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A Talking Astor Place Cube, Queer Vloggers, and More Performance Picks

WEDNESDAY

(flyer via Wild Project)

(flyer via Wild Project)

F*@#d in the East Village
January 11-17 at The Wild Project, 7:30 pm: $20, $16 students/seniors.

The East Village isn’t what it used to be, I think we all know that. Samantha Fontana and Roger Manix especially do, so much that they’ve crafted a comedic play all about it. F*@#d in the East Village is one of those plays where two people play many characters, but in this case the show begins with only two people: a “recently dumped high school senior” who meets “her twentysomething gay man self in 2005.” Now that that pattern of logic has been established, the audience will go on a journey back in time to the East Village of the past, only it’s a little weirder and more surreal. Not in the sense of there being more avant-garde art spaces, but like, in the sense that the Astor Place Cube is granted the ability to speak. You know, just average stuff like that. Fontana is a born-and-bred East Villager, so this isn’t a mediation on “old New York” by people whose first interactions with the city included Duane Reades and Starbucks on every corner already.

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Buzz in the Air: Melvins Documentary Screens at St. Vitus Tonight

Just a few months after The Smart Studios Story screened at St. Vitus, the Greenpoint metal bar is taking another look at the Seattle grunge scene by showing The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale. Last week’s screenings at St. Vitus and Nitehawk were sold out, but tickets to tonight’s encore are still available. The debut effort from filmmakers Bob Hannam and Ryan Southerly is a sort of behind-the-music take on the band that influenced Nirvana, among countless others who were warped by the Melvins’ neo-Sabbath brand of sludge metal.

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Aliens and Zombies and Androids, Oh My! It’s the NY Sci-Fi Film Fest

Now that you’re done binging on Black Mirror and Westworld, it’s good to know there’s a sci-fi film fest in the not-so-distant future. The New York Science Fiction Film Festival launches next Friday, January 20, and brings an intriguing slate of films to downtown venues like the Roxy Hotel Cinema and Anthology Film Archives. The schedule promises UFO cults, zombie attacks, breath mint ads for vampires, apocalyptic viruses, murderous humanoid robots, android clones of Philip K. Dick, and Winston Churchill battling Nazis with a group of time-traveling super scientists. There’s even a 360 VR experience simulating a Bohemian Grove-esque virgin sacrifice, set to music by These Machines Are Winning. Okay, then!

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20 Years For Bike Messenger Stabbing; $9 ‘Unicorn’ Latte in Williamsburg

Ramon Escobar was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison for stabbing and killing a 46-year-old bike messenger, David Fernandez, in Williamsburg nearly six years ago. [DNA Info]

This week Starbucks announced that it will table its “Evenings” program that served beer, wine and small plates, meaning the Bedford Avenue outpost will go back to being a full-time java shop. [Seattle Times]

Walter’s Coffee Roastery, where Bushwick residents get their caffeine fix with a Breaking Bad bent, now operates a new location in Dubai. [Bushwick Daily] More →

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Protesters Demand That Greenpoint Police Captain ‘Take Rape Seriously’

(Photo: Nicole Disser)

(Photo: Nicole Disser)

NYPD Captain Peter Rose caused a stir last week when, addressing a rise in Greenpoint sex attacks, he seemed to tell DNAinfo that the NYPD was less worried about so-called acquaintance rape and more concerned with so-called stranger rapes: “Those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards,” he said. Acquaintance rapes, on the other hand, are “not total-abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets,” Rose was quoting as saying.

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One Less Place to Shop For Kooky Keychains on the LES

(Photo: Daniel Maurer)

(Photo: Daniel Maurer)

The Lower East Side art scene is facing its first loss of the new year, as Object_ify 139 is packing up its bodega bags and going online-only. Bogota-born artist Maria L. Candanoza opened the “art object” shop on Essex Street in October of 2014, and during its first year it stocked quirky items from a roster of 20 artists. During its two-year run, it hosted guest curators like Benjamin Barron (books) and Mister Saturday Night (vinyl), threw book release parties, and popped up in Miami and Tokyo.

In a message inviting friends to a goodbye party at the store Friday evening, Candanoza says the enterprise will live on: “We have had an online store for a while but our commitment is to make it even better and to keep bringing new objects, prints, books and exciting artist collaborations to you every month.” In the meantime, buy a faux fur koozie and pour one out for the store’s IRL incarnation.

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Greenpoint’s Bar Matchless Strikes Back

(Photo: Nicole Disser)

(Photo: Nicole Disser)

Both touring bands and local music fans (aka members of an aloof subculture that you wouldn’t understand) have probably felt a shifting tide. Over the summer, a huge wave of closings washed into Bushwick, sweeping away DIY spots like Palisades then Aviv while making its way through Greenpoint. When it finally crashed into downtown, it showed no mercy to even longtime establishments like The Stone (which plans to close in February of next year), and Cake Shop, with its perfectly legal bar and ten-year lease. Meanwhile, Market Hotel is treading water after cops conducted a “gotcha” raid in October. It might seem like from here on out the only alternatives (start going to Terminal 5? move to New Jersey?) are pretty grim, but at least one still-standing Brooklyn establishment is taking advantage of the vacuum to reimagine themselves as a venue.

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Smell the Magic: Inside Blaine’s Brain and a Chance to Snap a Levitating Selfie

Roll up for the magical mystery tour and steal some magicians’ secrets next week.

TimesTalks: David Blaine
Jan. 18, 7pm, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, tickets $40.
Okay, so you may have gotten douchechills when New York immortalized David Blaine as a member of Leo DiCaprio’s “pussy posse” back in 1998. But trust, his ABC special Beyond Magic, now on Netflix, is worth watching if only to see Woody Allen nearly upchuck as the musclebound magic bro swallows a live goldfish and spits it back up it into a bowl. Even better is Ricky Gervais’s reaction, above, when Blaine (seemingly?) runs a needle through his arm.

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Bushwick Fire Leaves Families Homeless; Hotel Rises on Bowery

An 85-year-old man was struck and killed yesterday near 584 Grand Street by a driver in a white truck who fled the scene. [Gothamist]

Seven families are homeless following a fire yesterday afternoon on Bushwick’s Evergreen Avenue, where two of the 150 responding firefighters sustained minor injuries. [NY1]

According to police, 38-year-old Henry Pacheco is a person of interest in last week’s strangulation death of an Alphabet City woman, 27. [ABC 7 NY] More →

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Women Getting Lit, Plexiglas Playgrounds, and More Art

Kate Hush (image via Cooler Gallery)

Kate Hush (image via Cooler Gallery)

Female Behavior
Opening Tuesday January 10 at Cooler Gallery, 7 pm to 10 pm. On view through January 31. 

Firstly, let’s discuss this gallery’s name. Sure, it sounds sort of pompous, in a cooler-than-you kind of way, and maybe that’s what they think of themselves. But the origin of this gallery is actually, well, cool. It exists within a “repurposed industrial icebox” in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so it really is a cooler gallery. Plus, it seeks to display work that involves elements of manufacturing, so it’s aware of its roots. But enough about the gallery, let’s get to the show: artist Kate Hush makes massive sculptures of neon light, and what she is particularly trying to capture in her solo show, Female Behavior, are women and their so-called “wicked ways.” She writes of light being produced when bonds are broken, such as the cutting of a diamond, so she has crafted female silhouettes to portray those who are seen as cruel and conniving simply for being “sharp” or for cutting ties with a man who will then call her crazy. May women burn bright and powerful as much as they can, especially now.

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