Arts and Events: June 2009 Archives

Sure, old buildings have plenty of supporters sticking up for their preservation and landmark rights, but what about coordinates of where historic events took place? The NY Times takes a look at 39-year-old amateur historian, and Columbia grad, Andrew Carroll's project to preserve and mark those sites. While his mission will take him to all 50 states, there are plenty of places here in NYC (Barack Obama Alley anyone?).

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You can ride on a piece of Michael Jackson history right on Coney Island! That sounds weird, but it's true. The Dragon Wagon Kiddie Coaster is the very same one that used to reside in Michael Jackson’s private amusement park at Neverland Ranch. Reportedly Earl “Butch” Butler, CEO of California-based Butler Amusements purchased the ride last year. Butler is old pals with recent Coney addition John Strong "whose sideshow has been operating in Sitt’s would-be Dreamland since April. Strong kept calling him and said they were having trouble getting rides. Butler agreed to fly out and see the situation. His impression: 'Coney Island needs upgrading.'" And that's how a piece of Neverland ended up in Brooklyn. [via Amusing the Zillion]

Since being named director of the Hayden Planetarium in 1996, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson has transformed himself from a relatively obscure astrophysicist into one of the leading promoters in the public eye for science and scientific exploration. His advocacy work through his books and TV appearances has earned him accolades of all varieties—honorary degrees, medals of excellence, even an asteroid bearing his name—and popularity enough to get him a spot on People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" list in 2000.

       

With monsoon season seemingly on the wane, it's high time we welcomed P.S. 1's annual summertime Young Architects Program, wherein the Long Island City museum invites a design team to transform their giant courtyard into... whatever. This year's project, by the firm MOS, is drolly dubbed Afterparty, a sly nod to P.S. 1's popular afternoon "Warm-Up" music series.

       

Graffiti legend Iz the Wiz (real name Michael Martin) died at age 50 on June 17th, and has finally received an obituary from the Paper of Record. The artist tagged subway cars in the 1970s and 80s with his signature in "fat capital letters spray-painted on a door, below a window, across an entire car or even along the full length of a train." Throughout his career as a graffiti artist, he got his tag on every line in the subway system more times than any other, which means if you didn't ride in a car with his name, you probably saw one in a movie. He even did a two-car homage to John Lennon after he was killed in 1980, and was one of the first to work on the Phun Phactory building (now 5 Pointz).

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Ah, summer, when the news is sprinkled with a healthy portion of marine life sightings. This one could turn out to be the summer of dolphins! Yesterday we noted that following the sighting of 150-200 confused dolphins in Long Island Sound on Saturday, a pod of dolphins was spotted off the south end of City Island. Reportedly the group had started off as one (they were also sighted last Wednesday in Northport), and has now split in two: the City Island crew (team Bronx) and the the Long Island Sound crew (team Bayville).

Michael Musto has been writing for The Village Voice for twenty-five years, best known for his weekly gossip, pop culture and nightlife column, La Dolce Musto. The column still runs weekly in the paper, now along with regular updates on his blog, La Daily Musto. He's been a recognizable face on TV for years, as one of the regulars on E!'s Gossip Show in the '90s and as a VH1 commentator earlier this decade. Nowadays he can be seen regularly on Headline News and bantering with Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

                            

It was a beautiful day for a parade, and participants and spectators of the Gay Pride March made the most of it. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to see the colorful procession of marchers, floats, musicians, and performers. One spectator told NY1, "I'm hoping that in my time, I get to see them legalize gay marriage."

Everything's coming up Hathaway: The Devil Wears Prada star has put her very-public breakup with jailed Italian financier Raffaello Follieri behind her and emerged as the unlikely toast of New York theater critics, and is even gracing the cover of NY Mag's summer double issue to boot. While she's no stranger to the stage (her performance in Carnival seven years ago was well-received), it's been a while since she's performed live, and many wondered if the 26-year-old could pull off the difficult transition from film to outdoor Shakespeare. Well, the reviews are generally ecstatic, and not just for Hathaway, but for the entire production, lucidly directed by Daniel Sullivan (The Homecoming). Scott Brown at NY Mag writes:

Continue reading "Anne Hathaway a Hit in Twelfth Night"

   

Also this week:

• The King of Pop, Michael Jackson died at age 50
• JetBlue announced a live music series at their new T5 terminal
• We interviewed Dr. Dog (who play a free Celebrate Brooklyn! show tonight)
• We also talked to Thurston Moore
• Lou Reed got angry
• Sound Fix will be moving and bringing back live music (but not with the alcohol)
• Nightlife apparently needs to be saved
  Continue reading "Week in Rock: Summer Love Edition"

The color of the Guggenheim's facade has been discussed over and over again, but did you know that Frank Lloyd Wright designed it to be red? More specifically, "Exterior: Red-marble and long-slim pottery red bricks."

