featured

CONEY ISLAND SAND SCULPTING CONTEST 2024

Twenty-fifth annual Sand Sculpting Contest takes place in Coney Island on Saturday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Thirty-second annual Coney Island Sand Sculpting Contest should feature plenty of impressive creations on Saturday (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CONEY ISLAND SAND SCULPTING CONTEST
Coney Island
Boardwalk between West Tenth & Twelfth Sts.
Saturday, August 17, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
www.coneyisland.com
www.allianceforconeyisland.org

The thirty-second annual Coney Island Sand Sculpting Contest will take place at the People’s Playground on August 17, as amateurs, semiprofessionals, and professionals will create masterpieces in the Brooklyn sand, primarily with a nautical theme. It’s a blast watching the constructions rise from nothing into some extremely elaborate works of temporary art. The event, which features cash prizes, is hosted by the Alliance for Coney Island and features four categories: Adult Group, Family, Individual, and People’s Choice. There are always a few architectural ringers who design sophisticated castles, along with a handful of gentlemen building, well, sexy mermaids. You can usually register as late as eleven o’clock Saturday to participate. While visiting Coney Island on August 17, you should also check out the Coney Island Museum, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Burlesque at the Beach’s “Boner Killers” with Jo “Boobs” Weldon, MiscAllaneous DomTop, Iris Explosion, Sweaty Eddie, Poison Eve, Voodoo Onyx, Broody Valentino, Porcelain, and Storm, and the New York Aquarium in addition to riding the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, a must every summer.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE 17th ANNUAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI MEMORIAL READING

Who: Kat Georges, Peter Carlaftes, Jennifer Blowdryer, Puma Perl, Michael Puzzo, Danny Shot, Richard Vetere, George Wallace, more
What: Annual tribute to Charles Bukowski
Where: The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker St. between Thompson & La Guardia
When: Thursday, August 15, $10, 6:00
Why: “What sort of cultural hangover keeps Charles Bukowski in print and popular more than twenty years after his death?” S. A. Griffin asks in his Three Rooms Press essay “Charles Bukowski: Dean of Another Academy.” “In light of the fact that a good portion of what has been published since his passing in 1994 may not be the man’s best work, along with some heavy editing at times, why does Charles Bukowski remain relevant well into the 21st century?”

The seventeenth annual Charles Bukowski Memorial Reading takes place August 15 at 6:00 at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village in honor of what would have been the 104th birthday of the author of such books as Pulp, Factotum, Post Office, On Cats, and Love Is a Dog from Hell, with tribute readings by performance artist Penny Arcade, musician and storyteller Jennifer Blowdryer, poets Puma Perl, Danny Shot, and George Wallace, and playwrights Richard Vetere and Michael Puzzo, hosted by Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes of Three Rooms Press. Bukowski, who died in 1994 at the age of seventy-three, will be celebrated through poetry, oral history, rare videos, and live performances, with a special look at what he might have thought about the 2024 elections, presidential immunity, nonalcoholic beer, AI, and other contemporary issues. As a bonus, various prizes will be given away.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

THE TIES THAT BIND — TALES OF MADNESS: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) and Eli (Lina Leandersson) discover a different kind of love in Let the Right One In

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, August 16, 7:20
Sunday, August 18, 6:50
Series continues through September 1
metrograph.com

Metrograph’s haunting series “Ties That Bind: Tales of Madness” continues with the original Swedish thriller Let the Right One In, a chilling yet tender coming-of-age story about friendship and the meaning of family. In a snow-covered Stockholm suburb, twelve-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is severely bullied by Conny (Patrik Rydmark), Andreas (Johan Sömnes), and Martin (Mikael Erhardsson). The frail, blond Oskar dreams of getting even, but he always backs down. But then he meets the dark-haired, somewhat feral Eli (Lina Leandersson, dubbed by Elif Ceylan), who has moved in next door in their apartment complex. While Oskar lives with his divorced mother (Karin Bergquist) — his father (Henrik Dahl) has moved out to the country — Eli lives with Håkan (Per Ragnar), an older father figure who goes out to gather what Eli needs to survive: blood. But the aging Håkan begins encountering difficulties, forcing Eli to go out and hunt down her own food. As people start to go missing in the small community, Eli and Oskar’s friendship begins to blossom, two outsiders coming to terms with who they are. But when Oskar suddenly strikes back, Conny’s older brother, Jimmy (Rasmus Luthander), gets involved, and the steaks, er, stakes, get a whole lot higher.

