Outer Limits: Blogging in the Boroughs

TwoWheeler on Eyewitness News, Monday Feb. 22

2009-02-19T12:34:27-05:00

WABC-TVs Tim Fleischer just left my office after an interview about older Americans searching for work. (older American at 46? Hrumpf.) Anyhow, it was a terrific interview and may air on Eyewitness News on Monday, February 22 in the 5:30 to 6 p.m. segment. It was a good opportunity to pitch the 5 O’Clock Club, a career coaching and outplacement service that has been central in my ongoing job search.
As it happens, I’m not currently unemployed, which is why I’ve been absent from posting since the holidays. (Hopefully I’ll correct that.) In fact, my day job at Staten Island’s Project Hospitality has been a great experience, heading up their Tax Prep Plus program for the NYC Dept. of Consumer Affairs, which provides inexpensive tax services to low-income earners at 3 locations here on Staten Island, as well as in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. And when I’m not saving money for countless New Yorkers, I moonlight selling luggage to tourists nine stories above Herald Square (stop by and pick up that nice Tumi suiter anytime).
This project takes me through April, so if you need a soulless flack to carry out your evil spin (for a good cause, preferably), please feel free to drop me a line.

Tags: brooklyn, flack, macys, project hospitality, staten island, tumi, wabc

Facebook? My NYC.com blog is on Blog Networks

2008-11-14T10:32:41-05:00

If you are a FACEBOOK user, you can follow my NYC.com "Outer Limits: Blogging in the Boroughs" using the Blog Network application.

American Buffalo Stampedes onto Broadway

2008-11-14T04:00:43-05:00

David Mamet’s play, "American Buffalo,” takes plays in a dusty curio shop filled with the material culture of our nation. A cacophony of useless minutia is strewn across the set in a microcosm of society. Likewise, the language of the marginal losers who inhabit this world is filled with empty rhetoric made poignant by desperation. The ill-thought plans of the characters form a conspiracy of fools wallowing in their own clichés. Like Mamet’s other play currently in revival, “Speed the Plow,” the action is centered around the bantering of three scoundrels pursuing an elusive American dream.
John Leguizamo storms across the stage as Walter “Teacher” Cole like the Q-Train barreling into Times Square and dominating the scene with hyperactive rawness. Meanwhile, Cedric – the actor, as shop owner Donny Dubrow, grounds the play, punctuating the dialogue with the terse, understated comeback. Youthful Haley Joel Osment (Bobby) holds his own among the titans, as a scruffy apprentice scum, tempest-tossed in despair and longing for acceptance.
I envy the set designers who must have had a ball scouring countless Salvation Armies, yard sales and their neighbor’s curbs on bulk pick up day for decayed Americana. The set takes a beating, and some props ended up in the audience. The script is tight, uncensored and very witty. The off-stage plot is difficult to follow, which is not surprising since the characters are as clueless about the real world truth as the audience. The wisdom of the night is when Teacher declares in sincere-yet-ironic terms: “one thing matters above all the rest – know what you’re talking about.”

An evening with Mamet

2008-11-14T01:54:43-05:00

If you get the chance to see David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” at the Belasco Theatre, stampede over for an evening of great theatre. John Leguizamo is a force to be reckoned with onstage and Cedric, the Entertainer (now Cedric, the Actor?) grounds the show with confidence. Follow the link to read my full review: American Buffalo.
Also check out my take on Jean Claude Baker’s tribute to dear old mom, Josephine Baker, at the very Parisian Chez Josephine.

Tags: broadway, cedric, chez josephine, jean claude baker, josephine baker, leguizamo, mamet, play

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Rev. Jen, and other Halloween Classics

2008-10-29T00:30:27-04:00

It’s almost Halloween, and you can’t decide where to go. -basically, anywhere but the parade. Watch that on TV. Maybe hit up the after party at Webster Hall instead. Personally, I’d rather skip the crowds all together and head out on Wednesday night to check out Reverend Jen’s live-action TV special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Reverend Jen! at the Bowery Poetry Club. The self-proclaimed hero of the uncool will lead her usual band of misfit comics, actors and performers in a heart-warming Halloween special – Lower East Side style. (Wed., Oct. 29, 10 p.m., $5) Performers include local favorites: Reverend Jen and Jen Jr. of course (Chihuahuas with attitudes are “in” you know), Bower poet emeritus Faceboy, The O’Debra Twins (ooh-la-la), Mr. L.E.S., and Mayor Mike’s least favorite well-informed teen Rachel Trachtenberg.

