This Sunday, July 13th, Maison Provence in Williamsburg is transforming its cozy Brooklyn corner into a slice of the South of France for a Bastille Day celebration you won’t want to miss.
Get ready for a fun and festive French street party, complete with grilled merguez sausage sandwiches, ice-cold Kronenbourg beer, and crisp AVAL cider to keep you cool and satisfied.
A French DJ will be spinning all day, bringing high-energy Nice vibes to the heart of Brooklyn. Relax in lounge chairs or have a dance-off on our patio. Feeling competitive? You might just find yourself in the middle of a spontaneous pétanque ( bocce ball) showdown.
“No matter where you’re from, Bastille Day is a chance to come together and enjoy good food, music, and company,” says Chef Dantonio Lolo, owner of Maison Provence.
📍 Maison Provence – 55 Havemeyer St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn
🗓 Sunday, July 13th 12-10:30PM
🇫🇷 Bring your dancing shoes
There’s a scene in the new series “Overcompensating” in which the protagonist, a college student who’s finally decided to drop his business major, eagerly shows his friend a short film he’s made. It opens with her lying in a bathtub full of milk, and the plot never gets much further than that. She carefully composes her face, but can’t quite hide her horror. “It’s bad,” he concludes, crestfallen.
On the first Tuesday of June, a bar in Gowanus played host to a different vision of what short films can be: not just a class project, but an event worthy of fanfare; less about navel-gazing, and more about capturing the multiplicity of human experience.
The draw of the night was “GORTS: A Short Film Pride Pop-Up,” a pilot for Shorts Movie Theater, creator Karma Masselli’s forthcoming brick-and-mortar venue. As the sun set outside, over thirty people — mainly in their twenties —buzzed around Threes Brewing, posing on the red carpet and chatting in large clumps before finding their seats. The evening’s two emcees, Declan Zhang and Michelle Kariuki, quickly had the crowd laughing as they shot an impromptu short film, the topic of which was drawn from a hat (“a popsicle lamenting capitalism as it melts”), with actors pulled from the audience. Then the lights dimmed, and the show began.
While the pop-up highlighted the craft of short films, it doubled as a celebratory kick-off to Pride. In the first feature, “Across, Beyond, and Over,” by Brit Fryer and Noah Schamus, two trans men reconnect after decades apart and heal old wounds as they contend with why they broke up in middle school. The second short brought the star power: director Chheangkea’s “Grandmai Nai Who Played Favorites,” which won top marks at this year’s Sundance Festival, follows a closeted gay boy in Cambodia whose family has arranged his marriage. A third and final piece, the low-budget comedy “Finding Bella” by Lucas Castro-Cruz, chronicles a New Yorker who becomes obsessed with tracking down an anthropomorphic pigeon.
“Despite the fact that short films make up a multimillion-dollar industry, with tens of thousands of shorts coming out each year,” explained Masselli, “the artists behind them have no real places to screen their work. Even the filmmakers behind Oscar-contenders find themselves having to rent out theater space on their own dime, just to qualify for the awards.”
“GORTS,” the first teaser event for Shorts Movie Theater, took place on June 3 at Threes Brewing. Photos by Allison Luntz
Though Shorts Movie Theater’s location is still being ironed out, Masselli has several more pop-ups slated for the coming months and is aiming for a launch early next year. She hopes to “harness the modern attention span,” but with a greater emphasis on community: “people can come in to see a short film for a couple bucks,” she envisions, “take a break in the bar and have a drink with their friends, and then go back in and see two more shorts—all before a dinner reservation or whatever their night holds.”
The Star caught up with Masselli to learn more about her influences, the inspirations behind the venue, and what she has in store for her upcoming events.
The pop-up was amazing! How did it feel to see everything come together?
My background is as a theater director, so I’m used to the feeling of, like, “the show is happening!” But I find myself always putting in so many extra elements that require so much work: the red carpet, the hand-painted back of the step-and-repeat, the stencil for the words. So it’s all the more satisfying fun to see it pulled off.
Where did the idea for this project come from?
One of the reasons why I started Shorts Movie Theater was because a group of my friends and I have been running this film collective for the past couple of years, called Neighborhood Film Festival. We call it a festival, but it’s not really that — we pitch projects to each other at the beginning of the year, then we co-produce them and put them all together, and we present them at the end of the year. There’s probably 20 of us who come in and out of going to the meetings.
We’re a bunch of theater makers, and we know each other from various projects or from going to school together. It was originally the idea of Laura Galindo, who was there last night. She invited a bunch of people over to her apartment and said, “We should make a bunch of movies to teach ourselves how to make films, since we’re theater makers. We know we have these skills in collaboration and in storytelling, but we don’t know anything about, like, how you make a schedule for a film shoot. So we started doing this collaborative thing. We’ve made about 20 movies in the past three-and-a-half years.
The pop-up was divided into two screenings, one at 7 p.m. and another at 8:30 p.m.
Shorts Movie Theater was my project for Neighborhood Film Festival this year. Instead of directing a movie, I was like, what if there was a venue that could channel our belief in what a theater experience brings to an art project? Being in an audience is so important to us as theater makers, and so I was working on the business plan instead of making a movie this year, bringing it to the meetings and talking it through with people and working on ideas. It has just become more and more real. [Shorts Movie Theater] is incorporated in New York and forming as a nonprofit. (NFF itself is “still just a groupchat,” Masselli said.) And we’ll have a couple more pop-ups planned for this summer to keep building momentum.
