“Main Street Matters”: Cast Your Vote For Red Hook

Would you like to help Red Hook get some much needed help after all the problems the neighborhood faced after Hurricane Sandy?  It only takes a minute and a few clicks on your computer.
Matthew of Mazzone Hardware has made us aware of a new program by Benjamin Moore entitled "Neighborhood Matters" that allows you to choose a main street to revitalize.
He has provided the information below:

Benjamin Moore Paints has just announced the launching of “Main Street Matters”, an all-expense-paid program provided FREE to spruce up rows of properties located in twenty communities throughout North America. 

When Benjamin Moore announced this program, the Mazzone family - serving the hardware and paint needs of Carroll Gardens and the surrounding communities since 1950 - immediately launched its own campaign to include Red Hood on the list of selected communities being considered for this great opportunity. 

What’s needed now is for people to go online and vote for Red Hook. The twenty communities that will be chosen as the most in need of revitalization will be based solely on the amount of votes received. 

Considering what the Red Hook community has suffered in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, this could be one more way we can all come to the aid of our neighbors in need. Just look at what Benjamin Moore is willing to do. 

Benjamin Moore will not only provide the paint and supplies needed for facades, railings, and other exterior building trims, but will also provide color experts to consult on the best choices to enhance the architectural style, regional influences and historic references in each community. And in addition, this program will put local professional painters to work – again, all paid for by Benjamin Moore. 

Please, click on this link and vote. Thank you.http://www.paintwhatmatters.com

The map of North America immediately comes up.Locate and click on NY, next click on Red Hook, and finally click on Vote Now. ALL DONE! 

Voting ends at midnight June 30th.You can cast a vote once every 24 hours(You can only vote once every 24 hours when usingthe same email address and/or same computer.)

You can find all the pertinent information here.

Let's make this happen for Red Hook, friends.  Don't forget to spread the news and encourage others to vote as well.

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Are You Having Home Or Business Insurance Problems Post-Sandy? If Yes, Contact State Senator Montgomery's Office As Soon As Possible

Are you having difficulties collecting a Sandy-related claim related to your home or business in the area? Has your insurer recently sent you a cancellation or no-renewal letter?
Do you have any other issues related to your home or business insurance?
If the answer is yes, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, whose district encompasses flood prone Red Hook and Gowanus, would like to hear from you as soon as possible.
Please email her office at montgome@nysenate.gov.  Please write SD25 Insurance Study in the subject line

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Important Info Every Red Hook And Gowanus Building Owner Needs To Hear: What FEMA's New Flood Maps Mean For Building Owners In Zone A

Canal at Carroll Street during Sandy (photo credit: Margaret Maugenest)

FEMA Advisory Base Flood Elevations for Gowanus And Red Hook

After Hurricane Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has updated its 1983 Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM) of the New York area to reflect the full extend of the water's reach during the October 2012 storm. These new updated maps are called "Advisory Base Flood Elevations (ABFE)" and show the significant expansion of the flood plains. Many areas that were previously not in Advisory Zone A have now been included.

Just recently, FEMA has completed and added the ABFE section specifically pertaining to Gowanus and Red Hook. (You can access the section here)

New York's ABFEs are advisory now, but eventually, the information will be used to update the official FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map. When the agency does include it in the next 1-2 years, insurance premiums in flood prone areas will go up significantly.

According to FEMA, if your property is in the redefined Zone A, it should be raised by 3 feet above the Base Flood elevation. Otherwise, your insurance premiums will go up. "Elevating" can be accomplished by rebuilding on stilts or, by sacrificing the cellar/basement of an existing home.
To make up for the space, New York City will relax zoning requirements and allow property owners to build additional space on their building.

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery would like to make her Red Hook, Gowanus, and Sunset Park constituents aware of all this new information and of all the new regulations. Her office just published a guide, part of which you can see below. You can also access it on her website here.
"As you can see, there is much to be considered in response to the ABFE maps" State Senator Montgomery writes.  " If my office can be of service please reach out to us!"

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Red Hook's Fairway Looking Ready For The Big Re-Opening Tomorrow

 photo credit: Nasreen B.

Fairway seems ready for its big re-opening tomorrow, judging by the stocked outside produce section is already restocked and the yellow lines in the parking lot.
The Red Hook supermarket has been closed since the end of October, when Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on this waterfront community.
Like many others, the Civil War era-building that houses Fairway suffered major water damage. After months of reparation and renovation, Fairway is ready for business again.
Are you looking forward to the grand re-opening?
What have you missed most?  The cheese counter, the produce, the fresh seafood or the meat section?


