News

The Kaleidoscopic Stories Behind the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition

BQE Admin on February 21, 2025

Detail of Shosh Goller’s “Monument to the NRA,” one of many pieces included in the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

By ALICE MORENO | news@queensledger.com

New York City is easily known as one of the most diverse cities in the country. Thousands of cultures worldwide come together in this one place to live, breathe, and love. Not one story is alike — many come from all walks of life, and it is important to celebrate that aspect.

At the Brooklyn Arts Exhibition, located at the Brooklyn Museum on 200 Eastern Parkway, hundreds of local artists were exhibited. There wasn’t a main idea that followed, instead, many showcased art that described themselves and their experiences, as well as the world around them. Artists used their tools to focus on situations such as queer issues, body image, boyhood, and current events, using their ways to express their thoughts and spark a conversation.

Nevertheless, there is one similarity each artist holds: their connection to the borough of Brooklyn. Whether living there currently or having a long line of ancestry settling in the pre-American Dutch colony, each artist holds the badge of being a Brooklynite high and proud.

I interviewed five local Brooklyn artists who were displayed at the Brooklyn Arts Exhibition. Each artist displayed their work in a thought-provoking manner, leading the audience to dig deep inside to understand themselves and the world they currently live in. These are their stories.

* * *

Erin M. Riley, Violations

The complexities of womanhood can oftentimes be a struggle to face. Erin M. Riley, like most women, struggled with being comfortable in her own body. Now, she embraces it, recognizing her body as well as her history as a form of art, in which to be spoken about.

“In college, I wasn’t using my own body. I was using found imagery and stand-ins for me,” said Riley. “But now, as I’ve made [more of] my work and sort of become more comfortable, I’ve been trying to add my body into the pieces, because the work has always been about me.”

The East Williamsburg-based artist created Violations in 2022 as a woven tapestry made out of hand-dyed wool on a cotton wrap. The piece serves as fragments of her memory, discussing personal experiences stemming from the trauma she had faced throughout her childhood.

The tapestry contains a variety of images all connected to the idea of womanhood. With Riley’s body in the middle, it is mirrored by two images depicting her and her sister. Behind her body to the left sits a Barbie doll – known by many as an “idealistic representation” of a woman’s body – and to her right repeats the words “violations” in bright orange, imitating that of a New York City parking ticket. Pink splatter is spread by her body, covering up an apology below it.

For Riley, the most important thing for her is to continue discussing her experiences rather than shunning them.

“Part of me never wants to get tired. I want to sort of keep the conversation [of sexual violence] going,” said Riley. “I like to have these conversations about violations [and] whatever that implies.”

* * *

Shosh Goller’s “Monument to the NRA.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Shosh Goller, Monument to the NRA

Turning on the news to see another mass shooting has become more of a normalization than it should be. Many Americans are desensitized by the news, giving their “thoughts and prayers,” and moving on with their lives. Though many have pleaded to not forget what happened, the commonality of it has led the people to forget anyway.

Shosh Goller, however, does not forget and doesn’t intend to do so for as long as she lives.

The Prospect Heights-based artist created “Monument to the NRA” in 2012 during the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, and over a decade later, she is still updating the piece. Modeled after the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., the sculpture’s base is made out of chipboard, and it is filled with thousands of headlines ranging from mass shootings to lawmakers’ decisions on gun control.

“I just remember this one story, […] it had nothing to do with gun violence, but it was a story of a woman who was in a fountain in Forest Park [in St. Louis, MI], who was raped, and it was in front of a crowd of people standing around, and no one did anything,” said Goller. “And it just really affected me. And I can’t say that I have any personal connection to gun violence – because I don’t – but it kills me […] day after day of all these incidents that happen.”

When she began the piece, every headline of a shooting – even if there was one casualty – was added to the monument. As the years went on, it became overwhelming to constantly add, therefore Goller currently adds stories with mass headlines. The latest headline added was that of Trump’s assassination attempt in July 2024.

As the years went on, each headline began to yellow, serving as a testimony of a long-running issue in this country. Goller has also created similar pieces using headlines, such as one designed as the Twitter logo, sporting Trump’s haircut and a mask, surrounded by headlines discussing the issues of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Another features a women’s upper body, with headlines about sexual assault allegations all from the #MeToo movement.

“I keep offering [the piece] to politicians, thinking they can put it in their office for people who come in to show how awful this situation is,” said Goller “But so far, I don’t have any takers.”

* * *

Avram Finklestein’s “Golem 11/71 (BRAF V600E selfie).” Photo by Alice Moreno

Avram Finklestein, Golem 11/71 (BRAF V600E selfie)

Avram Finklestein’s story is that of resilience. His disability does not stop him from creating art – instead, he embraces it, being a frequent theme in his work.