           

Click on the stills above for more details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Afghan Star, My Sister's Keeper, The Stoning Of Soraya M., Surveillance, Chéri , Quiet Chaos, Repo! The Genetic Opera, The Killing, 10 Rillington Place.

              

If you were outside last night you likely heard some Michael Jackson tunes blasting in homage to the late King of Pop. MTV even took a break from their reality programming to play his classic videos all night, and fans gathered at the Apollo Theater for an impromptu memorial (The Jackson 5 performed there in 1969).

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Welcome to last summer amNewYork! The McCarren Park Pool parties and concerts aren't happening anymore. There was this whole long, drawn out thing about it when the series ended to make way for a $50 million makeover, at the end of which it will be a pool again. There were meetings and debates about it and stuff.

Hailed as "America's next great band" by Relix Magazine, psychedelic indie-rockers Dr. Dog will charm your fleas off with their shimmering harmonies, crunchy hooks, and affable grooves. Based in Philadelphia, the group's been a fixture on the NYC indie-rock circuit for years now; some music geeks may even remember them playing as part of a buzz band sandwich at Southpaw with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Dirty on Purpose way back in 2005! That was four years ago, and we're old. But Dr. Dog shows now sign of senility, and Saturday night's headlining slot at Celebrate Brooklyn is their biggest New York appearance yet. It's a free concert, with opening support from Brooklyn’s Matthew Houck, a.k.a. Phosphorescent, and electro-folk band These United States. We recently spoke with Dr. Dog's co-founder Scott McMicken about hippies, hipsters, and Baptists.

Okay, not really. But Flavorwire tagged along with Spencer Tunick to get a close-up look at the nakedest beach party in the Hamptons (surely it was fun getting all that sand off at the end of the day). The photographer set the scene for his latest nude project before dawn in Montauk, and the site reported back: "Tunick went through the setups he’d be arranging for the shoot, including a horrific-sounding pose called 'The Crab.' The group of 300 or so then trekked down to the beachfront, nestled between high cliffs and the picturesque Montauk Lighthouse, for more waiting. Once dawn arrived and the clouds broke, everyone stripped down and picked their way across the rocky beach to take position." And that's how the magic happens.

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Kathryn Bigelow's directorial visions have spanned genres, from the freewheeling surfing bank robbers of Point Break to heady science fiction voyeurism in Strange Days, from the police thriller Blue Steel to submarine intrigue in K-19: The Widowmaker. We spoke with the former painter this week about her new movie, the Venice Film Festival Grand Prize-winning The Hurt Locker, which is set in a land that Americans seem increasingly inclined to look away from: Iraq.

Someone's been bringing their parrot to Riverside Park, near the 79th Street boat basin, to entertain passerby—and one spectator has just posted this video!

     

As promised back in January, the Brooklyn Cyclones of Coney Island renamed themselves the "Baracklyn" Cyclones last night to honor the 44th President "with a night of patriotic partying at the ballpark." According to the AP, the line to get in stretched for two long blocks down Surf Avenue, with the first 2,500 fans receiving a free Obama bobblehead. Anyone who proved he or she was named Barack got in for free, anyone named McCain or Palin received free bleacher seats, and plumbers named Joe got two free tickets, har. (Like we said, this was announced back in January.)

While you were out enjoying the night for no reason, others were out enjoying the night for a cause. And that cause is to be able to enjoy many nights, more often, forever and ever. The Nightlife Preservation Community... is something that exists, and it was launched by the NY Nightlife Association on Monday. It's here to help you go out more often, stay out later, and age quicker—like Chloe Sevigny over there.

     

Looks like Calvin Klein succumbed to the prudes in SoHo who just couldn't handle an all-American denim-clad orgy billboard. The Daily News reports that the ad has now been replaced with one featuring a female, alone, in her soaking wet string bikini. Even though a lot more skin is being shown (and there are no jeans in sight!), some locals like the change. One old maid said, "The old one bothered people. It was a little too explicit with the threesome. You didn't even notice the jeans as much as what was going on with the people." Yes, in this new one onlookers will clearly only notice the product, and not that lady wearing it.

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There's not a lot to add commentary-wise to this video, which is a German report on the Brooklyn kickball league. Hipsters, Germans, a Beavis and Butthead quote... it's well worth your 6 minutes and 43 seconds.

