New Food Blog, 2 Cooks in the Kicthen!

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The Spread (labled)
Originally uploaded by killerfemme

I’ve decided to spread the blogging love and have started a collaborative food blog with my favorite chef SMH. We started our blog, 2 Cooks in the Kitchen, to be a collective project to share our love of cooking, eating and outer borough culinary exploration with our friends in New York City and the rest of the world. We hope to be the blog to visit if you are looking for the perfect market in Brooklyn, an ideal summertime vegan desert, are looking for the perfect thing to do with that strange vegetable you got from your farm share, or just enjoy reading about cooking and eating. We’re just getting started and welcome your feedback, ideas, and comments.

In addition, we’ll be serving sandwiches at the Desk Set’s Biblioball on Friday, December 11th. It’s a fundraiser for Literacy for Incarcerated Teens and also promises to be a lot of fun. Read the entry about it for details!

Hope you’ll join me on WordPress and continue to follow me on blogger!

Appalachian Trail Metro North Stop

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Thanks to SMH and other friends the weekends have been full of adventure that is accessible via public transit. We finally explored the section of the Appalachian trail accessible via Metro North (though we had to take a bus from South East due to weekend track work) and it was lovely. I am always so surprised at the idyllic landscapes accessible to NYC. I am beginning to understand the Hudson River school painters and their obsession with the landscape upstate. We had a lovely temperate day, got started down by a herd of cattle and had the Pawling Nature Reserve to ourselves! As a child I hiked the AT frequently during the summers in Maine and New Hampshire and it was pretty amazing to see another segment of it and imagine that I could keep going to Maine… or Georgia.

Leaving Berlin Ostbahnhof 2006

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I am feeling quite nostalgic today for Berlin and thinking about the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago (when I was a mere wee thing). In honor of that I finally re-made and posted a short video clip I took in 2006 as my night train pulled out of Berlin Ostbahnhof bound for Paris (a very slow ride to Paris, I might add). The trip goes through central Berlin, past many important landmarks, and would not have been possible when the city was divided.

Moving House

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Sunset Expanded
Originally uploaded by killerfemme

As most of you know, I recently moved three blocks away from my apartment of five years to my own place in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. This is a view from my fire escape I snapped while I was supposed to be doing homework (the day after I moved I also started my Masters in Public Administration at Baruch College, part-time, yes, I still work too). It’s a low, slow process of settling in, but I’m enjoying it and have a penchant for collecting affordable, mid-century modern furniture. There’s an ever growing set on flickr documenting the apartment’s progress from gutted to liveable to move in to being decorated.

My last Venus Zine Review

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Sadly, Venus Zine is going to stop doing live reviews. At least for now. Before they stopped though I got the chance to see Matthew Sweet (you know, that power pop guy from the 1990’s) with Susanna Hoffs (from the Bangles!) perform a series of cover songs at City Winery. City Winery is a new venue run by the guy who runs the Knitting Factory. It is definitely for adults who grew up in the scruffy downtown scene and now want a chance to sit down and relax when they see a show with a nice dinner or glass of wine (of course, this makes the ticket prices higher too). I enjoyed the experience, but was glad I didn’t have to pay $25 for it! Here’s the review with more about the music.

Those About to Die Salute You

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There are few times working as a museum educator and public programmer that I get to feel like an art world star. Usually I’m the one behind the scenes, checking the logistics and making sure everything goes off without a hitch. This week I, along with some of my colleagues, got a chance to be the stars of the show for a change.

When Peter called me and asked me to be involved in something after work on the 13th I agreed, not really sure what he was asking me to do. Little did I know, I had committed myself to taking part in the “art party of the summer,” Duke Riley’s project “Those About to Die Salute You,” the culmination of his residency at the Queens Museum of Art. Duke constructed boats for teams from 5 Museums in the city (Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, el Museo del Barrio, Snug Harbor Cultural Center?) out of reeds that grow in Flushing Meadows Corona Park and fashioned a project based on a Naumacia, a Roman battle in the flooded colosseum, held especially during times of hunger and strife. How fitting, I thought. Little did I know what I was in for.

