March 29, 2020 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAG E 11
Elana Gartner Golden and David Golden sang with their daughter from their Bergen Street house. Photo by Rose Adams
Quarantine Karaoke
Brooklynites join together in song during self-isolation
BY ROSE ADAMS
Hundreds of Brooklynites
gathered on their rooftops and
stoops on Thursday evening for
a borough-wide sing-along that
featured American classics,
such as “Sweet Caroline” and “I
Will Survive.”
“The idea is for folks to disconnect
from their devices and
connect with their community,”
said JJ Berney, a Park
Slope resident who organized
the sing-along to bring locals together
during the coronavirus
outbreak. “In this environment
we can’t touch people with our
hands, but we can touch people
with our voices.”
Berney said he decided to
start the “Sing-alone sing-along”
after his friend in Italy told him
about how Italians took to their
balconies to play music — bringing
residents together during
the country-wide lockdown.
“They found a way to release
the tension and be with people in
a way they couldn’t before,” said
Berney. “I found that pretty powerful.”
Berney started a Facebook
event called the “Brownstone
Brooklyn COVID-19 Singalone
(Singalong)” on Thursday morning,
and it quickly gained traction.
By the sing-along’s start
time at 6:30 pm, nearly 400 people
had marked themselves “attending”
and nearly 900 said
they were “interested.” Participants
posted their cross streets
on the event page to encourage
their neighbors to join them, and
Stella Artois beer said it would
send a free beer to anyone who
participated.
To make sure everyone sang
the same songs in unison, singers
assembled a list of popular
tunes in a shared Google Document,
which Berney turned into
a karaoke playlist on YouTube.
Singers began the playlist at 6:30
pm, when they crooned along to
classics such as Frank Sinatra’s
“New York, New York” and Ben
E. King’s “Stand by Me.”
One participant, who sang
with her husband and daughter
from their Bergen Street stoop,
said the event helped relieve her
anxiety from the outbreak.
Virus tests
abuptly
halted amid
chaos
BY ROSE ADAMS
The mayor’s offi ce abruptly
closed most coronavirus testing
centers last week — but failed to
notify many local offi cials and
hospital workers, confusing and
frustrating locals.
“They didn’t give us any detail,”
said Eddie Mark, the district
manager of Community
Board 13, which services Coney
Island, Gravesend, and Brighton
Beach. “There’s nobody that
we know of that we can call.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
on March 20 that the
city would close all appointment
only coronavirus testing
facilities citywide, citing a critical
shortage of protective gear,
such as gloves and face masks,
for hospital staff. Hizzoner clarifi
ed two days later that testing
would continue at tent facilities
erected outside public hospitals
— but only for patients in need
of hospitalization.
The change in protocol came
only hours after two testing sites
opened their doors at Coney Island
Hospital and the Ida G. Israel
Community Health Center.
A third testing site at Coney Island’s
MCU Park, which is still
under construction, will test
overfl ow emergency room patients
from Coney Island Hospital
once it’s completed, offi cials
said.
Prior to the facilities’ closure,
residents had been told they
could make appointments at the
testing centers by calling the
New York City Health and Hospitals
hotline, where a clinician
would evaluate their symptoms.
Continued on page 8 Continued on page 8
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