Who: Mutual Benefit, Shamir, Waxahatchee, Sadie Dupuis, Jazmine Hughes, Adam J. Kurtz, Dorothea Lasky, Mychal Denzel Smith, Doreen St. Felix, Brandon Stosuy
What: Housing Works Design on a Dime Benefit
Where: The Courtyard at Industry Park, Second Ave. between 36th & 37th Sts., Brooklyn
When: Friday, October 7, general admission $20, 6:00 – 11:00
Why: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe is holding its first-ever off-site event on October 7, teaming up with the Creative Independent for a benefit featuring live performances by musicians Shamir, Waxahatchee, and Mutual Benefit, book readings and signings by Sadie Dupuis, Dorothea Lasky, Mychal Denzel Smith, and Doreen St. Felix, a presentation by artist Adam J. Kurtz, and remarks from Brandon Stosuy; the event will be hosted by Jazmine Hughes. Complimentary refreshments include snacks from local Brooklyn vendors and potent potables courtesy of Greenport Brewing Company and Whispering Angel Wines; there is limited first-come, first-served seating. All proceeds will benefit Housing Works’ “health care, housing, job training, advocacy, and other services provided to homeless and at-risk New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS.” The benefit is part of a Design on a Dime weekend fair running October 6-9 at Industry City, with one-of-a-kind room vignettes by such interior designers as Akhira N. Ismail, Callidus Guild, CAVdesign, David Netto, House of Julien, LABLstudio, Leonora Mahle, Monica Hofstadter, Sheep + Stone, and others.
“He’s a handmaiden to the gods. He’s been midwife to some of the most important people in music,” John Cameron Mitchell says at the beginning of Danny Says, Brendan Toller’s highly entertaining if scattershot documentary about Danny Fields. Born Daniel Henry Feinberg in Brooklyn in 1939, Fields graduated from the University of Pennsylvania when he was still a teenager, dropped out of Harvard Law School, and went on to one of the wildest careers in the music business. Attracted to both cutting-edge and celebrity culture, Fields was a DJ, a magazine editor, a record executive, a press agent, and a band manager, always doing things his way. “I always went against the grain,” he says in the film, which features family photographs, home movies (including scenes from his bar mitzvah), outstanding music clips, and new and archival interviews with Fields, a natural storyteller with a casual delivery, whether he’s talking about his sexual promiscuity, hanging out with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick at the Factory, or trying to hook up Jim Morrison and Nico. Nothing is off limits as he shares tales about going to gay bars, making “Have a Marijuana” with David Peel & the Lower East Side, developing a friendship with Linda Eastman, and playing the Ramones for Lou Reed for the first time. “He had a way with words that made you want to become part of whatever he was doing,” Peel says in the film.
