Since this newsletter runs a little long, we’ll start with the news:

• A Bushwick deli caught on fire and damaged the apartments above, and the building is owned by one of New York City’s worst slumlords.

• Openings:

  • Contributor Casey Wetherbee spoke to Lee Knoeppel, the owner of Extra Sauce (1495 DeKalb Ave.), a new smashburger spot in Bushwick.

  • XTC, a venue and bar, is opening in the former Bushwick Triangle (1277 Flushing Ave.).

  • In Ridgewood, an Italian restaurant is taking over the space once occupied by Velma (5-84 Seneca Ave.).

• Gunther’s (4-87 Seneca Ave.) is closing and we spoke to owner Sarah Khoshaba about her plans upstate.

• In the arts:

  • Contributor Alex Wexelman covered Kim Gordon’s solo art exhibition, which just recently closed at Amant (306 Maujer St.), a gallery in East Williamsburg.

  • Honor Levy and the Dime Square gang hosted a reading at Ridgewood’s Amma (68-64 Forest Ave.)

  • An anti-tech techno night in East Williamsburg.

  • Local theater company Adult Film ran a production of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, and it was reviewed by the New York Times—and Grime Square.

• And Brian Jones Kraft caught us up on more local news and more drama at Pacha (140 Stewart Ave.)

Anyway, it’s essential to restart with a honkey’s close listening of 50 Cent’s “Window Shopper” single from 2005. In it, 50 does what any 30-year-old did back then: talk shit and flex with his broads, cars, and clout. He speaks to an unnamed second person (probably Ja Rule, as it always went): “You’s a window shopper / In the dealership, tryin’ to get a test drive… you’s a window shopper / Mad as fuck when you see me ride by.” Thinking of the general enemy, he sees only himself.

The production features warm guitars and shimmering piano samples that recall “21 Questions” from his seminal 2003 debut, where he expresses fear of abandonment (“If I got locked up and sentenced to a quarter century / Could I count on you to be there to support me mentally?”) and vulnerability (“I love you like a fat kid love cake / You know my style I say anything to make you smile”).

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The warmth of the production—neither the post-funereal “Many Men (Wish Death)” nor the pestering synth of “Wanksta”—briefly recasts the second person as a woman who’s window-shopping the speaker. When one returns from the romantic music and back to the lyrics (50’s “on the grind,” displaying “filthy” wealth to enemies that he catches “screw facin’” him), it recontextualizes the speaker as calling out to another DL man who he hopes is yearning for a hardened sugar daddy named Curtis.

That room for homoerotic interpretation does not make sense in 50 Cent’s discography. He was never exactly known for queering the genre. The effect heard in “Window Shopper” positions his lyrics as an idea out of place, overlaid onto a sonic plane where it doesn’t fit.

Brazilian critic Roberto Schwarz quotes author Machado de Assis, who writes, “A foreign impetus determines the direction of movement;” Schwarz adds, “What is the meaning of this passing over of the internal impulse?” 50 denies his heated rivalry, and I can’t look away from it.

Schwarz, in Misplaced Ideas, wrote on 19th and 20th century impulses in Brazil to import literary trends from American and Europe that did not comport with their country’s cultural and material histories. It illustrated a lack of conviction among that time and place’s elite, and I saw that same lack of conviction a few weeks ago when I passed the new fence at Bar Cornelia (523 Evergreen Ave.), another example of Bushwick’s own “corresponding cultural separation of the poor,” the same quality seen in the horizontal slatting of fences on newbuilds and the mirror facades of condos that only reflect, in any real definition, our own passing silhouettes. The fence is cheap and plastic, with a few holes that imply a slapdash effort, a hasty retreat to another world where every night is Cheers.

Behind barriers, newer residents seek pocket dimensions: in-unit luxury, or the test-grouped authenticity of a dive bar that opened in 2021. Bar Cornelia is only a symptom of a greater problem in Bushwick: the perpetual need to burrow deep and away from the outside world, to embrace being an albino animal in captivity. Inside, the shuffleboard is now absent: the patrons never needed it. They only needed somewhere to hide. The last time I went, the bartender described it as a “privacy barrier.”

Kijitora (2-79 St Nicholas Ave.), Ridgewood’s newest cafe which opened in July, presents itself as a similar pocket dimension: post-Scandinavian polished laminate, kawaii tchotchkes, and uncomfortable chairs that when I was there were occupied nonetheless by two people who freelanced elegantly and beautifully. I can’t comment on their coffee, since I’d already had too much that day, but the yuzu-ginger fizz was lovely.

There is nothing wrong with Kijitora in and of itself. I understand its appeal to be a respite from the chaos of nearby Myrtle-Wyckoff—its loud trains, open street market, the underside of Myrtle rendered perpetually gloomy by overhead sheet metal. One enters Kijitora to briefly occupy an ornate background, the same as the productions 50 Cent lived within. It is a preassembled, imported experience: as with the construction at retirement home Linden Grove (223 Linden St.), the materials have been imported: the new development was made from modular pieces preassembled in Quebec by Groupe RCM1. And it’s all designed for people who could never keep up or reconcile with where they signed a lease.

Retail exists in context, and Kijitora appears as an idea out of place on its stretch of St. Nicholas, occupied mostly by unpretentious delis and apartments. It’s the further encroachment of Williamsburg, reflecting “the imitative nature of our cultural life” here: Kijitora opened its first location off Driggs in 2022 before expanding into East Williamsburg (309 Graham Ave.), as reported by Greenpointers. Kijitora then took a detour to the East Village (534 14th St.), per EV Grieve, before expanding into a part of Queens that’s for all intents and purposes Brooklyn.

Schwarz writes that “countries which live in the humiliation of having to imitate are more willing than the metropolitan to give up the illusion of an original source, even though the theory originates there and not here.” Bushwick and Ridgewood, in the urban imaginary, are the country: a landing ground for condos initially defined in Williamsburg, for music better implemented in Berlin, a place for Queens’ uppity brownstoners whose bit was better executed long ago in Brooklyn Heights.

The metropole is Williamsburg, our original source, or some past that we imagine we might be more comfortable and accepted in. As with Europe and America to an earlier Brazil, the referent is rotten and washed. Because we’ve decided that the heritage Bushwick world—Dominican cafeterias, Ecuadorian stalls, pizza that isn’t an artistic statement—is off limits, transplants hide away in the most gauche simulations of the places they’d rather be.

In Brooklyn Rail, Max Moorhead writes, “The inspiration for [Rolo’s owner Kermit] Westergaard’s properties can be seen in historic establishments such as Rudy’s Bakery and Cafe,” a nearly century-old bakery off Seneca for which “Rolo’s—and other businesses selected by Westergaard—are only simulations of Rudy’s and other authentic restaurants in the neighborhood. If real estate prices continue to rise, the simulation may be all that is left.”

Moorhead, in rightfully critiquing change in Ridgewood, understates how difficult it is to rip on Westergaard when his competition presents consistently alien attitudes. Westergaard’s ventures—among them Hellbender (68-22 Forest Ave.), Cassette, and Forêt Wines (the latter two at 68-38 Forest Ave.)—rhyme with the historical character of the neighborhood in such a way as to appear organic. They are popular because they are tasteful.

Like Rolo’s, Field Study2 (904 Grand St.) is an example of a business that exists in conversation with the neighborhood outside: its brutal aesthetic references the active industry around the corner, while the cars inside nod down the block to the autoshop that spills out onto the street. It is incredibly pretentious (nonderogatory) and successful in doing so: they do not offer takeout cups. The experience is mandatory, with reservations required, and it’ll cost at least $14.

None of the above appear nakedly simulated in the way of Kijitora, fortress condo The Rheingold (10 Montieth St.), or the curtained Tabaré (1006 Flushing Ave.). They exist as compliments to someone’s reading of the landscape, not as escapes from it. Gentrification or not, they appear natural. Kijitora exists in a separate world; an alien, it signals to its home planet, farther west, the broadcast skipping all of Ridgewood and Bushwick.

This isn’t to say that local aesthetics are enviable. Bushwick and East Williamsburg function as one post-industrial canvas for a vomit of graffiti and tacky murals, while Ridgewood is all too fertile ground for South Brooklyn brownstoners. But, places that blend in, that feel at home here, acknowledge those local looks. That is what happened organically, absent of people who make a job of taste and the overwhelming capital that follows them.

