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One Hour with Zohran Mamdani

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

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.”

Mohamed Farghaly contributed reporting.

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At Shorts Movie Theater, Brevity Is the Main Attraction

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

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.

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In “People’s Hearing,” Greenpointers Make the Case Against National Grid’s Long-Term Plan

BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

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.

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Cosmic Gardens Launches Greenpoint Residency

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

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.

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Local Org Alleges Unfair Practices in National Grid Case

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.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.

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After a Long Reprieve, NYC is Selling Tax Liens Again This May. How Will it Affect Greenpointers?

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

In just over a month, the city is relaunching a program that will increase tax revenue, but may put some New Yorkers — especially older adults — at risk of losing their homes. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a tax lien sale? 

When the pandemic hit, the amount of overdue property taxes in New York City began to skyrocket. Last year, it reached an all-time high of over $880 million — more than doubling since 2019. That poses a major threat to the city budget, given that the property tax is its single largest source of revenue, but officials think they have a solution. They’ve pointed the finger at a practice that expired several years ago: the tax lien sale. 

A lien is a legal claim on an asset — essentially, it’s the right to collect a debt. Before 1996, homeowners who were significantly behind on their bills would deal directly with the city, which if not paid could eventually foreclose on a property. But managing those confiscated properties was a headache; by the early 90s, the city was spending millions of dollars repairing houses, and getting stuck with them for an average of 19 years. 

In 1993, the city stopped foreclosing on houses for unpaid taxes entirely. It still needed to collect them somehow, though, so then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani decided in 1996 to sell the liens to private investors — let them deal with it, the rationale went, and the city would reap at least a portion of the money owed without shouldering any burden.

The upside was clear, but tax liens sales also had a murky history. The practice emerged during the Great Depression, writes Margaret Newkirk of Bloomberg, and later spread to cities where speculators often targeted poor minority neighborhoods, stripping residents of their land or extorting them through exorbitant interest payments. 

Today’s tax lien system has grown even larger, but it’s also more regulated than its earlier incarnations. While investors buy up to $5 billion worth of tax liens across thirty states each year, typically through a trust, less than 1% of those liens now lead to foreclosure. Lawmakers have been actively tweaking the specifics, too. When New York folded water bills into the program in 2007, it also included a range of reforms to improve outreach and minimize impacts on low-income residents, and it has added new protections every few years, including its latest bill.

The bottom line: on May 20, the city will be auctioning off property tax liens to private investors for the first time since 2021, along with the rights to unpaid water and sewage bills. (During deliberations in 2024, the City Council considered permanently scrapping the sale, but anxieties over the recent trend of unpaid property taxes won out.) However, there’s still time for New Yorkers to find out whether their debt is being sold, and to take preventative measures if so.

Who is at risk? 

In technical terms, commercial properties, larger residential rentals, and other vacant land are eligible for a lien if bills are 1 year overdue; for Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs), a class of affordable housing co-ops, that number is 2 years; and for smaller properties, the liens becomes possible for debts older than 3 years.

For the average New Yorker, the good news is that many buildings won’t be included in the tax lien sale. Homeowners with mortgages generally have escrow accounts which preclude overdue payments, for example. And even if you’re behind on your bills amid an affordability crisis of staggering proportions, applying for a property tax exemption could remove you from the auction. 

The city offers four main types of exemptions: the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption (SCHE), the Disabled Homeowners’ Exemption (DHE), a range of Veterans Exemptions, and the Not-for-Profit Exemption. While the deadline has technically passed to receive discounts for next year, the Department of Finance will work with eligible residents who reach out now. To learn more, visit nyc.gov/site/finance/property/property-lien-sales.page# — each exemption expires at a different rate, so it’s important to keep abreast of the details.

But the fact that the exemptions exist doesn’t necessarily mean that administrators will guide homeowners to them without prompting. Rachel Geballe, deputy director for the Brooklyn office of Legal Services NYC, recalls one horror story in particular.

“I had a client who was elderly and blind, so she was guided by her daughter, and she was definitely eligible for both a senior citizen and a disability exemption. She got up to the desk and she said, ‘I’m on the lien sale.’ And they said, ‘Okay, well, sign this payment plan.’ So they put her right away into a payment plan that she actually couldn’t afford, whereas they could have given her the exception that would have also gotten her off the lien. Instead, she defaulted on the payment plan and her lien was sold.”

For seniors without support, the story might end there. Thankfully, Geballe’s team was able to secure a retroactive exemption for that client, which has been a focus of recent reforms. 