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The Brooklyn Museum has taken four of their eleven human mummies to get CT scans at North Shore Hospital on Long Island... and they're updating their Flickr account with photos and live Twittering. Surely so much technology can't be good for the mummified soul. They tell us that "Through the CT scanning, Brooklyn Museum curators hope to learn more about each of the four mummies and the ancient civilization in which they lived. The Mummies that will undergo CT scanning are a Royal Prince, Count of Thebes, who is more three thousand years old; the Lady Hor on view in her elaborately painted cartonnage since 1993, some two thousand years old; Thothirdes, over 2,500 years and; and a mummy about which little is known, that dates back to the first century C. E." And so far today they found out that Lady Hor is a really a man, baby.

       

Yesterday, the citywide project Make Music New York came together on different street corners and in unusual venues around town. Chances are if you were out, you ran into a performance of some type... like this glockenspiel jam session at East 97th Street. What did you see?

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Crystal Tompkins (right) and her wife Lindsey Evans (left) have combined their talents as writer and illustrator to create a children's book about same-sex marriages. Oh The Things Mommies Do! What Could Be Better Than Having Two? is aimed towards young children growing up with two moms—something the couple created after realizing the lack of children's books covering the subject of LGBT families. It will hit bookshelves later this month, and Tompkins recently told us a little bit about it.

                     

Yesterday, in spite of the dreary weather, the Mermaid Parade rolled along Coney Island's Boardwalk, officially welcoming the summer. This year, King Neptune was actor Harvey Keitel (his wife Daphna was his queen); the Daily News reports the 70-year-old said, "As Mel Brooks said, 'It's good to be the king.'"

If Terminator Salvation's bleak vision of humanity's enslavement by machines has you down, HERE Arts Center is the place to go for an antidote to Hollywood blockbuster dystopia. The machines that fill the stage in machines machines machines machines machines machines machines (which we'll henceforth refer to as "machines") are as inextricably involved in day-to-day life as the computer you're using to read this, but they're not about to become "self-aware" any time soon. They're not making existence any easier either, but that's what makes "machines" so damn entertaining: A man pouring a glass of orange juice doesn't make for compelling theater, but three men using an elaborate system of pulleys and counterweights to (somewhat successfully) pour juice makes for daffy, steampunk slapstick.

Everyone loves a good PETA ad campaign, and the latest stars a carrot-clad Lydia Guevara. Yes, Che's granddaughter. She talked about her vegetarian revolution, saying, "PETA's fight for animals was one of the reasons why I went vegetarian. Moreover, this lifestyle has become a true revolution that is attracting more people and is an alternative that is healthier for the planet and for humankind."

    

Also this week:

              

Click on the film stills above for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include Year One, The Proposal, Under Our Skin, The End of the Line, $9.99, Dead Snow, The Windmill Movie, Top Gun, The New York Asian Film Festival, BAMcinemaFEST, DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation, Killer's Kiss, and Splash.

                     

Last night, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus opened its new one-ring circus in Coney Island. Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz were on hand to welcome the show, The Coney Island Boom-A-Ring—Mayor Mike even checked out the Monster Trucks.

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It's like a scene out of Gossip Girl: B and her BF filmed themselves having S-E-X a few years back, and unsurprisingly the tape has now leaked (and prior to the release of her electric pop album, fancy that). It's just a shame this isn't a Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick tape, but surely that will surface soon enough.

In July of 2007 Arun Wiita visited all 468 subway stations in New York City, taking photos around each of them. At one point during the ten days of documenting, he was detained by police, handcuffed and held for 30 minutes. Later in the year he filed a Civil Liberties lawsuit, with an overall goal of changing the NYPD's photography policies. We caught up with him this week, after he completed The New York Subway Project, where his photos from 2007 are included in a subway map, and every station contains notes on the interior as well as of the surrounding neighborhood.

Spooky! Trainjotting holds a flashlight to its face around a campfire to tell the old tale of Ezekiel Marcus, who died on the West Side tracks in 1934. The site reports that Marcus was a Manhattan native, born in 1899, and worked as a West Side Cowboy, riding horseback "up and down the 20-odd blocks of 10th Avenue to warn pedestrians that the train was coming."

     

Okay, so maybe it was really a vacuuming that the American Museum of Natural History Museum's Blue Whale received. But now you know that's how the 90-foot fiberglass model, which hangs in the Hall of Ocean Life, is cleaned: An industrial sized vacuum, a scaffold, and the attention of Rodolfo Valencia. Valencia gave the whale its last cleaning two years ago—a lot of dust has piled up since then! The AMNH told the Post, "It's his baby. He's very gentle with it. He's got this all mapped out. He probably knows every inch of that whale."

Now that the American Apparel mess is behind him, Woody Allen can get back to talking about what he loves: movies and New York City. USA Today and Tribeca Film have interviews with the director, who says he's getting priced out of Manhattan! He told them, "I wish I could afford to be here all the time, but it's a very expensive city to work in. It's gotten worse for me. It's gotten better in that they give you tax breaks. But everything (else) has gone up. I work on a very limited budget." He noted that it would cost about an extra $3 million to film in New York in comparison to overseas.