The most material dream of Brooklyn is to consume in a memorable way, to eat and drink and do laundry in a place that’s a part of its surroundings. Our most common aesthetics—gated dive bar, veiled restaurant, Japanese escape—fail to understand that.

Cornelia and Kijitora allow one to window shop foreign experiences of place and time. Cornelia gestures toward a past none of us experienced. Kijitora is only predicting what the world outside of it will become. What appears tacky now is usually just early.

By looking anywhere but around, we miss the small and completely undeniable syncretism that I recently experienced on Menahan. After leaving Kijitora, I passed by a short Ecuadorian man. He almost bumped into me, so I said, “Permiso,” and he said, “Sorry,” to which I replied, “Todo bien.” Our languages mixed, we briefly intersected, having shared a space that neither of us sought to escape.

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A mysterious homeless man was pinned by cops yesterday for the June fire that took down the old South Bushwick Reformed Church (855 Bushwick Ave.), built in the Greek Revival style and largely unchanged since 1853. Last month, we talked to Monika Judkins, the church’s music director, and daughter-in-law of its pastor, who told us that folks running the church were concerned that “something is not right” about the fire that took down the church.

“Video surveillance from a camera on Bushwick Avenue,” per the criminal complaint, linked the appearance of the alleged arsonist with John Jones. The man allegedly made “several unsuccessful attempts to enter the church” shortly before it caught on fire. Footage from a nearby bodega showed a similar man buying a lighter. He then returned to the church, which caught on fire shortly after.

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Federal prosecutors did not initially suggest a motive in the complaint, or an associated press release.

An off-duty cop arrested Jones, 26, after catching him “shoplifting a turkey sandwich and donuts from a Midtown CVS,” per the New York Post. The Daily News added “a Coca-Cola and ice cream” to Jones’ late-night meal, but removed the donuts. Per these reports, Jones’ only other alleged run-in with the law had been smashing a TV at Williamsburg’s DOC Wine Bar in June.

Before the church burned down, developers were closely watching the spot, and it had been the subject of transplant poetry. The church has a GoFundMe to help in rebuilding their rectory, which the Department of Buildings paused demolition on after the Fire Department began investigating the fire as arson.

And in other news:

• Bushwick Daily now publishes plagiarized AI slop. Included in the story are comments from editors at Greenpointers and City & State.

  • And if someone could, tell Bushwick Daily’s publisher Alec Meeker we said hiii 👋 (he blocked us 😭).

• A slate of openings coming to Bushwick:

  • By the end of the year, Negative Space Cinema, a horror-focused cinema, should be opening in the former location of Umbra (785 Hart St.).

  • Comedy club Bibblebash (1139 Jefferson Ave. No. 1) opened in a local’s basement, and Brian Jones Kraft was on the scene.

  • Former Greenpoint metal venue St. Vitus is coming to Bushwick, replacing the unmade Brooklyn Made (428 Troutman St.), and not everyone in the community is thrilled about it. Nicole Rosenthal reports on troubles with Community Board 4 and the limits of Bushwick’s nightlife infrastructure.

  • Chicago-based vinyl record store Signal Records is transplanting to Bushwick, filling the storefront left vacant by the closure of PaperboyPrince’s Love Gallery (1254 Myrtle Ave.).

• Grime Square has an advice column now! Read the Mayor of Crashout City respond to locals’ most burning desires.

  • And submit (anonymously!) to the advice column here.

Tips, questions, complaints: grimesquare@gmail.com

Everyone’s mourning the closure of L’imprimerie (1524 Myrtle Ave.), and you should too. The world doesn’t have enough $16 miche sourdough loaves.

Former owner Gus Reckel told me of the closure: “While he [current owner David Mena] closed after the health inspection and this may be a factor, I think this is mostly [coincidental] and there were other fundamental issues on how the business was operated.”

One former employee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from future employers, described a chaotic workplace, alleged missing pay, and confirmed citations from the Department of Health and Safety. They described a business—which sold croissants for $6—that seemed to have lost direction. A former manager corroborated their claims, saying that the bakery, which had close to 15 employees, appeared “headless.”

