Although New York is an expensive city, there are plenty of things you can do for free or cheap. The city is best seen on foot. In addition to the most current cheap options listed below, check out the web sites Cheapo New York and FreeNYC.
Natural History cutback blamed on reduced city funding
The American Museum of Natural History has dumped its free jazz series, but it’s the why and how that may be worth noting.
The museum’s website explains the cancellation like this:
It is with regret that the American Museum of Natural History announces that, due to a reduction in City funding, we will no longer be able to present Starry Nights. We hope those who have enjoyed coming to the Museum for this popular music series will continue to enjoy the wide variety of cultural offerings the Museum provides.
Could this be a signal of things to come at other city museums and cultural venues?
The American Museum of Natural History currently has a suggested admission of $15 for adults; $8.50 for children; and $11 for seniors or students.
Astroland says it will close forever; Sunday's last day
Astroland’s owners today issued a statement saying Sunday will be their last day in business as an amusement park at Coney Island, the Post and amNewYork are reporting.
The 1920’s-era Cyclone rollercoaster, however, is safe and will not be shuttered.
An Astroland employee just confirmed the Sunday closure to NewYorkology by phone. She said the final hours of the parks operation will be:
Usher, Kieth Urban and Natasha Bedingfield today will play a free concert at Columbus Circle to celebrate last year’s NY Giants Super Bowl Championship and kick off the NFL’s 89th season.
20at20's $20 theater tix include 'Fela,' 'Enter Laughing'
$20 Off-Broadway tickets today return to New York for a two-week run.
The only catch is that you can only buy the $20 tickets 20 minutes before curtain at each show’s box office when you say ”20at20.”
This year, 22 shows are taking part in the 20at20 promotion, including “Fela!,” “Enter Laughing: The Musical,” “Forbidden Broadway: Dances With The Stars,” “Gazillion Bubble Show,” “Altar Boyz” “Stomp” and “Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque Of The Red Death & The Bells & The Tell-Tale Heart.”
The promotion, organized by the Off-Broadway Theater Alliance, runs through September 14. If you see seven of the shows during the two-week stretch, the Theater Alliance will buy you dinner for two (while supplies last.)
Astroland's final day may be this Thursday - Daily News
Say stop if you’ve heard this before, but once again, these could be the final days for the Astroland amusement park at Coney Island.
Astroland could close its doors forever come 1 p.m. Thursday, according to the Daily News.
The park’s (seldom updated) website currently states the park will be open daily until September 3, and then weekends only from September 8 “to date to be determined,” which is how they normally wrap up the season.
Next summer, Astroland would be replaced with new “amusements, games, shopping and entertainment galore,” a spokesman for developer Joe Sitt told the Post.
You can watch from shore, or onboard the Circle Line Spectator Boat, which will depart Pier 83 (at West 43rd Street) at 9:30 a.m. Tickets are $35 for adults, $30 for children and seniors.
To view the start of the race, head toward Pier I, near 72nd Street in Riverside Park South. To view the middle of the race, organizers recommend the best spot is Clinton Cove, at 55th Street on the Hudson.
The full schedule:
9:30 a.m. - Tugs gather near Pier 84, spectator boat departs Pier 83
10 a.m. - Parade of tugs from Pier 84 to the start line near the 79th Street Boat Basin
10:30 a.m. - Race starts
11 a.m. - Nose-to-nose pushing contests and line toss competition
Noon - Tugs tie up to Pier 84 for lunch
1 p.m. - Awards ceremony.
2 p.m. - Tugs depart
The event is organized by the Working Harbor Committee, Capt. Jerry Roberts (the founder of the event), Bert Reinauer of Reinauer Transportation and the Tugboat Race Steering Committee.
Summer's photo finish with Atget, Evans, Kikai, Fusco
By day, NewYorkology contributor Heesun Wee works as a video segment producer for Yahoo’sTech Ticker. She’s also writing a screenplay entitled “War Photographer.” Today, she surveys the best of the end-of-summer photography to check out in NYC.
I like to look. For photography fans like myself, it has been a bountiful summer in the city. From the shuttered, brothel-filled streets of early century Paris to the punk street culture of modern Tokyo, you can travel the globe through pictures – all for the price of a NYC museum ticket.
First stop, Paris by way of Alabama. “Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940” is a special exhibit that runs through September 1 at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection features a wide swath of images from Gothic-like landscapes to iconic portraits.
Among my favorites is Eugène Atget’s image of prostitutes, hanging out a widow in 1930s Paris. The women’s faces are painted like clowns, their eyebrows harshly filled in and arched. We may be looking at them, but they’re looking at us — and having the last laugh.
Also stunning are works by Charles Marville, who was under the service of Napoleon III and officially documented Paris as it was deconstructed and reconstructed. Marville roamed Paris early in mornings to record the metamorphosis of the city’s architecture. If NYC is all energy and money, Paris’ cityscape is elegiac and haunting in Marville’s version.
As dawn turned into day, another French photographer, Eugene Atget, was busy capturing iconic images of Paris street shops and windows. It’s the social, everyday Paris I imagine and dream of, as someone who has never been to the City of Lights.
Half way around the world, a budding American photographer named Walker Evans was taking note of the French photographers. In 1936, Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to document the daily Depression-era lives of tenant families in Hale County, Alabama.
Those images, a handful of which are on display at the Met, were groundbreaking in how collectively they weaved together as a narrative, something we take for granted today.
In Evans’ images, the families look directly into the camera, truly testing the boundaries of direct observation. It was a tactic Walker noted and borrowed from French photographers such as Atget and then made his own — an apprentice-like process of individuality great artists master.
