Oil & Greenpoint Don't Mix
The Victims. The Lawsuit. The Cleanup.
In the richest country in the world, in its grandest city, there is a working-class neighborhood where for the past fifty years millions of gallons of oil have been spreading under people’s homes because the most notorious oil companies in the world have been too busy making the biggest profits in the history of America instead of cleaning up their toxins. This story has greedy corporations, environmental crusaders, ineffectual government, and innocent victims dying from cancer. This is the story of Greenpoint, Brooklyn...
Father and Son
Bumper-to-Bumper on the BQE
After an early evening visit to a dear friend in Park Slope, I was journeying back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the always-congested Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
As it usually is in bumper-to-bumper situations, every split second is critical, and as the driver in front of me stopped suddenly for whatever reason, my mind was somewhere between “maybe he wants Cheerios?” and “maybe his milk is a little too cold?”
Hope for the Homeless
North Brooklyn Shelters and Outreach Programs
The early morning winds on January 15th cut up off the East River through the remains of the Greenpoint Piers – biting, 40 mile-per-hour rejoinders to the otherwise strangely mild winter.
A half-mile east, English sheltered his loose, hand-rolled cigarette from the sleet knifing down past the streetlight high above. He took a quick look left and right – the surrounding metal shops and light warehouses had long been closed – before moving through a drawn back section of the fence surrounding a vacated lot at the corner of Calyer and Moultrie Streets...
The Taming of Bushwick
Sociological Musings on Crime in North Brooklyn
Just into the second month of the year, there is already much to report, much to shock and disparage. Though the Giuliani residue is still apparent within New York City statistics, where robbery alone has been reduced by an average of 80 percent, recent incidents of serial rape and rapper beef have left North Brooklynites looking over their shoulders.
Afternoons on McKibbin Street in Bushwick are rather quiet. On one block, an orange Vespa is parked on the sidewalk and graffiti covers the cement sides of two adjacent buildings. Three years ago, the buildings’ young residents convened in an apartment strewn with tiled mosaics, large canvases covered black paint, and plants with long stems billowing over the sink...
The City Reliquary
Williamsburg’s Museum of Natural and Unnatural History
Dave Herman didn’t set out to be a museum curator. But when the Brooklyn City Reliquary expands to a full-fledged museum space on Metropolitan Avenue next month, the native Floridian will become just that.
“When I first came to New York I went into an intense study process and read historical and architectural books to become a licensed tour guide,” Herman says. “It was also a time when Williamsburg was really expanding and people would always stop and ask me for directions. Then I got the idea to paint the directions on my apartment from a newsstand on the corner of Bowery and Canal.”
Bound for Jaymay
A young girl sits on the stage, quiet and intent, the last vestiges of her youthful shyness peeking out from behind wide alert eyes. She greets the crowd casually, with only the slightest touch of an endearing nervousness and then begins singing. Her voice is as quirky as it is sweet and clear. The song is about herself.
She sings about relationships, colors, the city and the sky, all told through a simple honest vision of the world reflected inwardly. A comparison to Woody Guthrie might seem out of line for a poppy, melodic songwriter far removed from the politics Guthrie was known for, but she shares his most striking characteristic - the innocent nature that allows someone to look at the world and sing it back simply...
Crap-Tops vs. Lap-Tops:
Hi-Fi and Lo-Fi battle it out at MonkeyTown
Ashley Colgate loves her computer. As a Science, Technology, and Society major at Vassar College, she studied “society's relationship with technology, asking questions such as 'How does technology reflect culture?' and visa versa." While at school, she interned with the new media art community Rhizome.org - and her relationship with computers and technology blossomed...
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ L
A Relatively Stationary Adventure
I remember loving blackouts as a kid – the mystery of the dark, the card games by candlelight, the bond of shared immobility. Perhaps, the L-shutdowns are no different. As another weekend approached without Williamsburg’s lifeline to Manhattan – or Manhattan’s lifeline to us, depending on how you look at it – I set out to discover if there’s a similar upside to this public “un”- transportation...
Controlled Clatter: The Double
The Double’s buzzed-about headlining show with Celebration and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio filled Bowery Ballroom with a diverse crowd of intense fans. The Double’s first album on Matador Records, Loose in the Air, and their prior album Palm Fronds can’t seem to stay on the shelves of local record stores Earwax and Sound Fix. Utterly indifferent to hooks and harmonies, the Double prefers to indulge an intense, driving organ, unconventional instruments and vocals that echo eerily as if across an empty room. Toeing the line between controlled tension and chaotic, clattering noise on their latest album, the Double stands poised on the brink of growing into the expectations they have set for themselves. Block Magazine sat down with drummer and Williamsburg resident Jeff McLeod to discuss the Double’s productive differences and what’s next for the band....
Invisible Ink at Asylum Tattoo
Alone in the studio, resident artist Erik Diaz lies on the tattoo bed waiting for customers as Judge Judy grins on TV.
For most tattoo aficionados, one might be wary about where to get fresh ink, so when a new parlor opens up, it could be quite some time before the artist will find neighborhood regulars. Asylum on Bedford and North 4th Street, with its raw brick walls and 1950s horror paraphernalia, is an excellent choice for body art and some vintage collector’s items...
OPEN MAG: Bicycle Paintings
By Taliah Lempert
2006 Holiscope
Managing the Mid-Winter Malaise
Aries
You should light a fire, preferably in an open fireplace, although for most of us in New York, that’s not possible. Another good way to generate some heat is by running around; something competitive like a game of squash, or, weather permitting, soccer, should do the trick.
Taurus
Eating hearty foods is a typical Taurean way of keeping warm; sup on soups, go for a goulash or chow down on some chilli. And you people don’t need to be told that all of the above tastes are better when enjoyed with somebody to snuggle up to later.
