New Yorkers looking for pineapple and hemp lattes at MAMACHA Café will instead find paper-covered windows and locked doors. The Bowery café known for its CBD drinks and snacks closed amidst the city’s crackdown on CBD-infused edibles and beverages, and says it’s moving elsewhere. The café was co-owned by New York-based artist Eric Cahan as well as Nev Schulman and Laura Perlongo – best known for hunting down online lovers and liars on MTV’s Catfish. As for hunting down a new location for MAMACHA, its destination is still unknown. More →
African Spirits Opening Thursday, July 11 at Yossi Milo Gallery, 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. On view through August 23.
Your standard art history education tends to stay pretty Eurocentric, so some people might not know that portrait photography has had quite a heyday in Africa, dating back to the early 1900s, when both European visitors and African locals experimented more and more with the form. The 1950s through the 1980s were considered the “golden age” of portraiture in West Africa, and images from this time will be showcased in a new group exhibition at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery, which range from staged studio imagery to more candid nightlife captures. These photos will be displayed alongside works from more contemporary photographers of all stripes.
A lot of us may be hoping to spend the middle of summer in theater A/C, but are absolutely too spooked to sit through Midsommar. The hottest months are typically a lull between awards posturing. Aside from Ari Aster’s Swedish pagan nightmare-scape, plus that wildly high-concept Beatles-based comedy I haven’t yet gotten around to seeing, there’s mostly superhero reboots and high-budget misfires on the marquees right now. But with their retrospectives and lovingly-curated series, the lower Manhattan and Brooklyn arthouse theaters have us covered. More →
July 4th weekend tends to come with less events happening than usual, but don’t worry, there’s still plenty of quality fun to be had between the days of July 5 and 8. The night after the 4th, you can finish digesting all those processed meats at Cry Baby, a recurring comedy show and party in a DIY Bushwick venue hosted by performers Dekunle Somade and Abe Gatling. It also has iterations in DC and Philadelphia, in case you want to become a comedy show’s groupie. The latest Brooklyn edition features Sydnee Washington, Shane Torres, Devon Walker, Sam Evans, Chanel Ali, and Pockets Graham.
SATURDAY
(image courtesy of Ethan Beach and Josh Nasser)
Oh, Such A Huge Show, Oh! Saturday, July 6 at The Bell House, 7 pm: $18 advance, $23 day of show
As you might have gleaned from the title, Josh Nasser and Ethan Beach’s Oh, Such A Huge Show, Oh! is in fact a big show with a long, hefty lineup, and the proceeds will be going to The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. Long lineups can become dreary over time, but this one is too jam-packed with fun and talent to feel that way. A taste of the performers that await: The Lucas Bros, Ziwe Fumudoh, Conner O’Malley, Ana Fabrega, Anna Drezen, Emmy Blotnick, Josh Sharp, and even more.
SUNDAY
(image via The Nobodies / Facebook)
Get Your Panties In A Brunch Sunday, July 7 at Dromedary Bar, 1 pm: FREE
Brunch can feel like an event in and of itself, but if eating eggs while calculating how many mimosas you can down before your bottomless time runs out isn’t enough for you, there’s a way to make brunch feel even more like a show. Enter drag brunch, where (you guessed it) drag performers strut their stuff right before your hungry eyes. There are several drag brunches out there to choose from, but a solid one in North Brooklyn can be found at tiki bar Dromedary, where the drag-collective-with-a-penchant-for-wrestling The Nobodies take over every Sunday. Expect a rotating cast that includes Emi Grate, Lady Beatrice Andrews, Ariel Italic, and Blvck Laé D.
Hórama Rama by Pedro & Juana, presented as part of the Young Architects Program 2019 at MoMA PS1. (Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Kris Graves)
Welcome to the jungle, ravers!
The MoMA PS1 Warm Up, the longest-running summer dance party in Queens, starts this Saturday and repeats weekly through August. This year, when New Yorkers make the pilgrimage to the museum’s courtyard to sway in the summer heat and revel in the beats of up-and-coming DJs and rappers, underground electro pop, and more, they’ll be immersed in a Yucatan-inspired “jungle,” the brainchild of Mexico City-based architectural firm Pedro & Juana. More →
As Congress shut its doors for the holiday today, New Yorkers convened at the doors of Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village, rallying for the closure of abusive immigrant detention centers. The protest was part of the larger “Close the Camps” movement, a national day of protest pushing members of Congress to stop authorizing funding for family detention, to visit the detainment camps and to push for their closure. Locals, activists and representatives of the organizations leading Close the Camps– including MoveOn, United We Dream, American Friends Service Committee and Families Belong Together– gathered at the steps of Middle Collegiate Church to share personal testimony and their displeasure with the centers. More →
Bushwick locals are desperately trying to save the neighborhood from the Department of City Planning’s Bushwick Neighborhood Plan— especially since they spent five years laboring to create a plan of their own. The clash of PDFs was the focus of an hours-long meeting on Friday at Bushwick High School. The meeting kicked off the Department of City Planning’s official call for written comments on the Bushwick Neighborhood Plan, a period that will last until July 12th. More →
Twenty blocks north of the World Pride parade kick-off yesterday, thousands in Bryant Park were singing. Sing Out, Louise! passed out pink-and-black “hymnals”—protest lyrics, set to recognizable Americana (“Somewhere over the rainbow, love trumps hate/Black lives matter to all, and Muslims can immigrate”). When those in attendance came to outnumber the print-outs, latecomers snapped photos of their neighbors’ copies, and followed along on their phones. More →
Miss Meatface Opening Tuesday, July 2 at The Untitled Space, 6 pm to 9 pm. On view through July 13.
No, “Miss Meatface” does not refer to the latest right-wing woman to adopt the “carnivore diet,” that frightening all-beef culinary regime embraced by the likes of Jordan Peterson; it refers to the artist Kat Toronto, who creates bizarre and entrancing “performance-based photography” under the name Miss Meatface, which resemble stills from some surreal, experimental, BDSM-laced film you want to immediately consume in full. In addition to an exhibition of recent creations by Miss Meatface, Tuesday’s reception will also feature a zine signing and an artist talk between Meatface and The Untitled Space’s director, Indira Cesarine.
Thousands of people from all over the world crowded around Christopher Park on Friday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising, several nights in the summer of 1969 when patrons of the Greenwich Village gay bar and their allies fought back against routine police harassment and ultimately catalyzed the LGBTQ rights movement. We asked the rally’s attendees where they came from, and what brought them to the dive that’s now a national monument and a worldwide symbol of pride and resistance. Play the video to hear their stories.
