Author Archives: philippetheise

The Muslim Journeys Bookshelf Comes to QCC

In early 2013, Queensborough Community College acquired the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf, a collection of resources intended to educate the American public about historical figures and current issues throughout the Muslim world. QCC students and professors respond to and discuss the collection, and what it means for Muslim students. Continue reading

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Letting Nature Take Its Course: Listening to Brad Hargett and Crystal Stilts

This piece dates from fall 2013. Issue an album called “Nature Noir” and you never know how nature might respond. Crystal Stilts, the veteran psych-pop band from Brooklyn, struck celestial gold: just before its record-release show at Other Music on … Continue reading

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As Rents Rise, Gallerists Find Ways to Show Art in Greenpoint

This piece was submitted for class in March 2013. Calico, one of the featured galleries in it, opens “Rare Forms,” the first show in its new space at 67 West Street, tonight. Fowler Arts Collective’s gallery has “Who’s Taylor Swift … Continue reading

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New Age Compilation a Labor of Love

Douglas Mcgowan, the head of Yoga Records, spent years preparing for the making of “I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990,” a 3-album box set. Here’s the story of how he and his partner at Light in the Attic records did it. Continue reading

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A Fire on Cole Street, and a Boom in San Francisco

In 1999, my college friends and I moved into an apartment in the progressive community of Jamaica Plain in Boston. Some of us stayed on the east coast, and some of us moved to San Francisco. I eventually followed the latter group, and after living for a time in a single occupancy hotel in the Hayes Valley neighborhood, I joined some friends in a house in the Haight-Ashbury district.

Amidst the afterglow of the hippie movement in the late sixties and the collapse of the dotcom bubble the year before, my roommates and I worked at various jobs in the service industry. We were neither hippies nor hipsters, just people who were interested in “striving for realization of one’s relationship to life and other people,” to borrow a principle that the owner of The Blue Unicorn, a coffee shop near the strip of park called the Panhandle, printed on leaflets in the mid-sixties.

We had plenty of problems along the way. Drug use, food addiction, notions of self-importance—nothing too far from what hampered (and fueled) the sixties counterculture. But along with our issues came meaningful attempts to connect with one another and understand life, just what the coffee shop proprietor identified as important.

Due to high rent, I’m sure, we didn’t have a common room. But we still had trouble paying our landlord at the end of the month. Near the end of my stay, one of my roommates spent our rent money on alcohol and perhaps other drugs, and about four months after I moved out in October of 2001, the house burned down.

This piece is about the house, San Francisco and its cost of living then and now, and finding a place to be.
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Naomi Greenwald, Academic and Songwriter, Achieves Her “Composite”

Singer-songwriter Naomi Greenwald would prefer to be interviewed in the late evening or early morning, when some musicians might be out on the town or sleeping it off. But Greenwald, who is also a fourth-year doctoral student in comparative literature, … Continue reading

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James Smith, a.k.a. DJ Rock Masta Pat

“Do you ever feel like you’re visiting in your own neighborhood?” That, approximately, is what Randy Delgado, who worked at Myrtle Avenue’s Dope Jams, a record store that carried underground dance and nurtured a weird, collective flame for non-conformist lovers … Continue reading

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Dope Jams Closes on Myrtle Avenue

Clinton Hill’s Dope Jams, a record store specializing in underground dance music, closed its storefront at 580 Myrtle Avenue in the wee hours of Sunday, Jan. 27 after a seven-year run and an epic party. In recent conversations, co-owner Francis … Continue reading

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Street Vendors Rally for Reduced Fines

Submitted for class on Dec. 15, 2012 Over 30 street vendors rallied on Thursday, Dec. 13 at the corner of 8th Avenue and 32nd Street to urge City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to help pass legislation that would reduce fines … Continue reading

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Doo-Wop Singers, Lovers Celebrate the Life of Earl “Speedo” Carroll

Submitted for class on Dec. 5, 2012 Members of the New York City doo-wop community gathered at the Abyssian Baptist Church in Harlem yesterday to remember Earl “Speedo” Carroll, the lead singer of The Cadillacs who also sang in The … Continue reading

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