Radio Free Bay Ridge

Meet Kayla Santosuosso, who's running for City Council in Bay Ridge. Our councilmember is our most important local elected official. Handling quality-of-life issues for the neighborhood, they are our advocate in city government and budgeting. And for the first time in nearly eight years, there is an open election with no incumbent. Our current Councilmember, Justin Brannan, is term-limited and can...

Meet Ingeborg Andreas Blundell: Bay Ridge's midwife, nurse, and abortionist for over a half-century. Practicing from the 1910's through to the 1960's, Ingeborg was a Jordmor: a Norwegian midwife. Operating out of her apartment on 92nd street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, she oversaw a private clinic for women's reproductive health: delivering babies, caring for mothers, and, illegally providing abortion...

The Bay Ridge Environmental Group is one of the largest and most active groups to emerge out of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bay Ridge. Consisting of an ever-changing array of volunteers, it has gone on to not only beautify our local parks and playgrounds, but also advocate for cleaner and more equitable transit, better funding for green spaces, and much, much more. But every seed needs to be watered...

There's another hyper-local gallery in Bay Ridge. Underland Gallery, a brainchild of Hannah Salyer, Ester Kwon and Maxim Elrod, opened softly in October 2021, just before the COVID Omicron wave. Shaded by trees and with a mysterious cat-headed-sea-serpent adorning the gas lamp outside, Underland is a strange chimera of performance space, art gallery, and community center. Join us as we explore thi...

We're excited to be back with a special live episode of Radio Free Bay Ridge! Join us as we return for a new season of episodes, starting off with a special interview with local historian Henry Stewart for the release of his latest book, "The Streets of Brooklyn", a collection of 1800s Brooklyn Eagle columns by a mysterious writer known only as "ERG". Over the course of an hour and half, we'll dis...

CW // Alcohol Use The Democratic party has problems that stretch all the way down to its roots. But reformers and activists have been trying to bring democracy to its namesake party. Join us as we chat about how party politics works at the hyper-local scale with local District Leader candidate Mark Hanna, who is running in Assembly District 64 in northern Bay Ridge. At this scale, it's all about g...

On today's episode, we sit down with local author and journalist Jessie Singer about her new book "There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster - Who Profits and Who Pays The Price". Jessie's groundbreaking book has received national attention. It explores how, and why, we seem to dismiss preventable deaths and injuries as "accidental", rather than confront the dangerous conditio...

Today we're checking in with State Senator Andrew Gounardes. Now into his second term (and seeking a third), Senator Gounardes has been part of a revolutionary period in Albany. The State Senate, under Republican control for nearly a century, has transformed into an uncharacteristic flurry of activity. New bills have been passed left and right. Gounardes, an original member of 2019 Blue Wave, has...

We're back for a new year! To kick things off, we're delving into the history of racing dragons in Bay Ridge... fictionally, at least. Our guest is local author Katharine Dow, author of the short story The Brooklyn Dragon Racing Club, set right here in Bay Ridge. We'll chat with Katharine about the story and its influences. Katherine will discuss how her recent move to the neighborhood (in the mid...

We've got a new contributor to the podcast! Meet Ember, perhaps one of the biggest fans of Bay Ridge ever. Together, we're going to update our old podcast episode called "Welcome To Bay Ridge", intended for new (and new-at-heart) residents. Get our recommendations on where to eat! Learn what "The Hole" is! Find out what restaurant has the most attractive servers! Does Bay Ridge have a travelator?...

Over 120 former Bay Ridge residents are homeless and in city-run shelters at any given time. And how many shelter beds do we have in our neighborhood to help them? Zero. Instead, we send our former neighbors away to other communities to be sheltered and cared for. It is fairly clear that Bay Ridge is not doing its fair share. In this episode, we're going to explore previous attempts at sheltering...

For years, spiritual spaces have been key to progressive organizing in Bay Ridge. In today's episode, we say goodbye to Reverend Robert Emerick of the Bay Ridge United Methodist Church. Bob is being forcibly retired after seventeen years in our community. We decided to sit down with Bob and reflect on how he and his congregation have let their spiritual and moral beliefs guide them through controv...

