BUSHWICK — For the past two decades, 236 Troutman Street has been a reliable stop on the Bushwick nightlife circuit. In the beginning there was Tandem, an early hipster outpost that opened in 2007 and rose to local fame as the neighborhood’s “best hook-up bar” before closing in 2015. Then another watering hole, the island-themed Mad Tropical, took up the baton from 2017 until late last year.
Now the beloved location, a warren of side-doors with a sizable back room, is getting something indisputably new: Shorts Movie Theater, a nonprofit, 40-seat cinema that will exclusively show short films — the first in the world, in fact, based on semi-exhaustive Googling.
Viewers stamp a punch card when they arrive, and pay when they leave based on how many movies they’ve seen. The pricing ranges from $1 for mini-offerings of one to two minutes, to $9 for anything over 31 minutes long.
Karma Masselli conceived of the project in August 2023, after encountering a short film director at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival in Vermont. “There should be a theater for short films,” she thought in passing, but soon forgot about the idea. It was only when Masselli returned to the festival the next year and met someone else from the industry — a woman who bluntly told her that “people don’t watch short films” — that the idea took hold.
Was there really no audience for short films? Recent studies suggest that the average American watches a combination of Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Youtube for more than two hours each day, which amounts to 30 days of continuous viewing per year. This rapid-fire format was responding to a real need, Masselli believed, and she set about building a brick-and-mortar space that could channel those impulses, heavily monetized on social media platforms through cynical “attention fracking,” towards better ends.
Masselli organized a string of pop-up screenings across Brooklyn last summer as a proof-of-concept, and the results were promising. In June, attendees crowded into a makeshift theater in the bowels of Threes Brewing, a bar in Gowanus, for a Pride-themed lineup of short films. A second gathering followed later that month; in November, Shorts Movie Theater won a $5,000 grant from the Brooklyn Public Library, helping to fuel a partnership with Art House New York and more sold-out events through this spring.
As fun as that period was, Masselli is eager to see her original plan come to fruition. “The danger of doing something besides the goal is that we do it well, and people say, ‘Just do that!’” she explained. “There are so many incredible screening series, festivals, and one-offs every night of the week for short films. The one thing that’s missing is the physical space.”
Last Friday, as New Yorkers began battening down the hatches for the impending nor’easter, Masselli and collaborator Jennifer Allen sat contemplating the layout of the lobby, set to be a bar and café called The Suggestion Box, under the washed-out glow of a skylight.
Patrons from the Tandem days will recognize the countertop, rescued from an Elks Lodge in Elmhurst where Ella Fitzgerald used to sing, and the stained-glass doors, made of repurposed scrap from Frank Gehry’s IAC building in Chelsea. But the faux-jungle foliage of Mad Tropical is gone, replaced with illustrated details of characters holding smartphones — a Tibetan monk, Masselli and her older sister, and Connor Storrie of “Heated Rivalry” as a gladiator — courtesy of local artist Pilar Herrera-Land.
Shorts Movie Theater is looking to carve a niche for itself between 10-second videos and feature films, and the decor reflects its rich but uncertain relationships with both extremes. Take Herrera-Land’s work: Although Masselli wanted to make an explicit visual link between social media and short films, she also considered banning visitors from using their phones — short films’ main competition — before her team convinced her otherwise.
“The goal is to create a space that is so enticing that people naturally don’t pull out their phones,” said Allen. “Sometimes when I enter a place that’s like, ‘No phones,’ it can create a barrier for entry.”
“It’s just not the relationship we want to have with our audience,” agreed Masselli.
If Shorts Movie Theater aims to keep social media at a reasonable arm’s length, it actively seeks out resonances with the heyday of film culture. The lobby will have a custom split-flap board, the kind that greeted travelers at train stations in the 1950s, but displaying showtimes rather than arrivals and departures. And Masselli plans to revive the even older, 1910s-era tradition of movie theaters showing newsreels, too, with a twist — once per week, she hopes to invite local journalists to give a 10-minute recap of citywide news.
“There’s this sense that we’re at the end of humanity. We’ve totally messed up, and we’ve ruined what was an ongoing thread,” noted Masselli. “But one hundred years ago it was the rise of fascism, it was economic collapse, and it was short films in movie theaters. We’re not that different now.”
While some movie theaters sell the chance to step outside of time, Shorts emphasizes its passage. A sun crosses over the bar on a mechanical track; in the back, twelve panels painted by Herrera-Land depict dreamlike scenes from each month, accentuating the feeling of a 1930s jewel box theater. (A review of last year’s Gowanus pop-up in the magazine Copy described the aesthetic as a “worn-in saloon transformed into an idyllic summer-camp movie night under the stars.”)
The space is ultimately in service of a mission. From the outset, Masselli was committed to establishing Shorts as a nonprofit, funded by a combination of donations, grants, and ticket sales — an arrangement that allows her team to focus on providing a tonic to an age of disaffection and disconnection.
“I think that the negativity around diversity is a response to an existential fear that we don’t have enough resources for all of us. That we have no ability to coexist, so the more people there are, the more ways there are to kill each other,” said Masselli. “But imagine if you could frame diversity and the size of the world as a positive, and say that for as many people as there are, there are just as many solutions, stories, and parallels.”
“It’s crazy when you see a short film and you’re like, I’ve never heard this language before, or I didn’t know this country existed,” she added. “And then it’s exciting when you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is my sense of humor. This is my sense of beauty.’”
Shorts Movie Theater is scheduled to open in late October. For more information and updates about the exact date, visit shortsmovietheater.com.
Debra Bender is among the presumably shrinking crowd of Greenpointers to have given birth in the Greenpoint Hospital.
She had her oldest son there, before the long-dilapidated facility closed in 1982. Now, more than 40 years later, the 61-year resident of the nearby Cooper Park Houses is fighting to secure the former hospital’s future as a 557-unit affordable housing hub.
