News
Pabst Brewing Sold - The $250M Heist
Stephen Blackwell :: Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 3:00 pm
Pabst Brewing Company has sold for 250 Million dollars, which is amazing for a variety of reasons. First, the company doesn’t actually brew anything—they outsource production to a bunch of other manufacturers. Second, of the beverage brands Pabst Brewing Company owns, only a few of them are actually beers—most of them, like Schlitz and Colt 45, are actually malt liquors, which means they were never “brewed” at all. But that’s just the beginning. MORE »
News, Opinion
Duane Reade Corporate-Creeps Its Way Into Williamsburg
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Friday, May 21st, 2010 1:00 pm
We’ve all witnessed bullying by this point in our lives, although maybe we’ve forgotten what it looks like since our schoolyard days. Here’s a reminder: Bullies intimidate, threaten, and act aggressively toward people who really don’t deserve it. This behavior sounds suspiciously like that of Duane Reade, the enormous drugstore chain, as it prepares to open its Bedford Avenue location directly across the street from Kings Pharmacy in Williamsburg. The company is clearly trying to push out the smaller, locally-owned pharmacy and usurp its customers, and the residents of Williamsburg are none too pleased about it. MORE »
Live Reviews
Caribou: Live At The Music Hall of Williamsburg 5/7
Nick Nicoludis :: Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 2:30 pm
Some people think that you can judge the quality of show by the people attending, like how you can judge a book by its cover. Just as the latter statement is false, so is the former. When I arrived at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, an eccentric array of people were outside smoking between sets. This, and Caribou’s drastic musical metamorphosis had me excited and curious as to what the show would look and sound like. Would it just be Dan Snaith up there with a computer and some electronic gadgets or would they perform as a full band? After I decided not to hold any preconceived notions about what I was about to see, I entered the venue just minutes before Caribou took the stage. MORE »
Events
Brooklyn Flea Won’t Be Returning to DUMBO
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 3:10 pm
The Brooklyn Flea, home to myriad delicious treats and fun bargains to sift through, is returning to its original location in Fort Greene on Saturdays and will continue to operate at the Williamsburg Savings Bank on Sundays. Apparently, constant construction work on Water St. has caused a number of headaches for the Flea, and so they’ve decided not to return. In a statement, a representative said the following:
“While we are really sorry not to be in Dumbo, where we have received so much support from officials at the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Dumbo BID, we are also excited to consider our residency at the architecturally-stunning place where we’ve spent the winter. It’ll also be nice not to be so weather-dependent!”
Yeah, yeah, it must be easy to be so chipper about it when you’re not a resident of nearby Brooklyn Heights, like me. Oh, well.
News
Suckers Debut LP Due In June, SXSW Tour Dates Announced
Adam Kearney :: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 1:45 pm
Suckers are a gleeful, freak-pop Brooklyn hipster staple whose first self-titled EP was produced by Anand Wilder of Yeasayer and released in April 2009, and whose first full-length album Wild Smile will be out on June 8 on Frenchkiss Records. Over the last two years they have resided at the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg, but they are preparing for an outing that will include a packed lineup at SXSW, and additional shows with Local Natives.
You can listen to their eerie Lynchian cover of The Raveonettes’ “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed), and also peep their MySpace for “It Gets Your Body Movin’,” the hit single off the upcoming album. Make the jump for the Wild Smile tracklist and full tour info. MORE »
News
American Apparel Is Really Good At Making Enemies
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Friday, March 5th, 2010 6:00 pm
Last week, a group of feminist protestors swarmed the NoHo American Apparel on the grounds that its advertising and aesthetic objectifies women. That was a unified stance against for a clear and tangible cause. That certainly wasn’t the case in last night’s attack on the Williamsburg store, which was carried out by over 50 people clad in all black and ski masks. They threw rocks through the window, started trash fires, and basically caused all manner of mayhem on North 6th Street. Their reasoning is unknown to the media thus far.
