Maison Provence, the beloved French restaurant nestled in the heart of Williamsburg, is adding some extra flair to the middle of your week with the launch of two new weekday promotions: Ladies Night Rendezvous and Monsieur’s Night.
Every Tuesday, Maison Provence invites guests to enjoy Ladies Night Rendezvous, where women can sip on $1 prosecco shots with the purchase of any entrée. Whether you’re catching up with friends over coq au vin or enjoying a solo moment with a plate of duck confit, the bubbles are just a dollar away.
Then on Wednesdays, it’s time for the gentlemen to take the spotlight with Monsieur’s Night. With any entrée order, guests can enjoy a crisp, cold beer for just $1, perfect for pairing with the restaurant’s signature Duck Breast and Mushroom Fettuccine and Chicken Lemon Sausage Penne.
Chef and owner Dantonio Lolo, known for blending classic French cuisine with a warm, neighborhood feel, says the new promotions are all about creating community.
“Maison Provence has always been a place for people to gather and savor life,” said Lolo. “With these new weekday specials, we’re inviting our neighbors to make midweek feel just a little more like Paris — joyful, relaxed, and full of flavor.”
Maison Provence has quickly become a Williamsburg favorite for its cozy ambiance, attentive service, and authentic French menu. The new Ladies Night Rendezvous and Monsieur’s Night promotions add even more reason to stop by.=
Whether you’re planning a date night, meeting friends, or just in the mood for French comfort food and a great drink deal, Maison Provence now has your Tuesday and Wednesday evenings covered.
Maison Provence, a popular French restaurant in Williamsburg, just announced a special 3-Course Restaurant Week deal.
Guests can enjoy one small Provencal appetizer, one savory crepe, and one sweet crepe for onle $29 during restaurant week(s), Monday, July 21, through Sunday, August 17.
Maison Provence is a Brooklyn restaurant inspired by the flavors and charm of the South of France, and encompasses the creative vision and efforts of Chef Dantonio Lolo – who was born and raised in Nice, France.
Chef Lolo’s famous savory crepes include the Crepe Normandie, filled with creamy Chicken and muschroom sauteed with sauvignon wine, Swiss cheese, and parsley, and the Crepe Poulette, loaded with mussels, shrimp, Sauvignon white wine, onion, garlic, Swiss cheese, parsley. Lolo’s famous sweet crepe options include the Nutella Crepe and many more!
“We want guests at Maison Provence to leave feeling like they’ve had a little escape to the French Riviera,” Chef Lolo said. “Restaurant Week is a great chance to share the heart of Southern French cuisine.”
Maison Provence is offering their three-course menu for $29 Tuesday to Thursday evenings only.
Maison Provence is located at 52 Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Maison Provence, a beloved local gem, has just unveiled its latest culinary creation: the Merguez Sausage Sandwich. Available every Friday through Sunday during brunch and lunch, this bold new offering delivers a vibrant blend of flavors that promises to become a Brooklyn favorite.
Nestled in a crisp French baguette, the handcrafted sandwich features spicy merguez sausage paired with sautéed red and green peppers and fragrant garlic. The savory heat is balanced by peppery arugula and perfectly crispy fries tucked inside, then drizzled with harissa mayonnaise for a creamy, smoky kick. Each bite offers a symphony of textures—from crunchy to tender—making it a satisfying midday treat.
“Our community’s support means everything to us,” says chef-owner Dan Antonio Lolo. “I’m truly grateful for the love we receive every day. Bringing a fresh, flavorful sandwich like this to our menu is our way of giving back.”
Ahmed Samir, world champion boxer and patron of Maison Provence, echoes that sentiment: “My favorite Brooklyn sandwich? Hands-down Maison Provence’s merguez sausage sandwich. It’s got the perfect spice, the baguette is crisp, and that harissa mayo just ties it all together.”
Available only Friday through Sunday, Maison Provence’s latest offering is a must-try for locals seeking bold, comfort-food brunch fare with a gourmet twist.
Maison Provence is located at 52 Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC.
Williamsburg’s best kept secret is a luxe new event space named Blackbird, located inside the chic 42 Hotel at 426 S 5th St..
BlackBird is a globally inspired gastropub and lounge that blends bold flavors, an industrial modern decor, and a warm Brooklyn soul. Whether you’re stopping in for breakfast, brunch, dinner, or drinks, this all-day concept offers an experience that’s anything but ordinary.
At the heart of BlackBird is Chef Eric LeVine, a Food Network Celebrity Chef and proud Brooklyn native whose story is as remarkable as his food. Having battled and beaten cancer six times, Chef LeVine brings a fierce passion and creativity to the kitchen.
Expect thoughtfully sourced ingredients, inventive dishes, and a full bar serving expertly crafted cocktails, local brews, and curated wines all in a space that’s as welcoming as it’s stylish. From the Roasted Acorn Squash with brussels sprouts and corn sauce to the Braised Short Ravioli in a rich mushroom demi, each dish blends comfort with global inspiration. The rest of the menu follows with a variety of hand-made pastas and seafood dishes to bold, street-style tacos, thoughtfully crafted to pair with signature cocktails and a curated wine list.
From the warm glow of ambient lighting to the relaxed yet refined atmosphere, BlackBird invites guests to unwind, indulge, and party the night away. Whether you’re meeting friends for happy hour or settling in for a memorable meal, every visit delivers a balance of comfort, creativity, and Brooklyn charm.
