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Massive icebergs photographed in Greenland. PHOTO BY JAMES BALOG / EXTREME ICE SURVEY
What does the overdevelopment of Williamsburg/Greenpoint have in common with melting glaciers? Fossil fuel, that’s what; one’s using it, the other’s choking on it. Well, we’re all choking on it.
CHASING ICE
Jeff Orlowski
Submarine Deluxe Presents An Exposure
Production in Association with Diamond Docs
Eric Mingrino, inventor/ manufacturer, in his Greenpoint workshop. Photo by Allen Ying
As a kid, Eric Mingrino fantasized about being an inventor, and when his father was alive, they dreamed of someday opening a company together to develop inventions.
Mingrino remembers his first “Eureka” moment as a ten-year-old boy watching his mother making pancakes in their Greenpoint kitchen. As she struggled to balance a spoon underneath the pan to tilt it while cooking, so that the grease would drain off to the side, he told her that one day he was going to invent a pan tilted on an angle with a little hole in it to drain the grease, and he went and drew the plans for it. “And years later, who came up with it? George Foreman. Same exact thing I drew when I was ten. He sold millions of these things! Every time I see that I say, oh man.”
Bernadette Conte, owner of B.Conte boutique (at left). Photos by Ben Rosenzweig
By Francesca Moisin
The one constant at B. Conte boutique in Williamsburg is that things are always changing. Friendly-priced merchandise flies off shelves, to be swapped with new pieces from famous labels and up-and-coming designers. Regular trunk shows introduce cocktail-sipping customers to an influx of fresh accessories, both antique and au courant. Even the 750-square-foot retail space pulls double duty as a gallery, with the work of local artists rotating on the walls. “What I like best about my store is how it’s in steady flux,” says owner Bernadette Conte.
For many years the mainstream media has verbally eviscerated hipsters as if they’re some kind of Ebola virus. Hipsters are vilified, accused of destroying the social and moral fabric of America with their off-the-grid lifestyle and perceived sloth, to being the Fifth Column in the gentrification and displacement of working class folk through collaboration with Gordon Gekko inspired real-estate developers. Unless you’re a wealthy, celeb hipster, you’re a target.
Many of America’s movie stars portray hipsters, including Dustin Hoffman as the 21 year old, silver-spooned Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967) and Sam Elliot as the 32-year-old bohemian lifeguard Rick Carlson in Lifeguard (1976). Both characters rejected corporate offers; one in plastics, the other as a Porsche salesman.
A tremendous grassroots effort has been underway in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the last few weeks, addressing the issue of the holidays coming up, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, with the goal of delivering holiday cheer and toys to families with children adversely affected by the storm.
The businesses spearheading the toy drive called the “Big Brooklyn Holiday Toy Drive” are New York Shitty, East River Ferry, Red Star Bar, WG News + Arts, and local leaders, Assemblyman Joe Lentol, and Council Member Stephen Levin.