News

Filmmakers Help Relive a 2015 Cosmos Cup Triumph

BQE Admin on February 5, 2026

By Noah Zimmerman

noah@queensledger.com

In 2015, the New York Cosmos etched an iconic “cupset” win into franchise history, defeating new MLS side New York City FC in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. Now just over a decade later, and just ahead of the newly rebooted Cosmos’ debut in the USL, a documentary looks to recapture the magic of the club’s recent history.

Director Greg Jenkins first put together a short soccer film during NYC’s inaugural season. “Battle for New York (The Birth of the Hudson River Derby)” showcased fans of both clubs in the buildup to the first clash between the original MLS franchise New York Red Bulls and their new crosstown expansion rivals. Now Jenkins is revisiting that transformative year in New York soccer, focusing on another big match between new foes.

The Cosmos were reborn in the 2010s in an effort to earn a prospective MLS expansion franchise in New York. Instead it was New York City FC joining the top division league, backed by City Football Group and the New York Yankees.

The Cosmos were able to settle into the NASL (also attempting a comeback), winning a trio of championships in their first years back. Their first match against NYC came in the Open Cup in 2015, featuring a daring comeback and wild penalty shootout.

Jenkins and Rebel Talent are releasing a 30-minute documentary about the pivotal match and what it meant for both clubs that year. Fans in Astoria will be the ones with a first look at the new football short film.

“The Cardiac Cosmos 2015 CupSet” will screen at Rivercrest at 33-15 Ditmars Blvd in Astoria next Wednesday, February 11 at 7pm. There will be Cosmos executives and players in attendance, looking to enjoy one of the club’s first community events in the buildup to their 2026 season.

To RSVP for the screening, visit partiful.com/e/ADkvWhH7Am0Se4lB5VTW. Tickets are a $4 donation to EVLovesNYC to help the local food & resource nonprofit provide meals to the local community.

Your $4 donation to EVLovesNYC gets you access to the screening!

“Open Goal” Helps Unlock Soccer for Kids on the Spectrum

BQE Admin on February 4, 2026

Kids play against adults at an Open Goal practice in Greenpoint in January. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

Two brothers-in-law have designed a structured and inclusive soccer program for kids on the autism spectrum.

By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com

The grown-ups didn’t stand a chance.

A curly-haired 9-year old named Maximiliano maneuvers the ball around the indoor soccer field in Greenpoint with the ease of a future pro. Coaches Virgilio Baez and Jeffrey Cortez — Maximiliano’s father and uncle, respectively — offer little in terms of defense. The goalie, a slightly older boy, masterfully intercepts Baez’s attempted shot, while 12-year-old Isaac, Maximiliano’s cousin, seems to be getting distracted.

Fortunately, Isaac’s mother, Isaira Abreu, is on the grown-ups team. “Isaac!” she shouts. “What are you doing? Kick the ball!”

This happens often, Abreu said. Isaac is highly intelligent, with near-encyclopedic knowledge of the universe, but can struggle with communication, focus, and hand-eye coordination.

“For you and I, it’s easy to open a door, or put on a scarf, or keep balance,” Abreu said. “But for him, it’s easier to tell you what is the distance from the Sun to the Earth. For him, the things that for us are so hard become easy.”

At ordinary soccer practice, such distraction would be grounds for reprimand. But at Open Goal soccer, held every Saturday, distractions are no problem at all. The program is designed to help kids like Isaac — who’s on the autism spectrum — stay active, build social skills and learn teamwork in a fun and judgement-free environment. It’s the project of brothers-in-law Jeffrey Cortez and Virgilio Baez, who launched Open Goal after struggling to find a soccer program that fit Isaac’s needs. The program is currently in its second season, and offers inclusive soccer lessons for kids on the spectrum without isolating them. Cortez and Baez — who have backgrounds in tech and banking, respectively — explained that the idea is to pair neurodivergent kids with neurotypical “buddies,” in an effort to help them both socialize and learn leadership skills.

“It’s really about movement, about connection,” Cortez said. “If they learn soccer, great. But it’s also unifying, it brings people together. So besides the soccer skills that we’re teaching, we’re also building community.”

Open Goal parents are invited to join a WhatsApp group chat upon registration, where they can share materials and connect over their shared struggles in raising neurodivergent children.

Abreu, Isaac’s mother and Cortez and Baez’s sister-in-law, said that while programs exist in the city for neurodivergent kids, they can be exclusionary, grouping children on the spectrum with children with other physical and developmental disabilities with whom they have little in common. This happened when Abreu placed Isaac in a program recommended by his school, the Manhattan Children’s Center.

“He actually wanted to be part of a team in which you have all types of kids,” Abreu said, “not just kids like him.

Open Goal offers an ideal solution, she said, as Isaac gets the opportunity to play soccer at his own pace alongside neurotypical peers like Maximiliano, who can serve as role models for teamwork and sportsmanship.

But the challenge at Open Goal, Baez said, is staying flexible while also maintaining the strict routine that kids on the spectrum so often need. In a traditional soccer program, the coach will give instructions, then expect the kids to complete the task without question. This doesn’t work for kids on the spectrum, who can be easily distracted and sometimes need breaks, Baez said.

“You cannot do whatever your traditional soccer program does with these kids,” he said. “It just doesn’t work. A lot of kids, you tell them an instruction and a minute later they’re off doing something else.”

“And sometimes,” he continued, “kids say, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ And I’ll say ‘ok, then don’t do it. Let’s sit on the turf for two or three minutes.”

Baez recalled a kid from a few weeks ago who didn’t want to do one of the planned exercises, so Baez offered to allow the child to take a break on the sideline. But once he realized that none of his teammates would be sitting on the sideline with him, he decided to rejoin the group.

Abrupt changes to routine are also off the table. Every one of the hour-long sessions, for example, ends with a game, during which neurodivergent kids like Isaac and budding soccer stars like Maximiliano play against the coaches and parents. If ever a Saturday session is canceled due to weather, rescheduling for Sunday simply will not do, Cortez said.

“Structure is very important,” he said. “The kids are like, ‘we have to go on a Saturday, it’s our routine.’”