Golem 11/71 serves as a testament to that. As his disability – degenerative neuromuscular disease, which leads his muscle to atrophy – worsened his ability to do art in the long run, Finklestein operated a wheeled metal structure that doubled as a mobility device to be able to roam around his studio. After he finished and took the work of the wall, he realized the translucency of the matte acetate could lead to creating two pieces in one – birthing his self-portrait. One side reflected himself at age 11 and age 71 on the other.

Between the portraits surround a plethora of live-cell imagery of cancer and plasma cells. Battling cancer, Finklestein notes the importance of recognizing disabilities – even if it isn’t clearly visible.

‘And then it started me thinking about the invisibility of [disabilities] and the ways in which […] the person next to us on the subway train could be in pain, but we would have no way of knowing that,” said Finklestein. “What we can see about the world has nothing to do with how the world actually functions.”

As the years pass, Finklestein’s work has moved from social issues to more personal ones. He hopes to use his skills to help people understand him on a deeper level, especially by focusing on the issues he faces with his health.

Rather than making precise, realistic work, Finklestein opts for a more abstract look, feeling as it makes it more honest – not only with himself but with others. His emotions are evident in the piece, whether he is an 11-year-old child in a Xerox photograph using his coat to mask his face or using technology in an advanced world, with 70 years of experience behind him.

“My hands don’t obey me. My body just doesn’t obey me. But I refuse to stop,” said Finklestein. “I can’t see, but I refuse to stop making work.”

* * *

Qualeasha Wood’s “Brooklyn Baby.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Qualeasha Wood, Brooklyn Baby

Qualeasha Wood has a deep connection to Brooklyn. Her ancestor, Charlie Hueston, escaped slavery by fleeing from Tennessee to Canada and eventually settled in Brooklyn. Brooklyn became the home for her family throughout the 20th century, as her parents and grandparents grew up and met in the borough.

In Brooklyn Baby, Wood’s love for the borough — despite not living there, as she is based in New Jersey — family and loved ones shine through, with her descendants’ names being displayed on the piece. The machine-embroidered tapestry featured the subway signage for “Winthrop Avenue,” the block her family grew up in, and the symbol for the 2 train, which she depended on during her time in Brooklyn. The background for the piece is an image of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where she had her first date with her fiancée. The title of the piece derives from the Lana Del Rey song “Brooklyn Baby,” a satirical piece focusing on out-of-towners who live and breathe Brooklyn.

The piece is intermingled with the theming of identity. As a queer, black woman, Wood is finding her role in a society that caters to the cis, white man. A Photobooth app selfie of Wood takes up most of the tapestry, dating from the years she lived in Brooklyn.

“I think right now, as we were all on our phones and just absorbed with the world, it’s so important to kind of just dial it in and just be a little more in our direct sphere, and within our own communities,” said Wood.

Wood hopes for people to enjoy the now with the people they love the most. She is close to her family, inviting them to many of her exhibitions and art events and even helping her with embroidering her pieces. Despite making a last-minute decision to change her career from joining the Air Force — the route her parents chose for her life — to attending art school, her family is still her biggest supporter.

* * *

Melissa Joseph’s “Olive’s Hair Salon.” Photo by Alice Moreno

Melissa Joseph, Olive’s Hair Salon

As a biracial, Indian, and white woman, Melissa Joseph strives for others to see themselves in her work. Each moment with her family is special and unique, meshing together to create a melting pot of culture. To her, these moments feel special – even if it was a small event, Joseph strives to recognize her culture in her work.

Olive’s Hair Salon is a special moment for her. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many were left to DIY certain services that they would otherwise pay for, including haircuts. During a Zoom call with Joseph’s family, her brother planned to buzz his hair off completely in his backyard. His daughter offered to help and held the clippers upside down. Finding it humorous, Joseph snapped a photo.

“I try to like represent moments, sometimes everyday things that people can recognize themselves in,” said Joseph. “But also, it’s important to me to show kind of like imagery of South Asian culture and biracial culture, mixed families […] the funny things that happen when multiple cultures come together.”

Joseph notes that after seeing artist Henry Taylor’s work at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan – specifically the piece “Gettin it Done,” in which he had painted his neighbors getting a haircut in the vibrant community of Downtown L.A. – she realized that there was a sort of intimacy with getting a haircut. There is a high level of trust given to barbers, as many want their hair to be cut in a specific way. She compared the level of intimacy between a barber with their client and her brother and his young daughter, interested in the amount of trust her brother gave to his daughter, even if she held the clippers incorrectly.

Using wool and felt, Joseph noticed that there was a sort of contradiction. She uses a process called needle felting, in which she pokes the fibers through the surface. Though it is a meditative process, there is an underlying sense of violence: since she uses her images as a base, she “stabs” each image over and over. It took Joseph a while to understand that poking the piece over and over is a part of the narrative, noting that at the end of the process, the fibers are softly woven through the piece, feeling like a fluffy cloud.