“I did my trial there, [and] onboarding was so bad,” the former employee said. “No one really knew what was happening.” The former manager—with 20 years of hospitality experience—agreed. “It was kind of rough, to say the least,” they said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a lot of work.’”

Workplace conditions—which included a jambon beurre (aka a ham sandwich) for $16—reflected the difficulties: “The week I did my trial there the AC broke, I’m on new SSRIs and almost passed out several times,” said the former employee. “Also, on day three, I found a decapitated mouse from one of the traps they set.”

“If it’s not constantly maintained, everything starts to break down,” said the former manager. “When I got there, they hadn’t had a GM [general manager] for two months.”

And the difficulties were universal. Per the former employee: “Dave said he was struggling, but didn’t know it was at this grand of a scale. They still owe me… And it’s been hard to reach them to drop off the keys.” They later added: “And now the dodged texts. It’s only like $150 bucks but [it] would’ve been nice.” An egg sandwich was $15.

“This is my job, and I’m just going to try and fix it the best I can,” the manager remembered telling themselves. “I have a staff and I have to save face for them… Until the bitter end, I was trying to do my job.”

The former employee also confirmed that L’imprimerie had been refashioned into a launchpad for Mena’s Cacovu brand: “He was pushing the cacao drink,” they said, “and [Mena] bought the bakery for that being one of the biggest reasons.”

On a final phone call between the former employee and Mena, the former said the latter admitted to “struggling” and being in need of “fresh ideas.” Work is constantly in draft phase, per Mena in his Dark & Pure blog: “This will be an experiment until my crack marketing team and I land on the words that intrigue but do not confuse the intended audience.” The former manager said that Mena “came in[to the bakery] maybe once a week for maybe 15-20 minutes.”

“I want to close everything,” the manager recalled Mena saying. They added: “And once you close everything, it’s hard to get everything back going again. It’s a fickle business.”

Cacovu might still be out there somewhere, on the road to upstate farmers markets. Products live on, but retail square footage is too expensive to make a home of it.

We idealize storefronts and the implicit physical routine, their illusion of community. Another former employee, who worked under former owner Gus Reckel in the summer of 2023, painted a past history that wasn’t all nostalgia. “The help he [Reckel] found seemed wildly talented, but the owner was directly out of culinary school… and for me his lack of experience showed.” Despite that, Reckel landed on Food & Wine’s best bakeries list in 2020.

“I remember that the bakery was almost totally covered in a film of white,” they added. “Everything was covered in flour basically always. It was impossible to even begin to keep everything clean.” L’imprimerie always contained small chaoses.

Mena still could not be reached for comment as of publication.

L’imprimerie: 2015-2026 (cold brew: $7; $6 baguette sold separately).

And since we’re still here, stick around for the rest of the news:

• Bushwick Community Darkroom founder Lucia Rollow speaks on the darkroom’s history and closure.

• Vivian Girls returned to Brooklyn, and Andrew Karpan caught their show at Elsewhere.

• Brooklyn Mag columnist Arielle Lana LeJarde wrote about ethical nightclubbing, and endorsed Ridgewood’s own Trans-Pecos.

• We got to the bottom of how Amma became Ridgewood’s most happening bar.

• The South Bushwick Reformed Church secured a pause on demolition just as the Fire Department announced arson as a possible cause of the June fire.

• And a roundup of infrastructure and building permit announcements.

Neighborhood longtimers might remember that it’s been well over a year since Bushwick Public House (1288 Myrtle Ave.) poured its last maté on Myrtle Avenue.

By then, Hooman Enayatian’s cafe was about a decade old and functioned, as he told News 12, as a place that was “perfectly Bushwick: the chairs don’t match, the walls don’t match, the stickers don’t match, and yet it somehow all matches.”

It was a romantic image, though the bar had problems: some of its former employees had filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against Enayatian, “asserting tip theft and minimum wage claims,” per filings. The dispute persisted in a Brooklyn federal courthouse until last month, when federal judge Brian Cogan suggested of the former employees, long since deserted by their lawyers, that “it seems that they might be trying to get blood (damages) out of a stone (a failed and shut down business).”

Publicly, Enayatian pinned the closure on the building’s landlord, who Enayatian said was now demanding over $8,000 a month for a renewed lease, triple the rates Enayatian had been paying.

