(Photo: Andrea Castañon)
It’s not every ukulele player who goes from being homeless and broke to filling the room at CMJ. But last month at Ella Lounge, the front row was practically treading on Catey Shaw’s toes as she sang. “Watch your feet!” she said. “This is rock n’ roll.”
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Today, speaking at our own Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, Tom Wolfe was asked what aspect of contemporary New York life he’d like to see reported on more often. To which the famed author responded, with total earnestness, “I have never seen a profile of the hipster.”
Seriously, Tom? You’ve never seen a profile of a hipster? Clearly the Man in the White Suit hasn’t met the Gray Lady, having somehow missed the The Times‘s near weekly anthropological fascination with said species (see How I Became a Hipster, Caught in the Hipster Trap, and The Hipster in the Mirror for a quick primer).
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(Photo: Mindy Tucker)
I first met Natalie Shure on an organized trip to Auschwitz. Sites of historical atrocity are unusual stomping grounds for a standup comedian, but Shure is no typical jokester. A tall brunette rocking horn-rimmed glasses and a flowery frock, the 27-year-old dresses like a sixties fashion icon and banters like a Russian History professor. When she’s not frequenting the city’s standup clubs or co-hosting her monthly Barely Regal standup show at the Palace Café in Greenpoint, you’re most likely to find her at the library with her head buried in a Soviet history textbook.
At NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute (where we’re both students), she takes a break from working on her thesis about drug resistant tuberculosis in the former Soviet Union and tells me, “I like dark jokes. I tell a lot of jokes about history and genocide. Those are my favorite kind of jokes.” You can hear some of them at Palace Café on Wednesday, or just go on and read the B+B Q+A.
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Del Rio co-ordinating Sandy relief efforts (Photo: Jonathen Adkins)
Aspiring City Councilman Rick Del Rio raps his gold-ringed knuckles on the table as he speaks, his colorful bicep tattoos (“Jesus Christ Is Lord” and “The Lion of Judah Has Conquered”) peeking out from beneath the sleeves of a black button-up.
“I’m a political outsider, and being a political outsider means I have a lot to learn,” he says in a gravelly, booming voice that one can easily imagine bellowing across a pulpit. “But I’ll learn it. Because whatever I have to do, I will do. I’ve got no issues with ego; I just want to serve. And I’ve got no fear.”
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A little while ago we told you about Dimes, the new health-focused cafe and eatery on Division Street from Sabrina DeSousa and Alissa Wagner. Though it was originally slated for a mid-August opening, the spot will finally open its doors next Monday, providing some long-awaited MSG-free eats to the Lower Lower East Side.
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Photo: Dave Ratzlow, NYMag.com
Here’s an interesting thing about Bob Holman’s appearance tomorrow at the St. Mark’s Bookshop: on the reading’s Facebook page, Holman commented, “This will be the summer closer, the Last Party Ever For the store at this location.”
Indeed it’s the only upcoming event posted on the store’s calendar.
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Scott Lynch’s Flickr
This weekend, Uber is offering free rides within, to and from Brooklyn, as well as free stuff from 40 participating BK restaurants when you show your Uber receipt. Yet another great reason to avoid the L train. [From the B+B tip line]
Irving Farm, which we told you about last week, opens in the former 88 Orchard space tomorrow. [B+B]
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Photo: Shanna Ravindra, New York Magazine
While Hurricane Sandy feels like the distant past for most of the East Village, there are some businesses that are still feeling a little, shall we say, under the weather. And none has felt the hit more keenly than the Sunburnt Cow, whose tribulations lately must make that ol’ sunburn feel like a breeze.
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As far as we can tell, the thefts are in no way related to the classic work of Italian neo-realist cinema.
There’s an old saying: don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and don’t steal their wheels either!
And yet a couple of weeks ago Alex Mitow, the owner of Los Perros Locos, posted a Facebook update about his bike disappearing from a fence on the Lower East Side. And this morning Betsy Maher, the owner of Pearl’s Social and Billy Club, and Benny Thomson, a bartender at Anchored Inn, had their two Suzuki motorbikes stolen from outside Thomson’s place at 62 Greenpoint Avenue. (Yep, more crime in Greenpoint…)
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Fresh lettering (Photo: Anna Silman)
Judging by the crews of builders and painters knocking their way through the space at the corner of Orchard and Broome, the reinvention of 88 Orchard is well underway. Never a dull moment on the LES!
