This weekend (Sunday Oct 22nd), the New Latin Wave fest is taking over Brooklyn Bazaar (150 Greenpoint Ave) from 11am-7pm for their second year in a row, bringing a full day of Latinx art and ideas—featuring a book and zine fair, stimulating talks, a juried video art show, a mini-film fest and concerts. Curators, presenters and performers include: Composer Angélica Negrón, La Liga Zine, physicist Cristián Huepe, Rock ‘n’ Lolo, and El Museo del Barrio curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado. Tickets start at $15, and are available here. Continue reading →
In its 11th year, The Korean American Film Fest’s Infinite Cinema, headed up by Chung Tsang and Mark Anthony Singh, was held this past Saturday, October 14th in the Wythe Hotel Screening Room (80 Wythe Ave).
A passage on the fest’s website reads, “Embracing the motto of CONNECT. FUSE. REPEAT. KAFFNY Infinite Cinema challenges its audience to discard notions of cultures as separate, discrete and insular, instead exploring the infinite possibilities of contact, fusion, and creation born from the mixing of different backgrounds.”
True to that directive, KAFFNY’s collection of films, which crossed multiple genres and mediums, maintained an impressive cohesiveness in its focus on shared experience, exploring distinct cultural backgrounds within the global context. Cleverly divided into five thematic segments, the fest included 25 short films and two feature length films, as well as moderated panel discussions with many of the filmmakers and actors. Continue reading →
Locals have been buzzing about the forthcoming bar, cafe, and design store, BÚÐIN, making its debut in the neighborhood come December. We sat down with co-owners Crystal Pei and Elliot Rayman (their third business partner, Rut Hermannsdóttir, is based in Norway) to talk coffee, aquavit, Finnish design and why Brooklyn and Scandinavia go so well together. Continue reading →
Nine coffee shops and more than a dozen artists will participate in the inaugural Coffee’s Night Out, a coffee + cultural kick-off, in Greenpoint on Sunday, November 10th, 2013 fom 5-8 p.m.
Coffee’s Night Out is FREE and guests are encouraged to visit all the participating coffee shops. RSVP.
All participating shops have printed maps available NOW – grab a postcard and hop and crawl around Greenpoint to experience a unique cultural event in each location – and delicious coffee of course!
Curated its founder, Chérmelle D. Edwards of smdlr.com and presented by Greenpointers, Coffee’s Night Out features a program of cultural events – art, music, spoken word, film – that will pop up at participating coffee shops alongside specialty coffee in Greenpoint.
Somewhere between clouds and sun, the end of summer in Greenpoint brought on a longing. A longing for more sun when thunderstorms seem to rain on and on.
While the nature of summer played its role, Greenpointers were seen inhabiting coffee shops seeking shelter from storms at window seats (Champion Coffee); watching the streets darken as clouds amassed, hearing vinyl play as something nostalgic in the presence of affogato [Toby’s Estate Coffee via Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream]; in an intimate cubby-hole while the midday sun warmed an interior (Variety Coffee), stopping to smell flowers blooming near coffee brewing [Spina], and catching sunlight shining through the front door of [Achilles Heel.]
Through it all, Greenpointers had music, a beautiful diaspora of music I might say shining a bright cultural light of its own. Curated from the above spaces, ‘Looks like The Sun” is a playlist for your listening and coffee drinking pleasure. And now, play.
For those of us who move to New York to start our adult lives, it’s a great moment when we find ourselves in a living situation stable enough to invite our parents in to sample the recipes we’ve so enthusiastically tweeted about.
Once we start cooking and have hours to think while waiting for the turkey to hit 165, the temptation places ourselves in the historically questionable narrative of the “First Thanksgiving” – helpful natives sharing a bench with buckle-hatted outcasts for a feast of local game and new world grains – becomes borderline irresistible. We are, after all, both the pilgrims fleeing lack-of-religion persecution and the natives gathering exotically Kickstarted jams to supplement traditional fare.
My own narrative begins many moons back. A chance encounter on the street helping an older Polish neighbor to get her groceries upstairs led to regularly assisting her with everyday tasks. The experience has provided a great lens through which I can more accurately view the impact of my own life on this neighborhood.
I write this fully aware of the flak I’m going to get. But here it goes.
I read an article in Brooklyn Magazine the other day discussing whether hipsters and gentrification are ruining Brooklyn. I stand on both sides of the argument here. I’m not labeling myself a hipster. There’s more than enough evidence in my life to suggest that I certainly am not, but I do nevertheless fall under that umbrella of intellectual and creatively minded young people who enjoy a good artisinal roast every once in a while. And I’m definitely one of those more liberal arts types saddled with an enormous student debt sticker on my forehead.
Thus I moved to Brooklyn to cut my losses the best I could. But I moved to North Williamsburg, so I’m not exactly sure what good that did in the end. And having recently been the unsuspecting target of a hatefully anti-hipster website (over some pictures I took of a glow-in-the-dark kickball game…like really? Get over it.), I naturally began feeling pretty guilty whenever I walked down my street or whenever I worked my beat because of course I look nothing like the original culture of the neighborhood.
But now I wonder: Why am I guilty? I pay my rent. I take out my trash. I’m respectful to my neighbors and to members of my community. I have a great relationship with my landlords, who are among the first generations of Italian immigrants in Williamsburg. Why should I feel poorly for how I dress and for the things I like? Why is that at all marginalizing? Continue reading →
This Etsy store not only caught my eye because it features a cat in a cone; if you’re a cat owner you can relate, but the story behind the store’s name is pretty insane, too. “Pink Baby Mouse Shop is named after my first business, which was breeding mice. I specialize in hand made, unique pieces with a sense of humor.” I wonder what she was breeding mice for? Pets? Labs? Snake Food? Other characters include a Chihuahua Superhero.
You know the old expression – there goes the neighborhood. Nowadays in North Brooklyn, that sentiment is in the air when new high rise condominiums go up or when the hipsters move in. Robert Anasi’s latest book, The Last Bohemia: Scenes From The Life of Williamsburg, describes a time in our neighborhood’s recent past when North Brooklyn wasn’t a destination for artisanal restaurants and a good investment for foreign millionaires, but a long and sometimes scary ride on the L train to a place filled with drugs, prostitution, affordable housing and for Anasi, freedom: “a city you didn’t have to be rich to live in.”
Robert Anasi will be giving a reading at Word (126 Franklin St) tonight Tuesday, August 14, 2012 at 7pm.
The more witty the DIY aesthetic of Overturn Theatre’s interactive installation Waiting for Godot grew, the more charming the production became.
The venue [email protected], a restored medical ward at the edge of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg border, has a history just creepy enough to be interesting without being frightening. The random foliage, trap doors and pop-up bartenders all added to the experience. Continue reading →
