The Bay Ridge Digest Podcast - EP015: Wistful Thinking

In The Bay Ridge Digest Podcast episode 15, we speak with the owner of the Fort Hamilton Distillery, salute the importance of Memorial Day, and meet several small business owners. 

Featured in this episode are these segments: 

• The inspiration for Fort Hamilton Distillery (@fort.hamilton.distillery) in Industry City (@industrycity) with co-founder Alex Clark

• Anna from Anna Bella Pizza Cafe (@annabellapizzacafe) with a big hello and their late Spring menu and hours

• The history behind “In Flanders Fields” and how to donate to local Poppy funds through @forthamiltonfmwr and local VFWs

• Jeff Samaha (@jeff_samaha) on working the Today Show, David Letterman, Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, how Ridge Chorale expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, and meeting his wife Mary Ann

• Three Light-Hearted Jokes from Freddie Friday (@freddiefridaystoryfuntime) with a PSA for the Itty Bitty Kitty Bay Ridge Cat Rescue (@ittybittykittynybayridge)

• Establishing the first Doula program at the New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and launching The Brooklyn Birth Shop (@brooklynbirthshop) with Kerri Evers

• The history of the Memorial Day Weekend International Lifeboat Race in the Narrows

• Mighty Functional Fitness (@mightyfunctionalfitness) offerings with Victoria Salerno

• Selections from The Price of Their Toys with John P. Loonam (@jploonam)

• Sew ‘N Fashion’s (@sew.n.fashion_bk) upcoming anniversary party and summer camp with Alyson Melhus

• Launching and running the Fort Hamilton Distillery (@fort.hamilton.distillery) with Alex Clark 

• The story behind the Flagg Court Pool Closure with Christine Walters (@finnmom) of Three Day Champion (@threedaychampion)

Coming in Monday, June 29th, The Bay Ridge Digest weekly Monday morning roundup email. It’ll feature upcoming Bay Ridge events, local classifieds, restaurant recs, human interest, and other Bay Ridge happenings. 

Want to sign up for this and find out more? Please do so at the completely revamped  BayRidgeDigest.com

For more info on how to submit a story lead, please go to BayRidgeDigest.com. You can also get in touch by emailing BayRidgeDigest@gmail.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I just love that more people are out. I feel like more people are happy. It's just a happier time. You see, there's more life on the streets, the restaurants are fuller. It's great to then be able to walk down the avenues, stop in any of the boutiques. Bay Ridge is wonderful in the spring through the fall.

SPEAKER_10 0:22

Welcome to the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast, episode 15. My name is James Scully. Tonight we speak with the owner of the Fort Hamilton Distillery, salute the importance of Memorial Day, and meet several small business owners. Subscribe to the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast everywhere you get a podcast. For more info on how to submit a story lead, please go to BayridgeDigest.com. You can also get in touch by emailing BayridgeDigest at gmail.com. And follow on Instagram at Bayridge Digest. Want to take a ghost tour and see me in person? I'm leading Haunted Bay Ridge on Saturday, June 6th at 6 30 p.m. Tickets can be found at the tours and events tab at BayridgeDigest.com or through the link tree at Bayridge Digest on Instagram. Coming June 29th, the Bay Ridge Digest Monday morning roundup email. It'll feature local events, classifies, restaurant recs, human interest, and other important Bay Ridge happenings. If you're a business owner listening to this, head to the Media Kit at BayridgeDigest.com to find out more. Want to receive this? Want to submit a story or important event you already know that'll be happening this summer? Do all that at BayridgeDigest.com. In need of anything from script writing to MCing, editing, producing, mixing, and directing, do all these things. Been thinking about starting a podcast and not sure where to begin? I can help you produce your podcast in any stage, from pre-planning to post production. You can contact me for a consultation at james at the wallbreakers.com.

SPEAKER_17 2:19

Well, obviously, we met at a bar at four in the morning.

SPEAKER_07 2:24

The Nomalis Palace on Third Street and Avenue B, which was owned by a mutual friend of ours.

SPEAKER_17 2:35

It was definitely late one night. I had just quit my job there.

SPEAKER_07 2:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_17 2:48

So I was out late on the middle of the week. Amy and her party of girls.

SPEAKER_07 2:54

We go in half the party at those girls' house. So that's how we ended up meeting. And then she got into some heated debate about Cyprus with a Turkish girl who was hosting the party. And I happened to know a thing or two about politics.

SPEAKER_17 3:14

And I defended Amy's position. And that was it. She was like, You should come back away.

SPEAKER_07 3:22

Funny enough, have best friends with Cypriot from Texas, where she rather Cypriot refugees from the Turkish invasion of Cyprus back in the 1970s.

SPEAKER_17 3:34

So she had an educated position. And kids' godparents are both Cypriots.

SPEAKER_07 3:41

And in fact, their daughter is staying with us right now. She's hanging out for a few weeks in New York, so that's how we met. I was defending her honor about Cyprus.

SPEAKER_10 3:56

This is Alex Clark.

SPEAKER_07 3:59

My name is Alex Clark. I am the co-founder of the Fort Hamilton Distillery in Industry City, Sunset Park, Brooklyn. We're open seven days a week for cocktails, pool, shuffleboard, darts, board games, comedy, music, general entertainment, and some very, very high-end spirits at a very reasonable price.

SPEAKER_10 4:25

As you just heard, Alex is the co-founder of the Fort Hamilton Distillery, along with his wife Amy Grindlin. It's located at 6834th Street in building 6 of Industry City in Sunset Park. Although he comes from London, Alex is an aficionado of American history and very much the history of American spirits. The rye whiskey that Fort Hamilton distills uses a traditional ratio. It's 99% Northeast rye and 10% malted barley.

SPEAKER_07 4:54

No corn is used. Before Prohibition, the biggest, most popular whiskey in America was rye whiskey. And it wasn't just any old rye whiskey, it was rye whiskey made in the northeast of America, which is where rye grain grows very happily. Because it gets cold in the northeast and all the way up through the plains of Canada. Rye loves the cold. It's one of the reasons it was the most heavily planted grain by the colonists because it's hardy, it would resist cold, it would provide you crops the next year without you having to do much to it. It's also great for the soil. It protects your soil from erosion, from sleet, hail, snow. Nutritious. So they planted this heavily. And they were making rum from sugar and molasses that they traded with the British colonies in the Caribbean. And then in the 1700s, the colonist decided they didn't really want much to do with Britain anymore and stopped trading with them. So all of a sudden, your sugar source disappeared. And so you had to find a source close to home. So the first thing that they did after getting rid of the British sugar supply was harvest rye, ferment it and distill it, and turn it into rye whiskey. And that's how ultimately rye whiskey became the original whiskey style of America. All the classic cocktails of America. The cocktails were written in the 1800s, early 1900s, they're all rye whiskey cocktails. And Manhattan, the most classic of the classic cocktails, first committed to paper in a recipe in 1881 is a rye whiskey cocktail. And so there we are in the late 90s, early 2000s, thinking about how we're gonna make these classic cocktails again. And the main ingredient in most of these cocktails is rye whiskey. And the one thing you can't buy in New York is rye whiskey. Why is that? How have we gone from having rye whiskey be the main component in this cocktail culture to having literally one type of rye whiskey be available to us in New York? And that type was old overhaul. So I'm like looking at this and thinking to myself, what is going on here? And so are other people too. Prohibition killed all the rye whiskey distilleries in the Northeast of America. Prohibition and then corn subsidies. Two bits of government legislation. Prohibition shuts down the alcohol industry for the most part. You can still buy or be prescribed alcohol by your doctor. Then corn subsidies are enacted, which encourage everyone to use corn in absolutely everything. So that's why you have corn syrup in your Coca-Cola. That's why bourbon, the number one selling whiskey in America now, is a corn whiskey. Not because it's better than rye whiskey, but just because the government decides to subsidize corn. So ultimately, the government mandated bourbon whiskey into existence.

SPEAKER_10 8:21

Alex cut his teeth in the 1990s cocktail scene, defined by vodka forward recipes, sweet flavors, neon colours, and pop culture stardom. He was then a big part of the cocktail renaissance.

SPEAKER_07 8:35

This cocktail renaissance is happening in the late 90s, early 2000s. Basically, people saying, enough with the sweet, industrially processed ingredients that we're making bright blue. The apple teenies using like ingredients with lots of food coloring in them. Sour mix, which is basically stabilized industrial citric acid and sugar blended together in a format that will last forever in your speed rack without being refrigerated. So none of this is fresh. None of this is clean. So the cocktail renaissance was all about going back to the original ingredients, the original recipes, and making cocktails the old-fashioned way. Squeezing juice from a lemon fresh. Making syrups fresh. Making the cocktails exactly as the recipes that were written down a hundred plus years ago call for. And guess what? If you do it that way, the cocktail tastes amazing.

