Am I the only one who finds it odd that the New York Police Department is in charge of deciding who is allowed to have a permit for political demonstrations and decides who gets a press pass for city press conferences?

Taken on the roof of the excellent party for Paige West’s new book.

Hotel Chelsea Blog reports that the Bard family has been forced out of their management role. The family has been running it for over 100 years.

[photo from bwalsh on flickr]

Entrance of Pocket Utopia, with a salon poster intervention by Jonathan VanDyke

The page on ArtCal formerly know as “Williamsburg / Greenpoint” is now Williamsburg / Greenpoint / Bushwick, as the relentless march of gentrification means that many of the galleries that are interesting to James and me are increasingly distant from the Bedford and Lorimer stops. This doesn’t mean we don’t still have some favorites near those stops.

Here is an example: Brooklyn Fireproof now has an additional space in Bushwick called Temporary Storage that has a very interesting-looking show opening June 23rd.

“I Gave It Away”
Maria Dizzia, Jennifer R. Morris, Alison Weller
The Belt Theater
Photograph: Leslie Lyons

The Civilians are presenting Gone Missing at the Barrow Street Theatre (Barrow at Seventh Avenue) starting tonight. We’ve seen several incarnations of the play, and can’t wait to see it again. I wrote about one performance in 2003. Note that the MP3s are gone since my bandwidth was getting killed from people hot-linking to my various files.

Here is a discount offer for friends of bloggy. Go to Broadway Offers and enter the discount code GMEMX24. That almost makes up for the extortionate fees Telecharge gets away with — including a fee to email you a PDF of the tickets! The total charges were 25% of the $75 ticket price for 3 people! Check out this image:

One of Jonathan VanDyke’s “trees” at Pocket Utopia.

Read James’s post for more information, and check out my flickr set.

Daniel Isengart at the 28th Museum Mile Festival, 2006

Tonight is Museum Mile, when 23 blocks of Fifth Avenue along Central Park are closed to cars and museums are open late with free admission. The website has more information.

Our friend Daniel Isengart (alias Madame Butterfly) will be singing German Cabaret songs (with David Pearl on keyboard) on the steps of the Neue Galerie. In case of rain, go find him inside the Neue, at Café Sabarsky.

Neue Galerie
86th and Fifth
6-9PM (three sets)
Corner of 86th and 5th

How can you not love a singer who puts this on his website?

In the fall of 2003, Isengart brought an exclusive version of his One Man Show (entitled “Liederabend”) to Berlin’s legendary Cabaret establishment Bar Jeder Vernunft. Embraced by enthusiastic audiences, the show ran for 3 consecutive weeks, puzzling the scene’s conservatives and the press.

[photo provided by Daniel Isengart]

I stumbled across this on flickr and liked it.

Via Digby.

Abstinence-only sex education is basically another way to send tax dollars to right-wing fundamentalist organizations. Remind me again why I should be expected to donate time or money to the Democratic Party if this is what having a Democratic congressional majority brings us?

I spotted this piece in the office at Monya Rowe Gallery yesterday. Go here to see a larger version. Other works from this series are in Larissa’s solo show up now at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles.