History.Workshoppin’: Issue 6 (June 2025)
Maybe it’s that the weather is getting warmer and the nights longer, but the vibes in the city feel better than they were in the last few months. That’s not to say that things are anywhere close to great, of course; I’m still deeply angered and upset by ICE’s roundups at courthouses, including of a city high school student. And of course we’re a couple weeks out from probably the most outwardly fascistic event in DC’s history, and it’s unclear to me what the reverberations of that will look like here. But things seem different, and possibly on an upturn. (And the Mets and Yankees and Liberty and Gotham are all doing pretty well, which helps.)
On to the tours and stuff.
Coming Up Next
This month includes my day of tours June 22 (use code RUNAROUND for half-off tickets), along with a few twilight tours of Greenwich Village for Pride. July’s calendar eases up a bit due to my day job schedule, and returns to normalcy in August/September.
June 2025
June 11, 5:30 p.m.: Twilight Tours: Greenwich Village
June 18: 5:30 p.m.: Twilight Tours: Greenwich Village
June 19, 2:00 p.m.: Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn
June 21, 2:00 p.m.: Lost Theaters of Bay Ridge
June 22: I celebrate the summer solstice (kinda) with three tours from morning to sunset:
10:00 a.m.: Green-Wood Cemetery
2:30 p.m.: Meatpacking District/Chelsea
6:00 p.m.: The Bridges of Gowanus: Rezone Remix
June 25, 5:30 p.m.: Twilight Tours: Greenwich Village
June 28, 3:00 p.m.: Greenwich Village
June 29, 3:00 p.m.: Meatpacking District/Chelsea
July 2025
July 6, 11:00 a.m.: Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn
July 26, 1:00 p.m.: Lost Theaters of Bay Ridge
July 27, 10:30 a.m.: Green-Wood Cemetery
August 2025
August 3, 11:00 a.m.: Bridges of Gowanus: Rezone Remix
August 3, 6:00 p.m.: Quenching Brooklyn’s Thirst (free tour; reply to RSVP)
August 10, 10:00 a.m.: Greenwich Village
August 17, 11:00 a.m.: Quenching Gotham’s Thirst
August 24, 10:30 a.m.: Green-Wood Cemetery
August 31, 4:30 p.m.: Meatpacking District/Chelsea
September 2025
September 14, 11:00 a.m.: Greenwich Village
September 20, 1:00 p.m.: Lost Theaters of Bay Ridge
September 28, 11:00 a.m.: Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn
Stuff I Wrote
All as promised from last newsletter: a review of new Wedding Banquet, a reminiscence of old Wedding Banquet for the Queer Window series, and my look at Matt Wolf’s documentaries (strongly recommend my colleague Shayna Davis’s review of Pee-Wee As Himself, too).
Something from the Archive
Digging into the “cool stuff I got at Freebird” collection for this one, with a 1928 yearbook from the Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn. The old Crescent Athletic clubhouse is now the main building of Saint Ann’s School; their “country club” and boathouse was in Bay Ridge (back when Bay Ridge was the country).
Brooklyn’s city, and then borough, fathers (and eventually mothers, at least on a limited basis, as Bay Ridge historian Henry Stewart wrote for Hey Ridge) were among its member rolls, enjoying the confines of the clubhouse and playing on its amateur sports teams, including a lacrosse squad greeted by William Howard Taft in 1911.
Three years after this yearbook was printed, the club would sell the Bay Ridge properties for new digs in Huntington. (The site would eventually become Fort Hamilton High School’s campus.) They wouldn’t make it out of the Depression alive. Which makes this yearbook a document of Brooklyn’s elite at the height of their largesse, a tall tree that would fall hard.
