this week in literature

TWI-NY TALK: PHIL HARTMAN OF TWO BOOTS

Phil Hartman and his son, Leon, will be celebrating the silver anniversary of Two Boots on August 23 in East River Park

TWO BOOTS 25th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT: AN EVENING OF FREE LIVE MUSIC, PERFORMANCE ART, POETRY, AERIALIST, AND FOOD
East River Park Amphitheater
FDR Drive between Grand & Jackson Sts.
Thursday, August 23, free, 5:00 – 9:00
www.twoboots.com
www.summerstage.org

Twenty-five years ago, New York native Phil Hartman and Doris Kornish opened Two Boots in the East Village, a pizzeria with a distinct Cajun flavor. In the ’90s they began expanding, adding a movie theater that screened alternative and foreign films while introducing pizzas named after fictional and real pop-culture figures. Today there are more than a dozen Two Boots restaurants, across Manhattan as well as in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, selling specialty pies named for such favorite characters as Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs,, Andy Kaufman alter ego Tony Clifton, Newman from Seinfeld, Larry Tate from Bewitched, No. 6 from The Prisoner, Dr. John, Bella Abzug, Bette Midler, and Charlie Parker as well as the Village Vanguard. On August 23, Hartman and his son, Leon, who also works in the business, will host a free concert in East River Park in honor of Two Boots’ silver anniversary, featuring performances by Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Mamarazzi, Odetta Hartman, Himalayas, the Whiskeyhickon Boys, Lady Circus, and the Magic Beans; the event will also include poetry from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Caroline Rothstein, Mahogany Browne, and Marshall “Soulful” Jones ) and the City Lore/Bowery Poetry Club’s POEMmobile, live art and painting by Lizzy Grandsaert and Kat Carrot Flower, the Homespun Mini-Merry-Go-Round, and informational booths from the Lower Eastside Girls Club, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Time’s Up. The festivities will be emceed by actor Luis Guzmán, for whom the Luisaida pie is named after, and there will be free samples of the Newman and the Larry Tate. Phil discussed Two Boots, the revitalization of the Lower East Side, and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: What were the initial expectations when you opened your first pizza place twenty-five years ago?

Phil Hartman: Doris Kornish (my original partner) and I had two principal motivations: we badly needed funds to finish postproduction on our first film, No Picnic, which would go on to receive an award at Sundance in 1988, and we’ve always operated under this premise at our restaurants — don’t try to cater to an imaginary audience, just do something that we really love and hope that other people agree with us.

twi-ny: How did the idea for naming pies after famous fictional characters get started? Do you need to get permission to use the names? If so, has anyone ever turned you down?

Phil Hartman: The character names didn’t start until eight years in — beginning with Larry Tate, Mr. Pink, and Newman. I’ve always loved second bananas, oddballs, and the overlooked and underappreciated. And we’ve never been turned down — we just figure we’re honoring these characters and they would be proud of it.

twi-ny: What is your personal favorite slice?

Phil Hartman: The Bayou Beast (andouille, crawfish, jalapeños, mozzarella, and sauce), which combines the best of both worlds (Italy and Louisiana) is my fave — though as their parent, you know I love all the slices.

twi-ny: Is there a specific combination that you really wanted to work but it just couldn’t come out quite right?

Phil Hartman: My biggest disappointment is that we never really made our Pizza Piazza work — Mike, being one of our all-time idols (we’re enormous Mets fans); the pie was too soupy but will be resuscitated when he enters the Hall of Fame next year!

twi-ny: On August 23, you’ll be celebrating your twenty-fifth anniversary with a free concert in East River Park. How did the lineup come together?

Phil Hartman: We’ve always loved African pop music, and given that Fela Kuti is no longer with us, we had the chance to reach out to the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars and grabbed it. Mamarazzi is an amazing local Afro-funk band, with lots of our friends in it; Odetta, our daughter, just recorded her first album, and is bringing together her band and lots of special guests; Himalayas is an awesome Brooklyn marching band, which will rock the crowd, from within the crowd; Whiskeyhickon Boys are one of our house acts — gangsta folk at its best; plus Lady Circus from House of Yes, Nuyorican Poets Cafe all-star poets, live art by 4heads Art Collective, a mini-merry-go-round, and lots more.

twi-ny: When the first Two Boots opened back in 1987, the Lower East Side was a very different place. Since then, you’ve been at the center of the neighborhood’s transformation, adding such events as the Howl! Festival and leading an influx of new restaurants, music venues, and other institutions in addition to a revitalized Tompkins Square Park. How would you compare the Lower East Side of the 1970s and ’80s to the way it is now?