Host your next celebration at BlackBird. With its prime Williamsburg location, inviting ambiance, and unforgettable food and drink, BlackBird is the ideal setting for private events, intimate gatherings, and holiday parties.
Book by August to receive 10% off your holiday celebration! Call 718-493-4242 or email info@blackbirdbklyn.com to reserve your date.
This Sunday, July 13th, Maison Provence in Williamsburg is transforming its cozy Brooklyn corner into a slice of the South of France for a Bastille Day celebration you won’t want to miss.
Get ready for a fun and festive French street party, complete with grilled merguez sausage sandwiches, ice-cold Kronenbourg beer, and crisp AVAL cider to keep you cool and satisfied.
A French DJ will be spinning all day, bringing high-energy Nice vibes to the heart of Brooklyn. Relax in lounge chairs or have a dance-off on our patio. Feeling competitive? You might just find yourself in the middle of a spontaneous pétanque ( bocce ball) showdown.
“No matter where you’re from, Bastille Day is a chance to come together and enjoy good food, music, and company,” says Chef Dantonio Lolo, owner of Maison Provence.
📍 Maison Provence – 55 Havemeyer St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn
🗓 Sunday, July 13th 12-10:30PM
🇫🇷 Bring your dancing shoes
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic mayoral primary this week, we’re reposting the Star’s roundtable with him from March. While many then considered him a long shot, all of the components — the catchy (albeit ambitious) platform, social media savvy, and relentlessly optimistic vision for the city — were already on display during our wide-ranging conversation. Read on for insight into how the state rep approached his campaign, and what the past suggests about his ability to make his viral ideas a reality. (Plus: miscellanea about his early love of journalism, cricket skills, and a 2017 race “that changed my life.”)
If state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor this November, the decisive moment may have come years earlier, over a meal at King of Falafel in 2021.
But first, some context. Growing up, Mamdani had friends whose dads were living through a “crisis that everyone seemed to understand, but no one did anything about.” They were New York taxi drivers, and by the mid-2000s three forces had conspired to burden them with enormous debts: first, the Bloomberg administration inflated the price of medallions, from $200,000 in 2002 to upwards of $1,000,000 in 2014, to generate more revenue.
Soon after, a flood of competition from Uber and Lyft diluted the medallions’ value even as their cost rose. To cap it all off, predatory lenders who had been barred from the housing market swooped in to offer cabbies, 94% of whom are immigrants, loans that would entrap them even further. By 2021, the average driver was $550,000 in the red, and suicide rates had skyrocketed. “I’m going to be enslaved for the rest of my life,” NBC quoted one medallion owner as saying. “[It’s] not only that I will never be able to pay it off — my kids will never be able to pay it off.”
If you lived in Astoria or Long Island City in 2020, you probably received a mailer from Mamdani with a bold promise: if elected to the state assembly, he would cancel excessive taxi medallion debt. It was the sort of splashy proposal that politicians often bandy about, and it worked — his campaign was successful. So a year later, when Mayor Bill de Blasio put forward a plan to earmark $500 million for debt relief, it could have been a victory lap, a box checked.
Instead, Mamdani pressed de Blasio on the details, and began meeting with the taxi drivers’ union, NYTWA, which said the mayor’s proposal was mostly cosmetic. These conversations culminated in 45 days of consecutive protests outside City Hall, at which Mamdani was arrested for civil disobedience, followed by a joint 15-day hunger strike with five other lawmakers that forced the city, against all odds, to accept the taxi drivers’ demands. Though problems with lenders remain, some 2,000 drivers have seen their debts reduced to $200,000 through the resulting deal.
Mamdani shows off some new merch during his visit to the Star’s newsroom.
During the Star’s recent roundtable with Mamdani, he was quick to critique former Governor Andrew Cuomo, the current mayoral frontrunner, saying that “[his] early strength in polls is more a reflection of the mythology of [Cuomo], of nostalgia for his press conferences, than of an actual inspection of his record.” But politics is as much about myths as it is policy, and Mamdani’s fight against medallion debt is one such myth — a story that he will likely tell and retell in the lead-up to the election. The drama of the hunger strike captures his broad pitch to voters, which is that he, unlike both Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, is in tune with the struggles of working class New Yorkers and willing to put himself on the line for them.
But just as instructive as the dramatic finale is a quieter episode — after Mamdani questioned de Blasio and before the protests began — when he met Senator Chuck Schumer for lunch at Astoria’s King of Falafel. Once they’d finished eating, Mamdani asked Schumer if he’d take a ride with a cabbie named Richard Chow whose brother, a driver laden with debt, had died of suicide, and who himself had hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay off from loans he took to buy his medallion. Schumer agreed. Based on that experience, Mamdani said, the senator joined the push for debt relief and bartered with the mayor’s office, a major factor in the eventual deal.
“There’s a sadness in knowing that every time you finish a case, there will be another case and a different name, a different person, different specifics.” – on his time as a foreclosure counselor.
Four years later, much has changed. Mamdani, whose association with the smaller Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) party has isolated him in Albany, has ridden similarly attention-grabbing promises on social media — free buses, frozen rents, city-owned grocery stores — to go from an upset candidate for mayor to second in the polls, chasing only Cuomo. Last fall, fellow socialists including Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher were saying that his campaign “could be ruinous,” playing spoiler to other progressives with a more realistic shot; now even the New York Post, leery of the DSA, considers him “a serious contender.”