When did you first become involved in theater?
I’ve loved theater for so long. My grandfather was a composer for musical theater, and he showed me how to be an audience person and how to love going to the theater. It instilled in me this feeling that somebody sometimes has to show you how to love the thing that you’re getting into — it’s an apprentice-based work.
When I was 16, I decided I was going to see 100 shows in one year. I spent the whole year getting on the bus and going and seeing random plays. At the end of the year, I was like, I want to be a director. I went to NYU for theater directing, and have been developing new work in the city for the past six or seven years. It’s such an ephemeral type of work, where you make something and you work so hard on it, and then it just disappears the moment that it’s over. Especially the directing work: a playwright finishes and they have a script, but a director? You don’t have anything to point towards what you built, if what you built was right — which is that it’s an experience that people have that moves them. The proof of it is in their life moving forward, but you’re not a part of that.
I found myself wanting to make something where I could see the growth, and that coincided with me attending a film festival a year ago. I had had this idea a couple years ago, actually, that there should be a movie theater for short films. Like, why doesn’t that exist? It’s more common in Europe for shorts to play in theaters, but there’s not a single venue that is dedicated exclusively to short form content. I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve looked, and there doesn’t seem to be a permanent venue for short films anywhere.
I went to this fantastic festival called Middlebury New Filmmaker Festival, which is for first and second-time filmmakers, and that clicked another piece into place. There are all these incredible early projects, where you’re part of an exciting moment in someone’s career. But if it’s a short film, it has no way to connect with an audience. If it’s a really great film, hopefully a studio gets word of it, or someone who has some power finds out about it. [Yet] there’s no venue where an audience can enjoy it as an audience and not have anything to offer that person, just the capacity to enjoy their work and to follow it further.
The exciting part about shorts — one of many things — is the chance to bring the work of artists who are in development. To get those people interacting with their audience sooner in their career, rather than: you’re working for decades, and then you get a feature film, and that’s the first time a massive audience is seeing your work. In theater, we develop by presenting our work to an audience over and over again. There’s all these small theaters in the city where you have a weekend and you do your show, and that’s how I’ve developed as a theater director. It’s totally changed the kind of artist I am.
It’s different when you see the people who took time out of their life and came here and paid, and you have to encounter their physical reality. Then you watch them get bored by some decision you made that you thought was a good idea, and you’re like, “Oh.” Having to use their values and preferences as the barometer for success, rather than your own, is a crucial step as an artist. In my experience of directing, it’s important to burst the bubble of thinking that auteurship is the goal and having total control is the goal.
Two volunteer from the audience rounded out the cast of an ad hoc short film, shot during intermissions.
Because really, I think of directing as an act of service. You’re in service of an experience for all of these other people. In order to do that, you have to actually know: what do they need, what do they want, how can I possibly give it to them? Not just, what do I want to say — how can I show it to them? But you only get to think of your audience that way if you can see them and be in the room with them and feel what it feels like to not impress them, and to lose the chance to connect with them.
Being an audience member is such an enriching experience, because you go through this emotional catharsis with strangers, and you leave that space in peace. Nothing violent or bad happened between you and these other people, but something happened that you shared, and you’re able to move on. That’s a practice that, if you do it a lot, changes the way you look at the world.
And I feel that young people aren’t being invited into theater spaces as much — we’re like, “You can come in if you pay $100 and you sit here for two-and-a-half hours.” And young people are like, “I have no attention span and I have no money.” Well, then you don’t get to come to the theater. Building a space that caters to a modern audience gives us the chance to [cultivate] new audience-goers, and invest in them so that they develop the lifelong habit of going to the movie theater, or any theater.
How can you reinvent the experience, so that a modern person is like, I want to choose to do this? Amongst all my other costs, I want to watch short films. That means giving people more choice, more flexibility. The model for Shorts Movie Theater is that the movies will be programmed individually, not in a block. People can go in and out and see one movie, have a drink at the bar, go and see two more. You’ll pay for everything at the end: when you come, you’ll start a tab. You’ll get this ticket card that has all the movies we’re playing, and the usher will stamp the movie when you go in.
How did you develop this philosophy, which is super compelling to me, of what movie theaters and theater spaces in general need to do in this moment to survive? Are there any models you’ve drawn inspiration from?
My biggest inspiration, and my model for this, is my mom’s museum — she runs a children’s museum in Connecticut called Kidcity. She started it because she had two kids, she had nothing going on with her career, and she needed a place to feel like there was somewhere she could go and actually experience being a good parent. So she created this children’s museum out of her imagination and need for it, and it’s the most amazing place. It’s artistic and beautiful and creative. But the most important thing is that Kidcity is a nonprofit, and it’s the only museum of its kind in the whole country that operates off of its ticket sales.
“GORTS” drew a core group of Neighborhood Film Festival members, as well as friends, short film enthusiasts, and interested passersby.
They don’t take donations. They’re not grant funded. They are able to stay open because their customer pays a ticket, and they basically operate like a business. They are mission-based, but my mom has always instilled in me that the person you take money from is your customer. If you take your money from your donor and that is how your business stays open, then that is the person who you’re serving.