Some Sensory Stimuli
Understatement of the century, but I’m not going to look back to 2020 fondly. A year of a lot of solo bike rides (some to get hand sanitizer by the jugful at Kings County Distillery), a lot of walks with Chrisinda because we couldn’t go anywhere else, and a lot of anxiety as the bodies of the dead overfilled the morgue and the refrigerated trailers. Amid the anxiety, we went all-in for a long while on the grocery-delivery thing (we tipped heavily), along with produce/organics collection via Groundcycle and bread and sweets from a couple named Brian Villanueva and Autumn Moultrie. Their Back Alley Bread outfit delivered us sourdough, foccaccia, cookies, and their outstanding “angel donuts” all through deep Covid, and when the world opened back up, I picked stuff up from their place in Bed-Stuy.
Five years later, Groundcycle is still plugging away, and Moultrie and Villanueva found a brick-and-mortar spot all the way in Ocean Hill. What once was Bread and Butter is now Dolly’s Coffee Shop, home to some of the bread (and and sandwiches!) and pastries we enjoyed, and some new items like a sweet ube bun. Plus there’s a little bougie shoppy-shop section with some Black-owned businesses’ dry goods. It’s a bit of a schlep out there, but then again, it was a schlep for them out here, so now we’re getting closer to even.
Dolly’s Coffee Shop (53 Rockaway Avenue) is open Saturdays and Sundays 10–2 and 3–5:30, and Mondays, 12–2 and 3–6. It’s accessible via the J train at Chauncey Street, the C at Rockaway Avenue, and the B20, B60, and Q24 buses.
Some More Sensory Stimuli, Ulster County Edition
This story has an NYC connection before lighting out for the exurbs. Upstairs at the iconic downtown homegoods shop Fishs Eddy is a private collection of American-made plates, mugs, and other dinnerware, along with molds, ledgers, and pattern books. The New York Adventure Club hosts tours of the Fishs Eddy balcony, led by owner Julie Gaines herself, or sometimes her sister — we had the latter when we went a couple years ago, and had a grand old time looking through the collection of the servingware for restaurants, clubs, and schools across the twentieth century. And we learned that some of the stuff would have a new home: the International Museum of Dinnerware Design, which was moving from a carousel of pop-ups in and around Ann Arbor to Kingston. On a late April weekend getaway, we finally had a chance to go to the IMODD (not yet home to the Gaines collection, but it’s only a matter of time), and we had an absolute blast.
If you’re a fan of public design of any sort, you’ll love it here. Founder and director Margaret Carney is a hands-on presence — it was just her and her husband onsite when we went on a cold, rainy Hudson Valley Saturday afternoon — and her curatorial eye is the force behind Dining Grails and Dining Memories, the inaugural exhibitions in the museum’s new home. And to boot, once she saw we were into this stuff (if we owned a car, “we brake for fashion and design history exhibits” would be our bumper sticker), Dr. Carney gave us a tour of the offices, where the really cool new stuff was.
All in all, if you’re taking a trip to the Hudson Valley — Rhinebeck, Poughkeepsie, or Kingston — make a plan to get to this museum. I’d say “run, don’t walk,” but from where I’m sitting, that’s a schlep on foot.
The International Museum of Dinnerware Design (524 Broadway in Kingston) is open Thursday—Sunday, 12–5. NYC residents without a car can get to Kingston via Adirondack Trailways or by taking the Metro-North’s Hudson Line to Poughkeepsie and changing to Ulster County Area Transit’s KPL route to Kingston’s Rondout, Downtown, or Stockade districts. If you do have a car or plan to rent one, the trip is picturesque, and the parking is plentiful.
The Coveted History.Workshoppin’ Endorsements…
I’m so glad I waited to write this section, y’all.
Primary Day is coming up in NYC and across the state, and in the spirit of transparency, here’s my ballot for city/Brooklyn-wide offices. I’m not going to tell you what to do for your council races or other borough offices, largely because I have no idea what’s going on elsewhere.
