Teen launches a magazine to
promote boro’s small businesses
BY BEN BRACHFELD
Despite the already-rigorous
responsibilities of being a
senior in high school, one local
teenager has embarked on
an additional crusade: saving
Brooklyn’s small businesses
with a new magazine.
Esme Neubert, a Boerum
Hill native who attends Beacon
High School, recently launched
Teensy — a print magazine created
entirely by aspiring journalists
between the ages of 13
and 17, with the stated aim of
supporting Kings County’s
small businesses struggling
amid the pandemic.
At the beginning of her senior
year, when most of Neubert’s
classmates are focused
on keeping up their grades and
picking a college, she’s been
striving to make the biggest impact
she can, while empowering
her fellow youngsters with
an outlet to highlight their local
business community.
“It’s been defi nitely a stressful
fi rst three weeks of my senior
year,” Neubert said.
The fi rst issue, focused on
small businesses in South
Brooklyn (the area stretching
from Red Hook to Park Slope),
came out in September, and
features contributions by Neubert
and seventeen others, in
the forms of writing, art, poetry,
and interviews.
Its 1,000 copy run, which
was distributed for free in
various Brooklyn businesses,
was funded by about $4,400 in
funds raised on Kickstarter.
Neubert’s war chest of contributions
COURIER L 26 IFE, OCTOBER 22-28, 2021
came after she “sent
out a blast email to everyone
that I could possibly think of
that was a teenager that might
be interested, and also their
parents,” she said.
Once the team was assembled,
everyone was assigned
a different project, and was
given leeway to decide on their
own which establishments
should be featured.
Teensy contributors profi
led such businesses as Orphan
Guitars in Carroll Gardens,
which strives to sell
affordable, oddball guitars
that no one else seems to want
and serve as a counter to collector
shops and the Guitar
Center behemoth. The young
do-gooders also highlighted
Gage & Tollner, the historic
Brooklyn restaurant closed in
the 2000s and revived during
the pandemic.
Also included are short
lists of favorites in various
categories as defi ned by staff,
and on Instagram, Teensy
has been profi ling a different
Brooklyn business each
day this month. “During the
pandemic people are very distanced
and you can’t really
feel that sense of community,”
Neubert said. “This was a way
for people to really connect
over something.”
Thousands of small businesses
have shuttered across
the city during the pandemic,
as lockdowns kept people indoors
at the beginning, and
now living patterns change as
the city recovers.
Randy Peers, president of
the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce,
estimated that approximately
14,000 businesses, about
22 percent of those operating in
Brooklyn, have shuttered since
the onset of the pandemic.
While he noted that the borough
is seeing a healthy number
of startups rise from the
ashes, thousands of businesses,
meaningful to an untold number
of people, are no more.
“Teensy is an ode to our
community, expressing why
we love it, how it is unique,
how it is diverse and full of
talented, driven individuals,”
Neubert writes in a foreword
to the magazine.
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Brooklyn fi lm buffs can delight
this week as the Bushwick
Film Festival returns from Oct.
20-24 with a menu of in-person
and virtual events a year after
the annual arts celebration was
moved entirely online.
The festival, started in 2007
by Kweighbaye Kotee, a Brooklyn
based fi lmmaker and former
member of Brooklyn Community
Board 4, has grown
from humble beginnings — attracting
thousands of attendees
and fi lm submissions from
all over the world — even when
movies were being streamed
in people’s living rooms rather
than on the silver screen.
“The virtual experience
was really fun, too, we had an
exciting year,” Kotee said. “So
many people jumped in to support
us, to be a part of it.”
Last year, more than 5,000
people watched new fi lms and
attended panels virtually, and
the festival had a higher number
of volunteers than usual,
she said.
Networking virtually was
a benefi t, but one thing the online
festival couldn’t replace
was the experience of watching
a fi lm live in a theater — especially
if it’s one you directed.
“One of our fi lmmakers
said this recently, he said the
fi lmmaking experience is really
isolating,” Kotee said.
“Especially if you’re an editor
or producer, normally, you
can’t wait for the premiere in
front of an audience, you get
to see the feedback, get to see
the audience experience your
story. We’re just very excited
to be able to offer that again
to fi lmmakers, and offer that
to audiences, and also experience
it for ourselves.”
The festival team thought
about going fully virtual again
this year — but as restaurants
and other indoor events started
up again, with proof of vaccination,
Kotee realized they could
move to a hybrid festival.
They partnered with Regal
Cinemas — “a godsend,” Kotee
said, because many of their
usual venues are still trying
to recover from the past year
— and are hosting a full day
of live screenings on Oct. 23 in
their Court Street theater.
All week long, more than
100 feature-length and short
fi lms will become available to
watch online, and fi lmmakers
will take questions in virtual
panels available on the festival’s
website. The festival also
partnered with the City Artist
Corps to host a free screening
of “Rehab Cabin” happening
Saturday afternoon.
BFF is offering an all-new
virtual experience, too. For
the fi rst time, the festival accepted
non-fungible token
videos and has created “The
Metaverse,” a virtual venue
for guests to explore from
their own homes.
Rah Crawford, the festival’s
creative director, premiered
“Neo Now,” which chronicles
his journey with blockchain
and discusses the technology’s
future in the arts, at the
2018 festival.
“This is like, I would say,
an appetizer,” he said. “This is
the introduction, and then in
following years we’re adding
NFT short fi lms, narratives,
as an actual award category.”
In addition to giving people
attending the festival a cool
introduction to NFTs, he said,
it’s important for fi lmmakers
and creatives to stay ahead of
the next big developments in
the arts.
“There’s really going to be
two festivals in different dimensions,”
Crawford said.
The Bushwick Film Festival
runs online and in person
Oct. 20-24. You can fi nd tickets,
event schedules, and screen
movies on their website.
Small print
Bushwick Film Festival returns with
a hybrid model and new technology
BROOKLYN
Movie overload!
Esme Neubert holds up a copy of Teensy, the magazine she started which
focuses on local small businesses. Photo courtesy of Esme Neubert
Bushwick Film Festival founder Kweighbaye Kotee and creative director
Rah Crawford speak to the crowd at the Bushwick Film Festival. The annual
event is back this week, with events in-person and online.
Photo by Photo courtesy of Bushwick Film Festival