It’s that time again, folks. The time when the world’s most avant-garde and experimental theater types descend on the East Village and Lower East Side for a fortnight of moderately insane adventure know as the Fringe Festival. The 18th edition of the Fest will be deluging the metropolis with playful peculiarities from August 8 to 24.
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Fury Young with his anti-prison art (Photo courtesy of Fury Young)
Fury Young is planning a road trip—but not just any old cross-country joyride. He’ll be traveling from New York to LA in a faux prison cell for starters, and the itinerary is unusual to say the least. “We’re going to go, basically, to the hood,” he says. “High incarceration rate neighborhoods. And prisons, as many prisons as we can get access to along the way.”
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Legendary LES art bar Max Fish is poised for a revival, one year after the closure of its iconic Ludlow Street location. This Saturday afternoon, the Fish will swim again at new digs on Orchard Street—no. 120 to be exact, right across from that other dynastic offshoot, the Russ and Daughters Café.
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This week’s talks and readings: some heavy stuff, ending in laughs.
Wednesday, July 30
The Gatekeepers Screening
When The Gatekeepers was first released in 2012, NY Times film critic A.O. Scott recognized the Israeli documentary’s import. “It is hard,” he wrote, “to imagine a movie about the Middle East that could be more timely, more painfully urgent, more challenging to conventional wisdom on all sides of the conflict.” Several years later, as the war in Gaza stretches into its third week with no signs of abating, that urgency has if anything only become more pronounced. More →
Living Los Sures, a collaborative work-in-progress documentary project by UnionDocs, is a multifaceted portrait of Williamsburg’s South Side that has been four years in the making. The ambitious project—selections of which are now on display at Fordham University’s Idliko Butler gallery—was inspired by Los Sures, Diego Echeverria’s 1984 feature documentary about the then-blighted Hispanic neighborhood. “Remarkably,” wrote Eleanor Mannikka of the film, “some hope and ambition and drive are still present in spite of the crime and grime that settles over the neighborhood like dust.”
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When we saw this latest “Looking for a Girlfriend” poster up around the East Village, we thought it might be one of our previous flyer boys. Probably not swinging-man Alex, but possibly lonely-hearted Luis. This assumption was based on similar, defensive wording: “I’m really looking for a girlfriend. This is not a joke. Just tired of the singles scene and hoping to meet the right person…Open to the possibility of the relationship morphing into something more profound.”
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(Photo: Bitch Cakes on Flickr)
The New York City Economic Development Corporation, the private body in charge of the East River Ferry, has announced that Greenpoint ferry service will resume tomorrow morning—just in time to rescue Greenpointers stranded by lapsed G-train service.
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From zines to graphic novels, poetry to ethical treatises on torture, this week’s talks and readings have you covered.
Friday, July 25
Pete’s Mini Zine Fest 2014
If you love zines and alcoholic beverages and eclectic chit-chat, then this is the event for you. This weekend, Pete’s Candy Store will yet again be hosting “the longest running zine fest in Brooklyn.” On Friday, the Fest kicks off with a reading to celebrate the latest issue of We’ll Never Have Paris, a zine of nonfiction memoir that’s been around since 2007. Curator and editor Andria Alefhi will be reading from the issue, as will other contributors. The festival proper will be held on Saturday, bringing together an array of zinesters, comic artists, publishers, and “amazing delicious snacks.”
7-8:30pm (also Saturday, 2pm-7pm), Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer St, Brooklyn), FREE.
Demetrius and Helena get frisky (Photo courtesy of Jaclyn Cohen)
This outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, returning to the East Village Friday for a final three-day run, won’t remind you at all of eighth grade English. Maybe because the fairies are all drugged out and the forest has become a rave den, or because the lovers are Park Slope trust-fund kids, and the Wall is a spoken-word performer. Whichever way you squint at it, like the unfortunate Bottom, the entire play has been “translated”—in this case into a contemporary New York City setting.
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Billy Reid’s sample sale space on Bond/Bowery (Photo: Kirsten O’Regan)
This year, Billy Reid turns 10. And to celebrate the big one-oh, the high-end Americana clothier (originally hailing from the South), is holding a blow-out sample sale at 57 Bond Street, just steps away from its usual NoHo storefront.
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