Tag Archives: bowery

DAZED AND CONFUSED? NO PROBLEM! – AUG 16

Shawn Mendes, The Districts and Bomba Ester are all in concert. Plus, check out a screen of Dazed and Confused at Brooklyn Bazzar.

MONDAY FUN DAY – JUL 31

Happy Monday NYC!!! All Time Low and George Ezra are in concert. Plus, Games for Change Festival kicks off and Beauty and The Beast is screening at Yotel NYC.

The New Museum – a strong statement about contemporary art

The New Museum is devoted entirely to contemporary art from all over the world. Its exhibitions are often shocking, controversial, and they attract great criticism. But isn’t this what contemporary art is all about? The building of the New Museum, located on Bowery and Prince, is a contemporary art piece in itself. The Japanese architecture firm designed the building as a series of gigantic boxes, the museum’s galleries, placed on top of each other. It is truly a monument of contemporary art. Located in the Lower East side, where most buildings are old and poorly maintained, the building of the New Museum definitely stands and makes a strong statement – contemporary art exist, and it matters. The New Museum seems to reject everything that is bourgeois or old, making space for a new direction in art and culture – modernity.

John Varvatos: Rock ‘n Roll Never Looked Finer

One of the most popular and innovative male fashion designers of our time, John Varvatos, is rock ‘n roll meets high fashion. Taking over the infamous CBGB’s music club- that launched the careers of Blondie and The Ramones- John Varvatos is one of very few that could do the legendary music venue justice.

Most may know John Varvatos for his killer take on Converses, with the madly popular Jack Purcell and One Star styles, but his clothing makes men look effortlessly stylish. Every man can’t help but look two notches cooler in one of the distressed blazers, edgy leather jackets or skull cufflinks. All these cool clothes are hanging next to vintage album covers in a store where punk-rock music is always playing.

Known to throw concerts there from time to time- with free admission and free drinks- it’s no wonder John Varvatos is known as the rock star of fashion.

New Museum’s Lisa Phillips Dines at Gemma

As the director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisa Phillips knows a thing or two about the “renaissance,” as she calls it, of Bowery Street. The New Museum, is after all, at the center of that explosion of art on Bowery with its Guggenheim-esque new building that opened on December 1, 2007.

Picture 6When Lisa isn’t at the forefront of all things innovative, she heads up a few blocks on Bowery to the New Museum’s antithesis, Gemma. “This is where I spend most of my time and eat most of my meals,” Lisa told citybuzz of the East Village area.

Gemma’s an Italian restaurant that’s as rustic as you can get in ultra-modern New York City. There’s the classic thatched red wine bottles, wooden table tops and copper covered bar that evoke a feeling that Dorothy is no longer in the East Village anymore. The menu is filled with tried and true favorites like delicious wood-fired pizzas and soft gnocchi with a hearty Bolognese sauce. The easy setting and reliable food leaves diners like Lisa Phillips with the impression that, as the New York Times stated,”Gemma has an unlabored panache that makes an evening go down very easy.”

*** Lisa Phillips has been the Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art since 1999.