Welcome to the weekend Greenpointers! Catch-up on the local headlines from this week below and find out where to venture out this weekend.
New York eliminated the religious exemption for vaccinations this week. The U.S.’s largest measles outbreak in decades is centered in Williamsburg, where approximately 75 percent of NYC’s 588 confirmed cases have stemmed from. (ABC News)
Greenpoint’s newest upscale restaurant, Madre, is now open inside Franklin Guesthouse. (Bedford and Bowery)
Greenpoint’s artists opened their studios for GOS 2019 last weekend and there was an overwhelming amount of art to see and experience, demonstrating the thriving community of local creators. (Brooklyn Eagle) (Hyperallergic)
Greenpoint’s second petroleum vapors townhall so far this year happened this week at the Polish and Slavic Civic Center (176 Java St.), where residents expressed concern over vapor testing methods, and city and state agencies confirmed the petroleum build up in Greenpoint’s sewer lines has been flushed and air qaulity has returned to safe levels. (Greenpointers) (Brooklyn Eagle( NY1) (News 12 Brooklyn)
Williamsburg and Greenpoint restaurants Mason Premiere and Sauvage, which are owned by the same restaurant group, have racked up approximately $5.2 million in debt and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. (Eater NY)
Bogdan Piasecki, a 47-year-old Diamond Street resident was arrested for allegedly punching an eight-year-old boy in Greenpoint. (Greenpoint Post)
There’s a shortage of strong arms to hoist the Giglio in Williamsburg this July for the 100+ year old tradition in honor of the Italian Saint Paulinas of Nola. (CBS New York)
The non-profit organization In Our Hands is hosting two rescue adoption events this Saturday, June 15th.
One of the adoption locations will be at Port James of New York at 116 Franklin St. in Greenpoint and the other location will be at Green Pup at 544 Union St. in Gowanus, with both events going from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Continue reading →
^ BookBook Club: Relish: My Life in the Kitchen @ Archestratus (160 Huron St.), 7pm, FREE, read a new memoir, a collection of essays, novel, or anything else Archestratus finds interesting that somehow, in a big or small way, relates to food. Then discuss, RSVP ♫ Jog Blues @National Sawdust (80 N 6 St), 7pm, $18, deep tradition meets spontaneous improvisation in Jog Blues, a daring new combination of jazz, blues, and Indian classical music, Buy Tix ♦ Hydroponics 201: Intro to Plant Nutrients @ AgTech X (40 Bushwick Ave), 630pm, $29, learn what plant nutrients are; how to ensure you’re picking the right fertilizer for what you’re looking to grow; and understanding the various metrics for maintaining healthy nutrition, Buy Tix ♦♫ Brooklyn QUEER CULT PRIDE @3 Dollar Bill (260 Meserole St), 830pm, $10, a ridiculously fun filled rainbow unicorn queer performance art show, Buy Tix
THURSDAY 6/13
* Walking Tour: History of Domino Sugar @ Domino Park Rock Shop (Kent Ave at Grand St), 6pm, FREE, join author of “The Rise and Fall of the Sugar King” Geoffrey Cobb as he explains the history of the Domino plant, which was the largest sugar refinery in the world and the linchpin in the “Sugar Trust, RSVP * National Axe Throwing Day @ Bury the Hatchet (25 Noble St), 4pm, FREE, grab your friends and family for free axe throwing sessions (quick training provided), More Info ♫ New York Public Radio featuring a special performance by Real Estate @Brooklyn Bowl (67 Wythe Ave), 630pm, $75, a party with all your WNYC favorites and Real Estate, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley performing a DJ set, Red Baraat, and the High and Mighty Brass Band,Buy Tix ♫ Vomit Nose @ Muchmore’s (2 Havemeyer St), 9pm, $5, with Mouth Reader, Jeff Draco, and Nick Cage, More InfoContinue reading →
Parachute Brooklyn (151 Norman Ave.) is a new modern and vintage kids clothing store in Greenpoint that celebrated its opening in May.
(Courtesy of Parachute BK)
Co-founders and Greenpoint residents for over a decade, Carly Boonparn and Ambra Markos met through the friendship between their 3-year-old daughters at school. “We’re both mothers of three-and-a-half-year-olds and having little babies you get a lot of hand-me-downs and a lot of presents,” Markos said. Boonparn worked as a manager at the local clothing trading chain, Beacon’s Closet for the past 15 years and Markos worked as a production manager for major fashion brands, making their business venture a natural progression.
