As its name implies, it takes some effort to discover the new storefront of Lower East Side’s enigmatic purveyors with panache, The Hunt. Framed under an electronics store sign belonging to an old tenant, The Hunt’s cryptic entrance acts as a sort of portal into the world contained within – part store, part museum – where the line between old and new is a bit uncertain.
If there are two constants we face as New Yorkers, one is change and the other, our hunger for pizza. It was only a matter of time then before someone combined the two — in this case, five friends who over the past four years documented a changing New York through the time-weathered eyes of 120 of the “most authentic slice joints.” The result of there efforts: The New York Pizza Project book, which launched last week. In the excitement of the long-awaited release, we caught up with project member Ian Manheimer to find out more about the project, his thoughts on the precarious concept that is authenticity, and what makes the perfect pizzeria.
UR New York (Photo: Rob Scher)
Beginning today and running through October 10, the One Art Space gallery in Tribeca will be holding an exhibit titled Attack the Block – “a concise survey of contemporary street art in America.” With many of the featured artists having already had their work exhibited in museums and galleries like MoMA, the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum, the show is what Daniel Giella, owner of One Art Space, describes as an “all-star game” of the street art world. But is the show also an oxymoron?
Tiger + Man (Photo: Nir Arieli)
For several hours last night, New York-based singer/songwriter Tiger Darrow, covered in a thick layer of latex, sat statuesque in an inflatable splash pool placed atop a mechanically rotating chair. Why? Some might call it madness, others a vision. “You look like a cross between the robot in Ex Machina and something out of a Guillermo Del Toro movie,” said director Mike Donaghey.
“It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all” always struck me as a pretty shitty consolation. I guess it depends on who’s doing the losing part, right? Love looks a lot rosier from the side of the jilter than the jilt-ee. I guess the point being that at some stage you get a taste of both. Which is likely why, among the recently announced lineup for the upcoming eighth annual Bushwick Film Festival (Oct 1 to 4), the topic of love pops up so frequently. For this reason, I propose as a counter statement: it’s better to have neither loved nor lost, but rather watched the entire shitshow go down from the comfort of a theater chair. In honor of this newfound epithet, we’ve compiled our list of the films at this year’s BFF featuring the character of love in all her forms.
All vegetable brunch (Courtesy Dirt Candy)
It’s a good time to be a downtown vegetarian: this week Superiority Burger snagged two stars from the Times and next weekend, kale cravers can take part in that most hallowed of New York rituals: fancy brunch. Naturally, leading this bacon-less charge is Dirt Candy, the veg-centric restaurant (also two-starred) that in February moved to the Lower East Side from the East Village nook that, it so happens, now houses Superiority Burger.
Tonight a gallery in Brooklyn opens with the grand purpose of helping you deal with the weight of life’s mysteries. That’s not to say Stephen Romano, curator and gallery namesake, is offering any answers. Instead “Lexicon Infernali,” the gallery’s debut exhibit, is a window into a world of questions, inviting visitors to take a trip down the rabbit hole of visionary art.
With NYU having prevailed in a lawsuit that contested its expansion and Cooper Union just this week settling a lawsuit brought by opponents of its new tuition scheme, you’d think things would’ve quieted at the neighboring academic institutions. But yesterday students and faculty of both, along with those of New School, marched to NYU’s doomed Greenwich Village gymnasium to make clear that they weren’t giving up the fight.
The window for enjoying the spoils of nature shrinks with each passing day. Lest ye forget, winter is coming. Fear not, though, for as sure as there are endless plots prior to George R.R. Martin’s frosty apocalypse, so too does this city hold its own plethora of distractions to occupy these last sun-filled days.
From Left: Nic Ratner and Geoff Popler
Nic Ratner hates televisions in bars. So much so, in fact, he’s banned them from the three he runs along Second Avenue.
“If there was a television in here right now, even with the sound off, I could be talking with the most beautiful, intelligent, funny girl and a damn ShamWow commercial could come on and I’d be staring at it instead of her, no matter what,” proselytizes Ratner, standing in Shoolbred’s, the Scottish-themed bar where he’s an “honorary partner” (“hiring and firing powers, but I don’t make any money” ), with owner and business associate Robert Morgan. Together the two also own Ninth Ward, Kingston Hall (together with Steve Pyke and Geoff Popler) and a soon to be opened spot on Farringdon Road in London.