Evans’ photographs along with writer James Agee’s nonfiction eventually was published, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” a landmark document of poverty in America during the Depression. (I met Agee’s daughter, deeply in love with her father, yet still haunted by her father’s larger-than-life past, but that’s another story. “Men” is a must read by the way. The original gonzo, nonfiction swashbuckler, way before the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, Sebastian Junger and “Generation Kill.”)
Modern Japan via Midtown
Next stop Japan. “Heavy Light” is an impressive survey of modern photography from Japan featured at the International Center of Photography in Midtown until September 7.
Central Park Film Festival screens the classics for free
The Central Park Film Festival begins tonight - screening a series of free movies that all focus on New York in some way.
The schedule:
August 19: Working Girl (Staten Island)
August 20: The French Connection (Bronx)
August 21: Strangers on a Train (Queens)
August 22: Moonstruck (Brooklyn)
August 23: August Rush (Manhattan)
For the final screening, Impact, the choir from the film, will perform live in the park before the movie screens.
The festival takes place at Rumsey Playfield (enter the park at Fifth Avenue and 69th Street.) Gates open at 6 p.m., and the films begin at 8 p.m.
Summer Streets opens 6.9-mile route for recreation
Summer Streets resumes today, with a 6.9 mile route through Manhattan shut down to cars from Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd Street, with a connection to Central Park.
The stretch will be open for cyclists, walkers, joggers and all sorts of impromptu car-free cavorting.
It runs from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. today. There’s one more Summer Streets on tap: August 23.
LivableStreets.com calls the three-Saturday event “the most important car-free event in New York City history.”
The Bowery Boys have some pictures of a few places near Grand Central Terminal that are best seen on a day like today — including the portals underneath the Helmsley Building.
Blogger and bike rider Usman also notes that if you’re heading southbound, the route is mostly downhill.
Lineup announced for Brooklyn Book Fest on Sept. 14
This year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, set for September 14, plans to branch further afield, drawing authors including Joan Didion, Pico Iyer, Thurston Moore, George Pelecanos, Terry McMillan and Dorothy Allison.
Now in its third year, the event will expand to five outdoor stages in Borough Hall Plaza and Columbus Park, plus Reading Rooms inside Borough Hall and a few blocks away at the Brooklyn Historical Society and St. Francis College auditorium. There will be themed readings, panel discussions and an outdoor literary marketplace with more than 140 booksellers, publishers and literary organizations.
“These days, Brooklyn is indeed the Creative Capital of America. We’re home to many of the world’s renowned writers and a thriving reading audience—as well as a destination for culture-seeking tourists worldwide,” Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said in a statement announcing the list of authors already confirmed for the event.
The authors thus far: Henry Alford, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, Moustafa Bayoumi, Mo Beasley, Paul Beatty, Ross Benjamin, Charles Bock, Philip Boehm, Mirko Bonne, Jimmy Breslin, Breyten Breytenbach, Geoff Canada, Susan Choi, Kate Christensen, Melissa Clark, Gabriel Cohen, Ta-Nahisi Coates, Celine Curiol, Frank Delaney, Stacey D’Erasmo, Joan Didion, Robert Draper, Nathan Englander, Rachel Fereshleiser, Nick Flynn, Jonathan Franzen, David Frum, Andrew Sean Greer, Ben Greenman, Philippe Grimbert, Paul Guest, Pete Hamill, Theodore Hamm, Kathryn Harrison, Matthea Harvey, A.M. Homes, Pico Iyer, Steven Jenkins, Oonya Kempadoo, Porochista Khakpour, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Lily Koppel, Jonathan Lethem, Tao Lin, Sandra Tsing Loh, Leonard Lopate, Phillip Lopate, John R. MacArthur, Ian MacKaye, John Manbeck, Alice Mattison, Patrick McGrath, Terry McMillan, Joe Meno, Thurston Moore, Arthur Nersesian, Jay Neugeboren, Fae Myenne Ng, Elizabeth Nunez, D. Nurkse, Joseph O’Neill, Ed Park, Jose Luis Peixoto, George Pelecanos, Arthur Phillips, Darryl Pinckney, Katha Pollitt, Kevin Powell, Richard Price, David Rakoff, Elizabeth Reddin, Nathaniel Rich, Simon Rich, Steven Rinella, Cristy C. Road, Carl Hancock Rux, Linda Sanchez, Loretta Sanchez, Esmeralda Santiago, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Ken Siegelman, Amy Shearn, Owen Sheers, Robert Silvers, Larry Smith, Patricia Smith, Amanda Stern, Manil Suri, Paco I. Taibo II, Paul Tough, Nikki Turner, Linn Ullmann, Matt Weiland, Jacob Weisberg, Sean Wilsey, Dirk Wittenborn, Naomi Wolf, Peter Wortsman, Kevin Young and Gary Younge.
There will be a Target-sponsored children’s area with readings from the likes of Mo Willems and Jane O’Connor. Other confirmed childrens authors: Raul Colon, Grace Chang, Nina Crews, Melanie Hope Greenberg, Edward Hemingway, Betsy Lewin, Ted Lewin, John Bemelmans Marciano, Chris Myers, Chris Raschka, Jon Scieszka and Marilyn Singer.
There’s a separate Youth Stoop stage, which will include panels on graphic novels, fantasy and teen glamour fiction. Confirmed youth authors: Holly Black, Susan Cooper, Deborah Gregory, Gail Carson Levine, David Levithan, Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah Mlynowski, An Na, Ariel Schrag, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Paul Valponi, Ivan Velez Jr., Cecily von Ziegesar, Brian Wood, Jacqueline Woodson and Bil Wright.
Brooklyn Book Fest is also on Facebook and MySpace.
Brooklyn Book Festival
September 14, (Sunday)
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
209 Joralemon St., map