SPEAKER_10 9:46

But this cocktail renaissance. New York was where it began.

SPEAKER_07 9:49

Absolutely. In New York. You can trace it back to the late 1980s with Dale DeGroff at the Rainbow Rum booth started using fresh juices and fresh syrups. But the real touchdown for it happened at a bar called Milk and Honey, which was on Eldritch Street, Lower East Side, just a couple of blocks from where we lived, we were on Canal and Orchard. Milk and Honey was the first modern speakeasy bar. Now, these days, you like walk around any neighborhood in any city in the world, you'll find a speakeasy bar. They're all mimicking that one bar, Milk and Honey, which was started in 1998, 99, I think, by Sasha Petrasky, who also owned Little Branch and Dutch Kills, an Eastside Company, which is where I first started bartending in New York. A lot of people figured out bartending through working in his bars, and the culture was solidified through his bar scene, his style, and modern cocktail culture was codified by what happened in those rooms. Even the clothes that they wore, bow ties or the dapper suits, the music. And of course, like he had a set of rules at Bill Congress, too. You can't talk to a girl unless she talks to you first. These little touches that actually created this much more sophisticated, elegant drinking style that then ushers in this old world but almost futuristic, it felt at the time. Ponchant for the martini. You know, these classic drinks and sophisticated. You look at that, what he did there, and then you look around now, all these bars doing similar things, he started it all right there.

SPEAKER_10 11:52

To fast forward, Alex bartended at Eastside Company and then Balthazar on Spring Street. Next, he co-founded Widow Jane in 2011. In 2014, he decided to leave Widow Jane to launch a rye whiskey brand, as he and Amy also moved to Windsor Terrace. As he was formulating the idea for what became Fort Hamilton Distillery, he went back to bartending at Marea on Central Park South. It was those late-night train rides on the F-line that served as inspiration.

SPEAKER_07 12:20

I would ride the subway home after a shift at Moraya, knowing that we were building this brand. In fact, we started filling barrels. We filled the first barrel in February 2016. And then it became this whole like, okay, we've got to call this something, right? Well, what are we gonna call this brand? What's it gonna be? So I would ride the subway back from Columbus Circle, end up on the F-train at getting off at Fort Howard and Parkway, which is our local stop. I'd have a list of whiskey names scribbled down all generally awful, and then I keep getting off at Fort Hamillon Parkway, going, Fort Hamilton, that's a pretty good name. What's that all about? So I Googled it and I was like, and this is yeah, we're still relatively fresh to Brooklyn at that point. We've been Manhattanite since I moved here in '98 until 2012 when we moved into the basement of our gut renovation house in Brooklyn whilst figuring it out. So Fort Hamilton, what is Fort Hamilton? Oh, that's where the British landed to quell the American Revolution. That's where there's still a functioning army base, the last functioning army base in New York City. It's got this great history to it, it's got this great gravity to it. Revolutionary war. And the whiskey that we're trying to recreate here at Fort Hamilton is Revolutionary War style rye whiskey. It's the whiskey that was around long before bourbon existed, before Kentucky was even a state. New York was producing rye whiskey. Once it popped up, I was like, well, that's a really good name. I know a thing or two about trademark law too. Ultimately, Fort Hamilton, yeah, it's an army base, but they don't make booze. So ultimately, we're free and clear with the IP for Fort Hamilton.

SPEAKER_10 14:09

We'll pick up with Alex later in this episode.

SPEAKER_06 14:25

Hi, this is Anna from Annabella Pizza Cafe. All is welcome at 7521 Third Avenue. We have a great lineup coming up. We're gonna be opening our Parmesana Vigiana wheel where you get to pick from three pastas and add your own toppings like meatballs, chicken, vegetables. Come on down. We also have their great Roman slabs available with our unique slices like Korean barbecue with kimchi. We have a classic buffalo slice, we have a margarita slice. Everything here is gonna be very unique. We also offer Detroit-style pizzas, vodka sauces on some of our pizzas. We have a lot of things that you're gonna be able to recognize, but a lot of things that you don't. So our pizza cafe is very unique. We're offering cinnamon rolls, we have coffees, cappuccinos, matchas. We're gonna be offering mocktails soon. Everything here is made from scratch, from our buffalo wings to our sandwiches with mortadella. Everything we want to share with you is here. You come as family, and you're all welcome. Our hours are from 7 a.m. to eleven p.m., Friday and Saturday to 1 a.m. And our handles for socials are Annabella Pizza Cafe.

SPEAKER_10 16:13

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row, that mark our place and in the sky, the larks, still bravely singing, fly scares heard amid the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders Fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe. To you from failing hands we throw the torch. Be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields. Early on Sunday morning, May 2, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in World War I, Lieutenants Frederick Haig and Alexis Helmer left their position to check on a Canadian battery. A few yards later, a six-inch high explosive cannon shell burst. Lieutenant Helmer was killed instantly. Using the imagery of poppies growing on graves to urge the living to continue to fight, it established the poppy as a symbol of remembrance. And that brings me to a small editorial written by Frank Griffin in the May 20th, 1960 edition of the Bayridge Home Reporter on the origin of the poppy. In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow, and so the flower that precipitated one war became the symbol of another, and with Memorial Day of all those who have died in war. The poppy was first associated with war in 1840, in the form of opium, and the fireworks that started when the Chinese clamped down on Great Britain smuggling of opium through China. Britain took the opium issue as an excuse for declaring war. But when the opium war ended in 1842, the issue was left unsettled, while Britain concentrated on extracting trading privileges and economic power from the Chinese. Three-quarters of a century later, the poppy became a symbol of World War I. In 1918, when a YMCA staff worker named Moina Michael read the poem about Flanders Fields, she conceived the idea of wearing a poppy in memory of those soldiers who had died in the war. Miss Michael persuaded the American Legion to adopt the poppy as its memorial flower, and the National Convention approved the resolution in 1920. The veterans of foreign war adopted the poppy and conducted the first nationwide poppy sale for the benefit of war veterans in 1922. Today in the U.S., National Poppy Day is observed on the Friday preceding Memorial Day. In 2026, it was observed on Friday, May 22nd. Sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary, citizens wear a red poppy to honor fallen military members and support living veterans. Organizations often host May fundraising events. There are national platforms that accept continuous poppy fund donations. You can give directly through the ALA's Poppy Donation Portal or the VFW's Buddy Poppy program to support veteran rehabilitation. If you're in the area looking to donate, the primary groups managing poppy funds for Bay Ridge include American Legion Coffee Wilson Post 688. It directly serves the base community and officially meets inside the Fort Hamilton Community Club. VFW Post 7096 Fort Hamilton. They continuously accept military relief and buddy poppy donations through their channels. And VFW Post 7173, it's located at 7810 Fort Hamilton Parkway.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

There are earth-day demonstrations in practically every community across the country this morning. In Cambodia, Premier Lon Gall has asked President Nixon for American weapons. Trinidad has been put under emergency curview after black power riots and without two men have died.

SPEAKER_14 20:39

And then I moved on from soap operas to the Today Show. And I did the Today Show for a couple of years. The horror of doing the Today Show was I had to be in at 3 a.m. And I would finish at eleven. I'd come home to my apartment, which I had in Bensonhurst, 81st Street and 19th Avenue. I had been divorced and living alone in a studio apartment. Sitting there day after day, not able to sleep because the kids in the courtyard were making so much noise playing that I just was very unhappy. Not getting the rest that I needed to get up at three in the morning.

SPEAKER_10 21:20

At that time, who was the Today Show host?

SPEAKER_14 21:24

Jim Hart and Barbara Walters. Me and Barbara Walters were co-hosts for a couple of years, and then Tom Brocott took the slot. So it was then Tom and Barbara. And that's how Tom got to know me from working the Today Show many years later, after I did Letterman. Ten years or so later, I was moved into nightly news, and Tom needed a stage manager. The guy that I replaced had just retired. And there were five of us on the list that they gave to Tom. And Tom chose me, having remembered my name. From working the Today Show ten years prior.

SPEAKER_10 22:05

When we were last with Jeff Samaha, he'd become a stage manager at NBC for The Today Show. But as you just heard, the production schedule wasn't conducive to a happy life. Meanwhile, Rich Corral was becoming busier and busier in Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_14 22:25

Throughout the 70s, the group performed at the Christmas tree lightings in Dacker Park. Sang in Lincoln Center was featured on NBC's televised Christmas card. In 1979, a police officer was shot in a Bay Ridge store, which highlighted the need for bulletproof vests for the officers at the 68th Prefix. Since there was no money in the police budget, we put together a concert to raise funds for the much-needed life-saving equipment. We raised enough money to purchase 11 vests. One of the recipients was Peter Killen, who wore his vest until the day he retired.

