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.”

As I type this, photographer Gabriela Herman is shooting a picture of me for her blogger series. She emailed me last week to see if I’d be interested in being a subject. I looked at a private link to the photos, thought the pictures were great and said sure.

Why not?

Gabriela likes to take the pictures at night, in dark rooms with only the light of the computer screen lighting the blogger’s faces.

On Monday night she arrived at 10PM, set up her camera and asked me to sit at my desk in the dining room. She walked around turning off lights and shutting doors. I asked if I should clear off my desk and she said it didn’t matter. I felt a little self-conscious about all the clutter.

Gabriela told me just to sit at my desk and do what I do on the computer. I’m not even looking at the camera, I’m just typing away while she snaps pictures.

I asked Gabriela what inspired this series and she said that it started with a picture of her best friend just out of the shower wearing a towel working on her photo blog on her laptop. Herman  liked the result and decided to do the series.

By the way, Gabriela has a great blog, which highlights other photographers and photo shows in NYC. I will keep you posted on the status of Gabriela’s blogger series.

Yesterday John McEneny, who runs Piper Theater (and the theater program at MS 51), stopped me on the street to introduce me to Nigel Williams, an acclaimed Scottish director and playwright, who is currently directing Nocturnes
, a play by John Connolly, based on the author’s bestselling book of ghost stories. Williams is this summer’s Piper Artist in Residence.

Clearly excited about the upcoming production, McEneny told me that Williams is currently in rehearsal with an incredible group of actors of the play, which will be performed al fresco in Washington Park as part of Piper’s summer residency at the Old Stone House. Performance are July 8th through July 16th.

Ten years ago, Piper was created by the siblings, John and Rachel McEneny. Now after 15 professional productions, 17 youth productions, hundreds of acting classes, and thousands of audience members, Piper will return to Park Slope again with theater productions, as well an exciting drama summer program for young people in all of Brooklyn

This year Piper embraces our community’s rich history and love of great writers. On our main stage, will be presenting the world premiere of The Nocturnes by of one mystery’s greatest new voices, John Connelly.

Monday night, the first night of summer, the  4th Annual Make Music New York, filled the streets of Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue with musicians on every corner.

Accordions filled Washington Park. There was jazz in front of the Gate and at other locations classical groups, numerous rock bands, and folkies parked in front of storefronts along the Avenue.

The Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID decided to extend Make Music NY from the 19th – the 21st. Look for musicians on local street corners throughout the coming weekend. There was an official lineup but there were so many other bands along Fifth Avenue.

The Famous Accordion Orchestra (plus multitudes of additional accordions) will present a massive accordion event, open to all squeezers and free to the general public!

Starting at 6:00, Soloists and groups of accordions will fill JJ Byrne Park to create “Accordion Forest 2″, in which listeners are invited to stroll around the park and here a mind-blowing collage of accordion styles.

At 6:30 or so, the players will collect at the park’s central square to perform “Square Dance at the Old Stone House”, a site-specific piece for as many accordions as are available,

Monday, June 21, 2010
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Old Stone House/JJ Byrne Park
3rd Street and 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Accordionists are invited to participate in “Accordion Forest 2/Square Dance” a musical environment directed by Bob Goldberg. Accordion Forest 2 is a collage in which each player (or small group) performs from his/her/their personal repertoire. Square Dance creates an intense sustained texture as it moves around the Park’s central square.  Non-accordionists are invited to participate, provided their instrument can be heard along with accordions without amplification.

How To Join:

For information, email famousaccordions@earthlink.net, identify yourself and describe what you do as an accordionist. Bob Goldberg (director of the Famous Accordion Orchestra) will contact you with instructions.

You’d a thought we’d be tired. Indeed, the humidity was incredibly high yesterday and we’d spent most of the day outside. Some of us trudged up and down Seventh Avenue for the street fair, some of us went to see the Red Bull Air Races in New Jersey.