(Courtesy of Parachute BK)
Parachute Brooklyn operates as with a buy/sell/trade model with a variety of modern used clothes and vintage clothes dating back as far as the 1950s. “Because babies grow so fast from the age of newborn to four, they just go through their clothes soo quickly so it’s kinda just this cycle of clothes piling up and piling up,” Markos said, adding that it’s difficult to find one location to drop unwanted clothing an avoid it going into a landfill if it’s stained or damaged.
(Courtesy of Parachute BK)
Sellers at Parachute Brooklyn are given the option to receive 25% of the retail value in cash or 50% in trade, and the store even has a donation drop-off site for stained or damaged pieces. “We don’t want people throwing away their clothes and them just ending up in a landfill, we want them to go into housing installation or be upcycled in some way,” Markos said.
(Courtesy of Parachute BK)
Items that are not purchased for resale in-store will be donated to a variety of charities and recycling facilities. “Right now we’ve been giving the stained and damaged items to GrowNYC and they get them to the textile recycling facilities,” she said.
Another way Parachute is upcycling is by working with a local tie dying artist to transform stained or imperfect white clothing items into tie-dyed items.
The store will also host events for kids and parents from time-to-time with a live music singalong scheduled for every Tuesday morning in July.
Yaki Tiki, a new edition to the A/D/O (29 Norman Ave.) outdoor space launched two weeks ago and merges Japanese yakitori-style cuisine and tiki drinks.
The outdoor grill
Yaki Tiki is a partnership between the Sunday in Brooklyn hospitality team (Todd Enany, Adam Landsman, Exec Chef Jaime Young, and bar director Brian Evans), as well as JT Vuong and George Padilla (formerly of Okonomi and YUJI Ramen).
We stopped by last weekend to try some yakitori skewers and boozy popsicles; everything we sampled was delicious, check out the pictures:
Maitake w sansho lime; shishito w nori, lemon; potato salad
Brooklyn’s Community Board 1 (Greenpoint and Williamsburg) will hold its monthly public meeting tomorrow (6/11) at the Swinging 60’s Senior Center at 211 Ainslie St. starting at 6 p.m. The meetings have in the past been live-streamed here, and the agenda is as follows: Continue reading →
A Brooklyn restaurant owner said her staff was blindsided when a Polish nationalist politician showed up with 100 followers Wednesday — spurring a backlash that may force her to permanently close.
“There was someone there who shouldn’t be and no one was expecting,” the woman, who asked not to be identified by name, told THE CITY through tears. “I don’t have nothing [to do] with this, I didn’t do anything… I don’t even agree with this.”
“We are not evil,” she added. “We didn’t do anything to bring this guy.”
Robert Winnicki, leader of the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy), a nationalist Polish political party, spoke at French Epi in Greenpoint after being barred from nearby St. Stanislaus Kostka Church.
The restaurant’s manager, Jolanta Filip, said she received a reservation for 15 Wednesday night. Filip and her mother were the only two people working when a huge crowd rolled in to the small restaurant.
“In a matter of 15 minutes, we had a full house,” she said. “We weren’t prepared for this mass of people.”
More than 100 people packed into French Epi, overwhelming the staff. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Filip said she called the owner, who told her to eject Winnicki and his supporters. But the crowd — which threw out two journalists from THE CITY — wouldn’t leave.
“We are not a platform for anything,” added Filip, a single mother of three who was hoping to buy the restaurant from the recently widowed owner. Continue reading →
Get ready for Greenpoint Open Studios, an epic showcase of local art. Over the course of one weekend (this year June 8-9), hundreds of local artists open their studio doors to the public for an exciting peek inside their craft. It’s an uncurated, free event that allows visitors to get a glimpse of the process and space where the artwork is created while engaging directly with its creators.
Brooklyn has a long-standing reputation for being a hotbed of creativity and GOS is going to represent its northernmost tip in true Greenpoint fashion—by keepin’ it real—providing an open platform for showcasing the various expressions of our creative community’s imagination and skills. This year, we have more than 350 artists participating, and an exciting lineup of events. Continue reading →
More than 100 people packed into Greenpoint restaurant French Epi to hear Polish nationalist politician Robert Winnicki speak, June 5, 2019. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
A far-right Polish nationalist whose planned appearance at a Brooklyn Catholic church was canceled amid protests took his act to a Greenpoint restaurant Wednesday night.
