Today’s “Fab 5″+1 / Selected NYCity Events – SATURDAY, FEB. 14, 2015
“We search the internet everyday looking for the very best of What’s Happening on Manhattan’s WestSide, so that you don’t have to. We make it as easy as 1-2-3.”
Today is February 14, so let’s make the “Fab 5” a Valentine Special.
Ice Festival— Special Event (3pm) [FREE]
A Valentine From Rosanne Cash — Pop/Rock (7pm)
Valentine Ice Skate — Sporting Life (10am-10pm)
Dianne Reeves — Jazz (8pm)
and
Gregory Porter — Jazz (8pm)
Renewal of Vows / Times Square — Special event (6pm)
Anti-Valentine’s Day Beer Bash — Food & Drink (12pm-12am)
For other useful and curated NYCity event info for Manhattan’s WestSide:
♦ “9 Notable Events-Feb.”, and “Top10 Free” in the header above.
♦ For NYCity trip planning see links in “Resources” and “Smart Stuff” in the header above.
♦ For NYCity Sights, Sounds and Stories visit out our sister site: nyc123blog.wordpress.com
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Ice Festival
“Central Park’s fourth annual ice festival: master ice carvers from okamoto studio (3-5pm), free sprinkles mini-cupcakes (5pm, limited availability), and a silent disco dance party (5-7pm). milk truck, waffles and dinges, and ungle gussy’s will have food and treats available for purchase” (theskint.com)
This Valentine’s Day, celebrate your love of Central Park at our fourth annual Ice Festival. Witness ice-carving artists from Okamoto Studio use electric chain saws, chisels, and picks to transform more than 3,000 pounds of ice into a glistening replica of the Park’s most romantic statue ― Romeo and Juliet by Milton Hebald (1966).
As night falls, revel among colorful lights as the Mall becomes a 1980s-themed silent disco with live DJs, all as part of Central Park Conservancy’s 35th Anniversary celebration.
What to Wear: Baby, it’s cold outside! Dress warmly; the event is entirely outdoors. Otherwise, dress to celebrate Central Park Conservancy’s 35th Anniversary ― styles from the 1980’s and today are welcome!
Naumburg Bandshell, Mid-Park at 72nd St.
3:00 pm to 7:00 pm / FREE admission
A Valentine From Rosanne Cash
The eminently cool daughter of Johnny Cash is a skilled singer-songwriter in her own right; she also has over 20 Top 40 country singles to her name. For Ms. Cash’s latest release, “The River and the Thread,” which arrived last winter, she nudged some gospel and rock into her twangy formula. She leads a Valentine’s Day performance with assistance from the folk bard and comedian Loudon Wainwright III.” (Anderson-NYT)
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
At 7 p.m. / Sold Out last year, and tickets not available online now.
“Please call 212-570-3949 for ticket availability.”
or try the usual suspects – stub hub, craigslist, etc
212-535-7710 / metmuseum.org/tickets.
Jazz for Valentine’s Day
Dianne Reeves
Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th Street, fifth Floor, 8pm // (212) 721 6500
AND
Gregory Porter
The Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St., 8pm // (212) 840-2824
“Can there be any doubt that we are living in a marvelous age of great jazz singers? (If not truly golden like in the Olympian Billie-Ella-Sarah era, than silver at the very least.) With all the formidable talent about, the two artists to spend Valentine’s Day with, in the female and male categories, are Dianne Reeves and Gregory Porter. With his suave baritone and soulful style, Mr. Porter is an overwhelmingly passionate singer, and Ms. Reeves sings Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain” (on her current album, “Beautiful Life”) beautifully. Between the two of them celebrating the holiday over two nights, Midtown Manhattan will be well more than 50 shades of romantic.” (WSJ)
Valentine Ice Skate
It’s Valentine’s week! To celebrate we’re offering 2-for-1 skating at the Seaport Ice Rink. That’s right! All day on Valentine’s Day, rink admission and skate rentals will be 2 for the price of 1 as long as you bring a partner to skate with.
South Street Seaport
10am – 10pm / reg. $10 admission, $6 rental.
Renewal of Vows / Times Square
Say “I do” all over again.
On February 14, 2015, couples are invited to celebrate a tour-de-love as only Times Square can deliver by declaring their continued love on the famed red steps of Duffy Square at 6pm. If you’re in love – you’re invited; partners of all ages and backgrounds – whether you are of different religions, races, political stripes, you name it. Wedding attire is welcomed.
Have questions about the event? Visit our Renewal of Vows FAQ page
Duffy Square, 47th St. and Broadway (on the Red Stairs)
And for those without married partners, or lovers, try this One Night Stand:
EATALY NY throws an Anti-Valentine’s Day Beer Bash
ROSES ARE RED,
BEER IS GREAT.
LET’S DRINK ALL DAY;
WHO NEEDS A DATE?
Haven’t been struck by Cupid’s arrow? Not into that flowery, pink-hearted scene?