Based on the 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is a gripping horror film that is one of the best of the twenty-first century. By making the protagonists children with common adolescent problems, Lindqvist, who wrote the screenplay, and director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Snowman) create a more realistic setting, so the scares are that much more intense. Hedebrant and Leandersson have a magical chemistry, their tentativeness and fears intoxicating. They exist in a world that is meant only for them; all of the adults are essentially peripheral, whether parents, teachers, or community members wondering what is going on, and the other kids are merely in their way. And it’s all about that very moment; they both might be twelve, but Eli is going to be that age forever while Oskar gets older.

The atmosphere is thick and tense throughout, elevated by Hoyte van Hoytema’s inventive cinematography and Johan Söderqvist’s dramatic score, performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. Despite some very memorable scenes involving shocking violence, at its heart Let the Right One In is a sweetly innocent love story, albeit with a few unusual complications. Matt Reeves directed a 2010 English-language remake starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz, and the National Theatre of Scotland staged a terrific theatrical adaptation that played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2015, but there’s still nothing like the original, a visually stunning and psychologically adept fresh new take on the vampire legend.

The Metrograph series also features such other mad tales as Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face, Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, and J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

Sutton Foster is an unstoppable force of nature in Once Upon a Mattress (photo by Joan Marcus)

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 30, $89-$389
onceuponamattressnyc.com

Sutton Foster makes an entrance for the ages in Lear deBessonet and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s delightful revival of Once Upon a Mattress, which opened tonight at the Hudson Theatre for a limited run through November 30.

In 2022, deBessonet made her Broadway directorial debut with a spectacular, streamlined adaptation of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fairytale mashup, Into the Woods, which transferred from the popular “Encores!” series at City Center to the St. James. She should have another smash hit on her hands with her spectacular, streamlined adaptation of another fairytale classic, Once Upon a Mattress, the Tony-nominated 1959 show featuring music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, and a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer, adapted here by Sherman-Palladino, the six-time Emmy-winning creator, writer, and producer of such series as Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Bunheads, which starred Foster.

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 story “The Princess and the Pea,” Mattress is set “many moons ago,” in a medieval castle where Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) is seeking a bride to become princess of the land. However, his strict mother, Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer), has devised impossible tests for his suitors, as she doesn’t want her son to be betrothed. Meanwhile, his father, King Sextimus the Silent (David Patrick Kelly), has nothing to say on the matter, as he cannot speak because of a curse that can only be lifted when “the mouse devours the hawk.” Even if he could talk, it is unlikely he would be able to get a word in edgewise with his powerful, domineering wife.

The queen’s dismissal of princess after princess has a terrible impact on her subjects; no one else can marry until Prince Dauntless has been led to the altar. The law particularly hurts Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels), who will be the new princess’s lady-in-waiting. Lady Larken is pregnant and is desperate to wed her true love, the handsome, brave, and not very bright Sir Harry (Will Chase), Chivalric Knight of the Herald, before she starts showing. Sir Harry — and his jangling spurs, which he is obsessed with — heads out to find a princess. And what a princess he brings back.

King Sextimus the Silent (David Patrick Kelly) and Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) oversee the potential marriage of their son, Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (Foster) is everything the queen despises. She’s dressed in muddy rags, her hair is a mess, she’s utterly uncouth, and she is covered in leeches and other surprising creatures, as she swam the moat and climbed the wall to enter the castle. “What on earth are you?” the disgusted queen says to Winnifred. The princess wriggles around as if something is on her body and asks the queen, “It feels weird. Is it weird?” Queen Aggravain responds, “For you? I’m going to say no.”