It’s insane how many people make short films and they’ve seen, like, two of them — and I’m one of those people. I made a short film having probably watched one before. Then you watch all these shorts and wonder, why are they all making the same mistakes? It’s because you don’t watch short films, so you don’t know that everybody makes the same mistakes about these cliche moments. There’s economic value to be made here, and that’s really important to me. Not the money side, but the idea that [this venue] could be connected to the industry and connected to people’s lives.
Any final thoughts?
I see Shorts Movie Theater as a play, basically. It’s people going into a shared space, experiencing something, and leaving. How can we craft their emotional arc so that they walk away thinking, “Oh my God, I really like my life, I want to be a part of this world, and I want to keep being engaged?”
Want to learn more? Visit https://www.shortsmovietheater.com to sign up for the project’s mailing list, and to find info about the next pop-up.
Perfume and synths: an unlikely duo, or a match made in heaven?
Just ask Clément Mercet and Ugo Charron, better known as the electronic group Cosmic Gardens, whose calling cards are exactly that. Curious Brooklynites will have plenty of opportunities: the pair are launching a Greenpoint residency, during which they will be performing their signature show once per month.
When Mercet and Charron first met in 2019, the former was in Williamsburg working in advertising and the latter was based out of Bushwick pursuing a career in the fragrance business. But a mutual friend said they would connect over a shared interest: music.
Soon after meeting, the new comrades formed Cosmic Gardens, a band initially built around adaptations of Mercet’s solo material. “We had a weekend with friends,” recalled Mercet, “and we brought our guitars. That was how it started, [with] more acoustic, melancholic ballads.”
Before long, however, they had shifted to a more ambitious project that would unify their common passions — electronica, scents, and the environment — under one umbrella, a subgenre they call “organic indietronica.”
The results speak for themselves: since they began touring several years ago, Cosmic Gardens has performed sold-out shows everywhere from Lincoln Center to Dubai, drawing concertgoers with the promise of a “multi-sensorial” experience.
The show is structured as a three-part journey ushering the audience from the sea, to the forest, and ultimately to outer space. Charron’s perfumes mimic each biome — salty, earthy, and ethereal — and a sequence of original visuals sets the scene.
Cosmic Gardens staged their first installment of the residency last weekend, at Loft Story on Manhattan Ave. They were joined by two additional DJs: Sajh, originally hailing from Paris, and Ÿas, whose repertoire blends elements from the idioms of French electronica, Moroccan music, and Chicago house. Attendees were able to avail themselves of cocktails specially tailored to the tripartite themes of the show.
Though Mercet and Charron have their performance down to a science by now, there are still venue-specific technical issues to work out. One particularly tricky detail is ensuring that the perfumes diffuse throughout the space, which Charran — who apprenticed under a master perfumer for three years — said he was not taught in his master’s program. Instead, he’s had to optimize it through trial and error.
“My family is not at all from the perfume industry,” noted Charron, “but I come from Sancerre. I remember my father would have me smell the wine — not tasting too early! — so that definitely could be an influence.”
On the music side, Mercet attributed his passion to experimentation. “It has always been a fight between doing some regular job and getting money, and spending time creating music,” he said. “My father is a musician, but my parents never pushed my brother and me to do any music. So we learned on our own, and we had the same band: he was the singer, I was the drummer.”
While the group demurred when asked whether their show was motivated by an ecological ethic, Mercet does hope that it inspires audience members to reflect on their relationship to nature: ”It’s a matter of questioning life on Earth.”
“This is more than just a visual, olfactory and auditory journey,” their website explains, “it is an introspective one as well. It will awaken your senses and make you feel connected to your roots.”
The next show will be on Thursday, May 22, at Loft Story again (748 Manhattan Ave). You can find more info at cosmicgardens.com.
If the beautiful, new sweeping waterfront space of Malt Drive Park wasn’t enough to entice locals for its grand opening block party on Saturday, November 16, the heaps of free oysters, caprese salad, tiramisu, chocolate fondue, and an endless well of craft beer and Prosecco were thrown in to sweeten the deal. Upwards of 300 attendees mingled over their drinks and snacks, shimmied to the live music, and explored the new park all afternoon.
“Celebrating the ribbon-cutting here at Malt Drive Park shows the power of our community,” said Julie Won, a New York City council member for District 26, which covers the western Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside. “This is also a celebration of the development of the entire Hunter’s Point South Park where we have new public amenities to enjoy,” Won added.
Located on a brand new block in Hunter’s Point South, Malt Drive Park features spacious sidewalks and winding waterfront paths with seating areas, a playground and a dog park, and an open lawn with picnic spaces and views of the water. Malt Drive Park was created by the real estate development company TF Cornerstone (TFC), which has its two newest luxury residential buildings, 2-20 and 2-21Malt Drive, flanking the space.
“As someone who was born and raised in Queens, I’m really proud to be here with you today for the opening of Malt Drive Park,” said New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, addressing the crowd. “I’ve seen this neighborhood grow and thrive, and I think it represents the best of us in New York City, showing that through public and private partnerships we can have greenspace and public amenities, and a high quality of life.”
Featured Speakers at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Edjo Wheeler, Executive Director of CultureLab; Julie Won, New York City council member for District 26; John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning; Kristen Gonzalez, New York State Senator; Kate Orff, founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE / Credit: Nicholas Gordon
John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning, echoed the praise for the public and private partnership, noting that Malt Drive Park is unique for East River waterfront parks in being developed by a private company on private land.
