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Lincoln Center's great participatory performance series Midsummer Night Swing starts up again on June 25, and man are we ready to MOVE! Held in Damrosch Park on 15 nights over the course of three consecutive weeks, Midsummer Night Swing is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year (here are some pictures from last year).
I know, it's kind of a silly place, the multiple bar areas upstairs at the Hudson Hotel. There are those giant watering cans on the outdoor patio, now called Tequila Park, and the crazy chandelier over the front desk, and the thrones in the Hudson Common beer hall, and the giant domed lamps over the pool tables in the Library, and the hammocks in the Sky Terrace. It's so consistently, self-consciously bonkers that its hard not to be just a little charmed.
The South Street Seaport area was just beginning to shed its tacky-tourist image at this time last year, with a revitalized Museum, restaurants at which you'd actually want to eat, the great Imagination Playground, and the lovely East River Esplanade. And then autumn came, and the nightmare of Sandy, and ever since then the Seaport's main pedestrian plazas have been, in a word, forlorn.
For New York City's vegetarians and vegans, Table Verte is a wonderful discovery. It is likely the only vegetarian restaurant in town with a menu modeled after a classic French Bistro, with deeply satisfying rustic fare that relies on fresh-from-the-farm ingredients rather than your typical soy or wheat-based proteins (tofu, seitan, etc.) buried in garlic.
One of the biggest players in the Chelsea gallery scene is Pace, whose trio of large spaces on 25th Street are always a solid choice when you're making your art-viewing rounds.
It's been a long time coming (I know, I'm sorry, I first promised you it would open in the winter of 2011!), but the sports and fitness complex Asphalt Green is really, truly about to open its state-of-the-art facility in Battery Park City. In fact, the lobby's already open, and you can right now register for all summer camps, classes and teams, as well as fall classes and sports leagues.
It's the summertime dinner dream: good, simple food and drinks; lively, friendly atmosphere; comfortable outside seating somewhere NOT right on top of the street. Sounds good, right?
The list of must-do NYC summertime rituals just keeps getting longer: free Shakespeare (in the Park and in the Parking Lot), free concerts everywhere, outdoor movie festivals galore, Coney Island for the new rides (and the Mermaid Parade, on June 22), Rockaway Beach bouncing back from Sandy, on and on.
There are probably a hundred restaurants in this town that look exactly like Gajyumaru, especially, perhaps, on the avenues of the Upper East and Upper West Sides. You know the type of place: narrow, travel posters as decor, outdated color scheme, random menu, an overall feeling of fatigue.
Last fall, when design firm rAndom International first presented their remarkable Rain Room at London's Barbican Centre, rave reviews and social-media-fueled word of mouth quickly made five- hour lines at the site routine. Now, thanks to the terrific MoMA PS1 exhibition Expo 1, Rain Room has arrived here in Midtown, Manhatthan – not a bad walk for our Glenwood residents located at Paramount Tower!