In a role originated by Carol Burnett and later played by such other comedic actors as Dody Goodman, Jo Anne Worley, Sarah Jessica Parker, Andrea Martin, Tracey Ullman, and Jackie Hoffman, Foster holds nothing back. She romps across the stage with infectious glee, singing, dancing, and telling jokes, a seeming free spirit who Dauntless is instantly smitten with, even as she claims, “Despite the impression I give, / I confess that I’m living a lie, / because I’m actually terribly timid, and horribly shy.” She continues her hilarious high jinks through to the adorable finale.

But before Fred, as she prefers to be called, can marry Dauntless, she has to pass the queen’s toughest test yet by proving she has the sensitivity of royalty. “Sensitivity, sensitivity, / I’m just loaded with that!” the queen tells her wizard (Brooks Ashmanskas). / “In this one word is / the epitome of the aristocrat / sensitive soul and sensitive stomach, / sensitive hands and feet. / This is the blessing, also the curse / of being the true elite. / Common people don’t know what / exquisite agony is / suffered by gentle people / like me!”

As the jester (Daniel Breaker), who serves as the narrator of the show, informed the audience at the beginning, the test will involve twenty down mattresses and a tiny pea.

Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (Sutton Foster) creates havoc after swimming a moat and climbing a castle wall (photo by Joan Marcus)

As with deBessonet’s Into the Woods, which was nominated for six Tonys, including Best Director and Best Revival of a Musical, Once Upon a Mattress is great fun, although the show lacks some of the serious edges that make Woods so special, instead concentrating on inspired goofiness. Two-time Tony winner Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes) is a force of nature, a whirling dervish of id; every bone and muscle in her body gets in on the action — and you might never look at a bowl of grapes the same way again. Urie (The Government Inspector, Buyer & Cellar) could not be any more charming as the prince, a man-child who has not learned how to walk up steps yet and doesn’t know how to stand up for himself. Just watching Urie’s and Foster’s eyes are worth the price of admission.

SNL veteran Gasteyer (The Rocky Horror Show, Wicked) is phenomenal as the nasty Queen Aggravain, nailing the Mamalogue; Tony nominee Chase (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Nice Work If You Can Get It) has a ball portraying the dimwitted Sir Harry; Tony nominees Ashmanskas (Shuffle Along, Something Rotten!) and Breaker (Passing Strange, Shrek) form a fine duo as the wizard and the jester, who knows his secret; Kelly (An Enemy of the People, The Warriors) is wacky as the king, portrayed over the years by Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton, Milo O’Shea, Tom Smothers, and David Greenspan; and Daniels (Company, The Book of Mormon) is sweet and lovable as the endearing Lady Larken.

David Zinn keeps it simple with his set, consisting of vaguely medieval beribboned poles and family-crest-style banners slyly referenceing New York City; the orchestra plays in the back of the stage, performing Bruce Coughlin’s enchanting orchestrations. Lorin Lotarro’s playful choreography keeps up the often-frenetic pace, while Andrea Hood’s costumes add elegant color, all superbly lit by Justin Townsend, with expert sound by Kai Harada.

Sir Harry (Will Chase) and Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels) share only part of their story with Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) and Prince Dauntless the Drab (Michael Urie) (photo by Joan Marcus)

Not everything works. Several songs feel extraneous, a handful of comic moments are repeated, and a few bows are left untied — the show could probably be trimmed down to a tight hundred minutes without intermission instead of two hours and twenty minutes with a break. But who’s to complain when that means more time with Foster and Urie, delivering such lines as “Alas! A lass is what I lack. / I lack a lass; alas! Alack!??” and “In my soul is the beauty of the bog. / In my mem’ry the magic of the mud.”