“The park shows what good zoning can inspire a private developer to do,”McMillan said. “We like to think we’ve been part of the growth and evolution of this community and of the astonishing civic and public character that has taken root in this part of Long Island City.”
Also astonishing is the transformation of the real estate along Newtown Creek in Long Island City.
“When we talk about Newtown Creek, on both sides, Brooklyn and Queens, what we’re doing is taking a legacy of barren land and polluted spaces, or inaccessible waterfront, and creating something new and beautiful to give us the better life that we here in Queens deserve,” Senator Gonzalez said.
While there seemed to be little doubt about the beauty and usefulness of the new park, some attendees expressed skepticism about the nature of Long Island City’s rapid growth.
“The so-called affordable apartments being presented here, to me it’s baffling,” said a member of a local community group and a long-time resident of Long Island City who asked to remain anonymous. “If I lost my current living situation, I’d be priced-out of Long Island City, which is unfortunate because we moved here many years ago because it was so affordable.”
On the TFC website, the new Malt Drive studios are listed at $3,760.
Malt Drive’s 1,386 new residences brings TFC’s total in Hunter’s Point South to over 5,000 units across several properties.
Lisa Goren, a member of the Long Island City Coalition and a board member of the Hunter’s Point Community Coalition, questioned whether Long Island City’s unfettered growth has preceded a comprehensive management and services plan.
“All of the things that should come with upzoning where you have a tremendous number of new units built are being dealt with after the fact,” Goren said in a phone interview, acknowledging that she and her coalitions have had some difficult conversations with the developers. “When you build, it needs to be part of a comprehensive resiliency plan in the face of climate risk, so that the neighborhood is sustainable, not just a plan protecting particular buildings.”
Goren said that through community engagement events and ideas-sharing sessions with locals she and her teams have come up with vision plans for equitable development, resiliency, and sustainability. Their vision plan for Hunter’s Point North is available at hunterspoint-north.com.
Malt Drive Park features a dog park, playground, paths with seating and waterfront views, and a lawn with picnic areas / Credit: Nicholas Gordon
Named after the site’s history as a sugar cane processing plant turned beer distribution facility, Malt Drive Park expands park space from Hunter’s Point South Park by over three acres, adding roughly 700 feet of public access along the shoreline.
Kate Orff, the founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE which collaborated with TFC for Malt Drive Park, said that the ecology and legacy of the waterfront’s importance as the site where the East River meets the mouth of Newtown Creek was at the forefront of their design.
“With a focus on resilience, we created a sloping grade, sculpting the ground plane in a way that protects the building and brings you down closer to the water,” Orff said. “We wanted the idea of a living shoreline pulling all the way up to the buildings’ edge, and then carving pockets of open space out of that so you could really experience the feeling of being on the edge of the natural creek system.”
In their collaboration with SCAPE, TFC also prioritized the development of a greener waterfront by taking measures to stabilize the shoreline from erosion and protect marine life, as reported by the New York Real Estate Journal.
The Moving Dance Company performing at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Payton, Jaylon, and Nika Credit: Nicholas Gordon
Young couples, families with strollers, and people walking their dogs passed through the new park as the last musical act finished up and the sun began to set. Earlier in the day, Council Member Won had made an appeal to them.
“All of this development continues to create an infrastructure and an entire knit community, so what we’re saying to you is that we want you to stay and we want to see your family start here and grow here,” Won said. “We want this to be a place that you call home long-term.”
One of the most influential craft markets in the country is returning to Brooklyn this weekend, drawing over 150 creators from the borough and beyond.
The Renegade Craft fair will be setting up shop in ZeroSpace, a venue that straddles Gowanus and downtown Brooklyn, for December 7 and 8. It will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days.
Renegade was founded in 2003 by Susie Daly, an aspiring therapist who began making jewelry after college and created the event’s initial edition in Chicago as a means to sell her work. The first time the market came to Brooklyn, in 2005, it took place in the drained-out pool at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, where customers descended the sloped sides to peer at handmade offerings.
Now in its twenty-first year, and dozens of installments later, Renegade has grown from its humble roots to become an institution — in 2008, Brooklyn Paper was already dubbing it the “preeminent D.I.Y. fair in the world.” And as of this year, casting a historian’s eye on the now-ubiquitous genre of small creators, SFGate described it as “arguably the mother of all contemporary craft fairs.”
Today, Renegade throws events in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, along with summer and winter bonanzas in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. The company expanded to London and Portland, Oregon, but the former proved too logistical because of the distance and the latter simply didn’t catch on as fervently as it did elsewhere. Austin, Texas and Boston were cut due to the pandemic.
Part of what makes the fair such a draw no matter the locale is the careful vetting process for vendors. Renegade’s art director, Madelon Juliano, and her team combed over 600 applications for the upcoming winter fair at ZeroSpace. She said they juried based on quality alone, and had no hesitation including early-career artists alongside seasoned veterans, like long-time Etsy darling Wren Handmade.
The backgrounds of organizers like Daly — accomplished artists in their own rights, but ones who may have taken winding paths — speak to the grit of the participating vendors, many of whom seemed to have conjured a creative livelihood for themselves out of sheer force of will.
