City Winery backyard
155 Varick St. at Vandam St.
Saturday, August 6, $45 (food only), $60 (food and two drinks), 1:00 – 4:00 ($75 early entry at 12 noon)
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
The New York City barbecue season continues on Saturday, August 6, with the latest entry in the never-ending quest to bring great ’cue to Gotham. The fine folks at City Winery have teamed up with twin brothers Darin and Greg Bresnitz of Finger on the Pulse to present the first annual Summer BBQ Blow Out Festival, an afternoon block party of food and live music held in the Hudson St. venue’s outdoor backyard. A $60 ticket gets you two free drinks, one each of ten very different kinds of BBQ plates, and three hours of live music and DJs, from 1:00 to 4:00; for an extra fifteen bucks, you can get a head start on everyone else and enter at noon, and for fifteen dollars less you can get food only. The ten dishes, all created specifically for this event by chefs from the Meatball Shop, Mexicue, Craft, Momofuku Milk Bar, and other hot restaurants, include Phillip Kirschen-Clark’s duck leg skewer with pine-nut satay sauce, combava, mustard greens, and red-hot Holland peppers with puffed rice; Sam Mason’s grilled shrimp salad with Empire mayo; Sam Talbot’s charmoula-grilled mahi-mahi with Los Hermanos blue corn tortillas and peach mostarda; Noah Bernamoff’s coriander-smoked beef ribs; Thomas Kelly and David Schillace’s red beans and rice with house-smoked sausage; Tim Sullivan’s BBQ-spice grilled quail with Napa cabbage, scallions, citrus segments, and pecans; Daniel Holzman’s spicy lamb sloppy Joes; Oliver Kremer and Tyler Lohman’s braised pork shoulder with BBQ habanero glaze and sauce tacos; Jenny McCoy’s s’mores with chocolate panna cotta, toasted marshmallow, graham crackers, and smoked salt; and Christina Tosi’s watermelon and basil ice milk and sweet and salty cucumber ice milk. Music will be provided by Midnight Magic, DJ Autobot, Computer Magic, NewVillager, PUNCHES, and Ducky and the Snacky Tunes DJs, with such refreshing alcoholic beverages as vodka lemonade, sangria, and craft beers.
After the breakout success of Born to Run in 1975, Bruce Springsteen became embroiled in a lawsuit over control of his music that prevented him from going into the studio to make the highly anticipated follow-up. Springsteen found himself at a crossroads; “You didn’t know if this would be the last record you’d ever make,” he says in the revealing behind-the-scenes documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Combining archival footage of the Darkness sessions shot by Barry Rebo with new interviews with all the members of the E Street Band in addition to producers Jimmy Iovine, Jon Landau, and others, editor and director Thom Zimny melds Bruce’s past with the present, delving deep into Springsteen’s complex, infuriating, and fiercely dedicated creative process. “I had to disregard my own mutation,” Springsteen says at one point, regarding his battle to avoid getting caught up in the hype that came with Born to Run, so he decided that his next album would be “a meditation on where are you going to stand.” Rebo captures Springsteen and the E Street Band — from a bare-chested Bruce to a bandanna-less Steve Van Zandt — rehearsing and recording alternate takes of familiar songs as well as tunes that would later wind up on such albums as The River and Tracks, opening up Bruce’s famous notebooks and examining his intense creative process, which included throwing away dozens and dozens of songs that he believed just didn’t fit within his vision of what Darkness should be. Two of the most fascinating parts of the The Promise involve Patti Smith discussing “Because the Night,” which is about her waiting for her boyfriend at the time, Fred “Sonic” Smith, to call her, and Toby Scott talking about mixing the Darkness record to get the sound pictures in Bruce’s head onto vinyl. The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town is screening April 25 at 8:00 at City Winery as a benefit for the American Red Cross, with all proceeds going to Japanese tsunami and earthquake relief; the screening is just one of many being held around the country over the coming week, all of which will include special giveaways.
