Recently in Events Category
25 years ago yesterday Michael Jackson's "Thriller" debuted. Yesterday, 73 fans reenacted the dance at Madame Tussaud's in Times Square in an attempt to break the Guinness record for the most people to do the dance at once. Local ABC report, with video, here, and a nice account from the Times's City Room blog here. (Photo credit goes to the latter.)
Alas, the Times story contains the bad news that the record had already been broken last weekend by a group of over 800 dancers in Austin, Texas, part of a worldwide "Thriller" dance-off that included over 4,000 people across the globe. The Texans, as the Village Voice's news blog snarked, "presumably [danced] with their thumbs in their beltloops."
The full 13-minute original, which I tried to pretend I hated in the 8th grade but like everyone else was actually blown away by, is here (sorry, embedding disabled).
As of last Monday, the New York City Waterfalls project, created by the artist Olafur Eliasson, has had its hours of operation cut from 101 to 50. The reduction is the result of a complaint by The Brooklyn Heights Association that the salt water from the installations was damaging waterfront plantings along the Brooklyn Promenade. The group had originally asked that the installations be dismantled after Labor Day, but October 13 remains the final date.
You can see the waterfalls now from 12:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays.
This Sunday, August 31, will see the Sixteenth Annual Tug Boat Race on the Hudson River. The event lasts from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and begins in Hudson River Park at Pier 84, West 44th Street and Hudson River. The race is sponsored by the Working Harbor Committee, whose mission is "to strengthen awareness of the
working harbor's
history and vitality today."
You can view the start of the race at Pier I, near 72nd Street in Riverside Park South. To see the middle of the race, go to Clinton Cove at 55th Street and Hudson River. The race ends at around noon at Pier 84.
You can also buy tickets to view the race from a spectator boat (adults $35, children and seniors $30).
You can find an account of last year's race and more information about this year at tugster: a waterblog (the source of the picture above).
You can view the start of the race at Pier I, near 72nd Street in Riverside Park South. To see the middle of the race, go to Clinton Cove at 55th Street and Hudson River. The race ends at around noon at Pier 84.
You can also buy tickets to view the race from a spectator boat (adults $35, children and seniors $30).
You can find an account of last year's race and more information about this year at tugster: a waterblog (the source of the picture above).
Saturday morning my friend Sacha called with a giddy edge to her voice. She was biking up Park Avenue, closed to car traffic for Summer Streets, and had just passed Grand Central Station.
"It's like nothing you've ever experienced," she shouted into her cell. "Miles of Park Avenue heading up to the Park, and nothing but bikes and pedestrians. Biking in New York with absolutely no fear!"
photo via doddnyc/Flickr and Streets Blog
Now, I generally don't mind the adrenaline rush of biking down Broadway, working my way between cabs and buses, but I wasn't prepared for the euphoria to come when I took Sacha's advice and started to bike uptown.
Nothing but bikes and pedestrians -- and everyone smiling, glad to be alive? Kids on trikes, roller bladers with boom boxes and neon spandex, whole families on tandems and bicycles built for three. "Did you rent that?" I asked about the latter. "Oh, no," the mother said with the deepest seriousness, her kid perched on the middle seat between her and her husband. "This one's ours." It felt like the morning after the apocalypse, venturing above ground and back into the streets with my fellow survivors.
Heading north, I wasn't sure where I would stop. At the bottom of the Park? No, 59th street came all too fast. At 72nd, where the ride up Park Ave. officially ended, I thought briefly about turning around and heading back downtown, but decided to ride over to the Park paths instead. Once there, I made the entire loop around the Park, something I've never done before, and exited again where I entered. The bikers in the Park seemed not to know that just off their hamster wheel was an open artery running straight downtown for miles, all the way to the Bridge.
The route is lined with volunteers warning you of the few upcoming required stoplights, or gently guiding bikes to one lane and runners and walkers to the other. Repair stands dot the blocks along with activities for kids, including helmet giveaways and bike care classes. The whole communal effort gives you something of the feel you get running or cheering for a marathon. But nothing quite matches the rush you'll feel biking up the taxi ramp in front of Grand Central, heading smack up to the facade, working your way around to the East, then coasting down the hill behind, through the tunnel and into city sunlight.
Summer streets has one final installment Saturday the 23rd. Details here. Do you hear me, Mike Bloomberg? This thing better happen again next year and happen bigger!
Bottom photo via yyoyoni/Flikr
"It's like nothing you've ever experienced," she shouted into her cell. "Miles of Park Avenue heading up to the Park, and nothing but bikes and pedestrians. Biking in New York with absolutely no fear!"
photo via doddnyc/Flickr and Streets Blog
Now, I generally don't mind the adrenaline rush of biking down Broadway, working my way between cabs and buses, but I wasn't prepared for the euphoria to come when I took Sacha's advice and started to bike uptown.