The eight-week program costs $500 at registration, though parents can apply for reimbursements through the NY Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). Eventually, Cortez and Baez intend to register the company as a nonprofit, which could give them access to more funding that would expand the program’s accessibility.

For now, Baez and Virgilio are content with their roles as the program’s sole coaches. But as it expands, they said they plan to hire more coaches and offer them specific training for working with kids on the spectrum.

Lincoln Restler on Monitor Point: “I find it offensive.”

BQE Admin on February 3, 2026

Greenpoint City councilmember Lincoln Restler voiced his opposition to the Monitor Point development in a passionate speech. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

At a fiery public hearing, Greenpoint’s council member came out against a plan to build residential towers by a half-finished park, while unions backed it.

By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com

The moment Bryan Kelly began speaking, several of the more than a hundred Greenpointers packed into the Polish Slavic Center solemnly pulled out their signs: “600ft Luxury Towers? Hard Pass,” read one.

“Bushwick Inlet Can’t Be Replaced,” read another.

Tensions in the room were high. Kelly, President of Development at the Gotham Corporation, had come to pitch an enormous mixed-use development that would add 3,000 residents to Greenpoint by its completion in the early 2030s. The sign-bearers had come to voice their disapproval before the Community Board.

Hanging in the balance is the fate of Monitor Point, a spit of land north of Bushwick Inlet that’s Greenpoint’s last swath of undeveloped waterfront. A section of it is part of a 27.8-acre parcel that the City set aside in the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning for the long-awaited Bushwick Inlet Park.

Local activists with Save the Inlet and Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park have fought for years to prevent private developers from acquiring the promised parkland. Twenty years later, the Gotham Organization — in collaboration with the MTA — is seeking to remove the park designation from the City Map and upzone the adjacent property in order to build three high-rise apartment buildings, the tallest of which would rise to 600ft. The three towers would include 1,150 housing units, 40% of which would be affordable at 40-80% Area Median Income (AMI), and could add some 3,000 residents to the neighborhood. These towers, developers say, would provide much-needed affordable housing to the district, and help fund major public benefits, like a building to house the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, public waterfront access, shoreline rehabilitation, and crucial MTA funding.

But critics argue that the project is a land-grab. The 80,000-square-foot MTA-owned property located at 40 Quay Street will be leased to the Gotham Organization for a century, while air rights at the Greenpoint Monitor Museum-owned 56 Quay Street — designated on the City Map as park land but never acquired by the City — will be acquired by Gotham. It’s a betrayal, critics say, of the City’s 2005 commitment to integrating the land into Bushwick Inlet Park.

Other critics are longtime Greenpoint residents with the trauma of the displacement and gentrification brought by the 2005 rezoning and the luxury high-rises that followed fresh in mind, fearing that such a population bump of mostly wealthy residents will only lead to more gentrification. And for others still, it’s an environmental issue; rare birds and sea life live around the Inlet, which was just a century ago toxic with pollution. Now, years of care and rehabilitation have allowed the public to access the estuary once again, just in time to be overshadowed by residential skyscrapers that activists fear could turn the park and the Inlet into little more than a playground for the wealthy.

Still, several groups in attendance came to support the Monitor Point project, including the labor unions SEIU 32BJ and Local 79, whose workers expect it to bring them good jobs, as well as Los Sures, a local Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) cooperative.

The hearing, held on January 20, was the beginning of the project’s ULURP, set to go before Community Board 1 for a recommendation vote on February 3.

Activists from Save the Inlet held a protest against the development outside the Polish Slavic Center before the January 20 hearing. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

Affordable for who?

Outside the Polish Slavic Center, activists with Save the Inlet rallied before the hearing, braving the cold to chant and hold signs that read “Public Land for Public Good!” and “Stop Stealing Public Parkland for Luxury Towers in GPT!!!”

Inside, developers began by presenting their vision for an integrated, mixed-used community space that would finally connect Bushwick Inlet Park, the East River, the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, and the rest of the North Brooklyn waterfront esplanade via a series of public walkways and open spaces, while restoring a degraded and flood-vulnerable shoreline on Greenpoint’s last remaining plot of undeveloped waterfront. They argued the project goes far beyond housing, and will unlock more than 50,000 square feet of public open space that would include retail, park land, public plazas and lobbies, and the Greenpoint Monitor Museum itself. Part of this is a $20 million investment in “site resiliency, waterfront infrastructure, and pedestrian connections.”

“It adds 51,500 square feet of new open space — some of which was expected in the ‘05 rezoning and more — for the community, for public equity, not just for residents of the new building,” said Kelly. “It’s an open gate to the community, not a gated community.”

It would be all connected by a meandering path inspired by Bushwick Inlet that would finally connect the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfronts. Dan Kaplan, senior partner with FX Collaborative Architects, said that the project’s architects were working on a “bird-friendly” design that would integrate texture and setbacks into the buildings to avoid bird collisions, and that an all-glass facade would be avoided “at all costs.”

The 690 units of luxury housing would finance the public benefit, developers said, like an additional 460 units of “permanently affordable” housing at 40-80% Area Median Income (AMI), publicly accessible “open space,” and an expanded Greenpoint Monitor Museum. Key to the development team’s presentation was that the land’s current use — housing a degraded MTA mobile wash warehouse — adds nothing to the community, prevents the public from accessing the waterfront, and won’t protect the shoreline from the effects of erosion and climate change. And in leasing its property to the Gotham Organization, the MTA will earn more than $600 million over the course of the lease that could be put towards transit improvements throughout the city. Money for Bushwick Inlet Park, meanwhile, will begin at $300,000 annually, and increase over the course of the 99-year lease.

Throughout their presentation, the development team repeated that their plan does more for the community than is required by law. At 40% affordable housing at 40-80% AMI, the Monitor Point towers will far exceed the 25% affordability at 60% AMI requirement in the City’s mandatory inclusionary housing law, Kelly pointed out.

“We have had about 150 outreach meetings,” he said. “That’s to your elected officials, religious organizations, civics, friends of open space, people who are not friends of the project, and people who are friends of the project. Because the result is, we’ve done our best so far to make changes to address your concerns, and that concern is 40% affordability.”