“While we have made significant reforms to the lien sale, there will still be those owners who fall into arrears when they could and should be benefiting from property tax exemptions,” said City Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, introducing a bill at a hearing this January. “By allowing eligible homeowners to have these exemptions applied retroactively, we can bring at-risk households into compliance, save people’s homes, and stabilize neighborhoods.”

As with any situation involving both an information gap and large sums of money, scams abound. “Because the list of people who are subject to the tax lien sale is public,” said Geballe, “we do see scammers just go down the list.” Those named are “nervous that their liens are going to be sold, they’re in distress, and they are vulnerable,” she noted. “Many of them are elderly or disabled. And heirs are particularly vulnerable because there might be 20 heirs [to a property], ultimately, and you can scam one or two of them.”

Lastly, the tax lien sale doesn’t only affect homeowners. “In any given year more than 85% of residential units in lien sale properties with residential units are rental units,” a 2024 report by East New York Community Land Trust found, and “the vast majority of these properties are owned by absentee landlords.” The report cited a case in which dozens of Queens residents were evicted from their apartments without advance notice, after the owner of the lien arrived to claim the property — the landlord had been deep in debt, but none of the tenants had realized the building was on the lien sale list. 

What should I do? 

The first step is to get informed. Under the latest iteration of the program, if you are at risk of being included in the lien sale, you will receive warning notices in the mail 90, 60, 30, and 10 days before the sale. You can also read the full list on the Department of Finance website (see above). 

If you receive a warning notice, you will have to either (1) apply for one of the various exemptions, (2) enter into a payment plan, which could entail reduced interest rates, or (3) simply pay the bills, if you’re able.

Although this process can be confusing and stressful, there are systems in place to help. “There are free legal services available,” stressed Geballe. “The number one thing [to remember] if somebody is calling or door-knocking you, is, ‘Hey, that’s not the person to trust.’ You can call 311 and be connected to nonprofits that have been vetted and funded for this purpose, and they will never charge you. And they’ll help you navigate it all.”

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Preparing Brooklyn’s Kids with Special Needs for a Digital World

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

As with many great ideas, Beth Rosenberg conceived of Tech Kids Unlimited through equal parts necessity and chance.

The year was 2009, and Rosenberg was working as a special needs consultant at a school in Manhattan, building upon a career at the Guggenheim and in museum education writ large. Yet she was having difficulty finding resources for her own neurodiverse son, Jack, a then 10-year-old who loved technology. 

Taking matters into her own hands, Rosenberg put together one week of programming for 12 kids — a crash course in stop motion animation. As she recalls now, the response was both immediate and unambiguous: “The parents said, ‘Well, can we have more?’” There was a need, clearly, and Rosenberg set about meeting it through a fresh slate of classes. 

Today, Tech Kids Unlimited (TKU) — whose mission is to “empower neurodivergent youth through technology education and career preparation” — has grown to serve 542 students, encompassing not only New Yorkers but online participants from 12 additional states. Part of that expansion was made possible by a windfall in 2013, after Rosenberg started a job as an adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Downtown Brooklyn. Her boss, curious about her workshops, asked whether she would bring the burgeoning program to the college. 

Until then, the scrappy prototype for TKU had largely been a function of Rosenberg’s force of will — for four years, she pulled together flyers and booked rooms wherever she had an affiliation, typically Pace University or the JCC. But that conversation at NYU changed the equation by offering a long-term space in which to scale, and it spurred Rosenberg to register TKU as a nonprofit in 2014. “From that point on, we had a home base,” she said. “I had access to classrooms in the summer and in the evening and on Fridays, so we could expand the program.”

TKU, still housed within NYU Tandon, now boasts a suite of options. Interested parents of children and young adults can choose from 14 distinct programs that fall within two general tracks: “tech knowledge” and “career ladder.” While the organization was formed around the former, Rosenberg said that the latter has become her main concern. “We’re graduating more and more students from high school and even community college,” she said. “But the work learning piece, the getting a job piece, is virtually not there.” 

TKU’s students come from a wide range of backgrounds, both in terms of age (7 to 21) and abilities. But to pick one example, a 2017 census by Drexel University of Americans with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) found that only 38% of respondents were engaged in paid jobs, whether full or part-time, highlighting the barriers those with learning disabilities face in finding employment.

For her part, Rosenberg believes this gap is exacerbated by disinvestment and stigma, and can be closed. “You don’t really see kids with special needs working unless they’re shelving vitamins at the grocery store or at Target,” she said. “I’m sick of it, because our kids are capable of so much more. But the world doesn’t see that.”