My friend and PMFA reader Nasreen was down in Red Hook this morning and took the photos above.
Thanks, Nasreen.

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Please Come To Pay Tribute To Celia Cacace, "The Mother And Memory Of This Community"

Celia Cacace as a Child in Red Hook

(Cacace family photo)

Celia Cacace (on the right) with former Brooklyn  Borough President Howard Golden (on left) at the Carroll Park re-opening ceremony  in the 1980's

Celia at Community Board 6's Christmas Party in 2011

Celia in October 2012

At the Veterans Day Celebration in Carroll Park

Celia Cacace with my daughter C. at the Court street Fair, May 2012

As many of you know, Celia Maniero Cacace, a life long resident of Red Hook/ South Brooklyn, has to move away from the neighborhood she loves passionately. Not only will she be missed by all who had the good fortune to make her acquaintance, but the neighborhood is losing a very special person and community advocate. Saddest of all, Celia's knowledge of the history of the neighborhood will l
eave with her.
Many of us who love her are planning a farewell party for her on Sunday, January 13th. Please do come in and say good-bye to Celia.

Celia Cacace Tribute Party

Sunday January 1/13/13

3:30pm to 6:30pm

Mama Maria's Restaurant

307 Court StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231

Below is a lovely biography on Celia by her friend Carolina Salguera, founder and director of PortSide NewYork,

Celia Maniero Cacace

Fearless, feisty, loving and frank A champion of our community's weaker members

by Carolina Salguera

Celia Maniero Cacace is the mother and walking memory of the neighborhood she still calls South Brooklyn Red Hook; that's Carroll Gardens, Columbia Waterfront District and Red Hook for those of you got here after the 1960's.
To walk Court Street with the diminutive, doting Celia is to feel in the presence of a community Mayor. She's stopped every few feet or hailed from across the street by seniors or children to share news or advice. 

Having served as a one-woman social service agency for decades, 77-year old Celia is now in need of some help herself. She is obliged to move from her apartment since the building is being sold, and she needs to find that rare, inexpensive place in a neighborhood where prices have soared beyond the fixed incomes of seniors. Know someone who wants a granny au pair, or granny doorman? A committee is forming to help her find a place; and if need be, help launch some fundraising to cover the gap between her fixed income and the rent. She moves out of her current place on January 14 to her son's in Wisconsin. 

We are organizing a send off party for Celia and a campaign to bring her back. That kicks off Sunday January 1/13/13. (Details at bottom) Everyone is invited. Please bring a memory of Celia if you can.
Celia's life and prodigious memory describe a time when people stayed in a neighborhood—Celia has lived her whole life in 8 apartments within a 10 block radius— and when this area was largely Italian, as far back as when Italians still faced discrimination as the new immigrants.
Even today, Celia's back straightens as she says, "my older sister Jennie was one of the first Italian-Americans to knock down the walls on Wall Street. She was an amazing mathematician."

Celia is the 8th child of nine, of parents from the Island of Ischia in Italy. Her mother worked as a governess in France before emmigrating to the United States. With pride, Celia says her mother gave birth to her last child at 51. The family was displaced from 107 Rapelye Street for the construction of the BQE, an early experience with public works which might be what sharpened Celia's ability to analyze land use issues.
Tomboy Celia broke her nose and ran with the boys until she was married in 1960 to the boy next door Joseph Cacace.

She had two sons, Gregory and Robert, and was widowed early in 1979.
Over the years, Celia's community service had formal and informal components.
She served for more than twenty years as an active member of Community Board 6, on the Housing, Human Services, Economic development, Land Use, Landmark, Transportation, and City Properties Committees. Celia has been recognized for her perfect attendance at CB6 meetings, which demonstrated her serious purpose and commitment to her appointment to the Community Board. Aside from keeping meticulous meeting notes in her famous black and white copy books in multiple color inks, Celia is also remembered for her "compound questions", as City Council member Brad Lander has noted.

Celia's role in CB6 and other public meetings was often the voice speaking truth to power. Her private good works took the form of tending to the community's weaker members without fanfare or public acknowledgement.
That work followed the rhythms of the pre-blog, air conditioning and play date era when life was lived and information exchanged on the stoop and playgrounds, in street festivals and over laundry lines strung behind the brownstones. Someone needing help would be told "go see Celia."

