Parallels, fronted by Holly Dodson, were around before the term synthwave was even coined. Starting out in the late 2000’s, Parallels have worked tirelessly, releasing three acclaimed albums and building an audience both online and at live performances in Canada, the US and Europe. Dodson’s voice has been described as a mix of Kate Bush and Robyn, with the music occupying similar territory to Goldrapp and CHVRCHES. This Knitting Factory show will kick off a seven-date North American tour for Parallels and Nina. Originally from Berlin, Nina is a UKbased vocalist and songwriter who has also spent the last several years working on her ’80s-influenced synth pop, releasing a number of singles and an EP. Her well-received debut album Sleepwalking was released in 2018 on UK label Aztec Records. While there are hints of ‘80s Madonna or Kim Wilde in her music, Nina reaches out to the romantic and atmospheric corners of synth pop – synths are big and lush

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and vocals are bathed in lots of reverb. Nina’s songs have appeared in commercials for Hugo Boss and Mercedes Benz and in Syfy’s TV series Being Human. She’s also put a few miles down on the touring circuit with shows in the UK, Europe and the US, including opening for Erasure. This September will be the second time that Nina has joined forces with Parallels on tour. Czarina (pronounced “Zarina”) is one of two New York-based acts also on the bill. Fronted by Vero Faye Kitsuné, Czarina combines cyberpunk and electronic rock with a retro-futuristic aesthetic. She has quite the résumé – a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, actor, producer and filmmaker, not to mention fashion designer and creative director for her own line of footwear and accessories! Czarina brings all of these talents to her music as her recent album Painted Holograms and its striking music videos attest to. Expect an energetic live show from Czarina and her band that features two members of Blondie – Matt Katz-Bohen (keys/synths) and Tommy Kessler (lead guitar), Cyndi Lauper’s Ismael Baiz (drums), along with Carlos Kitsuné (synths). Bunny X is an NYC duo made up of Abigail Gordon and Mary Hanley. Together with a select team of producers they produce their own blend of Italo Disco-flavored synth pop. With a number of singles, EPs and album releases under their glittery belts, the duo has been growing a following, particularly in Europe. No strangers to the live scene, Bunny X has been performing a fun and danceable set on the NYC circuit for several years. Expect the Knitting Factory to come alive with the full neon spectrum of synthwave styles on September 11! Tickets are on sale now with a special meet-and-greet option also available. The Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211. 347-529-6696.

September 2019

The new Afrofuturism of Oshun

by Roderick Thomas

lack voices and stories have historically been silenced or pushed to the background. Afrofuturism puts a spotlight on black stories, and conceptually, the genre places black subjects in settings that didn’t usually include or consider them. Afrofuturism, in short, is where the themes of black culture throughout the diaspora meet technology and science fiction, usually via an artistic medium. Though the term Afrofuturism sprung up in the 1990s, its roots run very deep – Prince, Sun Ra, Grace Jones. Any point in time where black folk use fantasy or technology as a way to redefine themselves, and expand possibilities can be described as Afrofuturistic. Organized LGBTQ+ ball and house culture that was birthed in 1920s Harlem, for example, is Afrofuturism. Films like Black Panther or the innovative music videos of Missy Elliott all represent Afrofuturism. Oshun, an extremely talented hip-hop soul duo, are extending the tradition of Afrofuturistic music to a new generation. Group members Thandiwe and Niambi use African and black diasporic themes in their music. Their group name is itself an homage to the Nigerian goddess of rivers, love and fertility, Osun (pronounced Oh-Shoon). The two young DC natives met at NYU while in high school via a scholarship program and immediately bonded. “Musically and spiritually we always wanted to heal through music. We looked at each other and were like, let’s do this for real, but it wasn’t easy being full-time artists and students. We would be finishing papers before performances.” - Oshun From their debut studio album Bittersweet Vol.1 (April 2018), it’s clear how gifted and skillful these women are. Thandiwe and Niambi can really rap, really sing and write. Plenty of artists, especially in the NYC scene, use imagery and sound reminiscent of the late 1990s and early 2000s neo-soul golden era – Erykah Badu, Mos Def, D’Angelo. However, these artists usually come off as inauthentic, imitation cheese versions of their predecessors. It’s not good enough to just look the part. The foresight and skill required to not only match

20 years of Zum Schneider Featuring Moesl Franzi and The Ja Ja Jas by Stefan Zeniuk On September 14th and 15th, Zum Schneider will celebrate 20 years in Alphabet City. Known to have some of the most authentic Bavarian food in New York, alongside an extraordinarily curated beer selection, the restaurant will, sadly, be observing its final Oktoberfest this year (at least, in its current location). For their anniversary, they will feature the house polka band, The Ja Ja Jas. The band is led by drummer and singer Moesl Franzi, the stage name of Sylvester Schneider, who also just happens to be the owner of Zum Schneider. Schneider is, undisputedly, the heart and soul of the restaurant, whether he’s behind the drums or not. His pervasive energy, enthusiasm and joy have made it a jubilant place since it opened. He’s often seen hopping up onto the benches and bar, leading

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Thandiwe and Niambi named their group after the Nigerian goddess of rivers, love and fertility.

the artistry of musical predecessors, but also be a part of a movement’s evolution, is something very special and hard to manufacture. Nothing about Bittersweet Vol. 1 sounds like Karaoke Jill Scott, nothing. Thandiwe’s voice isn’t camouflaged in elementary neo-soul runs, or breathy phrasing many singers today use, to mask a lack of vocal ability – nope, sis can sing. Niambi on the other hand, while a talented singer as well, really shines when she showcases punchy rap vocals. Often when Niambi raps, she’s less goddess of love and more warrior queen (see Oya Orisha). She’s all fire and skill, very reminiscent of Left Eye (of TLC) at times. Both women are talented singers and rappers in their own right. Much like Lauryn Hill, they can choose to do either, and most of their songs spotlight how dynamic they both are. Oshun is a special part of hip-hop soul’s evolution and a unique addition to the current roster of hiphop acts. “We have so many musical influences like Fela Kuti, Lauryn Hill, Outkast, Parliament Funk. Bittersweet is about the challenges of growing, working, learning lessons and applying wisdom.” - Oshun

the entire place in rousing singalongs, or creating spontaneous dance parties. But he was a musician first. Born in Wessling, a small town outside of Munich, he moved to America to become a drummer. He played in rock bands in Boston and NYC in the ‘90s, before he opened Zum Schneider, which instantly stood out for its uniquely authentic German coziness. The band was there from almost day one (first, Sylvester says, they had caroling!). Schneider plays the bass drum and hi-hat, standing, while singing and leading the restaurant in songs and dances, accompanied by accordion, clarinet, trombone and tuba. But the raucous, rambunctious and extremely Lower East Side take on the traditional polkas and modern rock songs is at times more punk rock than you’d expect from a polka band. “I didn't want the conservative and stuffy old traditions. I value the lively and fun traditions such as comical polkas, communal singing and dancing, Schuhplattler, Tracht mixed with modern-day lifestyle.” The band will veer from a traditional polka into a soccer anthem, and finish off with “Take Me Home, Country Roads” within a single set, and then end the night with Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” or “99 Red Balloons.” Everything is fair game, as long as it aids the party.

The duo puts a strong emphasis on self-love and community. While themes of romantic love and fuck boys can be found in songs like “Crazy 4 You” and “Parts,” Oshun makes self-empowerment the eye of their music. Thandiwe and Niambi are definitely mission-driven artists. “We all need healing and empathy. Love can be romantic, political, love can be spiritual. The most powerful thing we can do is radiate light and do our part. There is an old saying that goes, when your sister is your hairdresser you need no mirror.” - Oshun Oshun recently came off their European tour, having amassed an impressive cult following in a relatively short period of time. And with the success of Afrofuturist films like Black Panther and Us, as well as the growing visibility of authentic black content, the possibilities for Oshun’s career are looking even more promising. Check out Oshun’s latest video for their song, “We’re Yung” and listen to their debut album Bittersweet Vol. 1 on all streaming platforms – Spotify, Amazon and Apple music. Roderick Thomas is an NYC-based writer and filmmaker. Instagram – @Hippiebyaccident.

left Germany,” Schneider explains. “Well, go figure, [polka] turned out to be my number-one band in the USA. We started off with songs I took from my father's local Oompah band he played with back home. Then Oktoberfest hits and modern rock stuff was added to make it more party-like.” It certainly is a party. For Oktoberfest, Schneider expands the small restaurant, and takes over a lot on the East River, at 23rd Street, for two weeks, where they expand into a proper Oktoberfest tent. There, the band plays for thousand of people every year. The Ja Ja Jas will be at Zum Schneider (107 Avenue C) on September 14 and 15, and at the Oktoberfest Tent: Munich on the East River (FDR Drive and 23rd Street) from September 27 to October 6.

“Polka and Oompah was part of the reason why I

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September 2019, Page 33

Busking and Grinding in NYC

set out to write a story on busking, the hip word for performing in the streets, in hopes of meeting crazy characters and hearing spectacular stories the likes of which could only happen in the chaotic streets and underground train stations of New York City. However, I got no such tales from the dozen or so musicians I spoke with. What I did get across the cultural board is the sense that buskers are walking, talking (singing) embodiments of the ineffable NYC grind. A busker may turn up anywhere. As I found myself in random stations, I’d put my head down and keep an ear out: a good way to echo-locate the musicians, and a good way to bump into commuters or get shoulder-checked by the more aggressive interlopers. Naturally, chances are good in major train hubs like Atlantic Center, Barclays, Times Square-42nd Street, or Union Square-14th Street. Parks are fine places to find folks singing for their meals, and the random street corner. If you’re not blocking pathways, or within 500 feet of a school, church, courthouse, or hospital during hours of operation, are no louder than 85 decibels, you can throw down anywhere to make your music in hopes of tips. Use of amps requires a permit which can be obtained at your spot’s presiding precinct. The relative ease of picking a permissible spot is in direct opposition to how daunting it is to play your music in the subway, to throw yourself in the middle of a crowd that didn’t ask. At a venue people purposely turn out to hear your music. There are systems in place to prevent just anyone from walking up and screaming in your face, “You suck!” Only paying customers have that privilege. Yet outright ire from strangers on the street is quite rare. Sure, it happens more frequently in Herald Square than at some art walk in a suburban park, but for NYC it’s pretty tame. Buskers are largely left alone to hack out a decent day’s pay. Occasionally, they’re shooed by the police or forced to put up with an overly friendly drunk. Otherwise, their day-to-day is singing the same songs as people here and there drop some change or Instagram their brief contactless encounter with the local color. There does exist a line of respect between musician and would-be audience member. Even in packed spaces the artists are given a degree of elbow room. But, if they’re entertaining enough to Instagram for all of your followers, throw ‘em a buck or two

Mama D (continued from page 1)

DJs of today. As I bobbed my head to the music, I was offered my first hors d’oeuvre—the hospitality y’all, the hospitality. Roderick: How did Mama D’s Sneaky Speakeasy get started? Mama D: I moved back to the city seven years ago and, honestly, it started out as a small party where there was food, drinks, movies and art. I wanted to feel comfortable, hang out and have a good time. I was envisioning my perfect night out meets my perfect night in. Roderick: When I think of the perfect night, the best moments were either completely random, or with the people I truly care about. Is that what you had in mind? Mama D: Exactly! I thought about the things we look for on a night out or brunch, great food, drinks, entertainment, art and people we enjoy being around. Roderick Thomas: Why put on these events, D? Mama D: I want to develop community. I want a

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by Jody Callahan

for getting you those likes.

it’s true enough to call back, “yup.”