We came home hot and sweaty. Some of us took naps, some of us just stood next to the air conditioner and drank cold lemonade. You’d a thought we’d be toast by the time we ate dinner. You’d a thought we’d be ready for bed. But then someone—I think it was Hepcat— made the suggestion.

And then I googled it to find out if it  was within the range of possibility.

And then my daughter said she’d like to go because she was, like, 2-years-old, when Toy Story 2 came out and she sat with me and her brother in Cobble Hill Cinema.

“It’s playing at 10:05 at the Pavilion,” I said aloud from my computer.

“Let’s go,” OSFO said.

“Let’s call Eastern,” Hepcat said and dialed the car service as I paid for tickets online.

Waiting for the car service downstairs I wondered if I’d make make it through the movie. The night was still warm and I felt like if I closed my eyes I might fall asleep. I looked at my watch and suddenly felt completely irresponsible. It was 9:50 and we were taking our 13-year-old to a 10:05 movie on a school night.

“This is kind of crazy,” I told OSFO as we got into the car.

The next thing we knew we were being transported to the Pavilion on Prospect Park West but then had to turn around because I forgot my wallet on the dining room table. Hepcat ran upstairs, the car service driver was pretty good-natured about the round trip and a half, we drove back up to the Pavilion and reminisced about 1 & 2.

“Well, you weren’t even born when the first one came out. I remember seeing it with Teen Spirit in Manhattan,” I said. “And the second one. You were just 2-years-old…”

And then I realized that going to see Toy Story 3 at 10pm on a Sunday night the weekend it opened made sense. The first two were markers in our lives, memories of wonderful movies we’d first seen in movie theaters and then lived with over the years on video and DVD.

I cried with my son when Jesse reminisces about her first owner, Emily, and Sarah Mclaughlin sings “When Somebody Loves You.”

It became a family joke. The second or third time we saw the movie in a theater my son would look my way during that sequence to see if I was crying. Yup.

There’s something about these films that delight and touch me deeply.

Continue reading It’s 10pm: Do You Know Where Toy Story 3 Is Playing? →

Eli Paperboy Reed and The True Loves have an album, Come and Get It,  due to drop in August but they were at The Bell House (which although it’s actually in Gowanus, I consider part of the neighborhood) Saturday night.  It was hot and sweaty in part due to the intensity of the band and in part due to the lack of intensity of The Bell House’s A/C.  You can read a further review at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.

Leslie Mendelson has been one of my favorite musicians over the past few years, but she has been on a performing hiatus since the end of 2009.  That break is now over and Leslie will be playing The Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 (also know as the Rockwood Colosseum) again tonight at 8pm.  If you haven’t heard or heard of Leslie, she plays piano and sings with a great pop sensibility.  You’ll find all the details over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Music on Sunday Night:

Carefusion Jazz Festival tonight at Barbes at 9PM: Anthony Coleman Plays Jelly Roll Morton. Coleman has worked with John Zorn, Glenn Branca and Dave Douglas (to name the proverbial few) and is one of Marc Ribot’s Cubano postizos. He has led groups such as the Selfhaters and Sephardic Tinge and tours regularly in Europe and the US. He is a voraciously curious musician and a superb pianist who can play Monk, Art Tatum or Sephardic music just as well as he can play post-modern mambo on a Casio. He has applied himself to the music of Jelly Roll Morton the way Borges’ Pierre Menard applied himself to re-writing Don Quixote – and the result is breathtaking.

13th Annual Black Box New Play Festival

Through June 27th: Where can a playwright find an outlet? Where can an audience see new works? The Gallery Players provides both of these in this Festival. Over the years of producing the Festival, we have developed works by countless playwrights, many of whom continue to work with The Gallery Players each year to incubate their new ideas. More than 300 plays have appeared in the Black Box New Play Festival since its inception and this year will bring even more writing and acting talent to the stage. Who knows what you’ll discover in the Box?

Art Fair

Friday through Sunday in various locations: Bococacartsfestival.com, an annual fair in the Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods. Show times and locations vary.

