Neighborhood: October 2005 Archives

My love affair with morning yoga is being downsized. For the past month, I've been getting up three times a week at 7am to head to a 7:30am yoga class at Brooklyn Yoga at Smith and 9th streets. Here's the interesting thing about getting up at 7am, vs. 8am, it's not any harder, and I don't go to bed any earlier. It's kind of weird really. I wonder, Am I getting to be one of those old people who doesn't need to sleep? (And no, I am not 30 quite yet, thank you very much.) The reason I started doing morning yoga is because nothing--at least nothing in my life--happens at 7:30am besides yoga. Whereas at 7pm or 8pm, there's quite a lot going on--dinners, drinking, parties, shopping, really anything you can dream up starts around that time, and there are plenty of people in New York willing to do it with you. Anyway, Brooklyn Yoga has cut its morning classes from five days a week to two because of lack of interest. So I would like to encourage Brooklynites to check out the morning classes now on Tuesdays and Thursdays :)

While the AAF Contemporary Art Fair might be priced a little high ($100-$10,000) for those of us who can't quite shop at Design Within Just Out of Reach, it's a great place to catch hot artists at a point in their career where they have a solid direction and gallery backing, but haven't quite hit the big-time. I was lucky enough to peek at a Brooklyn artist's work before it headed over to the fair. I've known J Ivcevich since he and I lived in Atlanta, and I wrote this lovely little article on him that never got published because the magazine I wrote it for never got off the ground (you can read it after the jump). It's a few years old, but I think a lot of what he said about art is still influencing his work today.

Most of his work on display is either from a series he's doing on street art--graffiti tags and such--or from manipulated-- overexposed or eerily colorful--photos he's taken of Brooklyn scenery and then worked his magic on. In many of these pieces he paints much like a printer would print color separations. He paints a layer, covers it with resin, then sands and paints another layer, repeating the process until the image is complete. In the case of the graffiti photo/paintings, it's like having the luxury of a 3-D image contained on a perfectly flat surface. I find them intoxicating (and I swear it's not the resin fumes talking). I also find them beautiful, especially the pieces that started off the graffiti series, photo-realistic doors covered in brilliant street art. There's also something intensely peaceful about what's on display, like the work depicting an overexposed Coney Island. With all of the clutter stripped away, it becomes a very serene place. (Oh, and he also makes socks.)

Anyway, go to the fair! It's at Pier 92 (52nd Street and 12th Avenue) from Thursday through Sunday. It's $12 per day for adults and $9 for students. To see his work, hit up the Barbara Archer Gallery booth, which is #125.

I snagged the above photo from Barbara Archer Gallery's page at the AAF.

A faithful reader asks ...

What up with all the new "no honking $350 fee" signage in Park Slope? Have you seen em? They're effin everywhere. And ugly. Like an eyesore.

Now why would I go to Park Slope when I live happily on the other side of the Gowanus? Just kidding! But I haven't seen them, and I'm a little surprised that the normally quiet and respectful Park Slopers would even need such a sign.

Saw this beauty over the weekend on Union Street, a little east of Fourth Avenue on the north side of the street. I'm crossing my fingers that it's a hotel (although why anyone would particularily choose this location for a hotel confounds me).

Update: Reader Mark points abrooklynlife to a story about the Holiday Inn Express, featuring lovely views of the Gowanus Canal.

There's a lot of stuff in this teeny-tiny Brooklyn store that used to house a cosmetics shop. Stationery, T-shirts, jewelry, bags, even a full book of wedding invites pack Serimony. Kinda makes me think Tiny Living in the East Village could help the store make even more space for its wares.

Smith Street art that always makes me smile ...

Yes, I know that Thai food was the new Chinese food like five years ago, but I have to wonder how this trend has continued to thrive. Why haven't any respectable Chinese restaurants cropped up to challenge the Thai invasion? I can think of five decently priced, tasty Thai restaurants in the Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill neighborhood: 9-D, Joya, Tuk Tuk, Lemongrass, and Thai Sesame. Now, they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's all supremely edible and mostly tasty. I wish the same could be said for the Chinese places I've tried. Sadly, Ling Ling Young Young, Me and My Egg Roll, Wing Hua, all produce the same brown gelatinous food with varying degrees of quality. None of it is tasty, and it all tends towards serious heartburn and occasional questioning of freshness. Has anybody tried a Chinese take-out (or eat-in) restaurant in the vicinity that's worth the trouble?

This bit of wall art caught my eye in the neighborhood ...  I will call him cowboy death kitty.