SPEAKER_10 23:03

Now, in terms of places that you in the years of Jeff Sama singer's Ridge Corral, I know you counted Lincoln Center as one of your crowning achievements of getting to perform. You know, it's funny because I've been doing research for you. You were at the Canarsi Pier often, it seemed like, or it's Christmas time and you're at the old Breborg Bank on 86th Street, or that's where I met my wife, by the way. At the Breboard Bank. Well, would you okay, would you mind telling that?

SPEAKER_14 23:30

Our friend Janet, who was already a member of The Singers, was friendly with my wife, Marianne Radioli. And she said, you know, you have to come down to join this group. You have a great voice, and she does. I think you'll have a good time. You know, she was in nursing school at the time, and uh, she wasn't sure she could devote the time to rehearsals every week, once a week. She refused and refused, and then finally she says, Okay, okay, I'll come down. And she got hooked. She sat in that rehearsal, and that was it. She was a member from then on. And that first year that she was in the group, we I guess noticed each other and we got involved in dating. But then it took 10 years before the marriage took place because we we would break up every month, you know, and uh for one reason or another. But finally we agreed and we got married in 1984. In 1986, my second child, I have one from a previous marriage who is much older. But the first child of this marriage was Christina, who is now gonna be 40 in October. And after that, my twins were born, Andrew and Jackie, in 1988.

SPEAKER_10 24:52

So, what did Jeff do after he left the Today Show?

SPEAKER_14 24:58

After the Today Show, I worked the morning show of David Letterman, and that was the first time he was on air. 10:30 in the morning. Lasted four months, and the show went off the air. But they kept him on contract until 1981 when they started late night. Tonight show was 11:30, 12:30 was the late show with David Letterman, and I moved out of Another World soap opera to 30 Rock, where Letterman's show was being produced, and I worked that for 10 years. And then in 1992, he moved to CBS, and I stayed at NBC in New York, and I did Kona for three months, and that's when the spot opened on nightly news, and Brocot chose me, so I said, Let me get out of entertainment, which is a lot of work, and get into news, which was less work, but less interesting, of course.

SPEAKER_10 25:59

Well, Jeff might have left the entertainment world with NBC. He definitely didn't with Ridge Corral. And I was curious, what were the financial logistics of running Ridge Corral, whether in the early years as a singing chorus or in the later years as a full-fledged theater group?

SPEAKER_14 26:13

These kind of groups are not for profit and require a 501c, which is tax exempt status. And as a community group, in order to get grants, which is where the income came in, partially, you had to be a 501c. So we applied, and any money we make is not taxable. As the years went on, they became more lucrative. The last grant we got was at the reunion show, and the city council gave us $10,000. Back in the early days, there'd be $2,000, $3,000. That plus the gate where the audience would come in and pay $20 a head. That didn't change too much. It's funny, Marianne would always say to me, You're charging too much money. I said, but $20? I can't charge less than that. The grants don't cover. I think the most we ever charged was $25. But that's where the income came, the gate from charging tickets. We would maybe bring in 500 people a show, and we would do three shows over two weekends, or six shows over two weekends, three on one, three on the other. Private donations came in occasionally. When we would perform for somebody, like I remember doing a Smokey Joe's Cafe, actually, for the AARP, which was doing a dinner at Barridge Manor. And they hired us to come in and perform. So there was a fee there that really covered only the band. Performers never got money. I never got any money out of it. And the only people we'd have to pay in would be the small shows like Smokey's seven-piece band. If it was a big theater production like Les Mes, it would be a 20-piece orchestra. So that's where the overhead was. Orchestra, the auditorium, the rights. And of those three areas, we would have to bring in enough money through the grants, through the gate, and through private donations. And we did pretty well. There was never really a time where we were out of money and had to come up with something else. There was always money in the Treasury. And that's because the performers, they were volunteers pretty much, as I was.

SPEAKER_10 28:39

I don't know that people realize, for example, Lem is when the rights opened up for a year to do that show. You don't get to just call them up and say, I'd like to put this show. Now, occasionally something like that will happen, but you have to buy the ability, you're leasing the rights to run this program. So for those who don't know, and the exact figures don't necessarily matter, but in the ballpark, how much does something like Le Miz cost to run six shows for?

SPEAKER_14 29:06

So they figure it out by numbers of shows times the maximum seating. The math would be 500 seats times uh six shows. And then they would come up with, as I recall back then, 2013, cost us $8,000 for the rights. So the rights and the orchestra were the big nut that we had to cover over the years of performing. And Les Miz was one of the biggest. Now I'm finding out that showboat overall would probably cost us around $45,000. Now the rights have doubled, I'm told.

SPEAKER_10 29:46

Jeff's longtime right-hand person was none other than Karen Tadros, president of Bay Ridge Cares, who I interviewed in the fall of 2025.

SPEAKER_05 29:55

His shows are, like I said, extravaganza, and so we're talking full pit. So three musicals had 24 people in the pit, we hired 24. We did shows nobody else could tackle. Miss Saigon, we flew a helicopter in. We were the only ones to get the rights to Lay Mes. But then we did things like, you know, Mary Poppins, and we actually hired Fly by Floyd to come in and actually fly her. So we did the things that a small community theater company would never even think of doing. You know, the opportunities that Jeff gave me as a producer were extraordinary. And so I'm always grateful for that.

SPEAKER_10 30:36

I'm gonna leave it here with Jeff for now because next time on the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast, we'll cover how important the community in community theater is, while highlighting the white whale that Jeff always wanted to produce. He finally got the chance in 2013.

SPEAKER_14 30:50

The reason they opened up for one year is that I believe that film was such a bomb that they needed to increase their revenue. So they opened up to local theater. There was an outfit in Staten Island. They got it first for some reason. And we were actually refused the rights to Le Miz the first time we applied, and they had already given it to Staten Island. They said, Well, we're not giving it to the boroughs. And I said, What do you mean? You just gave the rights to Staten Island. And I said, Well, what would you do for your community through this performance? How are you going to help the community? And I said, Well, if you give us the rights, we'll put on a show for a fee of maybe $20 a head or $25 the most, to provide an inexpensive way for the community to see almost Broadway. I'm not going to say we're Broadway quality. We don't have the money to be Broadway quality to hire the people that do it. But we come pretty close. So my answer to them was we're providing a service, an artful service, for the community to come to at a reasonable price. And people can't afford Broadway anymore.

SPEAKER_10 32:35

Interested in advertising your business on the Bay Ridge Digest podcast? Get in touch with me at James at the Wallbreakers.com. Now, enjoy this teaser for Burning Gotham. What's Burning Gotham? It's an historically accurate audio fiction soap opera set in 1835 in New York City. I created, produced, directed, and co-wrote it. The first eight episodes are out anywhere you get a podcast or at Burning Gotham.com. Episodes are ten to fifteen minutes in length. Burning Gotham made the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival as an audio selection. Right now, experience New York City like you've never before.

SPEAKER_07 33:17

The speculation is out of control. The whole economy is going to complete Will you make the right deal?

SPEAKER_11 33:29

Memories are short in New York. If you don't make a fortune, someone else will.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

I know you've been bringing rosemary into port illegally. I have eyes and ears and noses and tongues everywhere.

SPEAKER_10 33:43

Or fall to greed.

SPEAKER_11 33:44

If I was caught with diamonds at any time, any time, my sister and I would have been getting raped and murdered. I do this for you. Look at what we got here, Britta.

SPEAKER_12 33:54

Looks like we caught us a dandy and a whore, all alone on South Street with nowhere to find. Ain't that right, boy?

SPEAKER_10 34:03

But whatever you choose, there's the choice. You just always make the same choice. Don't work for yourself. Just make sure you get out in time. Out now on your favorite podcast app. Burning Gotham, the 2022 Tribeca Select Audio Soap Opera. About the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it. To find out more, go to Burning Gotham.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

I'll show Michael Price how he behaved.