Eataly New York invites you to spend February 14th with us — and maybe some new friends — at an all-day celebration 15 stories above Manhattan at La Birreria, our year-round rooftop restaurant. We can promise flowing beer, delicious food, and no discussion of l’amore. In other words: we’ve solved Valentine’s Day.
From noon to midnight, our rooftop will be hopping with 20 breweries, more than 50 beers, and sexy food pairings! No need to register for ONE NIGHT STAND: entry is free (and limited to revelers aged 21 and over), and beer and food tickets will be available for $3 at the door.
The event will kick off with a beer-and-chocolate tasting led by Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione! From 12-1 p.m., Sam will offer complimentary tastes of dark beer and Venchi chocolate — no tickets necessary. Check out the menu and list of breweries here
EATALY NY, 200 Fifth ave. at 23rd St.
from 12 PM – 12AM
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♦ Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm ticket availability, dates and times, as schedules are subject to change.
♦ NYCity (pop. 8.4 million) had a record 56 million visitors last year and quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats in advance, even if just on day of performance.
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WHAT’S ON VIEW
My Fave Special Exhibitions – MUSEUMS / Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue
(See the New York Times Arts Section for listings of all museum exhibitions,
and also see the expanded reviews of these exhibitions)
Metropolitan Museum of Art:
‘Cubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection’ (last 2 days!)
This no-strings-attached gift of 81 Cubist works more than lives up to expectations. Concentrating on the four horsemen of the Cubist apocalypse (Braque, Gris, Léger and Picasso), it outlines the style’s heady transformation of art while giving the museum a foundation in modernism commensurate with its holdings in other eras. It’s a stunning show and thrilling event. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)
‘Madame Cézanne’ (through March 15)
Cézanne’s paintings of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, have long stonewalled would-be psychologists, offering few indications of intimacy or interior life. (The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, enthusing over “Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair,” focused on the work’s color scheme and called the chair “a personality in its own right.”) But assembled at the Met, and supported by more tender and informal graphite sketches, these portraits are more forthcoming. They suggest that numbing familiarity was actually, for Cézanne, a form of intimacy; that he could connect with portrait subjects only when they were as reliable a presence in his life as Mont Sainte-Victoire. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Rosenberg)
‘Thomas Hart Benton’s “America Today” Mural Rediscovered’ (through April 19)
The prickly American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton had his share of detractors. But even they would probably acknowledge that his early mural “America Today” is the best of its kind, a raucous, cartwheeling, wide-angle look at 1920s America that set the standard for the Works Progress Administration’s mural program and has remained a New York City treasure. Now installed at the Met in a reconstruction of its original setting (a boardroom at the New School for Social Research), it captivates with period details (from the cut of a flapper gown to the mechanics of a blast furnace) and timely signs of socioeconomic and environmental distress (exhausted coal miners and hands reaching for coffee and bread). 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Rosenberg)
Guggenheim Museum:
Guggenheim Museum: ‘On Kawara — Silence’ (through May 3)
The first retrospective of this Conceptual Art giant turns the museum’s spiral into a vortex suffused with the consciousness of time, life’s supreme ruler, in all its quotidian daily unfoldings, historical events and almost incomprehensible grandeur. The presentation of date paintings, “I Got Up” postcards and “I AM Still Alive” telegrams echoes Mr. Kawara’s exquisite sense of discipline and craft. This is an extraordinary tribute. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Smith)
Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 (through spring 2015)
Early in his career Vasily Kandinsky experimented with printmaking, produced brightly-colored landscapes of the German countryside, and explored recognizable and recurrent motifs. This intimate exhibition drawn from the Guggenheim collection explores the artist’s representational origins.
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (continuing):
The stately doors of the 1902 Andrew Carnegie mansion, home to the Cooper Hewitt, are open again after an overhaul and expansion of the premises. Historic house and modern museum have always made an awkward fit, a standoff between preservation and innovation, and the problem remains, but the renovation has brought a wide-open new gallery space, a cafe and a raft of be-your-own-designer digital enhancements. Best of all, more of the museum’s vast permanent collection is now on view, including an Op Art weaving, miniature spiral staircases, ballistic face masks and a dainty enameled 18th-century version of a Swiss knife. Like design itself, this institution is built on tumult and friction, and you feel it. 2 East 91st Street, at Fifth Avenue, 212-849-8400, cooperhewitt.org. (Cotter)
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Museum Mile is a section of Fifth Avenue which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world. Ten museums can be found along this section of Fifth Avenue:
• 110th Street – Museum for African Art
• 105th Street – El Museo del Barrio
• 103rd Street – Museum of the City of New York
• 92nd Street – The Jewish Museum
• 91st Street – Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
• 89th Street – National Academy Museum
• 88th Street – Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• 86th Street – Neue Galerie New York
• 83rd Street – Goethe-Institut
Last, but certainly not least, America’s premier museum
• 82nd Street – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Additionally, though technically not part of the Museum Mile, the Frick Collection on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 70th St. and the The Morgan Library & Museum on Madison Ave and 37th St are also located near Fifth Ave. Now plan your own museum crawl. ========================================================
NYCity 1-2-3 : What's Happening / Manhattan's WestSide 