On Thursday, September 17, Bender and about two dozen Greenpointers gathered outside the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) headquarters in the Financial District to demand that the agency vacate the Greenpoint Hospital site to make way for a long-planned affordable senior housing.
At issue is the City’s abrupt decision to relocate 200 single homeless men from the former shelter at the old Bellevue Hospital on 30th St. in Manhattan — which the Mamdani Administration closed in March — to a temporary intake center at the former hospital, a move that interrupts plans from St. Nicks Alliance and Hudson Companies to redevelop the site as Kingsland Commons, a sprawling complex set to include deeply affordable housing, senior housing, as well as a homeless shelter.
Speaking to the Brooklyn Star, Bender was clear that she and the other protesters are not against homeless shelters— the site already hosts a 200-bed facility for unhoused single men. It’s the City’s lack of communication with the Greenpoint community, and the fact that the intake shelter is preventing developers from moving forward with the senior housing development, that Bender and her neighbors are protesting.
The crucial fourth phase of the Kingsland Commons project — housing specifically for Greenpoint’s seniors — cannot move forward until DHS vacates the site.
“We have nothing against people being homeless because we are one step away from being homeless ourselves,” Bender said. “We want affordable housing. We need affordable housing, especially for our seniors.”
The intake shelter at Greenpoint Hospital was always meant to be temporary, a DHS spokesperson said, and joins several locations throughout the city that are temporarily hosting the men once housed at Bellevue. And with the hospital site having been used as a Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter in the past, it was a natural choice, the spokesperson added.
“Following the closure of the 30th Street Intake Shelter, DHS had to address an urgent need for assessment beds so we could continue to connect New Yorkers to appropriate shelter placements,” the DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Brooklyn Star.
“As such, we utilized every resource at our disposal — including sites that previously served as DHS facilities and remained under our control — to meet this operational need.”
The spokesperson did not say how long DHS planned to keep the men at Kingsland Commons.
But for the Greenpointers protesting Thursday, the move represents both a betrayal on the City’s part and an obstacle to the much-needed affordable senior housing slated for development on the site. Phase Two of the Kingsland Commons project is set to complete in early 2027, said St. Nicks Alliance Director of Affordable Housing Policy and Advocacy Frank Lang, with the lottery for its 311 units of 30-80 AMI affordable housing set to open in the coming weeks. But it’s the project’s final phase — which involves the demolition of a portion of the Greenpoint Hospital to make way for 135 units of multifamily housing and 109 units of affordable senior housing, approved by the City in 2021 — that cannot move forward until DHS vacates the site.
Protesters criticized the department’s apparent failure to notify St Nicks Alliance and engage with community stakeholders regarding its decision to move into the site.
It was only after Bellevue’s closure, when a St Nicks Alliance staffer read about the City’s plans to move into the Kingsland Commons site in a news article, did the community learn of DHS’ plans.
”They did not engage us in any of these conversations,” said William Vega, who sits on Brooklyn’s Community Board 1, on Thursday. ”The promises that they made to the community, they broke.”
About 30 minutes into Thursday’s rally, State Senator Julia Salazar showed up to address the crowd, taking care not to alienate the DHS workers in the building above.
“I deeply appreciate the work that the public servants at DHS do, and they deserve and should have a more suitable location to do intake to serve constituents who are currently experiencing homelessness,” Salazar said.
She continued: “It’s not appropriate for them to endlessly use this site for that purpose, especially because it further delays this extremely important project that will benefit all of our communities.”
It’s this last point that drew the most ire from Greenpointers Thursday. Like other Brooklyn neighborhoods, Greenpoint faces a major shortage of affordable housing for its elderly population. Much of the new housing going up along the neighborhood’s waterfront is either luxury housing or affordable housing for single adults, meaning many of Greenpoint’s seniors are either forced into cramped arrangements with their younger family members, or leave the neighborhood entirely.
With such urgent need for senior housing, the community simply cannot afford a delay to the Kingsland Commons project, the protester argued.
“In their last chapter, what are they doing?” said Vega. “They’re sharing the bedroom with their grandchildren, having to travel to have their own apartment in the last chapter of life.”
St. Nicks Alliance, which has provided elder care services in North Brooklyn since the 1980s, has several affordable housing projects for seniors in development around Greenpoint and Williamsburg. According to Lang, these developments already have long waitlists.
“That’s the population that’s lived in the community for generations that’s getting priced out,” Lang added. “They can’t stay in the community.”
Bender, who lives with her 37-year-old, wheelchair-bound son, says she’s witnessed this displacement first-hand in her elderly mother, who moved out of Greenpoint years ago and now hardly recognizes the neighborhood she once called home. Without the seniors who remember how things were, Bender said, the neighborhood will lose its collective memory.
“We’ve seen a lot of change.” she said. “My mom, when she visits, she feels like a tourist here. Sometimes I feel like a tourist here as well.”
After scanning Brooklyn and Queens, Poonam Sharma and her husband Anand Parikh still hadn’t found the preschool they dreamed of for their daughter. They envisioned bright and interactive educational spaces, only to hit a wall of windowless basements and endless waitlists, sometimes years long. Most parents would have settled for the least disappointing choice, but Sharma and Parikh did not give in.
Sharma and Parikh founded the Goddard School of Greenpoint, which is set to welcome the first class of approximately 130 students later this year. The school will open jobs for 30 teachers, who will collaborate across the school’s eleven classrooms. Sharma shared that the center, located at 85 Commercial Street, features bright windows, an indoor movement area, and access to multiple playgrounds.
This is the seventh Goddard School location to open in New York City but the first in Brooklyn. Sharma shared that she was drawn to Greenpoint because it is a “vibrant growing neighborhood” with “a ton of young families.” But these families are faced with a severe school seat shortage. In Sharma’s experience, though there are a number of high quality educational institutions in the neighborhood, their small size and prioritization of siblings make it difficult for new families to secure spots at their school of choice.