Early on, the jester asks, “What is a genuine princess?” It’s a question that relates more than ever to the state of the world in the twenty-first century. And one deBessonet, Sherman-Palladino, and Foster go a long way toward redefining.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FREE SECOND SUNDAYS: WHITNEY BIENNIAL

Isaac Julien, detail, Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die), 2022 (photo by Ashley Reese), a highlight of the 2024 Whitney Biennial

WHITNEY BIENNIAL: EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Sunday, August 11, free with timed tickets, 10:30 am – 6:00 pm
212-570-3600
whitney.org

According to Ligia Lewis, the eighty-first Whitney Biennial is “a dissonant chorus”; that’s an apt description of the exhibition, which features more than seventy artists contributing painting, sculpture, video, live performances, and sound and visual installations. Organized by Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli with Min Sun Jeon and Beatriz Cifuentes, this edition is themed “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” with works that delve into the sociopolitical aspects of AI, personal identity, and marginalization.

The biennial comes to a close on August 11 with a free day of special programming as part of the Second Sundays initiative, including tours, workshops, and storytelling. Navigating the biennial can be a daunting task; below are ten recommended highlights, followed by the scheduled programs.

Nikita Gale, Tempo Rubato (Stolen Time): The keys of a seemingly haunted player piano are not connected to wires, so the sound made is just that of the pressing of the wood. Lights dim as the visitor contemplates whether what they are hearing is music and what constitutes an original composition.

Isaac Julien, Iolaus/In the Life (Once Again . . . Statues Never Die): British filmmaker Isaac Julien invites museumgoers to wander around multiple screens hung at different angles and sculptures by African American artists Richmond Barthé and Matthew Angelo Harrison as a film depicts conversations with Alain Locke (André Holland), the influential Harlem Renaissance writer, philosopher, educator, and first Black Rhodes scholar, and white chemist and art collector Albert C. Barnes (Danny Huston).

Seba Calfuqueo, Tray Tray Ko: Chilean artist Seba Calfuqueo makes her way through the sacred landscape where the Mapuche people live, walking amid trees, rocks, and a river, draping herself in a long train of electric blue fabric.

Carolyn Lazard, Toilette: A mazelike conglomeration of mirrored medicine cabinets filled with Vaseline, a by-product of oil and gas production, brings up thoughts of the price of self-care and caregiving as the corporatization of the health-care industry and the decimation of the rainforest get stronger.

Julia Phillips, Mediator: Hamburg-born, Chicago-based Julia Phillips examines pregnancy and motherhood in a piece composed of two chest casts with partial faces separated by a microphone, evoking a spinning game one might find in a public playground.

P. Staff, Afferent Nerves and A Travers Le Mal: A long room bathed in an ominous yellow contains an abstract self-portrait of the UK-born, LA-based artist, with a live electrical net hovering overhead, inviting visitors into what P. Staff calls “a particular trans mode of being that exists in the tension between dissociation and hypervigilance.”

Kiyan Williams, Ruins of Empire II or The Earth Swallows the Master’s House: A reflective aluminum statue of Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, holding a sign that declares, “Power to the People,” watches as the north facade of the White House, topped with an upside-down American flag, sinks into the earth in this outdoor installation. Viewers are encouraged to walk through and look closely at the impending death of a once-powerful building constructed by enslaved laborers.

Constantina Zavitsanos, All the time and Call to Post (Violet): Take a seat on the carpeted ramp and get lost in the blue-violet light as captions projected on the wall share such thoughts as “The universe is made of abundance” as you feel the infrasonics of modulated speech reverberating underneath you.

Holland Andrews, Air I Breathe: Radio / Hyperacusis Version 1: Sleeping Bag: Brooklyn-based composer and performer Holland Andrews has created two pieces for the biennial, Air I Breathe: Radio in the stairwell and Hyperacusis Version 1: Sleeping Bag, located in the elevator, works that incorporate music and found sound — in the latter, some made by the elevator itself — that offer a respite from visual overload.

