Hey Neighbors -
Just when I think I will have a short post for the week, I sit down to write and, somehow, there are way too many essential and juicy stories I’ve accumulated during the week that I want to share, including my original reporting and stories.
My instinct is always to start with local news, given my years at 60 Minutes, where “soft” stories come last in the broadcast. But I’m in the mood for lite today, which means first to my conversation with the artists and co-founders of Shiny Sparkle Labs and Studios in Red Hook. There are 100s of small, often creative-type businesses like this in Red Hook that, if you don’t live there, are easy to miss. It’s part of what makes the neighborhood unique. These businesses also create jobs and help the local economy.
QUICK, USEFUL AND RANDOM
(OK, so, not straight to SSLS)
My neighbor has a fantastic resource list of cat services if you or anyone you know needs to find a home for a cat. Email Ward 6 if you could use it: ([email protected]).
Nov. 24th: The Court Street Merchants Association court hearing to stop the Court Street redesign. Link to lawsuit and other documents. 10:00, BK Courthouse
Nov. 26: Just in time for Thanksgiving: Buzzy, the new cannabis shop on Atlantic and Court St., owned by a neighborhood resident, is aiming for a soft open this week.
Dec 1: The final opportunity to testify (you can still submit your written testimony until Dec 11) about the future of the BK waterfront. See Voices of the Waterfront. 6-9:30P 125 Summit St. Register here.
Not to upstage Lily Allen and David Harbour’s Architectural Digest BK home tour, but check out a Brownstone I often walk by, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard’s home video tour out this week.
OUT AND ABOUT IN WARD 6
On a cold, dreary, rainy day last month, I stubbornly rode my bike to Red Hook, pretending summer wasn’t behind me, to check out Red Hook’s open studios (see post). My only plan was to see a show featuring artists all affected by the fire, a few weeks prior, at another nearby warehouse. The other draw for my late Sunday afternoon outing was the host of the exhibit, the yet-to-open The Swan Club, an intriguing name for a nosy journalist like myself (more on this down below).
After the Swan Club, I wandered around the turn-of-the-century refurbished warehouse, which a San Francisco real estate company now owns, whose tenants also include Strong Rope Brewery and Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies It once housed the Cornell Paper and Box company, part of Red Hook’s storied industrial past.
Hallway to nowehere..?
I walked down the long, empty hall, assuming I had made a wrong turn, when a burst of colors assaulted me and my Sunday blahs – worsened by the thought of biking home in the cold rain – instantly disappeared. What exactly had I discovered? And, oh yes, I definitely would be late getting back to my apartment.
Sunday class, Bullseye glass, glass chips for students
Before I knew anything about this magical place, I penciled in a story about Shiny Sparkle Labs and Studio (SSLS) for Ward 6.
Meet Dorie Guthrie and Matthew Day Perez, artists and co-founders, of the four-year old Red Hook glass fusion labs and studios, two Illinoisans who first met 20 years ago in college.
Dorie, Matthew and Dolly Barkin celebrating a new student for one of their classes
“I wanted to find a glass program for college, and my parents begged me to get a teaching degree,” says Perez. “They didn’t have money for college – they were like, ‘Good luck!’”
Guthrie and Perez met in the glass studio at Illinois State. “It was located in an old sheep barn in the parking lot of the football field!” Guthrie told Ward 6.
After graduating, Perez attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where he also later taught, and then went to Australia on a Fulbright before moving to New York City and working for various artists, including Red Hook’s Dustin Yellin, founder of Pioneer Works.
Perez heads the fabrication part of their business (Sparkle Studios), which involves making glass objects for roughly seven artists, including Jeff Koons, Marshal Pels, Hannah Levy, Urs Fisher, and Ebony Patterson. They have one high-end commercial client, In Common With. To date, all of the fabrication business has been through word of mouth.
“He has more of an engineer brain and loves to figure out mold material,” says Guthrie.