The human experience can be simple to others but truly has some artistic measure to it. Joseph proves this with her work, letting the audience know that they too can familiarize themselves with other people’s stories, seeing themselves and their lives in her work.

Joseph was awarded the UOVO Prize, given by the Brooklyn Museum to honor emerging artists in Brooklyn. She was awarded a cash prize of $25,000, an outdoor installation at the museum, and a mural displayed outside of UOVO Brooklyn in Bushwick. UOVO serves as a storage facility and logistics provider for fine arts, fashion, and wine.

CHPE and Rod Strickland Host Hoops Event at Variety B&G Club

BQE Admin on February 21, 2025

By WALTER SANCHEZ | news@queensledger.com

The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) launched a new NIL (name, image, and likeness) partnership with the Long Island University-Brooklyn (LIU) men’s basketball team that included a visit to a CHPE construction site in Astoria, Queens, and a basketball clinic at the Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens (VBGCQ).

More than 50 youth were at the clinic at the club, which included hands-on instruction from the LIU men’s basketball starting lineup and the team’s head coach, NBA legend Rod Strickland. Participants split up into teams, learned key basketball skills, and gained an understanding of the life of a student-athlete, something quite important to kids at the club, as many aspire to play sports in school. The children then competed against each other while LIU players served as coaches.

Before the two-hour clinic, members of the LIU men’s team toured a local CHPE construction site near the Rainey substation in Astoria. They learned about the benefits of CHPE, a 339-mile-long clean-energy transmission project that will deliver clean, renewable hydropower to NYC, providing enough clean energy annually to power 1 million New York City homes, and alleviating pollution in disadvantaged communities. CHPE leaders taught players about the direct impact of union labor and grid reliability on the greater New York community.

“Through this community-first partnership, we were able to provide an unforgettable and impactful experience for these kids,” said Hydro-Québec Senior Director of Stakeholder Relations Pete Rose.

“We appreciate members of the LIU men’s basketball team learning about CHPE, and its commitment to uplifting the local community, whether it’s through the benefits of clean energy or reinforcing the value of teamwork by playing basketball with local youth.”

“Paying it forward and giving back is always important, and it was special to share our love of basketball with these local kids,” said Long Island University head men’s basketball coach Rod Strickland.

“Through our tour of the Rainey converter site and our time playing basketball, it was great to hear and see CHPE’s positive relationship with this community.” “This basketball clinic with CHPE and the LIU men’s basketball team created a special opportunity to share our diverse, unique, and robust “give back” ecosystem with kids in the Astoria community,” said WVI DF Founder Jeremiah Schnee. “This shows all the ways that we can give back and provide a positive impact on local youth. Basketball is a far-reaching pastime that can teach kids about the important lessons of teamwork and sportsmanship, and CHPE and the LIU basketball team are wonderful ambassadors for the community.” This Basketball clinic provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience to our kids; we thank CHPE for their continued partnership and commitment to Astoria,” said Costa Constantinides, CEO of Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens.

Community Spotlight: Uzo Okoye, the Bed-Stuy Rez Leading JFK’s Big Expansion

BQE Admin on February 20, 2025

Renderings of JFK’s gargantuan new terminal. Photo courtesy of Ghim-Lay Yeo

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Uzoamaka Okoye is used to managing impossibly large projects. Previously a construction lawyer with over two decades of experience, she now serves as the Chief of Staff for the New Terminal One at JFK, a mammoth undertaking that will leverage $9.5 billion to build 23 gates covering upwards of 2.4 million square feet.

Okoye, a Bed-Stuy resident whose offices are in Jamaica, began her career as an engineer working on water and wastewater infrastructure projects. She said she studied engineering at NYU because she “loved the concept of building something that hasn’t been built, something beautiful. If you’re lucky,” she expanded, “you get to build projects that really change the landscape and have meaning.” That, for her, is what makes Terminal One — which will not only dazzle the eyes, but generate over 10,000 jobs by the time it’s finished — so exciting.

On top of her stellar legal and project management bona fides, Okoye has served on the board of African Services Committee, a nonprofit dedicated to providing services for recent migrants, for 15 years. Having come to the U.S. from Liberia at age 13, and now the board’s chair, Okoye notes that the work has been “really rewarding for me, even through the difficult times.”

Okoye is also inspired by the work of the Queens Center for Progress, saying that she had the pleasure to visit their site and witness an array of vital programs that span from kids in Pre-K to 80-year-olds. In fact, she sees overlap between QCP’s efforts to empower those with disabilities and her team’s mission at Terminal One. “As we look at the people who will be coming in,” she said, “it’s every type of traveler.” Informed by an ethic of accessibility, the new structure will have a range of facilities — including an arrivals lounge, a sensory room, and automated wheelchairs — so that everyone “can be treated with dignity and have a great experience from the minute they arrive at the curb.” Okoye is looking forward to a “long partnership” with QCP over how best to accommodate travelers of all backgrounds.

