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Happy Monday everyone! I actually woke up at 5:45 and went to my 7am yoga class today so I’m already feeling hugely accomplished, plus since I’m funemployed I got to nap all morning afterwards! Hurray! I hope you are off to an equally good start this week! I wrote about a couple of events for tonight in an earlier post, so be sure to check that out.
This is the last week to check out Hiding Behind Comets, a play by Brian Dykstra that the NYTimes calls “a dark, gritty story with its full measure of sex, violence, profanity and general nastiness.” Check it out at the Spoon Theater!
David Tully, Rebecca Challis and Kiran Malhotra in Hiding Behind Comets
Tomorrow night celebrate Good Beer Month at the Local Grill-Off to benefit Slow Food! The event will be taking place at Water Taxi Beach, so you can check out the skyline while enjoying excellent food and beer! Get your tickets here.
In celebration of Good Beer Month, watch contestants show off their grilling skills using locally sourced ingredients in the Local Grill-Off to benefit Slow Food ($35). After sampling the entries, try locally sourced feasts from some the city’s top ‘cue joints (including Fette Sau, Rub BBQ and the soon-to-open Fatty Cue) and beers from Six Point Brewery.
Also on Tuesday you can embrace your inner geek at the launch party for a new weekly movie night at Teneleven– Classic Kung Fu Movie Night!
On Wednesday those of you who are amongst the funemployed can further your education with a walking tour of the East Village focusing on the grittier side of its history:
This exciting walking tour covers everything from the Golden Age of the American gangster at the turn of the century to prohibition-era gang wars to the bohemian arts and drug culture of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Some of the most influential and colorful criminals and characters in American history have called the East Village home — organized mobsters, social-political organizations, radical activists, religious cults, and everything in-between.
Trace the steps of everyone from Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, The Hells Angels, GG Allin, and many many more. Riots, squatter evictions, cannibals, street gangs, kidnappings, shoot outs, assassinations, grave-robbers, hangings, bombings; we cover it all…
For a look at more recent history you can join the hipsters in McCarren Park for a screening of 24-hour Party People, a comedy documenting Manchester’s golden age of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Check out the trailer:
On Thursday celebrate the great Jazz music written for piano at the 92Y Tribeca. Performers include pianists Mulgrew Miller, Eric Scott Reed, Renee Rosnes and Bill Charlap.
If it’s dancing you want head out to Hugs for another addition of Excess Energy‘s much lauded Love Machine party! DJs Brian Blackout and Fucci will be spinning the tunes while you connect with that hot stranger in the crowd through interactive messaging! The UK Magazine Grazia Daily will be there checking out the action; go show them what Wburg is all about!
If you want to add some art to your week head over to the Soho20 Gallery in Chelsea for the opening of their new exhibit Boxing Gloves and Bustiers! The exhibit explores different concepts of female identity through video art. Here’s a still from one of the pieces:
Under My Skin by Valerie Garlick
Have an excellent week and stay tuned for additions!
NOTE: The Big Red Apple is now TheBigRedApple.net
To view this post at its new location click HERE!
It’s my first week of funemployment and NYC has never felt so full of promise! There are lots of excellent events to consider attending this week.
The Summer Play Festival (SPF) starts Tuesday at the Public Theater:
The Summer Play Festival (SPF) stages original new plays and musicals by emerging writers during the summer months at the legendary Public Theater in New York City. Since its inception in 2004, SPF has invested millions of dollars in emerging theatre artists, produced over 500 public performances, and has provided an opportunity for 75 writers, as well as hundreds of directors, designers, actors, stage managers, and interns to present their work in a protected environment.
This year’s lineup includes a “testosterone-driven new musical” (Departure Lounge), which is possibly the most questionable statement I’ve heard this summer. All tickets are $10, so this is an excellent way to get your dose of questionable theater cheaply!
Tuesday night you can be part of the drama at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where an interactive retelling of an 1873 Murder Mystery casts the audience as the detectives. You can learn about the underbelly of NYC a century ago and test your intuition.
If you’re looking for a slightly more athletic participatory event on Tuesday, you can head out to The Bell House and join the Ping Pong Tournament. The Tournament is strictly amateur and just $5 to join but be forewarned- “whiners will be paddled!”
