14 JANUARY 24, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
M.V. woman creates new organization promoting Italian culture & heritage
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
La Bella Italia will celebrate the
culture and heritage of those
in Middle Village and the surrounding
area descended from Italian
parents, grandparents and so on.
Jacqueline Gagliano, one of La Bella
Italia’s founders, held an opening
reception on Jan. 13 at Christ the King
High School, where she said support
for the group was beyond expectations
and included former members
of similar organizations which are no
longer in operation.
The next quarterly meeting will
be on March 10 and will feature the
grandson of the chief carver of Mount
Rushmore, Luigi Del Bianco, while
future seminars will celebrate the
contributions Italy made to the world
such as Christopher Columbus making
landfall in the New World.
“There’s so many Italian-American
organizations, many of them are in
Manhattan,” Gagliano said. “There
was one in Maspeth called Bella Italia
Mia, and aft er many years, it closed
because of the fi scal affl iction of the
founder … I just felt that it was just
such a vital part of the community
and it would really be a sad thing if it
would just die away. So for the last year
and a half, I have gathered some of the
former board members of Bella Italia
Mia and said let’s do something in a
new and diff erent way and let’s plant
the seeds and see if we can bring this
alive.”
Gagliano said the support for the
proposal received widespread support
with about 81 people at the opening
reception.
The Middle Village resident does not
only want to reverse the negative image
of Italians that persist in the media
through the scope of organized crime
and other negative stereotypes.
“We want to open a window to clear it
up and to show what we’re really made
of it terms of advancing the fi elds of
medicine, in the arts, in business, economics
and education,” Gagliano said.
Gagliano hopes NASA astronaut
and mechanical engineer Michael
Massimino will attend future gatherings
for La Bella Italia as they celebrate
Columbus and his role in the age of
exploration.
Photo via Flickr
Ridgewood’s Evil Twin & Nowadays team up for pop-up taproom
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
Evil Twin Brewing in Ridgewood
will be giving partygoers a taste
of what is ahead with a pop-up
taproom at Nowadays on Jan. 25, a
preview to the opening of their own
space this coming spring.
The fi rst brewery in the craft beer
network, Evil Twin has been working
on renovating an old banquet hall at
1616 George St. since 2016 and the
pop-up taproom will be ongoing from
on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays
to promote their excursion into the
Ridgewood bar scene.
Founded by Denmark native Jeppe
Jarnit-Bjergso in 2010, the George
Street brewery was chosen as the
first brick-and-mortar location for
Evil Twin, which has built its business
model around contracting beer from
other small-batch beer craft ers from
across the globe.
It currently has a repertoire of at
least 40 beers served in 35 countries,
according to an earlier interview with
the Ridgewood Times.
Jarnit-Bjergso lives just two miles
away in Brooklyn and found the Ridgewood
area perfect for the new chapter
in the company’s history.
The banquet hall is owned by another
Danish ex-pat, Torkil Gudnason,
who has made a name for himself as
a fashion photographer and owns a
studio next door.
Jarnit-Bjergso says the international
business model has been a huge success
but looks forward to creating a
New York brand under the new moniker
of Evil Twin New York City with
plans to serve up beer only available
in Ridgewood.
“Sometimes you need to challenge
yourself, and we want to show that
this is local in Ridgewood and in New
York,” Jarnit-Bjergso said. “The point
is to have a place to serve directly to
customers and give them something
unique they can’t find anywhere
else.”
Nowadays, located at 56-06 Cooper
Ave., attracts beer-drinkers from the
surrounding communities with live
DJs and a mobile backyard shvitz by
Photo by Justin Sirizzotti
HotBox which returned to the venue
in November.
Evil Twin will be the second brewery
to establish itself in Ridgewood
following the opening of Bridge and
Tunnel Brewery on Decatur Street,
which gained notoriety as one of the
fi rst microbreweries in Queens.
Evil Twin and Nowadays in Ridgewood are opening a pop-up barroom.
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