Mamdani, 33, grew up in both Uganda and South Africa before moving to New York at age seven, when his father accepted a teaching job at Columbia University. He went to middle school in Morningside Heights, right by the university, and attended Bronx High School of Science, where he fell in love with journalism. He was also passionate about sports: he captained the soccer team, and co-founded Bronx Science’s cricket team. (To this day, Mamdani is an ardent fan of the soccer team Arsenal — his uncle inducted him into the ranks when he was eight, and he’s been a supporter ever since. His current favorite player is Martin Odegaard, whom he calls the “conductor of the team,” while his childhood pick was Thierry Henry.)
After majoring in Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, Mamdani cut his teeth as an organizer for Change Corps, a precursor to NYPIRG that billed itself as a “training ground for activists.” He ran phone banks for vulnerable senate Democrats out of Seattle, Houston, and lastly Denver, where he tried to unionize with fellow organizers before leaving amid mass firings that ensued. Following a stint in the music and film industries — including a single called “Nani,”released under the pseudonym “Mr. Cardamom,” that received a New York Times write-up— Mamdani knocked on doors for city council candidate Ali Najmi in 2015, and started to “to get a sense of [his] place in the world of local politics.” Yet it was the next race he worked on, a 2017 city council bid by Lutheran minister Khader El-Yateem in South Brooklyn, that set him on his current path.
“That was the campaign that changed my life,” said Mamdani. “I always knew I was a New Yorker. [But] I didn’t know how my politics fit into New York City, and here was this Palestinian man who was vocal in his support for universal human rights, and tying it also to the fight for a more affordable city for working class people, fighting back against corporate interests.”
Mamdani briefly left politics in 2018, to work as a foreclosure-prevention counselor in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill. The ever-present issue while canvassing had been housing, and this job seemed like a way to tackle those problems directly. “There’s a sadness in knowing that every time you finish a case, there will be another case and a different name, a different person, different specifics,” recalled Mamdani. Still, he was proud that as the only counselor at his organization who spoke Hindi and Urdu, he was able to reach people who weren’t aware that a lien was about to be placed on their home, and help them negotiate with lenders.
At the roundtable, Mamdani repeatedly said that “politics shouldn’t require translation,” a soundbite he’s returned to throughout the nascent mayoral race. The assemblyman’s experience as a housing counselor helps explain why that principle is meaningful to him — and his current campaign’s heavy focus on social media, racking up about 7 million views to date across all platforms, can be seen as an extension of that ethic.
Mamdani donned a thrifted suit for an early video at the Polar Bear Plunge in Coney Island. His campaign has combined an impactful ground game powered by thousands of volunteers with an equally strong social media presence.
“No matter your age, everyone lives on their phone. And it’s an opportunity to tell your story as to what it is you’re fighting for,” said Mamdani, “[even] if that means jumping into ice cold water in a suit bought from Steinway Thrift — $30, incredible deal, I recommend it to all — to speak about a rent freeze.”
Roughly seven months out from the elections, the strategy is already paying off. Mamdani has raised $3.8 million in the last filing period, more than any other campaign, through contributions from more donors than every other candidate combined. His nearly 5000 volunteers have knocked on 60,000 doors, and the barrage of short-form videos about his proposed policies has pulled him neck-and-neck with other, more established contenders like Comptroller Brad Lander.
“I always knew I was a New Yorker. [But] I didn’t know how my politics fit into New York City, and here was this Palestinian man who was vocal in his support for universal human rights, and tying it also to the fight for a more affordable city for working class people, fighting back against corporate interests.” – on working for city council candidate Khader El-Yateem in 2017.
The several-hundred-million dollar question — in some cases billion — is how Mamdani would pay for these blockbuster initiatives if elected. One of his trademark proposals is to abolish the fare for MTA buses, which he said will not only relieve financial pressure from low-income commuters, but also reduce crime and speed up routes by allowing for all-door boarding. Data from a multi-borough pilot program last year largely buttressed these claims. The only catch? He estimates that it would cost the city about $650 million per year to forego bus fares.
Mamdani’s critics say that, as with other socialists, his ideas require spending that’s not feasible. In an interview on The Point in December, Marcia Kramer appeared skeptical that his schemes for drumming up funds, which could include collecting back payments from landlords, would be enough to foot the bill. But the medallion debt deal was a tough sell, costing the city $100 million. And though easy to gloss over, Mamdani’s well-timed alliance with Schumer suggests that the Queens assemblyman may have a more pragmatic bent than his catchy, rapid-fire TikToks might convey.
Every candidate, from the progressive state Senator Zellnor Myrie to the centrist Cuomo, has promised to take drastic measures to make New York less expensive to live in. Mamdani’s proposals may be the most eye-catching, but the elephant in the room is President Donald Trump — whichever politician wins will have to negotiate with a federal government that is loath to offer any funding, let alone for a line item like city-owned grocery stores.
Mamdani has avoided buzzwords on the campaign trail, pitching a larger tent as he courts a wide range of supporters. “As the mayor, you represent all New Yorkers,” he told the Star. “Ultimately, your responsibility is to deliver for those New Yorkers, and what I’ve said does not mean a reflexive position of opposition to a federal administration. It means a willingness to be critical, to be oppositional, to fight, when that administration places your constituents in their crosshairs.”
There’s more to the Queens assemblyman than his brand as the “extremely online” mayoral candidate who has “embraced the cringe,” as The CITY put it. While it remains to be seen whether he can convince voters that he has the managerial and budgeting chops to see his viral ideas realized, Mamdani’s parting pitch is fairly universal: “What the city deserves,” he said, “is someone who continues to believe that it could be better than it is.”
