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COBB: Greenpoint Through the Eyes of Mary Meserole Bliss

BQE Admin on August 26, 2026

Mary Meserole Bliss! (Image via Geoff Cobb)

By Geoffrey Cobb | gcobb91839@aol.com

In the fall I am going to self-publish the last book I will ever write about local history. The book is entitled “Greenpoint’s Forgotten Stories” and builds on my first book “Greenpoint’s Forgotten Past.” My books tell the story of how Greenpoint evolved.

The first story I tell in the book is the saga of Mary Meserole Bliss, who saw Greenpoint transformed from isolated self-sufficient rural hamlet into the industrial heart of America’s largest city. She was born on February 14, 1813, when Greenpoint had fewer than two hundred people. and lived until September 11, 1897, by which time Greenpoint had become the home of heavy industry and oil refining.

In my first chapter, I tried to imagine an eighteen-year-old Mary contemplating an offer of marriage from her future husband Neziah Bliss who was more than twenty years older than his future bride. I struggled to capture Mary’s mindset as she considered his offer. A female friend helped me to write the chapter, saying that an eighteen-year-old girl contemplating such an offer would have been on an emotional roller coaster, which I tried to incorporate into my piece on her.

Confounding Mary’s dilemma was the question of physical attraction. From pictures I have seen, Mary was no great beauty, but her hand came with a dowry of thirty-one acres of riverfront property. The dowry alone must have interested Bliss, who wanted to become the area’s first property developer. In my chapter I imagined Mary struggling with the question whether Bliss really loved her or simply wanted to marry her for her dowry.

She decided to marry him, and Bliss and Mary did wed in 1832. Mary bore Bliss six children. Mary’s marriage to Bliss would last more than forty happy years. Her son Archibald became a member of Congress and voted to nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.

Bliss had the land surveyed and streets laid out, but just as his venture seemed to be most promising, the panic of 1837 hit freezing credit and brought real estate purchases to a virtual halt. Bliss was left on the edge of financial ruin.

Eventually the panic ended, shipbuilders relocated to Greenpoint and Bliss became a wealthy man. He died a very rich man in 1876 at the age of 86, his vision having become a reality.

Mary was a devout member of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Dutch Reformed church on Franklin and Java where they first worshiped was modest, hardly befitting the wealthy Bliss clan. Mary and her mother were the driving force in building a new grand edifice.

They wanted to build a more beautiful and elegant structure. Meserole money funded a new Dutch Reformed Church, one of the most beautiful buildings in the area, on Kent Street. Following the Civil War, plans were finalized for a larger church that was erected in 1869 costing over $50,00, a fortune at the time.

The Dutch Reformed Church on Kent Street was designed by William –Ditmars, a well- known Brooklyn architect and the structure is a gem. The church is a mix of styles and elements a combination of Early Romanesque Revival and High Victorian forms, which made it a unique church, earning it landmark status. Today sadly it sits empty but remains one of the area’s architectural treasures.

Mary left Greenpoint in the 1870s when the environment started to become polluted. She was regarded as one of the pillars of upper-class Brooklyn and an invitation to her soirees was a sign of being accepted into refined Brooklyn society.

Mary died at age eighty-four, having shaped local history. Her acceptance of Neziah Bliss’s marriage proposal completely transformed Greenpoint and laid the groundwork for the area we call home today.

GUNK Turns Three

BQE Admin on August 26, 2026

Ceci and Hannah (left) posing with panelists from a discussion of “Documenting a Scene” at GUNK’s birthday celebration. (Photos by Tashroom Ahsan)

The Brooklyn-based indie music magazine hosted a 12-hour birthday extravaganza to mark the milestone.

BY ADELINE DAAB

On a windowsill at The Owl. Below a printout of Dwane the Rock Johnson telling Rubulad showgoers to “stay sweet.”  Next to an “Armed and Gelatinous” arcade game at Wonderville. These are just some of the places you may have encountered an artfully-printed publication listing indie music shows around the city. Over the past three years, GUNK has spread.

It may be free to grab a copy of GUNK at your local indie venue, but it’s far from free to design, print, and distribute. Last weekend, GUNK hosted a 12-hour-long show and fundraiser in celebration of its third year as the connective tissue of the NYC indie music scene. Attendees swarmed the colorful upper level of Secret Riso Club—buying raffle tickets for workshops, getting flash tattoos of flying birds, screenprinting their own shirts with a tasteful GUNK. Behind the frenzy loomed a thermometer documenting progress towards the fundraising goal of $12,000. Down a set of steps in the back, the basement hosted a revolving door of artists playing before a silver curtain that reflected a dim red halo around them, with an old television sporting a neon screensaver in the corner.

