Episodes
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
Raising Underland
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
Sunday Jul 17, 2022
There's another hyper-local gallery in Bay Ridge. Underland Gallery, a brainchild of Hannah Salyer, Ester Kwon and Maxim Elrod, opened softly in October 2021, just before the COVID Omicron wave. Shaded by trees and with a mysterious cat-headed-sea-serpent adorning the gas lamp outside, Underland is a strange chimera of performance space, art gallery, and community center.
Join us as we explore this unique community space occupying an entire floor of gallery and performance space in Bay Ridge's brownstone belt between 5th and 4th Avenue. How do such unique galleries come to be? What does it take to get one running? And what's next for Underland?
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Check out Underland at UnderlandGallery.com
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
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Friday Jun 17, 2022
District Leaders: How To Reform The Party
Friday Jun 17, 2022
Friday Jun 17, 2022
CW // Alcohol Use
The Democratic party has problems that stretch all the way down to its roots. But reformers and activists have been trying to bring democracy to its namesake party. Join us as we chat about how party politics works at the hyper-local scale with local District Leader candidate Mark Hanna, who is running in Assembly District 64 in northern Bay Ridge.
At this scale, it's all about good governance... and Bay Ridge District Leaders are part of how we get there. We'll talk about opening up transparency around judicial screenings so that you can actually understand who those judges on your ballots actually are. Mark will also discuss the challenges involved in running, and how embedded party machines work to maintain patronage and power.
Oh, and we got a little tipsy since it was St. Patricks Day...
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District Leaders have their primary on June 23rd! Be sure to vote!
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Friday May 27, 2022
There Are No Accidents
Friday May 27, 2022
Friday May 27, 2022
On today's episode, we sit down with local author and journalist Jessie Singer about her new book "There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster - Who Profits and Who Pays The Price". Jessie's groundbreaking book has received national attention. It explores how, and why, we seem to dismiss preventable deaths and injuries as "accidental", rather than confront the dangerous conditions that make these supposedly random events inevitable.
We'll explore how corporations and profiteers fail to keep us safe, and we'll find some examples right here in Bay Ridge. From car dealerships and unsafe streets, to the opioid epidemic, to trips and falls, we'll see who profits from our unsafe environment. We'll also explore how we can demand change, nationally and at home in our own neighborhood... and change our own thinking about "accidents" along the way.
Check out the book, which is available now, and listen in as we discover that in Bay Ridge, there are no accidents.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Monday Mar 21, 2022
The Lawmaker of Bay Ridge
Monday Mar 21, 2022
Monday Mar 21, 2022
Today we're checking in with State Senator Andrew Gounardes. Now into his second term (and seeking a third), Senator Gounardes has been part of a revolutionary period in Albany. The State Senate, under Republican control for nearly a century, has transformed into an uncharacteristic flurry of activity. New bills have been passed left and right. Gounardes, an original member of 2019 Blue Wave, has been through it all.
Now, with nearly fifty (as of recording) bills passed, we sit down with our local State Senator to ask how a bill becomes a law in Albany. Where do the ideas come from? What is the process for writing a bill? How does he manage to keep up during long legislative sessions at the State Capitol?
Join us as we learn how our State Senator accomplishes the one job so many other politicians ignore: legislating.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
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Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
The Brooklyn Dragon Racing Club
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
We're back for a new year! To kick things off, we're delving into the history of racing dragons in Bay Ridge... fictionally, at least. Our guest is local author Katharine Dow, author of the short story The Brooklyn Dragon Racing Club, set right here in Bay Ridge.
We'll chat with Katharine about the story and its influences. Katherine will discuss how her recent move to the neighborhood (in the middle of the pandemic!) influenced how she's grown to understand Bay Ridge. Along the way we'll also discuss good hangouts for writers in the neighborhood, and more!
You can grab Katharine's story as part of the anthology "Dragons of a Different Tail 17: Unusual Dragon Tales" from Cabbit Crossing Publishing in both digital and paperback editions!
