Late on a Friday afternoon, right before things were sure to get busy, Zaida Soler-Williams and Roberto Williams welcomed me into their East Williamsburg apartment, which is also their place of business. The living space is furnished simply, with a couch, house plants, and a few black leather lounge chairs; less expected are the large speakers tucked in seemingly every corner, the dominant screen along one wall, and the disco lighting everywhere, illuminating even the countertops in phosphorescent blue. “We go all out,” Roberto told me. “We’re not the type to do things halfway.” More →

Thousands of people walk by them everyday, oblivious to their existence. But you’ll notice them if you’re looking. At eye height, two peepholes covered by sliding metal shutters allow passersby to watch one of the movies playing at IFC Center in Greenwich Village. The two holes look into an actual theater on the ground floor, allowing the peeper to surreptitiously observe the activity taking place inside. More →

THURSDAY

We’re Tired
Thursday, August 29 at Cobra Club, 8 pm: FREE

Thursday is a strange day. It’s not quite as close to the weekend as Friday is, but still gives you a looming sense of freedom. At the same time, it’s several days into the work week, which can make anyone feel weary. Comedians Irene Fagan Merrow and Amanda Hurley may very well be tired in the standard work week sense, but they’re also exhausted for another reason: seeing too many shows flooded with straight white men. Indeed, even in this day and age they still manage to find a way to populate, well, everywhere. As a counter to this, We’re Tired features performers who don’t identify as that. This time, they’re welcoming comedians Yedoye Travis, Alissa May Atkinson, Jordan Temple, Rachel Sennott, and Carolyn Castiglia.

Shoebox Museum
Opening Thursday, August 29 at 198 Allen Street, 10 am to 7 pm. On view through August 31.

Sneaker culture has reached a bit of a fever pitch in the past few years, with people worldwide getting their kicks (figuratively and literally) from reselling and/or buying flashy shoes of all sorts, as long as they resemble a sneaker. Historically, shoes come in boxes, and aside from being a convenient storage method and material for your elementary school dioramas of yore, shoeboxes are an opportunity to showcase both function and creativity and design, just like the shoes inside it do. The Shoebox Museum understands this, and for a few short days will be filling the Lower East Side with shoeboxes aplenty, from recognizable classics to the innovative and even avant-garde.

Remember breadfacing? It became a thing in 2015 when a woman in her late twenties began posting Instagram videos in which she squished bread with her face. The videos are all the same: a sexy tune plays in the background as she sits at a table and lowers her face over a piece of bread, relishing its sponginess, softness or coarseness. Sometimes she gently smooshes the bread; other times she mashes it with a vengeance.  

Even as Bread Face’s popularity has skyrocketed to nearly 200,000 followers, her real identity has remained hidden. Now, she’s heating up the wholesome entertainment by launching a Patreon account that’s all about… foot fetishes and findom?  More →

This is nuts! Mr. Peanut and his Nutmobile have taken over Astor Place and are dishing out free cheese balls. More →

The East Village Queer Film Festival brought rebellious sons and snappy elders to the big screen for a packed opening on Monday night. Hosted by mixed-arts space the Wild Project, the weeklong festival features an array of short and full-length films, webisodes and music videos all focused on LGBTQ+ experiences.   More →

When I first read Eileen Myles’s 1994 classic Chelsea Girls, I was certain it was nonfiction. I think I may have told an inquiring stranger on the subway that it was a book of essays, which it isn’t (sorry, now-misinformed New Yorker). It’s fiction, a series of short coming-of-age stories about a queer poet named Eileen Myles, who is like the collection’s author in many ways but not in all. I was so certain it was memoir because the book feels so lived-in—it brings you to tactile places, conjures the mud underfoot at Woodstock and those recognizable, “gorgeous grey feeling(s)” of adolescent romance. But Myles has long called Chelsea Girls an “autobiographical novel,” a hybrid of sorts. It merges the unreal, the dreamed-up, with the hyper-real.   More →

Food stands aren’t the only things being bulldozed for Essex Crossing, the ever-growing Lower East Side development of housing, vendors and aerial vegetables. Community Healthcare Network, a medical mainstay since 1971, will be demolished in 2021 to make way for Site 10 of Essex Crossing. Now, the nonprofit health-care provider is calling for the city to provide financial support for their expensive move.  More →

The email from Rooftop Films came hours before last night’s screening of Desolation Center at Green-Wood Cemetery in Sunset Park: “No standing, sitting, or leaning on any gravestone (no matter how sturdy it looks).” Apparently Lee Ranaldo didn’t get the memo, because during a post-screening performance involving an electric guitar suspended from a crane, the Sonic Youth member hopped onto the edge of an obelisk and ran his instrument across the stone to produce a howl that sounded all the more unholy under the full moon. More →