Despite arriving early and being briefed on the rules, both participants and spectators were given copious amounts of free alcohol and the event began to feel a little more like a bacchanal and less like a scripted Roman battle. I was nervous when we got on our boat and were pushed out into the pool, only to have drunken visitors lobbing rotten tomatoes at our heads and kids ran around in the pool. This was not a family program, people and hey, we were supposed to be the spectacle, not them!

Everything that happened after that was a blur, but I do remember the Queens Museum team illegally boarding and capsizing our boat and me scrambling aboard their boat while beefy guys tried to throw me off. Heck no was I going to let that happen. I couldn’t help but remember my great-grandfather, Captain Patrick, who saved his family by lashing them to the mast of his sinking clipper ship. While the Queens Museum celebrated victory, a climbed up their boat and flipped them (and the crowd) the bird. It probably only lasted 5 seconds, but it was an eternity in my mind.

I climbed out of the pool to find myself bleeding. My wounds got a lot of play and made me a rock star at work today, though my head was still pounding from tomato impact.

See the whole story unfold on the Brooklyn Museum’s flickr stream. Gothamist also did a pretty good write up (and took great photos). The New York Times’ City Room Blog also has a pretty good write up.

Mud Jacuzzi at All Points We(s)t

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Dominick and I took on our biggest challenge yet, covering the three day All Points West music festival, held in Liberty State Park in New Jersey. While covering music festivals is daunting anyway, this one was made more so because of two days of rain (and lightening) that turned the festival grounds into one big mud pit that smelled like a cow farm. Dominick was a super sport and even wrote some up some of the show to cover while I had to work. Read our review and see the pictures for Venus zine here.
After you’ve soaked in the music coverage, let me point out this: I was miserable, and I got in for free! I have no idea why people who live in or near NYC would pay so much for a muddy music festival when they can see most of the bands who played in NYC fairly regularly and for that much money they can even sit down!

I think that if All Points West is to be successful with a New York audience they need to really give people an added value to their ticket. It’s not enough to book top acts in a city that’s saturated with them. Here’s my suggestions to make All Points West better:

Put it in the city proper. How about Flushing Meadows/Corona Park? At least it’s not Jersey and you can get there by bike!

If it must be in Liberty State Park, how about providing a FREE ferry service from lower Manhattan, instead of asking concert goers to shell out an additional $25 or suffer on the light rail to path to subway.

Set up the stages so that sound from different bands doesn’t bleed together.

Value your journalists! The press tent felt like a refugee camp at times, the ground was soaking wet like the rest of the festival grounds, and sometimes we weren’t even allowed to walk on a path behind some bleachers to get there. When I first got to the festival no one told me where the press tent was and most staff members didn’t even know there was one.
You can see more (amateurish) photos on my flickr stream.

Opportunus Gladiators Eleanor quod Mary Jane

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I am really looking forward to the Duke Riley organized naval battle on Thursday in the World’s Fair reflecting pool in flushing meadows Corona park in Queens. I love how the artist is basing this project off of the fact that the Romans staged these kind of battles in a flooded colosseum during times of extreme hunger to amuse the pleebs. How fitting for the recession! I hear it will be the summer’s ultimate art party, so please join us (in a toga) at 6 p.m. on Thursday, August 13th. For more information, please read Will Cary’s excellent blog entry here: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/bloggers/2009/08/11/the-heat-is-on-2/

Covering the 9th Annual Siren Fest!

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It was a perfect beach day last Saturday and Dominick and I spent it at Coney Island covering Siren Fest. We were thankful for the shade of the VIP tent and the free drinks, as well as the close views of the bands. Highlights included Frightened Rabbit, The Ravonettes, Built to Spill, Grand Duchy,and in a strange way, Thee Oh Sees. Please check out my review for Venus Zine here and Dominick’s lovely photos.

Swedes! Norwegians!

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At the end of last month I got to check out two newer bands from Scandinavia, the ever fertile (if frozen) land of indie pop. Those Dancing Days and I Was a King both played at Union Hall and both were great. Those Dancing Days were a fantastic discovery and will surely be the next girly Swedish pop sensation (with a good amount of young punk attitude thrown in) due to their catchy melodies and high energy live show. You can check out my review for Venus Zine (and photos, though those are nothing to brag about) here. I Was a King sounded so much like American, mid-1990’s Chapel Hill-style indie rock that I felt like I was in high school all over again. They probably were too then. Check out my review for Venus Zine here. Thanks!