Street Fair

Sunday, June 19: Seventh Heaven Street Fair on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.

Film:

Saturday at 9PM at BAM: Am I Black Enough for You? Described as the definitive profile of Philly soul legend Billy Paul, most famous for his Grammy-winning number one single “Me and Mrs. Jones,” released when he was almost 40. Yet his more “militant” records made him “a criminally unmentioned proprietor of socially conscious, postrevolution, 60s Civil Rights music” (Questlove of The Roots).

Opens Friday at BAM: Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work exposes the private dramas of irreverent, legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to remain the queen of comedy. Filmed as a cinema verite documentary, the film reveals a rare glimpse of the comedic process and the toxic mixture of self-doubt and anger that often fuels it.

Pixar’s Toy Story 3 IS playing at the Park Slope Pavilion. It’s in Disney Digital 3D
‎1hr 49min‎‎ – Rated G‎‎ – Animation/Comedy/Action/Adventure‎: 1:30  2:15  2:45  4:10  5:00  6:50  7:35  8:00  9:30  10:05pm

Art:

At the Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of 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. It was a decade of great artistic development for him, during which a dramatic transformation of his style took place alongside the introduction of new techniques.

People ask how I keep going day after day writing OTBKB but all it takes are the melifluous strains of the Famous Accordian Orchestra practicing in the front yard of Bob Goldberg’s apartment building on Third Street to send me running home to my computer.

Three members of the group were playing a nostalgic dirge-like melody that infused me with a sense of small village life in Eastern Europe.

Goldberg told me they were practicing a traditional Serbian tune called Kumen field (meaning carnation) that they will be playing on Monday as Part of Make Music New York.

The Famous Accordion Orchestra (plus multitudes of additional accordions) will present a massive accordion event, open to all squeezers and free to the general public!

Starting at 6:00, Soloists and groups of accordions will fill JJ Byrne Park to create “Accordion Forest 2”, in which listeners are invited to stroll around the park and here a mind-blowing collage of accordion styles.

At 6:30 or so, the players will collect at the park’s central square to perform “Square Dance at the Old Stone House”, a site-specific piece for as many accordions as are available,

Monday, June 21, 2010
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Old Stone House/JJ Byrne Park
3rd Street and 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Accordionists are invited to participate in “Accordion Forest 2/Square Dance” a musical environment directed by Bob Goldberg. Accordion Forest 2 is a collage in which each player (or small group) performs from his/her/their personal repertoire. Square Dance creates an intense sustained texture as it moves around the Park’s central square.  Non-accordionists are invited to participate, provided their instrument can be heard along with accordions without amplification.

How To Join
For information, email famousaccordions@earthlink.net, identify yourself and describe what you do as an accordionist. Bob Goldberg (director of the Famous Accordion Orchestra) will contact you with instructions.

“Play Me, I’m Yours” is an artwork by British artist Luke Jerram who has been touring the project globally since 2008.

At 9am on Monday the 21st June, 60 pianos will be distributed and then unveiled across New York City by Sing for Hope. Located in public parks, streets and plazas the pianos will be available until 5th July for any member of the public to play and engage with.

While documenting each piano’s journey, the Play Me I’m Yours website will connect the pianos with their individual communities across the city. Following the artwork, the pianos will be donated to local schools and community groups. To volunteer as a piano buddy with Sing for Hope, please sign up by clicking here.

Play Me, I’m Yours is being presented simultaneously in London and New York. Here are the locations in Brooklyn:

1.    Brooklyn Bridge Park
2.    Columbus Park
3.    Coney Island Boardwalk
4.    Fort Greene: Myrtle Entrance
5.    Fort Greene: Visitors’ Center
6.    McCarren Park
7.    Prospect Park: Carousel
8.    Prospect Park: Grand Army Plaza
9.    Von King Park
10.    Willoughby Plaza

