BIKES OF BROOKLYN (Nº 1)
Posts tagged ‘queens’
BikeBANQUET November 7 with Recycle-A-Bicycle and special guest Randy Cohen
Thank you to everyone who came out to the BikeBANQUET to benefit Recycle-A-Bicycle November 7!
Guests enjoying the banquet part of the BikeBANQUET. In the foreground, (L-R) Hilda Cohen, Randy Cohen, Janet Liff and Josh Bisker
Randy Cohen
Karen Overton (L), Executive Director of Recycle-A-Bicycle, in conversation with Melissa Garcia
Arriving at the BikeBANQUET
Sarah Haga in conversation
Nomad Cycle owner and host Damon Strub
During dinner, Randy Cohen Janet Liff, Hilda Cohen and Josh Bisker in conversation
Randy Cohen listening
Dan Solow, of Southern Queens Greenway, and Marc Van der Aart, of Rolling Orange, in conversation during dinner
Angela Stach, Transportation Alternatives Queens Committee, in conversation with other guests during dinner
Randy Cohen spoke about biking in the city
Instead of cognac, a visioning activity and BikeART Party followed dinner and Randy Cohen’s talk. Lesley McTague and Dan Solow collaborate to make their Bicycle Utopia
Lesley McTague going for a spin in Bicycle Utopia
Stella Bronwasser of Rolling Orange making her Bicycle Utopia
Esmé Brauer (L) and Hilda Cohen taking their Bicycle Utopia visioning rather seriously
Esmé and Hilda in their Bicycle Utopia
Nathan and Lion Brauer getting ready for their BikeART portrait
Nathan and Lion in Bicycle Utopia
Luzmina Sindi Hernandez gets completely unnecessary encouragement from other guests as she gets her BikeART portrait taken
A passerby asks “Why does life have to be so terrible?” when no bikes are ALLOWED in Luzmina’s Bicycle Utopia
Recycle-A-Bicycle’s Will Knoesel works on making a very special Bicycle Utopia…
Will’s Bicycle Utopia
Raffle prizes donated by Nutcase Helmets, Vanmoof, Thule, Levi’s, Bloomsbury, Johanna Kindvall and ABUS
Avril Greenberg, raffle winner of a copy of the Culinary Cyclist, by Anna Brones and illustrated by Johanna Kindvall
Nathan Brauer, Hilda Cohen, Lion and Esmé Brauer, winners of an ABUS Bordo lock and a copy of the Infographic Guide to Cycling
Angela Stach in Bicycle Utopia
Reed Rubey goes for a spin on a Vanmoof bike in Bicycle Utopia
BikeBANQUET would not be possible without the generous support of Bicycle Utopia’s sponsors.
Modern Ruin – WORLD PREMIERE
Modern Ruin, premiering at Queens Theatre on Friday, chronicles the rise and fall of the iconic New York State Pavilion. A landmark of the 1964 World’s Fair, it is now, alas, a magnificent ruin at Flushing Meadow Park. Highly visible from the Grand Central Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, and by air for those flying into or out of La Guardia or JFK airports, the Pavilion stands a sentinel to past optimism of the future which is today.
The movie opens with a hardy group of volunteers determined to help save the structure. It starts with small steps. Simple steps, such as painting the perimeter wall of the pavilion. Set against the scale of the structure cutting a modernistic, timeless silhouette against New York’s ever changing skyline, these simple gestures seem so out of scale—almost futile. Instead, it is the start of something larger.
The time of the World’s Fair was a period when technology was viewed as a key ingredient to building a better, brighter future—and the world was on display. New York State was ascendant.
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Writer/director Mathew Silva does a very nice job of taking the viewer on a tour of the site: its origins, as a landfill made infamous in the Great Gatsby, the role of this the Pavilion in the 1964 World’s Fair, the conversion of the fairgrounds to today’s Flushing Meadow Park, and its the Pavilion’s various uses since the Fair, including a period as a roller skating rink, and its eventual decline.