Talking Shop with Comptroller Brad Lander

BQE Admin on February 12, 2025

In the first of the Star’s interviews with the 2025 mayoral candidates, Lander discusses his plans to make CUNY free, reveals where the letters of the Kentile Floors sign went, and shares a surprising story from Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez, involving a murder, a pizza delivery guy, and a priest.

Comptroller Brad Lander stopped by the Star’s offices on Friday to talk about his campaign to become NYC’s next mayor. Photo: Mohamed Farghaly

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Last summer, as Brad Lander lay in his dentist’s office in Gowanus, the hygienist paused, holding the Novocaine needle in the air so that it glinted in the light. “Comptroller,” she said, “I thought every three-year-old was supposed to get a 3K slot.” Eric Adams had promised universal child care, but the city had since fallen 10,000 seats short of its goal, to the hygienist’s dismay. “I’m 140th on the waitlist,” she said, grimly. Lander quickly committed to seeing that the program covered everyone. But she may not have needed the needle — even when not under duress, Lander has styled himself, in contrast to Adams, as a sober reformer dedicated to fiscal responsibility and accountable governance.

Though a fixture of New York politics for decades, Lander’s rise has been relatively slow and steady. Born in St. Louis, MO, he moved to the city when he was 23 and began to work on affordable housing, eventually running two organizations that advocated for tenants’ rights. Next, he spent 15 years on the City Council, where he helped found the Progressive Caucus. Since 2021, he’s served as comptroller, a role he describes as being the “city’s watchdog,” managing pension funds and auditing government contracts. There’s only one rung higher in city government, and that’s mayor — a post for which Lander will be on the ballot, come November.

Yet roughly eight months out, the race is already crowded. Lander is one of nine candidates who have announced mayoral bids, and that’s not counting former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who leads the polls but has yet to officially enter the fray. To win, he would have to overcome the embattled incumbent, Eric Adams — Politico has called Lander the current mayor’s “archrival” — and distinguish himself from a pack of progressives with similar policies, including state Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. In the process, he’ll have to navigate two hot-button issues for New York Democrats: affordability and public safety.

“People are pissed off with government that’s not working for them,” Lander told the Brooklyn Star during a recent roundtable. “People feel like the cost of living is going through the roof: the rent’s up, home prices are up, child care costs so much that I can’t afford to live here. It doesn’t feel safe and secure, and I don’t see government fighting for me.”

Subway crime in particular has been a flashpoint for conversations around safety, and left-leaning candidates like Lander have taken note. In an interview with the New York Editorial Board last December, he acknowledged that “progressives, including myself, were slow to respond to the growing sense of disorder coming out of the pandemic,” and at the roundtable he reaffirmed his support for more proactive security measures, albeit with a caveat.

“Sometimes you do still need involuntary hospitalization,” Lander said, adding that as mayor he would expand law enforcement’s ability to require people perceived as “‘dangerous” to undergo medical examination, a proposal that was seen as fraught in 2022 when it was rejected by state Democrats, yet which now has broad approval. “And I support more officers in the subway, especially at night, which is what the governor is doing,” said Lander. “But the real answer is getting people connected to housing with the services they need.” That response dovetails with Lander’s background as a housing advocate, which continues to inform his approach to the city’s problems writ large.

But the issue of subway security had recently become more personal. Midway through the roundtable, Lander paused to take a call from an NYPD officer. The eight-year-old daughter of one of Lander’s friends was pushed to the ground by a homeless person with a mental illness on the subway, and the officer was following up with Lander. “I’m just trying to make sure the dots get connected and that guy can get care,” he said. “And then she also wouldn’t have to see [her attacker] there [in the station] every day.”

Lander’s elevator pitch to New Yorkers is that he’s less corrupt than the big-name candidates, and more proven than the small ones. In that sense, he’s positioning himself as a foil both to Cuomo and Adams — who have a track record of getting things done, but also skeletons in their closets — and to his fellow progressives, whom he portrays as honest yet less battle-tested.

Based on the latest polling, that narrative seems like it could be a winning formula. A survey last week by the Manhattan Institute simulated ranked choice voting and found that Lander survived until the penultimate round, where he was narrowly edged out by Adams, who then lost to Cuomo. Yet pollsters caution that early results like these are often a function of name recognition: over 70% of respondents did not know of Ramos, Mamdani, or state Senator Zellnor Myrie, and despite topping the simulation, both Cuomo and Adams also draw the highest unfavorable ratings. Only 55% knew Lander, placing him in a middle zone along with ex-Comptroller Scott Stringer, but time will tell whose cause is boosted most by greater attention as the race progresses.

