Case closed: The district
attorney decided not to press
charges against the garbagetruck
driver who hit and
killed a 27-year-old cyclist in
Greenpoint in July 2017. Eric
Gonzalez on Jan. 9 declared
there wasn’t enough evidence
to charge the worker for private
carter Action Carting
after investigators’ nearly
six-month probe into the incident,
even after that probe
found the driver was behind
the wheel without the proper
license when he fatally struck
Neftaly Ramirez. Gonzalez’s
announcement came months
after police closed their investigation
into the fatal crash.
February
Gassed: Parents slammed
the city for not doing enough
to protect pedestrians from
motorists using a Fourth Avenue
gas station near a Sunset
Park school that they called a
“death trap.” The moms and
Special delivery! Brooklyn’s
fi rst baby of 2018, Joshua
Miguel Brito, arrived at 12:25
am at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s
Woodhull Medical Center on
Jan. 1. The New Year’s Day
birth of the little miracle
weighing six pounds and 14
ounces was particularly special
for his family, because he
entered the world six years after
his great-grandmother left
it when she died on the very
same day.
You’re out: Coney Islanders
called for Assemblywoman
Pamela Harris to resign after
prosecutors indicted her on
Jan. 9 for stealing thousands
of dollars from the city and
federal agencies, crimes a jury
later convicted her of. Prosecutors
charged the now disgraced
pol with fraud and witness
tampering as part of a scheme
to steal $30,000 in city funds,
and thousands more in superstorm
Sandy recovery aid, and
her constituents demanded she
should give up her seat for the
sake of public trust.
They’re electric! The city
rolled out a tiny test fl eet of 10
electric buses on Jan. 8, as part
of an initiative to modernize
its bus system The environmentally
friendly buses shuttled
riders of the B32, which
travels from Williamsburg to
Queens, as well as straphangers
on other routes in Queens
and Manhattan. The pilot fl eet
of gas-free buses, which the
state deployed in a three-year
test program, could be beefed
up to include of 60 zero-emission
vehicles, according to
dads said they and their tykes
enrolled at PS 172 must dodge
careless drivers who speed
into the Speedway gas station,
often illegally driving on the
sidewalk to reach its pumps.
Months later, in April, the
city’s Department of Transportation
initiated safety improvements,
including the
installation of granite-block
barricades outside the station,
and Speedway employees
painted arrows clearly marking
where cars should enter
and exit the lot.
Caribbean dream: The
beloved Caribbean marketplace,
Flatbush Caton Market ,
reopened inside a new, temporary
space, after vacating its
old location last summer. Hundreds
of shoppers celebrated
its reopening on Clarendon
Road, where it will remain until
builders fi nish constructing
its new permanent digs at
the bottom of an in-development
residential high-rise on
January
Gov. Cuomo.
the market’s former site.
Big house: Longtime Marine
Parkers blasted the city
for letting the owners of a
small one-family home in
the residential neighborhood
supersize it into what they
called a multi-family monstrosity
character with the rest of the
area’s quaint homes, and that
the house sticks out like a sore
thumb thanks to a cluster of
gas meters in the front and
a mess of ductless air-conditioning
some worried that the home
could start a trend of building
bigger in Marine Park, crowding
like those rising in nearby
Sheepshead Bay.
Island hoppers: Gov.
Cuomo announced the state
would shell out $6 million in
INSIDE
Border legend: Mexico City–based librettists
Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol will perform
several vignettes taken from the
turbulent life story of the larger-than-life
revolutionary Pancho Villa. Alex Marks
Rebel rebelde
Bi-lingual opera tells the story of Mexican revolutionary
By Kevin Duggan No wall could have stopped him.
A bi-lingual opera will tell the
story of an enigmatic Mexican
revolutionary who reportedly stole from
the rich and gave to the poor. “Pancho
Villa From a Safe Distance,” opening
at Bric on Jan. 5, will feature a non-linear
collage of scenes from the turbulent
life of Villa, who led rebellions against
several Mexican dictators and narrowly
escaped death numerous times before his
mysterious assassination in 1923 — all of
which made him a larger-than-life figure
on both sides of the Mexican-American
border, according to the show’s composer.
“Even before he was assassinated, his
legend was larger than he was. You go
through west Texas or northern Mexico
and everyone has a story of how someone
in their family was either on Pancho’s side
or against,” said Graham Reynolds, who
created the show with director Shawn
Sides.
The pair came up with the idea in
2013, when they were staying at the Hotel
Paso Del Norte in El Paso. The rebel
stayed at the hotel at one point, and in
1911, voyeuristic tourists climbed to the
roof of the building to watch him fight
the Battle of Juárez — on the other side
of the Mexican border — through their
opera glasses from a safe and comfortable
distance.
Those twin stories inspired the opera’s
plot and its title, which reflects the leery
relationship between both countries,
according to Reynolds.
“The whole thing is analogous to
today with Americans looking from the
border across to Mexico, and also me as a
white American composer writing about
Pancho,” he said.
Reynolds worked with Mexican librettists
Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez
to write the script, which is mostly in
Spanish with English subtitles. The
Mexico City–based writers will also perform
the score, backed by a six-piece
band playing a mix of Mexican, Texan,
classical, and psychedelic-rock music.
The show features both true stories
and modern legends that have sprung up
about Villa, touching both on his protection
of the poor, and his ruthless violence
against anyone who stood in his way. The
opera shows that dichotomy in a scene
where Pancho recruits a man for his army,
said Reynolds.
“There’s a scene where Pancho went
to someone’s house to get a meal and tries
to recruit the father who says he has to
stay home and take care of his family. So
Pancho shoots the family and tells him he
is now free to join the army,” Reynolds
recounted. Whether fact or fiction, the
stories reflect the myths that surround
Villa’s life — and his mysterious death,
when he was assassinated by a barrage of
gun shots while driving home.
“There is a long list of people who
would have wanted him dead and it is
still a subject of debate who assassinated
him,” Reynolds said.
“Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance”
at Bric House 647 Fulton St. at Rockwell
Place in Fort Greene, (718) 855–7882,
www.bricartsmedia.org. Jan. 5–8 at 7:30
pm; Jan. 6 at 2 pm. $30–$75.
Your entertainment
guide Page 43
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BKLYN’S BIGGEST
The time has come to close the books on another news-packed 365 days in Brooklyn. And what a
year it was! State offi cials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority dropped April 27, 2019
as the offi cial start date for the “L-pocalypse.” Brooklyn’s school-zone speed cameras switched off
in July due to inaction from some state pols — and switched on a month later under a temporary
scheme hatched by Gov. Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio. Federal offi cials detained a pizza delivery
man at Fort Hamilton Army Base, bringing the national conversation over immigration laws to
the streets of Bay Ridge. And the new owners of the old Pavilion Theater reopened it as Nitehawk
Prospect Park days before Christmas, giving an early present to local cinephiles. But wait, there’s
more! Relive what else happened in the year of our Lord, two thousand and eighteen, in our year
in review:
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT: (Clockwise from above) Electric buses started
rolling along some routes in Williamsburg in January. Former Assemblywoman
Pamela Harris left federal court in Brooklyn on Jan. 9 after being
indicted on 11 counts. Mom Arsenia Reilly-Collins called the Speedway gas
station in Sunset Park a “death trap.”
Associated Press / Mary Altaffer
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
File photo by Julianne McShane
/www.bricartsmedia.org
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