There’s a scene in the new series “Overcompensating” in which the protagonist, a college student who’s finally decided to drop his business major, eagerly shows his friend a short film he’s made. It opens with her lying in a bathtub full of milk, and the plot never gets much further than that. She carefully composes her face, but can’t quite hide her horror. “It’s bad,” he concludes, crestfallen.
On the first Tuesday of June, a bar in Gowanus played host to a different vision of what short films can be: not just a class project, but an event worthy of fanfare; less about navel-gazing, and more about capturing the multiplicity of human experience.
The draw of the night was “GORTS: A Short Film Pride Pop-Up,” a pilot for Shorts Movie Theater, creator Karma Masselli’s forthcoming brick-and-mortar venue. As the sun set outside, over thirty people — mainly in their twenties —buzzed around Threes Brewing, posing on the red carpet and chatting in large clumps before finding their seats. The evening’s two emcees, Declan Zhang and Michelle Kariuki, quickly had the crowd laughing as they shot an impromptu short film, the topic of which was drawn from a hat (“a popsicle lamenting capitalism as it melts”), with actors pulled from the audience. Then the lights dimmed, and the show began.
While the pop-up highlighted the craft of short films, it doubled as a celebratory kick-off to Pride. In the first feature, “Across, Beyond, and Over,” by Brit Fryer and Noah Schamus, two trans men reconnect after decades apart and heal old wounds as they contend with why they broke up in middle school. The second short brought the star power: director Chheangkea’s “Grandmai Nai Who Played Favorites,” which won top marks at this year’s Sundance Festival, follows a closeted gay boy in Cambodia whose family has arranged his marriage. A third and final piece, the low-budget comedy “Finding Bella” by Lucas Castro-Cruz, chronicles a New Yorker who becomes obsessed with tracking down an anthropomorphic pigeon.
“Despite the fact that short films make up a multimillion-dollar industry, with tens of thousands of shorts coming out each year,” explained Masselli, “the artists behind them have no real places to screen their work. Even the filmmakers behind Oscar-contenders find themselves having to rent out theater space on their own dime, just to qualify for the awards.”
“GORTS,” the first teaser event for Shorts Movie Theater, took place on June 3 at Threes Brewing. Photos by Allison Luntz
Though Shorts Movie Theater’s location is still being ironed out, Masselli has several more pop-ups slated for the coming months and is aiming for a launch early next year. She hopes to “harness the modern attention span,” but with a greater emphasis on community: “people can come in to see a short film for a couple bucks,” she envisions, “take a break in the bar and have a drink with their friends, and then go back in and see two more shorts—all before a dinner reservation or whatever their night holds.”
The Star caught up with Masselli to learn more about her influences, the inspirations behind the venue, and what she has in store for her upcoming events.
The pop-up was amazing! How did it feel to see everything come together?
My background is as a theater director, so I’m used to the feeling of, like, “the show is happening!” But I find myself always putting in so many extra elements that require so much work: the red carpet, the hand-painted back of the step-and-repeat, the stencil for the words. So it’s all the more satisfying fun to see it pulled off.
Where did the idea for this project come from?
One of the reasons why I started Shorts Movie Theater was because a group of my friends and I have been running this film collective for the past couple of years, called Neighborhood Film Festival. We call it a festival, but it’s not really that — we pitch projects to each other at the beginning of the year, then we co-produce them and put them all together, and we present them at the end of the year. There’s probably 20 of us who come in and out of going to the meetings.
We’re a bunch of theater makers, and we know each other from various projects or from going to school together. It was originally the idea of Laura Galindo, who was there last night. She invited a bunch of people over to her apartment and said, “We should make a bunch of movies to teach ourselves how to make films, since we’re theater makers. We know we have these skills in collaboration and in storytelling, but we don’t know anything about, like, how you make a schedule for a film shoot. So we started doing this collaborative thing. We’ve made about 20 movies in the past three-and-a-half years.
The pop-up was divided into two screenings, one at 7 p.m. and another at 8:30 p.m.
Shorts Movie Theater was my project for Neighborhood Film Festival this year. Instead of directing a movie, I was like, what if there was a venue that could channel our belief in what a theater experience brings to an art project? Being in an audience is so important to us as theater makers, and so I was working on the business plan instead of making a movie this year, bringing it to the meetings and talking it through with people and working on ideas. It has just become more and more real. [Shorts Movie Theater] is incorporated in New York and forming as a nonprofit. (NFF itself is “still just a groupchat,” Masselli said.) And we’ll have a couple more pop-ups planned for this summer to keep building momentum.
When did you first become involved in theater?
I’ve loved theater for so long. My grandfather was a composer for musical theater, and he showed me how to be an audience person and how to love going to the theater. It instilled in me this feeling that somebody sometimes has to show you how to love the thing that you’re getting into — it’s an apprentice-based work.
When I was 16, I decided I was going to see 100 shows in one year. I spent the whole year getting on the bus and going and seeing random plays. At the end of the year, I was like, I want to be a director. I went to NYU for theater directing, and have been developing new work in the city for the past six or seven years. It’s such an ephemeral type of work, where you make something and you work so hard on it, and then it just disappears the moment that it’s over. Especially the directing work: a playwright finishes and they have a script, but a director? You don’t have anything to point towards what you built, if what you built was right — which is that it’s an experience that people have that moves them. The proof of it is in their life moving forward, but you’re not a part of that.