For the past year, Bay Ridge has struggled with the pandemic. We've lost loved ones, and there has been grief both public and private. But early in 2020, politicians began to push their own narratives. At a moment when we all should have been talking about staying safe and healthy, conservative politicians fought back against masking, lockdowns, and social distancing. The story they pushed was tem...

Join us as we sit down with NY11 candidate Brittany Ramos DeBarros. We'll explore the dangers of partisanship and how military contractors and war profiteering have left troops tokenized, demoralized, and without basic services. To counter these forces, we'll explore how our district can engage with a Just Transition framework and invest in demilitarizing our civic systems. By removing our relianc...

Our long-awaited episode digging into Nicole Malliotakis's legislative history... such that it is. We'll go over her voting record before digging into a very unusual bill that leads us on a journey back to the 1970s. We'll unravel a web of land-grabs, NIMBYism, political backstabbing, racism, and legal maneuvers to keep Staten Island segregated. And how, aware or not, Nicole's only legislative ach...

We are joined by Bay Ridge resident and former NYPD officer Mike DeCillis to discuss how we can meaningfully reform a broken police force, and transition it into a police service that keeps us safe without violating our civil rights. From training to culture, we'll explore key flaws that Mike has witnessed firsthand, and figure out how to reform *our* NYPD. ---- Check out the  show notes  for back...

Whether it is giving some money, to volunteering, to simply going out and enjoying what the neighborhood has to offer, there are many ways to give back this holiday season. Here are a few of them. --- Check out the  show notes  for background info and bonus material Be sure to follow us on  Twitter ,  Facebook , and  Instagram  for more news and analysis!

The school year has been a total mess. So lets figure out how we can do better, and what we should have done different. In today's episode, we're joined by our Senior Education Correspondent Erik Shell. We'll dig into why we should have kept school closed during the pandemic, and how poor leadership and systemic inequality led to a botched hybrid-learning system. We'll debunk Educational Policy ar...

An episode over two years in the making! Join Dan and our guest John Hagan, a local social studies teacher, as we analyze our local racist monuments. Yes, Bay Ridge is host to multiple Confederate monuments. How did they get here? Why are they still up? And why should we tear them down? Find out! We'll expose a never-before-discovered history involving the United Daughters of the Confederacy, gree...

It's seems like longer, but it's been four years since the 2016 elections. And now more than ever, our vote matters in the upcoming election. But frustratingly, it seems like things are getting in the way of an easy, simple election day. From Postal Service shenanigans to COVID-19, never before has our electoral process been more fraught. So today on the show, we're going to do a quick guide on ho...

Join us for a walking tour… of the future! On today’s episode, co-host and transit nerd Dan will bring us on a walking tour of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park in an alternate future where The Triboro has been built... a proposed passenger rail line running along the old train tracks north of Bay Ridge. But it's not just about a rail line. We'll explore multiple ways that communities can regain control o...

We're back from our Coronavirus hiatus with a celebration for our 50th Episode... and the return of a lost co-host! We couldn't think of a more important topic for this occasion than the 2020 Census that's currently underway in Bay Ridge. Join us as we discuss how the pandemic and the federal goverment has thrown the census into disarray, and how local activists and politicians are working to ensu...

Something is happening at the old Victory Memorial hospital site in the 90s... a new Emergency Room! But the hospital itself isn't reopening. Instead, we're getting a satellite ER run by Maimonides. Technically it's known as an "Off-Campus Emergency Department". What does that mean for the community? What kinds of services can we expect? And are there any downsides? Our guest Ed Yoo will guide us...

Our origin stories for Bay Ridge's activist groups continues! Today we're going to hang out with three founding members of Bay Ridge For Social Justice. One of the older and more progressive groups in the neighborhood, they were formed in 2015 to explicitly counter racism, state and police violence, islamophobia, and homophobia... all while promoting grassroots organizing outside of the electoral...

Happy New Year! Uh oh... 2020? Already!? There's no doubt, this year is going to be tough. A national election is going to sweep across the district, and local conservative hopefuls are already vying to undo the 2018 Blue Wave. Meanwhile, we're in the midst of a Democratic primary where candidates are shifting position at the top of the polls almost daily. How do we gear up and organize in the mid...