THURSDAY 2/23
• Largehearted Lit: Jesse Browner & Joe Wallace @ Word (126 Franklin St) 7pm, Theme: New York City novel. Both authors will each read from their book, discuss music’s influence on their writing and vice versa, and a musician will share a book anecdote and perform, RSVP
♫ Don’t/The Pioneers of Seduction/Cobretti/Beef Wellington @ Grand Victory (245 Grand St) 7pm, $8, Tix
♫ Them Damn Ninjas Show @ Bar Matchless (557 Manhattan Ave) 8:30pm, RSVP

FRIDAY 2/24
♫ Kielbasa @ Veronica People’s Club (105 Franklin St) 10pm, Free Booze 11-11:30 AND 1-1:30, “See you there, Queen!” RSVP
♫ Turbotax w/Terrence Parker/Doc Daneeka/Octo Octa @ The Cove (108 N 6th Street) Free before 11pm, $5 till Midnight, $10 after, More info
♦ Dreaming Without Sleeping: Criminy Johnson @ The Active Space (566 Johnson Ave, Bushwick) 7-10pm, Join The Active Space in celebrating the grand opening of its new gallery space with an artist’s reception Criminy Johnson, RSVP

SATURDAY 2/25
* Best Wings in Brooklyn Competition @ Red Star Bar (37 Greenpoint Ave) 2pm, Free, Proceeds to benefit the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation
♦ Artist Talks @ Fowler Arts Collective (67 West St) Talks by Ellie Murphy and J.F. Lynch in association with their work in Of Mind, Body & Soul: An Exploration of the Personal, RSVP
♫ Arkham Presents: Club Tenebrarum @ Boulevard Tavern (579 Meeker Ave) 10pm, Goth tribute party to Italian Horror Cinema, RSVP
• Rumours @ The Loft Above Public Assembly (70 N. 6th St.) 10pm, $5, DJ Tanner presents the latest installation of Williamsburg’s hottest queer dance party. 80′s, post-punk, disco, 90s, old skool, & new wave.
SUNDAY 2/26
♦ A-Maize-ing Grain @ Arts@Renaissance (2 Kingsland Ave) noon-4pm, Suko Presseau, farm-educator for McEnroe Organic Farms in upstate NY, along with Caroline Burghardt present a family friendly food and crafts day that will explore Maize (corn) through a variety of hands-on activities, RSVP
♫ Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra: Paris in the Twenties @ St. Ann (157 Montague St, Brooklyn Heights) 3pm, $18, Kids Free, Nicholas Armstrong, Artistic Director, More info
♫ Roaring Twenties @ Manhattan Inn (632 Manhattan Ave) 10:30pm, As part of the Live Music Series

MONDAY 2/27
* Amazonian Dream @ Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer St) 7:30pm, Free slideshow & lecture with Katherine Needles
* Lady Returns for Drag Race Season 4 @ Veronica People’s Club (105 Franklin St) 9pm, Watch the new show Drag Race, Commercials will be replaced by Live drag performances, games & prizes! Happy hour ALL NIGHT! Free shot to anyone who shows up in drag, RSVP

TUESDAY 2/28
* Masters of Social Gastronomy Present: Candy @ Public Assembly (70 North 6th St) 7pm, Free Lecture with Sarah Lohman and Jonathan Soma, drinks and samples, RSVP
• Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom @ Word (126 Franklin St) Starting with her anxiety attacks in high school, Benincasa writes about her descent into agoraphobia (and related phobias) and recovery without skipping any of the gory stuff, but also without resorting to melodrama or self-pity. RSVP

* Greenpointers’ Pick
♫ Music
♥ Pheremones Likely
♦ Art Event

Submit events to greenpointers (at) gmail.com

© BasikKD from Greenpointers Flickr Pool

Nicole Reed, who began petitioning for a Farmer’s Market in McGolrick park sent me some positive feedback and updates:

The first meeting on 1/30 to discuss the possibility of a Farmer’s Market at McGolrick Park, with 709 signatures in hand, along with the support from District Leader Lincoln Restler, Morgan Pehme of the Friends of McGolrick Park, and Rev. Griffin Thomas of the Church of the Messiah was a success.

Community Markets is on the agenda to present tomorrow night, Thurs., 2/23 at 6:30pm, before the Parks and Waterfront Committee of Community Board 1 of Brooklyn. Location:  435 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. This meeting is open to the public. Please attend to show your support.

Andrea Diodati © Marofoto

Both nights of Williamsburg Fashion Weekend were highly entertaining. The fashion show style differed from neighboring Manhattan’s fashion week in a refreshing, non-corporate, chill, handmade and environmentally friendly kind of way.