Mayor, ranked choice ballot:
Asm. Zohran Kwame Mamdani: I’ve known Zohran since he was Ross Barkan’s field director for his…well, I wouldn’t call it a successful state senate campaign in 2018, but it did sharpen Andrew Gounardes as a campaigner and politician to help flip the seat. He’s a decent guy, with good values, a strong moral compass, an incredible knack for public communication, and an easily digestible if at times somewhat challenging to enact platform (I still don’t know how we’re going to convince Janno about the “free” part of “fast and free buses”).
Sen. Zellnor Myrie: Zellnor was the state senator one district over from us when his district briefly included a chunk of Sunset Park, and he seemed like a good dude then. Thus far his platform is a bit of a chimera — his plan for expanded afterschool and childcare is a good one, his Abundance™-esque plan for one million new homes a bit too heavily reliant on 485-x subsidies — and his debate performance was sadly a little too stilted. But he’s a staunch WFPer (helping to oust Jesse Hamilton from the IDC), to this point hasn’t forgotten that political origin story (unlike another colleague of his from northern Queens), and right now he’s still my #2 pick.
Former Asm. and DNC Vice chair Michael Blake: Best debate performance earlier this week — truly the only one to really grasp the value of going after Andrew Cuomo and he actually ranked pretty highly when I took the Meet Your Mayor quiz. He takes my #3 spot, though if you can stomach his damning non-answers concerning sexual harassment, Scott Stringer’s fine here, I guess.
Comptroller Brad Lander: Brad’s a bit of a pantomime villain in my Bridges of Gowanus tour, the architect of the rezoning that’s completely transformed the area around the canal, and (in my view, anyway) not for the better. But he’s got a boatload of plans and an even larger rolodex of progressive power brokers, and would be lightyears ahead of Andrew Cuomo, so into the #4 spot he goes.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams: Remember that P.J. O’Rourke line about Hillary Clinton in 2016, “She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters”? That’s kind of how I feel about Speaker Adams (no relation!). She helped shepherd into office her fellow Bayside High alum (which she now regrets), and her philosophy on streetscapes and transportation may work for her districts but would take the city backwards. But I’m like 99% certain she wouldn’t take bribes or straw donations from Türkiye, or grope a state trooper, or be compromised by the current federal administration for either. Which makes Speaker Adams a fine #5 pick, and potentially the first woman mayor in city history.
Comptroller, ranked choice ballot:
CM Justin Brannan
Manhattan BP Mark Levine
I’m still a little wishy-washy on this ranking and it may flip (especially if any further developments come about regarding the proposed Coney Island casino, which falls in my and Brannan’s district and for which Brannan has gone from a “hell no” to “wait and see” to “well, if everyone can get on board with it, I guess, but that ain’t happening”), but I’m giving Brannan the qualified #1 spot thanks to his voter guide top three priorities actually involving the work of the office of comptroller (e.g. conducting proper audits, ensuring pension fund success). Mark Levine, by all accounts, appears to be running because he sees the position as shadow mayor, and, well, it’s not.
Public Advocate (technically ranked-choice, but I’m bullet-balloting):
Jumaane Williams, incumbent
Brooklyn Borough President (ditto):
Antonio Reynoso, incumbent
Kings County Civil Court Judge (vote for any two of four candidates):
Janice Purvis
Susan Liebman
Marisa Arrabito appears to be endorsed by the Brooklyn Democratic machine, Frank Seddio, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and all. Janice Chen was petitioning on a slate with Kevin Parker’s comptroller campaign. Judges are supposed to show good judgment. ‘Nuff said.
Early voting runs from June 14 through June 22, and Primary Day is June 24 (polls open 6 am to 9 pm). Find your EV and E-Day pollsites here, and request an early mail ballot here.
A Cat and a Trophy
Ira is the cutest boy around and Gotham are the continental champions. Like I said at the jump, the vibes are on an upswing.
Hope to see you in the streets soon! I’ll be back in touch in early to mid-August. Until then, consider forwarding this newsletter to a friend, and stay safe out there.