There wasn’t all that much information about this year’s Bushwick Open Studios on the Arts in Bushwick website until the end of the week, so it was hard to know what was most exciting to check out. That allowed me to meander around, but I couldn’t help feeling some FOMO knowing I’d only see a fraction of the 200 participating art studios.
(Photo: Summer Cartwright)
It’s never too early for glitter buffets, BDSM photo ops or Lady Gaga. At least, it wasn’t too early at 4 p.m. today when we stopped by the Javits Center for a preview of RuPaul’s DragCon NYC.
The convention, devoted to all things drag queen, runs through the weekend, and includes vendors (makeup, wigs, glitter), personalities (RuPaul is, in fact, going to make an appearance) and shows (Mean Girls may have performed sexy “Jingle Bell Rock” first, but the queens and cast of the Broadway production took it to the next level).
This year’s Miss Subways pageant got an upgrade form its usual location, the backyard of City Reliquary, to a proper stage at Littlefield in Gowanus. Six “advocates and lovers of the NYC underground” represented their subway line and vied for this year’s title in City Reliquary’s cheeky nod to the MTA’s Miss Subways campaigns of 1941 to 1976.
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(Photo: Rodrigo Lizarraga/@shotbyrod)
If there was a circus made for adults, what would it look like?
Half-naked people flying through the air while those in the audience sat in a “splash zone,” of course.
New Museum kicked off its big fall season last night with a huge, career-spanning exhibition of one of the UK’s most influential living artists, Sarah Lucas. The show, titled Au Natural after one of her most famous assemblages, encompasses all of the museum’s three main floors and features more than 150 sculptural pieces, photographs, installations, and videos. Provocative, clever, and engaging throughout, it’s the first retrospective of Lucas’s work seen anywhere in America, and it runs into the new year. Expect enthusiastic crowds and lots of stockings, cigarettes, and penises.
As you probably know by now, the annual Bushwig festival showcases the best upcoming and established talent in drag and performance from New York and around the world. Its seventh annual installment, this past Sunday at Knockdown Center, featured local performers such as Chris of Her, whose mushroom-topped headpiece turned into a suspendered dress after a tumble down the catwalk, and Merrie Cherry, who came out in a wheelchair and hospital gown and was lifted by the power of music to reveal a dress underneath the gown.
Returning once again to its visually dramatic (and conveniently central) location directly under the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, the seventh annual Photoville opens today with more than 90 photography shows within and around a mini-city of shipping containers. The event runs through the weekend, then next Thursday through Sunday as well, and is totally free and open to the public.
(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
As Shellac took the stage of the Bell House on Monday to wrap up the Gowanus venue’s series of 10th anniversary shows, a hush fell on the audience. Or rather, a shush. There were calls of “Quiet!” and “Shh!” as the band silently tuned up.
The heroically hirsute gathered at Sideshows by the Seashore this past Saturday for the 11th annual Coney Island Beard and Mustache Competition. The area’s biggest beardos competed in categories like best natural beard, best styled beard, and best fake (given to a baby with a Sharpie mustache). Contestants were welcome to enter multiple categories, hence the guy who snagged “Most in Show” honors by shaving his beard onstage in order to enter the partial beard category, styling his mustache and beard after competing in the natural categories, and even wearing a mop as a fake beard.
Regal’s Union Square cinema upgraded to 4DX in 2016, meaning you can now feel The Rock’s spittle land on your brow, or join Robert Duvall in taking a whiff of napalm in the morning. So how does the theater plan to one-up itself? With ScreenX.