Here are a few highlights from the shows:

First up was an Andrea Diodati’s fairy kei collection, full of recycled materials & found objects. Everything from curtains, doilies, pillows, chenille bathrobes, crochet this&that and other unsuspected objects were found in this delightful collection of pink, baby-doll looks. The pink cotton candy hair w/rainbow highlights gave a serious nod to Marge Simpson in terms of height and playfulness. A few stand-out items were the spandex harem leggings, plush back-packs and jackets with “pillow” collars, giving a whole new meaning to the bed-jacket. Andrea, inspired by post-impressionist artist Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec’s “la Clownesse” (female clown), described it as David Bowie meets the Easter Bunny. The visuals were sweetheart candies for the eyes with girls dancing nymph-like to hypnotizing narration + midnight cowboy music (make that cow-girl).

Mark Tauriello © Marofoto

Mark Tauriello’s inspiration was VHS culture and 80s slasher movies. The cover art from these original VHS movies were used to morph unfriendly characters like Jason, Freddie and Michael into digital color fantastical labyrinths printed on fabric, lending an almost Givenchy aesthetic. An equally animated Mark called his line “the baby of Freddie Krueger and Debbie Harry”. The result was totally original graphic prints that you wouldn’t mind owning at least one. Memorable accessories were cool flashlight headgear, Wilma Flintstones-looking necklaces and of course purses assembled from VHS cases. Braided Madmax hairstyles and heavy brows completed the look.
www.marktauriello.com

Hannah Peyser

Hannah Peyser, designer of Restler, joined the show at the last minute and really turned it out. Bug prints and paint-splatters in electric pop colors added a great graphic element to the otherwise all-black line. The hardware was well composed onto garments, such as punk studded collars and metal collar corners posted in unique places. Hannah made use of bamboo organic cotton fabrics, producing a nature-friendly yet modern line. The designs were edgy, clean and sleek with a 90s feeling, yet very commercial.
www.restler.us

Marco Santaniello © Marofoto

Born in the toe of Italy’s boot, Marco Santaniello took an anarchist approach to fashion. Marco showcased an array of colorful oversized sweatshirts with messages on beetlejuice-styled models. The end of each message was cleverly completed on message T-skirts (Marco’s patented creation), such as “YOU ARE TOO” (on top) “HIGH” (on skirt), or “KETCHUP SOON” (top) “SWAG” (on skirt). Messages like “FASHION WEAK” “NEW YORK” seem to project Marco’s feelings about the big fashion event in NYC, in an albeit campy playful way. Stuffed Donald Duck & panda bears and shiny pleather pacman & cartoon eyeballs were appliqued onto sweatshirts, reminiscent of the Tokyo street shots seen in FRUiTS magazine. When I asked Marco what he did for work, he responded that he gets money from his mom and dad…but that he is also a graphic pop artist.
www.marcosantaniello.com

Nathalie Kraynina © Marofoto

Bulgarian designer Nathalie Kraynina’s “dark side” theme featured a seasonally appropriate color palette of black, mustard yellow and purple. Nathalie called her ready-to-wear line a “cross between Chanel and the Rolling Stones,” pairing feathers & studs with plaid wool tweed skirts in modern silhouettes. Nathalie’s well-constructed outerwear pieces were especially noteworthy, mixing multi-media fabrics such as leather with fur backs, including the reversed mullet style vest (shorter in the back, longer in the front). Model’s faces were fused with black lace and meticulously positioned up-do’s, rounding-out a sophisticated polished look.
www.nathaliekraynina.com

Laura Brook Texter showed sexy dresses with long strips, giving a fringed effect, in electric pop colors grounded with black. A striking blonde young man played the Theremin while models sauntered around the stage, adding a nice theatrical effect.

Stephanie Hinson, a regular at Williamsburg Fashion Week, designed trend-right drapey dresses in royal blue, emerald green, black & white floral prints all grounded with black. Throughout the collection, Stephanie utilized color-block details and chic sheath shapes. A showstopper piece was the black fringe dress with the how-low-can-you-go back cowl.

Uta Brauser © Marofoto

Most memorable about Uta Brauser’s over-the-top show were her unusual headpieces. Taxidermied fox heads, stuffed bird claws and knitted plastic bag caps were some of the outrageous delights made with humor & originality for your melon.

See more photos on Marofoto.

Sponsored Post Courtesy of Veronica People’s Club – 105 Franklin St

© Jon Pywell

We can all be scientists, civilian scientists that is. Researchers, including ornithologists, rely on data collected from us regular people because they can’t be everywhere at once to observe everything all the time!

Today begins the Great Backyard Bird Count, an annual 4 day event that “engages bird watchers to create a real time snapshot of where birds are across the continent.” After our Winter Bird Walk on 1/28, we learned there are lots of different kinds of birds in Greenpoint!

