Filed under: going out | Tags: afterhours, alcohol, bars, beer, bowling, brooklyn, cafes, cider, dylan thomas, late night, owls, porchia, the gutter, trashy, under milk wood, van gogh
It is Spring, moonless night…starless and bible-black…The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea…You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing…Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep…And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea…Time passes. Listen. Time passes…Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night….From where you are, you can hear their dreams.
(Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood)
brashly TRASHLY (image: courtesy Modern Drunkard Magazine)
Oh, the Good ‘Ole Nights of nihilism, liquor and lingerie. Oh…LAST NIGHT(!?)…UM. So maybe “after hours” NYC isn’t as Milk Wood-quaint. But srsly people, boozin’ isn’t ALL THERE IS late, LATE at night. And “after hours” memories are crisper, the drier they are.
Late night, Scrumpyless scenesters can peruse at Bleecker Bob’s Golden Oldies Record Shop (open till 3am weekends), bowl at The Gutter (open till 4am), gormandize at various evening establishments, or consider the aforementioned Wifi cafes–including Cake Shop’s new and IMPROVED upstairs.
And while it might be unwise to stroll alone at 4am, in-group it might be The Best Time to “get scenic.” Meander unhindered across Brooklyn Bridge, hitch a pre-dawn ride on the Staten Island Ferry or watch the sunrise along the Brooklyn Promenade.
But wherever you wander, remember, night is the world lit by itself, and yet for some, it is often more alive and more richly colored than the day.
(image: courtesy Daring Rocket)
Filed under: bklyn, new york city, reason to teetotal | Tags: brooklyn, exhibitions, fiction, film, gigs, hobbies, music, onomastics
Scrivenista? L Magazine wants your pocket fiction. BLOWING UP on Flickr? Click! Onomastically inclined? Submit a zoonym to Prospect Park Zoo’s kangaroo naming contest. Paralegalizing your pretty face away in a black tower in Money City? Take an actor/dominatrix gig. Musician could-be? Well.
(image: courtesy Fred Lantz @ Second Fret)
Producing under-the-gun for competitions, exhibitions and left-field “gigs” leads to new experiences/people/ideas. It may be best to “cross the river where it’s narrowest,” but in the absence of fragmentary-blackouts, or a robotrip…
we still need excitement, and to occasionally go out on that limb.
Filed under: relationships, week night | Tags: alone, bikes, blue list, commitment, drugs, existential crisis, graffiti, jeffrey lewis, new old friends, nyc, serial monogamy, the scenic sidewalk, walking routes
Even for the most friendless, co-dependent serial monogamists among us, the “existential crisis” of being alone need not entail the next horizon of intoxication.
(image: courtesy Not Mr. Right’s blog)
Besides, drugs can affect your appearance, infringing on the quest for the next commitment-phob, or new old friends.
So if you need to escape, but lack an entourage, just take to NYC’s ever-evolving Scenic Sidewalk.
(photo: courtesy The Scenic Sidewalk of art by Swoon)
Filed under: politics | Tags: anarchist, apolitical, bad faith, campaign, carpool, chomsky, election, hillary, independent, loyalist, mccain, obama, politics, primaries, rhode island, sartre, socialist
PLAN: TONIGHT [the politically agnostic aspiring teetotalers among us] will cease the bad faith of The Alcoholically Apolitical Act (i.e. puking on SUV tires v. campaigning). TONIGHT we will [re]consider the upcoming election, etc.
(image: courtesy Roger J. Wendell)
As for involvement with the ever-climatic democratic primaries, there’s still time to participate. An [Obama] NYC-to-Rhode Island caravan leaves tomorrow (310 West 43rd Street between 8th and 9th at 7am; and Tuesday 6am), and you can zip-code query for events in your neighborhood on Obama’s and/or Hillary’s websites.
Those seeking other kinds of political affiliation can support or attend activities hosted by
- The Independent Movement
- The New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists
- John McCain
- Ralph Nader
- Briane Moore (and the Socialist Party of New York City)
- The Loyalist Party
But it’s time to consider political INVOLVEMENT as-an-activity, because “politics is the art of controlling your environment.”