Sunday, August 11
15-Minute Tours: Highlights of the Exhibition, multiple times

Artmaking: Magnetic Mosaic, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Artmaking with Eamon Ore-Giron, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

Story Time with NYPL in the Gallery, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm

Double Take: Guided Close-Looking through Intergenerational Dialogue, for teens, 1:00

Recorridos Familiares, 2:30

Recorridos de 15 minutos, 3:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

UNDER THE PAVEMENT, THE BEACH: SOMETHING IN THE AIR

The cultural revolution on the early 1970s is back in Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air

SOMETHING IN THE AIR (APRÈS MAI) (Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Friday, August 9, 8:00; Saturday, August 10, 11:30 am; Tuesday, August 13, 4:30
Series continues through September 1
metrograph.com
www.ifcfilms.com

Olivier Assayas’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale Something in the Air, screening August 9, 10, and 13 in the Metrograph series “Under the Pavement, the Beach,” is a fresh, exhilarating look back at a critical period in twentieth-century French history. In this sort-of follow-up to his 1994 film about 1970s teenagers, Cold Water, which starred Virginie Ledoyen as Christine and Cyprien Fouquet as Gilles, Something in the Air features newcomer Clément Métayer as a boy named Gilles and Lola Créton (Goodbye First Love) as a girl named Christine, a pair of high school students who are part of a growing underground anarchist movement. Following a planned demonstration that is violently broken up by a special brigade police force, some of the students cover their school in spray paint and political posters, leading to a confrontation with security guards that results in the arrest of the innocent Jean-Pierre (Hugo Conzelmann), which only further emboldens the anarchists. But their seething rage slowly changes as they explore the transformative world of free love, drugs, art, music, travel, and experimental film.

Assayas (Les Destinées sentimentales, Summer Hours) doesn’t turn Something in the Air — the original French title is actually Après Mai, or After May, referring to the May 1968 riots — into a personal nostalgia trip. Instead it’s an engaging and charming examination of a time when young people truly cared about something other than themselves and genuinely believed they could change the world, filled with what Assayas described as a “crazy utopian hope for the future” at a New York Film Festival press conference. The talented cast also includes Félix Armand, India Salvor Menuez, Léa Rougeron, and Carole Combes as Laure, both Gilles’s and Assayas’s muse. Assayas fills Something in the Air with direct and indirect references to such writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians as Syd Barrett, Gregory Corso, Amazing Blondel, Blaise Pascal, Kasimir Malevitch, Max Stirner, Alighiero Boetti, Joe Hill, Soft Machine, Georges Simenon, Frans Hals, and Simon Ley (The Chairman’s New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution), not necessarily your usual batch of 1970s heroes who show up in hippie-era films.

Writer-director Assayas, editors Luc Barnier and Mathilde Van de Moortel, and cinematographer Éric Gautier move seamlessly from France to Italy to England, from thrilling, fast-paced chases to intimate scenes of young love to a groovy psychedelic concert, wonderfully capturing a moment in time that is too often marginally idealized and made overly sentimental on celluloid. “We’ve got to get together sooner or later / Because the revolution’s here,” Thunderclap Newman sings in their 1969 hit “Something in the Air,” which oddly is not used in Assayas’s film, continuing, “And you know it’s right / and you know that it’s right.” Indeed, Assayas gets it right in Something in the Air, depicting a generation when revolution required a lot more than clicking a button on the internet. “Under the Pavement, the Beach” continues through September 1 with three other films about civil unrest among the student generation, timely given the recent protests on college campuses around America: Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, and Ye Lou’s Summer Palace.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HARLEM WEEK 50: CELEBRATE THE JOURNEY

HARLEM WEEK
Multiple locations in Harlem
August 7-18, free
harlemweek.com

Fifty years ago, actor and activist Ossie Davis cut a ribbon at 138th St. and the newly renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. (formerly Seventh Ave.), opening what was supposed to be a one-day, one-time-only event known as Harlem Day; Davis called it “the beginning of the second Harlem Renaissance.” Among the cofounders were Davis, his wife, Ruby Dee, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ornette Coleman, Lloyd E. Dickens, David Dinkins, Basil Paterson, Tito Puente, Charles Rangel, Max Roach, Vivian Robinson, “Sugar Ray” Robinson, Hope R. Stevens, Bill Tatum, Barbara Ann Teer, and Rev. Wyatt T. Walker.