One of the nonprofit’s flagship programs is the TKU Digital Agency, which allows students to build skills by designing social media posts and other digital products for big-name partner companies. AMC, a recent client, used students’ creations to promote its show “Orphan Black: Echoes.“ Those posts received high praise: “It was nice to be able to share our knowledge with individuals who truly appreciate it,” AMC reps wrote, “and we were very impressed by all the ideas, work, and execution.”

Later this month, TKU students will be contributing to the fourth installment of the Marvels of Media Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, which runs from March 27 to March 29. The free event caps off a year-round initiative by the museum to “showcase, celebrate, and support autistic media-makers of all ages and skill sets,” and will feature VR experiences, video games, and film screenings followed by panel discussions.

Tonya Blazio was a graduate student at NYU when she found TKU through a newsletter. Her son Tate, who has IDD, had always been creative — to this day, he brings the objects he crafts into class to show everybody — but he fell in love with stop motion at a workshop, and has been obsessed ever since. More than that, Blazio said, her son discovered a safe space to learn alongside other kids: “Just seeing the improvement in my son’s work, his social skills, his ability to better communicate and understand how technology is available to help him — it’s been really tremendous.”

That sense of support and belonging extends beyond the students themselves, Blazio noted. “It takes a village to raise a child,” she said. “When parents realize, ‘Oh, I’m actually not in this all by myself,’ there’s all this information that you can share, and that’s been quite helpful for me.”

Though TKU’s pedagogy has evolved since 2009, it has kept its original emphasis on small class sizes. (“If it was good enough for the Queen of England,” Rosenberg said, referring to personalized tutors, “it should be good enough for our kids.”) Once the organization attained nonprofit status in 2014, it indexed heavily into project-based learning and design thinking, incorporating those principles throughout its curriculum. Another guiding paradigm is the special needs-oriented Universal Design for Learning, which encourages teachers to meet students where they are by “offering more than one way to access information.”

Nearly eight million students across America received services for disabilities in 2022-2023, the last school year for which data is available, accounting for roughly 15% of public schoolers. New York City alone is home to 200,000 students with special needs, though that label, which applies to 19% of the student population, casts a wide net; about 80,000 kids had learning disabilities, and just over 20,000 had ASD.

With April around the corner, Rosenberg and her team are spreading the word about their summer workshops. Each week is devoted to a different discipline, such as game design or video editing, and timing is flexible: parents can drop their kids off for either half or full days, and can sign up for whichever weeks they need.

“These kids are interesting, quirky, fabulous — they’re, you know, kids,” said Rosenberg, and the summer camps are designed to be just as fun as they are educational. Yet many parents, like Rosenberg herself, also witness their children develop valuable new skills. “[My son] went through TKU for 10 years: he learned time management, how to collaborate, how to take constructive criticism,” she said. “And he learned how to advocate for himself.”

So how is Jack faring, more than a decade after his passion sparked Rosenberg’s early efforts to ensure kids with special needs flourish? “I went out to dinner with all my SPED mom friends in December,” she said proudly, “and he was the only kid who was working.” Her son received an associate’s degree from Pace, which has a disability program, and he now works part-time as an operations assistant at the Shirley Aninias School, a special ed school in downtown Manhattan. 

Blazio has seen a similar maturation in Tate, who she said became more independent thanks to TKU’s programs. “At one point, they don’t want you to leave them,” she said. “And then the next year or so, they’re like, See you, mom!”

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G Train Fleet Gets Younger and Older, Simultaneously

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

The gods of transportation taketh, but they giveth too.

Last December, the MTA was facing a strange problem: the wheels of one model of subway car, R160s, were wearing out over the course of a few weeks, rather than months, and had to be rapidly replaced.

These R160 cars run on the E, F, and R lines, so theoretically the G should have been unaffected. But when the defective cars were pulled from service, substitutes from the G took their place — and vintage models from the 1980s were dusted off to fill any vacancies. Those cars, R68s, are slated to be phased out this year (prompting passengers to preemptively eulogize their unique yellow-and-orange “lover’s seats,” which are arranged in a cramped L-shape.) The end result, at least for the moment, is that G riders have been left with mostly musty, outmoded trains. 

Yet efforts to modernize the G line, the sole subway that doesn’t enter Manhattan, are also underway. After a “summer of pain” — not the citywide transit Tartarus of 2017, but the G-specific woes of 2024, when the line was shut down for repairs — the route started up again in September with a new signal system installed, which will come online in 2027. 

A more palpable change has been the introduction this month of open gangway trains, R211Ts, to the G line. The MTA initially rolled out two R211Ts, which have no doors between cars, on the C line, before announcing that it would be repurposing half of those 20 cars for the shorter G, where the 10 compartments could, like mitosis, form two additional trains with 5 apiece.