Phil Hartman: We’ve lost a lot of the color and complexity, but there still are a lot of great folks and great organizations carrying on the countercultural tradition here. It’s a lot less scary, which is good if you’re raising three kids here (like I have), but also a lot more tame (which is a shame!).

LIVE IN THE CLUBHOUSE: “GIL HODGES” WITH AUTHOR DANNY PEARY

Bergino Baseball Clubhouse
Cast Iron Building
67 East 11th St.
Thursday, August 16, free with RSVP, 7:00
212-226-7150
www.bergino.com
us.penguingroup.com

“Gil Hodges smiled, which was a big deal.” So begins Tom Clavin and Danny Peary’s latest baseball biography, Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend (Penguin, August 7, 2012, $26.95), the follow-up to their 2010 tome, Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero. Clavin and Peary delve into the life and times of the Indiana-born Hodges, the beloved eight-time All-Star who played first base on the Brooklyn Dodgers’ championship Boys of Summer team and later went on to manage the Amazin’ Mets in 1969. In more recent years, the late Hodges, who died in 1972 just short of his forty-eighth birthday, has been the subject of heated debate over whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Peary will discuss that and more when he talks about the book on August 16 at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in the Cast Iron Building on East Eleventh St. For our interview with Peary about his Maris book, go here.

JULIA AT 100: A CELEBRATION OF JULIA CHILD’S 100th BIRTHDAY

Julia Child’s one hundredth birthday is being celebrated with special events around the city (photo courtesy PBS)

powerHouse Arena
37 Main St. at Water St., Brooklyn
Wednesday, August 15, free, 7:00
www.powerhousearena.com

August 13 marks the eighth anniversary of the passing of beloved chef Julia Child, who revolutionized home cooking through her series of popular cookbooks and television programs. But Wednesday, August 15, is what would have been her one hundredth birthday, and there are centenary celebrations going on around the country for Child, who won a National Book Award, three Emmys, and a Peabody during her illustrious career. One of the primary gatherings will be taking place at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, where “Julia at 100” will feature appearances by Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, Dave Crofton, co-owner of One Girl Cookies (One Girl Cookies: Recipes for Cakes, Cupcakes, Whoopie Pies, and Cookies from Brooklyn’s Beloved Bakery), Matt Lewis, co-owner of Red Hook’s Baked (Baked: New Frontiers in Baking and Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented), intimate blogger and Nutella lover Alyssa Shelasky (Apron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs in and out of the Kitchen), and Smitten Kitchen blogger Deb Perelman, whose first book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook is due out October 31. There will be treats from Baked and One Girl, a trivia contest, free wine, and a bake-off; attendees who bring a baked good inspired by one of Julia Child’s recipes are eligible for prize packages. In addition, numerous restaurants are hosting special Julia Child menus, including Buvette, Aureole, Madison Bistro, Union Square Cafe, Marea, and Alison Eighteen. And tickets are now available for the October 28 presentation “On Julia Child at 100,” a discussion with Knopf editor Judith Jones and culinary historian Laura Shapiro at the 92nd St. Y, moderated by Alexandra Leaf.

DRINK THE CITY

HONOR THE DRINKS THAT MAKE UP NEW YORK’S HISTORY
Parish Hall
109A North Third St., Williamsburg
Tuesday, August 7, free admission, 8:00
718-782-2602
www.parishhall.net
robinshulman.com

Over the course of the last three weeks, Canadian-born New York City journalist Robin Shulman has been celebrating the publication of her first book, Eat the City: A Tale of the Fishers, Foragers, Butchers, Farmers, Poultry Minders, Sugar Refiners, Cane Cutters, Beekeepers, Winemakers, and Brewers Who Built New York (Crown, July 10, 2012, $26), with a series of events at bars, markets, and restaurants, including a special dinner last Thursday at Parish Hall in Brooklyn. Shulman returns to Parish Hall tonight for “Drink the City,” where attendees can sample some of the beer, wine, and hard liquor that Shulman covers in the book, in which she talks to people who produce their own food and drink. “In 1626, the year the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan,” Shulman notes in the “Beer” chapter, “a visitor from Holland wrote that they ‘brew as good beer here as in our Fatherland, for good hops grow in the woods.’” Weaving fascinating historical details into her smoothly flowing narrative, Shulman also writes about honey, vegetables, meat, sugar, fish, and wine. Shulman will be joined at Parish Hall by some of the characters in Eat the City as everyone enjoys homegrown cocktails, both old and new, mentioned in the book, all made with local ingredients.

