Hepcat and I went to Mission Delores (349 Fourth Avenue near Carroll) last night for beers and we love that bar, which is definitely having its moment. What a cool, cool place it is. A former garage, it’s an indoor/outdoor space with old factory doors,  colorized wanted posters on the walls and a great selection of beer including Hepcat’s favorite: Arrogant Bastard (not a beer I particularly enjoy).

Afterwards we had a late night snack at Oaxaca Tacos, which serves amazing tacos, including a Korean Tacos with Kalbi marinated steak topped with Korean BBQ sauce, kimchee and Asian pear slaw

Amazing. Full disclosure: I hired them to cater Blogfest and they were fantastic.

We also passed the Trash Pony Bar, which is what happens to Root Hill Cafe at night. The owners found a stuffed animal pony in the trash right outside the store about a year ago and when they decided to open a bar they had a concept and a name.

Look for the pink globe lights out front during the hours on Thursdays-Saturdays when Root Hill becomes Trash Pony. It’s a cafe with a double life.

Tonight at Zora Space (315 Fourth Avenue near Third Street) is a sampling of Persian poets, such as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Baba Taher, Shams e Maghrebi, and Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani, among others.

Sara Goudarzi Vocal (poetry)
Aida Shahghasemi Vocal (singing) & Daf
Sinan Gündoğdu Saz & Oud

Saturday night at 7:30 at Zora Space (315 Fourth Avenue near Third Street): A sampling of Persian poets, such as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, Baba Taher, Shams e Maghrebi, and Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani, among others.

Film

playing all weekend: I Am Love at BAM; Toy Story 3 at the Pavilion

Music

Saturday, June 26 at 4PM at Grand Army Plaza: Don’t miss Brooklyn’s hottest dance party as Felix Hernandez brings his famous Rhythm Revue to Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park.  Part of Jazz: Brooklyn’s Beat—a series of six events in June that bring world-class jazz to central Brooklyn’s cultural consortium.

Sunday, June 27th at 9PM at Barbes: French virtuoso Guitarist Stephane Wrembel seems to have channeled both the technique and the fire of Django Reinhardt. He studied for years with the manouche (the French Gypsies) but has also gotten deep into American vernacular musical styles. His weekly sets will mix up the traditional Django repertoire along gypsy swing re-interpretations of standards

Saturday, June 26th at 6PM at The Bell House: We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988 – 2001 is the first and only book on the last great wave of down-and-dirty rock’n’roll, one whose hangover can still be felt in bars and clubs across the globe. The book is the next chapter in the Please Kill Me/American Hardcore/Our Band Could Be Your Life succession. Musician and journalist Eric Davidson (Village Voice, CMJ, SF Bay Guardian) was there as this scene unfolded as the frontman for Ohio punks the New Bomb Turks, and he tracks the roots and history of this largely undocumented movement. This is the last generation of punks and rockers to conquer city after city without the diluting force of the Internet.

Theater

Shows this weekend: Gallery Players: 13th Annual Black Box New Play Festival

Sunday, June 27th at 7PM at Barbes: The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco presents theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly by the playwriting firm of shulman delaney gassman kosmas and copp. Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.

Art

At the Brooklyn Museum: Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career.

Food

Sunday, June 27th on Smith Street between Douglas and Degraw: Stink-Fest ‘10 Rocks Smith Street with Fun For the Whole Family Fourth Annual Cheese Eating Contesting.

Sunday, June 27, 12 – 5PM at The Bell House: The 2010 Unfancy Food Show. With dozens of local purveyors including, but definitely not limited to, Brooklyn Brewery, Sullivan Street Bakery, SCRATCHbread, Cut Brooklyn, Sweet Deliverance, Marlow and Sons, McClure’s Pickles, The Brooklyn Kitchen,, People’s Pops, Salvatore Brooklyn Ricotta and Nunu Chocolate, the UnFancy Food Show is the most aggressively awesome gathering of small producers in New York.

Everyone is talking about great summer music (or maybe I listen to the radio too much). So I decided to make my own list of albums I’ve enjoyed in the various summers of my life.