Show ‘em love, because it’s work, and not always in ideal environments. The subway is hot in August. It gets cold down there in February. Even in good weather the dingy halls of the MTA can smell of piss, fresh and old. The pay for a day’s worth of play is not really substantial. Supplementary at best. Zero dollars some days. No minimum wage, no nothing. Like us, no matter how hard it gets, they have to show up and act like they’re loving this big city life, because that will net them a dollar or a fiver. Sometimes a man in a fancy suit on his way to or from the Financial District drops a twenty in the hat, even if he never even stopped to listen. He hardly cared. Bless him.

If a busking musician made your wait in a toohot, too-cold, too-crowded train station, toss some love in the hat or instrument case. If they’re good, if they get you, hang out for a song. Train be damned. Be a part of something that is so inherently NYC, and far older than our country. Bob your head, tap your feet, clap your hands, but do put some tangible love and appreciation in the hat. For more information on MUNY, see their site: http://web.mta.info/mta/aft/muny/.

Harder still is to do the subway circuit officially through MTA’s arts program MUNY (Music Under New York). Though not necessary to perform in the subway, it does offer choice high-trafficked spots and allotted times. But get ready for official rejection, too. Out of thousands of applications only about 65 acts are invited to audition live at Grand Central Terminal every Spring, which is open to the public. Only a couple dozen of them will get to fly the official banner over their dingedup instruments and equipment. I wanted to find myself in a world different from our workaday one, less hectic and bureaucratic. In my hustle to be the greatest music journalist the world’s ever seen, I only discovered more hustlers hustling. I don’t believe anyone reading this needs a picture painted of what myriad funny hats a busker might wear or act they may put on. Whatever outlandish costume, or wacky persona these street performers take, it all amounts to a work uniform and professional conduct. The drive, the show a street musician puts on whether they’re feeling it or not, whether we’re feeling it or not, comes from a deep and sincere need to be heard above the crowds; to get that head nod. They make a little scratch, but mostly they earn experience as they grind for loose change, tokens that say keep it up. I love that. I do. There’s no doubt you know the deal. Grandmaster Flash probably wasn’t the first to say it, but he’s where I first heard the phrase “trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.” We fellow workaday folk trying to grind out our big city dreams dollar by dollar may not attribute such a statement to high art, but we know in our hearts

space for people to be their full selves and not be so compartmentalized. Life is meant to be lived, it’s that simple. Mama D’s food and drinks were truly as she’s branded them, “Gourmet As Fuck.” The Tasty Treats are an array of savory foods, from spring salads and vegan delights to her mouth-watering Goud’ Burger (yes, that’s a Kenan and Kel reference). And if you’re not in the mood for food, you can enjoy one of the many fruit-infused drinks, mango, passionfruit, or her regular Sneaky Ice Tea. Diana operates her events with the Bushwood Collective, a talented team who pull together these great parties, made up mostly of women. In addition, Mama D offers apprenticeship opportunities for those wanting to enter the nightlife scene who have little or no experience. Mama D: I’ve worn and wear so many different hats in my life. It’s important that I create opportunities, especially for other women. It’s crazy that you have to lie your way into bartending and nightlife, so I created a program for those who are interested. Roderick Thomas: That’s awesome. Now, can you tell us something interesting we don’t know about you?

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(photos by Jody Callahan)

Mama D: I lived in Paris for a few years, and oui, je parle le francais. Roderick Thomas: Impressive. Now, what the hell inspired those restrooms, Diana? Mama D: [laughs] I love seeing people’s reaction! At Mama D’s events you’ll have your pick of two restrooms. The first I call Golden Girls, a pink and fluffy environment that screams, “I’m living my best Floridian retirement life!” The other however, is a collage of naughty, after-dark cinema wallpaper, that will either have you laughing or gasping. Roderick Thomas: The one and only Mama D, thanks for inviting me to your event. I’ll be back. Mama D: You’re welcome and thank you! If you’re up for a great night, you can attend Mama D’s upcoming parties; 90s kids Back to the Grind on September 9 and Mama D’s Second Saturday Salon on September 14. You can find Mama D’s off the Halsey stop on the L train or the Forest Ave stop on the M. For the exact location and event details, check out sneakyspeakeasy. com, or contact organizers directly on Instagram at @ mamadssneakyspeakeasy.

September 2019

Concert Suggestions for the fall by George Fiala

The first time I saw Steve Forbert was the only time I went to CBGB’s, only because back in the day I wasn’t much of a punkster (my loss). When Forbert first came to NY though, Hilly Kristal was booking more folky acts. By 1980, Forbert was already somewhat of a star, playing clubs all over the country, and owner of somewhat of a hit single, and he did a nostalgic gig there. Well, it’s almost 40 years later and Forbert is still gigging. He’ll be at the Towne Crier in Beacon, NY on Saturday, September 28, and then back a bit closer to the Turning Point in Piermont, NY on the 24th. He’s got a book out and I’m guessing he’ll be telling stories from them between songs.

Briana Murphy wrote about the Slavic Soul Party for the Star-Revue back in February. She said: What else is there to say about the band that has played at Barbès in Park Slope, Brooklyn almost every Tuesday for almost 15 years? They have established themselves as an institution in the neighborhood and the number of veteran audience members often vastly outnumbers the first-timers. Musicians are added throughout the night (and the band’s lineup has been subject to rotations and adjustments over the years), but the group is primarily comprised of trumpets, drums, an accordion, a tuba, and a saxophone. Even those fairly unfamiliar with the general genre of Balkan brass will recognize and appreciate the dance-worthy elements that have been sampled in Billboard-topping dance anthems like Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty” and Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It.” Though the comparison is doubtless rather insulting to fans of Balkan brass and Slavic Soul Party! specifically, the overarching idea is simple – their music generates movement. Slavic Soul Party is traveling from Barbes’ pretty small stage to the pretty big stage at Manhattan’s Symphony Space on Thursday, November 14, located at 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street. It’s possible you’ve never heard of Jimmy Webb, but for sure you’ve heard the songs he’s

written. “MacArthur Park,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Worst That Could Happen,” “Galveston,” “Up, Up And Away,” “All I Know,” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” - all number one hits for Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel and others. He actually sings and plays piano pretty well himself. And you can imagine, he’s got some of the greatest stories - as a teenager he befriended Frank Sinatra as he sold him songs. I’ve seen him a bunch of times, and he attracts fans such as Judy Collins and Billy Joel, both of whom I watched while watching him.

Who doesn’t know about Lucinda Williams. Her father was an Arkansas poet chosen by Bill Clinton to read one of his poems at his second inauguration. By that time, Lucinda had already paid her dues first as a folk singer, and then leading a tight band touring behind her highly crafted bluesy songs.

He will be making an appearance at Daryl’s House in Pawling, NY, on Route 22, Saturday night October 26. By the way, in case you weren’t aware, the Daryl stands for the clubs owner, Daryl Hall. Last time I was there I saw Robert Earl Keen, who by the way, is doing a ChristI never watched the TV series Brooklyn Bridge, so I never heard of Jenny Lewis when she was an actress. Her band Rilo Kiley rings a bell, but I couldn’t name you a song. I’m sure I’ve seen the Watson Twins once, but I don’t remember a third singer.

The first time I saw her was back in the 1990’s when she stood before the audience, just her and a guitar, doing some great songs from Lucinda Williams and Sweet Old World, but before her breakout album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

But over the summer I heard a song on WFUV that blew my socks off, and as I am older man I can afford pretty decent socks. Red Bull and Hennessy is the third song on her album On the Line, released earlier this year. Every song on that album is unbelievably well written and the music is tremendous (Jim Keltner, Ringo, and Benmont Tench are on the album).

I actually went to that show to see the opening act, Nashville’s Mark Germino, who was great, but also became a Lucinda fan, despite her somewhat surly stage patter. It’s the songs. Just like pitching, you can’t beat good songs. Car Wheels is now 20 years old, and she’ll be celebrating it on September 20 at Port Chester’s Capital Theater, and the next night, September 21, in Princeton at the McCarter Theater, both great places to see shows, if you can get a decent seat.

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To me, it’s a recording that could have come out 40 years ago, and probably 40 years from now. Do yourself a favor and get the album and go see her at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn on October 24th. I’ve already got my ticket....

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September 2019, Page 35

Three gallery shows to check out in NYC this month

ith the high summer temperatures finally subsiding, New York City’s gallery scene is once again starting to heat up. Overwhelmed by the number of shows you could visit? Does even the thought of strolling through Chelsea on a Thursday evening give you significant stress? Look no further! Spanning Brooklyn and Manhattan, these are three fantastic gallery shows to check out in the month of September.

by Piotr Pillardy

with the artist on a different direction. The installation will also feature Davis’s surreal paintings set in an imaginary pastoral landscape the artist refers to as the “Fernweh” with shapeless furry mythical creatures called “Squonks.”

