Bar Crawl Radio

Park Bench Chats -- back in Riverside Park in Manhattan -- talking with our Upper West Side neighbors about their unusual jobs. And there were several. Join Rebecca and Alan as they talk with: Sam who was a motion picture projectionist for senior citizen homes and was in charge of painting the lines on NYC street - Al Gorgoni, guitarist, who was involved with most of the big hits that came out of...

ALERT! Garden lovers! This episode is for you.  We’ve lived in NYC’s Upper West Side neighborhood for decades, and it was not until BCR producer Alina Larson connected us with the people in charge of The Lotus Garden , that we were aware a verdant urban oasis existed a few blocks from our apartment. Near Broadway—floating twenty feet above W. 97th street -- on the roof of a garage -- dwells a...

Alan Winson here -- co-host of Bar Crawl Radio podcast. I had just lost an important Lawn Bowling competition -- by a "squeaker" -- to my former bowling student and friend -- Joe Kelly. I was happy for Joe, but -- hey -- I lost. It got me thinking about the experience of winning the game. Rebecca McKean and I invited Joe and his life partner, Ryan Hastu, to meet us on a Riverside Park bench below...

We met Mike Vogel at a BCR Park Bench Chat episode in which we asked our neighbors on an afternoon stroll along the Riverside Park Promenade below the crumbing Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument: Do you like your job? After a bit of cajoling, Mike joined us and told his his job was writing about what annoyed him -- we knew we wanted to learn more. This author of "New York Attitude" [2020] joined us a...

It's early Fall and the night comes quickly in Riverside Park in Manhattan's Upper West Side. For this BCR Park Bench Chat, Becky and Alan talked with neighbors out for their afternoon stroll about their "best" friend. Some had issues with that description and preferred "close." We spoke with Layla (& Nidra, her mother), Grant, and John. Who's your best friend? Share at barcrawlradio@gmail.com...

This conversation was first posted on the Hunkered Down Podcast on June 5, 2020. J.T. Rogers urge to move is reflected in the dynamism of his Tony Award-winning play "Oslo" and in the way he perambulated around his office during our conversation. Clearly, this artist thinks on his feet. “Oslo” -- first produced on Broadway in 2017 -- is a heart-wrenching telling of the back-channel meetings starte...

You might think that many do not like what they do to earn a living -- but that was not the case with the four Manhattan Upper West Side neighbors on an afternoon stroll through the Riverside Park Promenade below a crumbling Civil War monument. For this BCR Park Bench Chat we talked with four of our neighbors about whether they "loved" their jobs and for the most part -- they did. Hosted on Acast....

This is a re-dux of the Hunkered Down Podcast --conversations with creatives who stopped creating during the COVID19 pandemic: For eleven successful seasons -- Kathryn Erbe played Detective Alexandra Eames to Vincent D’Onofrio’s Det. Robert Goren on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.  Prior to Criminal Intent – Ms. Erbe appeared as a death row inmate on the award-winning TV series OZ . This...

Is it important to be happy? Are you happy? How do you really know? A credible, scientific answer to these questions would require a deeper dive with experts for a future BCR episode. For now – we just asked our Upper West Side Manhattan neighbors out for a stroll in Riverside Park below a crumbling Civil War edifice – “Are you happy?”  It was the end of summer -- a couple...

The Poetry Foundation editors write: “When major parts of our lives seem to change in a flash, we are reminded that poetry can help us to cope with new realities and to assess the unknowns ahead. When we are stepping out into uncharted terrain, alone or together, poetry can capture our emotions. It can share our vulnerabilities and scars, along with our strengths.” Today. we are sharing the first...

For this BCR "Park Bench Chats" episode -- once again, recording in Riverside Park, beneath the majestic and crumbling Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument -- Rebecca and Alan challenged Upper West Side, Manhattan neighbors to match wits with "Dear Abby" - "Ask Ann Landers" - and, "Ask Amy." These "amateurs" came up some amazing and insightful advice on several real-life, personal traumas. And -- in ou...

BCR was on road trip to the Eastern Shore of Virginia and came upon a magical room in the small town of Onancock – an art gallery with bright yellow walls and bold, color-filled, paintings that held a singular theme, reflecting the artist’s visionary connection to the African American women who inhabited his youth.  Danny Doughty calls himself a visionary folk artist. According to Easter...

Bar Crawl Radio travelled to Henderson County, in western North Carolina to talk with author and apple grower, Evan Williams, whose family has resided in the Blue Ridge Mountains since before the Revolutionary War. His writing abides within the people and culture of small town Appalachia. From Evan’s website -- “Surrounded by orchard, and writing from within a former apple storage shed, converted...

