(Photo: Signature Move)
Representation matters. But unsurprisingly, it’s still lacking in nearly all fields. Especially in Hollywood. Casts, directors and producers are overwhelmingly white and male. So much so that in 2015 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated claims of systematic discrimination against female directors.
The last couple of times we saw Lee Ranaldo, he was out of town– first at an Inauguration Day show in DC where he and his former Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore let their feelings about Trump be known, and then in New Jersey at the Montclair Film Festival, after the premiere of Hello Hello Hello: Lee Ranaldo : Electric Trim, a film that documents the making of the singer/guitarist’s next album.
Even Barbie is snapping out of her dream world and mobilizing against Trumpism. During the past several months, comedian and “World Champion” Judah Friedlander, of 30 Rock fame, has been taking this woke Barbie to protests. “If the only people protesting are the ones who are the direct victims of injustice,” Activist Barbie explains in her Insta bio, “then progress will either never happen or will take much longer.” She was back in action this weekend, during anti-Trump, anti-racism marches that took over the streets of Manhattan. Today, she’s at the UN and Trump World Tower, rallying against war with North Korea.
This year’s Battle For Mau Mau Island, the annual art-raft extravaganza that raged last month in the Rockaways, was as crazy as we showed you last year and the “combatants” had wonderful weather to enjoy it. Nary a cloud could be found in the sky all day as rafts were built and launched into the calm waters of Jamaica Bay. By mid-afternoon enough of them were lashed together to make the Island of Mau Mau, where jousting, swimming races and flag stealing had each team on their pruney toes.
The garbage truck driver who killed cyclist and Paulie Gee’s employee Neftaly Ramirez, 27, in a hit-and-run last month reportedly won’t face charges from Brooklyn’s District Attorney. [DNA Info]
Per newly-submitted paperwork, Corlears Hook Park on the Lower East Side is the site of a proposed ferry dock that could be built by Summer 2018 to shuttle passengers. [Curbed NY]
Two of the NYC neighborhoods with the greatest disparity between average incomes and rents are Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. [Town & Village] More →
For three years, Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito and a dozen assistants have slaved away on NYsferatu: a Symphonie of a Century, a remake of the 1922 vampire classic Nosferatu, but made out of 35,000 hand-drawn pictures. “This movie is my second wife right now,” Mastrovito told us. “We are always together, me and NYsferatu. And even if I love it, I love and hate it. NYsferatu has sucked my blood.”
At last, this Monday, the film will premiere at Pier 63.
Credit: Dr. Jennifer Craig.
Is your apartment missing that certain something? Could that certain something be a turn-of-the-century slide projector? Or mother-of-pearl opera glasses? Or an original Singer sewing machine? Or some steampunk-esque optometry glasses?
Well, you’re in luck. There’s a pop-up antique store coming to the Lower East Side next week, and the highly curated roadshow shoppe, which bills itself as a kind of “cabinet of curiosities,” may have just the eccentric accent your staid apartment needs.
Rat Academy graduates collecting their free rat-proof garbage bins. Photo: Shannon Barbour
In a city with as many rats as there are children, New York has taken on several methods of eliminating the pests from city streets, homes and sewers. Birth control, dry ice, and bait have all been employed to curb the ever-growing population. Just last month Mayor de Blasio declared a $32 million war on rats, which has already proven to be successful in the East Village. But rats aren’t going anywhere anytime soon and they’ve even been linked to a Bronx resident who was killed by leptospirosis this year. So last night, a few dozen New Yorkers scurried over to Midtown to attend the third annual Rat Academy and get schooled on all things vermin by a health department rat expert, Caroline Bragdon. Graduates of the talk, hosted by Council Member Corey Johnson, walked away with brand-new rat-proof garbage bins and two hours worth of rat facts. Here are 10 lessons we learned at Rat Academy.
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(Courtesy of The Living Gallery)
Back in June, when Joseph Meloy and Alexandria Hodgkins saw an ad for a storefront at 53 Avenue B, they fell in love with the building, and understandably so: it’s light purple and its facade has palm tree, heart and animal shapes cast by the landlord, Antonio Echeverri. Within days, the married couple and their business partner, Nyssa Frank, had rented the 250-square-foot storefront to use as a Manhattan outpost of their Bushwick gallery, The Living Space.
Meloy, a native Lower East Sider, felt good about bringing a new art space “back home.”
It’s been nearly a month since Cup and Saucer went dark after over 75 years, but someone is basking in the diner’s old-school charm today. Specifically, a film crew. That’s right, the vultures location scouts have descended on the Chinatown diner and a new Netflix series is being filmed there. There isn’t much out there about Ronald, but a casting call for a September shoot indicates that the producers, Paramount Television, are looking for “Chinese shop workers,” a “Caucasian female toddler,” and “Japanese lab workers (scientists, doctors, assistants, etc.).”