“The term starving artist, it’s not made up, and when you are trying to run a business with artists, it cannot be done when rent is tripled,” Enayatian told News 12. “This is not midtown, 57th Street and Lexington[:] this is Bushwick.”

The address has sat empty since, its doors still closed, the welcoming “Bushwick Public House” signage still dangling over Central Avenue. When it opened in 2015, it branded itself as an “Australian-style cafe,” catering to the new wave of transplants from down under flooding the area in the early 2010s. The espresso was Vittoria, a Sydney brand, and, on the walls, they had painted murals of Adam Yauch and Basquiat, informing older transplants they were welcome here too.

And for a decade, they were. A blogger at JP Morgan’s Infatuation said the cafe was “the closest thing Bushwick has to a town hall.” If outsiders didn’t quite understand the appeal (“It’s not particularly special, but it’s where a lot of people in the neighborhood congregate”), neither did I, though I had been there frequently, always to meet others who always seemed familiar with the wandering groups who lived at the outdoor tables. Bands I had never heard of regularly played in the basement. Was its collective unimportance to literally anyone else what made the neighborhood feel beautiful?

But it could be that there's just no room in modern Bushwick for an Australian cafe and its struggling artists. Maybe there will be no room for the rest of us, either.

Here’re some more local shutdowns we’ve been covering in the area:

• L’imprimerie, a French bakery on Myrtle, might be gone for good, too. We talked to the spot’s founder Gus Reckel about the business’ end, less than two years after being sold to a cacao businessman named David Mena.

• Bushwick Abbey and the affiliated Iglesia de la Santa Cruz congregation on St. Nicholas Avenue plan to shut their doors too, and they’re kicking out Mayday Space, which rented parts of the church for over a decade. We talked to members of the congregation about the sale.

  • Reporting from Anna Bradley-Smith and Cate Corcoran at Brownstoner confirms the city is moving ahead with demolition, though the church still has time to figure out a miracle.

• Another notable departure in recent weeks was the old South Bushwick Reformed Church, which has been on Bushwick Avenue since 1853. We’ve been covering the fire that took the church down, and recently talked to the pastor’s sister-in-law, also the church’s music and worship director, about why she has suspicions about the fire.

And other major happenings:

• Despite the above losses, Joe & John’s is coming to Fresh Pond, and they spoke to Grime Square about their history and changes in Ridgewood.

• Ridgewood State Assemblymember Claire Valdez clinched the Democratic primary in New York’s 7th congressional district, and we reported on her victory from Antonio Reynoso’s watch party at Xanadu.

  • And Brian Jones Kraft’s rounded up citywide election coverage.

• Pride weekend came to both Bushwick and Ridgewood.

• The leader of the Ridgewood Food Coop, an outgrowth of the departed Bushwick Food Coop, talked to Tomey about getting scammed out of $3,000 by a check thief.

• A concrete supplier filed permits to store combustible materials and resume manufacturing across the street from Pacha.

Primary Elections are here. Read Michael Lange’s breakdown of the 7th Congressional District here before you go out to vote tomorrow (if only to collect some limited edition stickers). Find your polling site here. Get it done.

Here’s a roundup of our recent coverage:

• The historic South Bushwick Reformed Church (855 Bushwick Ave.) burned down, and Andrew Karpan was on the scene to interview the onlookers.

• In openings news:

  • Jaywalker (573 Johnson Ave.) arrives in East Williamsburg, across Flushing from the Jefferson L:

  • A ramen shop is coming to the former site of Hartbreakers (313 Knickerbocker Ave.). First, it was a mystery, then a local source confirmed that Grime Square can in fact confirm the obvious.

  • A Chipotle is coming to Ridgewood (60-18 Metropolitan Ave.), and maybe it’s not quite the gentrification force it used to be.

• Myrtle-Broadway Summer started with a wet t-shirt contest at Jade (4 Stuyvesant Ave.)

• And at Grime Square’s “You Can’t Enjoy Anything At All” desk, Ridgewood’s Evil Twin Brewing (16-16 George St.) and East Williamsburg’s Grimm Artisanal Ales (990 Metropolitan Ave.) both had their craft offerings marketed at a beer festival in Tel Aviv, and little to say about how the Commie Corridor they do business in might feel about that.

