Yearly Archives: 2011

THE NO PANTS! SUBWAY RIDE 2011

Straphangers will be taking it off again underground this Sunday

Multiple locations
Sunday, January 9, $2.25 (subway fare), 3:00-6:00
www.improveverywhere.com

For some reason, the new year in New York City has become associated with taking one’s clothes off. On January 1, crazy people strip down to their bathing suits and dive into the freezing cold waters of Coney Island. And on the second Sunday of the new year, we take off our pants and head underground. On January 9, thousands of people will take part in the No Pants! Subway Ride, not as a protest of the increased fares, but just because they can. (It’s technically not illegal as long as the exposure doesn’t get too indecent.) And the lunacy continues to spread around the world, as nearly fifty cities now stage affiliated No Pants! events. Started as a prank by seven guys in 2002, the ride, staged by Improv Everywhere, is now in its tenth year; it hit a small bump in 2006, when 150 people participated and 8 were arrested and handcuffed, but the charges were shortly dismissed. If you’d like to join in, keep checking the above website for specific meet-up locations, and be sure to follow the rules, which strongly suggest no thongs.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI TRIBUTE 2011

charlesbukowski

SON OF A PONY READING SERIES
Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia St. between West Fourth & Bleecker Sts.
Friday, January 7, $7 (includes free drink), 6:00 – 8:00
212-989-9319
www.corneliastreetcafe.com

If the massive New Year’s Day marathons at the Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club were a little too much for you to take all at once, the Cornelia Street Cafe is holding its third annual tribute to the rather iconoclastic, eclectic, and iconic Charles Bukowski, author of such books as FACTOTUM, BARFLY, POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE JUMPING OUT OF AN 8 STORY WINDOW, CONFESSIONS OF A MAN INSANE ENOUGH TO LIVE WITH BEASTS, and PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT UNTIL THE FINGERS BEGIN TO BLEED A BIT. Hosted by Kat Georges, the evening includes poetry readings and performances by Peter Carlaftes, Thomas Fucaloro, Angelo Verga, George Wallace, and Ryan Buynak, videos of Bukowski, prizes, book giveaways, and, appropriately, one free drink with admission. And if you want to read your own favorite piece by Bukowski or your own poem inspired by the writer, you can sign up to participate as well, but you need to get there before six.

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN INVITATIONAL 2011

Professional bull riders show their true colors in Times Square (photo courtesy of Angela Cranford)

Madison Square Garden
31st to 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 7-9, $15-$200
800-732-1727
www.thegarden.com
www.pbrnow.com

There’s been an awful lot of bull at the Garden the last decade, under the uninspired “leadership” of the Dolans, although it appears that the Knicks and the Rangers have both turned the corner and are headed for playoff spots this season. There will also be plenty of bull at the World’s Most Famous Arena this weekend, as the Professional Bull Riders return to New York City for the Madison Square Garden Invitational. Instead of ice or hardwood, seven hundred tons of dirt will be brought in so some forty professional riders can battle two-thousand-pound bulls for a matter of seconds, trying to dethrone 2010 world champion Renato Nunes and Shane Proctor, last year’s Garden winner. Elton Cide is currently atop the leader board, followed by Edmundo Gomes, Mike Lee, and Rocky McDonald, while some of the toughest bulls are buck-off specialists Bushwacker, Lincoln Electric’s Bring It, Moon, Mr. Slim, Silver Wings, Flip Side, and Mad Max. Tickets range from $15 to $200, but you can save thirty-three percent by using the code MSG when you buy them online. Even better, you can get half off Friday and Sunday $35 and $50 tickets by using the code NYRTOUGH.

WILLIAMSBURG CASK BEER FESTIVAL

Cask beer festival at d.b.a. in Williamsburg should be filled with fine pours

d.b.a. Brooklyn
113 North Seventh St. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, January 7, through Sunday, January 9, 1:00 pm – 4:00 am
718-218-6006
www.facebook.com/drinkgoodstuff

The fourth annual Williamsburg Cask Beer Festival takes place Friday through Sunday at d.b.a. on North Seventh St., where more than fifteen cask-conditioned beers will be available in ten-ounce glasses for “reasonable prices.” Served at about fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, cask-conditioned ale is unfiltered, unpasteurized, and naturally carbonated, without using nitrogen or carbon dioxide. As purists know, “Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide,” according to the Campaign for Real Ale, which has been fighting for drinkers’ rights since 1971. In past years, the festival, put together by d.b.a. and Alex Hall of Gotham Imbiber, has featured Ten Penny Ale, Reindeer Droppings, Rossdorfer Urbräu, and Bourbon Barrel-Aged Entire, so you can expect another collection of international, and often strange-named, drinks this time around as well.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE SHOWCASE: JAPAN + EAST ASIA

