Celebrating Community
2025 is election year in New York City. Focus of most New Yorkers is, of course, on the mayoral race which is poised to be an interesting one, following Mayor Eric Adams’s string of mishaps, alleged criminal activities and flirting with Donald Trump, likely selling out many New Yorkers in his so far successful search for legal relief in the […]
It was a bitterly cold winter morning (probably) on Jan. 27 when New York State Environmental Conservation Officers Bieber and Keegan, fresh out of basic school (the Department of Environmental Conservation’s six-month-long training program for its specialized police officers) visited Star Market at 1778 86th St. in Brooklyn for a seafood inspection. The officers were only there to assist as part […]
As most in the neighborhood are aware by now, the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is being redeveloped. Since our latest story in the February Star-Revue, nothing has happened that has changed the course of the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which leads the project on behalf of the city. Despite continued calls to push the deadline for the finished master plan, […]
It’s the evening of Dec. 18, 2024. The Brooklyn Marine Terminal task force is meeting for the fourth time, just before the winter holidays. Alexa Avilés, council member for District 38 and vice-chair of the task force, is late and arrives with about 30 minutes left of the two-hour meeting. “I walked into chaos,” she said. “People immediately started beelining […]
In December, The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), began the second phase of construction of Gowanus’s two Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) tanks after pausing work since August. Because of the design of the much of New York’s sewer system, where stormwater and sewage water both go through the same pipe, […]
In our last issue, I wrote about how we (many of us, at least) celebrate Christmas in Sweden. I went through it all, from Dec. 1 and Swedish Public Service’s advent calendar TV show, through the celebration of St. Lucy and bingo on the night before Christmas Eve, to the sales on Boxing Day. And while these are all key […]
On Sept. 15, a driver in Brooklyn was stopped by the New York Police Department after running a red light. In an unexpected turn of events, the officers found 29 Chinese mitten crabs, a crustacean considered one of the world’s most invasive species (it’s number 34 on the Global Invasive Species Database), while searching the vehicle. Environmental Conservation Police Officers […]
Sweden is a place of plenty of holiday celebrations. My American friends usually say midsummer with the fertility pole and the wacky dances when I tell them about Swedish holidays, but to me — and I’d wager few Swedes would argue against this — no holiday is as anticipated as Christmas. Further, I would argue that Swedish Christmas is unlike […]
On Nov. 14, the Gowanus Oversight Task Force — a community-based group tracking the 56 commitments that were part of the Gowanus rezoning — convened for the fourth time this year, this time to share with the public information about the Gowanus Business Improvement District (BID) and the city’s plans for green spaces in the neighborhood. The Gowanus Rezoning Points […]
It smells like harbor, I thought as I walked out to the end of the pier to which the barge now known as the Waterfront Museum was docked. Unmistakable were they, even for someone like me — maybe particularly for someone like me, who’s always lived far enough from the ocean to never get used to its sensory impressions, but […]