On Wednesday night at The Slipper Room you can experience a book release party of an unusual nature; this dirty book needs an array of naughty performances to usher it into the world:
On July 8th, Fugu Press will release “Scarlett Takes Manhattan,” the first graphic novel by Dr. Sketchy’s creator Molly Crabapple and her longtime collaborator John Leavitt. Set in the demimonde of Gilded Age New York, “Scarlett Takes Manhattan” tells the story of poor Bowery girl Shifra Helfgott, who rises to become the premier fire-eater of her age. Chock full of rigged boxing matches, dirty politics, and turn of the century lesbian culture, “Scarlett” has been described as “disgustingly wonderful” by Warren Ellis and led Margaret Cho to call Molly “THE artist of our time.” Hosted by Amber Ray, New York’s “Salvador Dali of Burlesque” / Book signing by “Scarlett Takes Manhattan” creators Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt / Burlesque by Gal Friday / Fire performance by Jo Boobs / Vaudevillian music by The Two Man Gentleman Band, who will debut their new song “Scarlett Takes Manhattan” / Free red-hot flavored cupcakes by Glittle Cupcakes.
Also on Wednesday you can see Reality Bites at the ball fields at McCarren Park, as part of the Summer Screen Series by L Magazine. This is the movie that used the trope of home video years before youtube would propel our angst into the public realm. Check out the original trailer here.
ALSO on Wednesday, if you want to see some truly vintage movies head over to Dead Herring, where there will be a screening of “rare old-time cartoons hand-picked by Owen Kline and Tom Stathes, all projected on 16mm film.”
Thursday afternoon, if you’re funemployed (like me!), you can grab some gourmet munchies for a pittance at the World Financial Center Restaurant Showcase:
The 16 eateries of the World Financial Center will offer a tasting of world class cuisine for as little as $1 (and as much as $5) under the palm trees of the World Financial Center Winter Garden.
This may be the last week to see Twelfth Night at the Delacorte, but Thursday is opening night for another distinguished outdoor Shakespearean theater- Shakespeare in the Parking Lot! This year the parking lot, on the corner of Ludlow and Broome, will open its season with Midsummer Night’s Dream; what could be more dreamlike than Puck in a parking lot?
Finally I have one special advance theater notice: there will be two performances of Cirque Jacqueline July 25 and 26 at the Players Loft. This one-woman play about the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has received excellent reviews and the tickets are likely to sell out quickly, particularly as they’re only $20 apiece! The New York Times says that its author and star, Andrea Reese, “becomes uncannily Jackie-esque.”
Have a great week and stay tuned for additions!
NOTE: The Big Red Apple is now TheBigRedApple.net
To view this post at its new location click HERE!
This weekend New York City is going to be one GIANT PARTY, or to be more accurate, you will have a variety of massive events to choose from. I’ll start big and then return to the smaller gems.
Saturday and Sunday Madison Sq. Park (5th Ave. and 23rd St.) will be the center of the BBQ universe:
The Seventh Annual Snapple Big Apple Barbecue Block Party returns to Madison Square Park June 13-14, 2009, from 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM. The weekend-long event takes place every June and brings together the country’s top pitmasters who cook up their award-winning food for over a hundred thousand barbecue enthusiasts.
Big Apple Barbecue 2008
It is going to be intense. I’m considering not eating until then.
If you haven’t gorged yourself on BBQ there’s another marvelous food-centric event starting this weekend and running through next week- the NYC Food Film Festival! The concept is both simple and brilliant- you watch films about food and you eat the food while watching them. Last summer I ate some of the best samosas I’ve ever had, while watching a film about making samosas (they’re hard to make) and sitting on Water Taxi Beach overlooking all of Manhattan.
Food Film Festival 2008 at Water Taxi Beach
This summer the films cover delicacies ranging from peeps to mushrooms. Check out the trailer here.
A somewhat more movement oriented event is taking over Governors Island this weekend:
FIGMENT is an explosion of creative energy on Governors Island. It’s a free, annual celebration of participatory art and culture where everything is possible. For one weekend each summer, it transforms Governors Island into a large-scale collaborative artwork… and then it’s gone.
“Participatory” means it’s nothing like your average gallery show, this is the sort of art that is to be experienced. This video, about last summer’s event, should give you a taste of what the island will have to offer you this weekend:
Yesterday was the first night of a fairly unique theater festival- Planet Connections, an eco-friendly theater festival intended to foster social awareness:
Each of the more than 30 productions will be set up to benefit a particular nonprofit organization by donating a percentage of proceeds, soliciting volunteers or otherwise supporting the organization. The ideas behind the comedies, dramas and musicals range from the overtly political, like “The Katrina Project: Hell and High Water,” based on interviews with the hurricane’s survivors, to lighter fare, like “Suckers,” about a group of vampires. (The latter benefits the Red Cross Blood Bank of course.)
If you missed all those out of town music festivals this weekend you can have the awesome line-ups close to home! L Magazine is throwing a massive music event in Brooklyn- the Northside Festival.
Brooklyn Based and Gothamist are getting in on the action with ‘Our Very Own SXSW‘.