The festival has blossomed over the last half century into the annual favorite Harlem Week, a summer gathering packed full of live performances, film screenings, local vendors, panel discussions, a job fair, fashion shows, health screenings, exhibits, and more. This year’s theme is “Celebrate the Journey”; among the highlights are the Uptown Night Market, the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Harlem on My Mind Conversations, a Jobs & Career Fair, the Children’s Festival, the Concert Under the Stars, and the centerpiece, “A Great Day in Harlem.” Below is the full schedule; everything is free.

Wednesday, August 7
Climate Change Conference, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, West 125th St., 6:00

Thursday, August 8
Uptown Night Market, 133rd St. & 12th Ave., 4:00 – 10:00

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 5:30

HW 50 Indoor/Outdoor Film Festival, 7:00

Friday, August 9
Senior Citizens Day, with health demonstrations and testing, live performances, exhibits, panel discussions, the Senior Hat Fashion Show, and more, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Saturday, August 10
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating Harlem Week’s 50th Anniversary, 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

The Percy Sutton Harlem 5K Run & Health Walk, West 135th St., 8:00 am

Choose Healthy Life Service of Renewal and Healing, noon

Great Jazz on the Great Hill, Central Park Great Hill, 4:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival: Black Nativity (Kasi Lemmons, 2013), 7:00

Sunday, August 11
A Great Day in Harlem, with Artz, Rootz & Rhythm, the Gospel Caravan, AFRIBEMBE, and Concert Under the Stars featuring the Harlem Music Festival All-Star Band, music director to the stars Ray Chew, and special guests, General Grant National Memorial, Riverside Dr., noon – 7:00

Monday, August 12
Youth Conference & Hackathon, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Children’s Corner — Books on the Move: “Mommy Moment,” 10:00 am

Tuesday, August 13
Economic Development Day, noon – 3:00

Arts & Culture/Broadway Summit, 3:00

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:30

Wednesday, August 14
NYC Jobs & Career Fair, CCNY, 160 Convent Ave., 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 7:00

Thursday, August 15
Black Health Matters/HARLEM WEEK Summer Health Summit & Expo, with free health screenings, prizes, breakfast, and lunch, the Alhambra Ballroom, 2116 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

Harlem Summerstage, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, 5:00

Banking & Finance for Small Business & Entrepreneurs, Chase Community Banking Center, 55 West 125th St., 6:00 – 9:45

Harlem on My Mind Conversations, 8:45

Saturday, August 17
NYC Summer Streets Celebrating HARLEM WEEK’s 50th Anniversary, 109th St. & Park Ave. – 125th St. & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., 7:00 am – 3:00 pm

NYC Children’s Festival, with storytelling, live performances, dance, hip hop, theater, poetry, arts & crafts, double dutch competitions, face painting, technology information, health services, and more, Howard Bennett Playground, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Summer in the City, with live performances, fashion shows, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 6:00

Alex Trebek Harlem Children’s Spelling Bee, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 2:00

Harlem Week/Imagenation Outdoor Film Festival, Great Lawn at St. Nicholas Park, West 135th St. 6:00

Sunday, August 18
NYC Health Fair, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

NYC Children’s Festival, with storytelling, live performances, dance, hip hop, theater, poetry, arts & crafts, double dutch competitions, face painting, technology information, health services, and more, Howard Bennett Playground, West 135th St., noon – 5:00

Harlem Day, with live performances, food vendors, arts & crafts, jewelry, hats, sculptors, corporate exhibitors, games, a tribute to Harry Belafonte, and more, West 135th St., 1:00 – 7:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]