Louise has noted below on The Weekend List that tomorrow is the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade.  While not really a music event, this year Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson are the King and Queen of the parade.  And Brooklyn-based Phosphorescent has a song on their new album, Here’s to Taking It Easy, called Mermaid Parade.  So this is the day for you to download that song (legally, of course) over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Artist Jake Messing: Art in Brooklyn

The truth and fearlessness: Truth and Rocket Science

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: The Written Nerd

So much infinity, so little time: Brooklynometry

Brooklyn Pride: Brit in Brooklyn

Play me, I’m Yours: Brooklyn Paper

Laying around all day: Water Over Rocks

Andy Warhol: The Last Decade: Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Art Fair

Friday through Sunday in various locations: Bococacartsfestival.com, an annual fair in the Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods. Show times and locations vary.

Street Fair

Sunday, June 19: Seventh Heaven Street Fair on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.

Mermaid Parade:

The Mermaid Parade in Coney Island happens every year on the first Saturday of the summer. On Saturday, June 18th come dressed up as a mermaid or merman or watch others “float by” in their parade-best mermaid or sea creature costumes.

Film:

Saturday at 9PM at BAM: Am I Black Enough for You? Described as the definitive profile of Philly soul legend Billy Paul, most famous for his Grammy-winning number one single “Me and Mrs. Jones,” released when he was almost 40. Yet his more “militant” records made him “a criminally unmentioned proprietor of socially conscious, postrevolution, 60s Civil Rights music” (Questlove of The Roots).

Opens Friday at BAM: Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work exposes the private dramas of irreverent, legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to remain the queen of comedy. Filmed as a cinema verite documentary, the film reveals a rare glimpse of the comedic process and the toxic mixture of self-doubt and anger that often fuels it.

Pixar’s Toy Story 3 IS playing at the Park Slope Pavilion. It’s in Disney Digital 3D
‎1hr 49min‎‎ – Rated G‎‎ – Animation/Comedy/Action/Adventure‎: 1:30  2:15  2:45  4:10  5:00  6:50  7:35  8:00  9:30  10:05pm

Music:

On Saturday, June 19th at Celebrate Brooklyn (Doors open at 6:30 PM) CB presents a dazzling, multi-generational lineup to explore the legacy of Miles Davis’ landmark album, Bitches Brew, on the 40th anniversary of its release. While the soul of the master is manifest in the project, the music stretches out into otherworldly territory, becoming “whatever it was Davis intended in 1969: spacious, black-magic stealth funk.” (NY Times) The night begins with the virtuosic Mike Stern, one of the premier jazz-fusion guitarists of his generation and a veteran of Davis’ band.

On Friday, June 18th at 10PM at Barbes: Kill Henry Sugar. Poised astride the epic time-line of life in the boroughs, Erik Della Penna and Dean Sharenow sketch moody musical portraits with what the Village Voice calls, “Cinematic gravitas.” Their ethic is subtle lines by modest means, employing a signature palette of drums, dobro, and voice to construct petulant yankee poetry—more Serpico than Grapes Of Wrath, more Olmstead than Moses.

On Saturday, June 19th at 10PM at Barbes: Slavic Soul Party will perform as part of the Carefusion Jazz Festival.

Art:

At the Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of 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. It was a decade of great artistic development for him, during which a dramatic transformation of his style took place alongside the introduction of new techniques.

Pray for good weather for this iconic event. A parade of people dressed as mermaid and mermen in Coney Island It is as wonderful and zany as it sounds and always worth a visit to Coney Island.

Coney Island USA, the organizers of the parade, have a very helpful Q&A on their website. Here’s an excerpt:

What day is the Parade?
Saturday, June 19, 2010, rain or shine.

Who is this years King and Queen?
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson!

What time does the Parade start?
The Mermaid Parade starts at 2 PM!

What time does the Parade end?
Hard to say, but it usually all wraps up at around 5:30 PM or so. The winners in each category are announced as soon as the last entrant passes the reviewing stand. Immediately after, Parade founder Dick D. Zigun leads the King and Queen procession up 10st to the beach for the opening of the Ocean for the summer swimming season.