I found myself wanting to make something where I could see the growth, and that coincided with me attending a film festival a year ago. I had had this idea a couple years ago, actually, that there should be a movie theater for short films. Like, why doesn’t that exist? It’s more common in Europe for shorts to play in theaters, but there’s not a single venue that is dedicated exclusively to short form content. I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve looked, and there doesn’t seem to be a permanent venue for short films anywhere.
I went to this fantastic festival called Middlebury New Filmmaker Festival, which is for first and second-time filmmakers, and that clicked another piece into place. There are all these incredible early projects, where you’re part of an exciting moment in someone’s career. But if it’s a short film, it has no way to connect with an audience. If it’s a really great film, hopefully a studio gets word of it, or someone who has some power finds out about it. [Yet] there’s no venue where an audience can enjoy it as an audience and not have anything to offer that person, just the capacity to enjoy their work and to follow it further.
The exciting part about shorts — one of many things — is the chance to bring the work of artists who are in development. To get those people interacting with their audience sooner in their career, rather than: you’re working for decades, and then you get a feature film, and that’s the first time a massive audience is seeing your work. In theater, we develop by presenting our work to an audience over and over again. There’s all these small theaters in the city where you have a weekend and you do your show, and that’s how I’ve developed as a theater director. It’s totally changed the kind of artist I am.
It’s different when you see the people who took time out of their life and came here and paid, and you have to encounter their physical reality. Then you watch them get bored by some decision you made that you thought was a good idea, and you’re like, “Oh.” Having to use their values and preferences as the barometer for success, rather than your own, is a crucial step as an artist. In my experience of directing, it’s important to burst the bubble of thinking that auteurship is the goal and having total control is the goal.
Two volunteer from the audience rounded out the cast of an ad hoc short film, shot during intermissions.
Because really, I think of directing as an act of service. You’re in service of an experience for all of these other people. In order to do that, you have to actually know: what do they need, what do they want, how can I possibly give it to them? Not just, what do I want to say — how can I show it to them? But you only get to think of your audience that way if you can see them and be in the room with them and feel what it feels like to not impress them, and to lose the chance to connect with them.
Being an audience member is such an enriching experience, because you go through this emotional catharsis with strangers, and you leave that space in peace. Nothing violent or bad happened between you and these other people, but something happened that you shared, and you’re able to move on. That’s a practice that, if you do it a lot, changes the way you look at the world.
And I feel that young people aren’t being invited into theater spaces as much — we’re like, “You can come in if you pay $100 and you sit here for two-and-a-half hours.” And young people are like, “I have no attention span and I have no money.” Well, then you don’t get to come to the theater. Building a space that caters to a modern audience gives us the chance to [cultivate] new audience-goers, and invest in them so that they develop the lifelong habit of going to the movie theater, or any theater.
How can you reinvent the experience, so that a modern person is like, I want to choose to do this? Amongst all my other costs, I want to watch short films. That means giving people more choice, more flexibility. The model for Shorts Movie Theater is that the movies will be programmed individually, not in a block. People can go in and out and see one movie, have a drink at the bar, go and see two more. You’ll pay for everything at the end: when you come, you’ll start a tab. You’ll get this ticket card that has all the movies we’re playing, and the usher will stamp the movie when you go in.
How did you develop this philosophy, which is super compelling to me, of what movie theaters and theater spaces in general need to do in this moment to survive? Are there any models you’ve drawn inspiration from?
My biggest inspiration, and my model for this, is my mom’s museum — she runs a children’s museum in Connecticut called Kidcity. She started it because she had two kids, she had nothing going on with her career, and she needed a place to feel like there was somewhere she could go and actually experience being a good parent. So she created this children’s museum out of her imagination and need for it, and it’s the most amazing place. It’s artistic and beautiful and creative. But the most important thing is that Kidcity is a nonprofit, and it’s the only museum of its kind in the whole country that operates off of its ticket sales.
“GORTS” drew a core group of Neighborhood Film Festival members, as well as friends, short film enthusiasts, and interested passersby.
They don’t take donations. They’re not grant funded. They are able to stay open because their customer pays a ticket, and they basically operate like a business. They are mission-based, but my mom has always instilled in me that the person you take money from is your customer. If you take your money from your donor and that is how your business stays open, then that is the person who you’re serving.
It’s insane how many people make short films and they’ve seen, like, two of them — and I’m one of those people. I made a short film having probably watched one before. Then you watch all these shorts and wonder, why are they all making the same mistakes? It’s because you don’t watch short films, so you don’t know that everybody makes the same mistakes about these cliche moments. There’s economic value to be made here, and that’s really important to me. Not the money side, but the idea that [this venue] could be connected to the industry and connected to people’s lives.
Any final thoughts?
I see Shorts Movie Theater as a play, basically. It’s people going into a shared space, experiencing something, and leaving. How can we craft their emotional arc so that they walk away thinking, “Oh my God, I really like my life, I want to be a part of this world, and I want to keep being engaged?”
Want to learn more? Visit https://www.shortsmovietheater.com to sign up for the project’s mailing list, and to find info about the next pop-up.
To a passerby strolling down the sunny sidewalk, it might have seemed improbable: the main obstacle preventing one of the largest gas providers in New York from receiving billions to expand its fossil fuel infrastructure across the state was this small crowd on Java St, hell-bent on being heard, and two bearded twins in pirate costumes.
