Tag Archives: New York City Center

Sept. 17-20 Additions and RECAP

First, I’d like to recap the last couple of posts (scroll down or click HERE and HERE to read them in full). There’s some questionable theater ongoing in The Big Apple: Juliette Binoche is trying her hand at dancing; one man is playing 3 Irish Widows (plus 20-some other characters); Daniel Craig thinks he’s a real actor now; Philip Seymour Hoffman IS a real actor; Medea has a whole new look; and you can now take a poetic bus tour of the Bronx. Plus next week is the start of Fall For Dance and there are still a few tickets left! Also upcoming: Williamsburg Fashion Weekend is THIS weekend (Sept. 18 + 19); Le Fooding D’Amour will bring real French cuisine to the city NEXT weekend (Sept. 25 + 26); and The DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival will be dressing up DUMBO NEXT weekend (Sept. 25-27). Plus there’s still time to “see” a concert while in a MAZE AND discover wtf psychogeography means. There’s also still time to drink awesome beer AND rock out with gypsies! ALSO be sure to check out one of the comedy shows that are part of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival happening THIS weekend (Sept. 17-20). Feeling overwhelmed yet? Good, now it’s time for ADDITIONS!

Tonight (Sept. 17) is the 2nd Annual Park Slope Restaurant Tour! Last year’s tour was my first date with G so this marks our 1 year anniversary. Head out to 7th Ave. with someone who might be special and see if stellar samples can be good luck for you too!

Starting tonight and running through Oct. 3 M.E.A.N.Y. Fest (Musicians & Emerging Artists New York) will be showcasing up and coming bands at various venues throughout the city. G and I will be seeing Black Taxi play next Saturday (Sept. 26) and we’d love to see you there!

Tonight is the opening reception for the Recession Art Sale. The exhibition itself will open Monday and run through next Sunday (Sept. 21-27). Here’s a piece by Thaddeus Radell, an artist whose work will be on sale:

Thaddeus Radell

Thaddeus Radell

Tomorrow night (Sept. 18) you can sample an array of Indian street food all in one place, the Indian Culinary Center:

Your hands and feet won’t be the only things pretty enough to eat at the Indian Culinary Center‘s (131 West 23rd Street) evening of Henna and Street Foods of India this Friday from 6-10 p.m. In addition to body art applied by an onsite specialist, the evening will feature such savory bites as Bhel Puri (spicy snack mix), Aloo Tikki (potato croquettes), and Kati Rolls (Indian wraps).

On Saturday (Sept. 19) find someone willing to give up their spot on a team and you could be part of a Craft Beer Scavenger Hunt run by the lovely folks of Metro Metro!

As part of NY Craft Beer Week, we are having a daylong, multi-borough discovery of beer, bars, and neighborhoods. Teams of four will pore over the city in the pursuit of delicious knowledge while embracing the healthy spirit of competition. To cap the day off, hunters will enjoy a private afterparty hosted at the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg.

If you missed out on the last pig roast I mentioned you have another chance to see a whole pig being roasted this Sunday (Sept. 20) at Il Buco!

The sixth annual Sagra del Maiale, an outdoor pig and apple festival commemorating the Autumnal Equinox, will take place outside il Buco between 1-8 p.m. The guest of honor will be a 200-pound heritage breed Crossabaw Pig, slow roasted in an “infiernillo” (“little hell”) by Chef Ignacio Mattos.

Il Buco Pig Roast 2007

Il Buco Pig Roast 2007

If you can’t make it out to taste what Park Slope has to offer then you may want to sample the West Village Sunday (Sept. 20); Taste the West Village lets you try a number of top shelf restaurants for a small fee (from $10 depending on the number of tastes).

Finally, get your tickets now to The Big Lebowski Festival, happening next week (Sept. 22-24) in The Big Apple!

LF_TourFlyer_NYC

That’s all for now! Be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest updates and once again, shan’a tova for those of you celebrating Rosh Hashanah this weekend!

Sept. 14-27 Fashion, Art, Music, etc.

If you haven’t looked at my last post yet you should be sure to scroll down or click here to get more information on Juliette Binoche at BAM, Conflux (an annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography) and the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, all of which are ongoing or coming up THIS weekend!

