Like many years, this one really seemed to fly by fast. But rest assured, Bushwick Daily was here to record the highs and lows of this eclectic enclave every week. Let’s raise a glass to this year and revisit what happened.
In January, we had Brett Wachtel chronicling a visit to the somewhat new Ridgewood rock club, located off the Halsey L Stop called TV Eye in “Catching Michael Imperioli in Ridgewood.” Who else did he find there but “Sopranos” and “White Lotus” star Michael Imperioli himself, who told Wachtel “when you are there you feel like you are in the right place at the right time and all is well in the world” and “I love you TV Eye people.”
When it comes to fashion, no one captured Bushwick’s up and coming scene as intimately as Hilal Bachcetepe did in “More Like Bushwick Fashion Week.” In advance of that February’s NYFW, Bachcetepe wrote, ‘It’s been a century since the roaring 1920’s, but both novice and rookie designers alike seem to be pulling inspiration from the Jazz Age this winter.”
By Spring, Christine Fiala was on the scene to report on the inspiring story of an artist and writer named Alex Ashendorf, who was making his debut gallery showdown at Fuchs Projects on Thames Street. In “It’s his 70th Birthday — And his First Gallery Show in Buswhick,” Filia writes that ‘his paintings have been described as emotionally charged but Ashendorf doesn’t like to hold himself to one particular style; “Some are realistic, some are surreal, some are abstract…The reason for that is I start with an idea I want to express.”
As for our beloved Maria Hernandez Park, in “The Skaters Take Maria Hernandez,” we wrote about a short documentary that was produced and directed by a pair of Bushwick skateboarders that celebrated a new concrete pump track that randomly landed in the park. One of them, a poet named Matt L. Rohrer said it’s “part of a trend of the city being more supportive of skateboarding.”
In June, “Ice-T visited Bushwick!,” where the rapper and prolific “Law & Order” actor headlined the Bushwick Collective’s annual block party, where he played old hits like “New Jack Hustler” and a group version of “Original Gangster” that involved considerable crowd work. In “Meet Me in the Nook,” the founder of a local chess club named Mica Jameson came on board to begin writing a series of chess columns for us, where Jameson would digress about the joys of casual chess nights, where it’s not only about winning, but more about getting to know fellow chess players in the community. Notable attendees included the Kattoo King and others.
But Ice-T wasn’t the only well-known West Coast rapper to drop in the neighborhood that month. Soon enough, there was “Post Malone! In Bushwick!” Two celebrity rappers in one month. That’s dope. Speaking of rappers, later that month one former rapper (turned Amazon labor activist Chris Smalls) ended up endorsing another former rapper (turned local novelty political candidate Paperboy Love Prince, who has run unsuccessfully for both mayor and for a seat in congress) Sadly, Paperboy didn’t win this year either.
In more political news, we also covered the ongoing migrant crisis through reporting on the different local buildings that have served as shelters, from an unused Blink gym on Stockton Street to a spot on Jefferson Street that was raided by the NYPD in September. Later that year, we also covered a local punk show put on by a handful of hardcore bands in Brooklyn, organized around the ongoing war in Gaza.
As for happenings at the local jazz club Ornithology, Katey St. John reported on a non-profit project there in “A Campaign to End Domestic Violence.” In a vital local story, St. John wrote that “Rie Yamaguchi-Borden, one of the club’s owners, says she designed the campaign after hearing devastating stories of violence from two of her best friends.” Later, we ran a story this year on a different exploit from the folks at Ornithology: taking over the vegan cafe next door.
Speaking of Maria Hernandez park, we kept coverage going with a story about the city’s tree planting program there and interviewed a few locals about it. “The trees look sad,” one told us; “Yeah, it seems like they’re trying to meet a quota,” said another skeptical local. Later, we’d run a story from Neha Magesh about the weekly farmer markets there; “We get a lot of locals here,” says the owner of one of the family farms running a booth there.
In Magesh’s profile of a different kind of local scene, she reported on the story of Dillon Greenberg, an actress and proud cat owner who enlisted her musician friend, Kaele Earlie, to help record some cat-themed christmas songs. Elsewhere, Shenal Tissera reported out “It’s Fight Club, but ‘Gay’, and documented a local gym that wants to be a space for LGBTQ fighters to train in boxing and mixed martial arts.
Inside Kenneal Patterson’s story about the latest year of Bushwick Open Studios, Patterson was able to capture an intimate portrait of Cecelia Fabian, who used the day to get people to look at her crochet designs, which range from Alexander McQueen-inspired masks to intricate bikinis. Other notable arts stories we ran around then included a profile on a Dutch play that went on for a month at local Moffat Street performance space Unit J and a review of an auto-erotic performance piece that stopped by a refurbished warehouse on Scott Avenue. Perhaps the most moving of these local profiles came from Patterson, as well, when she depicted a number of locals who met on Craigslist to form a band called “Social Creatures,” which are playing the small room at Elsewhere in early January, a fine example of the power of the internet to connect people. As Patterson writes “It’s not Madison Square Garden, but..they hope to make it to South by Southwest next.”
Thanks for reading Bushwick Daily. Happy New Year!
— Put together by Max Rovo and Andrew Karpan
Top photo taken by Max Rovo for Bushwick Daily.
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