Attendees examine patterned tote bags earlier this year, at Renegade’s first of two bi-annual markets in Brooklyn. Photo: Renegade Craft
The Monday before the fair, Kelsie McNair spent the morning making stained-glass martini glasses. “[As Brooklynites,] we live in a place where there aren’t as many windows [being commissioned] as there might be in other parts of the country,” she explained, “because we’re mostly renting apartments.” So as an artist working with glass, she’s had to branch out: other items include languidly colorful forks, frames for mirrors, and even album art for the singer Jake Wesley Rogers.
McNair, originally from Virginia, started a vintage store out of college, at age 22. “I learned so much about small business, and about trying to be creative when you’re also trying to pay the bills. How do I find my joyful experience in the vast landscape of all the minutiae that the processing of owning a store brings?” After four years, she closed the shop and embarked on a range of other creative endeavors — photography, a job at a florist — before a friend recommended a glass residency program.
At first, it was “just something to do.” McNair had just wrapped her time as a shop owner, which she felt was “the best thing I was ever going to do,” and was feeling burnt out. But this residency, and the medium of glass, offered a way forward. “It sharpened my understanding of what kind of work I want to always have in my life,” she reflected.
McNair eventually landed a gig as a social media manager for Renegade, and began vending her own pieces in 2021.
The experience has been “wonderful” so far, she said. But she was sober about the acrobatics that creators must perform to remain marketable without compromising their personal style or message.
“We’re all in our own different challenging bubbles,” she said, “because we’re creating a path for ourselves that are uniquely ours. We are all looking for our own objects that work within the dialogue of the buyer or of the consumer or the customer, and we’re also constantly having to work to stay true to ourselves and to our brand.”
Similar themes resonated with illustrator Daili Shang, though her route to Renegade differed wildly from that of McNair.
Shang left China to study physics in a PhD program at UCLA, specializing in cancer treatment — much of her work centered on CAT scans and MRIs, she said. But she’d never thought of herself as a science person, and “didn’t really feel passion for it.”
When the pandemic struck, Shang found herself coding all day from home. It was miserable, yet it also offered a chance to reconsider her career. “I was just wondering about what I liked to do before [science],” she said, “what would bring me joy? And drawing is one of those things.”
The only issue? The last time Shang had picked up art supplies was in elementary school. Undeterred, she began to teach herself to draw — in her 30s, she wryly observed — by taking every online class she could find. Despite the difficulty of finding her own style, the pressure was manageable, because she had taken the leap and left physics for a new job, as a store manager for the high-end biking company Specialized.
Her first Renegade market was in Los Angeles in the spring of 2022, while still working at the bike shop. Initially, she focused on selling small stickers, which often incorporated the motifs of cats, bicycles, and self-help adjacent puns. But the margins were too slim when she decided to switch to art full-time, and she also began to have qualms about the stickers’ environmental footprint.
Serendipitously, Shang stumbled across linocut printing, her current medium of choice, though she is beginning to shift again towards acrylic painting. The cats are still there, but they’ve grown more whimsical, and the colors are bolder. And though cancer research, bikes, and illustration may seem impossibly disparate, Shang was adamant that the twists and turns were part of her work’s appeal.
A vendor from Renegade’s fair at McCarren Park in 2006, its second year in the borough. Photo: Renegade Craft
“What I want to offer the public is not just my art,” she said. “I want to offer them my story. Then they can also prioritize happiness and reflect on what they really want in life, and then live a happy life. Not everyone has to live a life they don’t want to be because they’re supposed to live a certain way.”
Juliano emphasized that the possibility of forming personal connections with the artists is one reason why Renegade has been so successful, enduring for over two decades.
In that vein, she was thoughtful about the unavoidable context for the fair, given its timing: Black Friday. On the one hand, she noted that many of the vendors were relying on the event to make their yearly budgets even out, and was candid about the imperative to sell items. On the other, she viewed the economy of independent creators that Renegade has fostered as an alternative to a more wasteful commercialism.
“Because of how long I’ve been working at Renegade, buying from small businesses has become a habit,” Juliano explained. “And I think something so cool about continuing to support things like Renegade and artists that participate in them is that once you keep doing it, you really can’t go back to buying stuff that you know is going right to the landfill, or you know isn’t going to last, or is so trendy that you feel like it’s not going to stick around your closet anymore.”
In a hard fought, physical match that appeared to be ending in a stalemate, DC Power FC eked out a 1-0 victory in the 98th minute of stoppage time on a BKFC own goal. It wasn’t the prettiest victory, but DC Power FC got the job done for their first win of the inaugural USL Super League season. In a league of eight clubs, BKFC (3-1-2) is currently in third place, and DC Power FC (1-3-4) is ranked seventh. Approximately 300 hundred fans attended the match on Friday, October 11, at Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium.
The match served a higher purpose as the “Pink Game for Breast Cancer Awareness,” a partnership between Brooklyn Football Club and the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. As stated in the press release, “Making Strides is a nationwide movement that unites communities to end breast cancer by celebrating courage and hope.” BKFC had the signature pink of Making Strides added to their jerseys for the match in a show of solidarity with the breast cancer survivors in attendance who were also wearing the pink t-shirts of the partnership.
“We’re really grateful to be able to honor these women who have survived breast cancer,” said BKFC midfielder Mackenzie “Mack” Pluck. “We want to thank everyone who came out tonight. We’re really blessed to have our fan base here in New York.”
Local breast cancer survivors Charmaine Deshong, Judith Hinds, and Naita Semaj-Williams attended the match together and with their family members.
