A bill that would re-design New York City’s truck route networking and help Red Hook deal with the increasing number of trucks coming into the neighborhood will hopefully be signed by Mayor Adams in the coming weeks. Introduction 708-A, sponsored by District 38 Council Member Alexa Aviles “would require the Department of Transportation [DOT] to redesign the city’s truck route […]
Day: December 10, 2023
BQE Update, by Brian Abate
A Zoom meeting was held with members of the Department of Transportation (DOT) updating the public on the possibility of changes to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE.) More than 120 people attended the meeting on Nov. 8, and the meeting materials will be posted at BQEvision.com. “We’re sharing a toolbox of ideas but this isn’t a place for making final decisions,” […]
Opinion: Dan’s disappointing vote, by Matt Matros, Carroll Gardens resident
A lot seems to escape Dan Goldman. When the writer and Red Hook resident Sousan Hammad stood in front of his office decrying the war that has claimed the lives of dozens of her family members, Goldman didn’t seem to notice. The letters delivered to him pleading for an end to the violence in Gaza, signed by more than a […]
Can I say enough good things about this store? (no–it’s great!), by Katherine Rivard
Tessa Williams isn’t your average business owner. In a world focused on maximizing profits and efficiency, she centers her work on art and community. Recently, she was packing a pair of delicate vases to be shipped when she noticed that the online order was from a nearby address. She called the customer, explained the situation, then refunded the delivery fee, […]
“You may be factually accurate, but if I feel differently, what does it matter?” Two cautionary tales by Howard Graubard
Tale #1: Sometime around the turn of the century, I was in love. She may have been too. Or maybe it was just a dysfunctional period of mutually assured destruction we’d suffered together. Anyway, we made each other laugh, which is nearly always how my problems began. Neither of us was involved with anyone else, but, because of what then […]
NYC Wildlife Encounters, by Gene Bray
In 1980 I moved to a rooming house in Manhattan. Three feet of my room was below ground level. One morning I woke up, opened my eyes, and saw a cat staring at me from less than a foot away. Our eyes lock. I’m terrified. Afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. It’s calmly studying me. Is it the Devil? When […]
The story of Steve’s Key Lime Pie is also the story of the neighborhood, by Brian Abate
The Barnacle Parade has become an annual celebration in Red Hook, which began on the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in 2013. The parade celebrates the community’s resiliency and a tradition of the parade is that it ends at Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies (185 Van Dyke St.,) where the family business gives members of the procession free key lime […]
Michael Quinn | Review of “Brooklyn Arcadia: Art, History and Nature at Majestic Green-Wood,” by Andrew Garn
Cemeteries freak some people out. My mother, who grew up in Queens, is still traumatized from an experience she had as a little girl. Her family visited dead relatives every Sunday. Once, she peeked into a mausoleum window and saw a baby carriage. She never got over it. I grew up differently. Perhaps as a result of my mother’s unhappy […]
Wiggly Air, on Music: Another decade, another blast of Bassoon, by Kurt Gottschalk
It’s hard to say just what a bassoon power trio should include, maybe hurdy-gurdy and viol de gamba. Brooklyn’s Bassoon’s got none of that, though. The heavy prog-metal Brooklyn band put out their debut in 2012 and somehow only now have decided to follow it up with Succumbent (Nov. 17, Nefarious Industries, CD and download). The band was formed in […]
Best Jazz Albums of 2023 By George Grella
’Tis the season of the list, and for your local man in jazz that means putting together what were, for me, the best new and archival recordings I heard this year. And I mean “heard” seriously; I listened all the way through something like 250 albums released in 2023, and at least partially through an additional 400-plus (those are records […]