To that already exciting array I would like to make some additions!

This weekend and next you can experience Euripides as you’ve never experienced him before! The production of Medea playing at Petit Versailles is anything but the play you read aloud in your High School English class:

Medea at Le Petit Versailles is a cross-culturally cast production of a modern, poetic new translation of the classic Greek play. The production is a site-specific collaboration by local artists from a variety of fields, including dance, visual arts, film, theatre, and experimental music.

medea

If you’d like your theater “to go” you should consider experiencing The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; this innovative theater piece allows you to experience travel in a new way as you explore the neighborhood by bus. In an NPR story Robert Smith described the piece as “part tour, part narrative.” It’s certainly not plot-driven but if you’re looking to explore an area you’re unfamiliar with this is likely to be a much more poetic version of your standard tour.

Several times a year fashion designers gather in Midtown to bow down before the altar of Anna Wintour. Across the East River a very different set of designers exhibit their anti-establishment experimental work at Secret Project Robot:

Williamsburg Fashion Weekend, the original innovator of unorthodox fashion shows in Brooklyn, opens its sixth season on September 18th and 19th, at Secret Project Robot. The group of designers we assembled this year, with their finger on the pulse of our fashionable neighborhood, will display the diverse elements that make up what Williamsburg fashion aesthetic is about, right now!

fashionwburg

Next week Fall For Dance is taking over New York City Center. You may recall that I spent all morning yesterday (and a good part of the afternoon) waiting on line to purchase tickets; if you were not on line with me you can still purchase some gallery seats and partial view seats at the box office. I’m most excited about performances by New York City Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

As far as I know Le Fooding is totally sold out but if you’re more cunning than I am try to get tickets to this foodie extravaganza at P.S. 1 next weekend. Le Fooding D’Amour is a showcase for up and coming French chefs as well as a place to see more established chefs in action.

FRANCE is actually home to countless up-to-date chefs. They just don’t get mentioned enough. The media are too dazzled by the glittering stars. The fact is that bourgeois cuisine is no longer France’s daily bread. Techo-cuisine never will be. In Paris, the gourmands are devouring the gourmets. Our favorite chefs are not celebrity chefs. Their photos aren’t printed on packs of vacuum-sealed ham. So where do you find these oh-so-Parisian luxuries? In their restaurants, their bistros? Such hodgepodge words! No, in their kitchens. They’re frequently French, most certainly Parisian, and always authors, of course.

If Le Fooding proves inaccessible you can still check out some very exciting new art for free! The DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival “presents touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation’s largest urban forum for experimental art.” Here’s an interesting piece from last year’s festival:

DumboArtsFest-UpStairs

That’s all for now! For those of you who, like me, are celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the next couple of weeks- shan’a tova! Stay tuned for additions and as always for the latest follow me on Twitter!

Sept. 9-12 Fashion, beer, the Dutch and more!

Once again we have a super stuffed weekend coming up, not to mention the days before and after! I’ll admit as one of the funemployed I fail to recall what day of the week it is most of the time…

Tonight, as I’ve told you already, I’ll be at Comix to see the Raspberry Bros do their thing to The Breakfast Club (plus participate in the John Hughes sing-a-long). If you’d like to join buy your tiks in advance using the code RASP and they’re just $5 ($15 at the door)!

Tomorrow is ‘Fashion’s Night Out‘- an advertising ploy by Vogue and the rest of the fashion industry to get you to shop before they all go broke (the blurb in the Sept. issue of Vogue says “don’t you miss shopping?”). There are innumerable sales and events involved; my pick is champagne fueled lingerie shopping at Kiki de Montparnasse (starts at 8pm).

Four hundred years ago a Dutch ship called the Half Moon, guided by Henry Hudson, reached the shores of Manhattan. This week the Dutch are celebrating that historic landing and all that’s followed it with a slew of exciting events! I’ll admit I’m at a loss to choose between the explorations of Dutch culture, the environmental lectures, the sports and the historical events. However, the big three are The Flying Dutchman Sailing Race, the NiEuW Amersterdam Restaurant Week and the New Amsterdam Market. The Restaurant Week runs from Sept. 5 to the 20th; participating restaurants are offering prix fixe menus for $24- the amount Hudson paid for Manhattan (now THAT’s inflation!). I recommend Bachas, Bar Tabac and Resto! The New Amsterdam Market is your standard farmers market but with the additon of various workshops and events (for example ‘drink with Henry Hudson’). Embrace your inner Dutchman!