Hinds said she enjoyed the match and appreciated the cause. “It’s women supporting women,” Hinds said. “We value their support in helping raise awareness in the fight against breast cancer, and it’s great to support a women’s soccer team from Brooklyn.”
Semaj-Williams brought her 7-year old daughter, Adara, who’s also a soccer player, to the match to witness the level of grit and skill in the women’s pro game.
“People are always telling little girls to be nice and gentle, but they can be athletic and tough too. You can see that with this women’s soccer team,” Semaj-Williams said.
BKFC midfielder Mackenzie “Mack” Pluck controls the ball against DC Power FC Credit: Azra Sheikh
If the teams on the pitch had comparable possession of the ball throughout the match, it was BKFC who delivered the more exhilarating goal-scoring chances, particularly in the closing minutes of both halves.
In the 43rd minute, BKFC midfielder Sam Kroeger found forward Isabel Cox on the far post with a cross from the left corner of the box. Cox connected on a volley that went just wide of goal.
A minute later Pluck fed forward Mackenzie George with a nice pass through traffic into the box. George dribbled past her defender and created space for a solid strike that sailed just over the crossbar.
With a new squad and a new coach in a new league,BKFC is still experimenting with player rotations in the young season. BKFC head coach Jessica Silva noted that pre-match plans for player substitutions often shift based on the flow of the game.
“We have a deep squad, and we have a lot of ladies that are capable of stepping in,” Silva said. “We saw it today. Players stepped in and made a difference. Sam Rosette came in on a position she hasn’t trained at once and made a difference there. So I’m very comfortable rotating my players.”
If Rosette was playing a new position up front for BKFC, she did well to position herself for quality scoring opportunities as a substitute in the second half.
In the 88th minute, BKFC full-back Leah Scarpelli lofted a deep cross from the left wing perfectly placed in the box for an on-the-run Rosette who volleyed a shot in mid-stride that got past the keeper but knocked off the far post.
In BKFC’s last best chance, Rosette carried the ball into the box on the right side and faced a 50/50 conundrum that every attacking player confronts at some point: to take the shot one’s self from a good look albeit a reduced angle, or lay the ball off across the box for an oncoming teammate to have the open shot. Rosette opted for the latter on this occasion and the score remained 0-0.
The trouble came for BKFC on a DC Power corner kick, when what appeared to be mixed signals between players on a clearance at the near post led to the own goal.
“That’s just football, sometimes,” Rosette said, on the gut-wrenching loss. “We created some great opportunities, but sometimes that’s just how the game lands. We’re going to regroup for the next match and go in with confidence, knowing that we played well today and just didn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”
Players from BKFC and DC Power FC go airborne challenging for the ball on a corner kick Credit: Nicholas Gordon
Silva said the disappointing loss is salvaged by the strong overall effort she saw from her club.
“I felt like we deserved better today. Our ladies definitely put in quite the performance,” Silva said. “I’m really proud of them, and we’re going to build off of this.” Silva added that it was a great start for the team’s run of seven matches to come.
DC Power FC will also look to build on their first win in what has been a frustrating string of draws and losses to start the season.
“It means everything for us to get our first win tonight,” said Claire Constant, center-back for DC Power FC. “We’ve been working so hard for months and our coach has given us the plan. Now we have the belief that we can win.”
Despite the losing effort, the game meant everything to BKFC too in helping raise awareness for the cause.
“This game was so important to us as women,” said Allison Pantuso, BKFC center-back. “You know so many women that have been through breast cancer and fought against it, so we’re always really proud to be able to wear pink.”
Christian Orellana, the development manager of Making Strides of Brooklyn, said the “Pink Game for Breast Cancer Awareness” was a great lead up to the annual 3-mile walk on the Coney Island boardwalk to honor breast cancer survivors on Sunday, October 27 at 8a.m.
“Every year we get about ten thousand people who come out for the walk to support breast cancer survivors,” Orellana said, noting that Making Strides has a “natural relationship” with BKFC and the local minor league baseball club, the Brooklyn Cyclones, as their post-walk festival area is located in the parking lot of Maimonides Park, the teams’ home field.
“Hearing so many stories of breast cancer survivors over the years inspires me to do what I can to support them,” Orellana said.
Thousands of people gathered on Tuesday evening, Oct. 1 to celebrate the opening of Domino Square, the newest addition to Domino Park in Williamsburg. The event was free to attend and featured a live DJ, food from Roberta’s Pizza, empanadas from Melanio, ice cream from Oddfellows, and drinks from Other Half Brewery. There was also a selection of activities for children from A Rosie Day. “I know it was a long work in progress and to finally see it become reality is really a wonderful thing,” said Senator Julia Salazar about the new space. “I am privileged to get to represent this beautiful place in the 18th Senate District.”
The public plaza has an egg-shaped concrete center featuring tiered seating along one side with space for vendors underneath. There is additional seating in the opposite corner surrounded by raised garden beds. Above the central area is a canopy for shade during the day and hanging lights for the evening.
It also features a scenic overlook with views of the Manhattan skyline and Williamsburg Bridge. “The only downside is I know there’s going to be less parking, but it’s fine,” said Crystal Ramirez, a Williamsburg resident. “It’s a nice, walkable neighborhood, so I enjoy it.” The space is now open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and will host a variety of events like farmer’s markets, outdoor movie screenings, and graduation ceremonies for local schools. The concrete center will be converted into an ice-skating rink in November. Also, a salsa night with over 800 attendees was already hosted in September, according to a published report.
