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Watch the Oscars among friends (and strangers) and more things to do this week in NYC
By
Steve Smith
Published Mar 10, 2023
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By
Steve Smith
Published Mar 10, 2023
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Seven Picks a Week is our guide to what’s worth catching in arts, culture and activities during the week ahead, with contributions from reporters throughout the WNYC/Gothamist newsroom and colleagues from WQXR and "All of It."
Go to an Oscars viewing party with your fellow New Yorkers
There are tons of storylines swirling around this year’s Oscars, which take place at 8 p.m. on Sunday. Will Angela Bassett win her first Academy Award? Will “Everything Everywhere All at Once” sweep all the major categories? Will host Jimmy Kimmel be able to resist making multiple bad jokes about Will Smith? After last year’s ceremony, you won’t want to miss out on watching the ceremony live — and the most fun way to do so is while you're surrounded by your fellow New Yorkers.
Viewing parties are happening throughout the city. In Brooklyn, Littlefield is hosting a free party emceed by Ruby McCollister, while sister restaurant Parklife is hosting a free Oscar bingo event with Carly Ann Filbin. In Queens, both Q.E.D. Astoria and the Prague Room at the Bohemian Hall are hosting watch parties. And in Manhattan, there are events at the Ivy Room, Fraunces Tavern, Caveat NYC, Oscar Wilde NYC, 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar and Club Cumming – which will present “The 2023 Logue Jam Oscars Viewing” hosted by Chelsey Ng and A.E. Kieren.
– Ben Yakas
Catch an ambitious festival of adventurous puppetry
"Puppetopia" has just opened at the downtown arts center HERE, and this year's lineup, curated by master puppeteer Basil Twist, includes five very different shows that explore some serious adult themes in fantastical and beautiful ways. Three shows are playing this weekend, and two close tomorrow night: "Mother Mold," a tabletop puppet show, and "Tin Iso and the Dawn," described as a shadow-puppet symphony with original music. Also playing this weekend and running for a while longer is "Deeper Closer Warmer," which brings together the Puerto Rican puppeteers of Poncili Creación with a local experimental music group called the Daxophone Consort. Two more shows open during the weeks to come: "The Emotions," a collaboration of Korean and Japanese artists, and "Offal Unstory," in which a creator named Kalan Shh! (enormousface) surveys literature throughout history to explore how humans justify dominating the natural world. All the shows are happening at HERE, on Sixth Avenue near Spring Street, and the festival runs through March 25.
– Steve Smith
Welsh post-punk trio Adwaith makes its stateside debut on Saturday at New Colossus Festival.
Courtesy Blocs
Determine your punk-rock saturation point on the Lower East Side
The Lower East Side reclaims its status as punk epicenter this week, as thousands of bands descend on the neighborhood’s venues for New Colossus Festival. Now in its fourth year, the marathon showcase features hundreds of local and international bands, many of them stopping through on their way to SXSW. An all-access badge runs for $123, but you can also opt for individual shows, including an impressive bill of free weekend matinees. Either way, it’s most fun to bounce recklessly between sets and venues with an ear for something new: Friday night at Arlene’s offers Valencian psych rock and Danish shoegaze and one of Bushwick’s premiere slacker-punk bands; a packed line-up of Saturday afternoon rock at Pianos includes the stateside debut of beloved Welsh singers Adwaith; and the festival closes out Sunday at Bowery Ballroom with scene veterans A Place to Bury Strangers. It’s enough to forget, at least for a moment, what the Man did to CBGB.
– Jake Offenhartz
Hear a chamber-music classic played by friends who work beautifully together
The Brahms Clarinet Quintet is one of my favorite chamber music pieces of all time: its mellow, wistful opening grabs one right away, and then it doesn't let go for the next 45 minutes or so. One of our country's great clarinetists — New York Philharmonic principal Anthony McGill — is joined by the equally wonderful Pacifica Quartet for a free concert in the free Music Mondays series on the Upper West Side. Frequent collaborators (check out their recordings), they also perform works by Sergei Prokofiev and James Lee III, a celebrated composer who teaches at Morgan State University in Maryland, whose work should be heard more in New York. The concert is happening on Monday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m., and you can reserve your spot in advance here.
– Ed Yim, WQXR
Holi was Wednesday, March 8, but there are events all over the city from now through early April to celebrate.
Celebrate Holi at a party in Williamsburg
Organizers of the “Holi in the City” party in Brooklyn say everyone is welcome to come celebrate the arrival of spring and to partake in the joys of Holi. Get ready to wear white, play with powders and dance at this all-day affair in Brooklyn. It’s on Saturday, March 11, and Sunday, March 12, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and tickets are around $40. You must be at least 21 to enter. And for more opportunities to celebrate Holi, check out our events guide.
– Kerry Shaw
View provocative prints by artist Kara Walker
For over two decades, Kara Walker has made controversial art using imagery of stenciled silhouettes, invoking thoughts about racism and gender politics through the use of stereotyped caricatures. Now, the New-York Historical Society is presenting a series of Walker’s prints based on a two-volume anthology, "Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion." The anthology, which was published in the years immediately after the Civil War, included 836 pages of maps, portraits and writings, but failed to include any Black people in its account of history. Walker's prints address that omission directly. The exhibition is on view through June 11; for more information about tickets, visit here.
– Precious Fondren
Author Margaret Atwood, seen here at a literary event in Toronto last November, has just published a new collection of stories.
Jeremy Chan/Getty Images
Stay in and catch up with a great new book
There's a line in one of the short stories in Margaret Atwood's new collection, "Old Babes in the Woods," that goes like this: A story isn't great because it's true, it's great because it's good. One of her characters wants to hold onto a lie because, well, it's a pretty good tale, even if it's a tall one. The collection is full of new stories and stories from decades ago: some are entirely fictitious, while others are based on real life. Characters include a storytelling alien, a snail trapped in the body of a woman, a housewife who believes she's a witch, and George Orwell. Atwood joined us this week to discuss "Old Babes in the Wood."
– Alison Stewart and Jordan Lauf, "All Of It"
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Steve Smith
Steve Smith is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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