Show: Elisa Lendvay: Rise Gallery: Sargent’s Daughters Duration: Aug. 8 through Sept. 15 Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 pm to 6 pm Address: 179 East Broadway, New York, NY

Show: Smile Sometimes Gallery: Peninsula Art Space Opening: Saturday, Sept. 7, 6 pm to 9 pm Duration: Sept. 7 through Sept. 15 Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 12 pm to 7 pm or by appointment. Address: 352 Van Brunt St., Brooklyn, NY Smile Sometimes is Red Hook’s Peninsula Art Space’s first annual Fall Incubator, showcasing the work of a young, local emerging artist. The first iteration features the work of Tashawn “Whaffle” Davis, a multidisciplinary artist and son of the Red Hook Art Project’s managing director Tiffiney Davis. Davis’s work explores a variety of cultural and socio-political issues in today’s society through the use of humor, pop culture, memes, and surrealism. The artist’s work represents the struggles of the black community, as seen in news articles and social media posts. His colorful, detailed images featuring landscapes and creatures put these issues into a different perspective. For Smile Sometimes, Davis is staging an installation at Peninsula which gallery owner and director Eric Fallen describes as a “cultural diorama.” This installation was inspired by Davis’s early experiences at the Museum of Natural History and lifelong interest in dioramas. Initially, the show was conceived as a traditional painting exhibition but after seeing Davis’s “staged retro moments” on Instagram (@iamwhaffle), Fallen wanted to work

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Show: Meet Me in The Bathroom: The Art Show Gallery: The Hole (x UTA Artist Space) Opening: Wednesday, Sept. 4 6 pm to 9 pm Duration: Sept. 4 through Sept. 22 Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 pm to 7 pm or by appointment. Address: 312 Bowery, New York, NY I am thrilled to see there is going to be an art show inspired by Lizzy Goodman’s fantastic book, Meet Me in the Bathroom, at The Hole gallery. The book chronicles the rock renaissance taking place in New York City between 2001 and 2011. Through oral history in thematically curated chapters, the book features interviews with members of bands such as TV on the Radio, the Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, and Vampire Weekend. This illuminates the nascent stages of these groups and the scenes from which they were birthed. According to the gallery’s press release, the show is positioned as the visual counterpart to the book and will feature artwork created by the musicians, visual artists inspired by their songs, and the artists who were integral to both. The show will consist of over 40 artworks spanning memorabilia, Polaroids, and other media in the form of new and archival works by Rita Ackermann, Doug Aitken, Urs Fischer, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Rob Pruitt, and more. It will also feature artworks by musicians including Fischerspooner, Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes, and Karen O and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There will be special guest performances and programming throughout the duration of the exhibition.

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Elisa Lendvay’s inaugural solo show with Sargent’s Daughters is not one to miss! Lendvay explores dichotomies between permanence/ impermanence by combining ancient forms and modern materials in her 26 new sculptural works. The work Arise (high plane) (shell), 2019, shows these contrasts through a cast concrete skull, steel, copper, aluminum, clay, paper, felt, cotton, shell, bottle caps, acrylic paint, and marble dust. The viewer is taken on a visual journey by way of the concrete skull anchoring interweaving and undulating forms. The intricacy of all the work’s details invites the viewer to continue making unexpected discoveries. The artist takes her time with the works, sometimes spending years iterating pieces until they are complete. Lendvay creates entirely new forms by blending common artistic materials, such as plaster and paint with discarded found materials. The works Centering, 2018, and Wavy Modulation (Ghost Growth), 2018, echo the architecture of the space’s raw concrete floor and pristine white walls. See the show soon before it closes on Sept. 15th! Piotr Pillardy is an arts writer for the Star-Revue. He received a B.A. in History of Art and History from Cornell University, lives in Manhattan, and plays live regularly with the band Bad Weird.

September 2019

11 Shows Set to Take Over Broadway This Fall By Anna Ben Yehuda Rahmanan

Our fall theater guide highlights the muchanticipated Tina Turner musical, yet another adaptation of West Side Story and Marisa Tomei’s return to the Broadway stage.

There is something about the theater in the fall that encompasses the hopefulness that New York is known for: as the days turn shorter and darkness envelopes the city at earlier hours, the twinkling lights of Broadway seem to shine a bit brighter, urging folks seeking indoor comforts to rush in and lose themselves within the stories that come alive across over 40 local stages. This fall, more than 10 new shows will make their debut on Broadway, all productions sure to send ripples across the city’s cultural scene and beyond. Concert experiences feature prominently on the roster: Harry Connick, Jr. will take on the work of artist Cole Porter in a self-conceived and selfdirected production. Talking Heads’ David Byrne, on the other hand, will perform his own solo music and his band’s greatest hits in American Utopia. Arguably the most anticipated musicals of the season will revolve around Tina Turner, whose artistry and life will be the focus of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical; Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, the basis of an eponymous fall production; and West Side Story, a show whose Broadway revival will coincide with a 2020 feature film tackling the same material, this one directed by Steven Spielberg. But, as is almost always the case on Broadway, quieter plays promise to deliver the most. Expect actresses Mary-Louise Parker and Marisa Tomei – set to star, respectively, in The Sound Inside and The Rose Tattoo – to make headlines in their explorations of womanhood and tragic family life. Whether solely in previews or officially opening this fall, these Broadway shows will delight you, excite you, make you cry and giggle with joy all at once – just like the season’s unpredictable weather.

The Sound Inside

Previews: September 14, 2019 Opening night: October 17, 2019 Closing date: January 12, 2020 Actress Mary-Louise Parker returns to the Broadway stage as Bella Baird, a creative writing professor at Yale. The play explores her relationship with

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a challenging student named Christopher Dunn, played by Will Hochman.

The Rose Tattoo

Previews: September 19, 2019 Opening night: October 15, 2019 Closing date: December 8, 2020 Marisa Tomei is Serafina, a widowed seamstress who rediscovers her lust for life after meeting a new lover, in this revival of the famous Tennessee Williams play.

The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical Previews: September 20, 2019 Opening night: October 16, 2019 Closing date: January 5, 2020

A company of seven plays over 45 characters in this musical based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling novel, which tells the tale of Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, and his quest to discover and control his superpowers.

The Inheritance Previews: September 27, 2019 Opening night: November 17, 2019 Tony Award winner Stephen Daldry – the director and producer of Netflix’s The Crown – directs this two-part play loosely based on E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End. In telling the story of three generations of gay men, playwright Matthew Lopez relocates the setting to a 21st century New York.

David Byrne’s American Utopia Previews: October 4, 2019 Opening night: October 20, 2019 Closing date: January 19, 2020

Scottish-American artist David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, teams up with choreographer AnnieB Parson and director Alex Timbers for this theatrical concert experience that will feature tracks off the artist’s eponymous 2018 album, in addition to other hits. Expect a slew of musicians the likes of Karl Mansfield, Angie Swan and Jacquelene Acevedo to join him on stage.

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical Previews: October 12, 2019 Opening night: November 7, 2019

One of the most anticipated shows of the year will chronicle the life of legendary artist Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock. Follow her upbringing in Tennessee, her tumultuous marriage to Ike and her much-discussed stardom. The musical debuted as a West End production back in 2018, starring Adrienne Warren as Turner. The actress will reprise her role in the Broadway production.

Jagged Little Pill

Previews: November 3, 2019 Opening night: December 5, 2019

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The music and lyrics of Grammy Award-winning artist Alanis Morissette get the Broadway treatment in this new musical by Academy Award-winning writer Diablo Cody. Morissette’s eponymous 1995 album, which won five Grammys at the time (including Album of the Year) sets the tone for the story of the Healy family, a seemingly “normal” clan whose issues and woes become apparent as the minutes roll by.

Grand Horizons

Previews: December 20, 2019 Opening night: January 23, 2020 Closing date: March 1, 2020 Following their move to Grand Horizons, husband-and-wife duo Bill and Nancy, married for 50 years, decide to split. The play – starring Thomas Sadoski, Priscilla Lopez and Michael Urie, among others – explores the couple’s adult kids’ reaction to the news, dissecting the fiber of a family slowly coming undone.

West Side Story

Previews: December 10, 2019 Opening night: February 6, 2020 It’s a big year for the 1957 musical, which has been adapted repeatedly both for the big screen and the stage throughout the years. In 2020, Steven Spielberg will direct and co-produce the musical film, based on a screenplay by Tony Kushner and starring Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler. The umpteenth stage adaptation, on the other hand, will star 23 performers making their Broadway debuts in the perennially favorite retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The Sharks and the Jets are back once more.

Harry Connick Jr. – A Celebration of Cole Porter Previews: December, 2019

Triple threat Harry Connick, Jr. takes the Broadway stage in celebration of the life and work of Cole Porter. The concert experience has been conceived and will be directed by Connick, Jr. himself.

My Name is Lucy Barton

Previews: January 6, 2020 Opening night: January 15, 2020 Closing date: March 1, 2020 Technically opening in the winter, this new solo play starring actress par excellence Laura Linney should already be on your radar. The show – adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Elizabeth Strout – sold out during its original run at London’s Bridge Theatre and sees Linney reprising her role as the title character, who wakes up after an operation to find her mother in the room after not seeing her for years.

September 2019, Page 37

Movie review:

‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld’

ag Hammarskjöld was a Secretary General of the United Nations, a Nobel laureate, a staunch anti-imperialist, and, according to a certain Jack Kennedy, “the greatest statesman of our century.” On September 18, 1961, while en route to a small Rhodesian airport, his plane crashed, killing all on board. In his newest film, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Danish documentarian and provocateur Mads Brügger asks whether Hammarskjöld was assassinated, and stumbles upon a far more salacious story than he planned. Over the next two hours, Brügger and his partners in uncovering crime lay out a grand conspiracy, one involving old-timey sailor outfits, murdered biologists, code-named fighter pilots, jungle laboratories, Belgian mining conglomerates, the CIA, and a plot to infect thousands of black South Africans with HIV. At the heart of the mystery sits a paramilitary organization called the South African Institute of Maritime Research (SAIMR), and its enigmatic leader, Keith Maxwell. Secret societies being what they are, the bulk of Brügger’s findings fall more under the umbrella of well-researched conjecture than proven fact. Working initially with only a small trove of official documents unearthed by Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation committee, Brügger spends much of the first act of the film tracing false leads, dead ends, and uncooperative witnesses. What’s more, the conspiracy’s sprawl demands total competence from every agent in its malevolent sprawl. And yet Brügger takes great pain to expose SAIMR and its associates as naught more than thuggish bunglers; stupid, violent men incapable of subtlety or cunning. Says one espionage expert of SAIMR’s growing paper trail, “This is not professional.” Even Brügger’s key witness, a mercenary who claims to have personally known Maxwell and his genocidal schemes, offers no documentation of his time in SAIMR, and instead invites the audience and the UN to take him at his word. However, even if Brügger struggles to definitively connect SAIMR and Maxwell’s to specific crimes, Cold Case Hammarskjöld creates an effec-

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by Caleb Drickey

tive portrait of an underexamined moment in history. Brügger and his team interview European mercenaries, American spies, and South African generals. They all casually describe participating in military coups, assassinations, foreign invasions, and fraudulent healthcare schemes, some with the support of the British and American governments, and all with the explicit goal of protecting Western commercial interests, Apartheid, and other whitesupremacist structures. Contemporary Americans and Europeans often pretend that the legacy of colonialism long since died, but Brügger and his team dismiss such sentiments as bunkum. Brügger’s most telling interrogation is therefore not of any evil old men, but of himself, his own work, and his audience. In entitling the film Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Brügger frames it as a work of True Crime, and therefore commercial entertainment, not journalism. About halfway through the film, Brügger confesses that he holds no great affection for Hammarskjöld or his anti-colonial mission. He dedicated six years of investigation to Hammarskjöld and SAIMR because exposing Belgian mercenaries is fun. Humiliating incompetent schemers is fun. Dressing up in pith helmets and the all-white regalia of a genocidal militia is (to Brügger, anyway) fun. The documentary team could have assembled his research into a dry newspaper report (and indeed they did – Brügger contributed to an investigation of Keith Maxwell and SAIMR that ran in the Guardian), but reading the Guardian is by no means fun (thanks for supporting local journalism!). So Brügger made a movie, one that foregrounds his creative process, his personality, and his frustrations. When he films himself dictating his shooting script to a pair of African secretaries or passing shovels to day laborers so that he can attend to his own minor blisters, he lays bare the exploitative ickiness inherent to the genre. In co-opting a titillating story of murder, state-sponsored terrorism, and personal misery to build his own profile as an important truth-teller, Brügger anoints himself as a spiritual heir to Truman Capote and Sarah Koenig. At least he has the decency to wink.