Where does the Parade take place?
The Parade will start on West 21st and the Surf Avenue. It will roll East to West 10th Street, where the cars and motorized floats will park. The marchers and push pull floats will go to the Boardwalk and march West to Stillwell Ave. where the Parade will Disband.

Where’s the best place to watch the Parade?
That’s entirely up to you.  Many people like to watch the Parade on the boardwalk, but the boardwalk only features marchers and push-pull floats.  Surf Avenue allows viewing of antique cars and motorized floats as well.

Where is the Reviewing Stand?
It is on Surf Avenue just east of West 12th Street, across West 12th Street from the Sideshow building.

Is it ok to bring kids to the Parade?
The Mermaid Parade is an art parade and is for everyone, just keep in mind that some folks will be dressed as Mermaids and Mermen who, let’s face it, aren’t historically known for wearing much clothing. That being said, we’ve always had a ton of kids in the Parade, (even a little girl’s Birthday party or two!) but it’sentirely up to you as a parent or guardian to decide what you feel is appropriate for your kids.

Who puts on the Parade?
We do! Coney Island USA the resident not for profit arts center in Coney Island. We are headquartered at 1208 Surf Ave between West 12th street and Stillwell Ave. You can help support the parade by supporting all of our programs throughout the year, buying merchandise at our giftshop, having a beer, soda or bottled water at the Freak Bar! And another great way to show your appreciation is to become a member of Coney Island USA! Memberships start at only $25 and include free admission to the sideshow and museum!

I didn’t know anything about the 15th annual Poets Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on Monday night.

Wasn’t anyone gonna tell me (or send me some PR?).

Actor Bill Murray was there as was  Brooklyn Poet laureate Tina Chang and poet Galway Kinnell, who read Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” at the Fulton Ferry Landing.

Poets House organized the walk and readings, which sounded great. This might be a good time to mention Broken Land, the  first poetry anthology dedicated exclusively to verse about Brooklyn edited by Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Michael Tyrell and published by NYU Press. The editors have collected 135 poems that convey the borough’s long history as well as the diverse mosaic of lives lived here.

Many of the poems recited during the Poets Walk, “A Coney Island From the Mind,” Allen Ginsberg’s “Supermarket in California” and Denise Levertov’s “The Rights.” and Walt Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” are featured in the anthology.

I’ve replaced the pocket camera that fell out of my pocket a few months back and have begun posting  pix of some of the shows I’ve attended recently at Now I’ve Heard Everything. You can see Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby, Charlie Faye with Will Sexton, Carolyn Wonderland, Davell Crawford and Allen Toussaint, and Rosanne Cash and the rest of the star-studded cast at the Benefit for Nashville Musicians.

As for tonight, Emily Zuzik is a Broolyn-based singer-songwriter who is a familiar part of the New York music scene frequently playing around town.  But the rest of 2010 is going to be busy for Emily with her day job (she’s a model) and another non-music project (it’s her wedding) keeping her busy.  So take advantage of Emily’s appearance at The Rockwood Music Hall tonight.  It’s a full band show and Emily will perform her own well-crafted songs and probably an inspired cover or two.  If you need more convincing, just check out the video of Emily posted here.  Details are over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Loom is a band I like very much. I’ve heard them at Vox Pop and Sycamore and this Friday they’ll be at Littlefield (see below) I’ll let the recent editorial raves about this band do the talking:

“To say that The Loom’s performance was a revelation would be to understate the significance of this unit. They combine musical talent, strong writing, and an abundant amount of band camaraderie into an intense amalgam.” – nyctaper

“Beloved Brooklyn sextet The Loom…have lately been guiding their chamber-folk sound to decidedly louder sonic territory.” – The New Yorker

Hear them at Littlefield with Damien Jurado this Friday at 8 PM.

Here are some summer reading suggestions from authors who have recently appeared at Brooklyn Reading Works, a monthly reading series at the Old Stone House. Readings resume in September 2010.