Now, let me start again at Friday…
If you’re looking for a romantic way to spend a Friday evening I can personally guarantee that drinking wine in the rose garden of the New York Botanical Garden tops the charts:
Stroll through the Rose Garden during the height of its beauty, stay late and enjoy a musical performance, talk with Botanical Garden experts about rose care, and purchase a glass of wine to complement the colors and aroma of the roses.
If you’ve always chosen sci-fi over romance you should be at 92Y Friday night for an evening of Battlestar Galactica:
Cast members from Battlestar Galactica join leading roboticists to explore scientifically, philosophically and ethically the approaching frontier where intelligent machines are commonplace and cybernetic technology enhances human capabilities. Featuring sneak previews from the forthcoming Battlestar spinoff The Plan as well as live appearances by some of the shows favorite cylons.
Also on Friday, there’s a fabulous event at the Guggenheim:
In honor of its 50th Anniversary, the Guggenheim has produced a documentary film on the history of its building, collections, exhibitions, and the development of its international network. The 27-minute film combines archival materials—including talks given by Solomon Guggenheim and Frank Lloyd Wright—with contemporary footage featuring artists, art historians, architects, architectural historians, and curators.
ALSO on Friday, for those of you who enjoy public pillow fights, I give you… a Bubble War in Times Square. At 6:15 on the corner of W 47th St. & Broadway the bubbles will fly! Once you’re covered in sticky bubble suds head to the afterparty at Club Exit in Greenpoint.
On Saturday the Queens of Pain will be playing against Manhattan Mayhem at the Hunter College Sports Complex- it’s always a good weekend for Gotham Girls Roller Derby!
You may recall how much I enjoyed the Young New Yorkers Chorus‘ last performance; they’re playing again Saturday night at St. Peter’s Church- check them out!
On Sunday rediscover Brooklyn’s suburban past by going on the Victorian Flatbush Houses Tour:
Developed more than 100 years ago to be a piece of suburban living just minutes from Manhattan, Victorian Flatbush maintains that special atmosphere today — right in the heart of Brooklyn. Stroll the streets of this spectacular neighborhood, home to five NYC Historic Districts, and tour interiors of 10 stunning homes, each lovingly preserved and restored.
Also on Sunday, I simply can’t resist adding an awesome event at the Bell House:
THE MODE MERR FASHION SHOW SPECTACULAR- Enjoy an afternoon of live music, burlesque, hot rods, DJ’s & the unveiling of the newest Mode Merr collection! SHOP THE DAY AWAY WITH A FULL BOUTIQUE OFFERING THE LATEST MODE MERR LOOKS AND OTHER FUN ITEMS! w/ performances from Angie Pontani & The World Famous Pontani Sisters, Dirty Martini, Helen Pontani, The World Famous *BoB*, Peekaboo Pointe, Miss Delirium Tremens, Little Brooklyn, GiGi LaFemme, The Lady Iye, The Fisherman Xylophonic Orchestra & many more to be announced!
I need not remind you that 1) I adore burlesque and 2) GiGi LaFemme and Peekaboo Pointe are two of my favorite performers, in fact, this interview with GiGi LaFemme made me a true fan.
GiGi LaFemme
On that note I shall end this post but please stay tuned for additions and have a marvelous weekend!
NOTE: The Big Red Apple is now TheBigRedApple.net
To view this post at its new location click HERE!
“Summertime… and the livin’ is easy;” I can hear Billie Holiday crooning in my ear as I type those words. It is going to be a GREAT weekend everyone! I will be in Boston with G and his fellow BC Law grads but you have a delectable spread to choose from.
Tonight, at Public Assembly, enjoy burlesque and sideshow to the backbeat of live rock n roll!
Tonight you can party for a cause at the Bed Stuy Food Not Bombs Benefit:
Tonight is also opening night for a lovely new French film showing at BAM- Summer Hours (L’heure d’été), directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Juliette Binoche and Charles Berling, amongst others. You know I’m a huge francophile so I’m biased, but you can watch the trailer and decided for yourselves:
Also tonight, you can check out a very interesting musical experience at Joe’s Pub- Futurity, a Musical by the Lisps:
Futurity is an original indie-rock musical by Brooklyn-band The Lisps. A theatrically staged song cycle, Futurity tells the story of a Union soldier in the Civil War who is an aspiring science fiction writer. The work fuses traditional Americana, found text, experimental music, and The Lisps’ own brand of quirky co-ed pop.
This weekend is the last weekend you can see the Raspberry Brothers make fun of Snakes on a Plane at Clearview Chelsea Cinemas; when you need some AC and a nice reclining seat, not to mention a good laugh, check them out.
Saturday night go to your first great dance party of the summer- the Down and Derby at Studio B.
