Brooklyn is full of singles getting their apartment ready for spring! One of those bachelors is 24 year-old dancer Stuart Singer. He’s a tree of a man with a taste for simple and homey things. His mix of retro, heirlooms, and craigslist finds makes for a great space. Spy on this handsome drink of water and welcome the coming days of spring! Hooray!
March 15, 2010 Queer Space, Real EstateBrooklyn The Borough is going to Austin The Shit Show this week to hang out at South By Southwest, bringing you coverage of Brooklyn bands from afar.
March 14, 2010 Brooklyn Beats, Music Profiles
Matthue Roth is the author, most recently, of Losers, a geek-punk novel about Russian Jewish immigrant hackers, and the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go. Here he reads a poem called “Good Thing I Don’t Touch Girls Or I’d Touch You” at at Soda Bar in Prospect Heights.
March 9, 2010 Authors Speak, Multi/Media, The Read, VideoHasidic Jews might not be the number one most-fetishized religious group by the media – my Muslim punk rock friends would probably win that particular medal – but, dammit, we get our fair share of attention.
March 8, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Guest AuthorsGet to know the family that throws the newest queer night in South Brooklyn by way of Queerespondence! Native Brooklynite Lauren Gulbrandsen of Babeland in SoHo and fabulous Southern transplant Douglas Calhoun of Queerespondence will join forces Saturday, March 6, to throw the second of many queer Brooklyn parties to come. Find out about upcoming events and learn more about these two as they turn the questions on each other over a few drinks and few laughs.
March 5, 2010 Features
DEPTH OF FIELD—I didn’t really mind being assigned the class. I guess I’ve developed a reputation for being good with the ED kids, and pretty much all the kids at Automotive are emotionally disturbed, so I was surprised when Mr. D took the time to run it by me beforehand.
March 2, 2010 Classic, Featured Writers
The Medgar Evers College Film & Culture Series engages in “viewing and discussing important works of film that speak to or about the experiences of members of the African Diaspora.”
February 26, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Film, The People
Frank Anthony Polito is a Brooklynite by way of Hazel Park, Michigan. The actor, playwright and author of BAND FAGS! and DRAMA QUEERS is staging a reading of his new show Blue Tuesday on March 2, at 7pm, presented by the Transport Group in the Penthouse of 37 West 26th Street. Originally produced under the title Another Day on Willow St for the 2007 New York Fringe Festival, Polito’s adventures into play writing hit close to home on the streets of Brooklyn Heights. We caught up with this multi-faceted talent to ask about his ongoing project, Brooklyn, and this new phase of his career.
February 26, 2010 Boroughing, Theater
The first time I saw Reddog—a lean, Pit Bull mix—I peered through the haze of anxiety and heroin hangover that I then lived in, and thought: now that is a sexy dog. Beauty like his, the kind we call sexy, it pleases some aesthetic instinct, softens something in us, makes us want to look longer, to memorize its implicit promise that there is ease in the world, that some things accord.
February 24, 2010 Boroughing, Guest Authors, Read Features
Nola squints in the sunlight that has just spilled over the rooftops and illuminated Williamsburg’s McCarren Park in all its dewy spring splendor. Slipping her Chanel sunglasses down over her eyes, she sips her latte and makes a sweeping gesture toward the jogger-strewn park, its busy dog run, and the new high-rise condos that have sprung up along its borders.
“There is no way I’d be living here without my nurse hat, if you know what I mean. This place is going to look like Park Slope in a few years. They might dress like hipsters, but they’re just yuppies with vintage wardrobes.”
February 19, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Writers, Guest Authors
DEPTH OF FIELD—I read on the internet the other day that Europeans brought the rat to Hawaii, and it took over the island in a New York minute. But what exactly it took over isn’t clear to me. Alleyways? The space between walls? Everyone has space between walls. That’s where the outside meets the inside and they find their balance, like in a decompression chamber. You don’t want to let the outside in.
February 18, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Writers
According to Laurie Cumbo, founder and director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts in Fort Greene, gentrification is our 800 pound gorilla in the room. In their new exhibit, “The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” it is her hope that the 22 participating artists will utilize the power of their voice to address it.
February 12, 2010 Art Reviews, Boroughing, Classic, The Art
Dear America,
Baby, I love your particular strain of capitalism, how its muscular hand caresses every part of me, everything in sight–I have always loved a firm hand, baby.
I love how it has turned everything into a product, one that looks suspiciously like my own body.
I love how this has made me hate myself, and hawk myself, and fostered an extreme poverty of imagination in my young self, and in everyone I have ever known.
I love how this has forced my imagination to grow bigger…
February 10, 2010 Classic, Fiction, Guest Authors, The People
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press), which recalls her four years working at a midtown dungeon as a dominatrix. Her writing has been featured in The Southeast Review, Redivider, The Rambler, Storyscape Journal, and Bitch Magazine, among others. She co-curates and hosts the Mixer Reading and Music Series at Cake Shop, teaches at SUNY Purchase College, The Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and New York University, and hangs her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in Brooklyn. Watch and listen as she reads live from her memoir.
February 9, 2010 Authors Speak, Boroughing, Classic, Guest Authors, Multi/Media, The Read, Video
Most relationships after a certain age begin with a body or two under the bed. Usually these are ex-lovers, whose legacy manifests tangibly in shoe boxes of old letters and photos, those morbid and sentimental curations that pulse faintly from the closet shelf. In my case, it took the form of a garbage bag full of S&M equipment.
