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Sculpture by Alexandra Limpert, sculptor who works in steel. www.alexandralimpert.com
The women in our photographic essay are metal fabricators in the spaces where they engage daily in the physically demanding activity of forging and welding metals.
Fara’h Salehi, metal fabricator and sculptor, in her work space on North 14th Street in Greenpoint.
From a recent production at The Brick, “The Tremendous Tremendous” written and performed by The Mad Ones. Performers are portraying The Tremendous Travelling Abbotts (a fictional troupe of actors from 1939). (Clockwise from the top) actors Michael Dalto, Marc Bovino, Stepvnie Wright Thompson and Joe Curnutte. Photo by William Hereford
When writers/directors Michael Gardner and Robert Honeywell leased space at 575 Metropolitan Ave in Williamsburg in 2002, they just wanted a place where they could stage their own works and maybe invite a few a friends to do the same; never did they imagine that just a few short years later, the Brick would play host to a multitude of festivals, award-winning plays, improv theater, and even late night burlesque shows. “People have really latched on to this space and they’re taking us to all kinds of places,” says Gardner. From a young age, theater was in Gardner’s blood. “I grew up watching Woody Allen movies. I remember thinking I wanted to go to New York and be one of those crazy, neurotic people,” he laughs.
When he came of age, he followed his dream and enrolled in NYU to study theater, writing and music theory. “Robert and I cut our teeth in the Lower East Side experimental theater circuit. I worked with the Lower East Side Y and we staged plays in a storm cellar run by the theater group The Emerging Collector. At some point in the late 90’s, we were thinking about renting a garage in Manhattan and turning it into a small theater, but we found out people wanted a lot of money for their garages. That’s when we decided to look for a permanent performance space.” Their search lead them to Williamsburg, to a sizable garage inside a century-old building that has a previous life as an auto-body shop, and later a yoga studio. “It was a raw space when we first moved in, but we transformed it into a theater.” The theater’s name was inspired by the dramatic old brick walls that give the space its indelible character.
By Ethan Pettit (With portions contributed by Amelia Blanquera)
Photos by William Hereford
What is surprising about pastor Jay Bakker is not only that he is covered in tattoos, wears a lip ring, and preaches Galatians on Sundays at a bar in Greenpoint. And not only that his ministry, the Revolution Church, which he shares with a dapper Lutheran from Fresno named Vince Anderson, is gay affirming.
The sidewalk outside the entrance to Co-Op 87,covered with crates and boxes of $1 records, feels like your old college buddy’s apartment: stockpiles of stuff that live where it lands. But inside there’s a sense of cozy calm, like a warm library. That is, if libraries played loud post-punk albums.
This new Guernsey Street record store is small but not sparse. Record bins flank visitors on all sides and new releases paired with rare lps line the walls. The back wall, painted like a chalkboard, features handwritten new release titles between two caricatured record store patrons. It’s all very, very endearing.
Kid Flight: The “Education Mayor” causes children to flee with parents in tow (part I)
Phil DePaolo sold his home in Williamsburg, this summer, and moved his family to Port Washington, L.I., where he says the public schools are better. Photo by William Hereford
I asked activist and community organizer Phil DePaolo what drives his activism. He took a few moments, and then said: unfairness, lack of transparency. Phil is salt of the earth, the sort of guy who, if you lost your shirt, would give you the proverbial one off his back. Or at least find you cover. Now, after thirty years in the community, he’s leaving Williamsburg because, he says, the city schools are hopeless. Private school is out of his financial reach and he wants his two sons to have a good education.
He has fought City Hall and the power movers and shakers for the good of the little guy, endured scary subways, late nights on rough city streets, and shrugged it off, but now he has to think of the kids. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, and a pretty big loss for the community. He’s not going far, 17 miles away to Port Washington, Long Island, where he says he’ll continue to sling his arrows, only from a safer distance. Asked what he’ll miss the most, he said, “When you live in a place for thirty years you make a lot of friends.”