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Cold Case Hammarskjöld is currently playing at the IFC Center, and is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, Youtube, Google Play, and Vudu.

3/4 Stars

“They all casually describe participating in military coups, assassinations, foreign invasions, and fraudulent healthcare schemes, some with the support of the British and American governments, and all with the explicit goal of protecting Western commercial interests, Apartheid, and other white-supremacist structures.”

September 2019

Fall Television Preview: Are TV Reboots Here to Save Us From a Dystopian Future Both On and Off the Screen? by Anna Ben Yehuda Rahmanan

t is said that art imitates life, and if TV trends of the past few seasons are of any indication, more accurate words have never been uttered.

As political views drench into cultural spheres, rendering the world around us an overcrowded bundle of arguments and screaming matches that involve much more than politics; as “feel good journalism” becomes a relic of a time now gone; as discussions about the positivity brought along by the Internet turn into rallying cries against the bullying catalyzed by an interconnected (read: overconnected) world, television executives have chosen to use similar fodder to fuel their lineups. As a result, TV no longer functions as an escape tool, instead becoming a mirror of the chaos and negativity that defines our daily existence. Dystopianism is now our reality and our television diet. We used to champion Seinfeld, Friends and The Big Bang Theory as bastions of TV glory but, today, we have Succession (a great but undoubtedly sad portrayal of family relations), Euphoria (downright depressing), American Horror Story (downright scary) and True Detective (downright dark, literally). Historically, TV served a mightier purpose than pure entertainment: it shaped society for the better, providing a glimpse into a world that could be if we only dared be as cheerful as The Nanny’s Fran Fine, as adaptable to change as the folks on The Brady Bunch and as brave as Xena, the warrior princess, and Ally McBeal. But has all of that changed? In 10, 30, 50, 100 years: will critics of the future consider 2019 the year that TV finally became too sad? Will they mourn the television that once was? What will be said about us binge watchers? A mere glimpse at upcoming award shows nominees paints a picture: we are drawn to twisted, dramatic, sorrowful and outright gloomy productions. The likes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Chernobyl, Sharp Objects and Ozark—all Emmy-nominated shows—portray a world so dark that watching a single episode requires a mental preparation akin to Olympic practices. We have to equip ourselves to

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be sad, embrace a melancholically desolate mindset, before we even start watching. Add to that mix data about TV viewers’ habits and you’ve got yourself a virtual manifest for whatever the opposite of feel-good-television is. According to Variety’s compilation of 100 most watched shows of the 2018-2019 seasons, Game of Thrones ruled the TV universe—a remarkable feat on its own, given that the HBO show was only available to the 3540% of the country that subscribed to the network at the time. Certainly a masterpiece of creativity and technicality, Game of Thrones’ essence involved deadly power battles, anger, revenge and self-imposed deifications, appealing to an audience hungry for clashes whose final goals (who should sit on the iron throne?) resembled America’s current battles (who should be president?). Not to mention a finale that saw a mad ruler attempt to fight off her own madness but ultimately fell prey to it, killing innocents all along her downward spiral. Now that’s art imitating life, indeed.

Some are still hopeful

Of course, not all TV shows showcase an inevitably doomed future. The success, both critical and audience-driven, of productions like This is Us, Young Sheldon, Modern Family, GLOW, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and even New Amsterdam prove that there is still a pretty chunky slice of the viewership pie that appreciates a more hopeful message—and, perhaps, this upcoming fall season will finally tick the scale back to the kind of shows that won’t solely have us despair. A notion not that far-fetched considering the roster of new productions set to debut on our small screens in the upcoming months. Amazon’s Modern Love, for starters, puts the idea of romance front and center. Based on the eponymous, uber-popular New York Times column, it features an all-star cast (Anne Hathaway! Dev Patel! Tina Fey! Andy Garcia!) that all but shouts about hopefulness. Mixed-ish, the upcoming ABC spinoff of the successful Black-ish, will function as the latter’s prequel and, although focusing on the mixed-race experience in America in the 1980s, it

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is sure to be a more light-hearted exploration of the subject than, say, Westworld. Then there’s Perfect Harmony, starring Bradley Whitford as a former music professor in a musical comedy that might not enjoy the critical success that Ryan Murphy’s Glee did back in 2009-2015, but is sure to tug at heartstrings over tear ducts. That is to say: not all is doomed and, maybe (hopefully), we’re just around the corner from the rediscovery and collective return to a more optimistic TV experience. One more trend that bubbled at the beginning of last year is set to solidify itself in the 2019 fall season (and, hopefully, beyond): the TV reboot. If 2017 and 2018 were the years of the dystopian drama, 2019 will be the year of revivals: from Will and Grace to The Hills, Roseanne (now The Conners), Fuller House and, most recently, Beverly Hills 90210, if there is any indication of America’s craving for a return to the past, these freshly re-launched TV shows are it. Viewers are likely asking for more than familiar storylines: they’re begging for the nostalgic happiness brought along by the return of Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, The Office, Bewitched and Murphy Brown (all already aired or announced)— we’re asking for the world to be shaped by triedand-true productions that did a good job at making us feel just a tiny bit better than we do today. We are asking for life to imitate art. Which all begs the question: will reboots be our ultimate saviors and protectors against a dystopianfueled existence? Are we going to witness a return to the TV of yore? Will fall, always the source of fresh beginnings, mark a new phase of our relationship with the medium? Will I be able to settle down on my couch and dive into a show that promises me—albeit temporarily, maybe falsely— that eventually it will all be okay?

September 2019, Page 39

THEATER: Mac Wellman’s wilderness of thorns and mirrors

“I

came here to raise badass, obstreperous, antisocial, pestiferous, brutalitarian, loudmouthed and chaotic bloody hell. The roaring kind!” In playwright Mac Wellman’s Sincerity Forever, a celestial visitor to a hamlet of reverent, well-meaning hillbillies announces her presence by the declaration above, but it might also serve as the motto of the artist himself. Wellman – a major figure in New York’s downtown theater scene, a CUNY Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College, and the recipient of the Village Voice’s 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement – co-founded the Flea Theater in Lower Manhattan in 1996, and this fall, a festival of five of his plays, written between 1989 and 2005, will take place on his home turf.

The Flea’s Perfect Catastrophes, which started August 24, offers new interpretations of Wellman’s puckish, peculiar work, some of it previously unproduced. Two one-hour comedies, Sincerity Forever and Bad Penny, which theatergoers can watch in a single evening with a break in between, have already begun their run; The Invention of Tragedy will join them in repertory on September 7. In 2017, the Flea, known for its experimental fare, moved into a new stateof-the-art facility in pricy Tribeca, which it owns, but its young actors still sometimes serve double-duty as ushers or box office attendants. In Bad Penny, a man self-identifies as “a freelance memory fabulist and metaphysician and card player.” Again, the character could be speaking for the whimsical but cagey author: Wellman’s not a normal playwright. Over the years, he has pioneered a dramaturgy that rejects characterization based on rational psychology, which, on Broadway, tends to frame the world and its inhabitants within neat, satisfying, and even normalizing theatrical explications. A political malcontent and proud crank, Wellman finds his rebellion in a refusal to naturalize the madness of modern life, which his work channels with ironic good cheer into surprisingly entertaining heaps of eloquent gibberish. With fractured stereotypes and brain-melted refugees from TV commercials and soap operas populating his plays, Wellman takes the focus off the ever-dignified individual and finds a dramatic form for the brokenness of our culture. His plays can be difficult to read, but on stage they’re vibrant small-scale spectacles. Performed in a 46-seat basement, the smallest of the Flea’s three spaces,

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by Brett Yates

Sincerity Forever takes the shape of a teen drama, set in southern Appalachia, where curious, tenderhearted high-schoolers fall in love, quarrel with their friends, and ponder the meaning of life. And they do it all while wearing Klansman robes. Their hometown – Hillsbottom, USA – is a place where no one knows anything about geography, government, economics, or any other subject, and that’s the way residents like it. In the absence of facts, they have faith and innocence and sincerity. They may not know why they believe what they believe, but they make up for it by believing it all the more wholeheartedly – until, that is, an invasion of alien “furballs,” in the style of pissedoff crust punks, poisons them with self-doubt, confusion, and rage. Something in me reflexively bristles when I encounter a Southern accent on a New York stage. I can feel the condescension in the room. The meta-rednecks of Hillsbottom aren’t supposed to represent “real” rednecks, but their beloved Christian Lord and Savior – who, embodied as a black woman, employs a diction that, purposely or not, contains an unmistakable echo of minstrelsy – does show up to condemn their antiSemitism and homophobia. But thanks to Wellman’s sharp sense of absurdity and prodigious gift for language, this material doesn’t register primarily as a liberal New Yorker’s harangue. His characters, parodies of themselves, speak their pious stupidity with Shakespearean flourish and originality – and then fall face-first into dunderheaded banality and cliché. The mixture is hilarious and exhilarating. Their philosophies may be awful, but their philosophizing certainly leaves an impression. When the weather holds up, the Flea stages Bad Penny, the second play of the night, in the building’s AstroTurf backyard. Wellman originally wrote it as a site-specific piece for Central Park. Playgoers can sit wherever they’d like, choosing among lawn chairs, a bench, a picnic table, and a yoga mat. The actors insinuate themselves into the outdoor hangout casually and then work around the audience. The players – comprised, as in Sincerity Forever, of the Flea’s energetic resident ensemble, the Bats – adjust seamlessly to the placement of the crowd. On a perfect-weather Sunday, I didn’t realize that the woman next to me was a performer until midway through the show, when she started chanting satanic incantations. Bad Penny tells the story of a motorist from Montana who gets a flat tire on the Upper East Side and tries to cross the park on foot to find a gas

station. He meets a strange young woman who has picked up an unlucky penny and now expects a visit from the Boatman of Bow Bridge, a legendary troll that menaces Central Park. The man doesn’t believe in trolls. Various other parkgoers insert themselves into the man and woman’s debate. “People come to the lunacy of places like parks to escape the even more terrible lunacy of their lives in the city, lives lived without love in many cases, lives of terrible, meaningless work, lives of torment, addictions to strange and disgusting substances, lives devoted to insane passions, obscenity piled upon obscenity, lives rendered unendurable by long incurable wasting diseases,” Wellman writes. His cast of eccentrics, put-upon everymen, and wised-up toughs tries to believe in logic, progress, consumerism, and the goodness of the universe in order to keep all this horror at bay, but none of it works. The Boatman is coming. Though a considerable poet, Wellman isn’t too precious with his words. His goal is to create an effect

