Before I meet a different kind of aficionado later that night, I see him play bluegrass at Red Hook’s Jalopy, a micro bar-cafe-concert hall and music school with a Mini Cooper (license plate: GOTBANJO) parked out front. Onstage, guitarist Rick Snell and his band, the Five Deadly Venoms, are framed vaudeville-style by strings of red and white lights and he holds his guitar high against his chest in a way that seems to allow him to coax emotion from it.
First question: Bluegrass in Brooklyn?
“It’s held up as a pure source,’’ he says. “The people who come are looking for that.’’
Snell, 32, points out the 1960s Greenwich Village folk revival where people went to cafes to see the likes of Bob Dylan play and would even head south to see the music at the source.
“It boiled over in New York; it was rural music reaching the rest of the world,’’ says Snell. “Now, there’s a DIY ethic to bluegrass, almost like a punk rock ethic, that Gen Xers and an even younger generation can identify with.’’
Snell has a deadpan style and a reserve that makes you wonder what he’s doing in New York, but as he talks, some of what sounds faraway turns out to be coming from within. “I love this city. To the core. I wouldn’t want to leave,’’ he says. “Maybe I’ll strike it rich and have a house here and somewhere else, but I’ll always have a house here.’’
After the show, I head out to the promenade near the Brooklyn apartment and see the Statue of Liberty across the water. She is far away, unmistakable dots: the crown and, out at an angle, the flame. Even at this distance, her iconic status kicks in and she’s out there alone at night, holding our hearts, hope, and history.
“Her position is the first and last icon of freedom,’’ says Barry Moreno, Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island historian. Yet from the Sept. 11 attacks until this past July 4, the small lookout inside the statue’s crown was closed.
“After 9/11, they said the statue was a fire hazard,’’ he says, “but then, that was resolved’’ . . . but the crown did not reopen.
“It was considered an impossibility to close the monument,’’ Moreno says, although there were a few exceptions like the 1916 “Black Tom’’ wharf explosion and the 1984-86 centennial restoration. “The story was, from the week it was unveiled in 1886, it was never closed.’’
Looking up at the statue, with the city off to her side, it feels good to know that the crown is open again and there’s a months-long waiting list to go up top.
On my last evening in town, with a thousand things to see and do, I opt for the views from the apartment, watching the sun go down behind the city.
Together, the places I’ve seen define only bits of New York, but they are big parts of the reason I’ll come back.
Joe Ray can be reached at joearay@mailcity.com.
