The weird neighbor in American Beauty may have called that floating plastic bag “the most beautiful thing in the world,” but the NYPD, FDNY, bomb squad, and anyone trying to get down Bedford Avenue yesterday would have just called it a huge nuisance. Gothamist reports that cops shut down Williamsburg’s main drag midday yesterday from North 4th to North 6th streets for a suspicious package. Tipsters initially described it as “a shopping bag with wires coming out of it taped to a tree.”
Turns out it was just an “I Love NY” bag strategically placed on a metal rod. Police reopened the street at around 12:38 p.m. and so far no one has come forward with any information about the bag. More photos on Gothamist.
Ende Tymes “Festival of Noise and Experimental Liberation” is happening this weekend at Secret Project Robot in Bushwick and Outpost Artists Resources in Ridgewood. As a matter of fact, it started already last night. Here’s a clip of Lussuria’s performance.
More performances and details about the remaining days below. (more…)
Books and booze seem to fit nicely together, don’t you think? San Francisco’s Litquake makes it happen when Lit Crawl 2012 hits Brooklyn on Saturday, May 19th. The evening will feature 30 + authors at 14 separate events in 11 venues spread across Cobble Hill. The festivities kick off at 6:00pm and all events are free. Click here for the full schedule of events and list of participants.
It’s a cliche but oh so true – New York City is this nation’s melting pot. This Saturday the many cultures of our fair city will be showcased in New York’s Dance Parade.
“Dance Parade NYC takes over Manhattan on Saturday, May 19th as over 6000 dancers, over 150 dance groups showcasing almost 80 different dance genres and cultures dance down Broadway in a multi-cultural, rhythm infused, magical display of movement, art and color!
We’ve been pretty quiet about HBO’s much buzzed about new show Girls because, well, every single other blog has written endlessly about it. But the show’s protagonists live in Greenpoint and today the gang is at Café Grumpy on Meserole filming for the second season.
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The café appeared in the most recent episode of the show as Ray’s place of work.
The MOST BLOGGED shows this week are somewhat enigmatic… and that has EVERYTHING to do with the Bamboozle music festival, which apparently our algorithm likes a whole lot. And hey, there’s some stuff to like (and a lot to make you cringe.)
I’m a New Jersey native, who has no problem admitting that I spent a great deal of my youth at Jersey shore emo and hardcore shows. That’s what this Asbury Park festival was originally known for, going back to its roots as the Skate and Surf Festival at the dilapidated Convention Hall. Some of that remains on the bill (Brand New, Jimmy Eat World, Motion City Soundtrack, Hot Water Music, Promise Ring, to name a few of the friendly faces), but the rest of the lineup is something of a gigantic clusterfuck consisting of everything from wub-wub dubstep to bad comedy.
Andrew Dice Clay is probably the biggest “WTF” of the event, and he has a set scheduled on Sunday which is headlined by an equally “WTF” act (but for totally different reasons), Bon Jovi. This isn’t AS MUCH of a surprise for me, as I’m somewhat familiar with the festival. They usually have some incredibly off-the-wall act every year that really doesn’t fit (acts as diverse as MC Hammer and Skid Row has graced the festival’s stage in previous years), but Dice Clay might take the cake (though I’m not sure where.)
Will Oldham is often described as prolific, and with good reason. The singer-songwriter of many monikers — he has recorded music as the Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Palace Songs and Bonnie Prince Billy, among other names — has seldom gone a year without releasing a record in almost two decades. He has also been known to rerecord his old songs, making instrument-packed renditions of what were spare arrangements and turning dark, slow ballads into light, country-inflected numbers. To coincide with his new book, “Will Oldham on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy,” Oldham is again releasing a new batch of his own oldies — a six-song EP called “Now Here’s My Plan,” made up of fresh versions of songs from the Prince Billy catalog. Among the recordings, available on July 24 at Drag City, is an impossibly upbeat rendition of “I See a Darkness,” the beautifully bleak song off his 1999 album of the same name that was later covered by Johnny Cash.
The L train to Manhattan stopped running around 9:45 a.m., sources report. According to the @NYCTrains Twitter feed, there is a police investigation at Union Square.
