Changing The City, 7 Minutes At A Time

PROSPECT LEFFERTS GARDENS, NY — Rain fell over Brooklyn as dozens of locals crowded into Awesome Home — as they have thrice monthly for years — on a March evening to laugh, cry, sing, debate and chat.

They call it “7 7.”

The idea is simple: seven performers get seven minutes in front of a microphone in venues across Prospect Lefferts Gardens on the 7th, 17th and 27th of every month.

Speakers and performers, selected by the series’ curators, span a huge range from poets, to comedians, to business owners, to musicians and dancers, to locals with something to say.

Imagine it as a community board meeting, but there’s beer, it’s fun. It’s also one of the neighborhood's worst-kept, most beloved, secrets.

“You have a good time, you laugh at jokes, your soul is moved by music, you learn about what’s available to you in your community, you find people who are experts,” said its creator Miles McAfee, a law school grad who now works at Medgar Evers College.

“7 7 is a representation of the world.”

One: Having Fun, And Fixing The World

The cultural event’s story — which connects Bernie Sanders’ former roommate, a handful of New York City elected officials, "The Dick Clark Show," a terrifying flight across the sky and more than one serenade — began because McAfee’s neighborhood clubhouse burned down when he was 13 years old.

The young California native became impatient waiting for Berkeley officials to repair his park, so he rallied some buddies to take matters into their own hands.

"That was the activism that showed me you can actually affect society if you organize people," McAfee said.

“It was ‘Little Rascals’ style and it was unsafe, but we fixed our clubhouse."

Decades later, McAfee has a new clubhouse, only this one floats around Prospect Lefferts Gardens and draws together all his closest friends (by which he means nearly everyone in the Brooklyn neighborhood).

In its name remains a nod to McAfee’s early lesson on civic engagement — a reference to his seven pals who all grew up to influence different spheres of culture, but enjoyed a lot of Seagram's 7 and 7-Up along the way.

“I like to have fun, but I want to fix the world,” McAfee said. "I think we can do those two things together."

7 7 was also born, in part, out of a random conversation McAfee had while campaigning for then-Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley with a man who turned out to be the former college roommate of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“He became very interesting to me," McAfee said. "I thought: there must be all kinds of people who have these kinds of connections and stories and life experiences.”

And so on Aug. 7, 2021, at HEE-space Thrift Shop, McAfee once again rallied his buddies for the first 7 7.

They included Louis Miller — a cultural events organizer and neighbor who coincidentally grew up near McAfee in Northern California — his wife Vanessa Raptopoulos, and neighbor Sue Yellin.

Years later at Edie Jo’s, as he does everywhere, McAfee points out the folks who make up the local community — like Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso's little brother (who, did you know, is a talented filmmaker?), and a staff member of Assembly Member Brian Cunningham who happens to be a talented cellist.

“It’s always been like a living organism,” McAfee said. "It’s a representation of the community, and the community’s constantly growing and changing."

On one 7 7 night in March, four civil court judge candidates sat in the room at once — that's the night Jackie Charniga took the mic.

Two: Sharing Stories At Awesome Home

Charniga steps up to the microphone, heart pounding, to tell a group of near-strangers about her near-death experience flying back from Uzbekistan.

“I’m completely alone up here,” she recalled thinking as she stood behind the mic.

After? “Performing is the key.”

A diary entry is read. A poem. An artist explains the meaning behind the work that hangs on the walls of McAfee's wife's store, Awesome Home. A singer serenades the room with “My Funny Valentine.”

On another night, former Zombie House emcee Felicia Martin leads karaoke at Gaia Nomaya, and Lincoln Market staple Alem Mumuni regales his triumphant story of overcoming polio to compete as a professional cyclist.

This is what 7 7 is all about, McAfee says. The room is open to anyone and anything.

“Get in where you fit in,” he repeatedly reminds the crowds. And throughout the night, he catches newcomers up to speed: it’s participatory budget season, explaining qualified immunity and tonight, you have to use your seven minutes. All of it.

Between songs and jokes about Bill Clinton’s sexual health, residents discuss the neighborhood.

How can we face conglomerate developers and rent hikes? Can local businesses sustain after the height of the pandemic? Can we avoid being overrun by rats? What can the community do for its neighbors who don't have homes?

“Ideally, part of what 7 7 is doing is increasing people’s will to engage,” McAfee says. "In 2023, with [phones] in our pockets and all the knowledge that people now have…we can fix the council district.”

“If we fix the council district, then we can extend it out and fix the next council district. And then fix NYC. You fix New York City, you can fix the world,” he said.

For many, 7 7 carries this weight. For small business owners like Lev, the event also holds practical uses.

Three: Where Hershey Would Never Dabble

Lev doesn't generally talk about his past.

Ask him where he's from, and he'll respond with a blunt quip about his mother's anatomy.

Instead, Lev usually tells 7 7 about his current venture, a cannabis store, which has been difficult to advertise in other spaces.

