Bar Crawl Radio

What a wonderful opportunity and pleasure to have a conversation with NY State Assembly person Linda Rosenthal. Her Manhattan office is next door to Gebhards Beer Culture Bar and when she knocked on the porch window during a BCR recording -- we knew we had to invite her on the podcast.

We talked with the SA person about her success at bringing "Menstrual Equity" to the state and her fight to extend the statute of limitations to prosecute child sex offenders. And we talked politics -- the shift to the left as the Democrats take over both houses of the state legislature. Linda is a life long Upper West Sider; so, we commiserated over the "corporatizing" of our neighborhood -- and much more.

BCR #24 starts off at 5 Napkin Burger . Becky and I try to match Ira Glass's exquisite "This American Life" style. Of course we failed, but it was fun trying.

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This BCR episode started at Gabriela's Tequila Bar on W. 93rd Street talking about favorite shot glass and the experience of watching the top of Jeff Daniels' head -- during his performance of Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" from the "angel's view" in the Shubert Theatre.

We then crawled over to Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar on W. 72nd Street and had two wonderful conversations, First with the founder of Paracademia -- Milica Paranosic.  We met this prolific, multi-talented arts, teacher and community organizer at her street event "Make Music Harlem." Since then we interviewed her for "UWS Neighbors" and recorded her musical tribute to Pia Gilbert at her "Ladies First-Pioneer" concert for "UWS LIVE" - both shows are scheduled on Upper West Side Radio - uwsradio.nyc --  For BCR23 we focused on Milica's upcoming film festival "Add a Movie" and her early inspirations in Serbia.

We also talked to three of the members of the all-female, a cappella singing ensemble -- ROSA ["dew" in Serbian] about their individual careers and their efforts to bring traditional Serbian-Croatian music to the world. Hear a couple of examples of their work recorded at Gebhards Beer Culture Bar on W. 72nd Street. See a sample of the work at the 2018 "Make Music Harlem" street event.

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At Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar, we spoke with Robert Jackson's campaign manager Richard Fife about the Democrat's work for education in our city, and /about his qualifications and goals when he gets elected to the State Senate. Here's a chance to meet a politician you probably don't know but who is gaining in power and prestige.

Our intro section was recorded at the UWS "5 Napkin" restaurant on Broadway and W. 84th Street -- we talked about bathrooms and blackmail and met our favorite bartender -- that night -- Lynn.

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Recently -- Becky and I attended the Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference in Swedesboro, NJ. We met a bunch of great podcasters --

• dined on grease at Appleby's
• almost got swept away in a flood
• hugged the Blind Blogger & Super Joe Pardo
• won TWO XLR microphones in a Podcast Contest for our new creation -- "One Nip'll Never Do"
• learned about all the things we are doing wrong
• and right

-- and we wanted to share these experiences with you. So, if you've always wanted the scoop on the shadowy secrets of the podcasting arts -- this show is for YOU.

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• "Trump is the first of any modern presidents to advocate for reducing legal immigration." Sarah Pierce of the Migration Policy Institute
• "More of the United States population are foreign-born now than at any time since 1910." NYTimes - Sept. 2018.
• The First Lady's parents become citizens through what Trump calls "Chain Migration." What a world!

BCR's second show on U.S. immigration brings in two experts -- one an academic -Immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta on BCR at Gebhard's Bar in Manhattan -- Monica Varsanyi of John Jay College -- studying how immigration enforcement used to be a border thing but under P.T. has moved inland. Individual city governments and even police officers are making decisions that impact the lives of millions of immigrants and their families. And immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta tries to explain the complexity of this country's immigration laws as if we were four-year-olds. And I still do not understand how it works.

In the end, these two experts on the issue of immigration in this county -- one from the side of enforcement -- the other from a criminal justice perspective -- express a compassion and respect for U.S. immigrants that is anathema to P.T..

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• We are a nation of immigrants.
• We are a nation that does not want immigrants -- keep it right and white.
• We are a nation that welcomes the talented and those who yearn for a better life and those who are escaping oppression.
• We are a nation that sticks to our own - outsiders are dangerous.

BCR #19 brings together three immigrants -- a Czech -- a Filipino -- an Irishman -- who are now authorized "United Statesians" OR USians. [If you are from the United States -- you are not "American" -- rather you are a USian. Afterall, we do not own the entire American continent--North, Central and South--and so USians do not own the identifier--"American." Of course, in doing so, we reveal an attitude of ownership and power.]