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
Welcome To (Ember‘s) Bay Ridge
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
We've got a new contributor to the podcast! Meet Ember, perhaps one of the biggest fans of Bay Ridge ever. Together, we're going to update our old podcast episode called "Welcome To Bay Ridge", intended for new (and new-at-heart) residents. Get our recommendations on where to eat! Learn what "The Hole" is! Find out what restaurant has the most attractive servers! Does Bay Ridge have a travelator? And where can you find the local waterfall? Have you seen the parrot man? Tune in and find out the answers as we geek out about Bay Ridge, our nation's capitol.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Give Us Shelter
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Over 120 former Bay Ridge residents are homeless and in city-run shelters at any given time. And how many shelter beds do we have in our neighborhood to help them? Zero. Instead, we send our former neighbors away to other communities to be sheltered and cared for. It is fairly clear that Bay Ridge is not doing its fair share.
In this episode, we're going to explore previous attempts at sheltering our unhoused neighbors in Bay Ridge, going back into the 1980's. Along the way, we'll dissect and tear apart the tactics that NIMBYs use to push the responsibility we have to shelter the homeless onto other neighborhoods.
Most importantly, we'll make the case for creating two new emergency shelters in Bay Ridge. This proposal is entirely our own and isn't a part of any city agency or politician's plan. We hope that, by starting this dialog at a community grassroots level, we can finally prove that the original concept of "Fair Share" in the 1990s was not inherently flawed. We hope that we can prove that neighborhoods can welcome shelters with open arms. If you agree that Bay Ridge can read the way, please sign our petition below, and listen on!
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Sign The Petition: https://www.change.org/rfbr-shelter
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Friday Jun 18, 2021
Reverend Bob
Friday Jun 18, 2021
Friday Jun 18, 2021
For years, spiritual spaces have been key to progressive organizing in Bay Ridge. In today's episode, we say goodbye to Reverend Robert Emerick of the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church. Bob is being forcibly retired after seventeen years in our community. We decided to sit down with Bob and reflect on how he and his congregation have let their spiritual and moral beliefs guide them through controversy, making innovative economic, civic, and educational decisions along the way.
Reverend Bob began his tenure in Bay Ridge during the tense and much-debated decision to sell the famed Green Church building, then the home of the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church. The press and protests faded after the church's demolition and a new school went up on the site. But for Bob and his congregation, the story had just begun and the possibilities were endless.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Saturday May 15, 2021
Public Health vs. The Economy
Saturday May 15, 2021
Saturday May 15, 2021
For the past year, Bay Ridge has struggled with the pandemic. We've lost loved ones, and there has been grief both public and private. But early in 2020, politicians began to push their own narratives. At a moment when we all should have been talking about staying safe and healthy, conservative politicians fought back against masking, lockdowns, and social distancing. The story they pushed was tempting to many: they used peoples fears about the economy to override science and safety.
On today's episode, Ed Yoo returns to the show. Ed is the Director of Strategic Research at the NY State Nurses Union, but today he's speaking to us as a local Bay Ridge resident. We last spoke to Ed in early 2020 about a proposed Emergency Room that was in development for the old Victory Memorial hospital site. A year later, so much has changed. Ed will help us analyze how Bay Ridge responded to COVID. We explore how early COVID data was hidden or flawed, and lay into both Democratic and Republican politicians who used fearmongering about the economy to undermine our pandemic response. Along the way we uncover some disturbing data that is yet to be revealed about our local hospital system, and make some armchair predictions on what a true post-COVID economy might look like for our local stores and businesses.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!
Monday Apr 05, 2021
Interview with Brittany Ramos DeBarros
Monday Apr 05, 2021
Monday Apr 05, 2021
Join us as we sit down with NY11 candidate Brittany Ramos DeBarros. We'll explore the dangers of partisanship and how military contractors and war profiteering have left troops tokenized, demoralized, and without basic services. To counter these forces, we'll explore how our district can engage with a Just Transition framework and invest in demilitarizing our civic systems. By removing our reliance on militarism and nationalism, we can build a leaner government that maximizes health and sustainability.
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Check out the show notes for background info and bonus material
Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more news and analysis!