New Amsterdam Market

New Amsterdam Market

If your favorite part about the Dutch is their beer you’ll be glad to know it’s also NY Craft Beer Week from Sept. 11 to the 20th! This year’s NY Craft Beer Week includes 83 different venues featuring 162 unique beers throughout the five boroughs. There are also all sorts of events such as beer “strolls,” “walks” and “crawls” (I find the distinction in naming quite intriguing…). Get out and take your knowledge and appreciation of this fine form of alcohol to a whole new level!

Backtracking a bit… tomorrow you can learn some secrets of Jewish cooking just in time to impress your mother-in-law (or any Jewish mothers in your acquaintance) on Rosh Hashanah! Joan Nathan will be sharing her tricks at the Tenement Museum!

If you can’t pay tribute to John Hughes tonight you have another chance Thursday night- Cattle Call Tribute to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This event is highly participatory so you should only go if you want to be part of the show! Audience members will reenact their favorite scenes from the film with some dubious direction; do you have what it takes to be Ferris? Here’s a clip to remind you of the size of the shoes you’re trying to fill…

This weekend previews for A Steady Rain begin at The Schoenfeld Theatre. This is Daniel Craig’s Broadway debut and the general feeling seems to be that he is likely to be terrible, but hey, you never know, especially with Hugh Jackman around. Here’s a panel from an excellent cartoon in New York Magazine that perfectly sums of the problem:

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Friday night Flux Factory is throwing the dance party to end all dance parties; there will be DJs, bands, installation art, weird performers and much much more, ALL ON A BOAT.

fluxonaboat-webflyer

Starting this Sunday Philip Seymour Hoffman is back on stage in The Public Theater’s production of Othello. He’ll be playing alongside John Ortiz in what is certain to be one of the most memorable productions of this challenging play. Get your tickets now before the critics start raving in earnest.

From Sept. 22 to Oct. 3rd New York City Center will host some of the most creative and talented dancers from around the world. Not only that but the tickets to these marvelous performances, all part of the annual Fall For Dance Festival, are just $10 each! The catch? Well, the catch is that this Sunday you’d better get up early and join me on line to get your tickets as soon as they go on sale!

Post-ticket buying head out to The Bell House for the Brooklyn Cheese Experiment:

Competitive cookoff gurus Theo Peck and Nick Suarez, present to you the Brooklyn Cheese Experiment, a cheese cookoff and homebrew-off of epic proportion. Amateur chefs will whip up their favorite cheese-based dishes ranging from sweet to savory, while local homebrewers pit their home made brews against each other in Brooklyn’s premier culinary competition. The audience will vote for their favorites along with a judging panel of highly touted cheese and beer aficionados. Prizes and cash will ceremoniously be given away to those who strive for cookoff glory. Do you have what it takes to compete?

Sunday is also the most anticipated literary event of the year- The Brooklyn Book Festival! Last year I came unprepared and failed to make strategic choices when waiting on line for tickets to readings. This year if I’m able to make it out there post-FFD ticket line (so unfair that these are the same day!) I’ll follow Brooklyn Based Cheat Sheet!

If you miss the other “premier screenings” of No Impact Man check it out at the Anjelika Tuesday night with the added bonus that Kate1, who collaborated on the book, will be speaking about local/sustainable food before the screening!

Also on Tuesday, anyone who hates Jane Austen and/or loves Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, should be at Idlewild Books for the release of Ben Winters’ newest mockery- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. There will be co-readings by co-author Ben Winters and The Good Thief author Hannah Tinti. Here’s a clip of a staged scene:

Now if that doesn’t make you feel gleeful I don’t know what will! Remember to RSVP for the reading!

Have an excellent weekend and stay tuned for additions! Also be sure to follow me on Twitter for the latest news!

April 13-16 Take 1: What to do?