For the past decade, a local nonprofit called Sane Energy Project has campaigned to decommission the nearby Greenpoint Energy Center, a natural gas depot — at 117 acres, the largest in the state — on the waterfront of Newtown Creek. The facility is owned by National Grid, the British energy behemoth responsible for servicing over 20 million people in New York and Massachusetts, which has repeatedly sought approval from the state regulator to upgrade the site’s two tanks. But in part due to community backlash, most of those requests have been denied. (Last August, the state did eventually allow a $271 million overhaul of the center, financed by rate hikes for gas customers.)
The stakes are greater this time. National Grid is asking the state to approve a long-term plan that would not only expand the Greenpoint Energy Center, but also entrench the use of hydrogen and natural gas throughout New York by building miles of new pipelines. The most conservative scenario in the plan calls for $60 billion, much of which would be passed off to consumers as higher gas rates. Over 1,800 members of the public have submitted comments, opposing the proposal by an overwhelming margin. And after a year of tense hearings and legal back-and-forth within the Public Service Commission (PSC), the state agency in charge of regulating utilities, a verdict is nigh.
This was the last push. The roughly 40 people gathered on Wednesday outside the Polish and Slavic Center on Java St — an assortment of concerned neighbors, environmental activists from groups like Sane Energy, Newtown Creek Alliance, and 350 Brooklyn, and staffers for local politicians — had come for the penultimate hearing of the public comment period. But they were intent on doing it their own way: the regulator had denied their demand to have an in-person meeting, so they had decided to hold a “People’s Hearing,” logging into the virtual platform as a united front with the name “North Brooklyn Community.” (“If we were online,” an organizer asked, “would we be able to feel the power of the people as we are right now?”)
Approximately 40 people — a mix of locals, activists, and politicians — testified against National Grid’s proposed long-term plan during a Public Service Commission hearing last Wednesday. The plan would expand natural gas infrastructure across New York, which the company says is an interim measure before transitioning to renewable energy.
That was the plan, at least. After a series of brief speeches just off Manhattan Ave, the throng filed into the building for the hearing. Greenpointers of all ages filled an unused classroom to the brim; in the back, two supporters perched on a piano bench. The mood was boisterous as the proceeding began and a PSC functionary read out the rules. When it came time to testify, however, pandemonium set in.
“Steff McGraw? If you are a call-in user, please press star-three so I can identify you,” said an administrator, deaf to the chaotic shouts in Brooklyn. She paused briefly before moving on. “The next registered speaker is Michael Davis. If you are a call-in user…”
It quickly became clear that the “North Brooklyn Community” would not be able to speak — its mic was muted, and officials were not responding to requests to enable video. The residents scrambled to call in as the PSC facilitator marched briskly through the list, crossing names off as no-shows.
Finally, Greenpoint City Councilman Lincoln Restler asked to jump the online queue. Restler first expressed his opposition to National Grid’s designs for the Greenpoint Energy Center, arguing that “any long-term plan that does not propose working towards retiring this facility is not a long-term plan that needs to be in our community.”
“Now is the time to put all of our energy and all of our resources into renewable energy, not infrastructure that will soon be obsolete,” he said. “This plan is frankly irresponsible.”
Then Restler addressed the elephant in the room. “Before I wrap, I want to say that I’m getting a series of text messages. There are 40 people called ‘North Brooklyn Community’ on the WebEx, and they’re not permitted to call in. They’re eager to speak and contribute and share their expertise—”
“If there’s time at the end of the hearing, we’ll call people who haven’t registered,” interjected Hon. Anthony Belsito, the presiding judge, cutting him off brusquely.
Kim Fraczek, founder of Sane Energy, claimed that the PSC had in recent months made it more difficult for community members to access crucial context about the plan. In early April, Fraczek’s group filed a motion asking the regulator to “withdraw its sudden, arbitrary, and capricious decision to prohibit further information sharing” between the nonprofit and an independent monitor, PA Consulting, which the state hired to verify the assertions in National Grid’s long-term plan. “After months of open communication among National Grid, Sane and other stakeholders, and Staff as well as its consultant, PA Consulting, Staff abruptly cut off information sharing at a critical part of the proceeding — one week before comments were due for National Grid’s consideration.”
But Restler pressed Belsito, and eventually, after sorting through a few technical hiccups, the judge relented. The floor was open.
Like all of New York’s utilities, National Grid does not make its profits from selling gas to customers. In return for the monopoly the company is granted by the state, it instead must ask the regulator to raise rates — and justify those hikes with expenses like capital investments, such as building pipelines or upgrading the Greenpoint Energy Center.
The relationship between the utility and the state can be contentious. In 2019, the PSC denied National Grid’s proposal for a $1 billion, 37-mile pipeline; in retaliation, the company refused to activate gas hookups for both new and returning customers, turning down over 3,000 requests and leaving developers, landlords, and tenants in limbo, unable to connect to the gas supply with winter fast approaching.
The Public Service Commission allowed the gathered residents to speak after being pressured by City Councilman Lincoln Restler. Administrators had initially insisted they call in individually, though many had technical issues doing so.
Yet the state struck back. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo gave National Grid an ultimatum: either lift the moratorium on hook-ups, or have their license to operate in downstate New York revoked.
That the hearing on Wednesday happened at all is a consequence of that battle. Facing Cuomo’s threat, National Grid backed down, but the state wanted to ensure that such a hostage-taking situation wouldn’t occur again. In 2022, the PSC required that gas utilities publish long-term plans on a three-year cycle, outlining the steps they would be taking to follow New York’s landmark 2019 climate law, the CLCPA, which mandates decarbonization.
