Showing posts with label Williamsburg waterfront. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Williamsburg waterfront. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Friday, July 3, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Williamsburg 30-Second Mystery Theatre: Marone! Who Tore Down Our Old Italian Restaurant? 2/6
As night descends on the Williamsburg waterfront, Claudia Cardinale is approached at the soccer field of Bushwick Inlet Park and told a shocking story about her friend Rose's favorite old Italian restaurant on Havemeyer Street.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday Evening in Williamsburg: nbART, OSA and DOT Unveil "Plan Ahead" by Magda Sayeg under the Williamsburg Bridge
We took the 5:57 p.m. Q59 bus at Union and Metropolitan Avenues through scenic Williamsburg over to South 5th Street and Wythe and walked over to Kent Avenue to see the North Brookyn Public Art Coalition (nbART), the Open Space Alliance of North Brooklyn (OSA), and the New York City Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Urban Art Program unveiling of Plan Ahead, a 600-square-foot knitted installation by internationally recognized Knit Graffiti artist Magda Sayeg.
Here's the press release stuff:
Plan Ahead was selected through a competitive process as part of the Urban Art Program’s pARTners track, which is designed to connect artists and community organizations to neighborhoods to create site-specific art for the public realm.
The Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn provided additional support. Sayeg first participated in the DOT pARTners track in May 2009 when a team of local knitters covered 69 parking meters along Montague Street with knitted cozies. That Brooklyn public art project was commissioned by the Montague Street Business Improvement District.
Magda Sayeg, founder of Knitta, has taken knitting out of the home and into the streets.
The simple juxtaposition of woven material and the urban environments in which she places it, has inspired an entirely new a new approach to knitting. One that questions the assumptions of a traditional craft while adding a previously unused material to the world of street art.
When Magda began Knitta in 2005, it was her response to the dehumanizing qualities of an urban environment. By inserting handmade art into a landscape of concrete and steel, she adds a human quality that otherwise rarely exists.
Her work has been recognized or its influence on street art as well as the craft of knitting. Magda Sayeg is based in Austin, Texas.
Though the last unveiling we attended was for our late great-uncle Abe and took place at New Montefiore Cemetery, we've seen knitting in art projects before, mostly by Agata Oleksiak, who goes by the name of Olek and has a lot of work in New York City. We last saw Olek's work at the Festival of Ideas for the New City in June on the Bowery.
Magda Sayeg, though, is considered by many to be "the mother of yarn bombing.” In 2005 she knitted a blue-and-pink cozy for the door handle of her shop in Houston, and it proved so popular that she began knitting lamp posts and stops signs, and then there was no stopping her, we guess.
We couldn't attend the reception that followed the unveiling. It was at IndieScreen (not the Knitting Factory?), but we were on our way up Kent Avenue to hear what we could hear of Real Estate, Dr. Dog and Bright Eyes from the soccer fields of Bushwick Inlet Park.
We didn't have tickets but we planned ahead and didn't have to squoosh together our final A and D.
We just had to walk away.
(Video courtesy of stoptheweakness)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Tuesday Night at the Williamsburg Waterfront: Watching Soccer and Listening to Death Cab for Cutie for Free from Bushwick Inlet Park
We joined our fellow members of the Sneak-a-Peek Freeloader Indie Music Appreciation Society tonight on the fringes of Bushwick Inlet Park's soccer fields at the Williamsburg waterfront to watch some amateur soccer, enjoy the skyline through the mostly covered-over fence,
and loll about as Death Cab for Cutie played a sold-out benefit concert practically next door at East River State Park.
We have four Death Cab CD's, more than any other sexagenarian we know. (That should inspire pathos, not admiration nor envy.) And, yes, we came to them, embarrassingly, through The O.C.'s Seth Cohen character's neurotic patter.
Did you know Ben Gibbard is very polite? Not only was a gentleman when he dated our friend's daughter in Florida, but tonight he said "Thank you very much" after every song. And it was sweet that he dedicated "I Will Follow You into the Dark" to Frightened Rabbit, who opened the night's show.
Anyway, the sound always comes over clearly to the soccer fields and it's sort of contemplative there, without crowds. Christina can lie in the artificial turf in her own little world.
Others can fix their bikes.
And there's always good soccer. We kicked an errant ball back at least fifteen feet to an ardent player. "Soul Meets Body" always sounds good, even when the sun had stopped wrapping its arms around us.
And all we could see were occasional white, blue and red lights blinking or flashing. Yet when Ben asked (twice -- he's really polite), "You guys okay?" -- well, what could we say but yes?