SPEAKER_10 34:58

Hello everybody. It's Murr, Frederick Fred Friday, back with another popular joke section here on the Bay Ridge Digest Pocket, Episode 15, Producer. Episode 15, Freddy owner. It's me, James, your producer, who's the host of the show that everybody knows. Yeah, I know, I know. Tell them why we're here. Well, before our jokes, we'd like to mention the Itty Bitty Kitty Bay Ridge Cat Rescue. If you stop into Henry Hardy's at 9314 Third Avenue and donate 25 bucks, you can get a free t-shirt for helping to save these cats. And all proceeds go to vet visits, cat food, and supplies. Yeah, you can also go to their website, you know, what is it? It's ittybittykitty ny.org. Yeah, donate that way too, people. And I hear that t-shirt shipping is available, right? T-shirt shipping is available, yeah. So to see more of the cats they're helping, where do they go? You can visit the Instagram page at ittybitttykitty nybayridge. Yeah, you know. You've stepping in there and uh helping out more than normal. Well, you know, these PSAs, they're important. You know, you gotta say bikitties. So what's going on this week, Freddy? Well, I tell you, I really need a vacation, people. I'm working all the time, you know. You're working all the time. It was just Memorial Day, so I got a couple of jokes. One is a Memorial Day and a couple of spring ones, and well, spring one maybe, and we'll end with uh, you know, a little bit of a traveling snowbird kind of like joke, you know? Oh yeah? Yeah. Well, you ready? Yeah, I'm ready, people, listen. So a Memorial Day joke, you know. This is respectful, you know. Why did the chef get a big promotion in the armor? Why did the chef get a big promotion in the army? Yeah, why did the chef get a big promotion in the armor? Oh, I don't know, Freddy. Well, pay attention then, I'll tell you. So why did the chef get a big promotion in the armor, purple? Because he was always whipping up a battalion of flavors. And we salute the troops. Okay, Freddy. And we've been getting a lot of rain, you know. Uh the week before Memorial Day weekend, you know, last week at this time, it was four days in a row, like 95 degrees, you know, disgusting weather, honestly. And then here come Memorial Day and get what? 57 and rainy. Oh weekend, even more disgusting in a different way, you know? Okay? Are you a weatherman? No, I'm telling you, I gotta I gotta joke tailor to that. What did the bee put on before he went out in the rain? What did the bee put on before he went out in the rain? Yeah, what did he put on? I don't know what. His yellow jacket. You like that one, you know it's cute. I bet you're gifted. Oh, this guy can't guess nothing. So you had one more joke for us? Yeah, I got one more joke. Listen, people. This is for all you people out there thinking about going down to Florida. You know, what's a snow day in Florida, people? What's a snow day in Florida? Yeah, because I really need a vacation. What's a snow day in Florida? Well, this seems like something we should say in the winter. No, what's a snow day in Florida? I don't know, Freddie. What's a snow day in Florida, people? When the ice machine at the bar breaks. Okay, Freddie. Wasting away and my read of you. Oh boy, Freddie. I love when I exasperate my already tired producer. Play us out. Okay. If you'd like us to mention a specific animal rescue center, please email at bayridge digest at gmail.com or DM at Bayridge Digest on Instagram. Yeah, you know, like Dr Sean Casey. You know, the Sean Casey Animal Shelter, there are no Kyo shelters. Maybe we should reach out to them. Yeah, maybe we should. You can also see my archives of jokes and stories at Freddy Friday StoryFuntime on Instagram and at Freddy Friday on YouTube. Yeah, and Freddie spells his name F-R-E-D-D-I-E. Yes, that's right, like Freddie Mercury, you know. So until next time, Freddie. Yeah, until next time, this was episode 15. I think we're late for a barbecue or something, we gotta go. I guess we do. Well, you know what I always say, people. Toodos to the one you love. Give him a big hug today, and toodos. And listen, toodos to all those who serve too. We love you.

SPEAKER_18 39:05

Oh, these poor kids.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

I'm waiting for them to maybe say, hmm, you were leaving us on our own, maybe a little bit too early. And then I could say, yes, I probably was, because birth happens whenever it happens. I wonder about how my work is going to play out in their young adulthood lives until you know adulthood, because these two things aren't separate. Pre-COVID, my interviews were in my home and my children were there. My children were meeting the families that I worked for, and could ask questions now. When I tell them that I'm at a birth, they'll ask me, is it the first baby? Because that'll help them to predict what time I might be home. Because they understand that the first labor is the longest, the seconds the fastest, the thirds are reset. And they'll always ask me how she's doing. How many centimeters is she? And they've been asking that since they're like eight and nine and ten years old, which is pretty fun and awesome.

SPEAKER_10 40:10

When we were last with Carrie Evers, we spoke to her about growing up in Bay Ridge, her home births, becoming a doula in 2008, and establishing herself in the community. During COVID, Carrie became part of the New York Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, which established the first on-site doula team.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Now I had already been texting anybody whose number I had on the staff there. I would never take advantage, but I was saying if there's anything I can do, I understood that we were not going into hospitals at that point. And I got a text message from Roseanne Seminara of the Parksalt Midwives. And she said, if there was a dual position here, would you work here? And then I wrote yes. And then I remembered the pit in my stomach. Because I was like, oh my gosh, am I gonna go into a hospital right now? Within about 10 days, I was on the labor and delivery floor at Methodist, full-time job. I went right up to Roseanne, and Roseanne looked at me and I looked at her, and then she said, Do me a favor, figure out how this is gonna work. I'm the lead duela there. I was the first one hired, and I was able to help train the other duelers on like how this would work really well within this situation. And we had wonderful representation, which was also a very powerful thing. We made sure that we had duelers from as many different cultures and background. Altogether, there were nine duelers hired. After sort of the wave of COVID, and when things started going back to normal, we were dropped. And at that same time, people had actually rated us or did these HCAPs from the hospitals, and they were writing about us, and then top people were hearing about this doula program, and then they asked me to come back. We've become not fully 24-7 just yet, but we were able to hire some really good, strong, amazing, hardworking, awesome, beautiful doolas that are on staff there. There's nothing like that happening anywhere, and I think it should be everywhere.

SPEAKER_10 42:26

What is your relationship with the hospital today? Obviously, if you're running a business, so you're not full-time.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

No. So I'm per diem at NYP Brooklyn Methodist. I'd be at Methodist probably right now from seven days a week. Now I'm down to two days a week.

SPEAKER_10 42:44

That business Carrie's running, it's the Brooklyn Birth Shop at 185 Marine Avenue. Carrie will tell you she's in the business of helping you have the birth you want to have, whether that's at home or in a hospital.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

A lot of my clients were taking classes and then sharing the information with me as we were trying to build the birth plan, let's say, right? I found myself saying, oh no, that's not gonna happen. Or, oh no, your provider doesn't do that. Or no, actually, your hospital that doesn't happen anymore ever. So my classes and this space here is very particular to just New Yorkers, right? And I mean everybody. It doesn't matter if you've been here a year or your whole life. I think everybody's a New Yorker. And I want to give you guys the information of what's happening in New York City hospitals, not what's happening in other states or or what you heard from a best friend somewhere else.

SPEAKER_10 43:35

So the space itself, how long were you looking? What was it about this space that you said, oh, this is one I can work on?

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Underneath it all, like I'm a hardcore Jesus lover. I love Jesus, I love everything that Jesus stands for, and I wish that I could love and care for people from that same place that He does with just completely open heart and understanding. So I as a Christian. Christian in that sense, I kind of just said to myself, okay, I'm gonna reach out to the people that I know that possibly have spaces or know the realtors. The rents were wild and really, really, really like it broke my heart. And I wanted to be up here. I wanted to be on Third Avenue and I wanted to be in Bay Ridge. But the rents were wild. They were super, super high for very small spaces, and I was super discouraged, and I was just over it and I didn't care anymore. And I was giving up. And I was also very lucky to have Doris Tiedeman with me. She does a lot of my behind the scenes work, all my admin stuff. We work together. She's a private chef. Families that I work for then hire her as their chef. But I was like, I'm giving up. And then one night I was kind of half asleep, half awake, and I very much feel like I heard that I was gonna walk to work or something. And my thoughts of being just disappointed, I feel like I very much feel like I heard God say, like you're gonna walk to work. I live on 93rd Street. Just a little bit after that, I decided to get on Craigslist. Which no woman in her right mind would ever look for anything on Craigslist in the year 2025, right? That would be like, when do you want to die? When do you want to get murdered down a dog alley? Kind of a thing. But I looked on Craigslist and this space was available. So I reached out immediately, emailed immediately. I looked at the space within two days, and it was 38 years untouched, I guess. The agreement for the lease, it was as is. And I had no idea how I was gonna do it, but I did it.

SPEAKER_10 45:47

So when I walked into Carrie's sunny ground floor office, the first thing I noticed was the warm light peach-colored walls in the main space. There's exposed brick and abstract expressionist art, juxtaposed with green plants and solid-colored furniture. So where did the interior design inspiration come from?