This balances Guthrie’s passion for teaching, which has been her focus since college. After a brief stint as a bridal seamstress, Guthrie taught at Brazee Street Studios in Cincinnati before moving to NYC in 2014. She lived and worked in nearby Gowanus for more than seven years at Urban Glass, the nation’s oldest glass studio, where she helped build the youth education program.
While the fabrication studio brings in most of Shiny Sparkle’s revenue, education (Sparkle Labs) is at the core of their mission and, until recently, what they were known for. Guthrie heads Shiny Sparkle’s education programs, which offer classes with enticing names like “Fuse and Booze” and “Pour and Restore” (more below, including a Black Friday discount code), in partnership with the nearby Red Hook Winery.
(This interview, done separately, is condensed and slightly edited.)
W6: You both ended up in Red Hook and decided to go into business together. How did you come up with the name?
D: A bottle of wine, a GoDaddy search for what was available. We thought about the properties of glass. We are silly and fun, and it’s different and catchy. [Labs is their education programs and Studios is fabrication]
W6: What happens here at Shiny Sparkle?
D: Most people know us for our Labs, the educational part of the business. We started doing one-off boutique casting [for artists].
M: We do fusing and casting [molds] with glass art. Fusing things together and then binding them with heat. Not blown glass. We do a lot of lighting and fine art for artists.
Strips of glass before and after fused for a sconce
D: A sconce we made on behalf of a client, In Common With, went gangbusters (see below). We have a whole library of glass. We can mix powder glass; everyone wants a unique color. Our glass [from Bullseye Glass] is expensive.
In Common With: Strata Surface Mount and Vera Sconce (souce ICW website)
[The day I interviewed Matthew, the duo had just installed their 18th kiln – with an eight-foot interior diameter, the largest commercial glass kiln in New York City.]
M: We can work even larger now, like tabletops.
D: Glass is a slow process, and this makes us more efficient. We can premake glass sheets for them [In Common With] and when they order, the color is ready.
W6: How did you first get interested in glass?
M: I was probably around 14, and my parents would drag me to their chiropractor appointment on Saturdays in a Chicago suburb strip mall. A few doors down was a stained glass shop, and I was enamored with the colors, the light and the smell of the ground glass. The three women took care of me. They eventually gave me tools. As I got older, I would ride my bike, then my car, and ended up working there, repairing Tiffany Lamps.
Also, one of them was a lesbian, and it was around the same time I was coming out. Glass is so intrinsic to my identity. Coming out, then learning a craft and falling in love with it.
W6: What specifically about glass was so interesting to you?
M: Physicality and tactility. I think as human beings we love little things that come together and make bigger things.”
W6: Dorie, what about you?
D: My dad was a graphic artist, and I spent a lot of time with him. I started screen printing in the 2nd grade and designed my own T-shirts. I always knew I would do art. When I was 17, I started going to a glass studio that was two towns over [from East Moline] with bead-making workshops, and I was blowing glass by 18. My work is a little on the darker side, as my mom owned a funeral home.
W6: I was surprised to learn, while doing this interview, how many other glass studios are in Red Hook and nearby.
D: Red Hook is still affordable. There are cabinet makers, welders, and makers. As fabricators, we need tons of equipment. We could never afford this in Manhattan. You will see many makers in Red Hook. There is open commercial space where you can fabricate.
M: We [glass studios] are all uniquely situated. There’s only a handful of studios like this [Shiny Sparkle] peppered across the country; we’re a unicorn in this space. Across the street is Flickinger Glass Works, which uses a different glass and process than we do.
[Other nearby glass studios: Sticky Glass (impacted by the warehouse fire in September) is a blown glass studio, BrooklynGlass, and Urban Glass.)
Check out Shiny Sparkle Labs and Studio’s website and IG for more information about its classes, held mainly on the weekends. They also offer 5-week classes, kiln rentals and special events. [Think holidays: Black Friday starts now! Use BF35 for 35% off all single-day classes!]
(Big thanks to Mark Faas for editing.)