Restler weighs in

Much of the public, however, was unimpressed. While Kelly was explaining the annual park funding, some audience members shook their heads and shouted “shame!” When he said that the towers would stand 56, 40, and 20 storeys, respectively, someone in the crowd shouted “Way too high!” And as Kelly explained the goal of the project — to create “intergenerational, mixed income housing and ultimately fighting for the goal of creating open space for everybody,” he said — shouts rang out from the audience: “Liar! Liar!”

At several points throughout, Community Board 1 Second Vice Chair Del Teague, who moderated the hearing, had to silence unruly audience members.

“We have 85 people who want to speak,” Teague said. “I don’t even know if I can give people a full minute.”

The mood turned, however, when Greenpoint City councilmember Lincoln Restler — whose City Council vote will likely determine the fate of the project — got up to speak.

“I want to just say plainly where I’m at on this project to all of you, which is precisely what I’ve said to Gotham and the MTA,” Restler said. “I’m a no on this project.”

A raucous applause broke out before he’d even finished the sentence. Some audience members were on their feet in standing ovation. Kelly and the development team, meanwhile, looked uncomfortable as they retreated into the shadows in the room’s far corner. Someone catcalled: “Atta boy, Lincoln!” After about 30 seconds of roaring applause, Restler approached the mic again:

“We built significantly more new housing in our district than any other district in the city,” he said. “We built well over 26,000 units of housing, but the vast majority of that housing is market rate, luxury housing, housing that our communities quite simply can’t afford.”

He continued: “This is the last large public site in Greenpoint, and the idea that we would build predominantly luxury housing on this site, I have to say, I find it offensive. This was the central jewel of the Greenpoint Williamsburg rezoning. And 20 years later, we do not have a fully funded park. In fact, most of the park is in need of significant remediation before we see construction move forward.”

Scot Fraser a long-time Greenpointer and member of Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park. Photo by Cole Sinanian.

Union jobs, Trojan horse

After Restler’s speech, the some 85 members of the public who’d signed up to speak lined up in waves to deliver their testimonies. First up was the SEIU 32BJ union, which represents building maintenance workers. Several members attended the hearing to express their support for the project, which they argued would deliver reliable, well-paid union jobs to working-class Brooklynites.

“I’m happy to report that developers of this proposed project have made a credible commitment to good jobs at the project,” said Theodore Perez, a worker with SEIU 32BJ. “Good Jobs mean prevailing wages. They mean benefits, and they mean a pathway to the middle class for the people who work them. We need housing built in every neighborhood in New York City to ensure that working families are not displaced by dwindling supply and skyrocketing rents.”

According to an unnamed Gotham Organization spokesperson, communicated via William Roberts with a PR firm called Berlin Rosen, both the unions SEIU 32BJ and Local 79 — which was also present at the hearing — have partnerships with the company that guarantee union employment at all Gotham properties.

“32BJ and Local 79 have been longtime partners of The Gotham Organization,” the spokesperson wrote. “All Gotham-owned buildings are staffed by 32BJ members, and we have worked closely with Local 79 across numerous housing projects. We look forward to continuing this partnership with Monitor Point.”

Sarah Roberts, also known as “the Brooklyn Bird Lady,” opposed the project on ecological grounds:

“I am here to oppose the proposed Monitor Point development not because I dislike change or I don’t want affordable housing,” but because we must protect what is truly irreplaceable,” Roberts said.

“Bushwick inlet is not just another piece of industrial shoreline,” she continued. “These tidal wetlands provide natural climate resilience. They slow down storm surge, absorb blood water, store carbon and buffer our community from increasingly frequent and severe weather events

George Weinmann, Vice President of the Greenpoint Monitor Museum, testified in support of the project, highlighting the educational value of the museum, which showcases the USS Monitor, the legendary Civil War battleship that was built in Greenpoint. Weinmann traced his family history in Greenpoint back to his ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, and explained how local children recognize him and his wife, Janice — who serves as the museum’s president — on the street as the “Monitor people.”

“We tell them that we are going to build a museum on the land that shares the launch site of the USS Monitor, the ship that saved the Union, and we don’t want to disappoint them,” Weinmann said. “Please approve and make the Monitor Museum a reality.”

Chris Duerr, a longtime Greenpointer and father, had a different take. He described how his son was eight-years-old in 2016 when Mayor de Blasio assured the community it would get the full, 27.8-acre Bushwick Inlet Park. Now, his son’s off to college, Duerr said, and the full park still isn’t built.

“This is not about affordable housing,” he said. “Affordable housing and this museum are the Trojan Horse for luxury tower development.”

Duerr continued, addressing Gotham directly: “The plans that you guys presented are very compelling, but we’ve seen a lot of plans, and we would appreciate not being gaslit one more time.”

State Explains No-Fine Call at Third Atlantic Yards Workshop

BQE Admin on January 30, 2026

Atlantic Yards — a plan to build housing over the Vanderbilt Railyard, a LIRR storage space behind the Barclays Center — has new developers, as of last year, and the state has held several public forums in recent months as it pushes to realize the project.(Photo: Google Earth)

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

DOWNTOWN — If the new developers for Atlantic Yards get their way, the long-stalled effort to build housing behind the Barclays Center will be taller, and denser, than previously expected.

But as the latest round of public engagement winds down, major questions still hang in the air: What subsidies will the latest team, Cirrus and LCOR, need to realize this plan? Just how high are they seeking to build? And perhaps most importantly, for many residents, how will the vague but sweeping promises of affordable housing be enforced given the collapse of past accountability mechanisms?

After months of tiptoeing around this last issue, on Thursday, January 22, Empire State Development (ESD) — the state authority charged with overseeing Atlantic Yards — gave its most direct answer yet at the third of four planned public workshops, held on Zoom.

Under a deal brokered in 2014, the project’s previous developer agreed to pay $2,000 in monthly fines for each affordable housing unit that it had failed to deliver by May 2025. When that deadline arrived, however, only 1,374 of the promised 2,250 affordable units had been built — the same number as when the China-based firm, Greenland USA, had first assumed control.

Instead of levying the fine, which pencils out to nearly $2 million per month, ESD announced last fall that the new team would pay a one-time fee of $12 million, money that would go towards a fund supporting affordable housing in the surrounding community board districts.