“The first five years of every child’s life is so important,” Sharma explained. “It really dictates how they’re gonna approach not only learning but social interaction as they get older.” Sharma didn’t grow up in the U.S. Moving here shaped how she understood the importance of these early years of education. “I’m one of three sisters. My older sister and I, frankly, we didn’t have the best foundation for an education. Coming to this country when I was nine, I realized wow I’m a little bit behind, and it took me a while to play catch up.” Sharma especially noticed the difference in her younger sister, who was educated here under a philosophy that incorporated social emotional learning.
This perspective drew Sharma to Goddard’s educational philosophy. Goddard locations across the country follow the signature “Wonder of Learning” curriculum, which allows children’s innate curiosity to drive the learning process. “Kids learn best when they’re really encouraged to explore their natural curiosity,” Sharma expressed. “They don’t do best when a teacher is talking at them or reading a story at them. They have to get involved in their own learning.”
At the core of Goddard’s curriculum is a collection of open ended questions. Each week, students are asked to contemplate a new idea, like “who am I?” and “how does it feel to be a part of something?” This shifts students away from learning that demands they find a “correct” answer, to a model where success looks like 15 different answers in a classroom of 15 students. The goal of this is to transform school into a space where children learn as much from their peers as their teachers. Critical thinking skills, problem-solving, and creativity are traits that Sharma hopes will sprout in this environment.
While every child deserves the opportunity to explore this form of learning, high tuition costs are a barrier to access for many families. The tuition enables the school to provide quality educators, nutritious food, and childcare from 7 a.m.–6 p.m. every school day for no additional charge. While Sharma hopes to expand access in the future, covering start-up costs without compromising the quality of care poses difficulties.
Though financial accessibility is a work in progress, Sharma seeks to incorporate values of diversity, cultural appreciation, and respect into the curriculum. Sharma spoke about how, because she and her husband come from a different background than many people in Brooklyn, they “want all of our kids, their backgrounds, and where their families come from to be celebrated. Kids aren’t born with empathy or kindness. These are qualities that must be taught.” Sharma says this is a huge part of why she is opening up the school. “I want to expose them to different languages, religions, cultures…I want all my kids to see themselves reflected in books, I want my own child to see herself reflected, I want my director’s grandchild to see herself reflected.”
Reviews of Goddard locations in NYC and beyond are not always positive—there are online reviews galore complaining of health hazards, disorganization, dissatisfaction with curriculum, and more. However, these critiques are typically traceable to management at specific locations. Each Goddard School location is an independently-run franchise; the motives and methods of school administrators make all the difference. While there is no way to know yet how the school will operate in practice, Sharma has her heart set on creating a nurturing environment for all students who walk through the doors of the Goddard School of Greenpoint.
Enrollment for the Goddard School of Greenpoint is open now.
On the final Friday evening of February, Greenpointers and visitors alike sought inspiration, intrigue, and evocative conversation at Greenpoint Gallery’s Photos Only Salon Show.
Curated through an open call for submissions, this semi-regular show gives emerging photographers a rare opportunity to publicly celebrate their work in a city known for an impenetrable arts scene. Once-blank walls were transformed into mosaics of prints in an expansive range of styles, sizes, color schemes, moods, and themes. Subjects of the featured photos oscillated from a curious orange bird titled “Andean cock-on-a-rock,” to swerving skid marks on an empty country road titled “Past Mistakes.” A striking set of silver gelatin prints of a college campus, processed using the Mordançage technique, depicted dissolving shadows flowing beyond the frame in billowy veils of ink.
The crowd was as eclectic as the photos: a blend of artists, art-appreciators, and people just looking for something to do on a Friday night. Everyone I approached was eager to converse, including (or perhaps, especially) the photographers behind the photos showcased that evening. I struck up a conversation with a woman who turned out to be the photographer behind a featured collage series of New York City subjects superimposed onto calming rural scenes. The idea for this series emerged from her experience of splitting time between NYC and a rural North Carolina property she acquired through a saga involving a cheap Craigslist car, a golden Ganesha statue, a five-leaf clover, and an unwavering belief in signs from the universe. I also spoke with Tashroom Ahsan, the up-and-coming photographer behind the aforementioned Mordançage works. “I’ve been at this show before as a witness,” he said, “but there’s something remarkable about being a participant. Lending physical presence to my work and seeing others engage with it has given it a life I’d never seen before.”
Many attendees were artists in mediums other than photography. In a pond of twenty- and thirty-somethings, the grey-haired painter Julie effortlessly matched the lively, youthful energy buzzing in the space. She was glad to see emerging artists getting the chance to gain visibility and feedback on their work, reminiscing about how the early days of her practice have shaped the way her artwork looks today. When she was young, she couldn’t afford frames for her paintings so she began a practice of painting artistic borders around her work. Decades have passed. Her frames have grown ever thicker around the page, swallowing more and more of the space available for a central image.
Now her paintings are almost entirely about the frame rather than what fills it. As Julie observed Friday night’s photographs, she pondered the three components of any work of art: the artist, the material, and the unknown. Looking for the element of the unknown within the displayed works framed my experience of the photographs for the remainder of the evening.
I was a few stairs up the flight to the gallery’s upper level when I peered over the railing. A gargantuan stuffed frog stopped me in my tracks. I asked the man standing beside it if he knew what it was for, and he told me he’d made it for a children’s puppet show. Somewhere in the midst of this conversation, he subtly revealed that he was the visionary behind the space, and Shawn James went on to humor all of my subsequent curiosities about the gallery’s origin and evolution.
He shared that this was all possible because John Perry Barlow—whom he identified as “the guy who wrote most of the songs for the Grateful Dead”—bought one of his early paintings for $25K. Gesturing to the painting on the wall beside us, James told me that Barlow had shipped it back to him from his deathbed, along with a note saying James could probably get $50K for it now. Barlow had become a mentor for James throughout his later years. When James asked how he could repay Barlow for everything he’d done to support him, Barlow told James to be to other young artists what Barlow had been to him. From this, Greenpoint Gallery’s mission was born in 2003: to empower emerging artists through classes, lectures, career counseling, and affordable exhibition space.