Childhood Summers:

Getz Gilberto (1963) A classic introduced to me by my dad. It was often on the turntable during those hot (and un-air-conditioned) summers on Riverside Drive.

Tapestry by Carol King (1971) We created modern dance to this endlessly at summer camp in 1970.

High School Summers:

The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff and others (1973) This was the soundtrack of my summer before college in 1976.

Music From Big Pink: The Band (1968). I remember the day I got this album ( a gift from my dad). We called it Big Pink for short.

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle: Bruce Springsteen (1975) Summer darkness and light with the E Street band.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns: Joni Mitchell (1975) Smell the grass on those LA lawns.

Tea for the Tillerman: Cat Stevens (19  ) Oh this brings back memories.

Loudon Wainwright (1970): I loved this album and will never forget running into Loudon at Matt Umanov guitars in Greenwich Village. He was wearing a seersucker suit jacket and seersucker shorts and I asked him if this album was still available because I lost my copy. He wrote down an address where I could send away for it on Edsel Records in London.

College Summers:

Hazel and Alice (1979) Tersely emotive singing by the Thelma and Louise of Bluegrass. This was the soundtrack of my summer of 1979 when I was working at IBM in Endicott, New York (and taking dance classes with Bill T Jones).

The Roches (1978) Songwriting sisters who blurred pop, barber shop, folk and fun. This was also my soundtrack of summer ’79.

Fear of Music: Talking Heads (1979) This was the soundtrack during the summer of 1980 when I was living on Beethoven Street in Binghamton, NY.

Spirit in the Dark: Aretha Franklin (1970 ) I remember dancing to this in a dance therapy workshop in Johnson City, NY circa 1978?

Joan Armatrading (1976  ) Oh the feeling, when you’re reeling, you step lightly thinking you’re number 1…

Adult Summers:

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) Hip Hop meets confessional in this virtuosic blend of jazz, rock, soul, gospel, and R&B. My soundtrack running in Prospect Park….

Soul II Soul Club Classics (1989) This was the music blaring out of car windows on Ludlow Street during the summer of 1989.

Inside Betty Carter (1965) A friend and I used to hear her at Fat Tuesdays; once at Celebrate Brooklyn (in the 1980s) and once at BAM (with my father) where she did a master class where all questions had to be sung. Brilliant.

Adrian Hibbs Project EP (2007) A white man who sounds like Stevie Wonder, he plays a mean Wurlitzer. A discovery of mine last summer in Block Island where he performed on Fridays at the Spring House.My summer Soundtrack 2009.

Manhattan based Monica Passin, better known as L’il Mo, crosses the river into Brooklyn to lead her band, The Monicats, through a set of country, rockabilly, blues, 60s pop and whatever else she and they may play.  And I’ll add that not only are L’il Mo and The Monicats terrific musically, they are just plain fun to watch.  Details plus a music video are posted over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

Next week, Alejandro Escovedo, a rock n roll force even if you’ve not heard of him yet, comes into town and plays three shows at City Winery to promote his new CD (on sale Tuesday), Street Songs of Love.  Check out a contest to win tickets to see Al, stream cuts from that new album and see a video by checking out Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

FYI: Weekend events are being added all day (see Stink-Fest on Smith Street).

Film

I Am Love at BAM; Toy Story 3 at the Pavilion

Music

Saturday, June 26 at 4PM at Grand Army Plaza: Don’t miss Brooklyn’s hottest dance party as Felix Hernandez brings his famous Rhythm Revue to Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park.  Part of Jazz: Brooklyn’s Beat—a series of six events in June that bring world-class jazz to central Brooklyn’s cultural consortium.

Sunday, June 27th at 9PM at Barbes: French virtuoso Guitarist Stephane Wrembel seems to have channeled both the technique and the fire of Django Reinhardt. He studied for years with the manouche (the French Gypsies) but has also gotten deep into American vernacular musical styles. His weekly sets will mix up the traditional Django repertoire along gypsy swing re-interpretations of standards

Saturday, June 26th at 6PM at The Bell House: We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988 – 2001 is the first and only book on the last great wave of down-and-dirty rock’n’roll, one whose hangover can still be felt in bars and clubs across the globe. The book is the next chapter in the Please Kill Me/American Hardcore/Our Band Could Be Your Life succession. Musician and journalist Eric Davidson (Village Voice, CMJ, SF Bay Guardian) was there as this scene unfolded as the frontman for Ohio punks the New Bomb Turks, and he tracks the roots and history of this largely undocumented movement. This is the last generation of punks and rockers to conquer city after city without the diluting force of the Internet.