Ku & Dancers (©You-Wei Chen), Ahn Ae-soon Dance Company (©LG Arts Center), and Maki Morishita (© Satoshi Watanabe) will all be part of annual Japan Society showcase

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 7, and Saturday, January 8, $23, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

All year long, Japan Society presents outstanding dance programs, primarily by Japanese and Japanese-American companies. But every January, they kick off the calendar with its highly anticipated Contemporay Dance Showcase, bringing together groups from throughout the Far East. The fourteenth annual two-day festival is scheduled for January 7-8, with another impressive roster of participants. Tokyo-based choreographer Ryohei Kondo, who leads the Condors, will be joined by J-pop star Miu Sakamoto, the progeny of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Akiko Yano, and a group of dancers for GOATS BLOCK THE ROAD, PART III: GOAT STAMPEDE. Japanese choreographer Maki Morishita specializes in solo dances, having toured with such works as DEBUTANTE, KOSHITSU (PRIVATE ROOM), and KOMA-INU-ILLUTSKY. For the Japan Society showcase, she will present the U.S. premiere of her latest solo piece, TOKYO FLAT. Seoul-based Ahn Ae-soon Dance Company brings a multitude of styles and forms to BUL-SSANG (PITY), which investigates Korea’s cultural identity through Buddhist imagery, incorporating Indian kathak, Korean Jindo drum dancing, Chinese martial arts, and Mongolian and Japanese traditional movement, along with contributions from DJ Soulscape and Pop artist Choi Jeongohwa. Taiwanese dancer, teacher, and choreographer Yu Yen-Fang will conclude the program with FROM HERE . . . TO THE END OF THE RAINBOW, described as an “endearingly oddball and intimate male-female duet.” (While at Japan Society, don’t miss Lewis Hyde and Max Gimblett’s “oxherding,” on view in the downstairs lobby gallery.)

THREE KINGS DAY PARADE 2011

El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Thursday, January 6, free, 10:30 am
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

El Museo del Barrio’s celebration of the Epiphany will make its way through East Harlem today, paying tribute to the three kings who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrth to the manger. The thirty-fourth annual event will feature music, dancing, large-size puppets, parrandas, floats, and live camels and other animals beginning at 10:30 at 106th St. near Park Ave., winding down Third and Lexington, then heading for the museum at 106th and Fifth, where preregistered students will participate in a series of related workshops.

MILESTONE FILMS: 20 FOR 20 — THE EXILES

THE EXILES is screening as part of continuing Milestone celebration at the IFC Center

THE EXILES (Kent Mackenzie, 1961)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
January 7-9
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.coms
www.exilesfilm.com


Founded in 1990 by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller as a way to preserve great orphaned works, Milestone Films is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a series of Weekend Classics screenings at the IFC Center. The festival began in November with Luchino Visconti’s ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS and Michael Powell’s THE EDGE OF THE WORLD and continues this weekend with Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 film THE EXILES. Having restored Charles Burnett’s wonderful KILLER OF SHEEP and MY BROTHER’S WEDDING, Milestone, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and preservationist Ross Lipman teamed up again to bring back Mackenzie’s black-and-white slice-of-life tale, which debuted at the 1961 Venice Film Festival and screened at the inaugural 1964 New York Film Festival before disappearing until its restoration, upon which it was selected for the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. THE EXILES follows a group of American Indians as they hang out on a long Friday night of partying and soul searching in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, centering on Homer (Homer Nish) and Yvonne (Yvonne Williams), who are going to have a baby. After Yvonne makes dinner for Homer and his friends, the men drop her off at the movies by herself while they go out drinking and gambling and, in Tommy’s (Tommy Reynolds) case, looking for some female accompaniment. As the night goes on, Homer, Yvonne, and Tommy share their thoughts and dreams in voice-over monologues that came out of interviews Mackenzie conducted with them. In fact, the cast worked with the director in shaping the story and getting the details right, ensuring its authenticity and realism, giving THE EXILES a cinéma vérité feel. Although the film suffers from a poorly synced soundtrack — it is too often too clear that the dialogue was dubbed in later and doesn’t match the movement of the actors’ mouths — it is still an engaging, important independent work (the initial budget was $539) about a subject rarely depicted onscreen with such honesty. Mackenzie, who followed up THE EXILES with the documentaries THE TEENAGE REVOLUTION (1965) and SATURDAY MORNING (1971) before his death in 1980 at the age of fifty, avoids sociopolitical remonstrations in favor of a sweet innocence behind which lies the difficulties of the plight of American Indians assimilating into U.S. society. THE EXILES is being screened at IFC with Mackenzie’s rarely seen 1956 short, BUNKER HILL.