Since its inception in 2023, GUNK has served as a road map for New Yorkers to navigate the music scene, both physically and intellectually. GUNK features a gorgeous riso-printed magazine, publishing a local New York show calendar alongside critical writing. Though music criticism grounds much of this writing, the issues expand to press on vital topics that exceed melodies. GUNK founders Hannah Pruzinsky and Ceci Sturman articulated this seriousness directly: “We find it really important to publish writing about issues that matter in the community that are not just music: social issues, political activism, the genocide in Palestine. [GUNK] is multi-faceted.”

Pruzinsky and Sturman are long-time friends, musicians, and collaborators themselves, playing together in the trio Sister. in addition to running GUNK.  As artists, they listened to others in the music community lament the loss of the physical bi-weekly publication SHOWPAPER, which listed DIY all ages shows in the tristate area until 2015. GUNK was created to spackle that gap, enabling people to find shows again without having to sift through an algorithm.

As Pruzinsky and Sturman began GUNK, they reached out to those who created SHOWPAPER to build on the wisdom they’d garnered over the paper’s seven years of circulation. “They gave us do’s and don’ts. We just bought a printer and started printing in my bedroom,” Pruzinsky shared. When Pruzinsky and Sturman come up against an obstacle, their contacts from SHOWPAPER remain their first call. “We kind of struggled figuring out how to organize people. How do we get people engaged? How do we even figure out when people are available to collate?” In those moments, they’ll call up someone like Joe Ahearn, a former SHOWPAPER managing director, who will send over a suggestion based on what worked at SHOWPAPER — “and then we do that and the process is a hundred times better.”

As GUNK’s popularity grew, a copy fell into the hands of a different pair of friends. Tara Ridgedell and Gonzalo Guerrero are the co-owners of Secret Riso Club, an artist-run space & creative studio that serves as a resource for independent publishing, distribution, and much more. “Gonzalo came across GUNK at Honeymoon coffee shop when it was just one page folded, printed on Hannah’s laser printer,” Ridgedell told me. “We were excited about it because it spoke to so much of what we love about independent publishing.” Guerrero, too, is a musician, and showgoing had long been an important part of his and Ridgedell’s friendship. They emailed Pruzinsky and Sturman inquiring about a collaboration. Two and a half years later, Guerrero designs each issue of GUNK and Secret Riso Club prints every copy. The issues we held at the fundraiser, hosted in their space, were printed just behind the GUNK silk screens pasting ink on attendees’ shirts.

Digital audio files, flowing through headphones into a solo pair of ears, dominate the musical landscape of the 21st century. In a world where infinite artists are at our fingertips always, it’s easy to forget the role of live music. Speakers on a panel discussion about documenting the music scene—sandwiched between bands Hiding Places and Tasha in the 12-hour lineup—reminded onlookers of the importance of going to shows. “You know how people go to stone work at a grave site and they’ll put a piece of paper over the stone, get some graphite, and rub. It’s a rubbing. These documents are like that,”  panelist Chris Billias said of recorded music. “The music is this: what you saw earlier and what you’ll see later. The recordings are just documents.”

COBB: The Story of Connie Darnowski’s Olympic Run

BQE Admin on August 26, 2026

Modern-day McCarren Park, where hurdler Constance Darnowski trained for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Photo by Noah Zimmerman.

GEOFFREY COBB

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past”

gcobb91839@Aol.com

Fager Field, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, July 4, 1952.

Seventeen-year-old Connie Darnowski sat alone on the hard wooden bleachers at Fager Field, staring silently at the eight hurdles that would decide her future. Five years of training had led to this day. Every sprint, every practice, every hurdle she had ever cleared had led her here. The stakes were high: win this race and represent the United States at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Lose, and the dream she had chased since childhood would die.

The five-foot-four-inch Polish American raven-haired hurdler began to think about her path to the American Olympic Finals. Her mind drifted back five years to the afternoon when, as a twelve-year-old, she attended her first track meet. She probably would never even have started running if she had not lived close to the track in McCarren Park. She could still picture that day with remarkable clarity. Her brother Vinnie, a powerfully built shot putter, was competing in a Police Athletic League track meet and she had come out to cheer him. She was astonished to see girls competing in sprint races. It was the first time in her life she had seen girls taking part in organized athletics, and it thrilled her. She was astonished to see girls competing in sprint races, which thrilled her.

Though the girls were older than she was, Connie was the fastest girl at Saint Stanislaw Kostka school, and she believed she could outrun these older, more mature girls.