The transit authority is bullish on the revamped models: last year it approved a plan to buy 80 more open gangway R211Ts, ostensibly funded by congestion pricing. And at a press conference on March 4, Brooklyn lawmakers were similarly ebullient, praising the rollout.

Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon called the open gangway trains “more comfortable;” state Senator Andrew Gounardes and AM Emily Gallagher both argued they would relieve crowding, while making it more accessible for riders using wheelchairs or strollers. Council Member Lincoln Restler simply said the update was “awesome.”

New York isn’t the first transit system to adopt the open gangway. From Paris to Delhi, “cities around the world have benefitted from this same design,” said Gounardes. In fact, until now it’s been a glaring gap between America and its peers — 6sqft writes that “75 percent of non-U.S. metros have adopted open gangway trains, whereas zero percent of U.S. metros have.”

But many Brooklynites are split on the design, largely over public safety concerns. Online, the chatter has fallen into two broad buckets: the people who think the open gangway is indeed safer, because you can move away from someone who’s bothering you more easily, and those who maintain it’s the opposite, since you can’t switch cars. Anecdotally, the divide seems gendered, with men largely feeling safer on the R211Ts and women expressing reservations. 

Sophie, from Windsor Terrace, fell into the latter camp — she had the sense that the long corridor would make it harder to escape, and she also worried that the trains were becoming too “screen-oriented,” with little to gain practically. “They play TikToks and moving ads on the new trains,” she said. “I don’t think we need that.”

That aside, she acknowledged that the trains have been in dire need of improvements, and that the system has lagged behind international analogs. If the open gangway moves the needle on repairs, she noted, that would be a win. 

A fresh wave of open gangway trains are on their way, so they may eventually become the norm in New York City rather than a shiny toy. But for the time being, commuters on the G line roll the dice each day — will I ride a holdover from the 80s, or the digitalized train of the future?

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Is Bushwick Inlet Park on Track at Last?

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

The year is 2021, and former Mayor Bill De Blasio is apologizing as he holds up a $75 million check, flanked by local leaders from Greenpoint and Williamsburg. “A promise was made to this community a long time ago for this park,” he says, pulling down his mask, “and the city of New York did not keep the promise.”

The promise referenced by De Blasio was made back in 2005 by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who included plans for the 27-acre Bushwick Inlet Park as part of a massive rezoning of the two neighborhoods that year that paved the way for the frenetic development currently reshaping the borough’s northern tip. The condos have come up, but the full stretch of green space — the announcement of which was already perceived as ‘a long time ago’ in 2021 — has yet to materialize.

Now, in 2025, real change seems to be afoot. The demolition of the enormous CitiStorage building on Kent Avenue wrapped last week, putting an end to a land struggle that had prevented the Parks Department from moving forward with construction. As with many other local sites, the grounds will still need to undergo a significant remediation process, but officials praised the progress nonetheless.

“This has been a long and drawn-out fight, but the Citi Storage facility is finally down, making way for our long promised Bushwick Inlet Park,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler. “Our community has waited for far too long to see this promised park space, and I’m thrilled that this milestone means we can finally realize the full potential of our waterfront.” 

The demolished CitiStorage building was one of two structures owned by the company that had posed problems for the park’s development. The other, a nearby warehouse, was damaged by a fire in 2015. Though it was earmarked for the park, CitiStorage attempted to sell the 7.5-acre property to private developers before the city swooped in to make a $160 million purchase. The promised park’s planners now have access to land spanning from the North 9th Street soccer field all the way across the Bushwick Inlet, leading community organizers to believe that the 2005 designs may be feasible at last. 

“The CitiStorage building sat on some of the most beautiful land in our district, and that land was held hostage for a decade since the fire, while the community fought for this outcome. The fact that the building has finally been torn down, and the park design process can move forward, represents a tremendous victory for the community,” said Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, celebrating the demolition. “This didn’t just happen — it is the result of decades of tenacious organizing from the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, past and present local representatives, and so many community members who came together to demand that the land be used for public good, not luxury condos that would drive up prices in our district.”

Greenpoint and Williamsburg continue to have among the lowest number of parks per capita in the city, leaders say, and that gap is becoming more urgent as thousands of new residents pour into freshly-unveiled apartment complexes. There’s a climate angle, too: “As New York City increasingly becomes hotter and more expensive,” Gallagher noted, “it is essential that we fight for parks as free spaces where our neighbors can gather, find shade, and build community.”

One of the main forces pushing for the 27-acre green space to be realized has been the organization Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which launched a campaign nearly two years ago called “Where’s Our Park?” to pressure the city into action. Its president, Katherine Conkling Thompson, said the sudden view of uninterrupted coastline afforded by the demolition was “astonishing,” and thanked her fellow organizers for their efforts.