“I want to heal people, I want to help people,” Lev said. “I’m making people happy, I’m making people high, I create goodwill all around me.”

Lev's cannabis store is the capstone to a journey that began with him fleeing the Soviet Union as a 19-year-old with strong beliefs about pacifism.

At 21, he owned his first car business, which flopped. He worked in finance, he owned and closed a restaurant in Brooklyn (Kiss Cafe), he studied culinary arts in Italy and he owned a hemp chocolate business called Brooklyn Dark — until Hershey's bought up his supply and nearly ran him out of business, he said.

“They want to crush me like the bug I was,” he said with a laugh on a hot day in his Prospect Lefferts Gardens shop. He wears an apron and, as he often does, a hat with his shop's name. So Lev decided to dip into an industry in which Hershey would never dabble: weed.

Weed was a lifeline when life became suffocating, Lev told Patch. At 30, he was depressed, trapped at home and wondering if life was worth living.

Weed made a huge difference — it made him feel better enough to change his diet, exercise habits, and more.

Despite the constant stressors of complicated state cannabis regulations that have made him feel like a fugitive on the run, improving a local’s quality of life is well worth the effort.

“You’re high, you’re functioning, you’re happy," Lev said. "When you’re happy everything works better, everything flows better.”

This is what Lev tells Charniga at Awesome Home after she shares the story of her nearly fatal plane turbulence — maybe smoke some weed before your next trip.

Four: Two Nights At 7 7

Five: Can I End My Seven Minutes Early?

Turquoise Haskin, then-candidate for Kings County civil court judge, tried to on that rainy night at Awesome Home.

No.

You’re done talking? Great, you can face the room, McAfee tells Haskin.

Audience members quip back and forth, asking Haskin relevant and outlandish questions.

From a folding patio chair in the front of the crowd, Sue Yellin has a question she yells out: Why are there so many CBD shops in Prospect Lefferts Gardens?

Six: Owner Of A Jazz Club Called Yesterday

Seven minutes at the mic makes a lot of people nervous, but it doesn't bother Yellin, one of the founders of 7 7.

“Because I like to talk,” she said. “I’m a people person anyway.”

Yellin has done seven minutes at the mic three times, including one of the first 7 7 events, where she told the story of The Needle’s Eye — the West Village jazz bar she opened on Ninth Avenue and Little West 12th Street in 1968.

“All the way down in the meat market," Yellin says, "which is now all very fancy and shi-shi."

Yellin dreamed of owning her own jazz joint since the age of 10 when her dad introduced her to the likes of Billie Holiday and Harry Belafonte.

"At that time, it was… all meat processing,” Yellin said. “I had jazz all weekend.”

Becoming New York City’s youngest female bar owner came with challenges, fanfare, and a cartoon portrait on the cover of "Women’s Wear Daily."

“The Needle’s Eye is in the middle of nowhere… but if you know New York, you’ll find it,” the Women’s Wear Daily article read.

“People are shoulder to shoulder… It’s a friendly place. It’s not hard to talk, but you’ve got to raise your voice.”

It was cool, but not quite as cool as Yellin, who once sang her original hit, “Sunglasses,” on "The Dick Clark Show."

When Yellin described this leap to stardom at one 7 7 night, the crowd demanded signed pictures of the record.

At the Needle’s Eye Yellin met her soon-to-be best friends and parents of Barbados’ future Prime Minister, Mia Mottley.

There begins Yellin’s third stab at the 7 7 mic where she covered a 30-year stint in Barbados, trip manager to the stars and owner of a jazz club called Yesterday.

When Yellin moved from Barbados to Brooklyn about 13 years ago to help her ailing mother, no neighborhood made more sense than Prospect Lefferts Gardens, where many call it Little Caribbean, she said.

And in Little Caribbean Yellin stayed.

She still loves it, despite some concerns about the pace of gentrification.

“I loved it," Yellin said, "this neighborhood.”

Seven: Life Is Good In PLG

Yellin's concerns about gentrification are shared, but so too is her notion that there’s still a lot of fun to be had in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

“I like to have fun, but I want to fix the world,” 7 7’s founder McAfee said. "I think we can do those two things together."

The seed of this philosophy began to grow in law school, when McAfee solidified his understanding of the criminal justice system that serves more as a trap than what it could be: an opportunity to change communities.

The philosophy grew as McAfee pursued a career in education, eventually spearheading a film and culture series at nearby Medgar Evers College that largely resembled the structure of 7 7.

“If the criminal justice system is at the edge of a cliff, and so when you do something bad you fall off the cliff," McAfee said.

"I want to build a fence at the edge of the cliff to prevent young people from falling into that trap.”
Within McAfee's fence, there is a great Brooklyn backyard party with good drinks, meaningful conversation with the hard-working people who aren't afraid to admit they're afraid to fly, were saved by weed, sang for Dick Clark and enjoy a Seagrams 7 and 7-Up.

Lev puts it best.

“There’s no reason that we cannot have a good life here,” Lev said. “We live in paradise.”