Monday, September 15, 2008
Wishful thinking...?
For some reason I was looking at the CBGB Web site...Guess it hasn't been updated in a few years...And whatever became of the Vegas dream?
Going Nightclubbing
Speaking of CBGB...thanks to Stupefaction for telling us about the new Go Nightclubbing Web site.
NIGHTCLUBBING
THE ORIGINAL PUNK ROCK MUSIC VIDEO SERIES
by PAT IVERS and EMILY ARMSTRONG
Live videotaped performances from 1975-80
Described by the New York Times as, “The Lewis and Clark of rock video”, video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong spent their nights from 1975-80 documenting the burgeoning punk scene in nightclubs around New York City. Ivers and Armstrong were acutely aware of the significance of that era and their material captures the sprit of the time. The edited results were shown on their weekly cable TV show NIGHTCLUBBING. These performances have been compiled and presented as the ultimate wish-I-was-there document of the groundbreaking punk, new wave, no wave and hardcore movement.
Lehman Brothers at night
Sunday, September 14, 2008
A Nick Zedd retrospective
A little late on this...there's a Nick Zedd retrospective tonight and Sept. 28 at the Gene Frankel Theatre on Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery. (Here's more on Zedd's Cinema of Transgression.)
What follows is Thrust in Me, a short Zedd did in 1985 with Richard Kern in the East Village. (Zedd has both lead roles.) The song is "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" by The Dream Syndicate.
Oh, please be warned if you're new to this. It's graphic. Very, very NSFW. Oh, and nice panoramic shot of the neighborhood at the 7:26 mark.
The 57-story condo coming to 56 Leonard
From the Daily News on 56 Leonard Street:
The Swiss architects of the iconic Bird's Nest stadium at the Beijing Olympics are bringing their innovative style to New York City with a translucent glass skyscraper designed to look like houses stacked in the sky.
Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron's $650 million, 57-story condominium featuring dramatic, cantilevered terraces is slated to begin going up in mid-October in the trendy Tribeca district in lower Manhattan.
Curbed has been following the story.
Anyway, this building won't look out of place at all! A fine addition to our city of glass.
"Giuliani will lock my ass up"
The Post reports: "Squeegee men -- the window-washing bane of city streets who became a symbol of Big Apple blight and a top target in former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's crusade to crack down on quality-of-life nuisances in the 1990s -- are making a comeback."
Noted from the article:
One press-shy squeegee guy, apparently still thinking it was Rudy's reign, asked The Post not to write about him.
"Giuliani will lock my ass up," he said. "There will be 30 cops up and down this street."
“Oh, God, we’re living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe!”
That's Arthur Nersesian, the 49-year-old playwright, poet and novelist, talking about the changes in his home neighborhood of the East Village. He's the subject of an entertaining profile in the Times today.
Unlike many New Yorkers who inhabited the East Village of the 1980s, Mr. Nersesian seemed to remember every aspect of that gritty and often dangerous time with fondness. Even as he described the endless parade of prostitutes down East 12th Street or the bonfires set by the homeless in Tompkins Square Park, there was a palpable tenderness to his voice.
“There was a sense of community there,” Mr. Nersesian said. “I couldn’t walk down the street without saying hello to someone. You’d see Allen Ginsberg all over the place, and you’d see the other Beats.
“I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Beats, but there was an exemplary quality to the artist as citizen. You think about artists today in our society, and they’re kind of removed. You don’t really know them. When Ginsberg died, a definitive quality from the East Village — at least from my East Village — was gone.”
Perhaps inevitably, the East Village of today, with its fashionable bars and restaurants and its gleaming glass towers, fills him with despair. “Oh, God, we’re living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe!” Mr.
Nersesian said mournfully that day at the diner. “It’s amazing how memory really does become a kind of curse. If I was just coming to the city today, I’d probably think, ‘Oh, this is a really interesting place,’ but it’s trying to tell people, ‘You know, there was a war fought here, a strange economic, cultural battle that went on, and I saw so many wonderful people lost among the casualties.’ ”
Also from the article:
In his 1992 play “Rent Control,” Mr. Nersesian incorporated an experience he had when he returned to the office tower that had replaced his childhood apartment.
“I tried to go to the exact same space,” he recalled, “and it turned out to be the romance division of Random House or something. I walked in and the secretary said, ‘Can I help you?’ And I think I tried to convey to her that this was where I lived for the first 10 years of my life; this space here was where I was bathed in the sink. And she looked at me like I was a nut.”
[Image: Andrew Henderson/The New York Times]
Welcome to our pretty bank branch
We've written before about the increase in bank robberies in NYC this year. Fancy bank branches abound on seemingly every corner of some East Village streets. It's so convenient! On the topic of the increase in bank robberies, the Times makes this observation today:
A look at the data shows that bank robbers seem to prefer some of the inviting environments of the newer banks on the city scene. Sovereign, Wachovia and Commerce — with plants arrayed on marble floors, jars of lollipops set on low-slung counters and no bullet-resistant barriers between tellers and customers — have some the highest ratios of robberies to branches.