A poll by the Manhattan Institute gives Lander the best odds of challenging Cuomo and Adams, the controversial heavyweights. Courtesy of the Manhattan Institute

The deeper issue, one not unique to Lander, is that New Yorkers haven’t been voting. Turnout in the 2021 mayoral election was an abysmal 21%, the lowest in seven decades and a drop from the 26% of 2017 and 2013. To be fair, New York is not an outlier: Dallas saw a shocking 7% turnout in its last mayoral contest, making double digits seem like a blessing. But in an age of bombastic, social media-oriented populists, can a relatively measured, scandal-free white liberal policy wonk like Lander, preaching a message akin to “eat your vegetables,” energize voters enough to reverse that course?

Lander is banking on it. “To me, this campaign is about who can lead a safer, more affordable, and better-run city,” he told the Star, “and get people excited about a [local government] that has their back.” He touted his work on the Gowanus rezoning, which has paved the way for over 8,000 units, with 3,000 earmarked as affordable, as a model for tackling the housing crisis — and the Interborough X (IBX), a proposed light rail line connecting Brooklyn and Queens, would be another opportunity to build homes, he said. He would make CUNY free, he noted, and institute a scheme for teachers and city workers that would leverage pension funds to double their purchasing power when searching for housing.

While leftist candidates are increasingly accepting safety as a paradigm, many of their underlying policies haven’t changed so much as the framing around them has. Explaining his stance on immigration, Lander offered a story Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez had shared earlier in the day. He knew that Gonzalez had joined law enforcement after his brother was murdered. But he hadn’t known about the sole witness, a pizza delivery person who hesitated to come to the police precinct because he was undocumented. Five years after the shooting, a conversation with his priest sparked a crisis of conscience, and he finally told the NYPD what he had seen. Yet, sure enough, the defense counsel had him deported before he could testify.

“Downstairs, there are ICE flyers on the doors of the buildings. People are reporting raids, they’re terrified,” Lander said at the Star’s office, casting Gonzalez’s story as a parable of how targeting migrants can backfire. “The city gets more dangerous if you don’t protect people and keep them safe.”

As the roundtable came to a close, talk shifted to local Brooklyn lore. After the legendary Kentile Floors sign was taken down in 2014, Lander’s office saved the letters, but he couldn’t convince the owners of any nearby structures to display them. “We should try again,” he said. “On top of one of those new buildings, maybe!” The light was reddening on the table, and the conversation started to rove across the other boroughs. “This city is so incredible,” Lander said. “During the pandemic, we worried whether people would want to be in this diverse place, but they really do. It’s the most amazing city on the planet — you have things like Shakespeare in the Park, and Diwali at Richi Rich Palace. But,” he noted, growing serious again, “you’ve got to have a place to live that’s affordable.”

At least eight other candidates would agree — there’s consensus that making New York City cheaper and safer is the job at hand. The race is young, but the open question will be whether Lander’s bona fides as a housing activist and resume as comptroller will persuade voters that he’s the one to do it.

Mohamed Farghaly contributed reporting.

What Would it Have Taken for the Nets to Land Doncic?

BQE Admin on February 4, 2025

What would it have taken a team like Brooklyn to pry the 25-year-old superstar from Dallas?

By Noah Zimmerman

The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers. Even after a handful of days there is little sense to be made of the blockbuster trade that shook the NBA and sports world to its core late Saturday night.

Los Angeles also received Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris in the deal. Alongside Davis, the Lakers sent Max Christie and a first round pick to Dallas, as well as Jalen Hood-Schiffino to the Utah Jazz.

Following the trade, a dejected Mavs team was forced to take the floor against the Cleveland Cavaliers, one of the best teams in the league. The Cavs scored 50 points in the first quarter en route to a 144-101 trouncing, a foreboding sign for the future in Dallas.

Despite bringing Anthony Davis to Texas, the Mavs departure from their franchise player confused fans and risks going down as one of the worst trades in sports history. Only time will tell if this deal damages the Mavs as much as Billy Kingís trade for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce crippled the Nets.

To defend his move, Mavs GM Nico Harrison echoed a well known sentiment that defense wins championships. There were many concerns with Dallas regarding Luka’s apathy on the defensive side of the court, as well as his conditioning and injury issues. With Luka due for a max contract extension at the end of the year, Harrison decided it was too risky to pay up.

As a result, Dončić is no longer eligible for the $346M/5-year contract Dallas could have given him. The most he can receive from LA is $229M/5-years.

Another young superstar, Minnesota’s Anothony Edwards had trouble making sense of the deal. “At 25 they traded, probably the best scorer in the NBA,” the 23-year-old guard lamented. “He just went to the finals.”

“I still feel like there is something, some facts that are going to come out over time,” said Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. “I can’t really comprehend how that makes sense to be honest.”

What would it have taken other teams to land a player as coveted as Dončić? It’s clear that the Mavericks’ priority was to land a dominant two-way center in Davis, but it’s hard to see any long-term benefit with their new center turning 32 in March. Their inability to fetch more than one first round draft pick is baffling considering the modern trade market.

