Gothamist
Kathleen Reilly last night outside the practice space for Despers USA (Scott Heins / Gothamist)
Last night at 10:30 p.m., fire trucks and several police cars sat outside a Despers USA steelband group's practice session in Crown Heights. The group is preparing to perform at Brooklyn's Panorama steel band competition, while other steel bands in the neighborhood are gearing up for J'ouvert and West Indian American Day Carnival activities. Kathleen Reilly, who was arrested last year after she allegedly made bogus noise complaints about steel drum music (the Brooklyn DA eventually declined to prosecute), was on the scene, cellphone in hand.
"Every year I've been playing for the band, this lady has always had a problem," said a man who identified himself at Muhammad T. He said that Reilly started making noise complaints at 8 p.m. "She called the police, the police told her to stop calling. She's still calling. She's calling the fire department," said Muhammad.
NYPD and FDNY officials at the scene declined to comment. On Friday, a spokesperson for the NYPD could not immediately find any noise complaints from Reilly in the 77th Precinct.
Despers USA practice (Scott Heins/ Gothamist)
Last year, Despers USA practiced at a space on the corner of Classon Avenue and Pacific Street in Crown Heights, but the practice space has since moved to Dean Street between Franklin and Classon Avenues. Several people outside of the practice session said that it was noise complaints like Reilly's that forced the group to move locations.
...."I like to do photography, so I just photograph whatever is going on in my neighborhood," Reilly told Gothamist last year. "I do it for my personal use. I never know what I photograph until I get home, but sometimes I see something that's strange, I just send it to the authorities." She explained at that time that she was on a mission to curtail rehearsals for Despers USA. "It sounds like the same song. It's extremely loud, and it's not what I want to sit in my house and listen to."
Replies
I HATE TO SAY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, BUT THE NEW YORK STEEL ORCHESTRAS THAT WERE FORMED UP TO THE 1990'S, SHOULD HAVE BEEN OWNERS OF SOME OF THOSE SAME TODAY'S MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR PROPERTY.
Yes but Ian, owning property in New York City, even in Crown Heights Brooklyn in the 1990's, is very expensive. You have to pay high real estate taxes, you have to have expensive liability insurance, and if there is a building there, business building fire/storm/etc. insurance. If it is an empty lot, you have to pay to remove trash/debris that others dump there. If a building, you have to maintain it, heat it, pay for water service, electricity, etc. Year round, not for a month or two in the summer. Very few if any steelbands in Brooklyn could afford that. You realize that very few businesses in NYC own their own buildings, most lease. Too much valuable capital tied up.
And I hate to tell you how many people I know in NYC, including steelband people, who lost property to foreclosure as they just couldn't afford the expenses.
Yes, in a perfect world where steelbands had the capital to purchase and maintain property, it would be nice to own the property, but I have fears that most would have lost it in the long run, and that usually involves loss of all the capital that went into purchasing it.
Also, sadly, many of the steelbands of the 1990s that were organized enough to consider the purchase of property are now gone, and not because they didn't own property. Running a steelband in New York is mostly a labor of love, not a profitable undertaking.
PJJ you said it all, ssteelbands cost money and they don't earn any.
Absolutely.
I thought about you today, IAN!!! Because when this topic comes up yuh does say the same thing OVER AND OVER AGAIN!!!
And, boy, if yuh see how BLACK and POOR and MIDDLE CLASS WHITE PEOPLE getting PUSHED OUT OF CALIFORNIA -- I cyar cry no tears because some woman making noise about PAN NOISE IN BROOKLYN.
Claude Gonzales, I cannot help it man (lol)
That's a damn shame! Playing the same song over and over...HEY LADY, that's why it's called practice! I went to the Despers panyard in Laventile in 1995 from 10pm till 3:30am while they practiced Pan Parang, they never played the whole piece through! (too many spies from other bands?) To me it is a lovely sound, but if I had to get up early and go to work might be annoying, give her some good earplugs and a fan.
Pan didn't meet this woman there. Pan was there decades before this woman and others like her came to this neighborhood. Despers had their pan yard less than two blocks away from there for more than thirty-five years. In the last four years or so, they have been forced to move literally around the block from their original panyard.
This woman's purpose is to make pan and the Brooklyn pan players go the way of the tepees and original native people of Brooklyn. She is just executing the same plan as her ancestors did two hundred years before with the expectations of the same dastardly results.
bugs
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next