I wonder when bank officials will realize these sparkly new branches are in the middle of an enormous metropolitan area, and not in Pleasantville USA...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A tour of the LES
Big eater Crazy Legs Conti takes on the LES food scene here in this video clip...it's not that old...interesting to see what has changed since then...and what hasn't...
Friday, September 12, 2008
For Friday: "Nightmare In Pink Dead Cool"
The Chrome Cranks. The lone comment to this video on YouTube:
one of the best NYC bands when rock n roll in NY was really wild and pure... fuck williamsburg's pussie bands
Sweetness
Hunter-Gatherer takes a look at "21" via one of my all-time favorites, Sweet Smell of Success.
As he notes:
This movie is a must see for film buffs (especially NYC ones) but what struck me, while reviewing the film for the first time in a decade, is the ever-so-timely portrayal of media corruption.
Christmas on Mars at KGB
Not much of a Flaming Lips fan these days*, but this looks interesting and unwatchable at the same time. From a press release!:
This fall, legendary cult-rock band The Flaming Lips, Warner Brothers Records, and film company Cinema Purgatorio will bring the long-awaited Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips to offbeat venues across the country.
Christmas on Mars will open theatrically in New York City on September 12, 2008, presented in a custom-designed cinema at the KGB Complex at 85 East Fourth Street, screening in high definition video and the custom designed Zeta Bootis Mega Supersonic Super-Sound Surround System, which the Lips created for the film. Christmas on Mars will screen at unusual showtimes, the first of which have been have been announced (and some have already sold out) on cinemapurgatorio.com. Showtimes will include 7am and 9am showtimes, so audience members can go to Mars before they get to work, as well as some traditional evening showtimes.
Christmas on Mars is the directorial debut of Wayne Coyne, lead singer and frontman for the Flaming Lips. Coyne co-directed with George Salisbury, an audiovisual technician who works with the band. Coyne constructed much of the set - representing Mars - in his Oklahoma City backyard.
The film does indeed take place during Christmastime on Mars, as the colonization of the Red Planet is underway. But when an oxygen generator and a gravity control pod malfunction, Major Syrtis (the Lips' Steven Drozd) and his team (including the Lips' bassist Michael Ivins) fear for the worst. Syrtis hallucinates about the birth of a baby, and many other strange things. Meanwhile, a compassionate alien superbeing (Coyne) arrives, inspiring and helping the isolated astronauts.
More details here.
*It was at this point when I stopped liking the Flaming Lips:
** OK, that was actually pretty cool. And that dialogue!
Report: Cops interrogate Leftover Crack manager; defend using Taser during arrest
Lincoln Anderson reports in The Villager:
Following the arrest of Scott Sturgeon, 32, lead singer of the punk-rock band Leftover Crack, and four of his fans in the East Village last Friday evening, three men identifying themselves as Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau officers paid a surprise visit to Bill Cashman, the band’s manager, Monday afternoon. The three officers easily entered the building, on Avenue C near 10th St., since its front door had reportedly been left open due to ongoing construction inside.
Later in the article we hear from Deputy Inspector Dennis De Quatro, Ninth Precinct commanding officer, who defended the use of a Taser on one of the people arrested at Tompkins Square Park last Friday night.
The man was tased through his shirt on his upper torso for three seconds with the Taser being used in “touch-stun mode.” The deputy inspector noted that a Taser’s other mode is to shoot two electrically charged darts, which are attached to wires on the Taser, up to 20 or 30 feet. These darts puncture the person’s skin and leave wounds that could get infected, he said. The “touch-stun” technique — in which the Taser is manually pressed against the individual — is safer, especially at close range, he noted.
More EV Grieve Donut Social coverage here.
New York has lovely skylines, stylish and diverse people, great art galleries, and we're really expensive and not too fucking friendly
According to Travel + Leisure's annual America's Favorite Cities list...New York received the most No. 1 ratings -- 11 in total! We're tops in classical music, theater, diversity, style, people-watching, skyline/views, art galleries, local boutiques and luxury boutiques. That's only nine. Whatever!
And NYC was dead last for "peace and quiet" and "relaxing retreat" and — shocker! — "affordability." And NYC was 24 out of 25 for "friendliness." That's fucking bullshit! Fuck you!
Report: Demolition permit for St. Brigid’s is still in effect
Could the church still be torn down?
The Villager reports:
A demolition permit for St. Brigid’s Church on Avenue B was still in effect last week, despite the promise in May of this year of $20 million from an anonymous benefactor to restore the 1849 building and the East Village parish that the Catholic Archdioceses of New York dissolved in 2004.
But an archdiocese spokesperson said last week that architects were preparing plans and contractors were drawing up documents for building permits.
“We know the demolition permit has to be withdrawn and we decided to do it all at once,” said Joseph Zwilling. “There is no construction date and we’ll make an announcement when we have one.”
Nevertheless, Edwin Torres, president of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s, the group that went to court in 2005 to prevent the church building’s demolition, said last week that the committee was troubled that the demolition permit was still on file at the Department of Buildings.
Yes, we should all be troubled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)