Bands
Everybody’s Working For The Weekend: Neon Indian, Titus Andronicus, And More!
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Friday, March 5th, 2010 5:20 pm
Get ready for some good NYC weekend shows to fill the two-day gap before you have to go back to the office, or, like many of us, sleep in and surf Craigslist for a job!
MORE »
Events, Reviews
Review: Jeffrey Lewis At Glasslands
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Monday, February 15th, 2010 5:45 pm
Our friends at Stuff Hipsters Hate threw a soiree at Williamsburg venue and gallery Glasslands on February 12th. The high point of the evening was watching folk artist Jeffrey Lewis play his sticker-covered guitar and sing along with what he refers to as his “movies.” The movies aren’t really video projects - instead, Lewis breaks out an enormous sketchbook with “scenes” drawn on each page and flips through them, singing a narrative to match what’s happening in the elaborate comics.
Events
Vincent Moon Screens Take-Away Shows in NYC This Weekend
Matt Kiebus :: Friday, February 12th, 2010 4:15 pm
La Blogotheque’s founder Vincent Moon is holding a special screening of his “Take-Away Shows & Other Music Shorts” this Saturday at Union Docs in Williamsburg at 7:30 p.m. The 30-year-old Parisian music director has already put his uniquely innovative stamp on music videos. His La Blogotheque website is a collection of acoustic videos shot guerrilla style throughout Paris. Bands ranging from REM, The National, and Arcade Fire to Phoenix, Grizzly Bear, and Vampire Weekend have all participated in Moon’s Take-Away Shows. Moon’s real talent lays in being able to use the backdrop of beautiful city, like Paris, without aid of special effects, quick cuts, and multiple takes to create a striking finished product. The result gives fans a more intimate relationship to the music. MORE »
New York, News
This Week’s Battle for Bedford
Craig Gaffney :: Friday, December 11th, 2009 4:00 pm
Perhaps the only sect in Williamsburg more zealous than its long-established Hasidic community is its contemporary crop of cycling Hipsters. In a radical effort (both in the drastic and “rad” sense of phrase), a group of vigilante bike enthusiasts took to the streets in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to repaint bike lanes that had recently been sandblasted by the city at the request of its Hasidic residents. Check it out.
Distress over the lane on Bedford Avenue appears to stem less from traffic concerns, but more so with the risqué attire being sported by some of its female riders (“hip-sluts” if you will), do we have a fun name for them yet? MORE »
News
Liars Announce New Record
Stephen Blackwell :: Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 2:00 pm
Liars, the Brooklyn band that formed nine years ago and helped usher in the electroclash movement (which subsequently ushered in the gentrification of Williamsburg), have announced the release of their fifth studio album.
The album, called Sisterworld, will be released in early 2010 on Mute. The band recorded the album in the United States, a first since 2004’s They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, one of that year’s cheerier titles.
Says the band, “We’re interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like LA. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society.”
No track list or tour dates are available yet.
Issue 22, Magazine
Sufjan Stevens on His Orchestral Project, The BQE
Drew Fortune :: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 4:50 pm
For a man who has never shied away from grand ambition, Sufjan Stevens’s latest project, The BQE, a cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, appears to have gotten the better of him—a project with a scope and feeling too large to fully capture. A sprawling undertaking, incorporating an orchestra of over thirty people, companion comic book, 16mm cinematography and choreographed Hula –Hoopers, the two-year endeavor is finally being released as a dual CD/DVD package on Asthmatic Kitty. Upon release, Stevens, the man who famously announced plans to release an album for each of the fifty states, is finally ready to take a step away from the epic and learn to appreciate the modest. Call it Stevens’s Apocalypse Now or Fitzcarraldo, the project may have been a vision impossible to realize, but the Detroit native is not beaten and, like his hometown, is slowly learning to rebuild from the ground up.
Speaking with Stevens from his home in Brooklyn, the boy who grew up playing too many instruments is enjoying some much-needed downtime. MORE »
