Results tagged “tompkinssquarepark”

                            

While the humans get the big Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village on October 31, canines have a series of Halloween Parades to participate in. This past weekend, there dogs were decked out in elaborate costumes in both Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side and Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. Take a look at these awesome costumes—our favorite is the Hulk Dog, if only because she endured getting dyed green! Update: We learned that Hulk Dog is an Olde English Bulldogge named Fanny—she got 2nd place for her costume.

We were sort of hoping the Urballoon was going to be a new form of hot air balloon public transit, but no such luck. It is however a pretty cool art installation that you can experience on September 18th as part of the Conflux Festival. "The Urballoon consists of a large helium balloon with a video projector and a wireless laptop that projects user-generated content onto public spaces. It floats above its tethers in parks or plazas and displays the video onto the ground, encouraging people to gather around a digital bonfire. People will be asked to address the theme 'What is New York?'" Get your answers ready, and look for it in Tompkins Square Park later this month. In the meantime, can someone bring back the hot air balloon rides over Central Park?

              

This is not your grandfather's bread line. The first ever Unemployment Olympics was held yesterday afternoon in Tompkins Square Park. Organizer Nick Goddard, who's been unemployed from computer programming since February, said his goal was simply to cheer up his fellow layabouts and give them shot at the gold with gift certificates from local businesses. And because the press photographers and reporters often outnumbered the participants, we're guessing the local merchants were delighted with the exposure.

    

Today was the sort of day rain dates were made for. After getting washed out yesterday, Tompkins Square Park had plenty of autumn sunshine for what is claimed to be the country's largest dog costume parade. Thousands of dollars in prizes including six iPods were given away to the owners of the winning dogs.

City Councilman David Yassky announced a plan yesterday for the city to sell ads on its trash cans, a revenue source that he says could rake in $2.5 million. The city owns 25,000 trash receptacles that under Yassky's plan would all bear ads within two to three years. The move would also potentially put a stop to trash cans being funded out of Council members' budgets and then arriving on the streets with the only legal form of promotion currently allowed--emblazoned with the names of the Council members themselves. How close would this all lead us to designer trash cans? Garbage bins in Tompkins Square Park recently began getting spruced up with pink and polka-dotted bags designed by a local artist.

Reports from last night's Donut Social protest in the East Village say it ended in a mini-riot with several protesters arrested. During an impromptu acoustic concert in Tompkins Square following the scheduled demonstration, Leftover Crack singer Scott Sturgeon was first arrested (possibly for throwing donuts at police). More arrests followed when protesters sat in front of the police car containing Sturgeon blocking its exit from the park as the crowd called for police to "quit, commit suicide and called them Nazis." The event's organizers had already run into resistance from police before the night of the gathering which was protesting "police brutality, real estate developers, and the blatant selectively targeted harassment/discrimination toward our scene during the 20th Anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park Police Riots concert/political rally back in August."

Security guards have stopped searching bags belonging to people attending a biweekly movie night in Tompkins Square Park after a group of 15 activists protested Wednesday night. The Villager was at the scene, where critics of the bag checks had vowed to strip naked to ironically facilitate the security searches. Mercifully, it didn’t come to that. Josh Boyd, a co-founder of the free movie series, called off the search “because it was upsetting people.” Jeffrey Rothman, a civil rights lawyer who attended as a legal observer, sounded a triumphant note as audience members filed freely into a screening of Better Off Dead: “Rights that are not asserted wither away.” [Photo: Villager/Jefferson Siegel]

          

On the humid night of August 6th, 1988, long-simmering resentments over East Village gentrification boiled over into the now-infamous Tompkins Square Park riot. Hundreds of people had gathered at the park to protest the imposition of a 1 a.m. curfew. At some point, the protest turned violent; bottles were thrown at the police, who retaliated with beatings and arrests throughout the night. According to the Times, forty-four people were injured, including 13 cops.