This evocative film resonated with me on several levels.I visited the 1964 World’s Fair as a youngster, on my first trip back to New York from Indiana, where I lived at that time.Visiting New York City was already exciting enough—but visiting the World’s Fair is like visiting the “center” of the center of the universe.
I recall with wonder the many pavilions, monorail, sky rides—and even the fun of riding the Flushing Line (Number 7) train to the Fair. It was sensory overload for an impressionable young boy. The 1964 World’s Fair was a crucible where the excitement and energy of the world seemed to converge to produce a miraculous world full of vision of and almost unlimitless possibilities!
Watching this documentary we learn of how the magnificent New York State Pavilion was allowed to fall into disrepair—neglect or the need to apply limited resources to deal with the more pressing, urban problems that characterized New York City in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. We also learn of an exciting adaptive reuse plan to convert the pavilion into an aviation and space museum—only to learn that it never came to fruition. Credit goes to Mr. Silva to not linger too much on nostalgia, or to engage in a blame game for why the structure fell into disrepair. But the savvy viewer can draw his or her own conclusions.
The question going forward is what will become of this structure? An engineering feat in its day, is it destined to become a permanent ruin akin to the Coliseum in Rome or Stonehenge? Or will there be a force for adaptive reuse which will eventually re-purpose the structure for use by future generations?
Which force will prevail?
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Modern Ruin: A World’s Fair Pavilion – WORLD PREMIERE
Friday, May 22, 2015 at 8:00PM
Queens Theatre
14 United Nations Avenue South
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens
7 train to Mets-Willets Pt.
Tickets can be purchased here.
DocoMomo Tri-State is sponsoring transportation from Manhattan with a party bus.
Movie tickets and bus tickets are sold separately and can be purchased by following the links here.
Kenneth Lin, AICP is a Senior Planning Manager for a transportation consultancy based in New York City. Ken has a lifelong interest in architecture, urban planning and transportation, and has traveled to 128 countries on six continents.
NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS 1
Fall doesn’t really begin for me until Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair at PS 1. I go every year, and every year it seems like it’s better than the year before.
Something about literacy seems to encourage a particular kind of hob-nobbing, cheerful flamboyance. This year the ambience of fearless bonhomie is perhaps due at least in part to M. Wells , currently in between locations, serving up excellent snacks in the PS1 café.
The first time I went I seem to recall being able to get through the entire thing opening night, despite spending quite some time with a publisher from Pennsylvania who had brought a small collection of large, smooth rocks to keep him company during the fair. It was the extremely pleasant discussion of the life story and occupations of these rocks that made me linger at his table far longer than could be considered efficient. But even without such unhoped for, impossible to imagine opportunity for uplift, in recent years, between the sheer quantity of wonderful things to look at, not to mention interesting people to talk to, it takes me several hours just to get through the zines, requiring more than one visit. Worse things can happen.
While I use a bike to get to the fair, I don’t usually expect to Levitra find anything like Jenny Lin’s Skinny Leg, a hair-raising, and page-raising, pop-up book and zine that tells the story of her bicycle accident and how she lived to ride again. Her pop-up engineering is great and full of imaginatioon, so not surprisingly, we found out we are both fans of Sam Ita. She has one of his books, and I have all of them.
Jenny’s book is published by the excellent B&D Press back at the fair with a new Judith Butler zine in their series “The Life and Times of Butch Dykes a “series of fanzines about the lives and times of amazing women”
It would take all day to mention everything noteworthy, thrilling and delightful, such as Louis M. Schmidt , Cinders Gallery , Fantasy Camp, just to mention a few–but I’d rather get back to the fair for an egg sandwich and a closer look at what’s new from Picturebox.
Bike parking would be nice at some point. Meanwhile, I’m making a note to myself to remember, on a day when our species has got me down: there are way, way more book lovers than there are parking meters and bus stop signs in Queens.