At a meeting in October, community leaders criticized that amount as too meager. Michelle de la Uz, a founding member of the local group BrooklynSpeaks who now heads the Fifth Avenue Committee, noted that “we all share the goal of a project that is feasible and that addresses current and future public needs,” which for her included halting the displacement of Black residents. Yet she called the $12 million “insufficient,” echoing other BrooklynSpeaks founders who have characterized the sum as a betrayal of the original agreement.

The state reps see it differently. “That, to us, is part of a win here,” said Joel Kolkmann, a senior vice president at ESD, during Thursday’s Q&A session. “We want to be mindful that there are a lot of costs with this project, and a lot of challenges. There’s the infrastructure and platform costs, the rising costs of construction and uncertainty with tariffs. There’s a more challenging financing market in general.”

“We’re eager to get this moving.” — Joel Kolkmann, ESD

“We know that public resources are going to be needed for this project,” added Kolkmann. “We don’t know how much, currently, but what we do know is that we want to keep this project moving. We’re doing our best to minimize costs that are added to this project so we can make sure that this is a successful, impactful project with a large amount of housing, and affordable housing, which we know is sorely needed here.”

Atlantic Yards faces a unique hurdle, compared to other housing projects of a similar scale: most of the site is a railyard used by the MTA to store LIRR trains, and building over it would require expensive platforms that can bear a skyscraper’s weight.

One significant cost-cutting measure, in Cirrus and LCOR’s framing, is their proposal to build on top of the thin, crescent-like platforms that Greenland installed before it bowed out. That would allow for the creation of more open space, the developers say, and could accelerate the timeline given that the platforms are already in place — but it would mean adding more floors to maintain the quantity of units, which many residents have expressed uneasiness about.

The Cirrus/LCOR plan would be a supercharged version of its predecessors, pushing for 9,000 total units (up from 6,400), a maximum height of 775 feet (up from 620), and shifting from a mix of housing for both lower and upper income brackets to “a focus on middle incomes,” with rents up to 130% of the area median income (AMI).

Empire State Development Corporation’s Joel Kolkmann, left, and Cirrus Partners’ Joseph McDonnell.

What other large real estate projects in New York City have a density comparable to what’s being proposed here, a resident asked, namely 409 apartments per acre? LCOR’s Anthony Tortora replied that his team aims to “ensure our proposed plan is contextual to the surrounding area,” before rattling off a few points of reference: Hunters Point, Jamaica, and Long Island City.

At the second public event, held in the bowels of the Barclays Center back in December, some residents expressed cautious excitement that the project was gaining momentum again. Yet as watchdog reporter Norman Oder has noted, the engagement process has been “carefully managed,” a fact that several veteran community advocates called out at last week’s meeting.

“I would like to encourage more in-person engagement on this,” said state Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon, also a founding member of BrooklynSpeaks. “I know last time when we all met in different groups, there wasn’t a reporting back function, so we don’t know what the other tables discussed. I think that kind of feedback is helpful to people, because they learn from other people’s ideas. I want to encourage us to do more of that going forward.”

Later, a participant argued that the only constant on the project for the past 20 years had been ESD, the state monitor. What would be different this time around?

“Like you, we’re eager to get this moving,” said Kolkmann. “We want to keep on having conversations with you all. We want to keep on hearing what you think should be here, and we want to also keep on discussing how we can prioritize accountability and transparency along the way.”

The next and final workshop will be in February, date and time forthcoming. You can watch the full recording of the latest event at this link.

Cowboys and Capos: Inside Linda Stasi’s Red Hook Epic

BQE Admin on January 30, 2026

Linda Stasi was the longtime co-host of NY1’s “What a Week” and is currently the book critic for CUNY TV’s “Uncensored.” She also teaches novel writing to journalists at the Newswomen’s Club of NY and was once named one of the “Fifty Most Powerful Women in NYC.” (Photo courtesy of Stasi)

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

RED HOOK — When Linda Stasi decided to take her mother to dinner at Ferdinando’s Focacceria, she didn’t expect the whole restaurant to end up in tears. Nor could she imagine that it would kickstart her new novel, “The Descendant,” out on March 10.

It was 2010, and Stasi’s daughter had been working on the set of a movie being shot in Carroll Gardens. In the process, she befriended Frankie, the owner of the iconic — and sadly now-closed — Red Hook eatery. After she graduated, he offered to rent her the upstairs apartment; she’d declined, but now insisted that her ailing grandmother come by for a meal.

“Where are we?” she asked, as they settled in. But while eating panelles, a traditional Sicilian fritter, something clicked. She called Frankie over. After chatting with him about the place’s history for a few minutes, she put her finger on it: “My mother died here,” she declared.

“Everybody in the restaurant, they only seat 35 people — everybody started crying,” recalled Stasi, in a conversation earlier this month. “There’s truck drivers, people of every race, and they were all hugging my mother. They took down a picture from the wall; it was my grandmother’s apartment, and my mother said, this is where she died.”

That was the night that Stasi, a longtime co-host of NY1’s “What a Week” segment and the current book critic for CUNY TV’s “Uncensored,” felt her latest novel start to percolate. Inspired, she began digging deeper into family stories she had heard scraps of growing up, especially records of Italian immigration to Colorado.

“The Descendant” gently fictionalizes the remarkable lives of Stasi’s mother and grandmother, who was lured from Sicily to America by the false promise of land. After fighting their way from horrific coal mine work to ownership of a ranch, the family became embroiled in the Mafia and resettled in Prohibition-era Red Hook, above Ferdinando’s.

“The day they moved to 151 Union Street, her mother says, ‘Pull down the shades, pull down the shades.’ They said, ‘Why?’ And then they hear — BOOM, BOOM, BOOM,” said Stasi. “Somebody was shot in the vestibule of their building on the very first day they moved there. It was a real scary place at the time.”

Coal miners strike in Ludlow, CO, in 1914. “The Descendant” follows the La Barbera family from Sicily to Colorado, before they finally land in Red Hook. (Photo: Wikimedia)

During the research process, Stasi came across another book, “Mountain Mafia,” written by her cousin Sam Carlino. Inside, she learned that her aunt had been married to a man named Charlie Carlino, who was killed in the longest gunfight in Colorado history when their daughter was only 10 days old.