Connie returned home and asked her parents if she could run in the meet the following year. She knew that other Polish American fathers were protective and would not let their daughters participate in something so unladylike, but thankfully her dad was different. He had played soccer in the American Army during World War I and was also a strong basketball player who loved sports. He told her that she could certainly run against the other girls and told her that her uncle had been the sprint champ of Saint Cecilia’s grammar school, so sprinting ran in her bloodline.

A year later, twelve-year-old Connie easily beat these older girls in the 100-yard dash. She remembered the excitement of running as fast as she could and the joy she felt as she broke the tape, winning the first race on a track she had ever run. There was something magical and addictive about running faster than the other girls and seeing the envy in their eyes. Tens of thousands of girls her age had similar dreams of running, but their dreams remained unrealized. In 1948 there were almost no organized opportunities for girls who wanted to become track athletes. Long before Title IX, many schools offered no teams at all.

She looked down at the lose-fitting blouse she wore, and the words written on it, German American Athletic Club. Connie realized she was extremely lucky that the German American club trained in McCarren Park. One of the girls she had defeated in that first race, Loretta Blaul, belonged to the German American Athletic Club. She told Connie that her father coached the team and urged her to join.

Without Coach Blaul, she wouldn’t be sitting in these bleachers today. He taught his hurdlers to skim over each hurdle so closely that, as he liked to say, they should be able to knock a coin from the top without losing speed.

The star of the German American club was Nancy Phillips, who would become Connie’s role model and toughest opponent. Four years older than Connie, the tall, long-legged blond with a pretty face was already a woman, no longer a girl. A three-time national champion in the 80-meter hurdles, Phillips practiced with intensity, pursuing her athletic dreams with incredible focus. She said little and led by example. Her ability to keep sprinting at top speed, even when her legs ached, earned the whole team’s admiration.

Connie idolized Phillips. She watched everything Nancy did—from the way she set her starting blocks to the effortless rhythm with which she cleared each hurdle—and quietly tried to imitate it.

Connie determined to work just as hard as Nancy and of course, she improved, but she could never equal Phillips, who won every race against Connie. Three years passed and Connie narrowed the gap between her and her idol, but Phillips still reigned as the queen of the hurdles.

1952 arrived, a crucial season for the girls on the team because the Olympic trials were being held in July.  Connie and her teammates trained as hard as they ever had with one goal in mind; winning the trials. In June, Connie and Nancy squared off, but the result was the same: Phillips won the gold medal. Now, the moment that she had trained all those years for was at hand: the final of the 80-meter hurdles. The starter called the runners to the line. Connie felt as if an electric current was running through her body. She became conscious of how sweaty her palms were as she set the blocks, nervously waiting for the gun. A tense hush fell over the stadium. The shot rang out and Connie exploded out of the blocks, as did Phillips in the next lane. She extended her leg to clear the first hurdle, aware that Phillips was a split second ahead. Connie cleared hurdle after hurdle, but Phillips kept her slight lead, as they approached the final hurdle. As Connie cleared it, she was aware of a crash next to her, but her feet hit the ground, and she sprinted to the finish breaking the tape to win.

Only after she turned around did she understand what had happened. Nancy had hit the last hurdle and fallen.

Connie should have been celebrating. Instead, she hurried back down the track. Nancy lay beside the overturned final hurdle, devastated. Connie knelt beside her, helped her to her feet, and embraced her as tears filled Nancy’s eyes.  Compassion filled her heart. At that moment, Connie understood that victory wasn’t everything. Coach Blaul had taught them how to hurdle, but she realized that in this moment of victory track had taught her other even more valuable lessons.

Connie represented the United States in Helsinki in 1952 and again in Melbourne four years later, becoming one of the finest female hurdlers America produced during the decade. Although she never won an Olympic medal, her accomplishments came at a time when opportunities for women athletes were still remarkably limited. Connie Darnowski and her teammates at the German American Athletic Club helped blaze the trail for the generations of American girls who would one day benefit from far greater opportunities in competitive sport.

From a Polish Farm to White Tablecloth

BQE Admin on August 26, 2026

Amber Steakhouse owner Lukasz Skrodzki. Photo courtesy of Amber Steakhouse.

Amber Steakhouse Owner Lukasz Skrodzki traces his family’s roots in rural Poland to one of Greenpoint’s finest restaurants.

BY BENJAMIN ZHURBIN

news@queensledger.com

GREENPOINT – Among Brooklyn’s Polish community, there is a common saying: “From Warsaw, the first stop is Greenpoint.”

For Lukasz Skrodzki, the saying was more or less accurate— his father immigrated to Greenpoint from a rural Polish farm on October 16, 1993, and 3 days later, Skrodzki was born.