LOCAL NEWS ROUNDUP FOR THE WEEK
You may have heard by now that, on Wednesday, a 10-year-old Ps29 student was hit by a car on Columbia and President, an intersection with no traffic light, stop sign, or other traffic calming measures. I’ve heard the elementary student sustained some injuries, but is doing OK. What a terrifying experience for her, her family and friends, whom I’m told were with her at the time.
Join hundreds of your neighbors and sign this petition from a community member calling on the DOT to implement street safety upgrades that the community has requested for “decades” that the DOT “has denied.” You can also call 311 to file a complaint.
Brownstoner: Relevant study out this week by Comptroller Brad Lander’s office about the increase in injury-causing crashes near last-mile delivery routes (like Red Hook’s Amazon warehouse).
On Monday, approximately 200 people showed up for the community forum I wrote about last week about the next steps in the proposed waterfront redevelopment held by our local elected officials. (What did you think of my “bad-arse” headline last week to describe them? Too much? Just trying to have fun as times are, well, you know… and it is a true statement.)
Council Member Shanhana Hanif, Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes and Jo Anne Simon, Council Member Alexa Aviles
This large turnout shows that our neighbors want to hear from our trusted local elected officials about how to voice our concerns/support. You can watch here or read more about it here.
There’s no question that this stage of the proposed waterfront development proposal is wonky, and unfortunately, it’s easy to get intimidated by it. As a Columbia Street Waterfront neighbor, James Morgan said, “It’s like going to night school just to have the confidence to submit testimony!”
But the message on Monday is: don't get discouraged! Now is the time to speak up, because the City/State must respond to your concerns.
Just echoing what Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon said this week: NYC and NY State officials, who are overseeing this current stage of this process, DO NOT LIVE in our communities and have little to no understanding of our local concerns if we don’t tell them (and in large numbers).
The good news is that there is ample help available.
- Amanda Nichols of the Cobble Hill Association is one resource, among others, such as Voices of the Waterfront. Or write down your concerns (housing, traffic, open space, pollution) and Ward 6 (ward6brooklyn.com) will get it to the right people for submission ([email protected] & [email protected]).
If you’re interested, I plan to submit testimony calling for:
A comprehensive traffic study (in my opinion, should have been done already), a housing affordability study, and the impact on our current infrastructure to add 20,000+ more residents and cars.
I also want to make sure the development does not displace one of the crown jewels, among many in Red Hook, the non-profit PortsideNY and its boat, the Mary E. Whalen, docked near the ferry terminal. It serves our schools and communities with educational programming, an incredible archive of Red Hook history, and more. It could serve as a training hub for future mariners, including Coast Guard members. Go check it out! And bring your children.
I have a massive record request from the federal government, totaling thousands of pages, documenting hazardous waste and chemical spills at the proposed development site and in neighboring communities, which I will use to request additional studies on potential health risks, residual contamination and remediation.
On Thursday, the Cobble Hill Association held its fall meeting at a packed Christ Church on Clinton St., with many neighbors, perhaps half, from the Columbia Street Waterfront and Red Hook. CHA meetings are open to anyone, and this was an especially popular, with three elected on the agenda. It was, by far, the most spirited, at times testy, CHA meetings I’ve ever attended. Yes, it got loud; yes, people were talking over, under and all around one another at one point; and yes, State Senator Gournardes had to defend himself, at times vigorously, but I personally found it invigorating and democratic.
Who was on the agenda?: Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon, State Senator Andrew Gournardes, and fresh off his failed mayoral campaign (or successful if you voted for Zohran Mamdani), Comptroller Brad Lander, who perhaps was also testing the waters for a future run against Congressman Dan Goldman. Hmmm…
Some in attendance expressed concern that the City/State is moving forward with its waterfront development proposal despite unresolved and critical problems: the BQE, near-constant traffic jams, and street safety. In addition, residents from CSW and RH were upset that State Senator Gournardes, one of the co-chairs overseeing the development project, has never met with their communities.
CBA President Amanda Nichols did her best to keep the conversation “civil,” which, she said, is the standard she tries to uphold in all her meetings. More highlights below.
First, the light news from the CHA meeting:
For those with children, the CHA has raised $140,000 for a new playground (is it lame that I’m sad to hear our scrappy Dolphin Park will get an upgrade?).