February 4, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Guest AuthorsDan Via is the playwright and actor starring in Daddy, a new play about gay relationships, currently running at TBG Arts Center’s Mainstage Theatre through Februrary 13. I was able to get the inside scoop from this handsome writer, who is currently based in Park Slope, as the show was kicking off.
February 3, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Queer Life, TheaterOur homes are often a reflection of our relationships and in this edition of Brooklyn Interiors we’ve got a real queer romance and two straight boys in a serious bromance. Both charming apartments are in Prospect Heights and offer a very zen design. Peak inside your neighbor’s homes with another installment of modern apartment porn!
February 3, 2010 Queer Space, Queerespondence, Real EstateWe all know lots of folks will be tuning into the big game this weekend, attending parties with football shaped chip bowls and all the natty ice you could imagine, while some of us spend the day trying to understand the appeal (besides men in tights, of course).
Here’s something I can get behind: Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl had been the source of adorable-ness for 6 years and counting, and who knew the game’s referee Andrew Schechter, 25, laid out his traditional stripped shirt and high tube socks in Williamsburg? It comes as no shock that the ref for alternative programming on Super Bowl Sundays lives in our alternative Borough. The concept is simple, 30+ adorable baby animals and one charming referee for hours and hours! More about Andrew and Zellie, plus a slideshow of adorableness, after the jump.
February 3, 2010 Classic, The People
Phillip Stearns (a.k.a. Pixel Form) creates art that involves unique networks of wires, connectors, light sensors, and miniature speakers. If you’re willing, his art interacts with you, creating an energetic intimacy between the observer and the observed
February 2, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, The ArtIn his third edition of a speech almost unheard of on a district level, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries took on the federal government, the banking and real estate industries and the criminal justice system.
February 2, 2010 Boroughing, City Politics, Classic, Multi/Media, Real Estate, State Politics, Video
Holden’s hunter’s cap haunts me as a lasting symbol of American literature as few others do. At once evocative of the hunt—of searching—and an insulation against the world, Holden’s defining sartorial article works nicely as a metaphor to be mined by high school English students in sophomore term papers year after year. But as nexus between the “very corny” trappings of life and the way we occasionally can’t help but fall for them ourselves, it also serves as a perfect reflection of the place Catcher in the Rye has staked out in the canon.
February 2, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Read Features
Beth Fertig, a senior reporter on education for WNYC, contextualizes this week’s public hearing at Brooklyn Technical High School where the Panel for Educational Policy voted to shutter 19 city schools.
January 28, 2010 Boroughing, City Politics, Classic, Guest Authors, The People
Nineteen schools were slated to be closed for poor performance last night, as hundreds at Brooklyn Technical High School addressed city officials in statements of defiance, pride, and at times malice. More after the jump.
January 27, 2010 Boroughing, City Politics, Classic, Multi/Media, The People, VideoWelcome to our newest literary feature, Live From the Franklin Park Reading Series. Our first installment of video from this series, which runs the first Monday of the month at Franklin Park in Crown Heights, features storyteller Jake Goldman, and the (very) amusing tale of how he used his screenplay writing degree (read: useless) working for a (ahem) new media company here in New York. Mr. Goldman is co-host of True Tales of College, a monthly storytelling series that was highlighted in the New York Times. We’ll feature one local reading from this series per week, so get excited, and join us live the second Monday of the month for a comforting beverage and some great stories.
January 26, 2010 Authors Speak, Boroughing, Classic, Multi/Media, The Read, VideoIt can be said that the latest culture war between North Brooklyn’s Hipster and Hasidim factions has gotten a bit out of hand, this time in person. Read more about this meeting of the minds, after the jump.
January 25, 2010 Boroughing, City Politics, Classic, Environment, Multi/Media, The People, Video“Violent Soho live = a make out session with the devil’s daughter. In other words: good times!” is the Thurston Moore-approved blurb about this Australian born grunge revival where long hair and flannel reign once again. Luckily for you they’re playing the Mercury Lounge this Thursday, January 28. Video and an interview with drummer Michael Richards, after the jump.
January 25, 2010 Boroughing, Brooklyn Beats, Classic, Multi/Media, Music Profiles, Video
Good news for all those who love things tartan, or things poetic, or things containing sheep’s heart, liver and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and simmered in the animal’s stomach several hours: it’s Burns’ Day!
January 25, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Multi/Media, Read Features, Video
Beth Fertig, a senior reporter on education for WNYC, tackles the issue of state education funding and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s four year plan.
January 21, 2010 City Politics, Classic, Guest Authors, The People
Part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion grant program that rewards states that are making strides in turning around struggling schools and enhancing education standards. Here’s what some of the players in New York’s education system are saying about the state’s application.
January 14, 2010 Boroughing, City Politics, Classic, State Politics, The PeopleSo we across this amazing video, taken somewhere in our fair borough, of a dilapidated but unique and spacious brownstone. Pride for one’s home has inspired many a Cribs parody as can be determined in google’s search results for the phrase ‘ghetto cribs.’ However, this featured video is brand new and close to home. We know nothing of Runt Productions, the makers of this delightful short film, but we think there’s more in store forthem beyond this ” Dope ass Brooklyn house tour.” Enjoy!
January 14, 2010 Classic, Multi/Media, Video
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