At the gallery’s information booth, a multi-medium artist currently interning at Greenpoint Gallery expanded on the gallery’s program offerings, including shows and lessons across a variety of popular mediums, communal studio space, and even an artist residency program. The gallery is also always looking for more interns—an invaluable opportunity to learn what happens behind the scenes in gallery spaces and build up experience in the New York art world.
Pete McGuinness left an indelible mark on the neighborhood he loved.
BY GEOFFREY COBB | gcobb91839@Aol.com
Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past
Greenpoint, Brooklyn today is an area of luxury high-rise waterfront properties, pricey, Michelin star restaurants and chic boutiques. Its residents are increasingly Ivy League graduates who live an affluent lifestyle, but not long ago, Greenpoint was the heart of industrial, working-class Brooklyn, an area of blue-collar factory workers and longshoremen, and no one personified working class Greenpoint more than its Irish American political boss Peter J. McGuinness.
A born and raised Greenpointer and former longshoremen, McGuinness represented Greenpoint on the City Council and then ran the area’s political machine from the end of the First World War until his death in 1948, as the last Tammany Hall style ward boss in the Borough’s history. People often said that McGuinness so embodied Greenpoint that it was hard to think of the one without immediately thinking of the other.
On Wednesday, February 25th, I will speak about McGuinness’ local legacy at the Oak and Iron Bar Local History Night, a forum where locals make presentations on aspects of North Brooklyn history. I have presented at the packed bar before and the atmosphere is great because we Greenpointers are really passionate about our community and its long, rich history.
I have written three books on Greenpoint history, including The King of Greenpoint Peter McGuinness: The Amazing Story of Greenpoint’s Most Colorful Character, which I published ten years ago. Though Greenpoint has over three hundred and fifty years of history, no character was as colorful as McGuinness and arguably no one left a greater legacy than Pete whose enduring contributions include playgrounds, the G Train stops, a bridge and the McCarren Park pool, just to name a few.
McGuinness, like the people he represented, grew up facing adversity and working hard. One of eleven children, Pete left school after eighth grade to work in the area’s lumberyards. An amateur boxer and a longshoreman, McGuinness was a powerhouse standing about six feet tall with a barrel chest, huge back and bulging biceps. Though he was a gentleman, he was well able to settle disputes with his fists. Once when six men tried to force him to accept a shipment of rotten lumber, a fistfight ensued, six-on-one. McGuinness knocked three of his opponents out and then lectured the remaining three on business ethics.
Nowadays, American politics is characterized by divisiveness, name calling and acrimony, but McGuinness, a Democrat, displayed a lifelong ability to work with Socialists and Republicans. He defied the Democratic Party and supported his childhood friend Republican John McCrate when he ran for the area’s congressional seat. When Fiorello LaGuardia defeated the Democratic candidate for mayor, McGuinness graciously stated, “The Little Flower is a most splendid gentleman. Under him, we know the poor people of this city will be looked after, irregardless of what may befall. What he done, he done honest and he done good.”
Charney Vladeck, a Socialist alderman from the Lower East Side and an enemy of corrupt Democrats was one of McGuinness warmest admirers. “That Irisher!” Vladeck used to say: “Sometimes he makes me wish I was a Democrat.” McGuinness won Vladeck’s friendship by giving Democratic sponsorship to a number of Socialist resolutions. “Many’s the time,” he said, “I used to say, Cheeny, old pal, if you got something you really want to get through this here board, give it to me, and I’ll make it Irish for you. I figured what the hell, if something was good enough for Cheeny, it was good enough for the other aldermen.”
McGuinness had a legendary sense of humor and there are a number of famous yarns about Pete. One of the funniest relates to Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 visit to Greenpoint as part of his presidential campaign. McGuinness and the future president were touring the area in an open car, and huge crowds lined the streets to greet them. Roosevelt saw Jewish businesses, Polish children dressed in traditional costumes and Italian Americans, but few Irish Americans. Roosevelt inquired about the absence of the Irish and McGuinness somberly told him that most of the area’s Irish were now dead and buried in Calvary Cemetery. A tense silence ensued and Roosevelt thought he said the wrong thing, but suddenly in a loud voice McGuinness retorted, “But don’t you worry Governor Roosevelt, those dead Irish will still turn out for you on election day.”
Though McGuinness had passed away some thirteen years previously, he was still so beloved that when Oakland Street was widened and made into a boulevard, both local Democrats and Republicans agreed it should be named in honor of its legendary political leader. Come out on Wednesday February 25th to hear more about this local legend.
The state approved National Grid’s bid to expand fracked gas, but also ordered it to engage with its staunchest opponent: Greenpoint’s community board.
BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
WILLIAMSBURG — The two groups shuffled in from the cold, unzipping their coats as they settled uneasily into opposite sides of the room.
On Thursday, January 15, representatives for National Grid — which provides energy to nearly 2 million customers in the New York metro area — met with Brooklyn Community Board 1 (CB1) at Swinging Sixties Older Adult Center, the first in-person forum since the state approved the company’s request to expand its fracked gas infrastructure last fall.
But this wasn’t a victory lap. While the approval of its “Long-Term Plan” was a major coup for National Grid, the regulator’s decision included some caveats. First, it noted that a new pipeline project running from New Jersey to the Rockaways, known as NESE, could eventually render National Grid’s 120-acre gas depot along Newtown Creek unnecessary, a boost to locals who have been calling for it to be decommissioned for decades.
Second, the ruling ordered National Grid to engage with CB1 and “take part in its meetings,” as a way for the fossil fuel giant to “hear the community’s concerns and attempt to address [them].”