The 20th Anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots was celebrated over the weekend with two days of punk rock, pot smoking, rabble rousing and slam dancing. (Potty-mouth video.) According to Neither More Nor Less, they “slammed with a physical intensity that TSP has not seen in many years. Someone threw $1000 in dollar bills to the crowd and this crowd of celebrants burned the dollar bills. The celebrants also burned a flag; being polyester it mostly melted in flaming gobs.” A reader (“Shadow”) sent us this photo, and noted that the commanding officer of the 9th precinct, Dennis DeQuatro, “looked the other way” as it was burned. (Two years ago a constitutional amendment to make flag burning illegal failed by one vote in the Senate.)

Today at 2pm in Tompkins Square Park, there will be a punk concert to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the police riots that took place there. The NY Times has an account of the battle between cops and protesters that took place back on August 6th and 7th, 1988 over a city-imposed curfew of 1 a.m. that had been enacted in an attempt to clean up the rampant homeless population and drug usage that dominated the park's nights. The Times paints the anniversary celebration (which began last weekend) organized by Jerry Wade, aka "Jerry the Peddler", as a bit of an anachronism within a heavily gentrified East Village, pointing out, "these days the park’s curfew is one hour earlier, but it is rarely a source of controversy."

Even back in 1984 there was mainstream media attention on the ever-changing landscape of the Lower East Side and East Village. Real estate was "exploding," chain stores were popping up, and galleries were abundant. The New York Magazine cover story on May 28th of that year was titled: The Lower East Side -- There Goes the Neighborhood.

Okay, maybe pets aren't so into the holidays, except when it comes to scraps that fall to the floor or the prospect of a new chew toy. But that doesn't mean that pet owners aren't enthusiastic about projecting the spirit of the season onto Fido and Fluffy.

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."

It's a Halloween Hump Day! We will have more details about the Halloween Parade and other events in the city later, but we thought we'd point you to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown videos on Youtube (part 1, 2, 3), in case you missed ABC's airing last night. You can also get it on DVD, and there's also the book It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic.

The annual Tompkins Square Park Halloween dog parade was yesterday, and the pups were out in their costumed best!

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures!

Saturday night’s Vendy Awards ended in victory for “Dosa Man” Thiru Kumar, the all-vegan, South Indian crêpe vendor of Washington Square South who had previously taken the runner-up title for the last two years. At the awards ceremony capping off a 5 hour eat-a-thon, Kumar was presented with the silver “Vendy” trophy by last year’s winner Samiul Haque Noor, from Sammy’s Halal.

Talk about joy -- over 300 sakes will be poured at the largest sake tasting in the United States, coming our way tonight. Over 100 of them are generally not available outside Japan and about 150 are silver and gold award winners in the National Sake Appraisal that takes place each year. Never fear, there will be appetizers to soak it all up, from the likes of Bao Noodles, Bond St, EN Japanese Brasserie, 15 East, Megu, Sakagura, Tocqueville, Woo Lae Oak, wd-50, and more. There's also a sake info desk where an expert will be able to answer all of your burning sake questions. 6 - 9 p.m., the Puck Building, 295 Lafayette between East Houston and Prince Streets. Tickets are $75 in advance and $90 at the door. For more info or to make reservations, call 212-799-7243, or visit joyofsake.com.

THEATER: The fall theater season gets curiouser and curiouser with the start of The Alice in Wonderland Puppet Festival at HERE. (The festival, which is not recommended for children under twelve, will feature a tea party after every show.) Tonight curiouser & curiouser fuses text from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s diary entries and his muse Alice Liddell’s memoirs to try to decipher what destroyed their unique friendship. - John Del Signore

You nominated your favorites and now the finalists have been revealed:

TIP: According to Paper's Mr. Mickey, Chloë Sevigny is having a tag sale on her block this Saturday. We're guessing there will be lots of vintage Balenciaga. Check out her apartment in House & Garden...pretty nice!

MUSIC: Scottish indie sensations Camera Obscura bring their pop and their rock to the Seaport tonight. They're joined by The Last Town Chorus. After that, there's only one more show down there this season!

