ORGAN GRIND
        Journalism, home & abroad          

We’ve come quite a distance from the virally virginal days of early March when we were still adjusting to certain grim realities I need not elaborate upon. Since then, the public’s psychological pendulum has swung, in some quarters at least, from caution and prudence to the reckless impulsiveness of ill-informed hoople-heads (e.g., the heavily armed, wannabe militia men who cowed the Michigan State Legislature last month). But most people aren’t reacting to the crisis in a ma

Johnny Huynh, Bushwick native and owner of Lucy's Kitchen These are, to put it lightly, keenly anxious times for the restaurant and bar business in New York. There are the hourly and/or tipped employees, the suppliers and the proprietors whose livelihoods are threatened; and then there are those who, in the weeks, months or even years leading up to Governor Cuomo’s coronavirus-related bar/restaurant closure announcement, had been in the midst of unveiling new contributions to

Let’s assume, for a moment, that blatant, vicious police brutality perpetrated against black people has only recently compelled you to put a shoulder to the stalled, sputtering Greyhound bus that is America on the seemingly interminable, blood-smeared highway to the achievement of truer racial and social justice. While there are several ways to get the leaden beast to budge, one in particular allows for march-sore feet to pause in their labor, if only for a moment - while pu

Chef Lisa Fernandes with Tom Colicchio on the set of Top Chef. Here’s a (long-winded) Jeopardy question for all you Bushwegians: “A queer Toronto-born-and-raised chef living in Bushwick with multiple seasons of Top Chef under her belt whose 5-year-old Southeast Asian-centric food truck Sweet Chili morphed into a brick-and-mortar (likewise Bushwick-based) last November and then closed following the Cuomo’s decision to shutter restaurants against the COVID19 pandemic.” The answ

Steve Sciacca, longtime Bushwick restauranteur (Mominette, Bushwick Bakery), takes his last name from the coastal Sicilian town from whence came his ancestors. (“Just like Vito Corleone!” you exclaim, before being sharply admonished in the most scandalized of tones for saying something so insultingly reductive.) But his newest venture, Pizzette in East Williamsburg, borrows from Sciacca’s Sicilian heritage something far more profound than a mere name; an entire philosophy of

For centuries in New York the slippery, opalescent oyster dominated the shores, their bone white shell fragments crunching underfoot. They were so ubiquitous as to be almost an afterthought, a cheap one at that, costing nothing at all before the arrival of the Dutch. That was then. Now, a plump, innocent-looking little Kumamoto from Puget Sound will easily rob you of $3.50 in even a mid-range New York restaurant. This rampant inflation...click here for the full article. #oyst

[Editor's note: The following six paragraphs were from the writer's original edit of this Bushwick Daily article - which were not included, sadly, in the final version. Enjoy!] First of all, the superficial nature of this, a cursory survey of a group of Bushwick restaurants that constitute a kind of Latin American “buffet,” cannot be overemphasized. It is the smooth rock skipping over the glassy surface of Lake Titicaca, the long, curved knife yielding a razor thin curl of or

Asked if there had been any notable disasters or setbacks in the few years she and her partner, Hagai Yardeny, had been operating the ultra-boutique MÔTÔ Spirits in north Bushwick, co-owner Marie Estrada thought for a second before answering, “Oh, yeah! There was the explosion.” Laughing at her interviewer’s taken-aback expression, the Phillipines-born American entrepreneur...click here to read the full article. #ricewhisky #jabuka #motospirits #bushwickdaily #fattmink #fattm

For Brooklyn activist Fury Young, Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” proved to be an important catalyst in the creation of Die Jim Crow, a non-profit dedicated to giving currently or formerly incarcerated musicians avenues to creative self-realization. The book concerns...click here to read the full article. #diejimcrow #furyyoung #mattfink #fattmink #organgrindcom #organgrind #hiphop #prisonart #prisonhiphop #prison