Bar Crawl Radio

This BCR conversation was quite special for Rebecca and me. We had agreed at the beginning of 2020 to investigate how racism permeates our society, our values, and individual behavior. We continue to want to work on our own complicity in what J. Chester Johnson calls this country's "damaged heritage" which is also the title of his new book. "Damaged Heritage” looks deeply into the 1919 Elaine, Ark...

Concert violinist Rolf Schulte describes pianist, Jeffrey Swann, as a polymath, speaker of several languages, and a magnificent musician. Mr. Swann has won several prestigious piano competitions – including the Queen Elizabeth Piano Competition in Brussels as a young man and then the Ciani Competition in Italy and a prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. The last few years he has run a mu...

PWIIGF podcast brings together two poets who have something in common read and talk about their work. For this episode we consider how word, image and mass interact within the creative artist.  Rick Mullin’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, including  The Dark Horse , American Arts Quarterly , The New Criterion , and  Rabbit Ears: TV Poems . His...

Were you bullied in middle school? Were you the bully? This BCR is for you. We talked with Simone Ellin – a journalist who sought out those in her middle school “cool girl clique” who befriended and then bullied her.  Now grown -- some would not talk to her but several did – and her recent re-telling of her experiences in Lilith magazine and the Huffington Post went viral; her Facebook creds...

We live in Manhattan's Upper West Side and Rebecca wants her own car. She has wanted a cute little car -- a Fiat -- for since her "Ruby"-- the sporty plum colored Mercury--died of neglect shortly after we met. I oppose raising another car in our car-infested city and GHG choked world -- but I gave in -- she really, really wants a hunk of well-designed metal. My reasoning? -- If she experiences the...

An important topic we have explored over several BCR programs is the work carried out by Witness Against Torture – who for 15 years have actively protested the incarceration of Muslim men from all over the world -- at Guantanamo, Cuba. Since 2002 almost 800 have been detained – most released and now 40 remain – uncharged with a crime. Some have been there going on 20 years in extremely u...

Coming out of the call for “Black Power” in the 1960s by Malcolm X and others, historian and playwright Larry Neal describes a new breed of Black artist taking on the contradictions of the Black person’s experience in the racist West and developing a “black aesthetic.” For this "Poetry--What Is It Good For?" episode, we talked with one of the lead architects of Black Arts Movement [BAM] poetry, Eu...

Let it be noted that this Bar Crawl Radio conversation was recorded the day after a U.S. President was impeached for the second time. And for this episode our BCR producer Alina Larson brought together three musical minds who will recommend music you may have not heard of but great to listen to a presidential impeachment by. Jim Harrington is the Pop Music critic for the Bay Area News Group a...

Your BCR hosts were surprised and honored when Catholic Worker, Bud Courtney, took us up the wooden stairs of Maryhouse to Dorothy Day's bedroom for our conversation on the Catholic Worker's soup kitchen feeding the the poor and homeless, We were joined by Joann Kennedy who heads up Maryhouse. They told us that Day had lived the last years of her life and died in the room in which we were recordin...

This will be our third visit with the hosts of the podcast -- Angst and Daisies -- Caroline Aaron, co-starring in "The Amazing Mrs. Maisel", and Steve Saporito, lawyer and knower of current American politics. We talked a bit about about the state of our country -- some on the Amazon hit series -- and a morsel on our favorite Christmas tunes and films. It was a lot of fun catching up with our new b...

This is a BCR EXTA.  Rhonda Roland Shearer was a first responder for the WTC first responders directly after the attack on Sept. 11th, 2001, At the time – she and her daughter London handed out a million dollars in PPE, construction helmets, bolt cutters and other essential equipment that supported those who worked the PIT. IN BCR 119 Rhonda tells that story and talks about her rece...

How was 9/11 like COVID19? Both needed effective PPE. Rhonda Roland Shearer satisfied that need then and now. This is a must listen BCR episode featuring a person who you should know. Soon after the destruction Rhonda and her daughter were at the WTC Pit handing out effective digging and cutting equipment and protective gear to the first responders despite being kicked out by city officials and di...

Rebecca McKean and I - Alan Winson - were back at our "studio" in the loft at Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar in our Upper West Side neighborhood. Rebecca is an elementary school teacher, and I had watched her conduct distant learning classes in our tiny apartment from our dining room table and listened to her concerns about her students for months and wanted to interview her about the difficulties of...