The shootout, which took place on the Baxter Street Bridge, shared too many similarities with a scene in “The Godfather” to ignore. Stasi believes that its author, Mario Puzo, based his saga in part on old newspaper clippings about the Carlinos.

But the beating heart of “The Descendant” is the stranger-than-fiction saga of Stasi’s mother and aunts, a gauntlet of near-Biblical trials and tribulations.

First there’s the drought in Sicily, straining Maria La Barbera’s honeymoon. Mount Etna erupts; almost 100,000 people die in the ensuing tsunami.

“She didn’t understand that she couldn’t take a wolf to Brooklyn.” — Linda Stasi, on her mother’s unusual pet

America seems like salvation: higher wages, land of one’s own. But the voyage turns out to be a ruse, engineered by John D. Rockefeller to rustle up indentured labor. Coworkers die in cave-ins, and when a union intervenes, the La Barberas are caught up in one of the bloodiest crackdowns in American labor history: the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, part of the Colorado Coalfield War, which sees the National Guard open fire on women and children.

The family flees to the mountains, where Maria gives birth. Her husband Mariano, who has become abusive since leaving Sicily, threatens to kill the newborn — until a wolf intervenes to save her. (Though it seems improbable, Stasi says her mother really did have a pet wolfdog. “She didn’t understand that she couldn’t take a wolf to Brooklyn,” she explained, “so it was very traumatic for her.”)

Prohibition rescues the La Barberas from the brink. Mariano builds a bootleg empire off sugar beet moonshine, raking in the profits needed to buy a ranch. But tragedy strikes again, this time in the form of the Great Pueblo Flood of 1921, which whisks away the town of Pueblo and all of the family’s holdings.

“The Descendant,” from Regalo Press, is expected to release on March 10.

The blows don’t stop. Just as they’re pulling their life back together, Al Capone comes calling: Mariano has killed the wrong man, and it’s time to leave for Red Hook, also known as the mythical “Brook-a-Land.” Mariano goes ahead, only to gamble away the La Barbera’s savings, leaving them no choice but to cram into the tenement above Ferdinando’s. All that before the devastation of the Great Depression.

Stasi cites the late action writer Nelson DeMille as one of her greatest influences, and the brief, punchy chapters of “The Descendant” — combined with its heaping serving of catastrophe, and side of the supernatural — make for a total page-turner. Yet as Stasi notes, episodes like the Ludlow Massacre rarely feature in high school textbooks, and her rendering of a multicultural West in the 1910s doubles as a crash course in forgotten history à la Howard Zinn.

Northwest Brooklynites will find familiar names, such as Saint Mary Star of the Sea, but the novel is less interested in the local topography than in the effect this new environment has on the outdoorsy La Barberas and their tangled relationships within Red Hook’s Italian American community. (“On Union Street, Mariano was loathed, Maria was loved. He was feared, she was fearless. He took, she gave.”)

This is a restless epic, however, and it doesn’t stay in Red Hook for long. A death sends the narrative back to Colorado, before the story loops around to Brooklyn once more. World War II brings fresh questions of identity — yet the most compelling element is the one with which the book opens: the wolf. What is this guardian spirit, vengeful and wild and watchful, that accompanies Firenze, a stand-in for Stasi’s mother, from rugged hills to a bustling port? More than a thriller, more than an ethnography, “The Descendant” brims with a fierce love — I have your back, it will be alright — that rises above the tide of woe.

Stasi will be holding a book signing at The Corner Bookstore in the Upper East Side on March 10 at 6 p.m.

Tammany Hall, Brooklyn Style

BQE Admin on January 28, 2026

Vito Lopez ran the borough’s “last great political machine,” before allegations of nepotism and sexual harassment ended his reign.

GEOFFREY COBB

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

gcobb91839@Aol.com

Political machines, like the infa- mous Tammany Hall, have wielded po- litical power in New York throughout a huge portion of the city’s history. Perhaps the last great political machine in Brooklyn was run by New York State Assemblyman Vito Lopez who represented Bushwick from 1985 until 2013.

Like great machine politicians of the past, Lopez understood that po- litical patronage could translate into power. An Italian American with a His- panic sounding name, Lopez began his career with the New York City Department of Social Services, at Bushwick’s Stanhope Street Senior Center where he began organizing senior citizens. Lopez researched programs for senior citizens available from local, state and federal funding sources to supplement the few services offered at the Stanhope Street Senior Center. He conceived of creating the idea of a not-for-profit that accepted government contracts providing services for senior citizens and the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council was born.

Originally the center had a small staff, but the council grew into a private agency that distributed $25 million a year in federal and state money for housing, health care and educational services to struggling neighborhoods in eastern Brooklyn and western Queens.

Using his political power to funnel grants to the council, its importance grew rapidly. The Council aggressively pursued government grants and market- ed itself to the area’s residents as a source of government aid, even assistance that lay out- side the purview of the council. Slowly, the Council increased in size and importance, and hundreds of constituents owed their jobs to Lopez. His council became by far the largest employer in the district, directly employing by 1990 nearly 1,000 people and financed programs employing about 1,000 more. A report by the CUNY Graduate Center School of Journal- ism counted eighty separate legal subsidiaries of Ridgewood Bushwick.

Lopez became an Albany power broker. Despite never being on the payroll of the Ridgewood Bushwick council, he controlled it from his position as chairman of the Assembly Housing Committee, which allowed him to steer government services contracts to the center and to have his supports ap-pointed as administrators. A formidable politician, Lopez demanded unwavering loyalty from almost everyone he helped and those who owed their jobs to the council including subcontractors, tenant organizers, building superintendents, recep- tionists, social workers and home-care attendants.

Lopez expected people to pay hom- age to him — to take him out to dinner, do favors for him and never disobey him. He once told an author: “The most important factor in politics is loyalty.” Closing its doors every Election Day, the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council sent hundreds of vol- unteers into the Brooklyn streets to get out the vote for Lopez, his Brooklyn Democratic slate and his allies. Even Lopez detractors have to ad- mit that he secured tens of millions of dollars to build affordable new housing in Bushwick. Lopez was instrumental in developing thousands of housing units in his district, including over 2,700 units and hundreds of smaller homes by 2013, along with managing other properties and securing signifi- cant state/city funding for affordable housing and senior facilities.