Theater

Gallery Players: 13th Annual Black Box New Play Festival

Sunday, June 27th at 7PM at Barbes: The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco presents theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly by the playwriting firm of shulman delaney gassman kosmas and copp. Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.

Art

At the Brooklyn Museum: Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career.

Food

Sunday, June 27th on Smith Street between Douglas and Degraw: Stink-Fest ’10 Rocks Smith Street with Fun For the Whole Family Fourth Annual Cheese Eating Contesting.

Sunday, June 27, 12 – 5PM at The Bell House: The 2010 Unfancy Food Show. With dozens of local purveyors including, but definitely not limited to, Brooklyn Brewery, Sullivan Street Bakery, SCRATCHbread, Cut Brooklyn, Sweet Deliverance, Marlow and Sons, McClure’s Pickles, The Brooklyn Kitchen,, People’s Pops, Salvatore Brooklyn Ricotta and Nunu Chocolate, the UnFancy Food Show is the most aggressively awesome gathering of small producers in New York.

There’s a new space for visual and performance artists, filmmakers and musicians on Fourth Avenue!. It’s called Zora Space and they officially opened their doors this week at 315 4th Avenue in Park Slope.

They are also calling out to artists to submit proposals for shows at the space, which was conceived by its founder-director Zohreh Shayesteh, as a welcoming environment for artists to experiment, interact, communicate, create and showcase their work.

Zora’s inaugural exhibition is called: Dialogue Beyond Reality (June 18-August 15). It serves as a jumping-off point for an eclectic line-up of events, performances, screenings and exhibitions. The schedule demonstrates the inclusive vision of Ms. Shayesteh along with the team of expert curators she has assembled: Renowned jazz sax player Jay Rodriguez (director of musical programming); noted Iranian-American artist Nahid Hagigat (art director); artist/weaver Cynthia Alberto  (coordinating director); and poet/essayist Zohra Saed (programming director).

An independent filmmaker whose documentary “Inside Out” was the official selection of 2006 Tribeca International Film Festival, Ms. Shayesteh feels passionately about the importance of the arts—and that served as her motivation for opening Zora Space. “As an independent artist who believes that art is a necessity for everyday life, I feel that the art world has become too commercialized—an exclusive club where artists are viewed as money making mechanisms. With Zora Space, I wanted to provide a place for artists who have something to say, regardless of who knows them and how much money they can generate for themselves or for their agents…a space for the arts, artists and art lovers.”

Dialogue Beyond Reality, which runs through August 15, features eight cutting-edge New York-based artists (Robin Antar, Behar Behbahani, Meredith Bergmann, Alex Cascone, Roya Frassat, Aphrodite Désirée Navab, Nosrat Nosratian and Anderson Zaca) using photography, sculpture and video in a group show highlighting diversity juxtaposed with unconventional harmony and synchronization.

Upcoming performances at Zora Space run the gamut from a concert featuring Gio Moretti, the Italian singer-songwriter (6/24); Poetics of Iran, an evening of poetry and music featuring a sampling of Persian poets (6/26); Samantha Chance performing BACK TO THE GRAVEYARD, a solo show about the joys and perils of family dinner planning, bad art, drinking in public, and, of course, flesh-eating monsters (7/31); among many other offerings.

Very importantly: Ms. Shayesteh is inviting visual and performance artists, filmmakers and musicians to submit project proposals (information available on the website).

Refreshments at Zora Space include coffees, beverages and a variety of moderately priced snacks and sandwiches—with an influence of far away places. Reservations are encouraged for special events.