This will be the third visit with scientist and genetics expert -- Nathan Lents . We focused our conversation on the nature of the "long-haul" maladies of those who have had the COVID19 virus. These serious health outcomes are known to effect even those who did not manifest the disease. And we talked to Dr. Lents about the new approach to viral vaccines using the mRNA technique. We also talked to...

We were joined by two world-class poets from Hispaniola -- Jean Dany Joachim writes in Haitian Creole and Spanish poet Rhina P. Espaillat who left the Dominican Republic as a young girl fleeing the Trujillo massacre of 1937. Their poetry cuts to the bone of the immigrant experience in simple but deeply revealing ways. This episode is a lively conversation with lovely people who interpret their poe...

It's a great time to wake up and get really distracted. If that is your goal -- then this BCR episode is for you. So if you really want to loosen your brain and drop any hope for serious and focused thought -- tune in and zone out while Rebecca and Alan tell you all about ... what was I saying? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was the day when we learned that the Biden/Harris ticket had won the Presidential election, and the sounds of elation and joy rose in the street outside our Upper West Side apartment windows. We ran down to West End Avenue with our equipment and quickly set-up to get some testimony from our neighbors about how they were feeling. Up the street 150 people had filled the street and were dancing an...

WARNING!!! LIBERAL TALK ZONE. It's the night of the 2020 election, and we did not want to be alone with the results. So, we invited a few knowing friends with whom we were in near total agreement. That's is how we roll: Lincoln Mitchell is a political pundit and professor at Columbia University -- Poli Sci. We talked with Lincoln about his recent book "San Francisco Year Zero" at BCR #73. The News...

Rebecca and Alan are back at their favorite bar -- Matt Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar on the Upper West Side on W. 72nd Street. It was really good to be back on our old turf recording Bar Crawl Radio. The episode honed in on the behaviors and sounds and bugs that bug us. It was loud and a bit smelly from the fumes on the busy bus-strewned street -- but we had a great time sitting at a real bar and re...

We talked about the issue of NIMBY attitudes in our Manhattan Upper West Side neighborhood and the lack of mayoral leadership in solving the problem of homelessness -- with NYC District 6 Council person Helen Rosenthal , Corinne Lowe, co-founder of UWS Open Hearts, Joshua Parkin, founder of helpNYC , and Da Homeless Hero, a sheltered resident of the Lucerne Hotel. This is the first in a series of...

Jon Ross, the founder and head of Micro Aid International joined Rebecca and Alan on the patio of Ellington in the Park on a beautiful Autumn afternoon.  Jon Ross was with on BCR #36 at Vino Laventino – where we no longer record because the owner kicked Alan out several months ago – but that is another story.  In our previous conversation, we got into some depth on Jon's life and work bu...

This BCR episode recorded in front of the regal Greek Orthodox Church on West End Avenue and W. 90th Street in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Rich Collier -- the “High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the Unusually Smooth Productions” -- joined us out on the street for his brand of fresh-air trivia. Rich is a multi-year Emmy-winning host for  “Roll Play” – where guests are challenged with trivia ab...

Once again – Bar Crawl Radio’s portable studio is set up on West End Avenue and 92nd Street -- this time for the "We Walk / Park(ing) Day" on-the-street event. And things were buzzing around as as our UWS neighbors too over the street. Local community organizations working for various socially positive changes were represented. "We Walk" was part of the worldwide "Park(ing) Day" celebration in whi...

Bar Crawl Radio has finally gone really silly. I had to come up with an idea for this week's podcast and so I was on my bike and I remembered this TV series I used to watch as a kid -- The Man and the Challenge -- and decided to challenge my Upper West Side neighbors to figure out how to survive several death-defying scenerios. They did pretty well but only one actually survived. On a fun scale --...

It's time we just give it up to all of those wonderful, wacky, weirdo conspiracy theories and go along with Rebecca and Alan for one ludicrous and fun-filled romp way past Alice in Wonderland and walk around in the land of the inane and creative. If you are a QAnon-er -- you might just get all down with TAnon -- and become an equal opportunity reviler of authority. Hear us out -- it makes sense an...