Worker Spotlight: Remy

What do you do at Black Star? 

On weekends, I come in and annoy my co-workers with lamentations on my pursuit of a Liberal Arts education. I’m basically the Judd Nelson of the Pub Team. Or the guy who had the turtleneck in Empire Records. He also played Slater in Dazed and Confused… Okay, I wanna be that guy instead.

Where are you from? 

I’m from Florida but I almost always have to qualify that with North Florida. In movies and television (like the adequately written Burn Notice), it’s all palm trees and pastel pants. Where I’m from, it’s not like that. It’s South Georgia— hunting, rattlesnake roundups, muddin’. The whole bit. Where Oak trees dressed with Spanish Moss dig their roots into red clay. 

Your favorite beer on tap? 

I love all of our beers but the winter styles especially. I have been anticipating Rebellious Dockhand since Rebellious Dockhand left last year. 

The best part of working at a cooperative would be…? 

Any cooperative or this cooperative? I appreciate our cooperative because we adhere to the cooperative values, like democratic self-management, more than any other co-op I’ve worked at (and I’ve worked at two others. Well I “worked” at one and the other… Ah forget about it). 

Norman Mailer or William S. Burroughs? 

To pal around with? Mailer I’d say. Burroughs was a fine writer but preferred to stay in his ivory tower. Mailer duked it out in the streets. He was involved in political causes and, unsuccessfully, ran for mayor of New York in possibly one of the most earnest political campaigns of the time (I’m aggrandizing of course). Also, apparently, he crossed paths a time or two with Lee Harvey Oswald (this was after Oswald returned from the Soviet Union) and later wrote what is considered the “definitive” autobiography of Marilyn Monroe in which he posited that she was murdered by government agents. You have to assume he knew something, right? I think Pynchon goes into that in Crying of Lot 49 or Gravity’s Rainbow. I don’t know because I haven’t read them yet, but I like to sound like I have. 

How much of your childhood do you remember?

I have suppressed much of it and replaced the memories with things from T.V. 

If the Pub team were all extended family, which would be more fun: funerals or weddings?

If? The Pub Team is an extended family! Since we’re all relatively young, and the death of a young person is always a terrible thing, I’d have to answer with ‘weddings.’ Weddings are a time of great optimism and, idealistically, a celebration of two creatures who have the mutual assurance of a forever-partner to support them when they go hurling themselves into the great gaping maw of the Future Unknown. Also, the last Black Star wedding I attended was rad. I got turnt and went swimming in a river. 

What is the best song in the world about friendship?

That’s a good question. It’s funny, there are so many songs about relationships, love songs, but there are so few about purely about platonic friendships. Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” comes to mind, but the refrain “you’re making me live now, honey,” suggests that it’s perhaps more romantic than platonic. I’ve got to go with the classic “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers. Not only did it come from a deeply personal place for Mr. Withers, but it was a communal song, ushering those disillusioned with the end of the Civil Rights era and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy into the next decade. It was like a better “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Have you ever _______ (fill in the blank)? 

“Have you ever—played basketball with Heath Ledger?” Why yes, I have, God rest his soul. He was an incredible talent in celluloid but exceedingly poor on the court, God rest his soul. I nicknamed him “Brickback Mountain,” God rest his soul.