THEATER: The annual Soho Think Tank Ice Factory, arguably New York’s most impeccably curated theater festival, has been hosting an exhilarating array of new shows every weekend since July 4th . Starting tonight you can sink your teeth into Vampire University, in which “a struggling vampire family descends on an evangelical college in the Midwest, the dad’s mid-life crisis of immortality triggers a desire to come back to life and the gulf between first and second generations vampires has never seemed greater.” Scored to live Theremin! John Del Signore

READING: Check out today's interviewee, Peter Yarrow, tonight at Barnes and Noble where he'll be performing and signing the recently published Puff, the Magic Dragon book. C'mon, you know you've always wanted to hear that song live!

MOVIE: It's certainly not the kind of night for an outdoor movie, so we suggest sitting in the cool a/c and watching the 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead. "Gone is the possibility of mankind’s dominance in this sequel to Night of the Living Dead; the zombies are in control now, with a group of AWOL soldiers and TV producers on the run from the staggering hordes. A deserted shopping mall offers a safe hideout, as well as the setup for Romero’s savage satire on consumer culture." The early screening will be introduced by producer Richard Rubenstein, more info here.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible grenade is noticed and reported on 33rd Ave. in Queens, an armed robbery on East 61st St. in Manhattan, and a carjacking on 133rd St. and Neptune Ave. in Brooklyn.
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is employing the celebrity skills of Matt Dillon to help save St. Brigid's Church in the East Village.
• Eastbay is marketing Converse All-Star high tops that appear pre-worn and fairly dingy as the "Ramones All-Star Hi". We would've gone with "Ramones Rock 'n' Roll Hi Tops," but that's just us.
• Perhaps realizing that publicity trumps dignity any day in her line of work, Angelina Jolie has rescinded demands that interviewers sign a contract restricting them from asking about her personal life. She even offered a paparazzo a lift in her car when the bike-riding photographer popped a flat!
• Students at private high-priced elite NYC high schools are dropping the club drug "Foxy" and paying to be driven around in a school bus and treated like babies in the phenomena known as "Sindergarten".
• Not even the actors in the cast of "The Sopranos" know what the seemingly anti-climactic ending of the HBO series was supposed to signify.
• Drug users are still shooting up in Tompkins Square Park, and a local organization is providing users with the anti-opioid Narcan to save the lives of people who OD.
• A 45-year-old homeless man was injured when a falling light pole struck him in the head outside the main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

The cafe’s owner, Nick Bodor, 38, said that for years he was able to clear enough money from Alt to live on. But times have changed on Avenue A, where new boutiques now face a cleaned-up version of Tompkins Square Park that includes several playgrounds.

Continue reading "Alt-Coffee-Delete"

We received a press release about the closing of yet another establishment in lower Manhattan today. This time it's not a high profile venue like CBGB, but a little vegan bakery on St Marks that is being forced out due to high rent.

To the relief of dog owners and to the dismay of the Juniper Park Civic Association, Queens Supreme Court Judge Peter J. Kelly ruled that off-leash hours for dogs between 9PM and 9AM are allowed, saying that the Parks Commissioner has the power to allow pups to frolic freely. While the Juniper Park Civic Association called the ruling "complete lunacy," Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said, "Tired dogs are good dogs."

Calling J. Jonah Jamison! Animal points out some rubbery impediments to people's daily lives: Artist Jasmine Zimmerman's rubber band installations. There are photographs of the Essex Street subway station entrance, parts of Tompkins Square Park, and other walkways covered with the bands. Animal has her full artist's statement, but here's an excerpt:

The installations alter urban traffic environments, such as crossing staircases or busy sidewalks on the streets of Manhattan, inviting the pedestrian to reinvent their path. They can be very visible or almost completely invisible, depending on how the light hits them, (which changes throughout the evening of course as the sun moves through the sky).

Continue reading "Webslinger Strikes the City"