“Over 150 years ago, the birth of the fossil fuel industry began here,” Thompson said in a statement. “As we begin to remediate this land, restore the riparian shoreline, plant native species to create precious public open space for all people to share, we can acknowledge that this is not only an investment in the future of our beloved Brooklyn but a symbol of the victory of the people coming together to demand environmental justice and [for] the city to fulfill its rezoning promises.”

You can watch a time-lapse of the demolition here, courtesy of Stephen McFadden.

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As BQE Deteriorates, Officials at Odds Over Fix

The triple cantilever was built in the 1940s, and experts say it is in dire need of repairs. Photo: Jack Delaney

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

“No more kicking the can,” said Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, as he announced two initiatives to fix the BQE Triple Cantilever, a distressed stretch of highway that runs underneath the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.

Yet in a letter sent to Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi last Monday, five elected officials whose districts encompass the site are alleging that Adams has been doing just that: punting the issue.

At the heart of the matter is the question of whether to act sooner to repair the cantilever in a limited capacity, or to wait until a long-term solution — likely a complete redesign — can be implemented.

Endorsing the latter approach, the mayor’s office and Department of Transportation officials have argued that a short-term remedy would expend the political capital necessary for a lasting overhaul, stalling the project indefinitely.

But the recent letter, signed by Councilmember Lincoln Restler, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Congress Members Dan Goldman and Nydia Velazquez, argues that the process of determining a permanent fix has already stretched on too long, and a stopgap measure is badly needed to ensure the highway is safe.

“Considering the importance of federal funding for this project and the orientation of the incoming Trump administration toward New York City and the general uncertainty at City Hall,” Restler wrote in an email, “it is not clear that the Adams administration’s plans remain viable.”

“We need an alternative option that protects and preserves the safety of the highway and our community for the foreseeable future, while we work to craft longer term solutions for the whole BQE corridor,” he said. “Implementation of a stabilization plan to extend the lifespan of the Triple Cantilever would create time for city, state and federal governments to achieve new strategies to divert freight and reduce trucks and cars on this highway.”

The cantilever was constructed in the 1940s, and renovations were floated in 2006 during a planning workshop organized by state officials. In 2018, Mayor Bill De Blasio’s team pitched a temporary six-lane highway that would have run parallel to the Promenade, which would have been closed for up to six years. Needless to say, Brooklyn Heights residents weren’t pleased, and the proposal withered.

Mayor Adams has picked up where De Blasio left off, but has encountered roadblocks of his own: per amNewYork, in January the Biden administration rejected a request for $800 million to redo the cantilever. The deliberations over the correct design have plodded on regardless, with DOT holding forums to gather community input, the most recent of which occurred last week.

At this month’s Brooklyn Community Board 2 full board meeting, some members who had attended the latest info sessions were just as leery as Restler of DOT’s promises for a long-term solution.

“You heard the councilman mention the BQE — we learned last night that they’re starting the clock again on the two-year study to come up with a plan,” said Sidney Meyer, chairperson of CB2’s Transportation & Public Safety Committee. “Now, most of us have been involved with the same two-year plan, beginning in the year 2000. It’s the same two years, where they’ll study all the alternatives, at the end of which they’ll propose whatever they’re going to propose. I would urge you to be vigilant about what’s going to happen there.”

In 2020, a report by leading transportation experts concluded that the BQE was deteriorating faster than expected, in part due to the presence of overweight trucks. The triple cantilever was especially degraded, it noted, and needed repairs “immediately.”

While the report warned that sections of the road could become “unsafe and unable to carry existing levels of traffic within five years,” it also specifically rejected any proposals for a temporary highway near the Promenade, instead endorsing a refurbished four-lane structure.

Ultimately, almost all the stakeholders involved seem to agree that a major overhaul is needed, and soon. Why then, many residents like Meyer ask, has it taken more than 20 years to arrive at yet another impasse?

The fault for continual setbacks to the BQE project may not belong to DOT and Gracie Mansion alone. As Christopher Bonanos, New York Magazine’s city editor, wrote in June, “digging up half of Brooklyn for the once-in-a-century chance to finally fix the BQE and, in turn, build a better city, would require a level of misery tolerance that has come to seem unimaginable.” He noted that the best choice could be to demolish parts of the BQE and bury others, but the inconvenience to drivers and locals — and what he viewed as an overly cautious attitude on the city’s part — has made it politically infeasible.

As of now, the environmental review is slated to begin in 2025, and bona fide construction on the cantilever would start in 2029 at the earliest.