Louis Cox, AKA the CHA “tree guy,” reported his committee planted 15 trees in Cobble Hill, mostly on Court Street, this fall. Louis works closely with our Council Member Shanana Hanif’s office and the NY Parks Department.
Fun (sad) fact: Did you know the cost of one tree ranges from $2400-5000! The good news is that the CHA will pay half the price as a tax deduction and Cox works tirelessly to raise money for more treess
Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon encouraged people to submit testimony about the waterfront development and answered a resident’s question about theskyrocketing costs of homeowners' insurance. Is it true that Brownstone owners are having trouble getting coverage?
Another question: could this impact the BMT proposal, given that they want to build 20+ towners in a flood zone? A: Not sure.
Gournardes talked about the RAISE ACT, an AI bill he co-authored, which calls to regulate companies like OpenAI and Google in New York by imposing guardrails. President Donald Trump has already threatened to withhold funds to the state if our Governor signs it the bill. Interesting Wired article about an AI SuperPac that isn’t too happy about it either.
AND THEN THE REST OF THE MEETING…
Things began to get tense when a resident questioned Gournardes’ support of the waterfront redevelopment proposal given it could add 20,000+ new residents, many with cars when there are other problems our communities want him to resolve now, mainly traffic that causes unsafe street crossings, and lack of reliable public transportation. Then someone else raised the near-constant problem of the Amazon semi-trucks, along with other massive delivery trucks, barely manuevering on our narrow streets and, in many cases, crashing into parked cars.
Typical scene this week: damaged parked car; big truck and even bigger Amazon semi
Gournades said he has unsuccessfully tried to get the DOT to conduct a comprehensive traffic study for the past three years. To my surprise, he said, the only way to get a traffic study was to support the redevelopment plan for the waterfront, which, at some point will require the City/State to do such a study. So the only way to get a traffic study done is to propose a plan that, I repeat, could add 20K more people and their cars, plus people commuting to new industrial spaces, a hotel, a new school and on and on to a neighborhood that anyone who lives here can tell you, is being overrun by cars and trucks right now? I still don’t see the logic here.
Then, when someone asked for the study’s parameters, Gournardes remembered the boundaries except whether Columbia St., which is already heavily impacted by traffic and the development proposal, was included. This did not sit well with CSW residents.
A lot of residents were also unsatisfied with Gournardes’ response to questions about the Amazon and other large delivery trucks getting stuck on our small streets almost daily and, in some cases, crashing into parked cars. I’m sure you've seen some of the photos that have gone viral. “I call Amazon, and they say it’s not its trucks!” Gournardes said to send pics to his office ([email protected] 718-238-6044), as he’s been trying to resolve this for a long time.
There were many more hands raised, but Gournardes said, it was time for him to go home to his family. And Amanda Nichols wanted to make sure Comptroller Brad Lander had time to speak. At this point, some residual frustrations with Gournardes hit a fever pitch among some of our neighbors in Red Hook and Columbia St Waterfront, who would be most impacted by this development project. They asked for Gournardes to meet with their community to answer more questions, as they’ve allegedly been asking for, and the state senator said he’s available any time and it went round and round, and got louder and louder, until Amanda Nichols told everyone to take a deep breath.
Then came Comptroller Brad Lander, who was classic Brad Lander, in a friendly CHA setting. All smiles, appreciative and seemingly revealing about this awkward professional stage that he’s currently in. Though he didn’t mention it, there’s rumors that he might challenge Congressman Dan Goldman, who’s up for re-election. Red Hook’s popular Council Member and Democratic Socialist Member, Alexis Aviles, is also rumored to want Goldman’s seat.
By now it was 8P, the designated end to the CHA meeting, which meant no further discussion on how to submit testimony about the development plan, which was on the agenda. However, Amanda Nichols announced a new committee that would help teach the CHA about maritime work that happens just blocks from where most of its association members live. I think I might sign up.
Thank you for sticking with Ward 6 to the very end! Enjoy your Thanksgiving.