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Far Rockaway has gotten a Mad Max treatment over the years. Nate Kensinger has some amazing shots of the eastern edge of Queens, which "was once a flourishing summer community. Today, its landscape is like the half-abandoned city of Buffalo, with vast empty lots and a large number of abandoned homes. In 2008, according to the NY Times, the Far Rockaway's city council representative called his district 'ground zero' of the subprime mortgage crisis." It's hard to picture the beach bungalows before they were boarded up, in their old time glory when the area was dubbed The New Hamptons. Maybe the Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association can bring them back to life.

An abandoned church in Spanish Harlem is, at least temporarily, re-opened and housing a new religious-themed art exhibit. Animal NY reports that St. John’s Episcopal American Catholic Church on the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 102nd Street, closed in the '90s and is now the backdrop for Sacrosanct, a group exhibition produced by curator Sophie T. Lvoff.

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This generation's obsession with instant nostalgia and visually documenting every part of their daily lives serves as the punchline in this Onion News Network piece. In the story, an NYU dorm is set ablaze during a party, and "after examining the evidence from the 25 iPhones, 15 Blackberries, 10 video cameras and 40 digital cameras obtained from the students who attended the party" the entire event was reconstructed, placing blame on chain smoking 22-year-old Danny Gordon.

    

Yesterday, the much-ballyhooed gathering to demand that CBS fire talk show host David Letterman after his questionable jokes about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's daughter (namely how A-Rod impregnated her by the 7th inning of a Yankees game and how Eliot Spitzer should be kept at bay) drew a few dozen protesters outside the Ed Sullivan Theater. Estimates are as high as 50 and as low as 15. But there was a lot of passion: Josephine Sarnok, carrying a "Over the Line, Dave" sign told Entertainment Weekly, “I’m outraged. It was a low blow. I’m insulted for women. I’m insulted for children. I’m insulted for families. I’m insulted."

Sebastien Grainger may be best known as one (usually shirtless) half of the now defunct DFA 1979, but for the past couple of years he's been toiling away as a solo artist. Now on tour with The Mountains in tow, you can catch him opening up for fellow Canadians Metric tonight at Terminal 5. Oh, and he's looking for some cheap eats while in NYC, so give him your recommendations via Twitter.

A series of photographs by Lee Jaffe have (re)surfaced, giving a colorful and intimate look at artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as he was creating one of his works. The Brooklyn-born artist wasn't in town when creating this piece, however, the shots were taken in Jamaica. [via Hypebeast]

An interesting police strategy is described in this otherwise "non-story" on Free Williamsburg, which overall delves into a rumor that someone is out to bring down the Market Hotel, a Todd P venue in Brooklyn. The promoter has now addressed the rumors that were in the original story, which focused on a "raid" that took place last Friday and included baseless accusations that he was "being brought up on a slew of charges including weed and underage alcohol distribution."

       

Earlier today the north end of Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint was shut down for a 4th of July parade! Allegedly the scene was being shot for a new Jennifer Aniston movie called Bounty Hunter (Miss Heather has pics of the parade preparation). They'll be filming tomorrow (from Freeman to Ash Street) as well, and there are promises of explosions, chases and even Bette Midler! Sadly though, even Hollywood won't be able to bring the 4th Fireworks to the East River this year.

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Last night the CFDA Fashion Awards took place at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. The Daily News reports that Michelle Obama was honored—designer and council President Diane von Furstenberg said of the First Lady, "Her meteoric rise in the world of fashion has echoed her husband in the world of politics." Obama, via a taped message, addressed attendees saying, "On behalf of women everywhere, I want to thank you for making fashion liberating, inspiring, but most of all, fun."

Last night, David Letterman apologized to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his questionable jokes about one of her daughters. He had initially apologized last week, but Palin still considered the remarks—which suggested that A-Rod might impregnate her daughter and that they should keep Eliot Spitzer away during the Palins' trip to NY—offensive and demanded that he "apologize to young women across the country [for contributing to a culture] that says it’s OK to talk about statutory rape...It's not cool; it's not funny."

If you haven't yet seen Andrew Bird live, then you've got a pretty easy decision to make regarding your Thursday night plans: He'll be performing at Radio City Music Hall with his stellar three-piece band, and tickets are still on sale! Of course, if you've already had the Andrew Bird live experience, there's no deciding necessary: to see him once is to be blown away and left wanting more, so you've already got tickets burning a hole in your pocket. We've pretty much exhausted all our superlatives when it comes to Bird, whose voice, violin, guitar, glockenspiel, and virtuoso whistling combine—often simultaneously—to create a sublime, almost unclassifiable pop-Americana soundscape. His most recent album,