Celebrating Community
In 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 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 […]
Any 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 […]
“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 […]
In early July, contractors for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) dug up a section of Beard Street east of Van Brunt Street, prompting speculation as to whether the project (marked as a “sewer repair” on the adjacent no-parking sign) signaled the beginning of a new effort to mitigate the persistent flooding just down the road at the Richards Street […]
Last month in Albany, Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa announced that, in the fall, she would assemble a commission to evaluate the possibility of dropping the Regents Examinations as a graduation requirement for high schoolers in New York State. New York remains one of 12 states that require students in public high schools to pass standardized exit exams […]
For the Star-Revue’s August issue, I wrote a feature about Revel, the moped-sharing app whose Vespa-style scooters have overtaken parts of Brooklyn and Queens. It wasn’t technically an opinion piece, but because most of Revel’s other media coverage had taken the form of first-person essays by intrepid reporters who, having tried out the product, had intercut regurgitated press-release info with […]
The tenants won, and the real estate lobby lost. But the tenants didn’t win everything. Signed into law on June 14 amid widespread celebration, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) expanded and strengthened New York’s system of rent stabilization and offered a host of new benefits to tenants across the state. It suffered, however, from the […]
From May to September, typically on the second Wednesday of the month, the arts organization Pioneer Works hosts $5 first-come-first-served lunches in its garden at 159 Pioneer Street. The series started in 2017, but I went for the first time this June. For each gathering, Pioneer Works hires a new chef to cater the event. When I attended, the food […]
If one could go back in time and visit Red Hook in the 1940s, one would, at about 4:30 am, find a scene of desperation on its crowded waterfront. Days began with “longshoremen huddling in doorways in rain and snow on Columbia Street facing the piers, waiting for the hiring boss, on whose arrival they surged forward and formed up […]