Celebrating Community
The punk ethos was designed to implode, and implode it did (or should have, anyway). Punk was a fiery rejection of the status quo. Once it became status quo, it was time to go. But like a dinner guest you don’t know is dead, punk refused to leave. The problem came with confusing the idea that talent and technique weren’t […]
Marc Ribot’s punkjam trio Ceramic Dog had been playing low key gigs around town for a long time before really finding their voice on their second album, 2013’s Your Turn. That’s when they started to get mad. The sarcastic AF song was about musicians gleefully accepting social media presence over money for their work “Masters of the Internet” was both […]
Back in July, Magik Markers quietly released a four-song digital EP, the first new music they’ve put out in a half dozen years. It was subdued, a little psychedelic, with a title suggesting they’ve been out of our ugly loop for a while. (Magik Markers has always been good at naming). In October, the band followed Isolation From Exterior Time: […]
There is something disorienting and unsettling about experiencing an artist talking about the end of their career in real time. They narrate the end of something that, until uttered, still existed. Imagine reading a book where every word disappears as your eyes move along the line, the only trace the one left in your memory. That is what it was […]
South Brooklyn Community High School, at 173 Conover Street, is a transfer high school that offers drop-outs a second chance. South Brooklyn is a partnership between the NYC Department of Education and Good Shepherd Services, which is a youth development, education, and family service agency. The students who enter the school are overage and under credited, which leads to […]
Back in June, I signed with the Board of Election (BOE) to be a poll worker. I did this because I had heard that fewer older people who are usually poll workers were able work the polls because of the pandemic, and I wanted to directly be behind the scenes of election day assisting in the voting process for this […]
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Disaster Recovery department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a virtual meeting on Thursday about the soil sampling at the Red Hook Houses related to Sandy construction. There was also an update about the two recent gas outages at the Red Hook Houses caused by the construction that has been happening. Joy […]
As the city prepares to move forward with its plans to rezone Gowanus, community members worry about what that will mean for the Gowanus Canal cleanup. According to the environmental impact study produced by the Department of City Planning (DCP) earlier this year, the amount of combined rainwater and sewage that overflows into the canal is projected to increase almost […]
About 50 protestors gathered together on the cold afternoon of Oct. 18, to remember elderly loved ones who had succumbed to COVID-19 and demand a sincere apology from State Governor Andrew Cuomo. The protest occurred outside the Cobble Hill Health Center (CHHC), nearly a week after the governor’s book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was published. During […]
A couple weeks ago I was surprised to see the name “Carlos Menchaca” pop up on my phone’s Caller ID. Menchaca has been representing Red Hook in the City Council for the past seven years. During all of that time I have been writing about Red Hook in this newspaper. We’ve never socialized, despite my invitations for dinner to talk […]