Before there were iPods, New Yorkers had boomboxes. Since 1992, people have been gathering to celebrate an Unsilent Night, when dozens of portable sound systems play a piece of ambient music simultaneously. Of course, iPods are allowed, and mp3 downloads are available on the Unsilent site...but boomboxes and cassette tapes are the preferred way to go. more ›

Artist Phil Kline has brought us an Unsilent Night every year since 1992. He describes his experiment as an "outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes. It’s like a Christmas caroling party except that we don’t sing, but rather carry the music, each of us playing a separate track that is a voice in the piece." more ›

Along with SantaCON yesterday, Unsilent Night took the streets as well. The boombox parade, led and organized by Phil Kline, happens every year and washes a sort of ambient sound over the city. The above clip shows the parade crossing the street, and here's one spectators interpretation of what might be going on. Personally, we think Aziz Ansari should have showed up playing his world's shittiest mixtape. more ›

THEATER: The Scene, a black comedy by Theresa Rebeck that premiered at this year’s Humana Festival in Louisville, is now in previews at Second Stage. The satire is about an out-of-work New York actor (Spenser: For Hire’s Tony Shalhoub) — married to a news producer (Alien Nation veteran Patricia Heaton) — who has an affair with a fresh-faced Ohioan ingénue. Rebeck’s stated intent with The Scene is to skewer America’s “cultural collapse into narcissism”. - John Del Signore more ›

Reminder!!! Unsilent Night, the amazing participatory performance piece by Phil Kline, is tonight-- starting at 6:45pm at Washington Square Arch, and ending around 8pm at Tompkins Square Park: more ›