BY LANA SCHWARTZ | lana.schwartz925@gmail.com 

Saturday morning did not get off to a good start for me. For anyone squeamish among you reading this, please forgive me for the next sentence. My cat threw up in my bed. His eyes were bigger than his little cat stomach and he got too excited, ate too fast. It happens to the best of us. My cat, who is currently wearing a cone because of an ear infection that will not go away, got some throw up in his cone. Figuring out my exact order of operations was difficult. I had to clean up my bed, clean up my cat, take off his cone, and because, right now, if he has an ear he’s going to scratch it, put a different cone on him.

It was not a pretty scene, for many reasons, not all of which had to do with the throw up. Eventually, though, I got things settled. I threw my bedding in a bag to be taken to the dry cleaner. I got my cat into a soft cone (which he hated and did not hesitate to let me know) and then back into his plastic cone (which he does not like but seems to tolerate, like a relative you only see at holidays), when I got a call from TD Bank.

“Hello, is this Lana Schwartz speaking?” It was.

“Did you make a charge for $300 in Florida?” I had not.

“Did you make a withdrawal for $1,500 from an ATM in Florida?” I also had not done this.

My card had been skimmed, according to this caller from a number associated with TD Bank. Well, that’s exactly the sort of thing that would happen after the morning I had, I told myself.

He asked me some more questions, asked me to confirm some information. Halfway through our conversation, I walked into my bedroom and saw my cat had wriggled out of his cone.

“Are you still with me?” The TD Bank employee asked.

“I am, yes. There is just a lot going on right now,” I explained. “Can I speak to a supervisor?”

The TD Bank employee stressed the importance of me listening to him. He told me to open my TD Bank app, and pointed to the fact that it said they were “FDIC-Insured” as reason to believe everything would be credited back to my account.

He told me some numbers and asked me to put my debit card in an envelope, bring it outside to his supervisor, at which point it would be taken to an FDIC facility to be “unskimmed.”

As he gave me these instructions, I Googled “Can a scammer call you from the TD Bank phone number?” The answer, while unclear how or why, was yes.

It was at this point I reiterated my request to speak with a supervisor.

“Am I not doing a good job, Miss Lana?” The man, who I now understood not to be a TD Bank employee, wanted to know.

“Am I not doing a good job scamming you?” He might as well have been asking. Normally, I would’ve been even quicker on the uptake, but sometimes your cat throws up in your bed.

I could tell he was becoming increasingly agitated, desperate — two things TD Bank employees often are not, because the dollars and cents in your account may as well be Monopoly money to them. I imagine if you’re looking at numbers all day long, they begin to lose their significance, like leaves on various trees. In fact, the concern this “employee” had for alleged fraudulent activity on my account should’ve tipped me off in the first place. So I did what anyone has the free will to do, during any phone call: I hung up.

Immediately, I tried to call TD Bank, but since the number was the same as the one he was calling me from, the calls merged. I hung up again. TD Bank should really consider looking into this.

Eventually, I got through to TD Bank. I took care of my accounts how they needed to be. My bedding is still at the dry cleaners. My cat is in his cone.

While this event was exhausting and disconcerting, it is not without its takeaways: There is someone out there who believes I have enough money in my account to be worth stealing from.

Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in Queens and today lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared on The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of the books “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” and “Set Piece.”

BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com

More elderly and disabled New Yorkers could soon benefit from a City rental assistance program, thanks to new legislation sponsored by Flatbush City councilmember Farah Louis. 

On Friday, September 18, the City Council’s Committee on Aging heard testimony on Intro 978, a bill that would raise the qualifying income threshold for the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) and Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) programs from $50,000 to $75,000 a year, expanding the number of New Yorkers who can enroll in the program. 

SCRIE and DRIE ensures rent freezes to eligible senior and disabled citizens by providing landlords with property tax abatements equal to the amount of rent forgiven. According to the City’s Department Finance, 67,677 New Yorkers received SCRIE or DRIE assistance in 2024. 

“For those who are enrolled, the program provides meaningful relief,” Louis said in her testimony Friday. “By raising the threshold to $75,000, we can extend this important protection to more New Yorkers and strengthen housing stability for people who have spent decades building their lives and communities here in New York City.” 

