ORGAN GRIND
        Journalism, home & abroad          

L to R: Marie Estrada of Moto Distillery and Shinobu Kato, owner of Kato Sake Works For those of us born into circumstances commonly, if chauvinistically, described as “First World”, the notion of security - of being cushioned like a lot of pampered, powdered Marie Antoinettes from a pitiless, fickle and treacherous universe - is very often seen as something like a birthright. Undergirding that notion is the assumption that everything, even here in one of the industrialized d

Compared to beer and wine-making, distillation is a violent process. Where the former substances gently bubble away under fermentation’s yeasty ministrations, distillates like whiskey, gin, rum, and tequila, result from the hellish boiling of already-fermented liquids and the subsequent condensation of highly concentrated vapors. According to Colin Spoelman, founding owner of Kings County Distillery, Staten Island was the home to America’s first distillery, a nameless entity

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

Somewhere along the road of our musical acculturation, we were set upon by various forces, both sinister and benign.​ They told us what to like and what to shun, lest we lose standing in whatever playground social circle we occupied. Various sub-genres of hip-hop, r&b, and rock were safe, while country music meant permanent exile. Meanwhile, jazz and classical were so far down the musical food chain that there wasn't even a need to be warned away from them by your supposed be

Italian pop is huge in Italy, but only occasionally reaches the shores of America, gaining a foothold for a time, only to lose it. Even the country's biggest stars are only slightly more than obscure among the majority of Americans, except for icons like Andrea Bocelli, whose oeuvre straddles...click here to read the rest of the article. #GianlucaVacchi #italianmusic #italianpop #italianpopmusic #popdust #popdust #mattfink #fattmink #organgrind #organgrindcom

Blick Bassy's new album, named for the year a key figure in Cameroon's struggle to cast off the colonial yoke was murdered, reminds us that freedom, political stability, and material security remain elusive for many African countries. While many of these countries are technically free from Western control, they continue to suffer from the effects of colonialism. All this and more is expressed in 1958, produced by Feist and Manu Chao collaborator, Renaud LeTang. From a mid-tow

Escamoles, or ant eggs, on a puree of cauliflower and parsnip, course four at Alcalde Without a doubt the jewel piercing the otherwise linty outie bellybutton of Mayor Alfaro’s recently-christened “gastronomic corridor” (being a collection of restaurants dotting Avenida Mexico between the perpetually congested Lopez Mateo and Golfo de Cortes roundabouts), Restaurante Alcalde is also a headliner on the city’s capacious culinary scene as a whole - perhaps its chief attraction,

Courtesy of © Daylight Community Arts Foundation I’ve often thought that, of all the things which can be glimpsed by our eyeballs across the world’s crowded panorama, that which compels the greatest attention are the multifarious objects of the modern world that weren’t created with “art” in mind. Not to say that a Dyson vacuum cleaner, for instance, isn’t designed deliberately with an eye towards some sort of rigorously thought-out design criteria, only that its function ten

Disclaimer: This food review is blatantly partisan: the writer is acquainted with the owner/chef of the restaurant under discussion, and is a close friend of one of his chief providers of organic produce. That being said, the reviewer is NOT receiving any sort of kick back for his troubles…thus far, at least. Driving east on highway 50 towards South Lake Tahoe, the dry, pine-speckled hills of El Dorado County rear up from the hot wastes of the Sacramento River Valley. These

Last week, on a gusty afternoon of spotless blue skies, the global refugee crisis arrived on the Upper East Side, roosting beneath the looming shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. However, its coming was heralded not by the wails of children or the echo of white supremacist gun fire - nor the mendacious fear-mongering of a presidential usurper - but by the soft tinkle of glass and restrained clatter of silver cutlery against ceramic dinnerware. Hundreds of battle-scarred donor

The migration of the North American monarch butterfly between Mexico and Canada is a journey of life, death and rebirth, a testament to the tenacity and ingenuity with which one generation ensures that life continues after it has alighted on its last leaf, sprig, twig, or patch of soil, the desperate flutter of wings slowing down until it lies still and dead in the sunlight, its brilliant raiment of orange-red gradually fading to the sepia tone of an old photograph. Life and

Courtesy of © Eugene Richards In the arts, context plays various roles, be it to make sense of a work, enhance and deepen its meaning - or construct around its edifice the leaden scaffolding of useless hearsay. For instance, it may be interesting to know that Beethoven composed his 3rd symphony as a tribute to his idol, Napoleon Bonaparte, but it’s far from essential to the listener’s experience. On the other hand, an expansive, career retrospective of the work of photographe