SPEAKER_03 46:03

So there's a couple of things that were really important to me, especially that I'm from Bay Ridge, and especially that I've had such and I still have such incredible men in my life. My dad, my brothers, my brother-in-laws, great guy friends that I've grown up with and that I've stayed friends with over the years, and then people in my life that I met. A lot of pregnancy birth stuff sort of cuts them out. Over the years in my work, I watched how when a man could step into that space, what a difference that that made for the woman, and what it really took for a man to do that. And that was a lot. That wasn't easy for a fella to be able to say, what's happening to the woman I love, they want it to stop. It looks like it's pain, it looks like she's scared, it looks like a lot of things. And in so many ways, that's what it's been portrayed as and what it becomes, right? We kind of watch things on TV or we hear people's stories, and then we play that out in our own labor sometimes when we don't feel loved and safe and cared for. So it's very easy for that to happen. And when a man could, whether it was put aside the need to be the man, it takes a lot for a fella to step in and say, I'm actually okay with everything that's happening. I'm looking at my dual. And a lot of it was work with each other, right? It was just this openness. And I'm very lucky that partners felt that they can feel that way with me. So I'm building off of that. So when I would encourage a sweetheart to lean into maybe something that he wasn't sure why he was thinking those thoughts, to say them out loud during the labor because that was only going to help her. And for women, if they feel this disconnect from their sweethearts and partners, they'll spend more time in labor. Part of this space was to really help men feel welcomed. I want the chairs and the couches to feel like a man can sit on that and be comfortable and rest his body from all day work and feel like he's not taking too much space up or that this isn't a space for him. So that's why I went to Bob's Furniture. Bob's is great. My dad was telling me, and again, my dad being a big guy, my dad has always loved Bob's furniture. I would have never wanted, I didn't furnish my own home with Bob's furniture, right? I wanted particular things for myself. But when it came to kind of making everybody comfortable, and then the colors for me, pink is my actual favorite color. And growing up and being a tomboy for most of my life, it's only in my last few years that I've been able to go with it. I'm gonna paint the whole place a beautiful, like you said, peach pink color. Obviously, there's like a psychology to the color too. This is a very calming color for people. So everybody has a level of anxiety and nervousness and excitement when they're coming into a new space and meeting new people or gonna talk about something like birth. So I want people to feel calm and centered. Every piece of furniture has an intention behind it to also help women to when they go home during the birth education class. I actually say, you see the way you're sitting, it kind of actually encourages women to sit up versus kind of tilting back or slouched, and that's really important in your pregnancy to get the baby to be in a particular position within the pelvis. I was also very lucky. Doris again just has an eye for beauty. So a lot of this is also Doris giving me her opinion and her suggestions because I wouldn't have even picked green, and everybody loves the green.

SPEAKER_10 49:41

So, what are some of the courses Carrie is offering?

SPEAKER_03 49:46

So, right now we're offering a Brooklyn birth education class, and that's like an intensive. So that's four hours, and in four hours, I'm gonna teach you all the ways that you can have a baby. I provide snacks and drinks and all the good stuff, and it's one of the things that I'm looking forward to because I want to connect people to each other in the community because a lot of times you people meet their like best friends in birth classes. I offer a doula dad class. Some families are not gonna want to hire doulas, some families are not ready to dive into that kind of maybe extreme of like birth stuff. So I have a class where dads can just bring your own beer, bring your own drink, and we're gonna hang out, and you can ask me anything. I'll tell you what really happens in birth. I'll tell you when to maybe feel a little bit like, okay, this isn't really awesome. Maybe we should, you know, head to the hospital, kind of a thing. But I'll teach you all like my tricks of the trade and how to be supportive during the birth experience and also how to experience the birth yourself. Because this is the same experience, but two different experiences for a woman and a man. So I prepare them and I help them to be like myself, two steps ahead of everything. You know, I don't think men know, but they're the strongest source of oxytocin for a woman, and oxytocin is actually what dilates the uterus. The uterus will contract and do a lot of things, but the dilation is super important. And a man's presence alone increases the amount of oxytocin, and then the touch, and then the words, and then all of those things. So I really want to help them be able to help their wives and their sweethearts. So I teach that class. We also have an incredible CPR instructor, Jason Mundy. He's been doing infant CPR for I think over 20 years in New York City. So we have infant CPR classes, and then he also helps families learn about how to put a baby in a car seat, which is again super, super important. And then we have newborn care classes taught by an incredible post bottom doula, Tina. She's actually out in Park Slope, but she'll come out here for us. She'll teach families how to just, you know, not be afraid of having a newborn and to actually be able to like look in and lean into all the incredible things that are gonna happen in that newborn stage, because it is the shortest stage of everything. And I'm training doulas, and then I have nurse to do a training for the professional women that are nurses that also want to maybe look into being doulas. And I, you know, you can email me and we could do a zoom, and I can help you find the right provider for the experience that you want, like a where to give birth or who to give birth with. And then I do lactation classes as well.

SPEAKER_10 52:27

To find out more, please go to Brooklynbirthshop.com. You can follow on Instagram at Brooklyn Birth Shop. And the Brooklyn Birth Shop is at 185 Marine Avenue, just off Third Avenue. It was a major maritime competition held annually in the narrows of the Bay Ridge. The race was established in 1927 by the Neptune Association. It was to promote maritime safety and celebrate seamanship. Usually sponsored by the International Lifeboat Racing Association and the City of New York, it was typically held on or around Memorial Day. I'd like to turn your attention to an article in the May 1st, 1956 edition of the New York Times called Thousand Sea First U.S. Victory Since 1939 in Lifeboat Race Here. A sturdy rowing crew from the American flag tanker SO Brooklyn brought lifeboat racing honors back to this country yesterday. The international competition was held over a one-mile course in the Narrows off Bay Ridge. Thousands line the Brooklyn Shore to witness the event. Others in excursion boats and private craft cheered the eight crews, most of whom had to pull the difficult route twice. In recent years, the race has tended to become the private property of Norwegian cargo seamen. The last time an American crew won the event was in 1939, when the seamen from the tanker WC Teagle of the Standard Oil Company took the trophy. Another American team took second place yesterday. It was from the Naval Transport General R. M. Blatchford. The crew had won the first heat at 130 against teams from the Transport General Harry Taylor, and the Norwegian motorships Libravil and Haina. In the second heat an hour later, the SO Brooklyn won against the Norwegian C Bonnet, the Swedish motorship Breholm, and the American Transport General Simon B. Buckner. In the final race, the three leaders of the two preliminaries competed. Five others finished behind the SO Brooklyn. The name of the winning crew ship will be engraved on the Perpetual Cup, the J.W. Powell Trophy. Each of the eight men and their Coxwain Robert Mayer, an able seaman on the tanker, received an engraved gold watch. After the race, prizes were presented on the 69th Street pier by Miller G. Gamble, president of the Esso Shipping Company, Granville Conway, president of the Cosmopolitan Shipping Company, Guy De Burke, Director of the French line in this country, and Rear Admiral Charles L. Austin, retired, assistant vice president of Istmayen Lines, Inc. All were members of the 1956 Race Committee. The race is sponsored by the International Council on Seaman's Recreation Port of New York to foster interest in seamanship and in the role of shipping in the port and in international affairs. By the early 1960s, a combination of declining shipping industry sponsorship, logistical disruptions from New York Harbor modernizations, and the rapid obsolescence of traditional rowing lifeboats were endangering the competition. After the 1963 race, shipping lines, facing tightening budgets and shifting corporate priorities, pulled their financial backing. When the race was canceled ahead of the May 1964 event, industry experts predicted it would never return. Thus far, they've been correct.

SPEAKER_13 57:08

We are running a special, so it's our $99 special. You get three sessions and you get the in-body assessment, you get a consultation with me, which reviews the in-body, and you get a nutritional analysis. We go over that, and then we get three personalized sessions. And if you want to continue after that, which most people do, they like it. I'm not tooting my own horn here, but they do because what they like is the space, they like that it's one-on-one, they like that they can work out and no one's around them, crowded around them, or you know, watching them. So if you're that kind of person who is looking for that, if you're the kind of person who you feel your body has changed and you just don't know what to do, or you don't know how to work out, if you have a daughter that you would like to become physically fit, or she would like to become physically fit, but you know, she doesn't feel comfortable working out at the gym, come see us. We're here and we're here for you. We'd love to have a chat. To make an appointment, you can visit our website at immighty.as.me. Or if you're in the neighborhood, you can stop in. I'm not here all the time, but you can give your information to the front desk. Usually it's Bianca, and Bianca will send me a referral link. But again, it's immighty.as.me, and there's a link for a consultation. Fill it out, and I will get back to you immediately. The social is Instagram and that's at Mighty Functional Fitness, and that's the prime social. So check us out. You'll see some pictures, you'll see some videos, but check us out.

SPEAKER_15 59:01

I was doggably writing when I could and submitting and getting hundreds of rejections, and then every once in a while I get an acceptance. A couple of times I would branch out from just writing short stories and fiction for literary magazines, and I would try teaching magazines. I got a couple of pieces in a thing published by the National Council of Teachers of English. And then it really wasn't until I retired you know, a friend who was a writer said, try this place, the Washington Independent Review of Books. They published book reviews. I wrote to them and said, Hey, do you have something you will let me review? I think they just were sort of like, Yeah, we have hundreds of things, so send him one and see if he can do it. And I did it well enough. So I do that now and I've branched out and reviewed things for other publications. I've published a couple of things that are not reviews for the independent, the Washington Independent Review books. How much money does a writer not make? So the independent that publishes my reviews recently doubled my salary from $25 each to $50 each. So if I could write a thousand reviews a year, I could make a middle class, you know, or a lower middle class salary. And so it really is that teaching pension that's the key to this.

