Celebrating Community
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 […]
THE ZONELORD We predicted long ago that the mayor was using his term of office to curry favor with the capital-concrete lobby in pursuit of a job that paid better. So when we read that Warren Wilhelm de Blasio announced May 16 he’d entered the race for president of the Real Estate Board of New York we felt vindicated. Why […]
Back in June 2010, when I started this paper, I didn’t have any experience with politicians. I didn’t even think I’d ever report on politics. I kind of thought local politics was boring. However, after Carlos Menchaca became our unexpected councilman, I realized that it was my responsibility as a publisher to take it all seriously. So I began paying […]
Onetime Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward, who now works for one of the largest infrastructure builders in the world, has been pushing a plan to radically change Southwest Brooklyn since last year. The plan involves replacing the Red Hook Container Terminal, and much of the rest of our working waterfront, with gleaming skyscrapers – more than tripling our local […]
Carlos Menchaca should have never had a race for re-election, he’s one of the better council members, at least as I see it. However, for various reasons, not many having to do with actual governance, he did. Thankfully, to me and many readers of the Red Hook Star-Revue, he won, pretty much going away. So now that we have four […]
For those few of you who aren’t keeping track, the year 2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of one of the two notable (and corrupting) things about our 29th President Warren Harding’s 1920 campaign: to wit, the slogan “a return to normalcy” (normalcy being the new normality). While Harding was looking to return to the country to a pre-World War 1 mindset […]
It had only been light out for a few minutes on the sub-freezing early morning of Monday, March 13 when the black rented van pulled away from the curb in the Columbia Waterfront District. The van was bound for Albany, for the Carroll Gardens Association’s annual lobbying trip on behalf of itself and the statewide Neighborhood Preservation Program. The Carroll […]
City Council Race Carlos Menchaca pulled off a stunning upset in 2013 – a political novice beating a seasoned incumbent in the 38 Congressional District (Red Hook, Sunset Park). At the time, we thought he was just trying to cash in on the goodwill he made in the neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy. He was sent here by his boss Christine […]