Fiction:

A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein: What happens when a successful doctor in New Jersey with a devoted wife and a young son finds out that his best friend’s daughter has a shocking and unspeakable past. Grodstein read a chapter from this novel at Fiction in a Blender 2010.

The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick: A high-quality page turner set in 1907 Wisconsin about a mail order bride. Goolrick read his incredible memoir, The End of the World As We Know it at the Memoirathon in 2009.

Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate: A  novel about three generations of an African American family and the power of the movies. Southgate read the first chapter of this novel at Edgy Mother’s Day 2010.

The Big Machine by Victor LaValle: His work has been called a mix of Gabriel Maria Marquez and Edgar Allen Poe. A funny book about a middle aged hustler who is inducted into a league of paranormal investigators. LaValle read the first chapter at BRW’s Young, Gifted and Black (Men) in September 2009.

Signifying Nothing by Clifford Thompson: Set in Washington, D.C., in 1979 this novel focuses on  Lester Hobbs, nineteen years old, mentally retarded and mute until the day he suddenly begins to rap at the top of his lungs about life with his parents and older siblings. Thompson read at the Young, Gifted and Black (Men) reading in September 2009.

God Says No by James Hanaham: a young black man strugglles with his appetites–for friendship and love, for religious experience, for corndogs, for illicit gay sex in Waffle House bathrooms, for acceptance. He tries everything to change himself…Hanaham read at the Young, Gifted and Black (Men) reading in September 2009.

The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel: A tale of food and friendship (the subtitle) told through letters and recipes. Israel and Garfinkel read at December’s Feast reading.

Tin House Summer Reading Issue edited by Rob Spillman: Short fiction by Lydia Millet, Steven Milhauser, Per Patterson and more. Rob Spillman curated January’s BRW, which featured three Tin House authors.

No Perfect Words by Nava Renek: In this East Village break-up book, the narrator addresses in second-person her longtime lover, a cultural critic of some renown who has recently left her and their seven-year-old daughter, Jenna. Renek read at the 2010 Memoirathon. 

From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt: “If Rockaway, at the Atlantic edge of New York City, were a state of mind, it would be energized despair. Or so it seems for the teenagers in this finely tuned first novel who have spent their lives in “Rotaway” and are unlikely to get out. They drink a lot, do a little dope, talk about sex more than have it and feel no more in charge of their lives at 18 than they did in Catholic grammar school.” — Publisher’s Weekly. The book is available from used booksellers at Amazon. Eisenstadt curated the Young Writers event at BRW in 2009 and read at Edgy Mother’s Day 2010.

Always Hiding by Sophia Romero: A coming of age novel set in Manila’s materialistic upper class under the Marcos regime, the main character deals with immigration to the US and her conflicted feelings about life here.Romero curated Edgy Mother’s Day and read at Feast 2009 and Edgy Moms.

Non-Fiction

Money Changes Everything edited by Elissa Schappell and Jenny Offill: An anthology of essay and memoir pieces on the subject of money. Schappell appeared at the Truth and Money reading and discussion on tax day 2010.

The Art of Making Money by Jason Kersten: The author traces the riveting, rollicking, roller coaster journey of a young man from Chicago who escaped poverty, for a while at least, after being apprenticed into counterfeiting by an Old World Master. Kersten appeared at the Truth and Money reading and discussion on tax day 2010.

The End of the World As We Know It by Robert Goolrick: A dark, captivating memoir about a southern family. Beautifully written with humor and depth. Goolrick read at the 2009 Memoirathon.

Dirt: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of Keeping House edited by Mindy Lewis: this book of essays and memoir pieces features an essay by Branka Ruzak, who curates the Memoirathon.

Poetry

Black Irish by Michele Madigan Somerville (Plain View Press)

The Virgin Formica by Sharon Mesmer (Hanging Loose Press)

Modern Life by Matthea Harvey (Greywolf Press)

Knock Knock by Heather Hartley (Carnegie Mellon University Press)

In Memory of the Fast Break by Michael Sweeney (Plain View Press)