Now 33, Skrodzi runs Amber Steakhouse, a restaurant his father opened in 2010 that has since become a Greenpoint staple, noted for its white tablecloths, high-quality steaks, dim lighting, and rustic wood interior. But beneath this classy, upscale aesthetic hides a multi-generational immigrant story of dedication, tradition and adaptation to the neighborhood’s ever-shifting urban landscape.

The story begins on a distant farm in Poland, where Skrodzki’s father started working as a butcher at 13. His father did the same work, and so did his father’s father.

“There was no grocery shopping—that’s how they put food on the table for themselves,” said Lukasz Skrodzki.

As Skrodzki’s father got older, he looked to expand his work beyond serving his family. Eventually, he began serving local weddings, funerals, and family gatherings. The business grew considerably, and, along the way, the elder Skrodzki slowly honed his entrepreneurship and culinary skills.

A few years later, he opened his own butcher shop, and was quick to involve his young son in the family business.

Growing up in Greenpoint, Skrodzki was always outside and around the butcher shop.

“I’ve always been a kid that can never sit home,” he told the Greenpoint Star. “I don’t watch TV. People will be like, ‘oh, have you ever watched the Lord of the Rings?’ No, I never watched that. ‘You ever watched Seinfeld?’ No, I never watched that.”

“We were the stoop kids,” he continued. “It made us who we are now.”

Skrodzki described how he got more involved in the family business as he got older. His father made him work for everything he wanted. As Skrodzki worked at the butcher shop to get a new bike or a scooter, he mastered his culinary skills, so it was almost natural for him to continue working alongside his dad beyond childhood.

He was always—and continues to be—greatly involved in Greenpoint life, particularly in the Polish community. This year, he is the Marshal of Green Point for the Pulaski Day parade, following in his father’s footsteps who was the Greenpoint Marshal in 2015.

“That’s a big milestone for me,”  he said.

His father continued to operate the butcher shop for over a decade, but he’d always dreamt of having an upscale restaurant, which he hoped could be a place for local people to celebrate their most special occasions.

At the same time, the neighborhood was changing. Many Poles moved back to Poland or were otherwise pushed out by rising prices. Skrodzki’s father opened Amber Steakhouse in 2010. Skrodzki describes the moment as the “perfect time to open it” because the neighborhood had not yet changed substantially, but would within the coming years. This “big 360” in the neighborhood, seems to have come with some positive effects for the business. The steakhouse has attracted high-profile customers, including celebrities like Anne Hathaway, soccer players, boxers, actors from Law & Order, former Polish President Andre Duda, and NBA champion Mikal Bridges just a few weeks ago.

“We don’t publicize it. We like it for them to be their own little private hidden gem.”

When  Skrodzki turned 18-years-old, his father started giving him a lot more responsibility in the restaurant until Skrodzki eventually became his father’s right hand man. When COVID came, his father dedicated more time to a small farm he owns upstate. The elder Skrodzki spent his free time there as a hobby, “just for himself. ” After COVID, he passed the torch to his son.

Despite Amber Steakhouse’s success, the restaurant business requires constant innovation. Though a nationwide cattle shortage has brought high beef prices and restaurant customers have tended to drink less in recent years, which has affected profit margins, Skrodzki continues to adapt to keep the business running. During COVID, the steakhouse adapted by adding an outdoor seating area. Recently, they added a private room option, and now they are looking at possibly adding tableside food preparation to the guest experience.

Inside the Civil War Tearing the Brooklyn Democratic Party in Two

BQE Admin on August 26, 2026

Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair and State Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn. (Photo: @rbichotte on Instagram)

Party boss Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn is trying to thwart a takeover by a coalition of progressives who want to make the Brooklyn Dems a true “people’s party.”

BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com

A civil war is raging inside one of America’s most powerful Democratic organizations— a war whose outcome could have far-reaching effects on the future of elections and criminal justice in Brooklyn. 

At a closed-door meeting in Mill Basin Tuesday night, district leaders voted to approve Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn’s proposal to nearly double the number of voting members on the party’s executive committee, a move that could allow Hermelyn to hold onto power amid a push to oust her from a coalition of progressive reformers led by Julio Peña III, a District Leader from Sunset Park. 

With the party’s fall vote to elect a new leader just weeks away, Hermelyn floated the last-minute rule change on August 19 to the condemnation of nearly every prominent Brooklyn Democrat, who’ve cast the proposal as a Trumpian power grab that would subvert the will of voters. The reformers, united in coalition as Brooklyn Can’t Wait, swept the down-ballot District Leader races in the June 23 primary, boosting their numbers in the State Committee from 14 to 22 — enough to oust Hermelyn prior to the rule change. 

