Adam Poor

Book Review: Newspaper Biz Thrives, Emus Loose in Egnar

October 14, 2011 By Adam Poor Leave a Comment

Emus Loose in Egnar

These days, small papers such as this one occasionally suffer crises of vocation. If one listens only to the lamentations of major-market media, one has to conclude that newspaper work is in its death throes.

As New Yorkers, we might pick up a newspaper in a fit of nostalgia or when we need to box our breakables, but in general, it is a far-from-essential part of our daily routine. This is the era of Twitter feeds and 24-hour cable news, after all. What need do we, technological sophisticates, have for a thick stack of broadsheet pages that you actually have to pay for?

Reading About the Dive Bars of North Brooklyn

October 21, 2010 By Adam Poor Leave a Comment

I realized in a recent moment of adult-onset anxiety just how many of the bars I’ve gone to in Williamsburg over the past couple months look like upscale hunting lodges. We’re in the midst of an explosion of places with communal tables built of great, rustic pine slabs or steampunk light fixtures fitted with antique, Edison-esque bulbs. Everywhere, it seems, someone is handing me some kind of grapefruit-y Bavarian Weissbier in an elegant, footed glass specific to its brand. Bar menus with warm goat cheese salads are rampant.

In some ways, that’s to be expected. We are the tamed frontier of condo country, after all. But for all the fancypants joints that are popping up all over, Williamsburg and Greenpoint still have their fair share of the kinds of places where you can put a dollar in a jukebox, get a PBR and a shot for $4, play Big Buck Hunter, and never have to worry about mispronouncing “Weihenstephaner.”

The Bagel Store, a New York Tradition

July 10, 2010 By Adam Poor Leave a Comment

the bagel store bagels For Scott Rossillo, a bagel is a lot more than a piece of bread with a hole in it. The big-voiced, fast-talking Brooklynite and owner of The Bagel Store sees his creations as preserving a true New York tradition.

That’s because Rossillo is what he calls “a bagel purist.” The ingredients, techniques, and equipment behind every Bagel Store bagel are all rigorously faithful to the lessons he learned during his bagel-baking apprenticeship.

“The people who taught me had been in the business 40 years,” Rossillo says, remembering his days at Bake City Bagels in Gravesend, his childhood neighborhood hangout, and later where got his first job. “The people who taught them had already been in the business 45 years!” That’s a bagel-making tradition Rossillo can trace directly back to the immigrant communities of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “People who grew up in New York in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, they know what a bagel is supposed to taste like.”

Fitzgerald Jewelry

July 10, 2010 By Adam Poor Leave a Comment

Photo by Adam Lerner. Michael Fitzgerald (in his North 10th St. studio) and his wife Hiroyo have earned high accolades for their wedding band and engagement ring designs.

Michael Fitzgerald has a low-key attitude about success. Fitzgerald Jewelry, the humble gallery and studio he runs with his wife Hiroyo, doesn’t even have its own storefront.

All that might draw in a casual visitor are a few cases along one wall inside Light Up Brooklyn, a lighting retailer on N. 11th St., and a small sign at the base of a flight of stairs directing patrons to the rest of the gallery. Once upstairs, the first thing one notices is not even the cases of elegant, handcrafted jewelry, but the space itself.

Light Up Brooklyn, a family lighting business in Williamsburg

June 14, 2010 By Adam Poor Leave a Comment

Photo by Adam Lerner. Lars Dahlhaus carries on the family tradition in the lighting business, first started by his father in Germany.

Light is in Lars Dahlhaus’ blood. As the owner of Light Up Brooklyn, Dahlhaus represents the next generation in his family’s long love affair with designing and selling light fixtures. His father owns a high-end traditional lighting company eponymously named Dahlhaus back in his native Germany, and little Lars spent many hours watching his father at work and dreaming about taking up the family trade.

“I grew up in the business,” he says. “Because of my father, I’ve been looking forward to having a retail store my whole life.”