You may prefer to get out of Manhattan altogether. The hipster heaven Union Pool becomes Union Pool of Blood for the night with Union Ghouls, The Underthings, and Wizardry. Dressing in your most over-the-top costume is assumed of course. Best of all, admission is free!

Out on Staten Island, the annual Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at Snug Harbor Cultural Center has taken on a life of its own. Live stage show, costumes (duh), and a goodie bag so you don’t have to bring your own props. And the mostly-restored Music Hall with its rough edges is a glorious environment for the classic of film debauchery. Starting shockingly early at 9:30 p.m., you’ll still have time to catch a ferry back to Manhattan (maybe the 12:30 or 1 a.m. boat) back to the real world. Tix are $10 and the participation back is another $2 on top of that. Since it’s two block from my homestead, this is where I’ll be headed. So if you pop in, say “Hi” to the guy in the pirate hat.

If you do stay home to watch the parade on NY1, be sure to keep a special eye out for Brooklyn's own Hungry March Band. Inside word is their theme for this year is simply spellbinding.

Photo from the Village Halloween Parade website.

Tags: bower poetry club, bowery, brooklyn, hungry march band, ny1, reverend jenn, staten island, union pool, village halloween parade

Fall Pumpkin Picking in Joisey

2008-10-13T17:47:06-04:00

Back in the day, we grew up believing that apples, pumpkins, all our veggies and even our milk all came from the corner store. We’d heard of places called “farms” where suspendered hayseeds coaxed our food stuffs out of the ground, or –yech- out of the under parts of large mammals. Now a-days city kids get much closer to the origins of our food at our local greenmarkets. Here farmer Joe comes to life and smiles at us as we buy our corn-fed eggs (who knew they had teeth!), but the actual farming life is still just as real as Green Acres reruns on TV Land.

If this description rings true to you, get thee and thyne to Johnson’s Corner Farm in Medford, NJ. It’s down the NJ Turnpike to Exit 5, just about as far as Philly. The farm is one of the best day trip experiences in the region, a virtual county fair of rural fun. First, line up to get your tickets for the hayride and pumpkin picking. The tractors pull visitors out into the pumpkin patch where your little darlings can roam the corn-maze and choose the biggest pumpkins poor Daddy will have to carry. This year my heirs managed to find giant specimen that overloaded the digital scale back at the cashier station, nearly “squashing” the tiny little cashier who had to lug it to the oversized scale. The verdict: a 50 pounder / about $25 dollars worth of pumpkins, plus a smattering of odd gourds in various shapes and colors that should never be found in nature.

Back at the market, Johnson’s has the pumpkins and gourds pre-picked for those who’d rather skip the hayride. The also have racks and racks of fresh pies – pumpkin, apple, and pecan, in addition to peach berry as well as strawberry apple tarts, blue berry muffins, apple cider donuts, and an lightly-sweet apple crumble bread that explodes over its tin. A festival atmosphere prevails with live music – country, rock, bluegrass; delicious BBQ pork sandwiches; and fresh ice cream from Bassett’s of Philly. A Johnson’s specialty is the brain freeze – apple cider slushy over their own soft serve ice cream.

My kids love the animal pen where you can feed dry corn to the farm critters and play in a home-made obstacle course. By mid-day the animals are stuffed, except I did find one hungry goat who couldn’t help sneezing whenever you’d reach out your hand to feed him off your cob. Remember kids, use the sinks outside the pen and scrub those hands good. Johnson’s has also opened an area for the 2-8 crowd called Discovery Barnyard with more critters and things to climb on. And don’t miss the gift shop, which this time of year carries all kinds of fun Halloween craft items.