This show and conversation was an inspiration of Rebecca McKean -- who is tired and sick of the populist right matching "criminal" with "immigrant." As she emphasized -- we are all immigrants.

The show starts off with Alan and Becky talking with BCR co-producer Alina Larson about her trip to the Galapagos, and we get an explosive definition of the alcoholic term "proof." It could have just as well been "POOF."

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BCR hosts--Becky and Alan--had been to Cabo, St Lucas at the tip of the Baja Peninsula and loved the beaches, food and tequila -- but we yearned for something less touristy -- less honky-tonk and richie-rich. We had visited Todos Santos up the coast on the Pacific side of Baja and decided that we would vacation in this sleepy Mexican village. Becky found a spacious, airy room at Villa La Mar, nestled on the side of a hill facing the Pacific Ocean. The ride from Highway 19 was a bit rough over rutted dirt roads -- but we got used to it -- and our room was down a series of stone steps that seemed to be cut into the side of the landscape.

We fell in love with our space -- a pool three steps up from our patio was continuously inviting and the service was friendly but never intrusive. For much of the week we had the Villa to ourselves.

Though we were on vacation we could not pass up the opportunity of talking to the designer of Villa La Mar -- Miguel Ochoa-- and on the way to the interview we stopped at a local fish taco stand and grabbed a quick conversation with its owner -- Pepe Sosa.

Pepe and Miguel speak about living in this small art community and what they think about the U.S. - Mexico relations under Trump.

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Becky has been developing our BCR Instagram account and "hearted" Island to Island -  642 Rogers Ave. She and Danii, owner and brew-master, started talking. Danii invited us over for a photo exhibit event.  So -- we decided - why not schedule an unplanned -- pop-up Bar Crawl Radio podcast in Brooklyn.

We had a blast talking with photo-artist, Ivona Hertz and-- and Ivona's friends -- Alan and Mike -- as well as Island2Island bartender -- Emily.  We tasted all sorts of herbal infused beers and meads. One was called "BBQ and Watermelon" and, oh my goodness, it tasted like both. We learned that "Jun" infused beer was non-alcoholic and perfect if you don't want to have a hangover because Jun -- whatever that is -- "eats up" alcohol. Good to know.

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This was a first for Bar Crawl Radio -- A Real Bar Crawl -- three bars -- three conversations -- in one late afternoon crawl on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We had a tight schedule -- 30 minutes of recording and then a rush to the next bar. We had to put together a small recording kit that could be re-assembled quickly ...

• Zoom MP3 recorder
• Three mics and portable mic stands
• Three headsets
• Portable headphone amp
• Lot's of cable and extra batteries

... and we headed off >>>

At Gabriela's we had one regular and one frozen "Margie" -- my main concern was to remain sober enough to speak straight -- Becky is Scotch-Irish and much better at handling liquor than this Jewish boy, so I had to keep my wits under control. At Gabriela's -- 93rd St. & Columbus -- we spoke with Brooklyn Council Person Raphael Espinal about his work to "green" the city and his push to ban plastic straws in NYC bars and restaurants.  We then "crawled" uptown -- ten blocks -- to Casa Mexicana -- 103rd St. and Amsterdam -- for a conversation with science writer and podcaster Nathan Lents about his recent book Human Errors -- a funny and terrifying study of our broken bodies. For the story of the third bar -- Mexican Festival -- you will have to listen to the podcast -- it was a surprise to all of us.

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We had decided to produce one podcast a month. So, Becky and I had settled into an easy Bar Crawl Radio July schedule -- the first annual BCR Margie Crawl was planned for the end of the month -- we had lined up some interesting guests -- things were going smoothly. Then, we went to Smoke -- a small venue jazz club on the UWS to hear jazz trumpet great -- Charles Tolliver. After the set, we talked to Mr. Tolliver and invited him to Bar Crawl Radio, and he said, “Sure -- I’m free next week.”  So the research and planning started in a hurry.

We had a great time talking with Charles at Gebhard’s Bar. He is a long time friend. We talked about his life as a musician and listen to several of his greatest hits and began the celebration for the 50th Anniversary of his “Paper Man” album -- culminating at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival on Summer Stage late in August. A most entertaining conversation.

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