So many of us are sealed up in the NYC media bubble that we forget that there's an entire world out there—complete with struggles, intrigue, emotions and money—that has nothing to do with Manhattan. Or even Brooklyn! That's right, the San Francisco newspaper battle has been raging for years. Yesterday, we received an email from Bruce Brugman, editor and co-owner of the Bay Guardian, updating his fellow independent newspaper colleagues around the country about the next stage in the saga that has been taking place between his paper at the now-Village Voice Media-owned SF Weekly. Turns out that VVM may have to finally pay out the money courts have said is owed to the Bay Guardian. As the East Bay Express reported, it's become clear that this is a fight til the death, and one paper will not survive. And then today, in The Stranger (also an independent paper), writer Eli Sanders goes in for a great analogy: "It's a war straight out of the last century in its ruthlessness and its destructive potential, and it continues to escalate even as, all around them, the entire words-on-paper industry is in a state of collapse. They're like dinosaurs, fighting over the rotting bones of a soon-to-be-extinct animal."
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Bowery Boogie has posted a great video of artist David Livingston visiting the New Museum with his upholstery sculpture that resembles a large, flaccid penis. As you can see from the video, Livingston is asked to leave the premises. Maybe if he had checked it as a piece of luggage, would it have been allowed?
Big Dick enters The New Museum from David Livingston on Vimeo.
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When it was announced that veteran film critic Todd McCarthy was fired from Variety, and that they would pick up the slack with freelancers, it wasn't only other film writers who were incensed. A lot of industry folk thought it was a bizarre move, since most industry news can be found immediately for free (Variety content is behind a paywall). Patrick Goldstein wrote about it in the Los Angeles Times, also referencing the treatment of our own Armond White by publicists and the studios. Now McCarthy has officially joined the New York Film Festival selection committee, according to a press release issued from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
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When the Baryshnikov Arts Center decided to open its new Jerome Robbins Theater in Hell’s Kitchen, conversations quickly turned to who would christen the space as the first resident theater company. From the very beginning, BAC executive director Stanford Makishi said The Wooster Group was at the top of the list. “The ensemble represents the kind of creative thinking and exploration the BAC is interested in,” Makishi explained. “It’s always forward looking, and the level of artistry they put in to any of their productions is really at the highest level. Everything is so much at the top of their field.”
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It was once a NYC cliché: You saw it in Woody Allen movies, on NBC sitcoms and just about any Jewish friend's dinner table on a goy holiday. But now the classic Upper West Side Chinese restaurant seems to be on the wane. Most likely it's been replaced by a just-as-cheap and yummy Thai place. Or maybe Korean BBQ or even Japanese ramen. Of course, this hasn't only been happening in the UWS, you can say the same for the West or East villages, Chelsea or—hell—even Chinatown (you're just as likely to find Vietnamese pho or banh mi downtown as an Empire Szechuan or other standby). The West Side Spirit investigated, asking such stalwarts at Gael Greene and T. Susan Chang what they thought.
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As Paterson seems to tumble further—after news that he ordered calls in the abuse case—we also look at "The Short Goodbye," a piece published in The Capitol by Edward-Isaac Dovere, who spent time with Paterson during those couple of days when he still had a political future. Paterson told him: "I enjoy being governor. I want to make the decisions. I want the ball. I think I should be leading the state for the next four years. And I have felt that way all along. I did think about the fact that when you’re running and you’re making tough decisions at the same time, this is not going to help your popularity. But I’ve decided to weigh my fortunes on this: that the public will hear me, that they will eventually hear me." The paper also looks at the people who backed Paterson—all the way to the end.
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The struggle to keep the Ohio Theatre in Soho has been ongoing for a year now (we thought we'd seen the last show last March). But according to a press release that just went out, now the Ohio, located at 66 Wooster Street, has really lost its lease on life. The theater, a stalwart in the downtown scene for 29 years, will close August 31, 2010. So says Artistic Director Robert Lyons: “It’s where Tony Kushner produced his first play out of college, where Philip Seymour Hoffman made his professional acting debut, where Eve Ensler performed Dicks in the Desert, a decade before writing The Vagina Monologues. The Ohio Theatre has been an incubator and platform for New York’s most exciting and innovative theatre artists for almost 30 years. Its closing emphatically punctuates the end of an era in Soho, and stands as a high profile casualty in the relentless decimation of the lower Manhattan theatre landscape.”
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