Her helping likely began, she's not keeping track, with coordinating summer jobs for youth of Italian American Club of South Brooklyn which had her run clean up crews for the annual Feast of Our Lady of Sorrow. That Feast began around 1945 and ran from Kane to Summit Street. Celia joined the tradition in the 1960s, and worked it until its waning years on Court Street in the 1980s. She found work for youth, and for adults, in the booths, worked with Sanitation to keep the feast site clean and well run and prevented fights between the teens.

Over the decades, she would get summer jobs for teens. She was firm about the rules. "You gotta get your parents to talk to me, kid", to make sure they approved, "faccia a faccia" ("face to face" in Italian). All her serious business is done faccia a faccia; forget the phone.

During the 70s and early 80s, she organized festivals in Carroll Park with clowns, concerts and DJs. Ever inclusive, she arranged for teens to have DJ time, and insisted they play some of everyone's music, Italian, Puerto Rican, rock n roll and oldies. She also allowed teens to DJ before the feast and procession, cannily roping in and managing the younger generation. 

"If they blasted the music, they had to account to me since I was the person speaking for them. I had a nice rapport, I never pointed my finger at them. If I had to talk to someone, I would walk them down the block and talked to them privately. If you talk to them in front of the other kids, then they would rank them out."

Celia also helped reactivate the original Society of Mother Cabrini of South Brooklyn, their feast and procession. Celia has that rare combination of deep pride in her identity (a layering of family, ethnicity, neighborhood) and the ability to simultaneously support others affirming their own, plus the smarts to understand that everyone needs to be included for a community to work.

Ever the intermediary between groups, she facilitated special events like the 100th anniversary for the Norwegian Seaman's Church (now condos), coordinating between the Scandinavians, the Italians and the police; and helped arrange donations for many churches not her own.

By the 1990s, she was ensconced at a desk at Postal Press on Court Street, where I first spotted her when I went in for photo copies. Her small head would pop up from behind a desk piled high with clippings from local papers. I observed a steady stream of people coming in to have hushed consultations over the counter with her: problems with bad landlords, unfair evictions, seniors who didn't understand their meds and had Celia be a liaison with the pharmacist, older Italians needing translation help, teens looking for jobs, people who needed help with city permits or were stymied by bureaucracy, or were just overwhelmed for whatever reason.

By the 2000's, I would catch up with Celia at Joe's Restaurant on Court Street, where she spent hours every morning cutting clippings from local papers and serving as on-the-spot greeter, advisor and nanny. Many a weekend morning, I saw young parents come in for brunch and sit frazzled by their children. Celia would step in with toys she bought on sale or at stoop sales and then boiled and bleached at home. I could see parents relax and see them find time for one another as the tikes' action was transferred to Celia.
Celia's beef with the term "Carroll Gardens" is that she remembers the slight to her pride.

This area was once redlined, her own family could not get a loan; and real estate brokers and other activists invented the term in the 60's to help market the brownstone area and delineate it from what is now called Red Hook "across the tracks" of the BQE. Rather than rebranding where she lived and pulling away from others, Celia preferred to help get jobs for people from "the Hook" and to wear a t-shirt "I live in South Brooklyn Red Hook not Carroll Gardens and I'm proud of it." It's a "love us for who we are, not who you want us to be" approach. She delivers a lot of love on the ground.

Several years back, I and Allison Prete, the director of the documentary film about the Gowanus Canal "Lavendar Lake" agreed that someone should make a documentary about Celia Cacace. Her stories, meeting notes and clippings are legion. As her apartment is being packed up, some 40 bankers' boxes have already been transferred to an archivist, journalist and local historian. 

Celia Cacace is mother and memory of this community which needs her as much as she needs to be here. We are organizing a Tibute to Celia party for her and a campaign to bring her back. That kicks off Sunday January 1/13/13. Everyone is invited. Please bring a memory of Celia if you can. 

Did Celia Cacace live in your house? Local addresses of Celia Cacace.
107 Rapelye Street 288 Van Brunt Street 28 First Place 64 Third Place 252 President Street 271 Union Street 285 President Street 83 First Place.

Tickets are $30 ($10 for seniorsy. To RSVP for the event, call Community Board 6 at 718-643-3027

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Buy A Rebuilding Gift Certificate And Help Red Hook Lobster Pound Back On Its Feet After Sandy

The Red Hook Lobster Pound is just one of the many businesses in Red Hook that was severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy two weeks ago. Ever since, its owner Susan Povich, whom I first met and interviewed when she started the lobster pound back in 2009, has been trying to rebuilt her business at 284 Van Brunt Street, which was under four feet of water. She estimated that this will take at least two months, if not longer.