In the plan currently up for consideration, National Grid writes that it supports “a strategic transition away from fossil natural gas.” However, it argues that the shift to renewables should not “impose undue cost burdens on customers who currently rely on this fuel for home heating,” and its $60 billion proposal involves “ongoing maintenance of the gas network and near-term investments in strategic assets to maintain the gas network.”
From their base in the Polish and Slavic Center, residents and politicians alike made clear that they weren’t buying that logic.
The aforementioned Steff McGraw, chief of staff for state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, highlighted the economic ramifications of the plan.
“Many of the constituents I serve struggle financially,” she declared, “surviving on low wage jobs while grocery prices skyrocket and the real estate industry preys on our neighborhoods, jacking up rents. One of the most persistent problems we face is the annual increase in rates from investor-owned utilities. You, the Public Service Commission and the Department of Public Service, have the power and obligation to protect New Yorkers from these steadily rising bills.”
“[National Grid] is financially motivated to continually increase the reach and lifetime of the gas system,” read McGraw, “not because it is needed, but because it makes investors and executives rich. There are other and better ways than gas to meet the need for heat — implementing these would not only eliminate the need for the Greenpoint Energy Center and expanded gas capacity, but also improve health and safety. With a climate denier in the White House, state governments must move with extreme urgency to phase out fossil fuels now. I urge the PSC to see this proposal for what it is — a reckless cash grab that will lock working families into a cycle of higher energy bills and climate chaos — and reject it.”
Sara Gronim testified on behalf of the 4,500 members of the environmental group 350 Brooklyn, picking up McGraw’s thread. “Many people have given you all the reasons you’re familiar with,” she said. “I’m going to give you another one: the cost to replace gas lines in the city is something like $6 million a mile. Expansion of service, such as what National Grid proposes, is also phenomenally expensive. All of this is billed to us, the customers.”
“It’s wasteful, and it delays essential action,” Gronim added. “As everyone has said, we need investment in 21st century solutions: thermal energy networks, recycling, wasted energy efficiency, and electrification.”
Along with finances, the community voiced concerns about the health implications of allocating more funds to natural gas infrastructure.
“I’m speaking on behalf of all the sick people,” said Vincent Vespole, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years. “People don’t know what those white tanks are, but my father grew up in Greenpoint on Beadel St, right next to the facility, and he died from cancer. My mother grew up in Greenpoint, she died from cancer. My brother died from cancer. And now I’m being treated for cancer.”
“It’s deadly serious,” Vespole stressed. “What we need is renewable, safe energy there, and we need our Little League back, which was closed because the soil was too toxic.”
Last summer, Greenpoint activists lobbed mud balls packed with nutrients into a defunct Little League field, which was found to be contaminated. The parcel is currently owned by National Grid. Photo by Jean Brannum, former community editor of the Greenpoint Star
In a statement, a spokesperson for National Grid said that “the Long-Term Plan demonstrates that the natural gas network is essential for meeting our customers’ energy needs, especially on the coldest days when customers’ gas demand peaks. The plan also outlines our vision for the future of gas in New York and identifies the policies and investments necessary to put New York on track to achieve the CLCPA’s emissions goals.” He further noted that “ongoing and planned operations at the Greenpoint Energy Center will not impact environmental remediation efforts in the area.”
But state Senator Kristen Gonzalez echoed Vespole’s calls for the Greenpoint Energy Center to be retired, and for the site to be remediated. “I stand with my constituents in opposing National Grid’s long term plan,” she said via a representative. “My waterfront district, which is increasingly vulnerable to flooding due to climate change, can’t wait until 2050 for National Grid to make good on their commitment to transition to clean energy. [The company] says they’re fully committed to our CLCPA goals, but this plan says quite the opposite.”
Earlier this month, New York City also called upon the PSC to require that National Grid revise its long-term plan. In its formal comments, lawyers for the city noted that the company’s choice of the “Clean Energy Vision” — the more fossil-fuel-intensive course of action, compared to “Advanced Electrification” — relies on “unreasonable assumptions regarding the availability of renewable natural gas and the expected usage of hydrogen.”
Many of those who testified voiced support for the long-stalled NY HEAT Act, which would cap energy bills at 6% of household income and shift subsidies from gas projects to fund renewable energy upgrades for low and middle-income New Yorkers.
After three hours, a weary Belsito cued in the last caller, who introduced himself as Cory. His earnest intro was a fake-out: thirty seconds in, he launched into a rowdy, “ahoy matey” parable about a lighthouse. The bottom line, buried ten leagues down in the metaphorical ocean deep, was that National Grid’s plan should be rejected.
“I liked that accent,” an administrator said in the background, as the screen went dark.
The independent consultant is set to file its final report on May 9, and the PSC’s deliberations will take place this fall. You can follow the proceeding as it develops here, and can read the long-term plan here.
Perfume and synths: an unlikely duo, or a match made in heaven?
Just ask Clément Mercet and Ugo Charron, better known as the electronic group Cosmic Gardens, whose calling cards are exactly that. Curious Brooklynites will have plenty of opportunities: the pair are launching a Greenpoint residency, during which they will be performing their signature show once per month.
When Mercet and Charron first met in 2019, the former was in Williamsburg working in advertising and the latter was based out of Bushwick pursuing a career in the fragrance business. But a mutual friend said they would connect over a shared interest: music.
Soon after meeting, the new comrades formed Cosmic Gardens, a band initially built around adaptations of Mercet’s solo material. “We had a weekend with friends,” recalled Mercet, “and we brought our guitars. That was how it started, [with] more acoustic, melancholic ballads.”
