The Museum of the Moving Image just finished their Fashion in Film Festival. Having only heard about it yesterday, I managed to catch one of the last screenings.

Located in Astoria, this museum includes prop, costume, and historical exhibits from the movie industry. In addition to weekend screenings, the museum hosts several events throughout the year, including the Machinima Festival, the Havana Film Festival, and the current Fashion in Film Festival. This current film festival showed films ranging from 60’s parodies about the fashion world to contemporary documentaries about fashion designers.
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Tapas are my favorite types of food. Only trouble is, I can’t eat most tapas on account that they’re meat-based. Not that I had any tapas on my first trip to Sacred Chow, the expensive, fulfilling, quaint vegan restaurant on Sullivan Street.
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I’m a big fan of supporting businesses who practice what they preach when it coincides with your own beliefs. I cannot tell a lie; when it comes to a choice between shopping for similar items at nearby stores, I will invariably choose the one with a rainbow flag sticker on their door. It’s just what I do. I also tend to increasingly gravitate towards complete vegetarian/organic restaurants, so it’s no surprise one of my recent favorite bakeries is even greener than I thought.
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I make it my point to subscribe to the feeds of other metblogs. An entry by Gina in Metblog Orange County caught my eye this morning. The entry, entitled “CityFacts” talks about the thing that is different about how Metblog Orange County is that Orange County is comprised of 34 distinct municipalities. But I wondered, is the OC comprised of 34 different mentalities and attitudes? I asked Gina in a comment to her post “Would a man in Anaheim refuse to date a woman in, say, Huntington Beach citing “geographical undesirability”?

Now if our blogging territory covered the same square mile area as the OC, we would also be blogging about parts of Long Island, Westchester, Rockland, and even Northern and/or N. Central New Jersey or Southern Connecticut. Talk about differing mentalities!

Does anyone recall the Seinfeld episode when Elaine changes her phone number and she gets a 646 area code, which is the newer area code for Manhattan? She goes into hysterical begging to the phone man “pleeez let me keep my 212″ . and then laments to Jerry that when she first came to NYC, she had a 718 area code and went into a funk for a year!

How about the episode when Kramer meets a girl from downtown and calls it a “long-distance relationship” and says “it’s a whole different world down there [downtown]“. While he is on the phone with his girlfriend in Jerry’s apartment, he tells Jerry “Do you know it is the same time down there as it is here?” How many of us live, or have lived in the hinterlands of Brooklyn or Queens and have a bunch of Manhattan friends who have never seen our apartments because they won’t leave the “island”.

Years ago, when Williamsburg was just getting hip, I heard comments such as “I would never move there! You have to take that G train!” And while living in Queens, I once asked a Manhattan-resident coworker if she would come to Forest Hills and see MY apartment for once. “What is there to do there? What would we do in Queens?” I tried not to be too sarcastic. I wanted to say “Oh I don’t know, maybe milk the cows and sit on the porch in rocking chairs” But instead I told her “Go get a your passport and a visa and take the R train. Where’s your sense of adventure?” (I know, that remark was sarcastic too). When she arrived at 63rd Drive and saw Marshall’s and Old Navy, she said “Oh you have the same stores” duhhhh!
Okay she was originally from out of town, so I will excuse her. But even I would say “going to the City”
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Photo of Playbill

Kevin Kline stars in King Lear at the Public Theater in the Village. I had heard rave reviews of his performance, so I decided to go see it. Due to its popularity, the only way to get advance tickets was to become a member. Since I’m a fan of both Shakespeare and Kevin Kline, I figured it was worth it.

I had never been to the Public Theater before. It’s conveniently located right near Astor Place, so close to several subway lines. Formerly the Astor Library, the theater itself is a beautiful old building with high ceilings and wall carvings. It opened with the world premier of Hair in 1967. Now the space holds performances of contemporary plays, classical works, and musicals.
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Brooklyn Brewery has just introduced another great beer. Brooklyn Local 1 is Brooklyn Brewery’s first bottle conditioned Belgian style ale. The beer is sold in corked 750ml bottles and is quite strong at 9% (almost double that of a typical beer). Despite it’s high alcohol content, I found it to be smooth, drinkable and even a bit fruity for a Belgian. Brooklyn Local 1 should be available in most local supermarkets and via Freshdirect (who has it on sale for $8 this week!). Has anyone else had a chance to try it?

Now I am fully aware that this is a sensitive subject, but as a former teacher in the NYC Board of Ed, I find myself haunted by this week’s news story about the school custodian who was accused of sexually molesting an 8 year-old student. The man spent two days at Riker’s Island, was taunted and threatened by inmates (child molesters are the lowest of the low in prison), and his wife and other family members suffered telephoned death threats. He was released due to “inconsistencies” in the child’s story, although the 8 year-old hasn’t retracted her allegations as of this writing. Oh, and the Dept. of Ed offered him his job back “if he wants it”. Now, let me say up front that I am not a parent, although I taught high school to inner-city kids. And I fully realize that school systems MUST take these kinds of allegations very seriously! But I also can’t help thinking there may have been a better way to handle this. First of all, would YOU want your job back after YOUR name was broadcasted all over television, and you were taken out of YOUR workplace in handcuffs? What kind of trauma will he and his family have to survive? Was there a better way to do this?

New York truly is unique.
Alone among major U.S. Cities save Los Angeles, it is THE city in which to participate in celebrity stargazing…and NYC has a particularly peculiar set of celebrities.
Models. Soap actors. Respected theatre stars. Chorus boys and girls (they do have their followers). Stars of the downtown nightlife scene.
They’re spotted everywhere, too. In your local Starbucks, at a restaurant, walking their dog (I saw Liv Tyler do this), buying flowers (saw Julianne Moore doing this), or enjoying some ice cream.
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Last night, Etsy Labs, in conjunction with MAKE and Create Digital Music, played host to the first Musicmaker Meetup. The gathering welcomed all those interested in music, electronics, circuit bending, open source technology, and just tinkering in general. Artists were invited to participate and bring their own projects, or simply enjoy the fruits of others’ labor. I chose the latter path, as my forays into Nanoloop aren’t quite ready for prime time.

A cigar box guitar connected to a Ritz box amp was slouched against one wall, while a man near the stage tended to an clothes iron and board, ready to connect to his laptop. The space was alive with the joy of curiosity, as artists toured their creations with an enraptured audience. Throwing one’s hands in a pit of slime (dubbed the Slime-A-Tron), and hearing the music it produces is a truly rare experience.

In a world where a subculture or a niche market can constitute a great number of people, exciting things start to happen. No matter who you are and what you like, there’s a group of people out their who like the things you do. It’s both comforting and exciting to meet those people, to be able to express yourself and be met with a nod of understanding. When you can do that, and play with a Frankensteinian Speak & Spell, well, you’re really living the good life.

Check out more pics! Also, at the Create Digital Music photopool.

The best part about living in the city is running into people. Today I ran into Michael J. Fox on Rivington. He was checking out a guitar store. I noticed him from nearly a mile away. This is the second time my heart beat so fast when encountering a celebrity. The last was when I ran into Scarlett Johansson at West 4th.

But this was different than Scarlett. This man is responsible for at least 100 hours of entertainment of my life if not more. I’ve watched and own the Back to the Future DVDs and seeing him was just such a treat. I wish I could have spoken to him, but I never speak to celebrities when I run into them. It’s an unwritten New York rule. You let them be. But, what did happen was that I went into the paper-selling store next door. He came in, took a look around, said “excuse me” and then just peaced out.

It was a great moment.