• In Knicks-adjacent news:

  • During their penultimate struggle, YHWH Nailgun played over New York’s game four loss at Gottscheer Hall.

  • And then the Knicks won and had a crossover celebration at the Puerto Rican Day Parade on Knickerbocker, which featured Mamdani, Jose Alvarado, and every local politician.

• In the local arts world:

  • Angel Archives’ Psychosphere exhibit at Ridgewood’s Lorimoto Gallery (16-23 Hancock St.) explored collective conditions.

  • And Alex Aguirre’s SUB, shown at ErF Gallery (1 Ingraham St.), used screwball comedy to indict today’s state of work.

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About Your Local Election: or, A Grime Square Endorsement

Vote for the farthest left person you can find. The DSA appears to express empathy in action for the downtrodden many in this country. Be it Assembly Member Claire Valdez running for Congress, or Christian Celeste Tate fighting against Erik Dilan in AD 54. Be it Eon Huntley in Bed-Stuy (supported by Councilman Chi Ossé and State Senator Jabari Brisport). Or, over in Ridgewood, where Samantha Kattan, David Orkin, and Aber Kawas are fighting for three State Assembly seats that each include a part of Ridgewood. All of their victories would give them precious legislative power, and they could be more easily held to account than entrenched progressives and longtime Democrats.

They deserve your vote more than Erik Dilan, whose goons intimidate voters at polling stations. They deserve your vote more than Jenifer Rajkumar, who allegedly can’t even get on the ballot without committing a crime, nor express enough loyalty to maintain a simple friendship with Coolest Guy Ever Eric Adams.

And Valdez deserves your vote more than Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a man who claims that his opponent “only wants rich people to vote” as he takes money from anyone and everyone. In any other era, he’d be the best choice in the room—and he deserves kudos for handling Crackheard Barney with grace—but the world’s left him behind, and he’s visibly aggrieved over it.

Politicians like Claire Valdez might not save us from national decline (which anyone of conscience won’t be mourning), but standard “progressives” no longer have a home on the current political terrain. In all of their performative showmanship, Democrats have done nothing but show their asses and abet multifold cruelty on the American people, people in America, and the people of the world. They are a captured opposition, divorced from reality; in action, they’re the same as any conservative.

At minimum, your nearest DSA candidate provides a vision of an offramp from our absurd, circular politics. If they win, but fail to uphold their platform, then you end up in the same situation standard Democrats provide today, but at least you tried. At least you had enough hope to spare.

Reynoso’s Losing His Edge

What couldn’t be included in the above playlist is (nonexistant) audio of Antonio Reynoso’s recent karaoke set, presumably at Chino Grande (253 Grand St.), possibly on the night of June 18th. See below for the transcript Grime Square dug up:

Yeah, I’m losing my edge. I’m losing my edge. The transplants are coming up from behind.

I’m losing my edge to the kids from Los Angeles and from Lubbock. But I was there.

I’ve been there since 1983. I was there at the first Johnny Ventura show in Bushwick. I’m losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps I hear when they get on the L. I’m losing my edge to the Internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good indie group from 2008 to 2013.

I’m losing my edge. To all the kids at Mood Ring and Carmelo’s. I’m losing my edge to the downwardly mobile Brooklynites in gigantic pants and borrowed nostalgia for the too-remembered 2000s. I’m losing my edge, but I was there. I was there. I can hear their footsteps every night on the L.

I was there in 2008 on the Los Sures doorsteps across Williamsburg. I was working on New Kings with much patience. I was there when Ed Droste started up his first band. I told him, “Don’t do it that way. You’ll never get a month-to-month lease in Williamsburg.”

I was there. I was the first guy playing bachata to the Boricua kids. I played it at CSC. Everybody thought I was crazy. We all know. I was there.

I’ve never been wrong. I used to play music way too high. I had everything before anyone. I was there in the WSKQ booth with Jinx Paul. I was there in Williamsburg during the great Post-Strokes Takeover. I woke up on a boat in the Sea of Galilee with Richie Torres in 2015. But I’m losing my edge to younger-looking people with commie ideas and more email marketing experience. And they’re actually really, really nice.