At midnight on December 31, 2003, we were in Apache Junction, Arizona, playing "The New Year" instead of "Auld Lange Syne."
It's always nice to hear, even if it doesn't feel any different when it's live.
According to this photo from Samantha Files on Instagram, this is what it actually looked like onstage for the paying guests:
We're grateful to Death Cab for being on our Chevette's cassette player as we drove around South Florida in 2004, and we're grateful we got to remember those times at Bushwick Inlet Park tonight.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Tuesday Night at the Williamsburg Waterfront: Orchestra of St. Luke's plays "Just Add Water" concert of summer favorites at East River State Park
Tonight, as the day's awful heat and humidity subsided slightly, we went over to East River State Park at the Williamsburg Waterfront for a delightful ninety-minute concert, "Just Add Water," with the Orchestra of St. Luke's playing summer favorites from Bach and Mozart to Joplin, Bernstein, Copeland and Lennon & McCartney.
We arrived at the park really early. Although most of these seats never filled up, there was a decent-sized crowd of all different ages, including tons of little kids with their parents.
It's just that most of the audience sitting at the benches on the concrete section in front of the stage or in the VIP section seats off to the side, or as most people were, lying on the grass close to the stage and out by the water.
The music carried. First, members of the Orchestra of St. Luke's Brass Ensemble played the three movements of the Russian composer Victor Ewald's Brass Quintet No. 1 Op. 5 (in B flat, we think).
Next the Brass Ensemble played songs from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess like the obvious "Summertime" and "A Woman Is a Sometime Thing." It was incredibly pleasant to be sitting there as a breeze wafted in from the East River.
The ensemble also played the Bach's 7th Symphony contrapuntal and "When the Saints Go Marching In" as they were joined by some strings.
Then, after a brief intermission, the whole Orchestra of St. Luke's came onstage, with Gary Fagin conducting and doing a wonderful job of putting the evening's program of classics into historical perspective for a general audience.
It was a splendid, easy program for a summer night as the sky darkened and an almost-full moon took the place of the warm sun: from Haydn's Fireworks and Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik to the classic ragtime of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer and Bethena Waltz as well as Tom Turpin's St. Louis Rag.
Then there were favorite selections from Gershwin's An American in Paris, Richard Rodgers' "Bewitched" from Pal Joey, medleys of Beatles songs by Lennon and McCartney and Star Wars by John Williams, West Side Story by Bernstein, and Aaron Copland's Hoedown from Rodeo. And the encore was a lovely movement from Schumann's Kinderszenen.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Early Monday Morning at the WIlliamsburg Waterfront: Mayor Bloomberg Inaugurates Launch of East River Ferry Service
We were at the Williamsburg Waterfront -- specifically at the new pier at North 6th Street -- for the inaugural launch of East River Ferry service,
with Mayor Bloomberg,
other dignitaries and lots of media aboard for the event.
It was great to see off this wonderful new transportation service linking downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City and Manhattan. That's right, "see off."
As we told News 12 Brooklyn, "You're not getting me on that thing. I'm old enough to remember Gilligan's Island."
People around here may live on The Edge, but not us.
Having endured seasickness on the ferries to Staten Island and Fire Island, we long ago vowed never go on a boat again. We're hoping for a bridge to Governor's Island someday.
But the new ferry service should take some pressure off the rush hour commutes for us subway-taking landlubbers in congested north Brooklyn.
And it's always great to see Hizzoner,
Mr. Bloomberg, lost amid a sea
of much taller pols and media types.
Our friend Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was on hand, too, natch.
We overheard him complaining about his constituents in Coney Island who hate music concerts and "don't want them anywhere."
People are really enthusiastic. These neighborhood kids have started a new gang and are aiming to become today's Leo Gorceys, Huntz Halls, Bobby Jordans and (sigh) Billy Halops.
Anyway, there had to be at least a couple of us to shout "Bon voyage!" and throw confetti to those boarding the gangplank.
This little blond child was the last to board, presumably so that he and his life jacket could be the first off.
This guy actually did said say, "All aboard!" before raising the gangplank (disappointingly, without any community board member being asked to walk it).
We waved goodbye to the Greenpoint-bound boat. The ferry at first looked like it was going the wrong way, but the guy next to us said it probably had to go out a certain distance before turning east.
Presumably it made it to India Street for the scheduled arrival five minutes later. As we recall, Christopher Columbus thought he was sailing for India, too.
And with Mayor Bloomberg aboard, in the event of a hometown emergency, the ferry might have to suddenly set sail for Bermuda.
Anyway, we're seriously grateful to NY Waterway for providing hipsters with a new way to leave Brooklyn.
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