Most importantly, it will take some much needed funds. To that end, she has started a Rebuilding Gift certificate sale/fundraising campaign through Small Knot,com.
It's an easy way to help a local business get back on its feet.

Here is more information on the fundraiser.

Purchase gift certificates to rebuild the Red Hook Lobster Pound

The whole community took a whoopin from that Storm Sandy. She filled up our tanks with more salt water than we could handle. We need to rebuild our lobster tanks, walk-in, kitchen and store. We need new equipment on top of new walls and floors! We also thought that it was high time for a bathroom! Our staff is so wonderful and we would love to be able to employ them to help during the rebuild.
Red Hook is a special place. It is the closest that NYC has to a fishing village, which is one of the reasons we moved here 15 years ago and opened the Red Hook Lobster Pound 5 years ago. We gave so much of ourselves to this project, it was heartbreaking to open the door on October 30.
The water raced down our main street and flooded The Pound and the commissary with over four feet of water, and there is extensive damage. Two of our vehicles are not functioning, our food truck needs to be totally rebuilt. We had to demolish all the walls, take up the floors, trash the lobster tanks and all our inventory.
We are rebuilding! This time with a/c and a customer W.C. We are reaching out to you to help us. Anyone that would like to help out, please e-mail: info [at] redhooklobster [dot] com, or tweet us @Redhooklobster.This could mean manpower, tradesmen, designers, painters, comedian, garbage bags, or anything else you can think of to lend a hand. Anything is appreciated.
We are raising this money through a special gift certificate program. For every gift certificate that you buy now, 75% of the purchase price will be yours to use at any of our locations and 25% will go directly to the rebuild. Buy now, lobstericiousness later! It makes a great Christmas or Chanukah present (for the Traif in all of us). Oh, and when we reopen the picnic room (bigger, expanded, A/C Heat and the all important W.C.) we will have a special party to thank all of our helpers and contributors.

To buy your certificate, click here.

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Red Hook's Very, Very Slow Recovery After Superstorm Sandy

C

School buses drying out in a parking lot.

Breeze Demolition on Bay Street had to do some demo on their own building.

Old trash and new sheetrock at Breeze Demo

The Sol Goldman recreation center sustained lots of damage

It is currently closed and the NYC Parks Department won't be able to use it for a long time, if it can be re-opened at all.

The foundation of the building was undermined ...

and water rushed right in.

National Grid hard at work to restore service

Just one of many cars destroyed by the storm surge.

Flooded art space on Van Brunt Street.

Fairway working hard to repair damage to the store. Apparently, when it reopens in a few weeks, it will have a bigger restaurant and tasting areas.

A group of volunteers heading to the meeting place

Billy Durney surveying the damage to his soon-to-open  Southern barbecue place "Hometown" at 454 Van Brunt Street.  If everything goes well, the eatery will still be ready for its opening in Spring 2013.

While the building is slowly drying out,  one can still see the water mark on the walls.

The big grill is one of the only things he was able to save.  Over the last twelve days, people have been donating over a 1000 pounds of meat that he has been barbecuing non-stop to feed local residents, volunteers and utility workers.

Brisket slowly cooking on the barbecue.

Folks at Brooklyn Ice House not defeated by Sandy.

Red Hook Lobster on Van Brunt Street was hit hard.

But the Red Hook Lobster folks are working long hours so that they can re-open soon.

Flooded business on Van Brunt Street

Just one of many flooded basements in Red Hook

George Fiala of the Red Hook Star Revue distributing the latest edition of his newspaper to local residents.

Flooding inside a friend's Red Hook home.

Refrigerator, oven, washing machine and all other appliances have to be tossed out.

A volunteer tossing garbage into a dumpster

Long lines wrap around Visitation Of The Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic church.  Local residents still need food, dry clothes and batteries.  Some still don't have power.

National Guard looking on

Brad Lander with local residents and  veterans who have found temporary housing at 165-167 West 9th Street because their shelter was rendered uninhabitable during Hurricane Sandy.

The group was going to walk over to Red Hook to volunteer.

It's been twelve days since Hurricane Sandy brought much misery to Red Hook.  The storm flooded most of the neighborhood and left homeowners, renters and business owners with massive destruction.
Slowly, they have begun the hard work of drying out and rebuilding their life, though life in the neighborhood is still very tough.
It would be fair to say that rebuilding will a slow process, but Red Hook residents are determined.
They still can use all the help that they can get, so please continue donating.
From what I saw, rubber gloves, masks, bleach, and garbage bags will be greatly appreciated.
So will words of encouragement and most importantly, a heaping hand.

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