Robert Winnicki, the leader of the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy), a nationalist Polish political party, drew a crowd of about 100 that packed the French Epi restaurant, a little under a mile from St. Stanislaus Kostka Church.
Facebook posts had touted Winnicki’s appearance at the Humboldt Street church even after Brooklyn Diocese Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio canceled the speaking engagement Monday amid an uproar.
The New York Archdiocese later canceled a stop at East Harlem’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel by Kurek, who gained kinder notices for a 1996 book she wrote about Polish nuns who saved Jewish children during the Holocaust. Continue reading →
♫^ Bruce Conforth for “Up Jumped The Devil” q+a @ WORD (126 Franklin St.), 7pm, $5, Bruce Conforth discusses his new book “Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson,” and will be joined in conversation by guitarist John Hammond, Buy Tix ♫ Mah” Zeh? b Omer: Revelatory Songcircling @ Healing Movement at Ohev Shalom (284 Rodney St), 7pm, $18, an embodied and participatory meditation, movement and song circling, Buy Tix ♦ Documentary Screening: The Barese Icemen of New York @ Swinging Sixties Senior Center (211 Ainslie St), 7pm, FREE, documentary film that follows the story of the Italian immigrants from Apulia who dominated the NYC ice trade from the 1920s to the 1960s, More Info ♦♫ Limited Resources 30 @ Muchmore’s (2 Havemeyer St.), 9pm, FREE, 30th installment of the monthly experimental series, More Info
THURSDAY 6/6
♫ Brooklyn Brass Bash @ Pine Box Rock Shop (12 Grattan St), 9pm,$10, kick the summer season off right with the brass band series with June’s amazing lineup, More Info ♦ Beginner Embroidery @ Brooklyn Craft Company (165 Greenpoint Ave), 630pm, $45, in this beginner workshop, you’ll master embroidery basics as you complete a cute little peace-sign hoop design, Buy Tix # Sicilian Vegan Dinner @ Archestratus (160 Huron St.), 630pm, $30, An evening of Sicilian, family-style food inspired by Nonna. Three courses cooked by Archestratus owner Paige Lipari. Si, one of those courses is dessert,Buy Tix * Environmental Protection Committee Meeting @ Brooklyn Community Board 1 (435 Graham Ave.), 630pm, FREE, presentation by NYC EDC on the future demolition of oil tanks on the Bayside parcel of Bushwick Inlet Park, More Info
For one weekend (June 8th & 9th), 300+ local artists and designers open up their Greenpoint, Brooklyn studios to the public to showcase work in a variety of mediums. From paintings, sculptures, film, photography, weaving/textiles, to ceramics, and more, there are seasoned artists to be visited and emerging artists to be discovered in the northernmost tip of Brooklyn. Plus guided tours, talks, workshops, parties & more! Greenpoint Open Studios is a grassroots organization that aims to provide a free and open platform for local arts that builds, sustains, and supports the thriving creative community in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
FRIDAY 6/7
*♦♫ Launch Party – Greenpoint Open Studios @ Brooklyn Bazaar (150 Greenpoint Ave.), 730pm, FREE, Greenpoint Open Studios 2019 will launch with an explosion of music, dancing, full bar with frozen cocktail specials, and lots of live art installations, More Info ♫ Tōth @ National Sawdust (80 N 6 St), 730pm, $15, a new project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist songwriter Alex Toth, known for collaborating and writing with Kimbra, Alexander F, Rubblebucket, Cuddle Magic and others, Buy Tix ♫ Dance Yourself Clean – Indie Dance Party @ Baby’s All Right, 11pm, $10, North America’s biggest indie dance party is not just a party, it’s an experience, Buy Tix ♫ TOKiMONSTA, Rosehardt, bad tuner (Rooftop) @ Elsewhere (599 Johnson Ave.), 5pm, $25, Buy TixContinue reading →
^ BookBook Club: Relish: My Life in the Kitchen @ Archestratus (160 Huron St.), 7pm, FREE, read a new memoir, a collection of essays, novel, or anything else Archestratus finds interesting that somehow, in a big or small way, relates to food. Then discuss, 
THURSDAY 6/13
♫^ Bruce Conforth for “Up Jumped The Devil” q+a @ WORD (126 Franklin St.), 7pm, $5, Bruce Conforth discusses his new book “Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson,” and will be joined in conversation by guitarist John Hammond, 
THURSDAY 6/6