Zora Space
315 4th Avenue (between 2nd & 3rd Streets)
Park Slope, New York
718 832-4870

Film

I Am Love at BAM; Toy Story at the Pavilion

Music

Saturday, June 26 at 4PM at Grand Army Plaza: Don’t miss Brooklyn’s hottest dance party as Felix Hernandez brings his famous Rhythm Revue to Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park.  Part of Jazz: Brooklyn’s Beat—a series of six events in June that bring world-class jazz to central Brooklyn’s cultural consortium.

Sunday, June 27th at 9PM at Barbes: French virtuoso Guitarist Stephane Wrembel seems to have channeled both the technique and the fire of Django Reinhardt. He studied for years with the manouche (the French Gypsies) but has also gotten deep into American vernacular musical styles. His weekly sets will mix up the traditional Django repertoire along gypsy swing re-interpretations of standards

Saturday, June 26th at 6PM at The Bell House: We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988 – 2001 is the first and only book on the last great wave of down-and-dirty rock’n’roll, one whose hangover can still be felt in bars and clubs across the globe. The book is the next chapter in the Please Kill Me/American Hardcore/Our Band Could Be Your Life succession. Musician and journalist Eric Davidson (Village Voice, CMJ, SF Bay Guardian) was there as this scene unfolded as the frontman for Ohio punks the New Bomb Turks, and he tracks the roots and history of this largely undocumented movement. This is the last generation of punks and rockers to conquer city after city without the diluting force of the Internet.

Theater

Gallery Players: 13th Annual Black Box New Play Festival

Sunday, June 27th at 7PM at Barbes: The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco presents theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly by the playwriting firm of shulman delaney gassman kosmas and copp. Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.

Art

Brooklyn Museum: Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career.

Food

Sunday, June 27, 12 – 5PM at The Bell House: The 2010 Unfancy Food Show. With dozens of local purveyors including, but definitely not limited to, Brooklyn Brewery, Sullivan Street Bakery, SCRATCHbread, Cut Brooklyn, Sweet Deliverance, Marlow and Sons, McClure’s Pickles, The Brooklyn Kitchen,, People’s Pops, Salvatore Brooklyn Ricotta and Nunu Chocolate, the UnFancy Food Show is the most aggressively awesome gathering of small producers in New York.

100 abandoned houses: CasaCara

Rainbow Jello: Swiss-Miss

Best summer house tours: Apartment Therapy

Sneak Peek: Gold Teeth: Design Sponge

Blogger tag sale: Adventures in Renovating a Bklyn Limestone

I missed The Dream Syndicate the first time around: I was living in Philadelphia and in grad school. When I finally found my way to The Dream Syndicate, they had long broken up, and their second album, Medicine Show, was out of print.  Steve Wynn, the leader of The Dream Syndicate, along with his current band, The Miracle 3, came to The Bell House last year to play the entire album on the 25th anniversary of its release (as then noted in OTBKB).

But on June 15th, Medicine Show was reissued and remastered.  As with many modern remasters, the sound on this reissue is incredibly full and clean and a huge improvement over the versions of the record (LP and CD) which had gone before. You can learn more about this great record at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

In 1959, a young photographer followed a gang of Brooklyn teenagers and created a lasting portrait of  Brooklyn street life. Sean O’Hagen who blogs about photography in the Guardian UK sent me his post about renowned photographer Bruce Davidson, who took pictures of a Brooklyn gang. Here’s an excerpt:

In 1959, there were about 1,000 gang members in New York City, mainly teenage males from ethnically-defined neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs. In the spring of that year, Bruce Davidson read a newspaper article about outbreaks of street fighting in Prospect Park and travelled across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan in search of a gang to photograph.

“I met a group of teenagers called the Jokers,” he wrote in the afterword to his seminal book of insider reportage, Brooklyn Gang. “I was 25 and they were about 16. I could easily have been taken for one of them…

…The saddest story belongs to Cathy, the blonde and beautiful young girl whom Davidson photographed several times and whose reflection he caught unforgettably in a cigarette machine as she fixed her hair while waiting for the Staten Island ferry. “Cathy was beautiful like Brigitte Bardot,” Bengie remembers. “Cathy always was there, but outside … Then, some years ago, she put a shotgun in her mouth and blew her head off.”