Other centers like Rudy Gobert netted four first round picks on the trade market. The Nets were able to fetch five first round picks from the Knicks in exchange for Mikal Bridges.

Brooklyn was able to transform their return for a 34-year-old Kevin Durant into 9 first round picks, two first round pick swaps, a handful of second rounders, Cam Johnson, and Zaire Williams. Dallas turned a 25-year-old Dončić into Davis, Christie, and a single 2029 draft pick.

For a rebuilding team like the Brooklyn Nets, young centers and draft stock were aplenty. Surely if Harrison had shopped Luka around the league he could have netted a haul of picks from the Nets alongside younger centers with upside like Nic Claxton or Dayíron Sharpe.

Regardless, whatís done is done. The NBA has been forever changed by the arrival of Luka in LA. With the trade deadline on Thursday afternoon, teams will finish making tweaks to their rosters while carefully eyeing the future.

“I thought I was gonna stay my whole career there. Loyalty is a big word for me,” said Dončić in his Lakers press conference. “But I got the ocean here. I get to play for the Lakers. Not many get to say that.”

Luka also expressed his love and admiration for the late Lakers legend Kobe Bryant. After landing in LA he made sure to mention Bryant and his daughter Gigi, who tragically passed in 2020.

Dončić is nursing a calf injury that has sidelined him since December. He is currently slated to make his Lakers debut this Weekend as LA plays two games against the Jazz ahead of the All-Star Break.

Remembering Penner the Penman

BQE Admin on February 4, 2025

When we meet an individual who is courageously unapologetic about using his unique insight helping the average New Yorker it’s difficult not to take note. Larry Penner; transit guru, letter writer, was that kind of person; curious, insightful and filled with empathy for the working man, and he know transit ridership from the supply and demand ends. And he was not afraid to write about it. Larry had a varied career in government, working for city planning as well as the board of elections. But his love was transportation, serving most of his working career managing and studying transit and transportation programs, working on projects within the MTA, NJ Transit and rail lines throughout New York.

With the knowledge gained throughout his decades of experience, Larry had become a prolific letter and op-ed writer to our newspaper for the past twenty years. He just loved the melodic proficiency in which the trains, busses and automobiles carried people with varied needs, through the city. His knowledge of the system, the movement of transit riders and the wants and needs of transit officials gave our readers the unique perspective few could.

Larry passed away last month after a battle with cancer. There are truly few who could replace the lens in which he saw transportation in New York City. He was born in Bay Ridge and lived most of his life in Great Neck. He was 71.

Pol Position: When There’s No Path, Move The Goal …. And Cuomo Still Leads

BQE Admin on February 4, 2025

The red dress, who had been seemingly inserted in every photo
with Mayor Adams prior his legal troubles, announced a run
for city comptroller in November. Woodhaven Assembly
member Jennifer Rajkumar announced then, with great
fanfare, that she could turn the city around. Her blanket
political promises, of course, covered little specific substance,
just outlined that she fixes things and NYC needs to be fixed.
When others saw she was running, they thought she was quite
vulnerable. Senator Kevin Parker was in the race early. The
political playbook says, ‘raise a lot of money and you scare
people away from running against you.’ Well, it didn’t work
here. Seeing Rajkumar had raised a significant amount of
money entering the race, our sources tell us that Councilman
Justin Brennan and Mark Levine didn’t flinch, saw a path to
win the Comptroller race and joined in on the fun. After all,
Rajkumar’s claim to fame, according to legislators we speak
with, is appearing wearing a red dress, in nearly every photo
op. with the mayor. And as soon as he, and those around him
got caught up in probes and cell phone confiscation, she was a
ghost.

It’s not really her fault though. We were the first to talk to her
when she announced she was running for the Assembly and
faced incumbent Mike Miller in a primary in Woodhaven &
Richmond Hill. Our Leader Observer newspaper has been the
weekly paper of record in that area since 1909. She admitted
she moved here from Manhattan, specifically to run against
him in a district that had a low voter turnout. It’s a great story.
We loved her honesty and gave her a bunch of credit for
wanting to get into the political game any way she could.

It was brilliant. But early success, as we all know, sometimes leads to
a false sense that it’s going to be easy to move up in the
political world. By the way, not every legislator wants ‘to move
up’ as they say. Being an Assemblyman, Council representative
or Senator is a pretty successful thing – and many we report on
here see their service in these positions as a goal. But no doubt
some feel the need to move ‘up.’ But we digress.
The ‘Red Dress’ thing is a great prop. It’s a good way for people
to remember you. But people aren’t easily fooled. These days
they want substance. It’s too easy to run for office now, so we
are getting people who are movers and shakers, civic leaders
and business leaders. They don’t solely come out of democratic
clubs any longer. She happens to be sort of an outcast in the
Queens Assembly Caucus. Why? Because she wants more and
her colleagues see it. There’s time, one Queens Assembly
member told us. You can’t just move up because you are smart,
or because you have a brand. Getting elected takes work. It
takes going door-to-door to talk to the people. “… it takes
proving you can get things done.”