Nothing but bikes and pedestrians -- and everyone smiling, glad to be alive? Kids on trikes, roller bladers with boom boxes and neon spandex, whole families on tandems and bicycles built for three. "Did you rent that?" I asked about the latter. "Oh, no," the mother said with the deepest seriousness, her kid perched on the middle seat between her and her husband. "This one's ours." It felt like the morning after the apocalypse, venturing above ground and back into the streets with my fellow survivors.
Heading north, I wasn't sure where I would stop. At the bottom of the Park? No, 59th street came all too fast. At 72nd, where the ride up Park Ave. officially ended, I thought briefly about turning around and heading back downtown, but decided to ride over to the Park paths instead. Once there, I made the entire loop around the Park, something I've never done before, and exited again where I entered. The bikers in the Park seemed not to know that just off their hamster wheel was an open artery running straight downtown for miles, all the way to the Bridge.The route is lined with volunteers warning you of the few upcoming required stoplights, or gently guiding bikes to one lane and runners and walkers to the other. Repair stands dot the blocks along with activities for kids, including helmet giveaways and bike care classes. The whole communal effort gives you something of the feel you get running or cheering for a marathon. But nothing quite matches the rush you'll feel biking up the taxi ramp in front of Grand Central, heading smack up to the facade, working your way around to the East, then coasting down the hill behind, through the tunnel and into city sunlight.
Summer streets has one final installment Saturday the 23rd. Details here. Do you hear me, Mike Bloomberg? This thing better happen again next year and happen bigger!
Bottom photo via yyoyoni/Flikr
What's up with the weather at home? I'm sitting in the airport in Portland waiting to head east, but my flight's been pushed back for several hours.
Hooray for an airport with free wi-fi!
Checking my email, I find this from the Tenement Museum (108 Orchard St.), about tomorrow night's installment in their outstanding Tenement Talks series:
Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in
New York w
Hooray for an airport with free wi-fi!
Checking my email, I find this from the Tenement Museum (108 Orchard St.), about tomorrow night's installment in their outstanding Tenement Talks series:
Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in
Tuesday, August 12 at 6:30 PM
From King
Kong climbing the
Our friend (and colleague in NYU's Faculty Fellows in Residence Program) Joe Salvatore has a play up as part of the Fringe Fest, which Cyrus mentioned in an earlier post. Based on "real life, all-male ménage à trois (1927-1943) between
the photographer George Platt Lynes and one of the great artistic
couples of the 20th century: writer Glenway Wescott and MoMA
curator Monroe Wheeler," Joe's play, III, has received terrific early press from Time Out NY and Gay City News. "How did the relationship affect the creative output of the three individuals?" the press release asks. "How did these three men make this complex relationship 'work' for fifteen years?" I imagine you'll have to see it to find out. Click here for tickets and here for more info.
I wrote earlier about Mayor Bloomberg's desire to reclaim parts of Manhattan for pedestrians. Starting today, and for the next two Saturday mornings, almost seven miles of Manhattan's streets -- from the Brooklyn Bridge to the middle of Central Park will be closed to automotive traffic from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. as part of the "Summer Streets" program. The motto of "Summer Streets" is "Play. Run. Walk. Bike Breathe." The route runs up from City Hall, Lafayette to Fourth Avenue, then up Lexington, up Park Avenue after Grand Central Station, and finally across 72nd Street to the park.
According to the publicity materials for "Summer Streets":
According to the publicity materials for "Summer Streets":
This event takes a valuable public space - our City's streets - and opens them up to people to play, walk, bike, and breathe. Summer Streets provides more space for healthy recreation and is a part of NYC's greening initiative by encouraging New Yorkers to use more sustainable forms of transportation.
Modeled on other events from around the world including Bogotá, Colombia's Ciclovia, Paris, France's Paris Plage, and even New York's own Museum Mile, this event will be part bike tour, part block party, a great time for exercise, people watching, and just enjoying summer mornings.There are three rest stops along the route, each of which has a full schedule of activities during the morning. It's a great idea, and I hope that some of you who are in town will be able to take advantage of it. Click here for a flyer about the event in PDF format.
One week from today (on July 29, 2008), the 50th Anniversary Season of the Washington Square Music Festival will come to a close with a performance by the Charles Mingus Orchestra, performing works by the great jazz bassist and bandleader Charles Mingus (shown at left playing during the Bicentennial celebration in 1976).The concerts take place in the Southeast quadrant of the park, near the statue of Garibaldi. The program starts at 8:00 p.m. and is scheduled to include the following works: "Taurus in the Arena of Life," "Jelly Roll," "Noon Night," "All the things you could be by now (if Sigmund Freud's wife was your mother)," "Blue Cee," "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife (are some jive slippers)," "The Chill of Death," and "Tonight at Noon."
