A good poem is a small slice of life. Loud music, a gentle gaze, raucous laughter, a brisk winter breeze. Poetry moves sensation to the page by transforming texture and temperature into text.
Miss Astrid’s ‘Striptease Séance’ Will Have a Celebrity Stage Kitten
(Photo: David Byrd)
Do you know Miss Astrid? The question is the Downtown equivalent to the Williamsburg litmus test query, “Remember Cokie’s?” Your answer speaks volumes about how long you’ve been around and how much realness you’ve gotten yourself into. Miss Astrid, née Kate Valentine, was a member of the LA burlesque troupe The Velvet Hammer, one of the major groups often cited as the edge of the knife in the burlesque revival of the 1990s (along with New York’s Billie Madley and Dutch Weismann’s Follies). With her own vaudeville review, The Va Va Voom Room (“Best Burlesque Show in NYC – New York magazine”) Astrid rocked such bygone venues as Fez under the Time Cafe, Show World, and The Zipper Factory.
The Deuce Shoots Final Season On LES
Back in September, HBO announced that it was renewing The Deuce, David Simon’s gritty drama about the rise of the porn trade in ’70s and ’80s NYC, for a third and final season. Now vintage cars are lining Orchard Street between Stanton and Rivington in preparation for a shoot tonight. More →
Queens Night Market Returns With Cheese Donuts and International Delicacies
(Photo: Cecilia Nowell)
This past weekend’s warm weather welcomed back a new season of Smorgasburg, the much-loved outdoor market held Saturdays in Williamsburg and Sundays in Prospect Park (and, starting this week, Fridays at the Westfield World Trade Center). Rest assured, Smorg isn’t the only opportunity to leave Manhattan for a great food market. Next week, April 20, the Queens Night Market kicks off its 2019 season with a special ticketed “Sneak Preview.”
Inside the Lower East Side’s Newest, Largest Movie Theater
Though the food market coming to Essex Crossing got some nice press last week, you’ll have to wait three months before it opens. In the meantime, the massive development near the Williamsburg Bridge finally got its 14-screen movie theater, as Regal Essex 14 & RPX opened at 129 Delancey Street on Friday. More →
Performance Picks: Autobiographical Bodies, Black Burlesque, and More
THURSDAY
(image via Union Hall / Facebook)Yourself, Your Body
Thursday, April 4 at Union Hall, 9:30 pm: $10
Arti Gollapudi, who we interviewed back in 2017 about her aggressively inclusive Comedy Cunt Collective, has been quite busy lately. One of her many endeavors include the recurring show Yourself, Your Body, a comedy show (produced by Amanda Justice, also of Comedy Cunt Collective) perhaps unsurprisingly about how bodies and brains alike can be, well, extremely weird. Anyone with a human body (and maybe some without) knows there’s a lot to be mined from this topic. This time around, the funny folks waxing humorously about this weirdness include Rachel Sennott, Rebecca O’Neal, Drew Anderson, Mia Myles, Amanda Justice, and guest co-host Maya Deshmukh. More →
Tags: Bizarre Bushwick, burlesque, Bushwick, club cumming, comedy, drag, East Village, la mama, theater, union hall
The Last Days and Nights of Enid’s, Now Closed After 20 Years in Greenpoint
Enid’s brunch staff before their second to last Sunday before closing with owner Ashley James (top, fourth from left), 3/24/18 at 10a.
Greenpoint’s past and present collided last week as Enid’s shuttered after 20 years of early brunches and late-night parties. After the beloved bar and restaurant announced its closure two months ago, owner Ashley James told Bedford+Bowery that it had served its purpose and “now it’s time to move on.” We spent time at Enid’s during the long reunion that was its final week and met countless regulars and staff who drowned themselves in tears, sweat and scores of Harrison cocktails.
Relaxer and My Year of Rest and Relaxation: More Taxing Than Relaxing
It’s not often that two strikingly original works seem to have been cut from the same puke-drenched cloth, but that’s exactly the case with Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, published last year to critical acclaim, and Joel Potrykus’s Relaxer, which premiered last year around the same time at SXSW and is now playing at Cinema Village East. The film has been called “the grossest movie of the year” while the novel will have you “cringing during every moment,” per The Paris Review. Clearly, despite their titles, relaxation isn’t exactly their intended purpose.
Bedtime Stories Get Woke at This Library and Exhibit of Radical Kids Books
Children’s books have a way of teaching lessons without coming across as preachy or insistent. They teach you to eat your vegetables and take care of others with playful language and bright illustrations. And, for some reason, they tend to stick with us. Those first stories stay in the back of our heads well into adulthood, reminding us to be kind to animals, try new things, and maybe give lima beans a chance.
If you’re hoping to teach your children even more radical lessons than those (or just looking for some great children’s books for yourself), you might want to head over to Sunset Park’s art and bookmaking collective Booklyn for its latest exhibition: “Lil’ Radicals: Multicultural and Social Justice Publications for Kids in the 21st Century.”
Political Cartoons On the Wall at This Year’s MoCCA Arts Festival
The Society of Illustrators expects to draw crowds to Hudson Yards this weekend for the annual MoCCA Arts Festival. Hundreds of New York- and Brooklyn-based cartoonists, publishers, and other artists will turn out for Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon, and animation festival. This year’s installment pushes beyond the boroughs of New York, though, with a special emphasis on breaking down borders.