Filed under: going out | Tags: bklyn, books, brooklyn, FREE, leap day, library, membership, met, moma, museums, reanimation library, sorrowful heart, studio museum
While it’s good to THINK FREELY, some things are worth the cost.
old books are NEAT (photo: courtesy John Hopkins Library)
i.e. Brooklyn Public Library’s Library After Dark. Today tickets are 60 bones. Tomorrow they’ll be 75. The event is FREE to due-paying members of the Brooklyn Vanguard, a forming clan of Library patrons ages 21-30something, committed to “expanding the role of the Brooklyn Public Library in the intellectual life of the City of New York.”
Most cultural organizations host attractively ageist groups of these types, i.e.
* The Museum of Modern Art
* Lincoln Center Theater
* The Metropolitan Museum of Art
* The Studio Museum in Harlem
et. al. (limited list circa ‘06, eek!)
Do you belong anywhere? Something to consider. If you can’t afford a LAD ticket or cultural membership “at this time,” don’t drown IN your sorrows. You can still do other FREE things.
Recommended alternative: submerge yourself in Reanimation Library’s culled collection of substream books.
Reanimated (photo: courtesy Reanimation Library)
Happy Leap Day.
Filed under: FREE | Tags: art, artists, astronomy, brain, east side company, FREE, ginger beer, lectures, outer space, talks, weather up
So Kathryn Weatherup (an original partner in East Side Company) just opened a new bar in BKLYN, and I’m grossly salivating over the new opportunity to bounce rent on Gin-Gin Mules.
AT THE SAME TIME, recent fumbles in intoxication have hurdled my attendance on The Lecture Scene, and if you haven’t heard – Medical Notice: *INTERESTING* Lectures may prevent brain-pruning and may increase brain-plasticity.
So let’s talk [FREE/suggested donation and Open to the Public] talks. Top picks:
1. The American Museum of Natural History’s Kaufmann Auditorium (Central Park West between 77th and 81st Streets) Friday night astronomy lecture series through May for the Amateur Astronomers Association (AAA) and YOU, because the universe is expanding, just like your BRAIN.
OUTER SPACE is AmAZinG, FYI (photo: courtesy pencil revolution)
2. The New York Studio School (8 West 8th Street) [generally Tuesday night] lectures by artists, scholars, critics, et. al. because they’re intimate and full of hotties.
Pricasso, FYI (photo: courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald)
For a more complete list of lectures check club free time, or “literary events” on New York Magazine.
Filed under: relationships, week night | Tags: apocalypto, brooklyn, dating, hobbies, museums, robot cowboy, sober
Maybe you just need to find the right robot cowboy to teetotal with.
(photo: courtesty robot cowboy), OMG.
How’dya, given that you aren’t bringing bones back from the bars, you’ve crapped too much in your own backyard (friend-wise) and you work alongside “faithfully devoted” baby boomers? Well, ONLINE there’s um “Internet Dating” (i.e. nerve, match, okcupid), predatory social networking on less awkwardly blatant flirt sites (i.e. myspace, friendster, facebook) and ehem blogs/forums.
If you’re not good enough at Photoshopping your Photobooth headshots into godliness to bump self-portrait threads, you can go-at-it in mass in person at “Singles” events, (i.e. speed dating), young cultural enthusiast functions (i.e. Museums) or join the *NEWLY* developed BKLYN-specific pheromone-mediation club (Brooklyn is For Lovers).
But a real benefit to teetotaling is that you’ll be sober, and sobriety means, KILLING TIME. The time you used to spend blacked out or watching wood-grain morph into rams. Killing time entails HOBBIES. And hobbies are good ways to meet people, with “common interests,” i.e. role-playing crumbling-Mayan-civilization:
Zero Wolf, of Apocalypto (Gibson, 2006), also OMG
So, start hobbying.
Filed under: unusual weather | Tags: cafe, cafe reggio, cakeshop, coffee, internet, laptop, late night, rapture, tea, tea lounge, wifi
You know what to do.