“The 2020 MAGA playbook of trying to steal an election is being used not by Donald Trump, but by the Democratic county leader here in Brooklyn,” said State Senator Andrew Gounardes at a press conference that the reformers held Monday on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall.  

High-profile Brooklyn Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, incoming Congressman Brad Lander, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, City councilmember Chi Osse and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, among others, have come out against Hermelyn’s rule change. Reformers filed an 11th-hour lawsuit to halt the rule-change vote in Brooklyn Supreme Court Monday, alleging that outgoing District Leaders lose their voting rights. The lawsuit was rejected, though Justice Jill Epstein said reformers could refile the lawsuit after the vote. According to reporting from amNY, eight outgoing District Leaders who lost their primary elections voted in favor of the rule-change. 

“I’m very much opposed to the proposed changes by the current Brooklyn Democratic Party chair,” Mamdani told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Glendale Monday morning. “I oppose them because they’re an attempt to circumnavigate the will of the voters, and what we should see is a Brooklyn Democratic Party that is a reflection of what New Yorkers want to see.”

For the reformers, Hermelyn’s attempted power grab represents the corruption and inaction that they say has plagued Brooklyn Democratic leadership since the days of former corrupt party boss Vito Lopez, costing the party elections and excluding voters from the democratic process. As Democrats nationwide struggle to win against MAGA Republicans and the party grapples with its own internal identity crisis, the reformers with Brooklyn Can’t Wait —  which includes City councilmember Sandy Nurse and prominent anti-deed theft activists Carmella Charrington and Omar Hardy — have promised a way forward, pledging to build a party that’s inclusive, community-focused, and equipped to stand up against an ascendant right. 

”We want to take a more egalitarian and democratic approach, where all the district leaders, the county committee, and citizens can have a more active role in shaping the priorities of the party,” said Alan Gamboa, an incoming Brooklyn Can’t Wait District Leader for Assembly District 54. 

Hermelyn, meanwhile, told reporters after Tuesday’s vote that her rule-change was about expanding representation within the party. 

“Democracy is what we did,” she told amNY. “We expanded.”

In a statement, the Brooklyn Democratic Party doubled down, characterizing the rule-change as a win for inclusivity.

“Last night, Brooklyn District Leaders voted to expand representation on the Executive Committee — adding leaders from every Assembly District and building a Party that truly reflects Brooklyn,” the statement read. “The vote was open, fair, and democratic. No kings in Brooklyn — we move forward together.”

Though they run lower-profile campaigns than State and City representatives, District Leaders play a key role in Democratic politics, appointing judges, recruiting election poll workers, and helping to organize campaigns. 

Brooklyn Can’t Wait nominated Peña as their pick to succeed Hermelyn as party Chair. In an interview with the Brooklyn Downtown Star, Peña — who was first elected as a District Leader in 2020 — explained that he got involved in politics to help those often left out of the democratic process advocate for better legislative outcomes in their communities. 

“I really wanted to broaden that role and be more of a community organizer and community educator to get people involved in local politics,” he said. “Because a lot of people like to say that they don’t do politics, but politics will do them.”

For Peña, a major goal of party reform is the appointment of judges that better reflect the diversity of the communities they preside over. 

“Particularly for those who may one day interface with the court system, you want to make sure that the judge you’re going to be in front of is someone that is going to listen to you and is representative of our communities.”

”I’ve suddenly noticed that everyone who wants to be a judge is very nice to me and wants to meet me and shake my hand,” added Gamboa, who also serves on the Organizing Committee of the North Brooklyn Democratic Socialists of America (NBK-DSA). Brooklyn Can’t Wait’s 22-member State Committee block counts among its ranks an ideological spectrum, including members of the New Kings Democrats, the Brooklyn Young Democrats, the Lambda Independent Democrats, and four NYC-DSA members, Gamboa said.  

Speaking in a personal capacity, Gamboa said that while NYC-DSA leadership was supportive of his decision to run for District Leader, the organization did not formally get involved in the down-ballot races, treating them instead as a sort of “side quest.” 

“It’s just not something that they’re focused on,” he said. 

If elected, Peña would be the first Party Chair in recent memory who’s not a career politician. Hailing from Sunset Park, Peña works with immigrant teenagers for the Chinese American Planning Council, and previously served as Chair of Community Board 7. 

“I work a regular nine to five job,” Peña said. “I run after school programming for a nonprofit. So for me, I think that just speaks to my values of what I’m looking to do.”

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