Some residents of Williamsburg who attended the opening celebration said they look forward to more family-oriented, community-building, and cultural events at the venue.
The acre of land is located next to The Refinery at Domino Sugar Factory, a historic building that was reopened as office spaces last fall and constructed by the same developers, Two Trees Management. The developers also constructed the rest of Domino Park, a six-acre waterfront esplanade, and a neighboring residential building, One Domino Square. “There was a big fight over many years over the future of this site,” said the 33rd District City Council Member Lincoln Restler. “We are really lucky that Two Trees came in and for such a bold and visionary plan for this space.” Domino Square was designed by Field Operations, the same architecture firm that worked on the High Line. The company also collaborated with another architecture firm, Studio Cadena.
Two Trees Management purchased the entire Domino site in 2012 for $180 million. The final part of their project to redevelop the area will be another residential building on Kent Avenue. The newest development was initially going to be a 45-story residential building.
“More and more condominiums are not something I like,” said Avi Friedman, a Williamsburg resident. “But it’s nice to see that they can incorporate public spaces.”
Alumnus Stephen Somers ’82 makes remarkable gift for Brooklyn and Long Island programs
BROOKLYN and PATCHOGUE, N.Y. – March 25, 2024 – St. Joseph’s University, New York (SJNY) is pleased to announce that it has received a $1 million gift from alumnus Stephen Somers ’82 to establish endowed student scholarships for the Brooklyn Campus ACES program, as well as the nursing programs on both the Brooklyn and Long Island campuses of St. Joseph’s University, New York.
Through his incredible generosity, the Somers ACES Endowed Scholarship provides $500,000 for student scholarships that will benefit students enrolled in the Brooklyn campus’ ACES program, an intensive reading and writing learning community for high-achieving immigrant students for whom English is a new language.
Similarly, the Somers Endowed Nursing Scholarship provides $500,000 for undergraduate student scholarships for high-need, high-achieving upper level nursing students during their junior and senior years.
“I hope the students who receive these scholarships realize the gift they have been given and reach back to support the University with whatever help they can give,” said Somers. “That may be their time, talent, mentorship or financial gifts. If you have the good fortune to live your dreams like I have, then in turn, you need to pay it forward so others can do the same.”
With a long history of philanthropic giving to St. Joseph’s, these are the fourth and fifth scholarships that Somers’ donations have established for the University, and because these new scholarships are endowed, they will be awarded for generations, benefitting countless students.
“This wonderful gift from Steve will have a profound impact on our students, many of whom depend on additional financial support to attend St. Joseph’s,” said Donald R. Boomgaarden, Ph.D., SJNY president. “His continued generosity to his alma mater, and his love for our students, is remarkable. We are very grateful to him for all that he does for St. Joseph’s University, New York.”
Stephen Somers graduated from SJNY’s Brooklyn campus in 1982 with a B.S. in Chemistry and began his career in the flavor and fragrance industry. He went on to earn a master’s degree in analytical chemistry from St. John’s University and purchased Vigon International, Inc., in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Under Somers’ leadership, the company became one of the industry’s fastest growing companies and the leading manufacturer of high-quality flavor and fragrance ingredients. He sold the company in 2021 but remains involved, serving as head of technology. In living out a lifelong dream and his love of baseball, he recently became an ownership partner with the Fenway Sports Group, owners of the Boston Red Sox.
“This gift is a testament to Steve’s belief and commitment to a St. Joseph’s education,” said Rory Shaffer-Walsh, vice president for institutional advancement. “Thanks to his generosity, the University will be able to provide impactful opportunities to students, and we are forever grateful.”
Somers resides in Hackettstown, New Jersey with his wife, Sharon, who also attended SJNY and graduated in 1982.
St. Joseph’s University, New York has been dedicated to providing a diverse population of students in the New York metropolitan area with an affordable education rooted in the liberal arts tradition since 1916. Independent and coeducational, the University provides a strong academic and value-oriented education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, aiming to prepare each student for a life characterized by integrity, intellectual and spiritual values, social responsibility and service. Through its Brooklyn, Long Island and online campuses, the University offers degrees in more than 100 majors, special course offerings and certificates, affiliated and pre-professional programs.
Honorees include Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Greenpointers and Apple Bank
By Oona Milliken
omilliken@queensledger.com
The Greenpoint YMCA held its sixth annual Spirit of Community service awards dinner and auction at Giando on the Water on Wednesday Oct. 4 to celebrate important community leaders within the neighborhood. The honorees at the event included Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Apple Bank’s Maureen Douglas, Executive Vice President, Debbie Hootam, Vice President, Business Relationship Manager and Monika Nowicka, Assistant Vice President, Branch Manager as well as those of the Greenpointers blog, Julia Moak and her team.
Tatiana Terzouli, Regional Director for Communications, Marketing and Fund Development at the Greenpoint YMCA, said the event was a chance to highlight another year of the YMCA’s goal of making a difference in the community.
“I thought this year’s Greenpoint Y’s ‘Spirit of Community’ Service Awards Dinner was another success, providing us with a great opportunity to come together, connect with old and new friends, celebrate, and fortify our commitment to another year of making a positive impact on the community we love. The event was filled with camaraderie, inspiration, and a shared sense of purpose as we gear up for another year of giving back,” Terzouli said in an email.