Like something out of the 1956 film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” –-- Donald Trump has invaded our psyches as we sleep. We live in an irrational nation – and we work out our roiling emotions in our dreams.  Dreaming about the Trumpster is a thing -- according to a study done by a NYC psycho-therapist – Martha M. Crawford. For this BCR episode -- Park Bench Chat series -- we asked our...

Here's a Bar Crawl Radio’s "Park Bench Chat" episode – Rebecca and Alan set up our portable studio in Manhattan’s Riverside Park on the Promenade and we talk to our UWS neighbors about a topic of -- hopefully -- interest. Rebecca went into this question thinking it would be silly and fun. I was expecting vociferous pushback from our neighbors – neither happened. Rather – the idea of a man ges...

Rebecca and Alan talk with two Catholic Workers who have been in prison for protesting U.S. Navy submarines armed with world-ending numbers of nuclear missiles. We first talked with Carmen Trotta and Martha Hennessy on the porch of Gebhard’s Beer Culture Bar in Manhattan in June 2019 – a bit over two years ago. At the time, Martha and Carmen and other members of the anti-war Plowshares moveme...

This BCR episode is produced for Manhattanites voting in the 2021 city-wide elections. We spoke with four of the candidates for the Manhattan Borough President position being vacated by Gale Brewer. We spoke with each candidate for about 20 minutes -- featuring person over policy. 00:03:10 -- Brad Hoylman 00:22:20 -- Lindsey Boylan 00:43:40 -- Kim Watkins 01:05:10 -- Ben Kallos 01:26:50 -- Louis P...

Geof Burke -Saxophonist, band leader and recently toured with Harry Connick Jr. / Steven Feifke -Pianist, band leader, arranger and composer / Dave Pietro --Saxophonist and Director of Jazz Studies at NYU -- joined me to talk about how their music is continuing in the city despite the fact that all of the great NYC Jazz venues are now closed. Social distancing can become an opportunity of all sort...

StreetopiaUWS and Bar Crawl Radio Podcast sponsored this “Meet your City Council Candidates” event - recorded at the Eleanor Roosevelt Monument on W. 72nd Street in Riverside Park. we spent an hour on a beautiful -- if hot -- summer day getting to know three of the City Council candidates vying to represent the most populated neighborhood in the country – Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Maria Danzilo...

Can a podcast be more than people talking at each other? Co-hosts - guests - mics and recorder - an interesting topic. NOW -- remove the "jabber-jabber." Make room for wondrous silence. We thought we would experiment with form and style and establish a new podcasting precedent. Talking about the issues has not worked -- so let's NOT talk about the issues. I know -- it's crazy, but it might work. I...

Being naughty goes along with being a child. Yes? After all, when you brand your sister with a hot ruler who could blame you -- you're a child -- you have no morals or sense of appropriate adult behavior. Return with Rebecca and Alan as they sit on a bench on the Riverside Park Promenade on a beatific NYC afternoon and talk to their neighbors about those carefree days when we roamed our realm wrea...

We had a delightful conversation under the Joan of Arc Statue on W. 93rd Street in Manhattan with Evelyn Kanter -- NYC TV news reporter and guide book writer – about her new book 100 Things to Do in New York City before You Die . Ms. Kanter has a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.  She was the consumer reporter on WABC-TV “Eyewitness News” and before that on WCBS...

This BCR episode was recorded at a great Upper West Side, Manhattan eateries and bar -- 5Napkin . Finally, we are back having conversations with amazing people in our favorite bars. Kathleen Collins is the Graduate Studies Librarian at John Jay College of Criminal Justice since 2007 – and a whole lot more. She has a double degree in psychology – a degree from the Cultural Reporting and Criticism P...

If you are a baseball fan -- a Giants fan -- a fan of San Francisco -- this BCR episode is for you. It opens with Ron Fairly of KNBR calling the back to back home runs of Candy Maldonado and Will Clark in the 1987 game between the Houston Astro and the San Francisco Giants. The Giants would give up the National League Pennant to St Louis – and not win the World Series until 2010 against the T...

Once again BCR recorded on an UWS street; this time we were set up in front of the stoop where Humphrey Bogart played stickball as a kid -- W. 103rd Street -- just down from Broadway. It was an "Earth Day Celebration" organized by Lisa Orman of StreetopiaUWS . While musicians from the MET Orchestra performed, Jody Sperling's Time Lapse Dance gamboled, and the kids rolled hula hoops into our mics,...