We have quite the week ahead of us and I hope you are rested and ready to take on some of these amazing events! Tonight Tom Shillue will perform his stand-up act at The Green Room. He makes me nostalgic for Seinfeld; check out this clip from his act:

Also tonight, at The Half King, there will be  a book reading of the spicy variety; Evan Wright will read from his book ‘HELLA NATION: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut’s War against the GAP, and other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America.’

Evan Wright is the New York Times-bestselling author of Generation Kill, recently an HBO miniseries, for which he served as a writer and consulting producer. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, he has also written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among numerous other publications. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards, and for Generation Kill he received a Los Angeles Times Book Award, a PEN Literary Award, a J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and a General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Award. He lives in Southern California.

hella-nation

On Tuesday experience the Urban Poetry Slam, starring Jaylee Aldee at the Bowery Poetry Club:

Known as the Teddy Bear with a razor blade under his tongue, Jaylee Alde is a young prolific poet who commands his audience with grit and grace. A bay area native and all around slam champion who combines classic verse with his truthful raw honesty. In St. Louis 2004 at the National Poetry Slam he placed 2nd in the Individual championships and as a member of the Berkeley Slam team placed in the top four teams in the nation. Jaylee is also a member of the Asian Bay Area collective Proletariat Bronze.

Also on Tuesday The Bell House hosts three fantastic bands for a night of awesome music; I predict that the chandeliers will be shaking by the end of the night. The bands are El May, Wye Oak and Crooked Fingers. Here’s the video for Crooked Fingers’ ‘New Drink for the Old Drunk’:

Also on Tuesday, if you know the right person to sleep with you might be able to get into The Dead Weather’s concert at The Bowery Ballroom:

The Dead Weather are a brand new rock outfit consisting of Dean Fertita, Jack Lawrence, Alison Mosshart and Jack White. The impetus for the band came when Mosshart’s band The Kills opened on a few US tour dates for The Raconteurs. Recognizing immediately the musical synergy between Mosshart, White and Lawrence, the trio devised a plot to record together during some down time in White’s own Third Man Recording Studio in Nashville where White enlisted the addition of erstwhile Raconteurs’ touring accomplice and Queens Of The Stone Age collaborator Dean Fertita. What was initially imagined as a one-off collaboration for a 7” single release turned into a full blown album project once the quartet switched on the recording tape. The Dead Weather’s menacing sounds were so electrifying that they couldn’t help but keep the tape rolling. In three weeks they had recorded a full length album, Horehound produced by Jack White, to be released on White’s Third Man Records in June. The album features the band’s explosive debut single, “Hang You Up From The Heavens”, which is currently available through iTunes, backed with a dirge driven cover of Gary Numan’s “Are Friends Electric?”

thedeadweather

ALSO on Tuesday (I know, it’s very overwhelming), Hebrew School will have their Record Release Party at Public Assembly. David Griffin has reworked Hebrew School classics with an indie rock bent. I’m a fan of his previous work with Nous Non Plus (you may recall my rave review of their concert at Mercury Lounge), and I’m excited to see how cool he can make the songs of my childhood.

hebrew_school_poster_small_2601

On Wednesday you have another chance to speed date with a soundtrack of music by The Smiths, at Black Rabbit. I posted their last speed dating event and sources tell me it was good fun.

Wednesday is also the first day of the Lincoln Center Film Society’s series ‘First Light: Satyajit Ray from the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy.’ Check out the NYTimes article to read more about this talented Indian director and the films that will be showing at The Walter Reade Theater through April 30th.

Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray

A and I are going to see ‘Humor Abuse‘ at the City Center on Wednesday; it’s a play about a very unusual childhood- growing up at the circus. This is your last week to check it out so if you’re interested don’t wait for my review!

Lorenzo Pisoni in Humor Abuse

Lorenzo Pisoni in Humor Abuse

On Thursday Brit Boras and the Cavalry play at Pianos. I love her voice, it has all the intensity and breathy sexiness of Alanis Morisette, but she’s also backed up by a talented group of musicians playing instruments you don’t often see in rock concerts, like a cello. Check out the music video from ‘Cassandra’:

Stay tuned for more events!