(Photo via Revjen Miller / Facebook)
If you’ve decided that Stairwell Theater’s scatological Ubu Rex seems a little too extreme for you, there’s no shortage of oddball performance events around every corner this week. But sorry to all you straight-laced folk out there, none of them are particularly traditional.
Museum at Eldridge Street. (Photo: Peter Aaron/OTTO)
The Festival of Lights is as good a time as any to get in touch with your Jewish heritage — or at the very least your city’s Jewish heritage. Take advantage of these two fine opportunities.
Kitsch lives at The Bad Old Days (Photo: Nicole Disser)
It couldn’t have been a more perfect night for stopping into The Bad Old Days, or maybe there’s no better bar for a rainy night. Either way, immediately after walking into this brand new bar in Ridgewood I felt like I was in some kind of geothermal beer womb. Warmth radiates up from the wooden floorboards and out of the living room lamps, and half-curtains hug the tall windows, shielding boozers from the depressing weather outside. If you need a new winter bar, here’s a stellar contender.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
Last night the mask-wielding artists of the Bruce High Quality Foundation opened up the doors of their epic new studio space in Sunset Park. The excuses were a party and an exhibition featuring work inspired by French Baroque painter Nicholas Poussin’s landscapes, while the reason was fundraising for the Bruce High Quality Foundation University (BHFQU), an experimental, non-profit art school that offers free classes and an alternative to the MFA by separating art from careerism. Come January, BHQFU, which has had a home base in the East Village since 2013, will move its operations here to Sunset Park.
Wolf Eyes (Photo via Ad Hoc)
It’s the first week to get back out there and prove you’re an actual human being, not a ghost or a witch or even Sexy Donald Trump. Take off your mask and get back into the swing of things with two record release shows, a band of metal dads, and enough Trip Metal to make you quit Instagram forever. Find your trip outta here below.
“Untitled” (from the series In The Vale of Cashmere), Thomas Roma 2011
Like many Brooklynites, Prospect Park is my go-to, but the awesomely named Vale of Cashmere– a relatively isolated area on the east side of the park and the subject of photographer Thomas Roma’s new book– didn’t sound familiar at all. To outsider eyes like mine, the Vale (depending on your taste) is either a beautifully wild or pitifully neglected patch of land, overgrown with disobedient trees and untamed plants, at the center of which there’s a once-elegant fountain clogged with weeds and fetid puddles from years of neglect. Park staff have planted shrubs and flowers there too, lending the area a rotting romanticism.
But the Vale has another history: it’s long been a cruising spot for gay men, but especially gay men of color. Until recently it was considered an open secret, and one that many park powerfuls have decided not to engage, despite demands from elsewhere that they do so (in various ways). While Roma’s series is ultimately a personal exploration of friendship and loss, it’s nearly impossible to unravel his images from questions about what kind of impact a looming project will have on the community that has made this space its own.
(Photo via Kickstarter)
The owners of the Munchie Mobile (um, not the same one that belonged to the Workaholics crew…) have ditched their wheels for a former warehouse. The Deep End, as the two friends Jon Gneezy and Jorge Mdahuar are calling their burgers-and-beers-and-performance establishment, has a home inside Rockwall Studios, a massive warehouse of nearly 57,000 square feet that’s been converted into upscale artist studios along the Bushwick-Ridgewood border (they boast a “famous heavy metal band” as one of their tenants). The guys already had somewhat of a cult following. Serious Eats defied everyone’s expectations and described the Munchie Mobile, which Jon and Jorge have taken off the road, as a “stoner food Mecca” with “outlandish burgers,” while the food truck’s Twitter followers have implored them to bring back their deep fried fare.
(Flyer via The Gateway / Facebook)
Are you looking for spooky Halloween-themed shows? Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. Stay tuned for our guide to legit everything worth going to this Hallows’ weekend. But for now, sate yourself with these totally, 100 percent normal show happenings. Well, strictly speaking they’re not “normal” at all, but you can pretend like it’s not Sexy Something Day for just one minute and stuff your ears with tunes instead of candy corn.
From left: Nelson Antonio Espinal, Rob Granata, Ned Shatzer (Photo: Nicole Disser)
A brand new “DIY done-right” venue, as booker Nelson Antonio Espinal calls it, has been operating (at half-capacity anyway) in the J train’s shadow these past few weeks, while most of us probably had no idea. The secretive new operation, aptly called  The Gateway, is located just off the Gates Avenue stop on the Bed-Stuy side of Broadway. Late nights, it’s pretty quiet around here, save for a Crown Chicken knockoff, a newish vegan diner called Toad Style, and the twice-a-weekend shows at Bohemian Grove, just north on the Bushwick side of the border.
Let it be known this is your last week to get in anything besides horror films y’all, so listen up. We’ve got an anthropology-themed film fest, a drug-fueled road trip romance, mule-inspired capitalist critique, and ha woops– a horror marathon. Enjoy!