DJ Session: From New Zealand Country To The Poetic Musings Of The Netherlands
KCRW DJ Chris Douridas joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to share some new summer music. There’s a bit of country and bluegrass with Pokey LaFarge and the Kiwi singer Marlon Williams. There are also some deep electro tracks with Maximum Balloon and the Flemish group Waar is Ken?
Note: We have a Spotify playlist and an Apple Music playlist for our weekly DJ Sessions.
Chris Douridas’ Playlist
Marlon Williams, “Hello, Miss Lonesome”
Kurt Vile, “Pretty Pimpin'”
Maximum Balloon, “Let It Grow” feat. Karen O + Tunde Adebimpe
Pokey LaFarge, “Goodbye, Barcelona”
Waar is Ken? “Woordenstroom”
Guest
- Chris Douridas, host and DJ at KCRW. He tweets @chrisdouridas.
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Top Stories From Gothamist
Brooklyn jury convicts murder parolee of killing woman, severing her head and limbs
A Brooklyn jury convicted an 87-year-old of killing and dismembering a woman in an East New York apartment, the district attorney’s office announced Friday. The defendant, Harvey Marcelin, was on parole at the time after being convicted of two other killings.
Jurors found Marcelin guilty of first-degree murder, tampering with evidence and concealing a human corpse after one hour of deliberations, prosecutors said. Marcelin faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing is scheduled for next month.
“This conviction holds the defendant accountable for the cruel and reprehensible murder of Susan Leyden,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “Following the senseless murder, the defendant desecrated the victim’s remains in a manner that truly shocks the conscience. I hope Ms. Leyden’s family finds a measure of solace in this guilty verdict, which ensures this defendant will never walk free again.”
The case made headlines at the time, as Leyden’s body parts were discovered and information came to light about Marcelin’s past convictions. The killing was also featured on an episode of the True Crime NYC TV show and various true crime podcasts.
Prosecutors said surveillance footage shows Leyden, 68, entering Marcelin’s apartment on Feb. 27, 2022. But she was never seen leaving alive.
Additional video footage shows Marcelin wheeling around a shopping bag in which Leyden’s torso was later found, according to the DA’s office. Prosecutors said investigators later discovered the woman’s head and limbs in Marcelin’s apartment, as well as blood, cleaning supplies, a hammer and the box for an electric saw.
Leyden’s legs turned up in a nearby garbage can several days later, the DA’s office said.
The medical examiner’s office determined that Leyden suffered blunt force trauma to her head and other injuries. Prosecutors said Marcelin and Leyden both lived in the same shelter in the Bronx in 2019, but that questions remained about the nature of their relationship.
Marcelin was convicted of first-degree murder in a separate case in Manhattan in 1963, according to prosecutors.
Marcelin’s defense attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
NYCHA residents can sound off in series of meetings with city officials
Residents of New York City's public housing complexes will get a chance to air complaints about mold, pests and broken elevators directly to top housing and city officials at a series of neighborhood forums starting later this month.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office announced the series Friday, describing it as a first-of-its-kind engagement effort. The first “NYCHA in Your Neighborhood” forum is scheduled for May 20 in the Bronx, with Brooklyn to follow on June 3 and Manhattan on June 17.
Each event will draw residents from an area's NYCHA developments for small-group discussions with policymakers, according to the mayor’s office.
City agencies, including the health department and Department for the Aging, will be on hand with resources as well.
“These forums will give residents a new opportunity to weigh in on the issues that matter most to them and access services from a range of city agencies,” Mamdani said in a statement.
NYCHA has been under federal monitorship since 2019 over hazardous conditions and faces tens of billions of dollars in unmet capital needs.
The announcement comes a month after the "rental ripoff" hearing series, which opened a forum for residents to tell city leaders about their struggles with housing in New York.
That series drew criticism from public housing residents who said they felt excluded, though City Hall officials said no one was banned from the hearings.
At the first hearing in Downtown Brooklyn in late February, the Rev. Kevin McCall of Kingdom Justice Church held up a sign reading “the mayor don't CARE about NYCHA,” and the performance artist known as Crackhead Barney commandeered the podium to demand public housing residents be heard.
NYCHA representatives were on hand with their own table during the first hearing.
A spokesperson for Mamdani's office said the new neighborhood forums were not a response to that backlash and had been planned as a separate, ongoing piece of the administration's NYCHA engagement strategy.
In the statement announcing the series, NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt called the events “a natural progression in how NYCHA engages with residents.”
Leila Bozorg, Mamdani’s deputy mayor for housing and planning, noted in the statement that the agency serves more than 500,000 New Yorkers.
“Their voices and experiences are critical as we collectively shape and implement a vision for a more affordable city,” she said.
NYCHA residents can register on the city website to attend the meetngs.
Group wants locked gates at Washington Square Park to enforce midnight curfew
A group of Greenwich Village residents fed up with late-night loitering in Washington Square Park is pushing the parks department to install gates and locks at its entrances.
The downtown park closes at midnight. But to enforce the rule, a crew of cops creates a ramshackle assembly of metal barriers at the park’s nine entrances each night. Some neighbors say it’s not enough, and called for the installation of classic, permanent gates similar to those found at Abingdon Square Park and other historic squares in the city.
Members of Manhattan Community Board 2’s parks committee voted Wednesday night to ask the city to investigate installing permanent gates at the park.
The resolution is the latest push by neighbors to control the crowds at the park, which have grown more raucous since the COVID-19 pandemic. The green space has become a hub for social media influencers, weed parties and massive snowball fights that have occasionally ended with clashes with police. A federal investigation into alleged drug dealers responsible for overdose deaths was followed by a major increase in NYPD presence.
Washington Square Park has been a countercultural hub for generations. The community board's push to rein in its rumpus highlights the divisive politics around regulating the city’s precious public spaces.
Some neighbors say that the barricades set up by police are unsightly and fail to achieve their goal since they can be easily moved aside or shimmied through. Opponents of more barriers say that the park should be open 24/7 and that societal ills should be visible and confronted rather than displaced. Others say they simply want to put chains at the park’s entrance to let people know when it’s closed.
George Vellonakis, the landscape architect behind the park's sweeping mid-2000s renovation, overhauled the plaza and aligned the fountain with the arch, said the metal barriers are unattractive, and that the current setup where officers drag them into place each night doesn’t befit the iconic park.
“ There's nothing wrong with gates,” he said. “All our parks around the world are locked at night because landscapes are very sensitive. Anyone who has a garden knows that it has to be protected. So it's really protecting our investment.”
Vellonakis added that one of his plans for the park in 2005 included gates at the entrances, but they were cut from the design at the last minute. For the entrance by the park’s arch, he suggested an accordion-style fence that could fold away when not in use.
Eve Silber, a 39-year resident of the neighborhood, said that moves toward permanent gating felt like a betrayal of the park's identity.
“We don't have a right to decide who deserves to be in a park or not be in a park,” she said. “They are the public, and if the public is a reflection of the issues in our society, then those should be seen and visible for everybody to know we have problems to address in our world, and you can see them in our parks.”
Brian Meister, who lives across from the northeast corner of the park, said during Wednesday's meeting he was upset about homeless people who sleep in the park overnight.
"I've worked hard all of my life so that I can afford to live on the park, and it distresses me to see it ill-used," Meister said.
The community board meeting concluded with the group agreeing to draft a resolution asking the parks department to investigate some options. Parks department officials said they would work with the Washington Square Park Conservancy on a formal presentation for the community.


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