I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody. Every great song by Fantasy of a Broken Heart. All the underground hits. All the Water From Your Eyes tracks. I heard you have a cassette of every Tatsuro Yamashita cut on Thai import. I heard that you have streamed every seminal YHWH Nailgun hit—2022, 2025, 2026. I heard that you have a CD compilation of every good 2003 cut and another box set from 2005.

I hear you’re buying a megaphone and posters and are throwing your corporate donor list out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a socialist movement. I hear that you and your polycule have quit your mutual aid group and joined a run club. I hear that you and your polycule have quit your run club and joined a mutual aid group. I hear everybody that you know has more BFAs than everybody that I know.

But have you seen my Wrapped? Rafaelito Román, Ilegales, Anthony Santos, Tatico Henríquez, Sech, Raulín Rosendo, Fernando Villalona, Wilfrido Vargas, ¡Estrellita, Dónde Estás! Luis Vargas, Jhay Cortez, Rafael Solano, Alex Bueno, Johnny Pacheco, Raulin Rodriguez, Yoskar Sarante, Bad Buuuuuuunny, Michel Camilo, Luny Tunes, Joe Veras, Lapiz Conciente, El Alfa, Fefita La Grande, Alexis y Fido (”Me rompiste el corazón!”), Zacarías Ferreira, Aventura, Xtreme. Grupo! Agua-! -kate! Toño Rosario, Milly Quesada, Francisco Ulloa, Trio Reynoso and El Ciego de Nagua, Frank Reyes, Yoskar Sarante. Los Sónicos, Los Sónicos, Los Sónicos, Los Sónicos.

[Valdez, whispering: “You don’t know what you really want. You don’t know what you really want. You don’t know what you really want…”]

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I’d usually say that, since NYC is the last real place in America and the world’s greatest exporter of culture, rooting for the Knicks is inherently fascist. That shitty cities deserve good sports: Ja with his head out of his ass and “Give Pittsburgh anything,” says Pittsburgh native Andrew Karpan (who you can’t ever call a transplant because his parents briefly lived in Brighton Beach after moving from Київ). That bandwagoning is unbecoming of anyone—and sure, it is, but I want a goddamn parade.

I need debauchery in the streets and a reason to go into The City: to see Mamdani hoisted onto the shoulders of the fans below, standing tall and in all the right postures, convinced there’s a new joy to wake up to. So go out and watch game four at Herbert Von King Park, Danger Danger, Gottscheer Hall, or anywhere that’ll have you.

And before you head out, here’s a rundown of what Grime Square has covered in the last two weeks:

• Whole Foods is coming to the Jefferson L (1224 Flushing Ave.). Everyone’s handling it really well.

• House of Nancy (219 Central Ave.) is open off the Central M. House of Nancy confirmed that they’ve secured a permanent liquor license, despite previous woes.

• Bed-Stuy’s Frog allegedly succeeds in pouring natural wine and allegedly struggles with things like paperwork, permitting, and basic food handling.

• Sex and the City-Themed Carrie’s Corner (59-02 Catalpa Ave.) opened in Ridgewood, and Andrew Karpan reported on its opening day.

• A review of local Ridgewood1 poet Bernard Cohen’s debut collection (link to book in article)

• Explore the beef between East Williamsburg Mother’s and Mommy’s and why there’s not a single business around with a normal name anymore.

• And watch local theater!

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90s hip-hop staple Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were supposed to headline the Bushwick Collective’s annual Block Party, but were removed from the show after Bushwick Collective claimed that Bone Thugs’s management doublebooked them. Grime Square has verified that Bizzy and Krayzie Bones, among others, abandoned Bushwick for Alaska’s Anchorage Tacos and Tequila Fest (where we’ll be missing out on Mark McGrath, too).

In their place, noted Def Jam Vendetta character N.O.R.E. is set to headline. N.O.R.E., who valiantly got his ass beat in “Grimeyville” here (calm down, it’s a video game), might finish off the audience with whatever “The Percolator” (his finishing move) is. Happening May 30th at Troutman and Scott, and it’s free!

Anyway, here’s a roundup of what we’ve been covering:

• Mayor Mamdani came to Bushwick to campaign for Claire Valdez in the NY-07 congressional primary.