First introduced in July, the legislation has received support from 30 City councilmembers, as well as organizations like Woodside on the Move, AARP, the Metropolitan Council on Housing, Tenants & Neighbors, LiveOn NY,  the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, the Cooper Square Committee and others. 

The SCRIE program was established in 1970, and it was expanded to include disabled New Yorkers in 2005. Now, with rampant inflation nationwide and rising costs of living, supporters of the legislation argue that the program’s $50,000 income cap no longer reflects the lived reality of low and middle-earners. 

“For older New Yorkers and New Yorkers with disabilities, these programs are the difference between remaining in your home and being priced out of your community,” said Brooklyn City councilmember Shahana Hanif — one of the bill’s co-sponsors — at a rally in support of the bill on the steps of City Hall Friday. 

“SCRIE and DRIE are not doing enough,” she continued. “We know that New Yorkers who are part of these programs are still paying too much in rent and are rent burdened.”

A City Council report estimated that, if  Louis’ legislation passes, 12,200 residential  units would become newly eligible for SCRIE and DRIE, with a $1,470,724 reduction in property tax revenue for the City in 2027. 

According to the NYC Department for the Aging, between 19 and 25% New Yorkers will be over 60 by 2030, while a 2024 report from the Comptroller’s office estimated that 1 in 6 New Yorkers have a mental or physical disability. 

In addition to income caps, SCRIE and DRIE include numerous eligibility requirements. Recipients must be renter who live in a rent-regulated household and spend more than a third of their monthly income on rent. For a full list of requirements, head to nyc.gov/site/rentfreeze/index.page. 

BY GEOFFREY COBB  | gcobb91839@aol.com

I have lived in Brooklyn for forty-four years, and someone recently asked me the best
music venue I had ever experienced. I answered without hesitation: Zebulon, the
legendary little club on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg.

Zebulon was unique in ways that are difficult to separate from the particular moment in
Brooklyn when it existed. Open from 2004 until December 2012, it was created by three
French expatriates—Guillaume Blestel and the brothers Jef and Joce Soubiran—not
primarily as a commercial concert venue, but as a place to present music, film and art
they personally cared about.

Blestel and Jef Soubiran had already worked together in New York’s restaurant world.
They met while working at Jules Bistro, an East Village restaurant known for live jazz,
and in 1998 opened Casimir, a French restaurant in the East Village. Casimir became
an important precursor to Zebulon. Eventually, they decided to concentrate more
directly on what interested them most: music.

Jeff’s brother Joce was the musician of the trio. A tenor saxophonist who had come to
New York in the 1990s and fallen in love with the city’s jazz scene, he took a leading
role in Zebulon’s musical programming. His tastes helped define the place. Zebulon
presented jazz, experimental music, psychedelia, international music, improvisation and
sounds that sometimes seemed to belong to no category at all.

But a list of genres doesn’t explain Zebulon. You had to be there.
The place felt different from any music club I have experienced. There was no cover
charge, and it never felt as though making money was the reason it existed. It was part
café, part neighborhood living room, part experimental laboratory and part musicians'
clubhouse.

Eventually, Zebulon developed such a reputation that you didn’t have to know who was
playing. You simply showed up. One night it might be free jazz, another African music or
psychedelic rock, another an improvised performance that was impossible to
categorize. People didn’t necessarily go to Zebulon to hear bands they already knew.
They went to discover something they didn’t know. They trusted the place. And they
were rarely disappointed.

Zebulon was small, and that was part of its magic. There was very little separation
between musicians and audience. You weren’t watching a performance from the other
end of a large room; you were right there with the musicians. The intimacy changed the
experience of listening.

It also changed the experience of performing. Zebulon wasn’t simply a place where
finished bands came through town to promote finished records. The owners encouraged
works in progress, improvisation and unexpected combinations of musicians. Artists
could take chances there. Drummer Kenny Wollesen remembered the owners as
genuine fans of the musicians they booked, and Zebulon became a place where new
projects could actually develop.

That, I think, was at the center of Zebulon’s magic: trust. The owners trusted musicians
to take risks. Musicians trusted the owners commitment to the music. And audiences
trusted Zebulon enough to walk through the door without knowing what they were going
to hear. That is radically different from a club built around ticket sales and recognizable
headliners.