It takes as little as 15 minutes on any day between today 2/17- 2/20. Your data helps birds!

How? Just look out your window, or any location in Greenpoint, and count the number and types of birds you observe.

If you need help check out the Kings County bird count list. This list will blow your mind. Once you’re done, just enter your data by March 5, 2012. Plus there is a huge photo library and photo contest you can submit to.

I just completed my bird count from the window at the Kingsland Ave HQ.

6 Housesparrows
2 House Finches

Just after I completed this post, I was washing dishes and looked out the window and saw this Cooper’s Hawk eating a pigeon. It was magnificent.

I also made this video.

Jen smoking an e-cig. She has since "quit."

The year was 1922 and prohibition in Greenpoint was already well underway. Led by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the dry forces had succeeded in convincing legislators that alcohol fueled little more than wife beating, child abuse, crime and poor labor productivity.

With banning in the air, Peter J. McGuinness – the old-fashioned Irish ward boss of Greenpoint – decided to sponsor a City ordinance to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to women, sparking a citywide controversy in the process.

Worldwide righteousness

McGuinness was not the first to single out women as unsuitable candidates for smoking. Leaders and legislators around the world have occasionally tried their hand at banning women from lighting up.

Last year, Hamas in introduced a short-lived ban to prevent women from smoking the narghile in Gaza. ‘The police have decided to ban women from smoking narghile in open, public places because it is against our customs, traditions and social norms,’ said Ihab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry.

Better known as the hubble-bubble or hookah, the narghile is a familiar site in the streets, cafes and open spaces of the region. Originally invented in India, the narghile was adopted by both the Turks and the Persians more than 500 years ago, spreading quickly throughout the Ottoman Empire.

By the middle of the 19th century the narghile was viewed as a fashion accessory among some women – the French romantic artist Delacroix painted a group of women sitting around a narghile in Algiers in 1834.

Nevertheless, at the start of the 20th century cigarettes were viewed as the props of ‘fallen women’ and prostitutes. In 1908 the New York City Board of Alderman unanimously passed an ordinance prohibiting public smoking by women.

The ordinance was quickly enforced, resulting in the arrest of Katie Mulcahey on January 22. Just two weeks later however, the ordinance was vetoed by the Mayor, George Brinton McClellan, Jr.

During World War I, the outrage felt against smoking women disappeared as the men left for war and the women began to work their jobs – donning coveralls and picking up wrenches for everything from the major shipyards to the local cruise port.

The gap in the market led tobacco companies to actively try and remove the taboo. Public relations supremo, Edward Bernays, was recruited and sought the help of psychoanalyst, A. A. Brill, who devised the idea that it was natural for women to smoke because of their oral fixation.

‘Today the emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires,’ wrote Bernays. ‘More women now do the same work as men do. Many women bear no children; those who do bear have fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom.’

Thanks to the work of Bernays, the number of women who purchased cigarettes went up from 5% of cigarettes sold in 1923 to 33.3% by 1965. Thankfully, the tide is again turning, with both women and men realizing the error of their ways, even if this realization is forced upon them.

The day the smoking died

It’s been almost three years since the smoking ban was introduced to New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former smoker himself.

‘Fundamentally, people just don’t want the guy next to them smoking,’ Bloomberg said at the time. ‘People will adjust very quickly and a lot of lives will be saved.’

As the number of places open to Greenpoint smokers become smaller, some are turning to products such as the e-cigarettes to continue to feed their addiction. E-cigarettes (or e-cigs) are electrical devices that simulate the act of smoking by producing an inhaled mist that replicates the appearance and sensation, as well as the flavor and nicotine content of tobacco smoke.

Though the cigarette’s manufacturers claim that the devices minimize the health risks associated with tobacco, health professionals disagree. E-cigarettes are already banned in Canada, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and New Zealand, with a number of other countries restricting their use pending further research.

End of the e-cig?

Last year, the New York State Assembly voted overwhelmingly 125-0 to ban e-cigarettes. The decision followed pressure from the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) group, which cited a report by the FDA describing e-cigs as posing ‘acute health risks’.

ASH had previously helped persuade New Jersey and Suffolk County, NY, to ban the use of e-cigarettes in no-smoking sections.

This Saturday (2/18/12) Brooklyn’s You Da Balm presents a midnight screening of the 1986 Kurt Russell/Kim Cattrall epic Big Trouble In Little China at IndieScreen in Williamsburg (285 Kent Ave.)

What you need to know:

10pm: IndieScreen’s bar opens the Mai-Tai drink special floodgates. Get a Mai-Tai, plus FREE You Da Balm.

Midnight: Kurt Russell kicks you and all your friends in the face!

Tickets are $10. Grab them now before they sell out.

Sponsored post courtesy of You Da Balm.