The exact parameters or duration of that engagement are uncertain, but the upshot on Thursday was clear: National Grid’s emissaries would have to answer questions from residents who have spent thousands of hours trying to shut down its primary foothold in North Brooklyn.
The meeting began with a presentation by MaryBeth Carroll, director of gas scenario planning for National Grid and a lead architect of its Long-Term Plan, who foregrounded the discussion with an overview of the company’s operations throughout New York City. Nearly all of its fracked gas is sourced from the Marcellus Shale in Northern Pennsylvania, she explained, before being carried by pipelines to two storage facilities — one in Holtsville, Long Island, and the other in Greenpoint.
“Do you all acknowledge that Greenpoint residents don’t want this LNG storage in the neighborhood?”
The audience, exclusively composed of local environmental advocates, wasted no time in interrogating Carroll’s high-level summary. One bone of contention during the two-year legal battle over the Long Term Plan was whether the quantity of natural gas stored inside the Greenpoint Energy Center made sense. National Grid claimed that the hulking tanks were a fallback in case the demand for gas spiked far above supply amid an extremely cold spell. But an independent consultant found that those reserves were almost never used — and as one attendee noted, the corporation’s forecasts are based on a hypothetical “design day” in which the average temperature drops to 0º Fahrenheit, something that has not happened in NYC since 1934.
“It has not gotten within 10 degrees of that in the last 15 years,” noted a member of Sane Energy Project, a Greenpoint-based advocacy group that was out in force for the CB1 meeting. “If there’s evidence to show that it should be raised, are you currently working to raise it? Because clearly this is not appropriate design day, and that’s costing all of us who pay bills here a lot of money.”
The presentation next turned to safety protocols. “We want to make sure that everybody who is a customer stays safe, that everybody who is living in the communities around our customers stays safe, and that our employees stay safe,” said Carroll. “It’s just something that we are uncompromising on.”
But the Greenpointers in the crowd shot back with several pointed questions. Kim Fraczek, director of Sane Energy Project, brought up an explosion at the nearby gas depot in 2022 that knocked a worker unconscious, asking why the community board was never informed. (“I’m aware of that incident,” replied Carroll, promising to loop in CB1’s Steve Chesler in the future. “I don’t know the details.”)
Next, Laura Hoffman inquired about the extent of soil pollution at both the depot site and an adjacent Little League field that was opened by National Grid in 1999 as a gift to the community before being closed in 2022 as revelations of contamination came to light. “To my knowledge, the lead that was on the property from previous demolitions was never cleaned up, which was part of the reason why the kids were no longer allowed to use the ball field,” she said. “My grandson was one of the kids that played there. Since you’re talking about the commitment to safety, I want to hear about that.”
Another prominent topic was National Grid’s initiatives to promote non-pipeline alternatives (NPA), a range of measures — such as heat pumps, improved insulation, and managing demand — that limit the need for companies to build more gas infrastructure. Residents noted that National Grid refers many customers to Con Edison’s program rather than investing in one of its own.
“We would be very interested to work with you on that. If you’re considering doing pipe replacements, you can work together with us from the community to organize blocks to do that,” said Fraczek. “The last time you had a community engagement person come to CB1, he told me and a few others that the only thing he does with his job is tell people when to move their cars. I wonder if there could be a better partnership.”
“We’re happy to do it,” said Carroll. “We want to deliver on these things, we just need willing customers.”
The final word, before the National Grid contingent ceded the floor to a representative of an organization working to abolish microplastics, went to fourth-generation local Kevin LaCherra, who refocused the conversation on the Greenpoint Energy Center.
“This community does not want this facility here. It is on some of the most polluted land in North America. It’s 120 acres — you could fit every park in the neighborhood on that facility,” he said. “We’re asked to subsidize it; we’re asked to live next to it. So I do think, with all of this, what I really want to know is do you all acknowledge that Greenpoint residents don’t want this LNG storage in the neighborhood?”
“What I am most interested in going forward is how your planning, as you come back here, is going to reflect what we as residents are asking for,” added LaCherra. “That needs to be a part of this going forward — otherwise, it’s a lot of fancy slides.”
One of the first things that our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani did was to come to Greenpoint and address the controversy surrounding McGuinness Boulevard, the four- lane traffic artery that divides the neighborhood and many local resi- dents. Before we address the present controversy let’s take a look at the history of the boulevard. Once, Mc- Guinness Boulevard was not a four- lane speedway at all/ It was once quaint Oakland Street; a charming cobblestoned street lined by pretty, wood-frame 19th-century homes typical of our historic district.
It is hard to conceive the mindset that wanted to destroy such a lovely street and replace it with a soulless four-lane highway, but in the late 1950s automobiles were seen as the future of transportation and the city was ready to carve up Greenpoint for motorists. Robert Moses, the in- famous power broker, had his sights on our area. Moses, who arguably had the greatest influence on New York’s infrastructure of any person who ever lived, wanted to destroy Oakland Street. The destruction of Oakland Street was only a small piece in the grand scheme of Rob- ert Moses who built the BQE, the Tri-borough Bridge, and the Cross-
Bronx Expressway. Moses wanted a city for motorists and tens of thou- sands of homes across the city fell victim to his projects.
Oakland Street was, sadly, the only north-south street, other than Manhattan Ave. that stretched to Newtown Creek. In the late 1950s the city determined that the rick- ety old Vernon Blvd. Bridge, which Greenpointers called the Manhattan Avenue Bridge, should be replaced. The north end of Oakland Street be- came the logical place to build a new bridge of the creek, and they built the Pulaski Bridge to funnel traffic between the Brooklyn Queens Ex- pressway in Brooklyn and Long Is- land City.
When the new bridge first opened, Oakland Street was widened, but only as far south as Greenpoint Ave- nue – and gas stations to service the heavy car and truck traffic quickly appeared. The narrow section of Oakland Street remaining beyond Greenpoint Avenue survived, but created traffic jams, dooming the quaint cobblestone street and its pretty houses.