Lopez became notorious for nepotism. In 2005, he became head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and gained the power to appoint judges. Lopez found judgeships for friends and relatives, among them the brother of his girlfriend and one of his own daughters. Angela M. Battaglia, his longtime girlfriend, became the housing director of Ridgewood Bushwick as well as a member of the City Planning Commission. She earned an extraordinary $210,000 a year thanks to Lopez.

One commentator noted that if there were a corruption hall of fame Lopez would be inducted into it. His long-time campaign manager Christiana Fisher. who earned an unbelievable $607,000 a year, was sentenced in 2010 to a prison term for document fraud. Fisher resigned in November 2012 amid a federal tax investigation. In 2012, Lopez was stripped of his committee chairmanship and cen- sured after he was accused of sexually harassing two women who worked in his district office. Lopez eventually settled sexual harassment allegations with over $500,000 of public money. Even after the State Assembly censured Lopez for sexual harassment in August 2012, he won re-election to a 15th two- year term that November.

He died of cancer in 2015 and the New York Times obituary revealed that an inquiry by the State Joint Commis- sion on Public Ethics, female legislative employees told investigators that Mr. Lopez had groped them, sought to stay in hotel rooms with them, demanded they massage him and urged them to dress provocatively. Though he helped build thousands of affordable housing units for his district, his legacy is tarnished by scandal and the sexual allegations against him.

Welcome Inn!

BQE Admin on January 22, 2026

The Brooklyn Inn holds firm, 140 years later.

By COLE SINANIAN

news@queensledger.com

Take a walk down Hoyt Street Street in Boerum Hill, and you’ll bear witness to a breathtaking and sometimes disorienting architectural juxtaposition— looming high above, the Brooklyn Tower’s bronze and steel facade straddles modernity and tradition. At street level, old and elegant brownstones stretch in all directions.

This neighborhood has seen lots of change over the years. Now one of the borough’s ritziest residential districts, Boerum Hill was until the 1960s a nebulous transition zone on the edge of Downtown Brooklyn, known to some as South Brooklyn and to others as North Gowanus.

But at least one street corner hasn’t changed: the corner of Hoyt and Bergren Streets has been the historic home of a bar now called the Brooklyn Inn since before electric light bulbs were commonplace. Though it’s changed owners and names many times since its initial opening in 1885, the Brooklyn Inn has remained both a striking example of 19th-century architecture and an increasingly rare kind of no-frills neighborhood watering hole for more than 140 years.

“What we provide is an extension of peoples’ living room,” said general manager Jason Furlani. “Because it’s New York City, and everyone’s got limited space. So we provide a comfortable, safe space for you to come and enjoy yourself. Maybe have a conversation, maybe read a book.”

The bar’s history has been meticulously documented by local historian and Brooklyn Inn regular Joel Shifflet in his book, Hoyt and Bergen Streets, a copy of which is available on site for patrons to browse. Originally a house, the building was converted into a bar by Anton Zeiner in 1885, who financed the endeavor with the help of the German-American Otto Huber Brewery. Much of the interior woodwork was added in 1892 after Zeiner’s death by his wife, Marie, who sold it to Otto Huber in 1896. Later, another German-American family, the Heissenbuttels, took control and renamed the bar the Exchange Cafe, and ran it through the Prohibition era. Writing in the Lewiston Tribune of Lewiston, Idaho, Martin Heissenbuttel’s great-grandson, Marty Trillhaase, described how the Heissenbuttels served beer, spirits and clam chowder downstairs while they raised their two children on the floor above. Newspaper clippings from the Brooklyn Eagle reveal that the Heissenbuttels kept it open as a speakeasy during prohibition and were subject to a police raid on January 15, 1929, which led to the bar’s eight-month closure.

According to Furlani, all of the facade’s ornate arches, columns and cartouches are original, built by Zeiner in 1885, except for the bars on the windows, which were added later. Inside, a long, darkened drinking den empties into a pool room in the back, with the two rooms separated by bathrooms. High above the bar in the front room are several pieces of backlit stained glass, another of Zeiner’s iconic design flourishes. These were restored in the 2000s, Furlani says, a project that was financed by the earnings from a Gilmore Girls shoot that took place at the bar. Over the years, the building that’s now the Brooklyn Inn has graced both the big and small screens numerous times; parts of Wayne Wang’s classic Brooklyn film Smoke were shot at the Inn, as was a Spike Lee-directed Budweiser commercial and more recently, scenes from the Batman prequel series, Gotham.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the bar was a French restaurant, Furlani said, that utilized a doorbell-like buzzer system to allow patrons to summon their waiters. These buzzers can still be seen along the wall in the bar’s pool room. Modern patrons have a tendency to mess with them, Furlani said, perhaps expecting a tuxedo-clad French waiter to appear.

The current owners — who are real estate investors that Furlani said he’d rather not name — acquired the Brooklyn Inn in 2007 and also operate The Magician on the Lower East Side and Tile Bar in the East Village. When it first opened, there was concern among neighbors that the new owners wouldn’t respect the building’s history and aesthetic integrity. But though Furlani and the new owners made some renovations — namely, expanded seating capacity — they made a deliberate effort to preserve its heritage.

“We’re stewards of the Brooklyn Inn,” Furlani said. “This is our time with it, and we have to do as much as we can to keep it in the spirit that we inherited it in.”

So don’t wander in on a Sunday hoping to catch the game. As part of the owners’ commitment to preserving the bar’s historic charm, the Brooklyn Inn has no TVs. It’s not a cocktail bar (though there is a cocktail menu, it’s classics only), sports bar, dive, nor gastropub. It’s an extension of the streetscape itself, a designated neighborhood third space designed for camaraderie, conversation, and brooding. Nothing more, nothing less.

“It’s amazingly fortunate that it exists,” Furlani said. “It’s like sitting in a snow globe. It’s amazing. It’s got magic. The whole secret is not to kill the magic.”

JJ: “Finally! A Met Offseason Move to Celebrate!”

