With election day only a week a day, we provided a chance for the three candidates for the District 39 City Council seat to answer the same 5 questions. Today, we’ll start with Joe Nardiello, the Republican nominee.
Carroll Gardens is simply “home” – and I really don’t limit that comfort of a home-area to one block, but across many of an expanse of Brownstone Brooklyn. It’s a social place and the feeling is indescribable, as its just part of who I am, really. My upbringing on President Street, and would make the old Wonder Years tv show run home crying in comparison. My wife is from Boston, by way of Los Angeles and we’re raising 2 children who are at ease talking with neighbors, shopkeepers, interacting with scores of their own young friends in Carroll Park or families that just happen by, ringing our doorbell (which was the old way that I was used to, decades ago). Everyone’s community-minded, and this aspect is contagious across our local public schools, places of worship, and in/out of every store, across every friendly face you can meet — day or night. There’s simply hundreds of components to life, and many scores of friends we’ve met and continue to meet.
My parents also live nearby, and that makes it easy to check in on them, and my maternal grandmother. The children can visit plenty, have fun and experience their warmth/unconditional love. Because my family has been here for generations, there’s hardly a block where I don’t know someone, and there’s stories and old friends and ghosts of 1,000s of people that are no longer living in CG that still evoke memories. St. Agnes/St. Paul and Sacred Hearts/St. Stephens parishes have family history. Conversations had with older residents about their youth, come back to me. Little stories can be relayed as I walk with my 8 year old daughter, like pulling the tongue of a German Shepard every time I’d passed “its area gate” as a 6 yr old, on the way to grandma’s house. Mom and pop shops that are long gone, that served me free lime-rickeys & egg creams…or where I’d had to go after an elderly woman lowered a basket from a top-floor with $5 and a grocery list (which I’d done 100s of times in my youth). Guzzi’s pizza. Years and years of teenage fun, and sports/street games played between my friends and then, later visiting rival groups to challenge for softball, football or roller hockey.
But, our area is far, far more than nostalgia. We lived in Park Slope for 3 years to ‘06 (and do miss the peace & quiet, easy walks to Prospect Park, and friends we’d made, of course, and the Q train and Mr. Won Ton and Roma Pizza and the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 7th Avenue, and an easier walk home from the Park Slope Food Coop after shopping). In Carroll Gardens, people walk outside and stay outside for hours on end. A walk to get a newspaper & iced coffee can take an hour, across the many friendly people you’d meet that want to talk. And night, as Smith Street is a hotbed of nightlife across its bars/restaurants. Some people would complain about the noise, but we’re used to it. As if the sounds of emergency vehicles down Union St. and loud shouts by 40-something frat boys, emerging from bars at 3am have blended into the familiarity and history across generations that can be unspoken, but understood.
Where are you originally from, and how does it compare to Brooklyn?
Brooklyn, and nothing compares. Born in Long Island College Hospital…guess which Council candidate would fight tooth & nail for it to remain a strong health-care option across our areas. Was raised in Carroll Gardens, when it was called South Brooklyn much more commonly. Also lived in Cobble Hill for about 5 years, before being wed to Cindy and having the first Wedding Reception at the Brooklyn Marriott Downtown, which still has our pictures & story of how we met, before their 3rd floor offices. Essentially, we’ve lived in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope and my life experiences have taken me across each area of District 39, long before I’d decided to run for Council.
How do you, personally, contribute to your community?
That’s easy, I do everything for anyone at anytime. For the Brooklyn Youth Association of Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill I coach softball all summer long. Within the Prospect Park Youth Baseball League, I also Head Coach for the Sacred Hearts Cardinals program — meaning running practices, dealing with 17 psyches, and carrying the equipment, setting the field up/bases in the Park (for younger teams) and generally leading boys and girls along from baseball skills to patience, focus, caring about the welfare of others (cheering).
Being there for others, with a watchful eye as well. Last month, for example I’d headed to the Brooklyn Tech ‘protest’ event when initial word was that others may join in from the flanks and provoke violence as Kansas hate cult was demonstrating. I went to make sure the students were protected from any nonsense, and ultimately helped 3 kids away from possible confrontations with NYPD officers (being the HS students didn’t understand why such hateful people can have police protection). Was able to also relay to community leaders closer to home, that these people weren’t threats at all, and were a bizarre family/band of attention-getters that were better off ignored (although I’d gone to a Kane St. synagogue too, just in case).
A few years back, I’d caught a staggering man at Jay St./Boro Hall just before he could fall before an A-train and ultimately walked/carried the drunk man from the Carroll St. station to Henry Street (stopping for him to be sick, 4-5x). No big deal. Early on I’d taught inner-city kids with college aptitudes across every summer and also coached softball. There’s an aspect of volunteerism from simply being a good friend and neighbor, and where I’m from that even extends to taking in the trash pails of your neighbors, if you see them around the sidewalks before they do. There’s plenty that goes on without anyone knowing, like shoveling many walkways/gates, during a snowfall (especially the elderly). Brooklyn born and bred, means something. There’s no pretense about life, here.
If you could change one thing in your neighborhood, what would it be?
Two things. The cost of renting or owning homes. The way local realtors have pulled off what seems like sure collusion and disregard to comparable pricing, in keeping prices high and not releasing homes for sale or relaying all bids to owners (holding them for 6-8-10+ months until their prices are met). It seems to me, that instead of lowering prices in accordance with the Recession and borrowing difficulties – Asking Prices of home went up by percentages above their value, in anticipation of lowering them back down to an amount that was originally simply overreaching in the first place. (But, all you need is one buyer, playing that game.) The cost pressures on families, seniors, young singles just starting “prices out” a staggering number of people.
Secondly, excessive car speeding on our streets has to be curtailed by stronger penalty and enforcement. Careless driving is rampant, from drivers slowly impeding on where pedestrians are walking across crosswalks, to not seeming to care about slowing down near schools or stop signs, for that matter.
What is you favorite restaurant/hangout?
Kind of like the low lighting, friendly feel of the Red Rose or Union-Smith Cafe. Hangout? I’ll go with Smith Social Club [sic], although with a great number of extended family/friends & 2 kids my days of hanging out are long over… (but, I certainly do miss the Montague St. Saloon).
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