So until I figure out how to make a calendar for this blog, I’ll be posting my upcoming events here. Feel free to follow along, or come and check them out for yourself!
Friday 3/2/07: The Guggenheim
- 5:15-7:45 pay what you want
- 9:00-1:00am First Friday
Friday 3/9/07: Point Break Live!
- A live performance based on the wonderfully ridiculous movie starring Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey, and Patrick Swayze
Friday 3/16/07: Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre
- 8:00pm Paincake & The Al Pacino School of Acting
- 9:30pm THE STEPFATHERS
Saturday 3/17/07: St. Patrick’s Day in Tampa
- A whole day of who the hell knows what!
Saturday 3/24/07: Brooklyn Brewery
- Tours from 12:00-5:00pm
Thursday 3/29/07: Live Music at 55 Bar
- Wayne Krantz at 10pm
Saturday 4/7/07: The Brooklyn Museum
- First Saturday 5:00-11:00pm
As Friday night and my first NYC literature reading approached, I have to confess that I got a little nervous. While I typically try to include others in my plans, I had purposely set this event apart as something that I would attend alone, so as not to be distracted or deterred from my cultural quest. Unfortunately it made me antsy, realizing that I would have no fallback if the reading turned out to be something dreadful or dull, but at this point I was committed, so after work I got on the train and made my way to KGB Bar.
Despite trying to leave a little early, I ended up arriving about fifteen minutes into the first reading, which was a shame, because the first reader turned out to be absolutely hillarious. I quickly found myself laughing along with everyone else in the room as he calmly walked us through his diary-esque depiction of one unfortunate man’s attempts to cure a stubborn sinus infection with a series of increasingly bizarre herbal remedies. The deadpan delivery, along with the comical absurdity of his character’s mounting plight were enough to make this an instant hit with me, as well as with the rest of the assembled listeners, who showed their appreciation with chuckles, giggles and outright peels of laughter. As far as I could tell, that poor sick man never did get cured, but at least we all could take something positive from his experience.
After being primed by this first author, we were introduced to the second reader, whose work was considerably more serious. To me, this requires a different approach to listening if you want to get anything out of what is being said. In my experience, reading a good piece of literature is a very personal, even introspective act, so finding ways to appreciate the same work in a public setting can be daunting, but by no means impossible. I think that the key is not to get too caught up in your surroundings. I try to clear my mind as best I can, focusing solely on the voice of the reader. I find that if you ignore everyone around you, and allow your mind to add a few layers of image and sound to the scene, you might just find yourself transported. At this point I should note that KGB Bar proved to be an excellent venue for this sort of focus. Thanks to a curteous audience and a competent reading, I was actually able to get a lot out of this particular performance.
Finally, following the serious second reader, the third and final reader, Melissa Kirsch, stepped up to the podium. As she began to speak, I got a sense that this woman would be, in some way, the headliner of the evening, and I wasn’t disappointed. While she declined to read from her major work, The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything, she chose instead to read some of her poetry and discuss, as she put it, “misery.” This may sound like the beginning of a long and painful episode, but it was actually quite the opposite. I’m not typically a connoisseur of poetry, but i found her readings to be fantastic, witty and in some cases very funny. Even her discussion of what she described as misery was in fact an entertaining and inspirational tale of how she came to be a writer, a journey that many in the audience could commiserate with.
After the readings were finished, I was able to mingle with the other patrons and even speak briefly with Ms. Kirsch. While I hadn’t necessarily anticipated bumping into any of the readers or taking time to chat with the rest of the audience after the event was over, the post-reading atmosphere that pervaded the bar was very relaxed and sociable. The relative smallness of the space worked to great advantage here, and I found this part of the evening every bit as enjoyable as the readings themselves. All told, my first cultural expedition was everything I had hoped it could be, and it had cost me nothing more than than about three hours of my life. Dare I say, “Mission Accomplished?”
Unfortuntely I’m playing catch-up this week as I’ve been somewhat absorbed in setting up and learning about this blog that I’m writing, but now I’m finally ready to provide an account of my premier adventure in the city. Since the post ran kind of long, I’ve broken it into two parts, of which this is the first:
After having made the decision to seriously pursue this project late last week, I had to come up with something great to start the ball rolling. I immediately decided that due to lack of proper time to plan, this wouldn’t be a fancy outing. That meant nothing requiring an advanced ticket purchase, or other special preperations of any kind. Thus, with these restrictions in mind, I set to work brainstorming some ideas. After initially casting about for inspiration, I finally decided on something that I had thought of several times since arriving here but never acted on: a reading of poetry or literature.
Now naturally not all readings are what you might consider accessible to the average person, but fortunately this is New York, and as I quickly learned, there are a variety of readings being performed literally every single night. One merely has to choose.
I personally went the Google route and found MurphGuide.com which provided a few solid leads. From there, I checked out some of the venues and their events, and ultimately opted for a reading at KGB Bar simply called “Paragraph.” I did not know what this meant, or even really what the bar would be like, but then the whole point of this is to try new things, so I decided to take the plunge. After a quick lookup on HopStop, I was all set to get out and experience my first taste of New York culture.
Hi, my name is Tony Floriani and I’m the mind behind NYCultureblog.com. This, of course, isn’t exactly my day job. I currently live in Brooklyn and work in internet marketing for a Manhattan based interactive company. I’ve been in the city since Summer, 2006, and as of the creation of this blog, have been mostly overwhelmed with working and trying to make a smooth transition into being a New Yorker.
Going back a little further, I attended undergrad at Northwestern University in Illinois, about ten miles north of Chicago where I studied English and Sociology. I also belonged