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upon the audience – a sensation of excitement, not necessarily of comprehension – and his characters often talk on top of one another, rendering half their speech unintelligible. Clearer moments might make use of a phrase from an advertising jingle or a sublime formulation of Wellman’s own. Bad Penny is fantasy and artifice, but it authentically captures some of the noisy, irritating vitality of public spaces. Mac Wellman is now 74 years old. The plays of Perfect Catastrophes provide a summation of an admirable career of mischief, obliqueness, fury, and merriment. Since their initial publication, some of Wellman’s proteges, like Young Jean Lee and Annie Baker, have come into their own as significant theater artists, but even more of his enemies – the earnest authors of stale, realistic drama – have prospered. Concluding with The Sandalwood Box and The Fez, the festival ends November 1. Purchased in advance at theflea. org, tickets can cost as little as $15, and last-minute student rushes go for $10 in person at 20 Thomas Street

September 2019

‘Loro’: an iconic portrayal of Silvio Berlusconi anchors a reckoning with Italian (and American) culture

rson Welles once described Harry Lime, his character in The Third Man (1949), as the greatest star part ever written. “It’s where they talk about you for an hour and then you appear,” he explained to friend and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. It took 70 years, but Welles’s Lime has a challenge for star-part supremacy in Toni Servillo’s Silvio Berlusconi–the center of gravity, both sun and black hole, of Paolo Sorrentino’s (The Great Beauty, The Young Pope) new film, Loro, an outrageously sordid and frustratingly uneven dramatization of an Italy in thrall of a megalomaniacal billionaire hedonist. Opening September 20, the 145-minute film was stitched together from a two-part, three-plus-hour experience released in 2018. Too often, the theatrical Loro feels rushed or slapdash. Characters, plot points, and motivations are introduced, only to disappear for long stretches before popping up again at their conclusion (if they reappear at all). A blackmail scheme is loaded with portent, then vanishes. Stella (Alice Pagani), a young woman meant to represent a kind of virtue in a depraved world, has a flatness that feels attributable to some key scenes going missing. What binds it all, though, is Servillo’s Berlusconi. That might seem obvious in a fact-based Felliniesque fantasy about Berlusconi. But Sorrentino audaciously withholds the introduction of his antagonist for nearly a third of the film. Set between 2006 and 2010, between Berlusconi’s two stints as Prime Minister, Loro is both a ruthless critique of Italy’s trashy pop culture and trashier culture of political debasement and a surprisingly humane attempt to understand who – and what – Berlusconi is. But for the first 40 minutes, the media-mogul-turned-politician exists more as a myth that could evaporate if you even say his name. We see his beaming visage tattooed on the small of a working girl’s back (an incredible sight gag). We watch – along with a gasping, starstruck platoon of women in little black dresses hobbling down Rome’s streets in stilettos – as his motorcade zips by. But “Silvio” or “Berlusconi” is rarely, if ever, uttered. Instead, it’s always lui (him). More precisely, lui lui. It’s said with such awe that the word might as well be a proper noun, like God. When Lui finally appears, it’s as a small, veiled figure in a lawn chair watching the smoldering embers of a raging, MDMA-fueled orgy of sex and debauchery happening at the villa next door to his Sardinian estate. Even then, we only assume it’s

Star-Revue Section 2

by Dante A. Ciampaglia

him: this rotund figure is in full Indian concubine costume. There’s a menacing quality as this person walks purposefully into the house, looks around deliberately, then makes their way to the sleeping Veronica (Elena Sofia Ricci), the current Mrs. Berlusconi. When the veil is removed, and we’re greeted with Silvio’s deep-creased rubbery face, makeup caked on makeup caked on a too-bronze tan, wearing a wide-grinned expression of childlike elation, the carnival lights turn on and – and Silvio, that master barker, has us. Despite what we know about the real-life Berlusconi – his degenerate sex parties, his venal politics, his iron-fisted control of Italian media – it’s impossible to hate Servillo’s interpretation. This Silvio is charismatic and charming and kind of fun, like a big kid with sociopathic tendencies. Or a Venus fly trap. In a moment both troubling and bizarre near the end of the film, a young woman wakes up in a bed to find a shoeless Berlusconi watching her, that rubber grin plastered on his face as he holds a pencil in one hand and a crude joke sharpener in the other. Despite all the setup implies, a laugh is inevitable. Then, in perhaps Loro’s best scene, he essentially prank calls a woman selected randomly from a phone book to sell her a nonexistent apartment as a means to test his dormant salesmanship skills. When speaking with the woman, he presents the illusions of intimacy and conspiracy to win her trust and make the non-sale. It’s like watching a psychic work a mark; everything he says is so broad but sounds so specific that it takes the woman aback. How does he know so much about her life, she asks. Servillo waits a beat, takes a breath, and with a twinkle in his eye and worldliness in his voice, says, “I know the script of life.” Berlusconi’s abuse of this woman’s time and trust is undeniably cruel. But listening to his pitch and watching his enthusiasm at selling this woman his dream as her own, you’re ready to give him all your money, too. This Berlusconi – like the real person – is a narcissistic cartoon, but a self-aware one that Sorrentino and Servillo never allow to become a caricature. Rather, and perversely, he’s the only figure that makes any kind of sense in the upsidedown world the director drops us into. When we meet Berlusconi, he’s in exile, ousted from government after a raft of corruption charges and allegations of criminal behavior. He desperately wants back in, and is willing to break the government to make it happen. His machinations oscillate between Machiavelli (luring gullible senators to his cause) and Looney Tunes (offering to fire off the vol-

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cano he has on his property), but you get the urge. What’s incomprehensible is the lengths others will go to just to be in Berlusconi’s orbit. In the first 40 minutes of Loro, which feels like a setup for a different movie entirely, low-class vulgarian Sergio Morra (Riccardo Scamarcio) dreams of amassing power and influence (and tons of coke), and he cooks up a scheme to get close to Berlusconi by appealing to the leader’s Bunga Bunga, neoCaligula appetites. With the help of Kira (Kasia Smutniak), a gorgeous statuesque woman of class with a direct line to Lui, Morra assembles a coterie of beautiful women, troops them out to a villa in Sardinia and, to get Silvio’s attention, proceeds to have that drug-fueled pool party Berlusconi watches from his yard. For Sergio, this gambit is meant to get him close enough to Berlusconi to realize some cockeyed goal of becoming a member of the European Union parliament. For Kira, it’s her way of showing this 70-something-year-old man that she, a 30-something woman, is still useful in a world of lithe 20-year-olds offering themselves to him. (He keeps getting older…) The women see Berlusconi as a ticket to celebrity and fame as TV stars and models. What they all learn – too late – is that Berlusconi offers no hope or redemption. It’s a point Loro makes explicit by opening with a sheep wandering into Silvio’s home, standing entranced before a TV playing a dumb Berlusconi-produced game show, and then being slowly frozen to death by a malicious wall-mounted air conditioner. (It even has a nefarious red eye, à la HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) The biblical implication returns at the end of the film, when a crew slowly lifts a pietà Jesus statue out of a crumbled church in the ruins of earthquake-ravaged L’aquila. Resurrection is possible, just not for those who make deals with devils. This is particularly resonant now, in America, as a Berlusconi-like made-for-TV clown wearing too much makeup alters the landscape of democracy for self-serving, self-enriching ends. There are moments where the similarity between Silvio and Donald is undeniable, like when Berlusconi convinces his grandson he didn’t just step in poop even though the boy watched him do it, telling him, “The only thing that matters is you believed me.” But the message is less one of equivalencies than of caution – about the stability or instability of institutions and humans, and the havoc assumptions about both can cause. We all underestimate a rubber-faced buffoon, who commands money and power and supplicants, at our own peril – and their profit.

September 2019, Page 41

MUSIC SEPTEMBER West Village Mezzrow, 163 W. 10th St.

9/2 Rale Micic & Steve LaSpina, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 9/3 Geoffrey Keezer & Joe Locke, Vocalist Vanisha Gould; 9/4 Geoffrey Keezer & Ben Williams; 9/5 Geoffrey Keezer & Gillian Margot, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 9/6 Joan Belgrave, Sullivan Fortner & Santi Debriano, Pianist Ben Zweig; 9/7 Joan Belgrave, Sullivan Fortner & Santi Debriano, Pianist Anthony Wonsey; 9/8 Will Sellenraad, Rene Hart & Eric McPherson; 9/9 Bennett Paster, Ed Howard & Joe Strasser, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 9/10 Michelle Lordi, Donny McCaslin, Orrin Evans & Matthew Parrish, Vocalist Naama Gheber; 9/11 Tyler Blanton, Drew Gress & Johnathan Blake, Pianist Tadataka Unno; 9/12 David Liebman & Richie Beirach, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 9/13 Rick Germanson & Gerald Cannon, Drummer Dan Aran; 9/14 Rick Germanson & Gerald Cannon; 9/15 Yaala Ballin, Pasquale Grasso, Ari Roland & Keith Balla; 9/16 JonErik Kellso, Rossano Sportiello & Tal Ronen, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 9/17 Emilio Solla, Chris Cheek & Julien Labro; 9/18 Shawn McGloin; 9/19 Daryl Sherman, James Chirillo & Boots Maleson, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 9/20 Ken Peplowski, Rossano Sportiello & Kevin

lio Alves & Chico Pinheiro, Spike Wilner & Pasquale Grasso; 9/27 David Bryant & Chris Tordini, Pianist Steve Ash; 9/28 David Bryant & Thomas Morgan, Pianist Jon Davis; 9/29 Greg Skaff, Matt Dwonzsyk & Rodney Green; 9/30 Yuval Amihai, Endea Owens & Jason Brown, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso Smalls Jazz Club, 138 W 10th St.

