Left to right: Primo (James ‘Primo’ Grant) and John (John Diaz) talk business on the court. (Photo: Nathan Fitch)
Keith Miller’s latest film grew out of his 2011 short, “Gang Bangin’ 101.” In that two-minute doc, James “Primo” Grant – a burly, bearded Brooklyn native who works as a bouncer at a Bed-Stuy nightclub – spoke frankly about joining the East New York Bloods when he was 12 and eventually becoming a five-star general in what he calls the “brotherhood.”
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(Photos: Sherry Hseih) Gail Busche, co-owner of Archangel Antiques.
Normcore is Gail Busche’s nightmare. Ask the co-owner of Archangel Antiques to describe each decade’s fashion in a word or two and she doesn’t hesitate: “’20s short, ’30s slinky, ’40s strong, ’50s elegant, ’60s fun, ’70s out there.” But after that? “The ‘80s was so bad I was happy I could still wear ’40s. And after that, there was no style.”
The East Village store plans to close in June. Busche, 75, and partner and co-owner Ricahrd Cullen, 71, say they can’t keep up with a rent increase and competition with other nearby clothing shops. Back in August 2012, Cullen told The Local East Village that Archangel’s then-rent of $4800 had sextupled since the couple first occupied 334 E. 9th Street.
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(Photo: Sherry Hsieh)
One look at Alex Gabriel McKanze and it’s obvious he’s a musician: the tall, lanky 22-year-old has shoulder-length brown hair and a tattoo of the solar system on his right arm. But he isn’t your stereotypical Bushwick rocker: raised in the Paris suburbs by an American father with Cherokee blood and an Italian mother with Gypsy blood, he’s fluent in five languages (and knows a little Portuguese and Latin, to boot). And as a freelance tour guide for Great New York Tours, he’s a walking encyclopedia. Even with a hangover, he can tell you that Henry Hudson discovered the Hudson River in 1609 (adding snidely, “Because the Native Americans obviously never saw it before”).
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The new location of Steve’s Key Lime Pies.
Steve Tarpin remembers the night that Hurricane Sandy destroyed his beloved Red Hook bakery, Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies. “By 6 p.m. the water was lapping up at my feet,” he recalls. “And we were still three hours away from high tide… I came back around 2:30 a.m., and had to drive through a fair bit of water. Took a quick look and realized there was absolutely nothing I could do. Came back in the morning, we were about three feet underwater.”
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