Jedis!

Last Saturday night, as we were walking home through the Lower East Side, we stumbled on a park filled with lightsaber wielding Jedis. I kid you not.
It was all the work of Newmindspace, the same masterminds behind International Pillow Fight Day. Read more about it here.

Summer Highs...and Lows

It's Memorial Day on Monday -- the official start of summer in America. And in New York, that means that more bikers will take advantage of the lovely warm weather and hit the streets and bike paths in the coming months.

There's one memento mori that always stops me in my tracks on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It looks like any other bicycle at first, tied to a street pole or bike rack, but on closer inspection one realizes that it has been crudely sprayed white and sometimes it has flowers on the handle bars and a note explaining that it stands there to mark the spot where a cyclist was killed.

They are called "Ghost Bikes" and described here as "quiet and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed or hit on the street...They serve as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of cyclists' right to safe travel."

According to GhostBikes.org, these aren't a New York invention at all. "The first ghost bikes were created in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003, and they have since appeared in over 100 locations throughout the world. For those who create and install the memorials, the death of a fellow bicyclist hits home. We all travel the same unsafe streets and face the same risks; it could just as easily be any one of us." *Shiver*

Above, is a minimal ghost bike that I spotted just off the Williamsburg Bridge, a fantastic bike path between the Lower East Side and Williamsburg. It may not have a plaque or flowers, but it's a stark reminder, nonetheless.

Crying for Art's Sake

"Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present" is on at MoMA only until May 31. If you need any further inspiration to get there and sit with the artist, take a look at this blog called "Marina Abramovic Made Me Cry" featuring sitters who became emotional in her gaze.

Cuba on Her Mind

Mexican born photographer, Alinka Echeverria's sensitive work in progress is titled Cuba 1959: The Second Front. Echeverria (above), an ICP graduate, is concerned with collective memory. Editor At Large spotted her work yesterday in the Latin American Pavilion at the New York Photo Festival in Dumbo. For these portraits of men in their homes, she encourages veterans of the Cuban Revolution to reminisce. "The process of being photographed wearing their military uniforms and medals provoked in many an emotional journey into their past and created a space for self-reflection of their identity as veterans of a war that changed their nation forever," she writes. See her work below and here.

South Africa at the NY Photo Festival

Editor at Large went over to Dumbo to listen to Jodi Bieber talk about her new book on Soweto. It is quite an honor to be asked to give a talk at the festival and Bieber's work is certainly strong, interesting and even groundbreaking (though some photos made me think of Zwelethu Mthethwa's shack portraits and also of Lolo Veleko's "Smarties"). But we think Bieber could have been more prepared for the talk and more conscious of the fact that she was talking to Americans who have only the scantest knowledge of what life in South Africa was like during apartheid and what it's like now. For example, showing a photograph of black South Africans swimming in a public pool and commenting: "Before black people didn't swim," is not really enough information. Same goes for the amazing photo of the women with the boa constrictor wrapped around her body and the photo of the gay couple. Most speakers suffer from TMI (too much info). Bieber made us yearn to understand the context better and to know more.

Meanwhile, at the Tobacco Warehouse, I spotted the work of one South African photographer and one Swiss/Lebanese photographer who did a documentary in South Africa:

1. I loved Market Photo Workshop student, Simangele Kalisa's "Clothed" project. Kalisa grew up in Soweto. She says that she's using the title "Clothed" for a number of reasons. I like this one: "In most traditionally black Christian churches and movements in South Africa -- with most having their own uniform and therefore a particular semiotic system associated with dress and identity -- uniforms are called Izambatho (Zulu) or diaparo (Sotho) which translates into English simply as 'clothes'. Looking at the history of colonialism, and in particular how Africans were referred to as 'the naked'and colonisers 'the clothed,' it becomes apparent how identity can literally be fashioned by dress."




2. Mariella Furrer's hard-hitting black and white photographs document the realities of child sexual abuse beyond the headlines that are so hideous to read but also so easy to forget. "South Africa records one of the highest rates of child sexual abuse in the world," says her artist's statement. "Because the sexual abuse of children remains taboo, it is not spoken about openly and is, in a sense, invisible." This heartbreaking photo shows a child being examined for signs of abuse.

Pullino's Public Patio

Word on the Bowery is this: Pullino's, Keith McNally's new Nolita hotspot, opened its "patio" last night by placing chairs and tables on the sidewalk at the corner of Bowery and Houston. Thing is, that corner is extremely popular with hipsters, but also with the homeless. And, sure enough, a homeless man came around and began asking Pullino's patio patrons for donations. When a security guard asked him to move on, he became angry and began throwing his body against the nearby busstop. Needless to say, the two patrons he'd been plaguing decided against dessert and called for their check. Talk about a turf war!

Death for Dieters: Artisinal Ice Cream Truck

Van Leeuwen's artisinal ice cream truck is testing the willpower of New Yorkers from Williamsburg to the East Village. One source on the Lower East Side told Editor At Large: "Every night I come home and it's parked outside my apartment. It's ruining my diet!" Well, at least if said source does succumb, she should feel better about the fact that Van Leeuwen uses hormone-free milk in their flavors. Read more about them here.

Better than Magnolia: Butter Lane

Last night was a carb-fest: I cooked rigatoni with gorgonzola, artichoke hearts, asparagus and cream and my guests brought over organic cupcakes from Butter Lane in the East Village.

Seriously, if Carrie wasn't frozen in a certain New York minute, she'd dump Magnolia Bakery's overly sweet offerings in a heartbeat for these organic culinary orgasms.

Butter Lane owners Pam Nelson, Maria Baugh, and Linda Lea offer up frosting flavors like key lime, pumpkin, raspberry, or blueberry. We had popcorn flavor adorned with a couple of popped kernels, dark chocolate, chocolate with raspberry frosting (topped with a fresh raspberry), and vanilla with cherry frosting (crowned with a fresh cherry). I also hear that the banana cake with cream-cheese frosting and the grapefruit ginger is divine.

123 E. 7th St. (near Ave A)
Tel: 212-677-2880

Gourmet Doggy Treats

Spotted at the Hester Street Market (Saturday and Sunday on the Lower East Side), Naya and Mila's Gourmet treats, named after two pooches, of course. Plus, you can spoil your pooch with a handmade, leather personalized collar with their name on it.

Cart Smart

Editor at Large makes no attempt to hide her addiction to lemon curd ice cream, so it was with much excitement that she spotted this cart outside Cookshop in Chelsea.

Find refreshment on your way to the galleries on the corner of 10th Avenue and 20th Str.

Bloom-ing Marvelous

The South African author, Kevin Bloom, stopped over in New York on his way back from launching his memoir, Ways of Staying, in Toronto. Editor At Large caught up with him at a punk bar on Bedford Av in Williamsburg for a pint of locally brewed Brooklyn Lager and a conversation about how even if he wanted to leave South Africa (which he doesn't), he can't now that he's written a book called Ways of Staying , but he did concede that if he had to leave the country, Williamsburg wouldn't be a bad place to land up.

See what the Economist had to say about his book here