On recommendation from the locals, we stopped off at Tarantella Restaurant, a nearby Italian restaurant, deceptively located in the Medford Plaza Center strip mall at Hartford Avenue and Route 70. An encouraging sign was that I could hear the staff speaking to each other in Italian from the kitchen. The friendly staff was welcoming and offered good recommendations. The northern Italian menu has a creative menu that includes lobster manicotti, jumbo shrimp scampi, tortellini Alfredo, and a seasonal pumpkin ravioli, all in the richest sauces imaginable. Desserts include the usual suspects of pound-packing cheesecakes, cannolis, pies, and more. Check out the fruit sorbets served in natural bowls of hallowed-out pineapples, mangos, lemons, and so forth. We were all well stuffed when we left, taking a crate-load of leftovers home with us to eat the next day.

Tags: apples, halloween, medford, new jersey, october, pie, pumpkin

Lighthouse Becomes a Darkhorse

2008-10-10T23:40:27-04:00

The past few years have been a remarkable time for museums in New York City, with new, expanded and re-launched museums marking the revitalization of the post 9-11 city: the Museum of Finance, the Sports Museum of America, the Museum of Arts & Design, and the literally re-launched Intrepid Museum of Sea, Air and Space. But one museum has not joined this list.

On the Staten Island waterfront, next door to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal sits a unique historic site. The site of the former United States Lighthouse Service, home to five historic buildings and an underground cavern where whale oil was once stored to supply lights along the East Coast. In fact most of the historic lights along the Atlantic were born in the shops of the Lighthouse Depot.

More than a decade ago, New York rallied with the mayor’s office and the borough president’s office both pledging their support to bring the National Lighthouse Museum to New York City. A board of trustees was formed, money was raised, several of the buildings were protected from the elements, a website launched, and plans were laid to use the entire site for exhibits, libraries, classrooms and dining. The developer was enlisted and enthusiasm was high. Then…nothing.

In its immeasurable wisdom, the Economic Development Corporation managed to crush the project with the same iron handed tough love that has thus-far prevented any successful development of Staten Island’s North Shore from the ferry to Rosebank – primarily, the Lighthouse Depot and the abandoned Staten Island Navy Homeport site. Numerous plans and dreams have been stifled, from movie studios to multiple income housing. Nothing has come to fruition.

The good news is that the Lighthouse Museum’s treasurer has projected the funds raised to date, and if a new board is formed, there may be a head start on getting the funds together to begin work on the first structure. There is talk of an organization called Lighthouse Action and Mobilization Partners pulling together to get the project back on track. There are plenty of community leaders and arts administrators on Staten Island willing to get involved and pull this together, and perhaps they can do so without deeding much of the historic site to overbuilding and commercialization.

The story has been reported in the Staten Island Advance, and more info is online at the Lighthouse Action and Mobilization Planners [LAMP]. You can even check out the project overview at the old National Lighthouse Museum website, by visiting their site at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Tags: lighthouse, museum, staten island

DUMBO Gets Down with Art

2008-09-26T00:17:40-04:00

Brooklyn’s artsy hood becomes a canvas in the DUMBO: ART UNDER THE BRIGE FESTIVAL, the 12^th annual river-side festival of art, music and performance. Floating babies, monstrous murals, laser pendulums, and the massively awesome Hungry March Band take art to the next level this weekend throughout the streets of DUMBO.

Check out video clips of the art installations and performances on CURRENT. Better yet, get your booty down to the riverside and experience it yourself. Don’t let the soggy weather deter you. Stop in for in impossibly rich hot chocolate you could possibly chew on at Jacques Torres DUMBO.

Be sure to check out the new Galapagos Art Space on Main Street (they were priced out of their beloved Williamsburg, so the move to – DUMBO? Go figure.) And for ridiculously great time, stop by Rebar on Front Street to be blown away by the Hungry March Band at the Massive Thunder Party. Everyone is invited to come in their raingear, and expected loose those extra layers over the course of the evening.

Tags: art, bridge, dumbo, festival, nudity, performance

The Pillows Will Fly in Union Square 9/26/08

2008-09-22T09:15:20-04:00

Did you ever want to get between the sheets with a few hundred strangers at sunset under the trees? Well, I can’t make that happen for you, but I may be able to get you between the pillowcases for a while at the Union Square Pillow Fight this friday evening.