Though the place never charged a cover when the hat was passed around for the
performers the audience members would often throw in very generous tips, tens and
twenties, sometimes even fifties. This was their way of showing their appreciation for
the excellent music they heard there.

Sharon Van Etten, who went on to become an acclaimed singer-songwriter, has said
that Zebulon was the first venue to give her a residency and let her curate her own
shows. Its welcoming community helped her gain confidence as a performer. Her
experience says something important about the club. Zebulon didn’t just present a
music scene. It gave musicians a place in which a scene could develop.

When Zebulon opened, Wythe Avenue was a very different place. Williamsburg was
rougher, less expensive and considerably less developed. A motorcycle club sat just
down the block. The transformation that would remake the neighborhood was
underway, but the Williamsburg of luxury hotels, expensive condominiums and high-end
retail had not yet arrived.

Places like Zebulon were part of what made Williamsburg culturally desirable. Artists,
musicians, restaurants, bars and small venues created a neighborhood people wanted
to visit and eventually wanted to live in. But as real estate values rose and a wealthier
population arrived, the conditions that had allowed places like Zebulon to exist began to
disappear.

For Zebulon, that conflict became painfully literal: new neighbors complained about the
noise.

Joce Soubiran said the complaints became especially intense during the club’s final two
years. On Halloween in 2012 alone, Zebulon received seven citations, including noise
violations and citations related to people congregating outside. Keeping the venue open
would have required more soundproofing, lower volume and other changes to the way
performances worked. The owners believed those compromises would change the
character of the place itself.

When they announced the closing, they said Williamsburg had changed so much that they could no longer operate Zebulon “in the manner in which it was conceived.” That sentence captures something larger than the closing of a music club.

Zebulon was part of the culture that helped make Williamsburg exciting, but the transformation of
Williamsburg eventually made it difficult for Zebulon to remain what it had been.
The story did not entirely end there. In 2017, Zebulon reopened in Los Angeles, this
time in a former industrial space. The owners even brought the original wooden bar
from Wythe Avenue with them—a physical piece of the old Zebulon and a tribute to
those remarkable years in Brooklyn.

But for those of us who knew the original, there was only one Zebulon.

After the Wythe Avenue club closed, someone wrote three words in French on a wall:

“Zebulon, je t’aime.”

Zebulon, I love you.

I knew exactly what they meant.

Geoffrey Cobb is the author of “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past.”

BY LANA SCHWARTZ 

Author, “SET PIECE”

lana.schwartz925@gmail.com

The concept of the viral YouTube show Subway Takes is simple. Someone, anyone, sits down next to host, Kareem Rahma. They tell him a strongly held opinion on which many do not see eye-to-eye. Kareem Rahma then either lets them know he “100% agrees” or “100% disagrees.” There is no sentiment in between and no variation on the expression of these sentiments.

When Subway Takes first started, it predominantly featured comedians, likely people you’d never heard of or only knew in passing. Then, Subway Takes grew bigger. It got sponsors. It demanded bigger guests. When I saw Austin Butler on a press tour saying his take was that he “should be invited to more bachelor parties,” I knew that a shark had been jumped.

There seems to be a consensus that Subway Takes has gone too corporate. So why not reverse course now? It is not too late to talk to some people who are not famous. Regular New Yorkers, who happen to have some things to say:

Justin, an old sketch comedy teammate of mine

He moved to Rhode Island, so technically he is no longer a New Yorker, but you could never predict what that guy was going to say.

A subway conductor (or multiple subway conductors)

Subway conductors drive you all over the city. Would it kill you to ask them a question or two for once?

My dad

I don’t think my dad has any takes and would instead take the chance to tell the long-winded, Borscht Belt style jokes he’s fond of. However, my dad has a lot of friends he could send the clip to, and I’m willing to bet that men over 70 in Eastern Queens isn’t a demographic Subway Takes is currently hitting.

This guy who lives a few houses down from me

Every Halloween he hangs these zombie baby dolls from his front porch. I would love to know about some of the other opinions he has.