WORD FOR WORD: DEBUT NOVELISTS

Bryant Park Reading Room
42nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, August 1, free, 12:30
www.bryantpark.org

On August 1, Bryant Park’s summer Word for Word series celebrates debut novels by featuring four local writers who have just published their first fiction books. NYU Law School grad Cristina Alger will discuss The Darlings, about a wealthy New York family immersed in a financial scandal. Longtime nonfiction writer, essayist, and short-story specialist Karl Taro Greenfield will talk about his first novel, Triburbia, in which a half dozen fathers meet every morning at a coffee shop in TriBeCa and share their secrets. San Diego native Karen Walker Thompson will present The Age of Miracles, some of which the current Brooklyn resident wrote while riding the subway. And nonfiction author Jean Zimmerman turns to historical fiction in The Orphanmaster, going back to 1663 New Amsterdam. The afternoon will be moderated by Catherine Chung, whose first novel, Forgotten Country, deals with the history of a Korean family. The Word for Word series continues on Wednesday night at 7:00 with Harold Holzer discussing his latest work, Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory.

HARLEM BOOK FAIR: FROM HARLEM, WITH LOVE

West 135th St. between Malcolm X Blvd. & Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Saturday, July 21, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.qbr.com

Kicking off with the inaugural Literacy Across Harlem march, in which participants carry their favorite book, the Harlem Book Fair features a full day of activities celebrating the written word. Taking place at such venues as the Countee Cullen Library, the Langston Hughes Auditorium and the American Negro Theater in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the main stage outdoors on West 135th St., the fair will include live performances and readings by Lynn Pinder, Mitzi Carrasquillo, Elijah Brown, Sadequ Johnson, Danny Simmons, Renarda Huggins, Atiba Wilson & the Befo’ Quotet, Eleanor Wells, and others. Among the panel discussions and lectures are “Decision 2012: Race, Democracy, and the New Jim Crow” with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Cornel West, Fredrick C. Harris, and Sonia Sanchez, moderated by Peniel Joseph; “Black to the Future: Why We No Longer Die First in Science Fiction Movies,” with Shykia Bell, Joelle Sterling, R. Kayeen Thomas, and Gregory “Brother G” Walker, moderated by Harlem Book Fair founder Max Rodriguez; and “The End of Anger: Teen Book Talk with Author Ellis Cose.” There will also be a special tribute to Sekou Molefi Baako, with musical guests Mzuri Moyo and Jazz Trio, the Atiba Kwabena Trio, and the NuyoRican School Poetry Jazz Ensemble featuring Americo Casiano Jr. with Edy Martinez, Ray Martinez, & Yunior Terry in addition to poets E. J. Antonio, Cypress Jackson Preston, Tony Mitchelson, and Ed Toney.

NEW MUSEUM BLOCK PARTY

Experimental composer Sxip Shirey will be performing at 2:45 at the New Museum Block Party in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on July 21

New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery at Prince St.
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Chrystie St. between Delancey & Broome Sts.
Saturday, July 21, 12 noon – 5:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

The sixth annual New Museum Block Party takes place on the Lower East Side on Saturday in nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park as well as the museum itself. There will be live outdoor performances by experimental artists Chris Giarmo/Boys Don’t Fight, Yvonne Meier, Sxip Shirey, and High Priest of Antipop Consortium, a Bowery Artist Tribute in which visitors can remix and recontextualize poems that have ties to the neighborhood, a digital archive of New Museum catalogs (in which you can create your own mix-and-match mini-catalog), an Op art workshop, a Lower East Side photo show, an interactive paper workshop led by Nicolás Paris, an alternate-color demonstration, and free admission to the museum (with tours every hour at a quarter past), where you can check out the exhibitions “Ghosts in the Machine,” “Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969 – 2008,” “The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg,” and “Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently.”