9/1 Richie Vitale Quintet, JC Stylles Quintet, David Gibson; 9/2 Ference Nemeth Trio, Rodney Green, After Hours Jam Session; 9/3 Justin Robinson Quartet, Abraham Burton Quartet, After Hours Jam Session; 9/4 Pablo Menares Quartet, Matt Chertkoff Quintet, Charles Blenzig; 9/5 David Gilmore Quintet, Michael Blake Trio, Mimi Jones and the Lab Session; 9/6 Roxy Coss Quintet, Alex Siplagin Quintet, Wallace Roney Jr,; 9/7 Roxy Voss Quintet, Alex Slpagin Quintet, Brooklyn Circle; 9/8 Alex Hoffman Quintet, Bruce Harris Quintet, David Gibson; 9/9 Ari Hoenig Trio, Joe Farnsworth Quartet; 9/10 Steve Nelson Quartet, Frank Lacy Band; 9/11 Ben Winkelman Trio, Flavio Silva Quartet, Jusius Rodriguez Trio; 9/12 Pureum Jin Quartet, Scott Neumann and Tom Christensen, Malick Koly; 9/13 Rachel Z. Hakim, John Fedchock, Corey Wallace; 9/14 Rachel Z Hakim, John Fedchock, Eric Wyatt; 9/15 Ray Gallon Quartet, Nick Hempton

gelo Trio, Joe Farnsworth Quartet; 9/24 Steve Nelson Quartet, Abraham Burton Quartet; 9/25 Rafal Sarnecki Sextet, Mike Karn Quartet, Taber Gable; 9/26 Tim Hegarty Band, Valery Ponomarev Quintet, Malick Koly; 9/27 John Chin Trio, Alex Norris Quintet, Corey Wallace DUBtet; 9/28 John Chin Trio, Alex Norris Quintet, Phillip Harper Quintet; 9/29 Lucine Yegiazaryan Quartet, Charles Ruggiero Quartet; 9/30 Ulysses Owens Jr., Joel Frahm Trio

Park Slope Union Hall, 702 Union St.

9/3 Stellar Underground; 9/4 Decolonize Your Mind; 9/6 Whiplash, Karaoke Tremendous; 9/7 DJ Party; 9/8 My Hometown; 9/9 Ellen is the Only Ally; 9/10 The Lesbian Agenda; 9/11 Hampton Yount And Friends; 9/13 Max Wittert, Karaoke Tremendous; 9/14 DJ Party; 9/19 Mawaan Rizwan; 9/20 Actors; Rebirth, 90’s Pop Sing-Along, Karaoke Tremendous; 9/21 Pop Show, DJ Party; 9/23 Pass The Aux; 9/24 Stevie; 9/25 Ladies Who Ranch; 9/27 The Occasionalists, Karaoke Tremendous; 9/28 DJ Party Freddy’s Bar, 625 5th Ave

9/3 SlamJunk Tuesday; 9/4 The Push And Pull; 9/5 Cashank Hootenanny; 9/6 Matthew Loenard, Kajun Hootenanny With Danny; 9/7 Alejandro Meola, Elan Noon, Coachkiller; 9/8 Sarah Mucho; 9/10 SlamJunk Tuesday; 9/12 Home Brew Opera; 9/13 Fridays At Freddy’s, The Ziggernauts, Eephus Band, Funk-N-Soul Dance Party with Fred Thomas; 9/15 Open Mic, Aaron Irwin Sextet; 9/17 SlamJunk Tuesday; 9/18 Humans Against Music Karaoke; 9/20 Clam Pals, Luke Callen and Wolf Van Elfmand; 9/21 Autumaura, Trusty Side Kicl, Tyler And The Names, Tom Leach; 9/24 SlamJunk Tuesday; 9/27 Touque, Fred Thomas Funk-N-Soul Dance Party Barbes, 376 9th St.

Manhattan native Rob Stoner graduated from New York City’s Columbia College in 1969. His rockabilly band, Rockin’ Rob and the Rebels, became headliners on the national nightclub circuit and appeared on television. In 1975, Bob Dylan hired Rob as his bandleader and opening act for the Rolling Thunder Revue. His compositions have been recorded by Link Wray, Johnny Winter, Shirley Bassey, Robert Gordon, and others. Rob has co-written three off-off-Broadway musicals, all of which were staged and produced in New York City. He now lives in Rockland County, NY, where he remains active on the music scene. He will be appearing in Ridgewood at Trans Pecos on Saturday, September 14.

Dorn, Pianist Marc Devine; 9/21 Ken Peplowski, Rossano Sportiello & Kevin Dorn, Pianist Anthony Wonsey; 9/22 Sherrie Maricle, Jackie Warren & Amy Shook; 9/23 Angela Roberts Trio, Guitarist Pasquale Grasso; 9/24 Lauren Kinhan, Vocalist Vanessa Perea; 9/25 Evan Christopher & David Torkanowsky, Pianist Tuomo Uusitalo; 9/26 He-

Quintet; 9/16 Ari Hoenig Trio, Jon Davis Trio; 9/17 Theo Hill Quartet, JD Allen Quartet; 9/18 David Smith Quintet, Harold Mabren Trio, Charles Blenzig; 9/19 Helen Sung, Willy Rodriguez Quintet; 9/20 Brian Charette Quartet, Mimi Jones and the Lab Session; 9/21 Brian Charette Quartet, Brooklyn Circle; 9/22 Claire Daly Quartet, David Gibson Quintet; 9/23 Andrew DiAn-

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9/2 Brain Cloud, Tropical Vortex; 9/3 Slavic Soul Party; 9/4 The Mandingo Ambassadors; 9/6 The Crooked Trio; 9/7 Midnight DJ Set; 9/8 Stephane Wrembel; 9/9 Brain Cloud, Tropical Vortex; 9/10 Slavic Soul Party; 9/11 The Mandingo Ambassadors; 9/12 Kotoko Brass; TO BE CONTINUED

East Village Drom, 85 Avenue A

9/3 Silver Arrow Band; 9/4 SoulGood; 9/5 Sound Judgement; 9/6 Carlton J. Smith, Carlton Jumel Smith; 9/7 Hustlers Paradise, Rico Suave vs. D’marquesina; 9/10 Tam from Moscow; 9/11 Amanda Monaco; 9/12 EL Playlist; 9/13 Tasselmania 4; 9/14 Pepito Gomez Sextet Buena Vista; 9/17 Silver Arrow Band; 9/18 Ani Cordero Album Release Event; 9/19 The Workshop; 9/20 A Tribute to the Music of Queen; 9/21 The Primrose Drive; 9/24 Tibor Kiss & Gabor Vastag; 9/25 Genco Erkal; 9/27 Timbalive En Concierto Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St.

9/4 Joey Pecoraro; 9/5 The Love Gang Forever Tour: Cold Hart &

Horse Head; 9/6 Gouranga Live; 9/7 Guerilla Toss; 9/8 Benny Sings; 9/9 Dominic Fike; 9/10 Fontaines D.C.; 9/11-12 Marc Rebillet; 9/13 Boy & Bear; 9/14 Ezra Furman; 9/15 The Sons & Heirs, All Cats Are Grey, Dead Letter Office; 9/16 Ashe: Mom’s First Headline Tour; 9/17 Tanya Tucker; 9/18 Boy Harsher; 9/19 Tove Lo – Sunshine Kitty; 9/20 Lauren Alaina; 9/21 Brent Cobb & Tem; 9/23 Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes; 9/24 Penny & Sparrow; 9/26-28 Billy Bragg; 9/29 Methyl Ethel; 9/30 Enter Shikari

Ambar Lucid; 9/25 Lime Cordiale, Lowest of the Low, Smooth Hound Smith; 9/26 Karl Blau, Love Fame Tragedy; 9/27 Band-Maid, Ezra Bell; 9/28 Mates of State, Stoop Kids, The Danbees, Between Giants; 9/29 Janita, John Snow’s Coast to Coast; 9/30 Up and Orance, Laura Dance

Beck, Swimming Bell; 9/24 Words n Guitars, Golden Shoulders, Kate Prascher, Alexandra James; 9/25 Merkins Merkin; 9/26 Ghost Town, Elora Lin; 9/27 Folk Songs in the Round, Rue Snider, Masino; 9/28 Deadseedm Brooklyn’s Echo, Koubeh, Andrew Vladeck; 9/29 Hayley Harrington, Lindsay Clark, Timothy Cleary, Evan Alexander

Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery

9/2 Cloud District; 9/3 Emma Jayne & Friends, DJ Seductive Hippo; 9/4 Emily Blue, Natalia Ice, Rio Tigre, Allegra Bloom, Nicholas Single; 9/5 Kyle Lawson Band, Zoe Briskey, Natalie Asport, Juletta, Henson Popa, Ryan Peete; 9/6 Jaxon, Greg Duffy, Corey Hommell; 9/7 The Vibrators, The Nuclears, The Carvels NYC, Ray DaFrico, Space Junk Is Forever, Boogieman, Lolo Shang, Luv; 9/8 Mokra; 9/10 Top Vibe Tuesdays with DJ Seductive Hippo; 9/11 Richie Ramone; 9/12 Nu 90’s Tour Experience: C.L. Smooth, DJ Evil Dee; 9/13 Bill Lloyd, Lannie Flowers, Danny Wilkerson, Slyboots; 9/14 Exact Change Project, Pan Arcadia, The Jaded Babies, Jillian Rossi; 9/15 Rojobarcelo, Shablam; 9/16 Notes From Underground; 9/18 Speed The Plough, Benchmarker, Citizensane; 9/19 Denzil Porter, Johnny Popcorn, Meridian Lights; 9/21 K. Sparks, Paul Rivers Bailey, Moziah, Paytra; 9/22 Mergerfest; 9/23 Joey Wit & The Definition, Porch 40; 9/24 Over Under, The Sweet High, Christina Hart, Tami Jones; 9/25 David Bryan & Friends, Aaron Ginns, Cordoba, Real Clothes, Moon Revenge, Naked Hugs; 9/26 Soft Streak, Couch Prints, Loren Beri, Annie DiRusso, The Undead, The Down Strokes, Soraiam Eck’s Men, The Lousekateers; 9/27 The Inoculated Canaries, the Holy Wow, Samonik; 9/28 Heavenly Faded, Toshio, Psychotica; 9/29 The Pork Dukes, The Mystic Underground, ADORNS, Songs For Sabotage

Williamsburg

Mercury Lounge, 217 E Houston

Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St.