All of the houses on the east side of Oakland Street and all the houses from Driggs Ave to the BQE were condemned by the City to create the new grand boulevard. Some residents tried to fight and save their homes, but their utilities were cut off, and they grudgingly accepted com- pensation for their beloved homes. Amazingly though, most people did not protest. They regarded losing their homes and the cobblestoned street as the price to pay for progress. The only defiance by the community was a proposal for more gas stations on the boulevard south of Meserole Av- enue. The commu- nity killed the idea and that is the only reason new hous- ing was built on the thoroughfare at all.
In 1964, Sal- vatore Tortorici pressed his local alderman, Joe Shar- key to rename the new boulevard in honor of the great- est politician in lo- cal history: Peter J. McGuiness, who had passed away in 1948. The City Council passed the name change unani- mously and Oak- land Street was re- named McGuinness Boulevard.
Many local residents have complained about the way motorists drive along the boulevard. The four wide lanes encouraged aggressive driving, illegal passing, and excessive speeding—conditions that routinely lead to serious motor vehicle collisions. Hundreds of pedestrians have been hit on McGuinness Boulevard, with over 200 fatalities since 1956, including 11 pedestrians or cyclists killed between 1995 and 2021.
Activists in the community pushed for the transformation of McGuinness into a two-lane, pedestrian friendly artery with bike lanes. Wealthy production company own- ers Gina and Tony Argento funded a movement to block the changes to the boulevard. After the redesign began in 2023, the Adams admin- istration abruptly switched course, throwing its support behind a re- vised plan for the northern section of the road that critics called wa- tered down and insufficient.
In August, the Manhattan district attorney charged Ingrid Lewis-Mar- tin, a top aide to Mr. Adams, with conspiring to kill the original pro- posal, in exchange for a relatively small sum of money and a speaking role on a television series owned by the Argento siblings. Ms. Lewis-Martin pleaded not guilty, as did the production company’s owners, Gina and Anthony Argento, who were also charged.
Last week, Mayor Mamdani, surrounded by supporters with signs bearing the names of crash victims on the boulevard, said he would finish the original, full plan for the roadway as soon as weather permit- ted, and that he would not be “bowed by big-money interests.” “Thanks to so many who went out and pounded the pavement, that pavement now will change,” he said. Some residents fear that the changes to the boulevard will lead to increased auto traffic on the streets running parallel to the boulevard. One thing though is certain, the boulevard will soon change into a narrower, more pedes- trian and cyclist friendly artery.
Right after Thanksgiving in Greenpoint and Williamsburg every year, the sidewalks are suddenly transformed. Hundreds of cut Christmas trees magically appear, just like mushrooms in a forest after a heavy rain. Though the trees are plentiful, they are not cheap. Tiny trees will run you $50, while a premium tree can cost up to $300! Even though the prices are high, we always buy a tree and drag it home. Decorating the tree brings back happy memories of childhood long ago and the scent that fills the house is heavenly. Please don’t remind me about the pain of cleaning the ubiquitous needles and dragging the tree out of the house at the end of the holiday!
Seeing the trees for sale waiting on snowy local sidewalks reminds me of one of the most touching chapters in the best book ever written about Brooklyn, the 1943 classic, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The novel is a coming-of-age story of a young local girl, Francie Nolan who grows up in the poverty of Williamsburg tenements in 1912. The novel was a huge success, and it transformed its author Betty Smith into a famous author overnight. Twentieth Century Fox acquired the rights to the book and two years later it became a box office hit that won a special Oscar award.
Smith’s chapter about Christmas in our area long ago is one of the most poignant. Francie, the protagonist and narrator, paints a vivid picture of how the struggling local population experienced Christmas long ago. Christmas trees, sadly, were a luxury many could not afford. Ten-year-old Francie excitedly tells her readers, “Christmas was a charmed time in Brooklyn.” Though they were a charmed time for local children, they were also times of great cruelty as one local ritual the narrator vividly describes proves.
Over a century ago, local sidewalks were also transformed by a salesman hawking Christmas trees. Smith tells us that spruce trees began coming into the neighborhood a week before Christmas. She relates in her novel, “There was a cruel custom in the neighborhood. It was about the trees still unsold at midnight of Christmas eve. There was a saying that if you waited until then you wouldn’t have to buy a tree, that they’d chuck ’em at you.” This was literally true.
The kids in the area gathered where there were unsold trees. The man threw each tree in turn, starting with the biggest. Kids volunteered to stand up against the biggest. If a boy did not fall under the impact of the tree, it was his.
The impoverished protagonist, Francie, age ten, and her brother Neely, age nine, volunteered to catch a tree, the biggest in the neighborhood at ten feet. The tree was so large and so expensive that it remained unsold in this area of poor people. Tiny Francie and her brother stepped up to catch the huge tree, much to the delight of the snickering residents who had gathered to watch and enjoy the cruel spectacle. The tree seller admired the bravery of the little duo and thought about just giving them the tree, but rationalized that if he gave them the tree, it would encourage people the following year to wait until midnight and not buy the trees, hurting his business. The tree salesman finally hurled the ten-foot spruce at the tiny pair and though their legs quivered, they did not buckle under the weight of the tree, and it was theirs, though being hit with the heavy spruce had left them both bruised and bloodied.
The tree salesman finished the cruel ritual by telling the battered kids,” And now get the hell out of here with your tree you lousy bastards.”
The children then eagerly dragged the large tree back to their apartment to decorate it. The readers share in the Christmas joy of the poor children who have paid such a steep price for this symbol of Christmas. The scene re-enforces the theme of the book that poverty was hard in Williamsburg, but it made the kids who suffered through it even harder.
Thankfully, over a century later our area is far richer. Thousands of locals can afford even high-priced trees, and no child is reduced to the bloody spectacle of catching an unsold Christmas tree, a fact that we can all celebrate this Christmas season.