Robert Caro

While technically famous, Robert Caro seems incredibly down to earth. I’d love to know if he has an opinion about his local grocery store that simultaneously reveals a deeper truth about how power is structured in New York City. Not that I want to put too much pressure on him; I’d be happy to hear his top-line opinions all the same.

A girl named Amanda who I went to sleepaway camp with

I can’t figure out what she’s up to and this would be a fun way to find out.

Children who aren’t The Rizzler

I typically scroll away when Subway Takes makes an appearance on my feed, yet something was oddly mesmerizing about The Rizzler’s conviction that “peanut butter is overrated.” If we’ve learned anything from Sesame Street over the years, it’s that children, famous or not, are often very charming and say strange, unexpected things.

Mrs. Met

This could be her well-deserved chance to spin off her career from the Mets, who most certainly do not deserve her.

Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in Queens and today lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared on The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of the books “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” and “Set Piece.”

BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

CARROLL GARDENS — If you were in South Brooklyn last weekend, you might have seen an apparition floating down the street.

On Saturday, the Church of Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen organized the 78th edition of the annual Our Lady of Sorrows procession, carrying a somber, life-size statue of the Virgin Mary through the neighborhood before returning to the church for fireworks.

The painted “Maria Addolorata” was commissioned in 1948 in Mola, a small town in the Italian region of Apulia — on the heel of the boot — which has had a disproportionately high rate of emigration to Carroll Gardens. A block of Court Street was formally co-named “Mola di Bari Way” in 2010, and today the Van Westerhout Cittadini Molesi, a social club for descendants of Mola, is one of only two such local institutions that remain.

In its latest installment, roughly 100 parishioners sat for an Italian-language mass, with a special appearance by Robert Brennan, the Bishop of Brooklyn. Then the parade was off, stopping by the 76th Precinct for a blessing from an NYPD chaplain and turning back near Marco Polo, at the intersection of Court and Union.

“Picture Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, generations later, brass bands, candles, old Italian hymns, and tears in the eyes of people from Mola di Bari,” wrote J.M. de Palma, who pens “Saint Spotlights” for the church. “Since 1948, your families have carried me through these streets, not as a statue to admire, but as your Mother to accompany. I have watched grandparents arrive with hope, mothers pray through worry, fathers carry burdens, and children learn the songs. You did not leave Mola behind. You carried its faith across the sea, and I came with you. Newcomers watch and do not understand your devotion. How will you teach them?”

For as long as Carroll Gardens has been gentrifying — the process began accelerating in the 80s, and went into hyper-drive in the late 2010s — the primary angle for many citywide outlets, if they weren’t tracking the Gowanus Canal cleanup, has been the fate of Italian-Americans in the area.

This year brought a fresh wave of coverage: After New York Magazine entered the scrum to understand why Caputo’s Bakery closed so abruptly, it published a follow-up with a doleful headline: “Where Did All the Italians of Carroll Gardens Go?” (For what it’s worth, and as the article itself recognizes, similar themes were being plumbed over a decade ago — a 2011 piece in Brooklyn Ink called “An Italian-American Sunset Falls on Carroll Gardens” quoted one man as saying, “We’re not here anymore.”)

But Saturday’s procession didn’t get the memo. As it stands, Our Lady of Sorrows continues to roam the neighborhood, watching over it with a tearful but benevolent eye as she approaches her 80th birthday.

BY JACK DELANEY

jdelaney@queensledger.com

DOWNTOWN — A lawsuit over sweeping rule changes within the Brooklyn Democratic Party has been delayed by a week due to a clerical error, increasing the pressure for a resolution before a key leadership vote next month.

That’s not to say its first two hearings have been uneventful: From an attorney yelling “I will speak!” at the bemused judge, to a pregnant reporter body-blocking the elevator doors as three district leaders tried to make an Irish exit, the suit’s early skirmishes suggest that the losing side — whichever way the verdict falls — will go down swinging.

The dispute dates back to June, when current party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn seemed set to lose her position after candidates affiliated with two anti-establishment groups, the New Kings Democrats (NKD) and Brooklyn Can’t Wait, flipped eight of the nine contested district leader seats in the primaries — a result that bumped the reform coalition’s numbers up to 22, securing the majority it needs to oust her.