9/2 Ellis Dyson & The Shambles, Carl’s Band, Uncle Skunk; 9/3 Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Musta Ace, Marco Polo, Rah Digga; 9/4 keshi, Mustardmind “Modern Evil”; 9/5 The Good Few, American Fever, Sense; 9/6 Megan & Liz, CRX; 9/7 TEKLIFT, DJ Spinn, TRAXMAN, DJ Manny, Tripletrain; 9/8 Youth in a Roman Field, Two Degrees, Claragh; 9/9 Moha, Simon Kouka, Maneka, Grivo; 9/10 Gianni & Kyle “Say it Back”; 9/11 Julian Lmadrid, Stanley, Little Church; 9/12 The National Parks, WILD, El Vez; 9/13 Finish Ticket, Marvel Years, Defunk; 9/14 Christian French; 9/15 Floam, Julia Anrather, Cloudchord, Moontricks; 9/16 Sam Behr, AOFine, Minted, Kid Le Chat, Aicha; 9/17 Briston Maroney, The Cowmen, Jounce; 9/18 Becca Mancari, Joseph King & The Mad Crush, iEzra “Digital Downpour”; 9/19 Rose of the West, ilovemakonnen; 9/20 Maggie Koerner, Dude York; 9/21 Ken Stringfellow, Kitchen Dwellers; 9/22 Side Saddle “Waltermelon”, The Weeks; 9/23 Imaginary Tricks, Soften, Tetchy’ 9/24 Robbie Fulks,

9/2 Girl + Gang Live; 9/3 Freres Lapierre, Tim Kuhl; 9/4 Christine Chanel, The Year of the Hare; 9/5 Wildlife Freeway, M Shanghai, Damsel, Adam Bellaro; 9/6 Rebecca Turner, Maynard and the Musties, Stephen Artemis Jr.; 9/7 Broken Flight, Playshoes, Cathy; 9/8 Bryce Schramm, Visit, Adam Lakes Band; 9/9 Todd Caldwell, Austin Miller, Olivia Reid, Jack Schneider; 9/10 Zie Guigueno, Youbet, Rivky, Joshua Wood & Clover; 9/11 Rembert Block And The Basic Kindness; 9/12 Adam Finchler, Nora Roy, Villins; 9/13 Chelsey Meyer and the Attic, Garden, Clover; 9/14 Are Skwaird, Emily Frembgen, Everything Must Go; 9/15 Camille Thorton, Amelia Murray, Katie Glasgow; 9/16 Rikki Will, Annique Monet, Lady J, Crystal Rose; 9/17 Dougie Poole Country, Becky Krill, Robert Gaylka, Jack Simmons; 9/18 Arlo Hannigan; 9/19 Wolf Van Elfmund, Michael Hollis, The Gemini Singers; 9/20 Sham Sundra, The Letter Yellow; 9/21 Huvudbry, Emma Bowers; 9/22 Lisa Bastoni; 9/23 Gawin and the Green Knight, Jason Myles Goss, W.C.

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The Eephus Band started by playing deep cuts and obscure B-sides of early 20th century country-western music. Then Peter started writing songs. As a New Yorker, he quickly figured out that it would be tough to write songs about cowboy boots and pickup trucks. So he started to write songs about what’s happening in the world right now. Songs about money, political frat boys, our slip-slide towards a police state... Oh, and a few love songs. The Eephus Band is: Jonny Leal (lead guitar), Shelly Leal (vocals and percussion), Jim Kuras (Bass), Timur Yusef (drums) and Peter Levinson (guitar, vocal, and songwriting). They are appearing at Freddy’s Bar, 625 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope on Friday, September 13

Moore; 9/30 Alwyn Robinson Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe St.

9/1 Rumors: A Fleetwood Mac Tribute Show; 9/6-9/7 Blackberry Smoke; 9/8 Reggae For Kids, The Green; 9/9 Jules & The Jinks; 9/11 Yacht Rock Revue; 9/12 Amy Winehouse Tribute, Remember Jones, A 12 Piece Orchestra, Wax Tailor; 9/14 Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds, Sparkly City Disco; 9/15 The Music of Bruce Springsteen; 9/16 Funk You; 9/18 Karina Rykman; 9/19 The Machine performs Pink Floyd; 9/20 Black Pumas, OG Garage A Trois; 9/21 OG Garage A Trois; 9/22 Black Moth Super Rainbow; 9/23 Flux Capacitor; 9/24 Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge; 9/26 Strand of Oaks; 9/28 Jimmy Herring and the 5 of 7, Just Ladies Kni�ng Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave

9/1 CalenRaps; 9/3 Fat Boy SSE, Bobbynice, lilboostmobile, Stevie B; 9/4 Finesse Records Tour; 9/5 Smilen, The Main Squeeze, Petit Celine, Amira B; 9/6 Emma Frank, Levels N Stuff; 9/7 Kaleta & Super Yamba, Black Parade; 9/8 Radiate, Moonfall, Bedlam Barrio, In Loving Memory, Emensia, Oblivion Her Majesty; 9/9 Quandro Rondo; 9/10 Counterfeit, Starbenders; 9/11 Nina,

September 2019

MUSIC SEPTEMBER Parallels, CZARNIA, Bunny X; 9/12 Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers; 9/13 Bret Bollinger & The Band of Habits; 9/14 Los Stellarians, San Junipero; 9/15 Satsang, Sundub, Wes Watkins; 9/16 Le Big Zero, Kid Midnight, So Called People; 9/18 Steve N Seagulls, Grainsville North American Tour; 9/19 Free Throw, Chris Farren, Youth Fountain, Macseal; 9/20 Brian Courtney Wilson; 9/21 Spock & Yakz, Weekend Warriors, Cup A Joe, Gnaw Box; 9/22 Shonen Knife, Straw Pipes, Brower; 9/23 Noah Chenfeld, KilCool, Donna Stravinky; 9/24 End of the Weak Challenge of MC Champions; 9/25 Cycles, Of Clocks and Clouds, Kudu Stooge; 9/26 Josh A and Jake Hill, Darko, Jordanxbell; 9/27 Juan Wauters; 9/28 Aesthetic Perfection, Disciple Records; 9/29 Hail the Sun; 9/30 Acid King, Wizard Rifle, Warish Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N 6th St.

9/27 Working Women and Violet; 9/28 Saturday BBQ, Umfand and LSDXOXO; 9/29 Earth Week Benefit for Sunrise Movement

House of Yes, 2 Wyckoﬀ Ave.

9/1 Soca Fete, Anane and Louie Vega; 9/2 WERK; 9/4 Blac Rabbit and Abracadabra Field Trip, Ama-

Bene’s RECORD SHOP

9/5 Girl in Red; 9/6 Fontaines D.C.; 9/7 Fletcher; 9/9 Wilder Woods; 9/10 Raphael Saadiq; 9/11 Sunflower Bean; 9/12 God is an Astronaut; 9/13 Jennifer Hartswick & Nick Cassarino Duo; 9/14 Slow Thai; 9/15 Raveena; 9/17 Boy Harsher; 9/18 PVRIS; 9/19 Masked Intruder; 9/20 Orville Peck; 9/22 Olivia Gatwood; 9/24 Meg & Dia; 9/25 Xavier Rudd; 9/26 Generationals; 9/27 Daniel Norgren; 9/28 Phum Viphurit; 9/30 Aldous Harding

Speed The Plough’s

Union Pool, 484 Union Ave.

You can get an idea about what the Hoboken music scene was like in the heyday of Maxwells.

9/1 Summer Thunder; 9/2 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 9/3 Jewish Currents End-OfSummer Party; 9/4 Sarah Bernstein/Kid Millions; 9/5 Pink Mexico; 9/6 Mister Lies; 9/7 Rae Isla; 9/8 Paul De Jong; 9/9 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 9/10 The Men; 9/12 Women to the Front; 9/13 Blonde Otter with Abigail; 9/14 Blonde Otter with Abigail; 9/16 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 9/18 Malcom Mooney and The Eleventh Planet; 9/20 Allah-Las; 9/21 Allah-Las; 9/22 Chris Brokaw and Bill Nace; 9/23 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir; 9/28 Lily and Madeleine; 9/30 Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir

Ridgewood

Trans Pecos, 915 Wyckoﬀ Ave

9/1 Satellite Show; 9/7 Constant Elevation, Queercore Rages; 9/10 Carlos Truly, Nappy Nina, Wsabi Fox; 9/11 Mega Bog, Potty Mouth; 9/12 Ryley Walker and David Grybbbs, Ali Winter; 9/13 Bethlehem Steel; 9/14 One Eleven Heavy, Rob Stoner; 9/16 Sheena, Anika and Augusta Nowadays 56-06 Cooper Ave #1 9/1 Outdoors, Mister

Sunday After Party; 9/2 Backyard Papi; 9/6 Justin Carter and DJ Minx; 9/7 Saturday BBQ, Aurora Halal; 9/8 Justin Carter and Tama Sumo; 9/13 Timmy Regisford All Nightl 9/14 Saturday BBQ, Seltzer and AG; 9/15 Justin Carter and Eamon Harkin; 9/18 An Evening Under the Stars; 9/20 Anthony Naples and Cashu; 9/21 Saturday BBQ, Powder All Night; 9/22 Eamon Harkin and Octo Octa;

Star-Revue Section 2

jam session and pick it up again, playing music is a nice way to help balance out this world of screens. Oh! and a Special Shoutout to the Brooklyn Americana Music Festival Sept 19-22, curated by the tireless Jan Bell, which will host 50 free concerts across 9 stages from Dumbo through Redhook. Shows listed in the calendar which are part of the festival appear in Bold and be on the lookout throughout the paper for more in depth reporting. --jaimie branch * critics pick

orchestral pop has survived almost as many regenerations as Doctor Who, starting back in 1984 as an offshoot of the Feelies sideproject The Trypes. The current lineup includes founding members Jon and Toni Baumgartner, old friends Ed Seifert and Cindi Merklee, the Baumgartners’ grown son Michael, and drummer John Demeski, whose father, Feelies drummer Stan, held the job twenty years earlier.

Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery, September 16

Midwood

Bar Chord, 1008 Cortelyou Rd

9/3 Janet Burgan; 9/4 Paul Tabachneck; 9/5 Queens County Roots; 9/6 Jack Grace Band; 9/7 Ewald; 9/8 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 9/9 Whiskey Bumps; 9/10 Homeboy Steve; 9/11 Beings Organ Trio; 9/12 Bern Band; 9/13 Fraggle Funk; 9/14 Ethan Eubanks’ Blues Bangers; 9/15 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 9/16 Cam Darwin; 9/17 Max Johnson Trio; 9/18 Darkest Timeline; 9/19 Meltron; 9/20 The Clubs; 9/21 Alegba and Friends; 9/22 Cortelyou Jazz Jam; 9/23 Michael Porter

Bushwick The Sultan Room, 234 Starr St.

9/3 Habibi, La Mano, Blair, Pinocchio, DJ Meriem Bennani; 9/4 Maria Usbeck Album Release, Jackie Mendoza, Ensemble Entendu; 9/5 Midnight Magic and Friends, Analog Soul; 9/6 Lauren Early, Beau, Rose Cologne; 9/7 Jonathan Toubin NY Night Train Dance Party, Flasyd; 9/10 Gold Child Album Release, Beauty Queen, Hideout; 9/11 Billy Martin’s Wicked Knee, Steven Bernstein, Curtis Fowlkes, Marcus Rojas; 9/12 The Wants, M Lamar, Mezzanine Swimmers, Martial Canterel, Ghost Cop, Andi Harriman; 9/13 Paris Monster, Jachary; 9/14 Eden Zane; 9/16 Batterie; 9/20 Disco Tehran; 9/21 Colin Self, Eartheater; 9/24 Ladawnda

360 Van Brunt St. 718-855-0360 All Shows 8:30PM, unless noted. SAT 9/21 Jaimie Branch - trumpet Stale Snozzleberg - percussion THURS 9/26* BLOOR Sue St. Silva /Toby Zederberg Joanna Mattrey *IBEAM 168 7th Street, Brooklyn FRI 9/6 Catherine Sikora Mingus/ Brian Chase Duo, Catherine Sikora + Friends SUN 9/8, 7:30 PM Feathery Quartet, Lena Bloch - Saxophone, Russ Lossing - Piano Cameron Brown - Bass SAT 9/14 Mike McGinnis Presents SAT 9/21* “Emptying the Self” William Parker - bass, Second set: Andrew Drury Group MON 9/30, 7:30 Boehringer/Curtis/Jimenez Samir Boehringer - drums, Caleb Curtis - alto sax, Kenneth Jimenez - bass Attias/Ammann Duo Michael Attias - Alto Sax Sebastien Ammann - piano JALOPY TAVERN

teur Burlesque; 9/5 DRAGASM; 9/6 WONDERSHOW, Before the Dust Settles; 9/7 DeepBeats, Voice Cult, Kiss my Brass; 9/8 Rosa Perro; 9/11 Dirty Circus, House of Vogue; 9/12 The Get Down, 90s Night; 9/13 Blunderland Variety Show, GOLD; 9/14 Blunderland, Full Moon party; 9/15 Planned Parenthood POP; 9/16 Black Femmes Panel and Party; 9/17 Secretary Drinking Game; 9/18 Bushwick’s Got Talent, Cabronis; 9/19 Bootylicious; 9/20 Reefer Madness, AMAZONIA; 9/21 DeepBeats, Osunlade + Marques Wyatt; 9/22 YES Block Party; 9/25 Dirty Circles, Funk You; 9/26 Art Battle Brooklyn, Blacklight Night; 9/27 EXTRA, PINK MAMMOTH; 9/28 EXTRA, Gala Galactica; 9/30 DeepBeats “Oh it’s a long, long while from May to December/ But the days grow short when you reach September” - Kurt Weill, September Song September. We made it! Summer fun is winding down and school is back in session, but that’s all the more reason to get out and enjoy some of the musical talent in the hood these days. Fall is the perfect time to learn something new or get back to work at your craft. Check out a vocal, ukulele, or guitar class at Jalopy theater or plunge face first into the universe of modular synthesis over at Pioneer Books. I also want to encourage everyone who plays an instrument but has maybe let it lapse a bit to wander over to a

317 Columbia St. 718-625-3214 SAT 9/7 AVO; WED 9/11 Chas Justus with Friends; TUES 9/17, 8PM The Honky Tonk Heroes; THURS 9/19 Audra Rox’s 3rd Thursdays!; THURS 9/26; Atom and the Orbits; SAT 9/21 Sabine McCalla and the Dew Drops; SUN 9/22, 6PM Leila Jane (Dublin, Ireland); SAT 9/28 Stillhouse Serenade; TUES 10/1 Anna J. Witiuk & Friends

Isto, Rosetta Serrano, Jan Bell, Frankie Sunswept & more! THURS 9/19* Brooklyn Americana Music Fest Opening Night Gala! Dayna Kurtz/Megan Palmer/Underhill Rose; FRI 9/20, 8:30PM RC Andres Distilled record release; SAT 9/21 4PM*: Ian Nagoski: Early 20th Century Near Eastern Musics in New York Discussion with the music researcher and record producer. 8PM: Choir! Choir! Choir!; SUN 9/22 2PM: Choir! Choir! Choir! 7PM: Ruben Moreno & Zydeco Re-Evolution; FRI 9/27, 8PM Jalopy Records Show, Eli Smith, Jackson & Lynch, Ukranian Village Voices, , Brotherhood of the Jugband Blues, Tamar Korn; SAT 9/28, 4PM Sloop Clearwater Show Community Jam Session hosted by Kyle Tigges LITTLEFIELD, 635 Sacke� St. FRI 9/6, 8PM Cross Culture,

Booty & the Kidd, Wild Prxfits; SAT 9/7, 11PM Reggae Retro 1st Saturdays Dance Party; FRI 9/20, 8PM* 0 Stars (Album Release!, Joanna Sternberg, Relatives, and the Rainbows; SAT 9/21, 11PM Be Cute Brooklyn - dance party; SUN 9/22, 7PM* Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn “Kosher Style” Album Release w/ Tamar Korn, A Kornucopia, and Special Guests; TUES 9/24, 8PM Hangar (Mongolia/China); THURS 9/26, 6:30PM Väsen and Kardemimmit Nordic roots music.

& Spadine 2PM: Ashcan Orchestra 5PM: Gamelan Gender Wayang; MON 9/9* False Harmonics #5 Lucrecia Dalt, Hiro Kone & Roxy Farman, Aaron Dilloway ROCKY SULLIVAN’S 46 Beard St. Always three sets on

Fridays!

SUNNYS 253 Conover St.

EVERY SATURDAY TONE’s Bluegrass Jam Bring your axe!; TUES 9/3* Joanna Sternberg; WED 9/4 Charlie Burnham and Kings County; THURS 9/5 Ana Egge; FRI 9/6 Stillhouse Serenade; SUN 9/8, 5PM Paul Spring; TUES 9/10 Jackson Lynch; WED 9/11 Tubby; THURS 9/12 Four O’clock Flowers; FRI 9/13 The Essex Three; SUN 9/15 3PM: Harry Bolick’s Old Time Jam; 6:30PM: Honky Tonk Heroes ; MON 9/16 Elijah Miller ; TUES 9/17 Will Scott; WED 9/18 Sabine McCalla & the Dew Drops (New Orleans); THURS 9/19 The Lonesome Heroes (Austin TX); FRI 9/20 Western Youth w/ Jaimee Harris (Austin TX); SUN 9/22 5PM: Luke Tuchscherer 7PM: Suzie Vinnick; TUES 9/24 Leila Jane (Dublin, Ireland); WED 9/25 Doggy Cats; THURS 9/26 Ryan Scott and the Kind Buds; FRI 9/27 Holy Hive w/ Kate Mattison; SUN 9/29, 5PM Tamar Korn SUPERFINE 126 Front St.

NOLAN PARK 8B Governors Island SAT 9/7, 3PM Wave Farm

Works in Progress Workshop w/ Sound Artists Samuel Hertz & Carmelo Pampillonio

PIONEER BOOKS 289 Van Brunt St. TUES in September

PIONEER WORKS 159 Pioneer St. SUN 9/8 1PM: Skakun

9/3-24 Intro to Modular Synthesizers Class w/ Stud1nt and Sam Work

SUN 9/8, 12PM Haggard Kings; SUN 9/15, 12PM; Tiger Alley; FRI 9/20, 8PM; Sabine McCalla and the Dew Drops ; SAT 9/21, 8PM The Jackson Lynch Band; SUN 9/22; 12PM: Annie Ford; 1:30PM Tiger Alley ; 4PM: Melanie Hope Greenberg Story Time; 7PM: Troubadours of Divine Bliss, Megan Palmer, Sabine McCalla and the Dew Drops

*JALOPY THEATRE 315 Columbia St. Every Tuesday

Night, 9PM Open Mic Night, sign up by 9 sharp! Each performer gets 2 songs or 8 minutes.; Every Wednesday, 9PM; Roots n’ Ruckus - hosted by Feral Foster. Real deal folk music in NYC. Free!; Every Thursday, 8PM show 10PM jam Brooklyn Raga Massive Weekly: with guest artists Raga Jam: Free entry to musicians who come at 10 and are ready to play! 9/5: TRIO - North Indian Classical Music; TUES 9/10, 8PM* “A Dog’s Dream” A bluegrass fundraising concert for Animal Care Centers of NYC; WED 9/11, 9PM Ben Paley, Duff Thomson, Carver Baronda, Nat Myers; FRI 9/13, 9PM Bumper Jackson’s Live At Wolf Trap Album Release Show; SAT 9/14, 5PM Brooklyn Loves Oaxaca, An Exhibition showcasing the artists and printmakers of Espacio Pino Suárez w/ Marco Velasco, Phebe Macrae Corcoran, Jeff Tocci, Ernesto Gomez; SUN 9/15 11AM: Little Laffs - A Kid’s Variety Show 1 PM: Vocal Harmony Workshop with Don Friedman & Phyllis Elkind; 8 PM: Hank Williams’ 96th Birthday: Tribute Concert and Fundraiser; Performers include:

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People who haven’t ever seen Robbie Fulks wonder what all the fuss is about. But once you do, you’re likely to understand why he’s the poster child for the sentiment that REAL country music isn’t always what you hear on Country Music Television or see on TV award shows. Fulks plays real country music. Originally from York, Pennsylvania, Fulks has been doing his thing from Chicago, NOT Nashville for many years, releasing 14 or so albums over the past 20 years. His latest album Wild! Wild! Wild! was recorded with Jerry Lee Lewis’ younger sister Linda Gail. You can catch Robbie at the Mercury Lounge on Houston Street Tuesday, September 24.

September 2019, Page 43

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September 2019