SPEAKER_10 1:00:18

When we were last with John P. Loonham, he spoke about his time growing up on Long Island, moving to New York City in the 1980s, and becoming a teacher. He retired in 2019 and is now able to write full-time. His latest collection, The Price of Their Toys, is available at the bookmark shop at 8415 Third Avenue. It's a series of semi-autobiographical, semi-anecdotal, and semi-fictional chronological coming-of-age tales, often marked by loneliness and disillusionment. In one story, the main character finds out that post-Watergate Richard Nixon has rented a New York office in the building he works.

SPEAKER_15 1:00:58

So I have to say that one I give all the credit to my friend Bob Monterra. He is the young man in that. The young man that I've written is nothing like my friend Bob. But he went to work for a law firm and discovered that Richard Nixon had moved into the building and obsessively attempted to meet him until the Secret Service convinced him, you really can't do this. And he tells it as a very funny story. But at a certain point in my life or in my writing, I was kind of like, what's the difference between a story you like to tell and a short story that's written and published? There are a couple of them in here that I began to try to work out and say, Let me see if I can transition this. So the character is much more like I was at that age. Lost. Counterculture, but not in a way that was leading me someplace productive. I was just kind of like, What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. And the Secret Service did not punch Bob. But I wanted to. But did he be breaks in eventually? No, he didn't submit eventually. So I created that. Oh, and then the other thing, for some reason, that story that Bob was telling came to me at a point where I was fascinated with the sculptor Richard Serra, who did that tilted arc sculpture that was so controversial. And so I was like, oh, I could put those two things together. And get Richard Nixon commenting on art, which was I thought, oh, that would be fun, sure. My brother, who is more counterculture than me, his comment on that story was, I didn't really think you could make Nixon sympathetic, and I don't really sympathize with him, but maybe reading your story that's as close as I'm gonna come. So I took that as a compliment.

SPEAKER_10 1:02:40

Two stories that stood out to me were the unexamined life. It's about a divorced man struggling to stay deeply connected with the world around him, and make the man about a widower having trouble moving on, despite his daughter's insistence, while he simultaneously notices his neighbor losing a battle with dementia.

SPEAKER_15 1:02:58

In the last story, the neighbor who is suffering from dementia by the end of the story, he has really lived his life as a tough guy and pushed people away as if that is a virtue, and come to discover that's not a virtue.

SPEAKER_10 1:03:13

There's something about that story also. You wrote, door flying open as Catherine jumps out from the driver's seat and Michael from the passengers, the two staring at their fathers, asking each other what's happening. But you may get a point throughout that story that Catherine and Michael have been no longer for quite some time, but that she has something to tell the father, and then they get out of the car together at the end. Yes. Which is obviously a conscious choice.

SPEAKER_15 1:03:38

So what are you inferring? Mostly I just wanted it as a subplot. So here is this man, his wife has died, who's sort of at the end of his life and facing a life of loneliness. And that question, what's happening? What's happening is the arc of life. Do you know the saddest song ever written? I think is the Jason Isabel song, If We Were Vampires? I don't know what your relationship status is, but make sure it's healthy before you listen to the song. And he's writing to his wife and saying, in the course of events, we'll get to stay together for maybe four years. But one of us is gonna die first and the other is gonna have to be alone. And I remember consciously thinking when I was falling in love with my wife, and giving myself over for that, how dangerous that was. I was an atlas instilled, but thinking, oh, there's a certain safety in that alone thing. You're not gonna lose anybody if you never have anybody, and saying, Oh, if I give myself over to loving this person, something terrible might happen. So the story of the unexamined life that's in here, the two divorced men who are they're kind of filling themselves up with, like, oh, let's go to the best sushi parlors. We can live this wonderful life unattached. And the narrator's sort of realizing this sucks. Divorce means freedom to some people, but I think it mostly means loneliness at some point. Especially if you've been codependent. The ending of that story was very difficult to write. Because I'm aware one of the privileges of teaching English is kids write things and you get to see parts of their lives. And I had a number of students over the years, female students, who wrote about just the phenomenon of men on the street saying things to them. So I wanted that character, the narrator, he's not coming onto her, he's not hitting on her. But he is presuming an intimacy. He feels like he has the right to be intimate with her about something. And it was easy for me to make her friend, you know, just like, just fuck off, go away. I wanted the person he refers to as the Catherine, who he says reminds him of his door. I wanted her response to be a little bit more complicated and recognize okay, you're not hitting on me. This is not sexual. But it's still totally inappropriate and totally unwelcome. And so I felt like ultimately she has to be maybe nasty, but certainly firm. Like, no, we've gone as far as we're gonna go. But I wanted her to be maybe a little kinder in the beginning. Like, go ahead, I'll give you a little space. And then when he pushes her, you could be friends with my daughter, like just a weird fantasy. She says, No, no, you don't have any idea what your daughter is going through, you don't have any idea what I'm going through. You think you have the right to impose your thoughts on other people, but you don't. I rewrote that section over and over and over again to try to find the right level of her response.

SPEAKER_10 1:06:40

In the last story, I found the daughter to be very callous by having the main character comment that even his late wife felt that she was a little too systematic. And the question that I had about the two children getting out of the car together was because it seemed that she did not like that this guy was a dreamer.

SPEAKER_15 1:07:02

What I'm going for is that they are together, that she is very logical and practical, and pushing her father to be less emotional about these things, and has previously found this guy to be too dreamy. But dreamy is also attractive to her in the same way that it was to him. And so what I'm thinking is these are two men who are going, what's happening? We're alone, and these are two other people who are starting the story that's going to end them up where these two men are. They have now decided to overcome their differences and be together. And that's happy until it's not. What I'm hoping for is as you're reading it, when he calls her, she repeats some things he says about the man across the street. And he says, I realize there's another person in the room. You won't think that's important, but that when you find out they're together at the end, you realize, oh, when he said Michael Cangjano's father is not wearing shoes, she's turning to Michael Cangiano saying, Your father is not wearing shoes.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:03

Yeah, and then he does call and say, Oh, it's worse than you thought.

SPEAKER_15 1:08:06

Yeah, you know. So that they have been together throughout this, and he's the father and has just been clueless.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:12

One other story that really hit me was say a few words. It's about a young professional eulogist who falls in love with a dying woman in her 30s after hiring him to speak about her at her upcoming funeral.

SPEAKER_15 1:08:25

I had a period in my life where I said like four eulogies in 18 months, and it was relatives, my mother, a close friend, a variety of people. It's just an overwhelming topic. So I would walk off the stage or the altar feeling like I had failed. I didn't get it. It was bigger than I was able to get. But the people in what I'll say is the audience, first of all, they are hungry for someone to say something, so they're really predisposed to going with you. And then also, just out of politeness, if they didn't like it, they avoid you. Nobody comes up to you afterwards and says, Yeah, that was in the list. They come up to you and they compliment you. So while I was feeling this tremendous sense of, like, oh, I really blew it, people were saying to me, That was beautiful, thank you very much. And I began to think when I was writing that story that there's something about that that's the condition of art. That you feel like, oh, I didn't quite get it. But somebody else might say, Oh, you did get it. And so that notion of the two stories. At one point while thinking about that, I came up with the opening of like, I don't usually sweep with my clients, notion that he would have this other kind of relationship with someone he was supposed to be writing a eulogy about.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:07

He's arrogant until he's heartbroken. That's right at the end. He doesn't give the eulogy, maybe because one, he can't, and two, because he's maybe an intruder or an imposter in this grieving family that he knows this woman intimately for a very short period of time and doesn't know any of the people that know.

SPEAKER_15 1:10:28

That's right. He has to recognize that he's not the great eulogist that he thought. Right. And that this business of I don't really need to know you, it's only five minutes, I can sketch you out, is airing it. Not just about eulogies, but about human beings.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:44

We'll pick back up with John P. Loone in the next episode of the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast with more about his family and what else he's been working on. You can contact me for a consultation at james at the wallbreakers.com. If you're a regular listener of the Bavers Digest Podcast, you hear everything from the fully produced history segment to wacky jokes. Thanks, Freddy, to narrative interviews. Here's a commercial spot. Special thanks to Brett Solomini for lending his vocal talent. See what else he's been up to at Brett underscore Solomini on Instagram. That's B-R-E-T-T underscore S O L I M I N E.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:09

Hello, sir. You what do you want? You know what I want. How could I possibly?

SPEAKER_09 1:12:20

You're roaming through the city. You have a voice. Use it. I'm trying to use it. Ah but are you using it correctly? What do you mean? Isn't it obvious? Script writing, narrative nonfiction, audio fiction, editing, producing, mixing, directing, acting.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:46

What does this have to do with you following me through the street on a rainy night? Have you utilized any of this?