• Celebrity chef Caroline Schiff announced her Monday Diner concept, which will open at Myrtle and Wyckoff in the space that used to be Marie’s.

• Lady Moo Moo opened at Irving Square Park, cleansing a place cursed by its last tenants.

• Ocean Hill vegan spot Toad Style closed after being caught in the lawfare crossfire of a decadelong battle in court between their landlord and their neighbor’s landlord.

• Grime Square went inter-Brooklyn to break the news on the Park Slope Food Coop’s hiring of “worker-owned” security.

  • Also south of North Brooklyn, the sequel to Valentine’s Day Hole Contest at Rash.

• Also on the politics front, indie musicians led a fundraiser for Samantha Kattan in State Assembly District 37.

• And a guide to local indie cinemas and coverage of an environmental art opening.

As of the first week of May, it’s back on the market for rent.

Crime and grime can’t even afford rent in Bushwick’s collective head:

• Lady Moo Moo Too (1210 Halsey St.), which opened alongside Irving Square Park on May 8th (More on that shortly—Grime Square is ALWAYS on the scene) after the owners of General Irving fled the neighborhood following a successful boycott surrounding their involvement in the Israeli military.

• Just as They Say That (615 Wilson Ave.) turned a smoke shop into a buzzy new restaurant, the cocaine den FKA Punta Cana might become another entrepreneur’s progress.

Over in East Williamsburg, permits were filed for 73 Kingsland Avenue off the Graham L to convert a small lot into four stories of residential units, while a new development might sprout up from an empty lot near the Hewes J in South Williamsburg.

Everything moves toward alignment with the great dream of landlords and tastemakers (at nighttime, they always think of morning): all of North Brooklyn will one day be a small plates restaurant in the sky.

+ here’s what we’ve been writing about lately:

• Book Club Bar opened right off the Jefferson L. Andrew Karpan reported on the fedora situation.

• Photos and reviews of sets from the second-ever C2C Festival at Knockdown Center. Real ones know we also covered the first one last year.

• In more Knockdown news, the club is also on the receiving end of a lawsuit from the mother of a man who died after leaving the club in 2024.

• A rally led by the local DSA slate of candidates for Congress and State Assembly meeting in Starr Bar in response to the ICE kidnapping of Chidozie Wilson Okeke.

P.S. Get your tickets to catch Suz Murray as KACHONK at Eris (167 Graham Ave.), off the Montrose L and Lorimer J, next Saturday (May 23rd)! Editor Aaron Tomey recommends: “I never knew a clown could make me feel so much that wasn’t terror.”

Speaking of denim, we also swung by the Queens Honky Tonk that Charles Watlington and Jonny Nichols throw at Gottscheer Hall. We didn’t see many nudie suits, but pearl buttons abound.

We’ve also been checking out the health citations for a number of beloved Ridgewood spots, from Aunt Ginny’s to Bonus Room, as well as the new Salvo’s. And better than that is the argument Aaron Tomey makes for an exploration of the “cultural intersection of restaurants, vermin, and guys with clipboards.” Or, as one email marketer tells him: “I assume every restaurant establishment has rats.” (we were talking about mice). Parts of the community had a totally normal response.

In lighter, more western (no, not that kind) territories, Dylan Teggart gave North Brooklyn’s first straight answer as to whatever the hell East Williamsburg is. We even made you a map too.

On the edges of Williamsburg, we wound up at PAGEANT, a dance studio where the largely naked Crackhead Barney debuted a new performance piece where she said and did (NSFW) so many censorable things, which is why everyone loves her. There’s so much to love if we just stay busy.

Some more recent headlines:

• “The performance offers no solutions but for us to hug. This is our common politic: well meaning, completely defenseless.” – Aaron Tomey has thoughts about a collection of poetry, monologues and nondenominational prayers he caught at Makers’ Space in Williamsburg.

• “You get me here on a Sunday. I’m going to dress comfortably,” current Brooklyn Boro Prez Antonio Reynoso told us when we caught him at a debate over the weekend to take Nydia Velázquez’s seat in Congress. Ridgewood columnist de jure Andrew Karpan has got thoughts about that too.

• Do you remember the history of Bushwick’s brewing industry? That’s a Bushwick that’s no longer around, but thankfully Brendan Davey does…