Greenpointers trace a beloved enclave’s colorful past and uncertain future.
By COLE SINANIAN
news@queensledger.com
Izabella Prusaczyk remembers the Pulaski Day parade of her youth. Everyone was out on the street in Greenpoint speaking Polish, the red and white of the Polish flag painting their faces and hanging from the cars that did donuts in gas station parking lots. Poles would crowd the delis, subway cars and street corners on Greenpoint, Nassau and Manhattan Avenues, out to show pride for their homeland in what was then America’s preeminent Polish enclave. When her father, Marek, arrived from Poland in the early 1990s, he spoke no English, but had no trouble finding his way in Greenpoint, where he now operates a restaurant called Pyza, named for its specialty in pyzy, a kind of Polish dumpling.
“It really felt like the city was ours,” Prusaczyk said.
Polish-American NYU student Sebastian Staskiewicz was born in Greenpoint and spent his early childhood on Diamond Street. The Polish community here back then was tight-knit. He recalls grocery shopping with his Polish grandma, who spoke no English but had no trouble communicating with her neighbors and shopkeepers in the majority Polish-speaking community. Polish flags hung from storefronts and almost every corner was a Polish-owned bakery, deli or butcher shop.
“It was a very friendly community,” he said. “She would push me on a stroller and every block or so we had some sort of friend or relative that we could wave ‘hi’ to at the local deli. For her it was much easier in that sense because she could still use Polish to navigate and live within the US.”
Alain Beugoms, current principal of PS 34 on Norman Ave, was just beginning his teaching career in 2002, and remembers the Greenpoint of this era as one of New York’s most vibrant ethnic enclaves.
“It was almost like a Chinatown kind of experience,” he said. “Many people on the street speaking Polish, many stores and little restaurants and little shops, bookstores in Polish, all serving the Polish community.”
In 2025, Greenpoint’s Polish heritage is not so easy to spot. Nowadays, English is more commonly heard than Polish, and many Polish businesses have disappeared, replaced by American chains, cafes and now, cannabis dispensaries. Beloved Polish butcher shops and specialty supermarkets peddling smokey kielbasa, blood sausages and other Polish delicacies have closed their doors as corporate supermarket chains have moved in. Meanwhile, an influx of wealthy professionals who began moving to Williamsburg in the 2000s has spilled over into Greenpoint, while higher housing costs and luxury residential towers have followed, forever altering the neighborhood’s once working-class, predominantly immigrant character.
“I always saw someone I knew at the store I’d go to to get deli meats,” Prusaczyk said. “Now it’s a weed dispensary. We’re really on the decline here.”
“Everything is so expensive now,” continued Prusaczyk, who works with her father and her mother, Grazyna, at Pyza. “People get mad at us for our prices being so high, but I’m like, do you know where you are? There’s avocado toast for $18 down the block.”
But although many members of Greenpoint’s original Polish community have left — often moving either to the suburbs or back to Poland, where economic conditions have improved drastically since the fall of the Soviet Union — others stayed to raise families with children now growing up as Polish Americans, whose presence continues to influence neighborhood life through their cuisine, customs, and language.
A view inside the Eberhard Faber pencil factory on Kent Street in 1915, after the first peak of Polish migration to Brooklyn in the 1890s. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Poles in America
Polish immigration to America reached its peak in the 1890s. By the 1920s, more than 2 million Poles had immigrated to the US, according to the Library of Congress. Many of these early arrivals were economic migrants and political refugees, working as steelworkers, miners, meatpackers and autoworkers and congregating in enclaves in America’s industrial centers.
Later, a subsequent wave of Polish immigrants arrived after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s. A New York Times report from 1984 counted 50,000 people of Polish descent living in Greenpoint. These were economic migrants as well, mostly younger, educated people who took low-paying, working class jobs with intentions of saving money and eventually returning to their country once conditions there improved.
“Our 80s in Poland in the 20th century were truly devastating,” said Mateusz Sakowicz, the Polish Consul General in New York. “There were no products on the shelves and you could barely make ends meet. People had to line up to buy diapers.”
According to Sakowicz, Greenpoint’s “Little Poland” era peaked in the early-mid 2000s. In addition to gentrification and rising housing costs, Sakowicz partially attributes Little Poland’s decline to Poland’s 2004 entry into the European Union, which brought the country unprecedented economic growth and facilitated easy immigration to other European nations. Since 2004, Polish immigration to the US has slowed to a trickle.
“Finally my country has much more to offer, and it’s actually a preferable place to be, in particular if you’re of Polish origin,” Sakowicz said. “And if they were deciding to emigrate, people were choosing different states, closer to home,” he continued.
Partly as a result of Poland’s economic growth — with the country’s GDP having grown by 300% between 1989 and 2024, according to a report from Wrocław University in Poland — more people of Polish origin are returning to Poland than are leaving the country.
Meanwhile, many of the Polish economic migrants to Greenpoint of the 1980s have since moved on, having kids in Greenpoint, then purchasing homes outside the city. This is precisely what Staskiewicz’ family did, moving to Linden, New Jersey while Staskiewicz was in elementary school. Other family members moved to Long Island and Pennsylvania, Staskiewicz said, chasing better affordability and a higher quality of life to raise their families. Many of Prusaczyk’s childhood friends moved to Masbeth, Middle Village, or further out on Long Island.
Izabella Prusaczyk and her father, Marek Prusaczyk. Marek came to Greenpoint from a small town in the north of Poland in the early 90s. He opened Pyza, a Greenpoint staple serving traditional Polish food, in 1993.
Little Poland lives on
Like much of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland is a deeply Catholic country. St. Stanislaus Kostka Church on Humboldt Street, founded in 1896, remains a community hub. Staskiewicz attended Sunday mass here with his family as a kid, while Prusaczyk, now in her 30s, regularly goes to mass conducted in Polish by Pastor Grzegorz Markulak. On December 7 at 5:30pm, the church will host a screening of Triumph of the Heart, a Polish language film that tells the story of Maximilian Kolbe, a priest who was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Given Poland’s deep Catholicism, it should be unsurprising that Greenpoint’s Polish community is most visible around Christmas and Easter.