SPEAKER_09 1:12:55

No. Well then, it's time you launched a podcast, or at least some kind of audio production.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:03

Why would I need to do that?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:05

You're in one already.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:08

I am?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:09

What do you think this is? Stalking! No, you're in my commercial spot. I'm James Scully, I do all these things.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:18

Wait, you mean you wrote, directed, produced, and mixed this?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:22

Yep. Reach me at James at the Wallbreakers.com.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:28

Well do I get paid for my time at least?

SPEAKER_18 1:13:34

I hope you like pepperoni on your pizza.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:45

Hi, my name is Allison Melhoose. I am the owner of Sewing Fashion, located on 278 87th Street. We are a fashion school studio, and I would like to invite you all to my two-year anniversary party on Friday, June 19th from 3 to 6 p.m. We're gonna have a great bedazzle bar for kids to do for free. Adults can do it too if you want to. Everyone is invited. You do not have to be a student to come. There will also be fashion illustration and a lot of other fun treats and beverages. Also, if you're looking for something for your kids to do in the summer, instead of on their screens, you could sign them up for a fashion summer camp. I do have four spots left. They are going fast. Each week is themed with something different, which means different projects every week. They include sewing projects, fashion illustration, jewelry making, and more. You can sign up for camps on sewingfashion.com slash camps. The summer camp is five days a week from Monday through Friday. They start at 8 30 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. Every Friday is a pizza party with fun treats and a movie, which is really fun for the kids to end the week on. And if you're interested in taking weekly classes, they will be released in August for fall enrollment. You can find out more about our classes at sew and fashion.com slash classes. You can give us a call at 267-421-7196. You can find us on Instagram at sewing fashion bk. It is so period and period fashion underscore bk. And we are also on Facebook at sew and fashion bk.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:58

In somebody else's history, we did not have the money to rent our own space or to get our own licenses. And that was also somewhat deliberate to the problem with the whiskey business. There are many problems, but let's just say the major problem with it is that you make it and then you have to age it. From producing your first barrel, which is like filling it with liquid, to selling it is a big multiple years. Multiple years, right. Think about that from a business perspective. Like it means that you have just negative cash flow for multiple years. The only way you can get positive cash flow is by selling your whiskey. But you can't just wait until your barrel's six years old and then sell it and go, oh, they liked it, and then make another barrel and wait for six years. You've got to keep making it whilst you're waiting for your barrel to get old and hope that A, you haven't messed it up, and B that somebody is gonna buy it at the end. Incredibly risky. No other business operates like that. None. So you're making whiskey, then you're making more whiskey, then you're making more, and then eventually you'll sell some whiskey, hopefully. It's bonkers, you know, and convincing an investor to get into this is also somewhat bonkers. But it's also why whiskey companies are very valuable when they're successful. So you can get quite healthy multipliers on your revenues if and when you get the opportunities to sell your business. But we've never been in it for the money, thank God. Because if we were, we would have failed multiple times over.

SPEAKER_10 1:17:41

The first barrel of Ford Hamilton whiskey was filled in February of 2016, and the first bottle poured in September of 2017. These days the Rye market is expanding.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:51

So it was only 18 months old, but it was good 18 months. It was aged in a smaller barrel, which gives you more liquid to surface area ratio. You get more maturation in a shorter period of time. The steam generators right here in Industry City, the big pipes in the courtyard, heat these buildings during the winter, so our barrels are kept at a higher temperature all winter long than they would be if they were just sitting in a field in a barn in upstate New York. We came to market with an 18-month-old whiskey in the fall of 2017, but we kept laying whiskey down. The whiskey we're selling today is whiskey that we've made in pretty much 2020. So we've sold the first three years worth of inventory, I would say, but we've kept a bunch of it back, which is now absolutely delicious and is competitive with any whiskey coming out of anywhere else in the world, I would say. And yeah, it's made right here in New York. And we do it the old-fashioned way. We don't use any corn, we just use rye grain and malted barley, and it's fabulous. That being said, our number one selling whiskey is bourbon, because bourbon sells 15 times more than rye in America. But in the year 2000, basically no rye was sold in America. Zero. But last year, about two million cases of rye whiskey were sold in America. But 30 million cases of bourbon were sold.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:20

Now Fort Hamilton Whiskey occupies a large space in building six of the Industry City Complex. In addition to their distillery, there's a tasting room, saloon room, and library with more to come.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:31

I mean, look, first things first, let's let's acknowledge Amy. My wife and Covan, she is the interior design maven of Fort Hamilton. And without her, you know, everything would look pretty trashy because I'd be in charge. We have this Revolutionary War feel to the brand because we make Revolutionary War style rye whiskey. So Fort Hamilton, the army base, is named after Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of America, who ironically instituted the first ever taxation on America, the whiskey tax, which then actually forced distillers to run away into the mountains in Pennsylvania, and then ultimately keep running all the way down until they got to Kentucky. But ignoring that for a second, Fort Hamilton's name after Alexander Hamilton, his militia, the Hearts of Oak militia, stole the cannons from the British at the Battery, which is where Battery Park is, called the Battery Park because it had a battery of British cannons on it. Took those cannons to George Washington, who then declared they'd be the first artillery company of the American army, and turned the cannons around and started shooting the British, which I'm slightly conflicted about, frankly. Which is why there's a cannon and it's to send a piece of a logo. You know, we knew that the cannon was the thing for Fort Hamilton, and then when it came to the bar, we wanted brass. Shiny, but with that sort of warmth to it. My general manager, Morea, he left and he decided to build the Portali restaurant group with Alfred Portali, formerly of Gotham Bar and Grill. He called me one day. He said, Hey, you're building a bar, right? He said, I've got all these stuff we're getting rid of from the restaurant we're moving into. He said, You want to come take a look? I was like, sure. And walked in and they had a brass bar top. And they clearly paid someone lots of money to build all the decor and the bits and pieces around it. He was like, So we've got all these bar stalls, we've got the high top tables, I've got the hoop lights and everything, and all centered around this brass bar, which is what we had just installed here at brass bar. I said, I love it. How much do you want? He said, give me a thousand bucks. I was like, done. I was there two minutes later in a U-Haul, hacked everything up and brought it over here. Thankfully, we've got some amazing friends who have helped us will fought Hamilton into existence and will forever be indebted to.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:13

During the pandemic, they crafted what's become Fort Hamilton's signature drink, the maple old-fashioned, made with their own barreled maple syrup from the Catskill Mountains, black walnut bitters, and double barrel rye whiskey. They officially opened the tasting room in 2022, and they have comedy nights, live music, and now with a library room, it's easier for them to offer private parties. Tuesday, June 9th is the Battle of Brooklyn cocktail competition.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:42

So there's an industry shindig called the Bar Convent Brooklyn, which is a very big industry event for producers, suppliers, distributors, retailers. Everyone sort of gathers here in Industry City quite conveniently. It happens in early June, and everyone who's relevant in the alcohol world ends up being here for two days. People who are trying to push into the industry, people who are succeeding in the industry, all the players, they're all here. And we happen to be located right here in Industry City. One building over from where the biggest industry event of the year happens in America. We've used it as a platform to grow the brand and just showcase what we do. On Tuesday, we're hosting our Battle of Brooklyn cocktail competition featuring our New World Gin, which is distilled with fresh watermelons, but fresh cucumbers.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:40

If you haven't tried Fort Hamilton gin, by the way, now's the time, as it's perfect for summer. And I'm a gin drinker and a picky one at that. And I keep Fort Hamilton's gin on my bar cart.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:50

Yeah, you like that one? Nice! I like that. Yeah, so we distill that right here in Industry City. It contains watermelons because the Battle of Brooklyn actually started one block from here in a watermelon patch in the Gates Agreement Cemetery, which is where the Red Lion Inn was, surrounded by a watermelon patch when the British landed at what is now Fort Hamilton. They rowed over from Staten Island, where they parked the boat, disembarked at Denise's Ferry, which is still down there. Denise Wharf, right? I think they just put it up again. So then they marched north up what is now Fourth Avenue, got to the Red Lion Inn, which is basically right here, 34th and 4th Avenue. Found the watermelons, surrounded the Red Lion Inn, started stealing them, were busted by the American pickets, who started unlugging their muskets on them, and that's how the Battle of Brooklyn started. So our cocktail competition this year is going to be based on the Fort Hamilton New World Gin. They're still with watermelons and cucumbers. You can absolutely come in. We're open both days. The tasting room was open seven days a week, anyway. So you can come and grab a cocktail at Fort Hamilton anytime that you like, from one o'clock in the afternoon onwards. On the weekends, we also offer tours so you can come and like learn about the history of whiskey in America, taste through all of our products, including our barrel aged maple syrup. You can enjoy a cocktail at a bar. You can just do a tasting fight, just rock up anytime. On the tour, you do get to make your own bottle of whiskey as well, though, which you can then put your name on and personalize, which is kind of unique, and a lot of people enjoy that. And then on the Wednesday of Bar Convent Brooklyn, we're having our famous closing party. Wednesday 5 to 8. Quite a shindig. People have been imbibing most of the day, and then they come and relax at Fort Hamilton afterwards, you know. So we make sure there's plenty to eat as well as drink at that event. So that's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:47

So what has the Fort Hamilton Army Base had to say?