BQE Admin on January 21, 2026

New York, New York

By John Jastremski

The winter months so far have not been kind to David Stearns and the New York Mets.

Sure, they’ve told you that a plan is in place. Yes, publicly they have remained confident about their process.

However, as of 4 days ago. The plan was not exactly one that had Mets fans jumping for joy.

So far this winter, it’s been the winter of departure. First Brandon Nimmo, but in a two day span Edwin Diaz and Pete Alonso became former Mets.

No disrespect to Jorge Polanco and Luke Weaver, but not exactly the moves that have you high fiving your buddy at work walking into the office.

The Mets last week appeared poised to make a big splash. As of last Thursday, the team was hot and heavy for Cubs All Star outfielder Kyle Tucker.

Tucker was looking for a short term contract with a crazy high yearly salary.

Despite some of the fit concerns I had with the player, on a short term deal, this appeared to be in the David Stearns wheelhouse, until guess who?

Yep… The Dodgers!!!!! Swooped in and made Tucker an offer he couldn’t refuse.

After losing Alonso and Diaz and now missing out on Kyle Tucker, the Mets had to do something this offseason. After all, you just can’t sit on all that Steve Cohen loot!

Thankfully Friday, they pivoted beautifully.

Out of nowhere, the Mets signed infielder Bo Bichette to a three year contract.

Bichette is a right handed hitting machine. He is a throwback player, puts the ball in play and has exactly the sort of attitude the 2026 Mets should be looking for.

He is a natural shortstop, so he will be moving positions, which certainly contradicts the run prevention narrative you’ve heard throughout this offseason.

However, cast that aside.

Bichette makes the 2026 Mets a significantly better team.

He can hit behind Juan Soto. He has the right makeup to handle New York City.

Oh and the Phillies were interested! So much for that!

The Bo Bichette signing will bring about a variety of questions about how the rest of the roster will look moving closer to Opening Day.

However, there is no question that the Mets are a much better team than they were on Thursday night.

This was a move that had to be made.

You can listen to my podcast New York, New York on The Ringer Podcast Network on Spotify/Apple Podcasts every Sunday & Thursday. You can watch me nightly at 11 PM on Honda Sports Nite on SNY.

Call it a New York Cosmos Comeback

BQE Admin on January 21, 2026

Local roots forge path for historic club’s rebirth

By Noah Zimmerman

noah@queensledger.com

The New York Cosmos remain one of the most historic clubs in American soccer history. Founded in 1970, the club has been graced by some of the world’s greatest players, bringing Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Raúl, Carlos Mendez, and many other icons to the Metro area.

While it hasn’t all been good, the Cosmos have enjoyed many memorable moments throughout their history in New York City, Long Island, and New Jersey. Now they’ll once again look to establish themselves as a premier spot for high level soccer in the Northeast, hoping to regrow the local roots that made them so popular in the past.

The Cosmos began play in the NASL, winning five titles before the league began to falter and eventually fold. The club attempted a revival with hopes to secure a Major League Soccer expansion franchise in the 2010s.

From 2013 to 2016 the Cosmos claimed three championships, the only team to win multiple league titles. They also claimed US Open Cup victories against MLS clubs like New York City FC and the New York Red Bulls.

Unfortunately the NASL lost Division II status in 2018 and significant financial issues pushed the club to fold in the years after. The Cosmos took a hiatus during the COVID pandemic, one that became permanent.

Now under former COO Erik Stover, the club is preparing to take the pitch once again. They’ve secured a home stadium at Hinchcliffe Stadium in Patterson, NJ, and are hoping to use that as a backbone for the club’s third iteration.

“The Cosmos are American soccer, good and bad. There’s been a lot of ups and downs,” said Stover, who is now serving as the club’s CEO. “A lot of soccer in the United States hasn’t been done properly and we want to be a part of changing that.”

To not only change the club’s culture but lead others in growth requires a major focus on building local communities, and that’s a central piece of the Cosmos’ plan. They’ve already partnered with roughly 20 teams, academies, and organizations to build stronger networks and pathways to competitive play.

“The whole idea is to be as inclusive as possible to work together in a way that’s cooperative and supportive,” said Stover. “Our plan is for that network to give people opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise and we’re off to a good start so far.”

Among these partnerships are youth academy affiliations with clubs like New Jersey’s Morris Elite SC. Other partners are scattered around the five boroughs and Long Island, building a map for the future of the Cosmos and their network.

The club is also turning to former stars and top-level soccer minds to jumpstart the club ahead of their 2026 season. Giuseppe Rossi has joined as a Vice Chairman and head of soccer, bringing him back to Northern New Jersey where he was born and raised. The Cosmos also named Italian coach Davide Corti as the club’s 9th manager and first in the USL era.

On the field, the Cosmos are also looking to recapture previous success. Their first signing was Sebastián Guenzatti, who was with the club during their run of championships in the 2010’s.

Growing up in College Point, Queens, Guenzatti started for four years for the soccer team at Francis Lewis HS before moving to his native Uruguay to join Peñarol’s academy. He signed his first pro deal with Huracán, but soon moved back to the US where he joined the Cosmos.

Guenzatti won two championships on the field and watched teammates seal a third in 2016 as he was injured for the final matches. He was also with the club for their historic triumph over NYC in the Open Cup.

“That first title when we first got together, we only had six months together as a team and it was a big shock for the league,” recalled Guenzatti about his first year back in NY. “We had a lot of hardworking young kids with a lot of talent and bright futures.”

“Seba and the crew did great things for us around 2013. We won some championships and brought soccer back in a different way to a lot of folks in the area,” added Stover.

In essence, that’s what the Cosmos aim to do in 2026 and beyond. Soccer in the US is at its best when local teams have passionate followings and that happens when teams make a point of partnering with the local community and making them a part of the club.

Guenzatti also looked back to his days growing up in Queens and his path to competitive soccer.

“My biggest memories are playing pickup. Right in front of my house there was an abandoned hockey rink so we used to get in there and play all day and all night. My dad would come bring us water,” he said. “Now they turned it into a public soccer field in Queens, right in College Point where I had a lot of memories.”

In their new form, the Cosmos know there is plenty to achieve and strive for in the future.