Cuomo Still On Top

Case in point … Andrew Cuomo. This week another poll came
out showing he still has a 25-point lead in a run for mayor ….
and he didn’t even announce. You have Stringer, Williams,
Ramos, Landor, Mamdani and Adams, each under 10%.
Cuomo has a track record of getting something done. Whether
you like it or not.

As of last week, the path to the next level for Rajkumar is in the
Public Advocate office. Moving The Goal… brilliant with
unapologetic moxie.

Jennifer Rajkumar

Is Bushwick Inlet Park on Track at Last?

BQE Admin on January 29, 2025

After a recent demolition, the city now has access to the land it needs to begin the remediation process for the 27-acre park that Greenpoint and Williamsburg residents were promised back in 2005. Local organizers were elated, but wondered: what took so long?

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

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

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

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

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

Demolition began in summer 2024. Photo: a still from Stephen McFadden’s time-lapse.

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

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

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

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

January 2025, and the demo is complete! Photo: a still from McFadden’s time-lapse.

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

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

BK Hospital Celebrates Two ‘Milestone’ Heart Surgeries

BQE Admin on January 29, 2025

The cardiac surgery team at NYU Langone Hospital — Brooklyn poses with hospital leadership following the successful completion of the hospital’s first Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) procedure. Photo courtesy of NYU Langone

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

NYU Langone Hospital — Brooklyn completed two open heart surgeries last week, marking a significant milestone for the borough’s healthcare system. Both patients were Brooklynites who received the procedures near home and have been recovering well, according to the surgeons.

Whereas several hospitals in Manhattan perform a particularly difficult type of heart surgery called coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), the options in Brooklyn are scarce. Mount Sinai offers CABG at its Manhattan locations, for example, but not in Brooklyn; New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope is one of the few borough-based sites for the surgery.

That scarcity exists for good reason: the surgery is incredibly complicated to pull off. “[CABG] involves working on tiny coronary arteries, or blood vessels, to bypass blockages in the heart,” said Mathew R. Williams, MD, chief of adult cardiac surgery and co-director of NYU Langone Heart. “It requires extreme precision as it involves creating new ‘plumbing’ by using a graft to form a new channel for blood to flow to the heart. Unlike other heart surgeries, CABG focuses on restoring blood flow to the heart by rerouting blood around clogged arteries.”

In America, heart disease has been the leading cause of death since 1950 and over 3,000 people undergo CABG annually. The procedure, also known by the name ‘open heart bypass surgery,’ can take anywhere from 3 to 6 hours to complete, and the average life expectancy for patients after receiving the treatment is around 18 years. In fact, over 80% of people who require CABG are still alive 5 years afterwards.

“It was exciting,” said Dr. Williams, when asked about the two recent procedures. “What made it even more rewarding was seeing the patients go home just three days after surgery, feeling well and knowing they now have an improved longevity.”

A spokesperson for NYU Langone Hospital — Brooklyn explained that the successful surgeries were a “coordinated effort” by NYU Langone Heart’s experienced cardiac surgeons, specialized cardiologists, and dedicated advanced practice providers and nursing staff. The hospital announced in December that it was expanding cardiac services, and has made great strides since then. On top of the two CABG surgeries, the center’s cardiologists have also successfully performed more than 40 advanced atrial fibrillation ablations, something hospital representatives said was not available in Brooklyn previously.

Telling ‘NYC-Scale’ Stories with the MTA’s Open Data

BQE Admin on January 29, 2025

The Subway Stories team (from left: Jediah Katz, Marc Zitelli, Julia Han) and Lisa Mae Fiedler (far right), head of the MTA Open Data initiative. Photo: Jack Delaney

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

“What a wonderful group of nerds we’ve put together in one room!”

It was true: on a dismally cold Thursday night, a sold-out crowd had come to the NYC Transit Museum to listen to panelists — led by Lisa Mae Fiedler, manager of the MTA Open Data program and the evening’s first speaker — talk about maps, graphs, and charts.

But their passion was infectious, even for a layperson. A central motif of the night was how data visualizations and more personal modes of storytelling, such as interviews, can inform each other. Fiedler illustrated this point with a particularly timely case study: subway crime.

“My dad is here with his girlfriend,” said Fiedler. “And if anyone here has family from out of town, I think you are very familiar with the conversation — how could you possibly ride transit? It’s so dangerous on the subway, all of this crime is happening!” Anecdotes often seem to support this conclusion, she noted, but the data tell another story. She gestured at a slide showing that in the past few years crimes have hovered around one per million riders, and are trending downwards.