SPEAKER_07 1:25:50

It's funny, I think we put the Facebook page for Fort Hamilton together, and it's probably right at the beginning of 2017. And then, like a few days later, I get this Facebook message. Who are you? What is this? And I was like, uh, who's asking? It was the Fort Hamilton Army Base. It's Trevor who was in charge of the entertainment down there. He said, We need to meet. And I'm like, really? I think I might be in trouble. So he's like, you need to come to the army base, and so I stood outside the army base thinking, is this a trap? Is this what's going on here? But it turns out he just wanted to chat and thought that we could partner up on stuff, which we ended up doing.

SPEAKER_10 1:26:33

Now I know they recently renovated the officers, like there's a bar off. Yes. I've been on beach, but never been to any of the restaurants here.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:40

Okay, yeah. So there's the officers club, which is technically the community club. Anyone can go in there, which is in the old fort. So it's really cool. You walk in and it's like, oh, this is built by thousands and thousands of bricks. It's a real structure. And then you walk around the back and down the stairs and through these little tunnels where you can just fit a cannon through, basically. And then you end up in the officers' club, which has a bar and catering restaurant, and then out onto the lawn, which has views of the Verizana Bridge. It's a beautiful space. We do the July the 4th party down there every year, which I highly encourage everyone from Bay Ridge to get involved with. All you gotta do is sign up in advance, and you can come on the base and see the fireworks going off right next to the Verizana Bridge. It's an unbelievably cool experience.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:36

So, what will the Fort Hamilton Distillery be doing for Independence Day weekend?

SPEAKER_07 1:27:40

As Fort Hamilton brand, like we kind of live that life all day, every day. Our tagline is the spirit that United Estates. And also this year we're working with Declare Independence. Because we're an independent spirits brand, and we're like, you know, why not 250 years of America? We're doing special deals. For liquor stores that can get on a Fort Hamilton train. We're building out displays in stores, windows. We have muskets and telescopes and the Betsy Ross flag, and you'll see our stuff decorating stores around town. So we're doing that sort of thing. You can buy our products online at fortham.com as well. So we're promoting the fact that you can kind of get involved with the Fort Hamilton brand and that independent American story via our website at Forthamilden.com or we'll ship anywhere in America. We've also sold like private barrels to uh store up in Saratoga that's working with the Saratoga 250 organization that celebrates the Battle of Saratoga. But you know, Fort Hamilton is always about American independence. It's not just on July the 4th on the 250th anniversary of America. And what about in Bay Ridge? We're available all over Bay Ridge. At Peppinos, McGovern's, at Henry Hardy's, at Long's, Bay Ridge Wine Spirits. You'll find us out on the streets too. You can find us in restaurants at the corner, tannerine, salty dog. You know, you can get our cocktails all over the place. Come and support us, you know? We're here for it. And we're also here for Bay Ridge. We're going to be doing the Battle of the Bartenders with the Merchants of Third Avenue, where we're sponsoring it with our cucumber vodka, which is super exciting.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:33

Through all of this, where did Alex Namey find the passion and will to keep driving forward?

SPEAKER_07 1:29:38

During this researching the brand and looking for stories that relate to what we do and the Revolutionary War, I was reading a book. There was this explanation of this French term called rage militaire, which is translate directly as military rage or military fire or passion, right? You never really translate everything directly into romantic languages. So you sort of have to get the feeling. And what it is, it's this idea that people who are defending something that they truly believe in have a much higher chance of winning and can do much more damage than the opposition because they truly believe in what it is they're fighting for. And that power is undefinable. You can't buy it, you can't sell it. It exists in your mind, and your world is defined around that. And I feel like what we're doing at Fort Hamilton has some similarities to that. We shouldn't have got as far as we have done. The only reason we have is because of, I believe, this Raj militaire that exists within us. We truly believe that this product that we're making is better than the competition. We make sure every day that it is. It's better quality, it's great pricing, and we believe it should exist. But it's that reason that gets us out of bed in the morning and makes us better and stronger. So, Raj Militaire, we go through walls that we shouldn't go through because we need to. We're trying to do something better than exists right now. It deserves to. And people deserve to have this. And that's why we're outperforming the market. And that's why we're outperforming our competitors, I think. Raj Militare. I think putting ourselves out there, putting ourselves on the line all day, every day, is normal for me. This is it. I don't have anything other than this plan for me. This is my heart, so I would put everything into this. And that's okay. I'm cool with that. The reason that people were revolutionaries is because they wanted to change something.

SPEAKER_10 1:32:14

The Fort Hamilton Distillery is located at 6834th Street in the second floor of Industry City, building six. The tasting room is open seven days a week at 1 p.m. They close at 8 p.m., except Friday and Saturday when they're open till 10. To book a tour, join one of their Greenwood Cemetery tours, book a private event, or see all the public live events they have, please go to Fort Hamilton.com, and you can follow on Instagram at fort.hamilton.distillery.

SPEAKER_16 1:33:20

The winter of 77, when that huge snowstorm hit, we were jumping off the gazebo into big snowdrift piles as if we were like diving into a pool, but we were like jumping into snowdrifts. That's a very distinct memory of just kind of hanging out and having fun. And then it became like when David Letterman started doing his thing of throwing things off a 10-story building. A couple of kids thought, let's do that Letterman bit, because Flag Court's nine stories tall. You used to be able to like sunbathe on the roof and go and hang out on the roof. And they closed it very soon after this. Kids were like stealing shopping carts and throwing them off the roof into the pool, and the sound was deafening. So they kind of had to cut down on the hooliganry.

SPEAKER_10 1:34:14

That was Christine Walters, guest of the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast, episodes 12 and 13, talking about the then-abandoned swimming pool in the Flag Court apartment complex. When the 422 Unit 6 Building Sprawl, designed by Ernest Flagg on Ridge Boulevard, between 72nd and 73rd Street, was completed in 1936. It boasted amenities like a bowling alley, swimming pool, nursery school, and 500-seat auditorium. In order for the tenants to use the pool, they had to pay a fee before the season began. In 1958, it was $15 for an individual and $40 for a family to use the pool for the season. The pool was supposed to open Memorial Day weekend in 1959, as it had every year since 1938. But in 1959, the landlord left the pool empty. Controversy ensued. The Flagcourt Tenants Association filed a multiple tenants application for a decrease in rent, feeling that access to the pool was part of what made Flag Court special. Supposedly, over the two decades, and especially after the end of World War II, seasonal passes for the pool had decreased to the point where the landlord was paying for maintenance out of his own pocket. The landlord's lawyers claimed the pool was a health danger, and 75% of tenants weren't paying for it. Now, the source of the water for the pool was a nearby artisan well, but in 1957 the Department of Health ordered the landlord to close the well. He did, and the next season the water was treated with chlorine and watched on a daily basis. But the landlord feared that any health issues from tenants could make the landlord responsible for substantial monetary damages. So to reopen the pool, the landlord wanted to increase all the rents in the complex. With such a procedure, a new water source supply could be obtained, and then the pool could be used by all the tenants in the building. So what happened? You have to tune into a future episode of the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast to find out.

SPEAKER_18 1:36:14

Oh yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_15 1:36:16

I actually wrote some things down so I wouldn't draw a blank on this. I think first and foremost, I'm gonna plug the bookmark bookstore. They've been very nice to me in stocking my book. But also they've just been great to me as a customer. If you're tempted to go to Amazon, you don't have to. Go to the bookmark website, they'll order the book for you, and they're great. I'm gonna plug the restaurant where it does. Really good. Latin food. And just because I think he's a really nice guy in a nice shop, Anthony's butcher shop, also on Third Avenue.

SPEAKER_10 1:36:54

Next time on the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast, we welcome in a month of gatherings with good food, good mental stimulation, and most importantly, good community. The reading material used in today's episode included articles from the Bay Ridge Home Reporter, GreatWar.co.uk, the New York Daily News, The New York Times, PoetryFoundation.org, and veterans.gc.ca. Thank you to the guests. Alex Clark, Anna from Annabella Pizza Cafe, Carrie Evers, John P. Lunham, Alison Melhuse, Victoria Salerno, Jeff Samaha, Karen Tadros, and Christine Walters. Coming in June, the Bay Ridge Digest Weekly Monday Morning Roundup Email. It'll feature upcoming Bay Ridge events, local classifieds restaurant rec's human interest, and other Bay Ridge happenings. Want to sign up for this and find out more? Please do so at the completely revamped Bay RidgeDigest.com. For more info on how to submit a story lead, please go to BayridgeDigest.com. You can also get in touch by emailing Bayridge Digest at gmail.com. So until June 11th, my name is James Scully. This has been the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast episode 15. And I'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much.