This Saturday at 6 p.m., just show up at Union Square discreetly carrying your softest, fluffiest (customized?) pillow. Wait till 6 p.m. (There is a huge art clock titled “Metronome” on the façade of the Virgin Megastore, if you can read it – just wait for the first four digits to read “0600”) – then let the feathers fly. Costumes and custom pillows are encouraged. There are some rules for this seemly spontaneous event. Remove eyewear (duh). Don’t swing till 6 p.m. Don’t attack bystanders or cameras, unless they ask you too. Be gentle with me – there may be hundreds of people flailing pillows around, so try not to hurt anyone. And SOFT pillows only – feathers preferred. 6:15, stop swinging.

From there hooking up with your favorite pillow pal is optional. If you do, you may want to sit down over some serious comfort foot at Chat n' Chew, before getting a room at the David Rockwell-designed W New York Union Square, just across the park.

(photo: Union Square Pillow Fight, March 2008, afrandle’s photostream, Flicker.com)

Tags: chat n chew, clock, flash mob, pillows, union square, virgin, w

Talking Like A Pirate in Staten Island

2008-09-19T00:53:48-04:00

All you landlubbin’ bilge rats may not be ‘ware that today be TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY across the seven seas an’ deep as Davy Jones. That said, you may be wondering what is there to do in an urban metropolis to celebrate this noteworthy occasion.

I suggest you take to the high sea adventure, that is a free trip on the Staten Island Ferry. Just skip work, there’s a pretty good chance after all that your boss has already sent you home some time this year for an endless summer vacation, like mine did. The Ferry ride is free, so just get off at South Ferry and hop on the next big orange brigantine to the southern isle. En route, you may want to contemplate NY’s own pirate history, including such luminous names as Sadie the Goat, with her teeth filed shaped – the better to bite you with, or Albert Hicks, hanged with great ceremony on Bedloe’s Island on the site of today’s Statue of Liberty. [ http://www.sailstjohn.com/NYT.htm ]

From the ferry, take the #40 bus along Richmond Terrace to Snug Harbor Cultural Center to visit the grave of the privateer, Robert Richard Randall (1750-1801). Randall left his fortune to found a home “for aged, decrepit and worn-out.” Trustees of the institution chose to keep the estate’s holdings along Washington Square North to generate income for the home, which they located on a large tract of inexpensive farmland in a rural community far south of Manhattan. Once regal Greek revival building grew over the years into an extraordinary campus of fine architecture, spanning the 19^th century. The deteriorating old salts had every convenience and amusement on the grounds of Snug Harbor in its heyday – except alcohol, which could be had by the inmates just a few yards east at an old watering hole, then known as the Old Stone Jug.

After skyrocketing maintenance forced Sailor’s Snug Harbor to retreat to Sea Level, NC, the site sat derelict for many years leaving the buildings to the tender mercies of developers and time. But through preservation efforts, the majority of the site was saved, and much of it has been redeveloped into its contemporary use as one of New York City’s premiere cultural destinations. Exhibits at the Newhouse Gallery are a treat, but for the maritime experience, don’t miss the site’s John Noble Maritime Museum , dedicated to the work of Staten Island artist and the maritime history of the region which greatly influenced the artist.

A good pirate will want to enjoy the sea over dinner, so after visiting Snug Harbor, walk west along Richmond Terrace to RH Tugs. The staff dishes a varied if inconsistent meals, including a very good shrimp scampi. But lift your heads up to enjoy work by many Staten Island artists, including the neighborhoods other favorite son, Bill Murphy, and don’t miss the stunning views of traffic along the Kill Van Kull waterway. Tankers, containers, and – of course – tugs put on a soothing show day in and day out. If you’re up to it, walk back east along Richmond Terrace, and then turn left at Jersey Street to follow the Waterfront Esplanade back, with spectacular harbor and skyline views.

Tags: aarg, art, harbor view, history, maritime, pirate, privateer, staten island, statue of liberty