La-Asia Hundley, the co-master of ceremonies, said the honorees were exceptional, not only in their fields of work and passion but also in their commitment to providing for their communities.
View from Giando on the Water. Photo credit: Oona Milliken
“These honorees are not just exceptional leaders, and I will say they are exceptional in their own right, in their own fields, but they are role models for the young people at the Y. Their everyday actions aligned with the core values of the Y: respect, honesty, responsibility and caring. They are driven by a deep passion for serving others,” Hundley said.
Elaine Brodsky, the former co-founder of Citistorage, a Brooklyn-based archival storage and records-management company, the chair of the North Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and keynote speaker at the event, said the YMCA was an important part of her upbringing and wanted to give back to the organization.
“I was a little girl when I learned how to swim at the YMCA upstate in Elmira, New York. The was a central location for all activities back in the day, much as it is in Greenpoint now. We are so fortunate to have such a strong culture of diversity, acceptance, and solidarity in our neighborhood,” Brodsky said.
Elaine Brodsky speaking at the event. Photo credit: Oona Milliken
Terzuoli said it was important to hold community events in order to both recognize community members, bring people in the community together as well and inspire others to dedicate some of their time to service and helping others.
“First, it makes people feel valued and appreciated for the good things they do in our community. Recognizing and celebrating influential individuals acknowledges their efforts and motivates them to continue their support and involvement,” Terzouli said in an email. “Additionally, recognizing influential community members at these events can serve as an inspiration to others. When people see others getting involved with organizations like the YMCA, it encourages them to become actively engaged, volunteer, and contribute to causes they are passionate about, not just the Y. This means more support for essential community programs and services.”
Disclaimer: Walter Sanchez is a board member of the Greenpoint YMCA
A program that helps connect justice-involved people with stable jobs welcomed its most recent graduating class, which will work to maintain the Citi Bike fleet all across New York City, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Friday.
The program, called Bike Path, teaches participants how to maintain bikes and become certified bike mechanics in just five weeks, providing them with a direct path to employment afterward.
“This is a lifeline for me, personally,” David Bonet, one of the recent graduates, said. “I’ve been going through a lot of health issues and I’ve been out of work for some time. My daughter passed away in 2019 so I haven’t been fully there, but I’ve been looking to go back to the workforce for some time and this is allowing me to do so.”
The group of 18 graduates began working at their new jobs on Monday, according to Bike New York community outreach manager Jeremy Lockett. Lockett said that graduates spend four days per week learning in the five-week course, and that the positions they are going into are union jobs that pay weekly.
“This can be one of the best workforce development programs for those that are coming back from primarily being formerly incarcerated, and it’s been a success so far,” Lockett said. “It’s an incredible program, and we just want to expand it.”
The Bike Path program came from a 2019 partnership between One Community, an organization working against inequality in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, and Bike New York, which looks to increase access to biking and ridership across New York City. The two groups created an intensive bike mechanic training program which would help formerly incarcerated people find stable employment.
Justin Vega, another graduate of the program, said he found out about it through a friend of his, and that he enjoyed learning about the importance of different bike parts and getting to know the others in his class.
“I can’t wait to get started on this,” Vega said. “I see where I can do good as much as the next person, just like fixing an apartment, fixing a bike — everybody uses a bike everyday. For me to fix something and be proud of knowing that I fixed that, and somebody is going to ride it safely, that’s my biggest goal.”
More recently, Bike Path has educated participants on how to repair and maintain the Citi Bike fleet in the city. The program partnered with the organization that oversees the maintenance of these bikes — Motivate — to allow participants to work on the Citi Bike maintenance team once they graduate.
Ben Goodman, an instructor in the program, said that this is his favorite group of students in his 15 years of teaching people how to fix bikes.
“This is the first program I’ve ever taught that is directly related to an employment program,” Goodman said. “I’ve done a lot of teaching for high school students and some adult programming, but it’s just a thing they do in the summer, just for the fun of learning. This is great because there’s an end goal that’s more than just the education, its actual opportunities for them. That’s the best.”
In their new jobs, graduates start with pay at $23.25 per hour, and are eligible to work full time and overtime, and they are eligible to become union members after 30 days, Lockett said in an email. Lockett also said that there are roughly 600 bike mechanics employed at Motivate, which is the largest bikeshare company in the United States. He added that there have been around 200 graduates of the program since 2020, and of the 55 that graduated this year, 46 are hired.
The union representing Citi Bike mechanics, Transportation Workers Union Local 100, negotiated the first union contract in the country for bikeshare workers in 2015, securing wage increases and paid parental leave, vacation time and holidays for union members.
Graduate Rasheem Benjamin said he is looking forward to working for Motivate, and also hopes to learn more about the inner workings of electric bikes in the future. He said that most of the graduates in his class will be on the same work shift, so they’ll continue to see each other in their jobs.
“Day by day I’ve learned something new, and by now I feel like I can make an entire bike with my eyes closed,” Benjamin said. “I very much would like to put other people on, try to let them know about this program. In five weeks you can literally learn a skill, something that you can utilize anywhere, not in just New York City. You can go somewhere else and fix your child’s bike. That feeling, to be able to use my hands and craft something, is something great — it’s powerful.”
