(Photo: Kavitha Surana)
A baseball bat swung through the air and collided with Donald Trump’s torso. The bat-wielding child laughed, the crowd cheered, and the piñata of Mr. Trump, by artist Pablo Helguera, went flying around in circles.
“That’s a tough Donald Trump,” said someone in the crowd. After multiple assaults, barely any dents were visible.
TUESDAY
Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature
Feb. 2nd at 7:00 p.m. at Powerhouse Arena, 37 Main St (DUMBO)
If you’ve ever read a memoir or a personal essay and wondered about the nuts and bolts behind all the self-exposure, this is the book for you. Twenty memoirists who’ve been through the ringer dish on the struggles of picking over your own dirty laundry to expose hard truths, turning loved ones into characters, and the pleasure and challenge of putting oneself front and center in your own narrative. Contributors Meghan Daum (The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion), AM Homes (May We Be Forgiven) and Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng) will speak.
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Grey Gersten at Custom Melodies exhibition (Photo courtesy of Eternal Lips)
It’s not usually the case that filling out a revealing questionnaire, waiting in line, and encountering someone with a lot of tools at their disposal ends up being fun. Like, ever. But people who participated in Custom Melodies, an exhibition held last summer by Grey Gersten (aka the musician known as Eternal Lips) left not with a sinking sense of shame, but an original song composed according to their unique personality traits and experiences. (You can explore the melodies on this special, interactive website, which launched today.)
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Friday on Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, security footage caught an individual drawing a swastika and the words “Die yuppies” in wet cement. [Brooklyn Paper] Watch it here. [News 12 Brooklyn]
Take a look inside landlord Ben Shaoul’s pricy new condos now on the market at 100 Avenue A. [Curbed NY]
Sandwich chain Subway shuttered its location at 12th Street and 4th Avenue in the East Village. [EV Grieve]
Police are seeking the man shown here in connection with a string of robberies in the East and West Villages. The first of the five incidents happened at 3:45 a.m. on Dec. 13, when the suspect allegedly approached a 29-year-old and 30-year-old in the lobby of an apartment building near Waverly Place and Christopher Street, flashed a silver gun, and lifted $400 from one of the men. He’s also wanted for questioning in connection with the following incidents, as described by the NYPD. Most of them occurred as the victims entered their apartment buildings.
Incident #2 – At approximately 0315 hours on Wednesday, December 30, 2015 in front of 181 Thompson Street in the confines of the 6th Precinct. Two male Blacks approached the 31-year-old male victim, brandished a firearm, and fled with the victim’s cell phone, watch, and $300.
Ippudo’s new beer bar (Photo by Kavitha Surana)
It’s still raining ramen out there– it seems we can’t go one week without a new opening. Here’s a round up of some of the newest places to slurp during noodle season.
Frozen beer machine (Photo by Kavitha Surana)
Ippudo
65 4th Ave, nr 10th street, East Village
This pioneer of New York’s Ramen craze recently closed for what store manager Yuske Nakamura says is an “iPhone 6 to iPhone 6s” upgrade. The space, originally meant to serve 200 guests a day, became so popular it quickly had to adjust to accommodating 800 – and all that turnover took a toll on the equipment and machinery. The upgrade will come in handy when Ippudo presents an expanded menu (expected in May) to include more vegetable-based ramen options and appetizers with global influences, like Spanish Iberico pork. There’s also a revamped beer bar at the front, now with Japanese craft beers on tap like Asahi and Orion (and the Ippudo collaboration with Brooklyn Brewery, Kaedama Ale). The biggest novelty is a slushy Kirin Ichiban machine to top your drink with frozen beer, a popular variation in Japan.
Russ & Daughters is opening a giant multipurpose space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, its first retail location outside of its longtime home on Houston Street. The appetizing institution is taking 14,000 square feet in Building 77, a massive storage facility undergoing an $185 million renovation that’s expected to be completed in early 2017.
What is there to say other than, ‘Where’s our park?’ and, ‘The promise was made,’ and, ‘Do it’?” State Senator Daniel Squadron asked Sunday at the CitiStorage site, on the anniversary of a seven-alarm fire that renewed calls for the greening of the eight-acre plot on the Williamsburg waterfront. Turns out, there was more to say: the state senator was joined by Council Member Stephen Levin, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, and other elected officials and activists who once again called on Mayor de Blasio to acquire the land and make good on a promise made by his predecessor. So how many ways are there to say “Where’s our park?” Play the video to find out.
The panting dog was somewhat unsettling, but the click of a digital camera was just plain upsetting, because both seemed to violate the air of silence and vulnerability as Lisa Levy sat naked on a toilet seat in an ironic homage to Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present. Then again, these weird ways of interacting with the artist were more exciting to watch than people who approached the porcelain throne and looking blankly at Levy for what could easily be dismissed as a glorified staring contest.
Chants of “Feel the Bern,” “Not for sale,” and “We are the 99 percent!” echoed down Broadway on Saturday as New Yorkers participated in a national March For Bernie. The candidate himself was present only in the form of cardboard cutouts, hand-drawn portraits, and (in one case) a Bernie puppet, but that didn’t stop hundreds of supporters of all ages and stripes (humans, canines, pigs, a #butterfly4Bernie, and the purple people eater below) from marching from Union Square to Zuccotti Park.