In Polish culture, Christmas is traditionally celebrated on December 24, not December 25. And the Christmas Eve meal contains no meat. The holidays are a busy time at Pyza, Prusaczyk says, with Polish and Polish Americans coming from all over the tri-state area to pick up their special orders. Many are loyal customers who’ve since moved out of Greenpoint, usually to Masbeth or further out on Long Island. One Polish woman named Eva was once a Pyza regular but now lives in Connecticut. Still, she comes without fail every Christmas Eve to order Polish Christmas specialties like krokiety (croquettes), saurkraut, kapusta (cabbage) and mountains of pierogies. Some years, Pyza sells more than 3,000 pierogies over Christmas.
On Easter, baskets are packed with food and gifts, and local Poles line up outside St. Stanislaus’s to have them blessed by a priest, part of a tradition called Święconka that dates back to the 7th century. This confuses many tourists and non-Polish Greenpoint residents, Izabella says, who raise their eyebrows at the long line of people carrying their baskets outside the church.
For Sakowicz, the Polish General Consul, it is the long queues that form around the holidays outside bakeries like Syrena, Cafe Riviera, and others serving Polish bread and pastries, that most remind him of Poland.
“Maybe they expect communism a little bit,” he said. “Because in communism, there was scarcity of products and oftentimes they’d have to line up for a day and a half.”
Sakowicz, who’s lived in America since 2011, currently resides on the Upper West Side, although he commutes to Greenpoint regularly to get his haircut at his favorite Polish salon. During the warmer months, he says you’re most likely to hear Polish spoken in Greenpoint during the evening, as the sun is setting over the Manhattan skyline and most people are doing their shopping.
“You have many Poles that would leave Greenpoint, but still go there every now and then to do a routine,” Sakowicz says. “You have your favorite hairdresser, you want to go and gossip.”
New Opportunities
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, many of the Polish immigrants to Greenpoint took blue collar jobs below their education levels, in fields like construction, manufacturing and caretaking that allowed them to work without English fluency. But nowadays, the comparatively few Polish people coming to New York are of a different class entirely, Sakowicz says.
“It’s not a blue collar migration,” he said. “These people that decide to pursue their careers in the US these days are highly qualified, skilled and educated people. We’re talking Wall Street, IT, AI, arts, these kinds of fields of work.”
And conversely, the Polish government finances internships and visa programs to Americans of Polish origin, offering them the chance to work, live for a while and perhaps emigrate for good to the country of their heritage. This is, of course, much easier if you speak the Polish language.
Along with Staskiewicz, Polish student Max Miniewicz runs the Polish and Eastern European Society at NYU. Originally from Warsaw, Miniewicz came to New York three years ago to study, now getting his Master’s in Economics. The first time he visited Greenpoint, he saw traces of Poland, but did not initially see it as the vibrant Polish enclave he had heard about.
But as he explored the neighborhood more, its Polish soul started to reveal itself. He recalls a time he took a Polish classmate on a tour around Greenpoint. They got coffee, pastries, and went to a few bookstores, speaking to each other in Polish the whole time. In each of these places, Miniewicz said, as soon as the cashier heard them speaking Polish, they’d start speaking Polish too. This was the case even in American chain restaurants and seemingly non-Polish establishments, suggesting to Miniewicz that much of the Polish community from the golden era of Little Poland remained, but their businesses had been swallowed and absorbed by American establishments.
“We spent a few hours walking around, and we were shocked by how many places were like this,” Miniewicz said. “I think a lot of those Polish people are still there, but they’re just like kind of hidden and working for American businesses.”
For Beugoms, the principal at PS 34, language is a key to unlocking the community’s Polish heritage. In 2015, under former principal Carmen Asselta, the school launched its Polish-English dual language program. Now in its eleventh year, about a quarter of the student body is enrolled in the program, Beugoms says. Students progress from kindergarten to fifth grade in a mirrored classroom, with everything written in Polish on one side and English on the other. The bilingual teachers in the program guide students through math, science, social studies and literature in both Polish and English, paying special attention to Polish historical figures like Marie Curie and Copernicus. And every student, Beugoms says, Polish or otherwise, knows what a pierogi or a pączki (donut) is.
“It unlocks a door to culture,” he said. “Language might appear to be a barrier from someone accessing a new culture, but when you learn, even in small increments, you start to unlock things.”
Inside PS 34’s Polish-English dual language classrooms, students learn literature, science, math and social studies in both Polish and English, with a special focus on Polish culture.
For some Polish-American parents who’ve lost touch with their heritage, the program provides a new motivation to learn (or re-learn) the language of their family through their children. Beugoms recalls one parent of Polish descent who didn’t grow up speaking Polish. But both of her children are in PS 34’s dual-language program, and for a parent-student read-aloud the school hosted one year, she came ready with a Polish book in-hand.
“The Polish that she heard as a kid from her grandparents was coming back to her,” Beugoms said. “So she came with a book and said ‘don’t judge me.’”
Although the program is mostly made up of Polish heritage students, many of whom speak Polish at home, others aren’t Polish at all. The school holds a celebration for Polish children’s day on June 1st. One year, a non-Polish fifth grade student who’d been in the program since kindergarten, gave a presentation on Copernicus, in near-fluent Polish, to a room full of stunned Polish parents.
And with more Poles returning to Poland than ever, the program has another purpose: preparing Polish students for life in Poland, should they decide to return.
“I’ve had students from this program move to Poland, and then the parents write me an email stating how the school in Warsaw was impressed,” Beugoms said. “There’s a lot of opportunity in Poland nowadays, so it’s attracting a lot of folks back.”
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
