Questroyal Gallery at 903 Park Avenue in Manhattan will host an important retrospective of great Greenpoint painter Ralph Blakelock from November 11th through December 10th. The show is titled “Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns” and will feature many of his works. Continue reading →
(sponsored)This Saturday, it’s that rarest of things: a really good reason to be in Manhattan on a weekend. Bedford + Bowery – New York magazine’s site covering North Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan – is bringing together the best of both worlds for an outdoor festival of food, shopping and music. Come for the free beer (while it lasts!) from Brooklyn Brewery; stay for the beats by members of LCD Soundsystem; and sip still more exotic brews from Greenpoint’s own Torst, whose newly Michelin-starred chef Daniel Burns will be serving up duck sandwiches. You’ll also get to try Vietnamese grub from Ridgewood’s Bunker, Malaysian street food from Williamsburg’s Pasar Malam, Japanese rice burgers(!) from East Village’s Yonekichi, Icelandic stews from the LES’s Skal, Korean-American fried bird from the Seoul Chicken, southern grub from Empire Biscuit and lots more.
Rad vendors like Etsy NY will be selling vintage clothing, home wares, jewelry, books, and zines. For Halloween, Bushwick’s Catland has all your occult items and Greenpoint’s “Wizard of Odd,” Billy Leroy, will be staging a one-day-only comeback of his famous Houston Street antiques and oddities tent. There’ll be used records – and brand new vinyl from Greenpoint label Captured Tracks. And speaking of music! Your DJs for the day will be none other than DFA Records artists Museum of Love (featuring Pat Mahoney of LCD Soundsystem) and Nancy Whang (LCD, The Juan Maclean). It’s all FREE and happening this Saturday from 11am to 6pm at the Hester Street Fair, at Hester and Essex Streets on the LES. Find more info here and follow @bedbow for updates!
Late in his life, Henri Matisse would turn to creating cutouts, which eventually covered the walls of his lofty studios from floor to ceiling inside the Hotel Excelsior Regina Palace at Cimiez in France. Matisse would direct his numerous assistants and his Russian mistress, Lydia Delektorskaya, with a 12-foot long bamboo cane from his bed, and they would all rush to adjust his colored paper compositions. Echoing Matisse in his own way, and paying homage to the beauty of industrial America, multimedia artist Michael Hambouz has created a series of 18 large-scale, cut-paper collage works called Factory Made using paper stock from the mill located in his hometown of Niles, Michigan. We met in front of The Richardson, and walked to his studio a few doors down, where his cat, Pickles, was waiting. Continue reading →
“Helping to assist thousands impacted by Hurricane Sandy in the Rockaways, Mayor Bloomberg, New York City Economic Development Corporation and Seastreak today announced a partnership to provide temporary ferry service between the Rockaways and Manhattan while subway service on that route is suspended. Seastreak will operate the ferry service beginning this Monday, November 12.
Ferries will depart from Beach 108th Street and Beach Channel Drive (View Larger Map), where NYCEDC has installed a temporary landing, and stop at Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan with free transfers between Pier 11 and East 34th Street in Midtown.
The service will start at 5:45 AM in the Rockaways with ferries departing for Manhattan regularly until 9:20 AM, with regular service resuming during the evening rush.
This past Saturday I had plans to attend an art show held in a Manhattan apartment, plans that I, a municipal employee who works in a Queens office with a “bucket truck chic” dress code, tend to find myself underdressed for. However, a combination of a successful fall shopping trip or two and a cooler-than-usual forecast after a soggy summer left me optimistic. The preceding months have found me DOA (damp on arrival) so I was very excited to actually look as I’d intended.
Then it rained and was far too warm for the cardigan of which I was so proud anyhow, but that’s actually beside the point. Even had I been the crisp, just-hip-enough vision in denim that I had in my mind, I still would have fallen into a trap that I’ve been victim to before, one which I’m calling – and you heard it here first (if not, link me) – BFMC. Brooklyn Fancy Manhattan Casual.
Fellow Greenpointer Nathaniel Ziering tipped me off that Kickstarter is moving their headquarters from Manhattan to Greenpoint! The fast growing company provides crowd-sourced funding for creative projects, many of which have come from Greenpoint. In March, plans were approved for Kickstarter to renovate 58 Kent Street, a Landmarked, vacant building located between Franking & West streets. As you can see from the picture, this one could really use a tune-up! Kickstarter’s move to Greenpoint is a big vote of confidence for the neighborhood, will be great for the local economy and continue the momentum of businesses choosing Brooklyn as their new home. Continue reading →