In the event of rain, the concert will be held at NYU's Frederick Loewe Theater at 35 West Fourth Street.
If you're interested in an introduction to Mingus's music, a good choice would be Mingus Ah Um, which is available for download at amazon.com.
Last week, Bryan wrote that he found Oliafur Eliasson's waterfalls "completely underwhelming." I've been thinking about that. Certainly they do not have the dramatic impact of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 2005 project "The Gates," which swathed a wintry Central Park in orange fabric and thereby transformed its landscape. And I think that's the point: it's a big public art project that aims to be low key. Eliasson's project asks us to do a double-take: the waterfalls draw attention to parts of the cityscape that we rarely look at, that we tend to take for granted.
My wife and I took our children out on one of the Circle Line's half-hour tours of the waterfalls, which leaves from the South Street Seaport. The kids enjoyed the outing, but I think that getting on a boat with the deliberate object of seeing the waterfalls may not be the best way to experience them. It may be better to take the longer Circle Line harbor tour or even the full trip around the island, because then the waterfalls become just one of the sights to see rather than the main attraction. (If you do take the half-hour boat, get there early so that you're at the head of the line: the boat they use is smaller than the typical Circle Line boat and has limited outdoor space.)
I was rollerblading last Sunday by the Hudson River and paused at the Battery. Looking across the water, I saw the waterfall that Eliasson had erected on Governor's Island, and it made me pause and look -- and to scrutinize the island in a way that I never had before.
On Tuesday, my wife and I biked over to Brooklyn, taking the Manhattan Bridge first and returning on the Brooklyn. During the trip, we managed to see the waterfalls from above and from afar, and they became parts of the cityscape, even as they drew attention to areas that we would normally glance over.
And the waterfall at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge acts as a kind of footnote to the bridge (literally), drawing attention to the way that
the bridge rises out of the water without detracting from the drama
inherent in the bridge itself.
The Gates project was an event. In Oliafur Eliasson's Waterfalls project, it's the city that remains the main event. The Waterfalls are an homage to the interplay of built space and water that is a crucial part of the city's character.
My wife and I took our children out on one of the Circle Line's half-hour tours of the waterfalls, which leaves from the South Street Seaport. The kids enjoyed the outing, but I think that getting on a boat with the deliberate object of seeing the waterfalls may not be the best way to experience them. It may be better to take the longer Circle Line harbor tour or even the full trip around the island, because then the waterfalls become just one of the sights to see rather than the main attraction. (If you do take the half-hour boat, get there early so that you're at the head of the line: the boat they use is smaller than the typical Circle Line boat and has limited outdoor space.)
I was rollerblading last Sunday by the Hudson River and paused at the Battery. Looking across the water, I saw the waterfall that Eliasson had erected on Governor's Island, and it made me pause and look -- and to scrutinize the island in a way that I never had before.
Governor's Island Waterfall and Staten Island Ferry
On Tuesday, my wife and I biked over to Brooklyn, taking the Manhattan Bridge first and returning on the Brooklyn. During the trip, we managed to see the waterfalls from above and from afar, and they became parts of the cityscape, even as they drew attention to areas that we would normally glance over.
The Manhattan Waterfall from beneath the FDR.
The Manhattan Waterfall from from the Manhattan Bridge.
The Manhattan Waterfall from from the Manhattan Bridge.
The Brooklyn Bridge Waterfall
The Gates project was an event. In Oliafur Eliasson's Waterfalls project, it's the city that remains the main event. The Waterfalls are an homage to the interplay of built space and water that is a crucial part of the city's character.
One of the best things about my recent college reunion (the 25th!) was the opportunity to get to know Stefan Fatsis, who's married to my college friend Melissa Block (of NPR and All Things Considered fame). Stefan is a journalist who writes for the Wall Street Journal, contributes to NPR, and is the author of Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland (1995) and Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001).
His new book is A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, an account of how he tricked the Denver Broncos into "letting me do a Plimpton." After training for a year with both a strength coach and a kicking coach, Stefan joined the Broncos as a place-kicker during their 2006 training camp. The result is an inside-account of life with a professional football team that has already received shouts in the the July 11 issue of Entertainment Weekly and the July 14 issue of Time magazine, as well as a glowing review from the LA Times. You can find a brief interview with Stefan on nytimes.com.
Stefan will be appearing this Monday, July 14, at 7:00 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble on Broadway and 82nd Street to read from the book. You can also catch him at at the Barnes and Noble in Park Slope on August 8 at 7:00 p.m. If you're not in the city, you can find out about his book tour at stefanfatsis.com.