But Bichotte Hermelyn struck back. On August 19, she proposed a raft of amendments to the party’s by-laws, adding 48 new members to the executive committee and raising the voting threshold to revert the changes to 85%, which lame-duck district leaders narrowly approved several days later at a secretive meeting in Mill Basin.

The rule changes triggered widespread backlash, briefly uniting such unlikely allies as Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senator Chuck Schumer. Hakeem Jeffries, the top-ranking Democrat in the House, said he was “suprised” and “opposed.” Longtime Brooklyn rep Brad Lander called it a “naked power grab.” Tony Melone, the president of NKD put it in terms that were just as stark: “We can’t have another January 6 moment in Brooklyn.”

The reformers, who have united behind Julio Peña III as their pick to replace Bichotte Hermelyn, sued to overturn the amendments before the meeting, but Kings County Supreme Court Justice Jill Epstein ruled that they would need to re-file once the measures had been formally adopted.

So the coalition returned on September 2, holding an abbreviated press conference in front of Brooklyn Borough Hall before funneling into a nearby court building. The anticipation was palpable — lawyers for the reform camp had opted to sue on the grounds that outgoing district leaders do not have the power to vote on rule changes after they’ve been defeated. How would the defense frame its counter-argument?

The first hearing offered few answers. Conspicuously, Bichotte Hermelyn never appeared. But as the attorneys filed up the aisle to their seats before the dais, three district leaders listed in the suit — Anthony Beckford, Arleny Alvarado-McCalla, and Heriberto Mateo — followed them and sat waiting to be called.

It quickly became clear that the defense was looking to postpone the case, maintaining that the trio had not been given enough time to find legal representation. Yet Epstein insisted that because her decision would almost certainly be appealed, further delays would scuttle any chance of resolving the suit before the leadership vote.

Up sprang Anthony Genovesi, Jr., the law chair of the Brooklyn Dems and a partner at Abrams Fensterman, a firm which counts Frank Carone — the disgraced aide to former Mayor Eric Adams — and ex-party boss Frank Seddio as alums.

“They don’t have rights?” said Genovesi loudly, pointing his finger at the three district leaders, who technically were not being represented by him. As Epstein calmly explained her reasoning, his voice grew louder, until the court reporter finally interjected to say that she wasn’t able to transcribe the hearing accurately since he was interrupting the judge.

One facet of the situation was particularly strange: As law chair, Genovesi had played a direct role in electing Justice Epstein to her seat. In fact, a simple Google search by journalists in the courtroom’s second row returned an image of Epstein posing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bichotte Hermelyn, beaming. That was to be expected — one of the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s main sources of power is its monopoly on nominating county-level judges, which incentivizes candidates to stay on the party’s good side. (The reform bloc did not object to Epstein overseeing the case, though the initial judge assigned to the case, Kenneth Sherman, recused himself.)

In the end, Epstein gave the district leaders a reprieve of one day. When the hearing resumed the next morning, neither Alvarado-McCalla nor Mateo showed; Beckford, sporting an intricately-carved cane, said he would represent himself.

But there was a new roadblock to the case proceeding. The night before, the petitioners’ attorneys — led by Mark Hanna — and Genovesi had both noticed a clerical oversight: Hanna and his team had omitted Bichotte Hermelyn’s name from a key document, the order to show cause. Genovesi pounced, arguing that although she had been served with a notice of the lawsuit, the error meant that his opponents had failed to follow protocol.

Epstein, initially skeptical, probed whether Bichotte Hermelyn had really been left in the dark. “I believe you appeared for her yesterday,” she told Genovesi.

“We’re arguing now whether we should just entirely circumvent the order to show cause,” he retorted. “The case law on this is not discretional. It’s absolute.”

“It is a jurisdictional defect,” Epstein said thoughtfully. Eventually, she relented: “I would want [Bichotte Hermelyn] to have the opportunity to be here personally. Given that her name is not on the paper, I would question that.”

Hanna and his partners, sheepish, looked on as Epstein explained that the hearing would be rescheduled to Tuesday, September 8.

Afterwards, foot soldiers from the reform coalition lingered in the hallway, outlasting the journalists who gradually filtered off to write their stories. Down by the benches outside Borough Hall, Anthony Beckford stood laughing with a friend.