“A question we got a lot on Long Island was ‘yeah you won the league, but what’s next?’ and we didn’t really have an answer,” Stover said.

With USL on track to implement promotion and relegation in the near future, the Cosmos hope to make a push for their top division. Perhaps if the USL can get the Division 1 classification it’s been seeking, the Cosmos can finally return to top division play as they once were.

Until then, the focus remains on developing a competitive team and building a new Cosmos culture from the ground up.

“Building a culture that resonates in the community and gives long lasting opportunities to people is extremely important,” stated Stover about his first season goals. “Bringing in players who understand who we are like Seba, bringing in coaches like Davide Corti and directors like Giuseppe Rossi to build a foundation is the most important to me.”

“I’ve seen a lot of people fall through the cracks,” Guenzatti said about his experience growing up with the beautiful game. “I was lucky enough to end up on a team with unbelievable people to help me along the way and not everybody gets that chance. We should give everyone a fair chance to follow their dreams, whether that’s soccer or other things.”

100 Years of the Northside’s Puerto Rican Community

BQE Admin on January 21, 2026

Antonia Pantoja founded ASPIRA in 1961, helping to force New York City to provide bilingual education options in public schools. (Photo: NYC Schools).

GEOFFREY COBB

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

gcobb91839@Aol.com

The other night I met James Nunez, a lifelong Greenpointer of Puerto Rican heritage and we reminisced about the long history of Puerto Ricans in North Brooklyn. Though Puerto Ricans still comprise a vibrant part of our community, many have been forced out of our area, victims to gentrification. James’ grandmother ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in the area until the 1990s. When I first arrived in Greenpoint in the early 1990s, walking north of Greenpoint Avenue meant experiencing Puerto Rico’s exuberant culture. Families sat outside on the street often playing dominoes while listening to salsa music, the smell of pork or chicken being barbecued on a grill wafting through the air.

Many North Brooklyn residents are surprised to learn that Puerto Ricans have lived in our area for over a century. In 1924, Congress passed the first immigration law, severely restricting immigration by establishing national quotas based on the 1890 census, heavily favoring Northern and Western Europeans, and completely barring Asians, particularly Japanese, reflecting widespread nativism and xenophobia. This act dramatically reduced overall immigration, created the first U.S. Border Patrol, and aimed to preserve a perceived homogeneous “American” demographic makeup for decades. In the 1920s, North Brooklyn was the beating heart of industrial New York City, then the planet’s largest industrial city. Local factories, heavily dependent on immigrant Jewish, Polish and Italian labor, facing a manpower shortage, looked to Puerto Rican whose residents were American citizens legally able to work in New York.

One of the local industries hit was the by the labor shortage was the American Hemp Rope Manufacturing Company located on a sprawling campus on West Street. Desperate for workers, the firm sent a ship to Puerto Rico and returned with 130 Puerto Rican women to make rope and shoelaces for the company Other local industries also recruited workers in Puerto Rico including Domino Sugar, which once ran the world’s largest sugar refinery in Williamsburg.

Puerto Ricans who spoke Spanish as a first language encountered many problems, including racism, discrimination and language issues because local schools for many years had no programs for immigrant children to learn English as a second language. Puerto Rican children suffered a very high dropout rate in schools. In 1961, Puerto Rican woman Antonia Pantoja founded ASPIRA (Spanish for “aspire”), a non-profit organization that promoted educational reform to help struggling Hispanic students. In 1972, ASPIRA of New York, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit demanding that New York City provide classroom instruction for struggling Latino students and bilingual and English as a Second Language instruction was born helping Hispanic students learn English and stay in school.

By the 1950s, North Brooklyn had become home to thousands of Puerto Rican migrants. Many white residents left Brooklyn in the 1960s for the suburbs and Puerto Ricans quickly replaced them. The North end of Greenpoint became predominately Puerto Rican and the south side of Williamsburg also grew into a huge Puerto Rican quarter.

By the late 1960s, Puerto Ricans comprised about a third of the local population. Many Puerto Ricans bought houses left by locals fleeing the area for the suburbs and a generation of Puerto Rican Greenpointers came of age locally. Although some Puerto Ricans owned their own homes most were renters who were forced out by rising housing prices.

Puerto Ricans soon organized to fight gentrification. In 1972, Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics in the south side of Williamsburg helped organize Los Sures, a community organization that still exists, which fights to help working-class people secure their housing rights. Los Sures was also perhaps the first North Brooklyn organization to provide a number of vital community services including education, senior citizen services and even a food pantry. Los Sures began responding to problems that confront tenants today, including withdrawal of city services, lease violations and illegal evictions. The organization also fought property owners trying to vacate their buildings to gentrify and whiten the neighborhood. Los Sures promoted community-based control of housing, both through management and ownership. In 1975, Los Sures became Brooklyn’s first community-based organization to enter into agreements to manage City-owned properties. It also became one of the first tenant advocacy groups to undertake large-scale rehabilitation. Still fighting for local people, Los Sures is a vital force in community activism.

Though the Puerto Rican presence in North Brooklyn is far smaller than it once was, many Puerto Ricans still and work in our area. Many Puerto Rican Greenpointers run local businesses including lifelong resident Catherine Vera Milligan who runs a wonderful coffee shop at 269 Nassau Avenue. If you want to eat delicious authentic Puerto Rican food try Guarapo restaurant on 58 North 3rd Street, Chrome at 525 Grand Street or La Isla at 293 Broadway. These places prove that Puerto Rican culture is still a vital part of the gorgeous mosaic of cultures that make up North Brooklyn. The other night I met James Nunez, a lifelong Greenpointer of Puerto Rican heritage and we reminisced about the long history of Puerto Ricans in North Brooklyn. Though Puerto Ricans still comprise a vibrant part of our community, many have been forced out of our area, victims to gentrification. James’ grandmother ran a Puerto Rican restaurant in the area until the 1990s. When I first arrived in Greenpoint in the early 1990s, walking north of Greenpoint Avenue meant experiencing Puerto Rico’s exuberant culture. Families sat outside on the street often playing dominoes while listening to salsa music, the smell of pork or chicken being barbecued on a grill wafting through the air.

New York, New York

Local roots forge path for historic club’s rebirth

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