A Shift Within the MTA

The concept of ‘open data’ has roots in the 1940s, when Robert King Merton advocated for the free dissemination of scientific research. The phrase was formalized in 2007, riding a wave of crowdsourced software and calls for a more democratic internet. That ethic steadily seeped into conversations about government, and in 2021 Governor Kathy Hochul signed the MTA Open Data Act, requiring the agency to make its datasets publicly available. “New Yorkers should be informed about the work government does for them every day,” Hochul said at the time, “but we have to make it easier for them to get that information.” The bill also established the role of a data coordinator, a position Fiedler has held since 2022.

The law’s lasting result was a website, intuitive to navigate and accessible by anyone. (“As a public agency, we want our data to be usable by more than just people who are extremely tech savvy,” explained Fiedler.) That portal now boasts over 150 datasets, ranging from hourly ridership at every subway station since 2020, to which stops have Wi-Fi, and even a catalog of the MTA’s permanent art collection dating back to 1980. Eventually, the team hopes to make the site itself open source, meaning that users can contribute code to beautify it.

The MTA, which was established in 1965, provides around 2.6 billion trips per year, encompassing an enormous number of commuters and correspondingly large batches of data. It’s technically an independent entity run by a 17-person board of governors, with members recommended by the governor, New York City’s mayor, and executives from counties in the exurbs. However, its datasets are kept on the state portal (data.ny.gov), rather than the city’s analogous site (opendata.cityofnewyork.us).

When it’s not preparing data, Fiedler’s team does outreach: collaborations with media outlets such as the New York Times, blog posts, and public events like the Transit Museum talk. Another initiative is the MTA Open Data Challenge, a competition that incites citizen data enthusiasts to create projects based on the MTA’s data. The winning entry for the inaugural installment last fall was “Art off the Rails” by Stephanie Dang, an interactive map that allows New Yorkers to explore which stations have art installations.

Sonder, Storytelling, and the City’s ‘Splendor’

The event’s next presenters — Jediah Katz, Marc Zitelli, and Julia Han — were finalists in the competition, who had created an interactive map of their own called “Subway Stories.” Judges voted the project the ‘most creative storytelling,’ and it was boosted by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.

Echoing Fiedler, Katz argued that some stories about New York are too wide-ranging to be told without data. “As tempting as it is to take our own personal experiences and apply them to this city of 8 million people,” he said, “we need to resist the urge to do that.” But a tension exists, Katz conceded, because individual accounts often resonate in a way that statistics can’t. “While data is really powerful for uncovering the truth of what’s happening,” he concluded, “narrative is much more powerful for actually convincing the public.”

Katz and his co-designers envisioned “Subway Stories” (subwaystories.nyc) as a marriage of the two modes. Their map tracks five separate narratives, exploring questions such as why many Chinese-Americans take early-morning trips from South Brooklyn to Manhattan’s Chinatown, and what the heavy evening traffic on the L train says about the city’s current most popular neighborhoods for nightlife. In each case, the trio said, the starting point was some aspect of the MTA’s ridership data, which they then illuminated with an interview.

For the Chinatown story, for example, Anna Lee of Bensonhurst emphasized that many people in her community travel to Chinatown to play volleyball or basketball, work in boba shops, or call on elderly relatives. The conversation revealed a hidden angle to the data: it would be rude, Lee said, to ask older family members to travel all the way to Brooklyn, which is partly why the northbound F train spikes when it does.

The designers also solicited bite-sized anecdotes, along the lines of the NYT’s Metropolitan Diary or the Subway Creatures account on Instagram. “When reading these glimpses into [people’s lives],” Han said, “we couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of sonder,” a term for the “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” She turned to the crowd, and asked if anyone wanted to share their own impromptu subway story. One man raised his hand — he had once spotted a high school acquaintance on the train, and texted them to ask where they were living now. They got out at his stop, and it turned out that their brother had been working in his office building, at his same company, for months: “Small world!”

During the Q&A, audience members were curious about how data collection could respect privacy, how long the project took to make, and (inevitably) the latest on congestion pricing. For Katz, the central lesson was about storytelling. “If there’s anything I want you to take away from tonight,” he said, “it’s that data is so powerful because it’s the only way to measure New York City in its massive and chaotic splendor. But divorced from context, it can just become another sea of meaningless numbers. Only by tying data back to its source, by making it feel relevant to people’s everyday experience, can we ever hope to convince anyone of what we have to say.”

And as the event wound down, there was a shared excitement about new tools that could be crafted using the portal. “I hope that after tonight’s talk you’ll feel inspired, if you haven’t been already, to check out MTA Open Data,” said Fiedler, closing things out. “Play around with one of our datasets, and build something cool.”

What would it have taken a team like Brooklyn to pry the 25-year-old superstar from Dallas?

By Noah Zimmerman

Cuomo Still On Top

Fill the Form for Events, Advertisement or Business Listing