If soul is more your thing boogie down at the Five Spot Soul Food Supper Club:
If it’s a concert you want I highly recommend checking out Emanuel and the Fear at Mercury Lounge. You may remember my stellar review of their show at Crash Mansion. They were also mentioned by L Magazine as one of the 8 NYC Bands You Need to Hear. Don’t miss them!
On Saturday and Sunday you can challenge yourself as never before at the great Crawfish Boil for NOLA 2009! A ticket entitles you to:
4 crawfish pours (4-5lbs of crawfish per person) along with corn on the cob, potatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, sausage and spices served with unlimited beer and New Orleans Hurricanes!
Sounds like a challenge to me!
This weekend is also the New York Airshow at Jones’ Beach! Performers include the USAF Thunderbirds, the Warbirds Over Long Island and the Canadian Forces Snowbirds! Bring your sunscreen and enjoy the spectacle!
New York Airshow 2008
Sunday is the first Sunday Best event at the Brooklyn Yard:
Tacos, sangria, little kids running around, trees, water, and good, good music. Residents Doug Singer, Justin Carter, and Eamon Harkin are playing alongside soulful house maestro Quentin Harris all afternoon and evening.
Sunday night there’s another great show at Mercury Lounge (I hate them but they have the best shows!)- Brit Boras and the Cavalry! I told you how much I enjoyed their show at Spike Hill; now it’s your turn to be impressed.
And if you’re looking for a traditional BBQ (of sorts), I recommend Flatbush Farm for all your Memorial Day needs:
As Obama Nation observes Memorial Day, the Farm will offer a traditional American-style BBQ on our outdoor patio: grilled barn burgers, pulled pork sandwiches, cole slaw, shiskebabs, grilled hot dogs, chips and potato salad. Drink pourer Jason Roberts will serve up the new and refreshing BUMBLE TEA—Earl Grey infused vodka-based sweet tea!
Have an amazing weekend! See you next week!
NOTE: The Big Red Apple is now TheBigRedApple.net
To view this post at its new location click HERE!
This studying thing is killing me; missing events is against my nature. This seems like a negative sign in terms of law school. Why isn’t going to burlesque shows and art exhibits a job? Sigh… Well, for those of you with free time there are some great events this week.
Tonight at the Japan Society you can learn the subtleties of sake:
Koji-making is the heart of the sake brewing process. Koji is steamed rice onto which a special mold has been grown with great precision and skill that converts starches to sugars, which in turn are fermented to yield alcohol. Making good koji requires precise regulation of temperature and moisture, and nothing has a greater impact on the final flavors and aromas of sake. Like much of sake brewing, koji-making is more art than science. Sake expert John Gauntner discusses the art and science of making koji, what it is, the myriad ways it can be accomplished, and how tiny changes to koji can result in major differences in sake flavor. Followed by a sake tasting.
If you want a bit more madness in your Tuesday head over to Galapagos for the ISSUE Project Room’s Sixth Anniversary Party. There will be shows by a range of performers including Elysian Fields, (“They carry a torch for nature, sex, love, the cycle of death and rebirth, and the sounds of folk and jazz ballads, new wave and classical music, seamlessly interwoven into a style that is at once languorously romantic and tough.”), Ray Sweeten and Brock Monroe.
Elysian Fields
Tomorrow you have a chance to check out one of the bands I’ve raved about recently– The Woes. As I said before, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many instruments used in a rock concert… their music blends jazz and blues and country into something unique and catchy.” Check them out at the Bell House.
Also tomorrow the Mixer Series is back at Cakeshop! This week there will be readings by Bret Anthony Johnston, Tracy K. Smith, Alex Mindt and music from Young Lions.
On Thursday there are two absurd and marvelous parties to consider. First, at Monkey Town, Twi the Humble Feather will be performing their [ahem] extremely original music, with L Magazine calls “part Gregorian chant, part Christmas carol and part Panda Bear’s Person Pitch unplugged.” They will be accompanied by the psychedelic visuals ofNobuko Hori.
Was your High School prom a disaster? Don’t worry, on Thursday you have a chance to be the cool kid you couldn’t be at 17- The Music Hall of Williamsburg is hosting ‘The Prom You Were Promised.’:
The night will feature rare DJ sets by VAMPIRE WEEKEND, PAT MAHONEY (of LCD Soundsystem), and HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR, and will be hosted by one of our favorite comedians (and 826NYC advisory board member!) LEO ALLEN. So fire up the limo, dust off that tux (or not), break out the hairspray, and get ready to dance!
It’s currently listed as sold out but some tickets may be available at the door, or you can always look for someone who needs a hot date.
Prom Dress (I almost wish mine had actually been this bad)
Have a lovely week and stay tuned for additions!
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