Before long, however, they had shifted to a more ambitious project that would unify their common passions — electronica, scents, and the environment — under one umbrella, a subgenre they call “organic indietronica.”
The results speak for themselves: since they began touring several years ago, Cosmic Gardens has performed sold-out shows everywhere from Lincoln Center to Dubai, drawing concertgoers with the promise of a “multi-sensorial” experience.
The show is structured as a three-part journey ushering the audience from the sea, to the forest, and ultimately to outer space. Charron’s perfumes mimic each biome — salty, earthy, and ethereal — and a sequence of original visuals sets the scene.
Cosmic Gardens staged their first installment of the residency last weekend, at Loft Story on Manhattan Ave. They were joined by two additional DJs: Sajh, originally hailing from Paris, and Ÿas, whose repertoire blends elements from the idioms of French electronica, Moroccan music, and Chicago house. Attendees were able to avail themselves of cocktails specially tailored to the tripartite themes of the show.
Though Mercet and Charron have their performance down to a science by now, there are still venue-specific technical issues to work out. One particularly tricky detail is ensuring that the perfumes diffuse throughout the space, which Charran — who apprenticed under a master perfumer for three years — said he was not taught in his master’s program. Instead, he’s had to optimize it through trial and error.
“My family is not at all from the perfume industry,” noted Charron, “but I come from Sancerre. I remember my father would have me smell the wine — not tasting too early! — so that definitely could be an influence.”
On the music side, Mercet attributed his passion to experimentation. “It has always been a fight between doing some regular job and getting money, and spending time creating music,” he said. “My father is a musician, but my parents never pushed my brother and me to do any music. So we learned on our own, and we had the same band: he was the singer, I was the drummer.”
While the group demurred when asked whether their show was motivated by an ecological ethic, Mercet does hope that it inspires audience members to reflect on their relationship to nature: ”It’s a matter of questioning life on Earth.”
“This is more than just a visual, olfactory and auditory journey,” their website explains, “it is an introspective one as well. It will awaken your senses and make you feel connected to your roots.”
The next show will be on Thursday, May 22, at Loft Story again (748 Manhattan Ave). You can find more info at cosmicgardens.com.
A small group of local climate advocates have been facing off against one of the biggest utility companies in the country, National Grid, in a case that could shape Greenpoint’s landscape for years to come — and make or break New York’s transition to renewables. But with a key deadline approaching, the activists say they’ve been cut off from critical information.
The focal point of the case? There are two, and you can see them clearly from the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge: a pair of enormous white tanks. They rise from a spacious lot, imposing but nondescript compared to the chrome domes of the nearby Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The tanks are part of the Greenpoint Energy Center, the largest fossil fuel depot in the state by acreage. Owned by the UK-based corporation National Grid, the facility’s main function is to hold fracked gas, which is cooled below 200ºF to transform it into the easier-to-store liquified natural gas (LNG). And it has become the subject of a protracted legal proceeding that could set the tone for statewide efforts to realize New York’s ambitious climate goals.
A local environmental advocacy group, Sane Energy Project, has long pushed to decommission the site, arguing that gas stored there isn’t utilized and that earmarking more funds to upgrade the facility would violate the timeline for decarbonization outlined in the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).
“If we’re continuing to facilitate throwing money into the gas system,” said Kim Fraczek, founder of Sane Energy Project, “we’re just never going to reach our goals.”
National Grid, for its part, has campaigned for expansion: in recent years, it has repeatedly applied to build new vaporizers, which it says would “allow the facility to deliver its current annual capacity at a faster rate to meet demand.” It has also asserted that the gas is a contingency for extreme weather.
Sane Energy Project and National Grid are now locked in a fierce battle over the future of the Greenpoint Energy Center. The arena is a legal case within New York’s Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s utilities.
The stakes are high. As Columbia University’s Alice Finno noted last November, “this regulatory proceeding with the Commission marks the first time National Grid has had to publicly outline in a long-term plan how it will meet New York’s energy demands and comply with safety standards and clean energy goals.”
In the wider view, the regulator’s decision regarding National Grid’s operations in Greenpoint “could set up a blueprint for the state’s energy system,” explained Finno, “and potentially become an example for gas utilities across the United States.”
The latest skirmish hinges upon PA Consulting Group, an independent monitor whose role in the proceeding is to verify National Grid’s claims — most importantly, whether it needs to maintain the Greenpoint Energy Center to satisfy energy demand.
In a separate proceeding, the monitor had previously determined that the company’s proposal for vaporizers was not supported by adequate evidence. Yet its latest report backed the assertion that the LNG held in Greenpoint was necessary.
With the deadline for submitting comments on National Grid’s bid to expand its facility fast approaching, Sane Energy Project filed several information requests in early February to clarify the methodology behind PA Consulting’s findings.
However, the monitor did not respond. Sane Energy’s latest motion alleges that “after months of open communication among National Grid, Sane and other stakeholders, and [New York Department of Public Service] Staff as well as its consultant, PA Consulting, Staff abruptly cut off information sharing at a critical part of the proceeding — one week before comments were due.”
A representative for National Grid could not be reached before this issue went to press, but the company has previously stated that the Greenpoint Energy Center “is a crucial part of our operations and indispensable to provide heat to nearly 2 million New York households.”
You can read Sane Energy Project’s full motion here.
Maison Provence is a Brooklyn restaurant inspired by the flavors and charm of the South of France, and encompasses the creative vision and efforts of Chef Dantonio Lolo – who was born and raised in Nice, France.