While we’re at it, let’s talk refuge between battle zones (for those momentary pauses amid alleyway snowball fights). There’s an overwhelming plenitude of cafes in NYC, but in what cozy crevices you can slurp tea and surf on free Wifi LATE-into-the evenings?
If you’re in the P. Heights/Park Slope area of BKLYN, as apparently I am
Please note Yoda figurine, circa 1997 in the shade of a BBG cactus
visit The Tea Lounge, in three locations, the main base on Union St. (allegedly-O.K.-come-dusk a.k.a bohemian living room furnishings are satisfactorily wiped down with organic stroller antiseptic), open till 1am weeknights, 2am weekends.
In the East Village, Rapture features bingo, cabaret, readings, releases, books and purchase-able internet minutes (for the laptopless). Currently on view: Garry Hayes exhibition, Open Book. Open daily till midnight, occasionally later for events.
On the les Cakeshop-upstairs sells records, comics, zines, CAKE, etc. (the clamor of raucous bands ever-seducing you downstairs). Open till 2am weeknights, 4am weekends.
In the West Village, Cafe Reggio doesn’t offer Wifi, but they do serve Italian-fare and the walls are adorned with Old World art; check out Jaren Blaschke’s pictures. Open till 2:30am weeknights, 4am weekends.
Cafe Reggio (photo: courtesy Lorcan Otway’s Flickr)
And, if you find yourself lost in the bar barracks of Williamsburg, while Atlas closes at 10pm, there’s Fix Lounge (adjacent to Sound Fix record store), hosting “analog games,” performances and activity nights (i.e. Sunday: role playing and Atari). Open Mondays till 11pm, Tuesday, Wednesday & Sunday till 2am, Fridays & Saturdays till 4am.
Filed under: week night | Tags: antifolk, indie rock, jeffrey lewis, music, sidewalk cafe
The [indie rock] Music Scene in NYC largely overlaps The Bar Scene, with bars doubling as performance venues and watering holes spouting out of concert hall flooring.
Still, we all need to sneak the occasional show in, and tonight is the first of Fortified Winter Antifolk Festival 2008 at The Fort aka the backroom of Sidewalk Cafe (94 Avenue A; the birthplace of the antifolk movement) with musicians all night every night (through February 29) starting at 7:30pm.
The concert is free and there’s a “two drink minimum,” but according to the hostess, any two drinks will do “two coffees, two teas, two cokes.” So have at it!
The Antifolk Documentary
Jeffrey Lewis, Antifolk Artist Extraordinaire
And, if you consider antifolk to be The Bane, there are alternatives. About.com provides a wide angle view of standard music venues, while Oh My Rockness lists indie rock venues and keeps a curated concert calendar.
Filed under: week night | Tags: annie hall, comedians, comedy, demetri martin, mike birbiglia
ALVY: Oh, you-you have to be artificially relaxed before we can go to bed?
ANNIE: Well, what’s the difference, anyway?
ALVY: Well, I’ll give you a shot of sodium pentothal. You can sleep through it…it ruins it for me if you have grass because, you know, I’m, like, a comedian, so if I get a laugh from a person who’s high, it doesn’t count. You know, ’cause they’re always laughin’.
(Annie Hall, 1977)
Tonight, consider COMEDY.
While my favorite comedian is currently O.O.S, there are plenty of people in NYC figuring out what’s funny, i.e.
Demetri Martin: Comedian NY, NY (Actually, Demetri is also on tour, BUT).
If you want to see something NEW, TELL YOUR FRIENDS! is a [generally] free series at Lolita (266 Broome St.) at 8pm on Monday nights. It’s known as a “workout comedy room” where comedians can try out new material, and writers can stretch their legs. Monday night also means the New Talent Showcase at Comedy Village; and this Monday The Upright Citizen’s Brigade is hosting two “SPANK”in’ news shows for $5.
If you’re looking for something more standard, there’s a full line up at the Comedy Cellar, and several of the other clubs, including an “all pro” show at Gotham.
