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When Brooklyn Wasn’t Cool: A Review of Gowanus Crossing

Old English poets (not T.S. Elliot in his later years but those Anglo Saxon guys before the Norman invasion), when not being hacked up by Vikings or scorched by dragons, would often tear up in the presence of Roman ruins. They’d plop down on a shattered stone, marble shard or something, take in all the decay of once magnificent structures, and imagine those doomed overlords having a fine old time…

Shrink Talkin'

Chet Explains the Battle of Brooklyn

A year ago today she passed away.

Another Year of Living Dangerously

It was late afternoon on New Year’s Eve and flurries were blowing in from Erie Basin, sweeping through the Food Bazaar parking lot and up Conover Street, pushing me into Sunny’s. Izzy poured me a generous Dewar’s and I hunkered down in the booth by the door to peck out my annual retrospective. Oh what a wretched year. Pancreatic cancer swiftly took Virginia, my wife of 40 years and Trump even…

#Brooklyn #Interborough Express #Red Hook Star-Revue #UFOs

Another Train

#Grief #Magical thinking #Mediums

Next Stop: Newkirk

Thompson Newkirk is what they call in the trade an indie artist. Without the financial backing of a major label, he records, distributes and post videos for the songs he writes, and tours aggressively to promote them. He also designs and sells merch ranging from tee shirts to coolies. He even appeared in an indie movie (playing Police guitarist Andy Summer in 2013’s CBGB). And oh yeah, Thompson’s…

#Castello PLan #Newkirk Plaza #Thompson Newkirk

Empty Chairs

A month after retiring, my wife Virginia broke her back in a fall. Thereafter she was forced to spend a good deal of every day reclining on sofas or on beach chairs in the Rockaways. She required medical marijuana to get to sleep and two seats next to on a plane so she could rest her head on my lap. She still managed to read five or six novels a week, pay the bills, monitor our investments,…

Emergency

In Hollywood movies when somebody gets the news they don’t have long to live, it’s usually delivered by a solemn doctor in a quiet room. Virginia got the word lying on an ER cot, located in a row of cots, deep inside the battle zone known as New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Virginia laughed when we first saw that sign, imagining the inevitable TV ad campaign: “Behold! Medicine…

#Healt Care

A Newkirk Plaza Historical Slidehow Type Situation

1905: The Sleepy South Midwood Trolley Station That Would Become Newkirk Plaza Click HERE to view a 15 minute video uploaded to YouTube a year ago to try and explain how a complicated situation arose and might be resolved by digging into some long-forgotten history. The NYC Department of Transportation refuses to include the Plaza in its plaza maintenance program because…well, they claim it’s…

Virginia Waters

Last Call for Night Drones at Sunny’s

I was working the late shift at the Star-Revue HQ on Van Brunt Street, trying to finish my 2024Year in Review piece (Spoiler Alert: It Sucked) when an argument heated up over by the dry bar. Howard, the politics guy, was telling George, the publisher guy, that the drones over New Jersey were a lost Ukrainian battalion that took a wrong turn over Donetsk and wound up in Bedminster. But George…

If Trump Was Our President Back Then

July 20, 1969. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, our 37th President was patched through from the Oval Office to the astronauts and announced: “I am hereby signing an Executive Order changing the name of the moon to Amoonica.”

April 30, 1789. Our first President is sworn in and announces: “I exchanged more letters with King George, a very fine monarch, one of the best in my opinion and I agreed with him that we were very unfair to the British in how we fought, like guerillas in a jungle. To be honest, we should have fought more like gentlemen, in the open, get mowed down like real men, even if it meant we lost. So I’m…

Attack of the Turkish Taffy

September 25th. I was working the night shift on Van Brunt Street when the phone rang. Wrong number. I continued eating my delicious Key Lime Pie from Steve’s, so authentic and… Brrrrring! Brrrrring! “Red Hook Star-Revue, the new Voice of…” “Enright! Why did you just hang up on me!? Never mind, The Village Sun is reporting the Mayor’s just been indicted but it’s under seal. I need you to reach…

#israel #istanbul #news #politics #turkey

Arrows in the Air

On a beautiful late summer evening in Windsor Terrace some two hundred people jammed into the Holy Name auditorium just off Prospect Avenue to air their grievances. The sounding board on this occasion was Community Board 7, mandated by the New York City Charter to solicit comments from residents about the proposed upzoning of a large oddly-shaped section of land a block west, occupied since 1978…

#Arrow Linen #Brooklyn #City of Yes #Windsor Terrace

Walt Kuhn: A Red Hook A-Lister

Internet pages curated by that new cyber sensation sweeping the nation, Artificial (“Arty”) Intel & His Zombies, now list about three dozen carbon units as famous “Persons/Red Hook.” Many of them never spent much time here (Notorious B.I.G., e.g.), while others lived in Gowanus and South Brooklyn (Joey Gallo, Jimmy Iovine, e.g.) – close enough when zombies call the shots I suppose. As Red Hook…

Looking for the Remote: Play by Pay $, Ralph Kiner & Choo Choo

Avoiding drivers who seemed to be auditioning for Mad Max: New Jersey Turnpike Thunderdome, I needed a ball game to calm me down…Punching buttons…Ah, there it is, the Yankees. Prefer the Mets, of course, but they’re off…First inning, good. Don’t recognize the voice. Sounds too stiff. Gimme bozo John Sterling and his home run calls: “It is far! It is deep! It is…and Jeter drifts under it to make…

#baseball #Mets

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