Fujisankei Communications International (FCI) and Sharp Electronics Corporation team up to bring you the New York–Tokyo Music Festival 2006 – a free, all-day, open-air music festival that will showcase the most inspired artistic talent from the East and the West.

Music provided byHIFANA (Break Beats – 21st century Japan’s most anticipated artist), PE’Z (Samurai Jazz – Japan’s No. 1 Instrumentalists), and MIGHTY CROWN (Dancehall Reggae – 4-time world champion) from Japan, as well as DJ A-TRAK (Turntablism – Kanye West’s live DJ) and TALIB KWELI (Hip-hop – Brooklyn-bred prodigy) from the United States.

Prior to an exciting evening of music, the afternoon will feature high-energy performances by worldly B-boy groups and traditional New Age Japanese instrumentalists.

Saturday, September 30, 2006 from 2:00 - 10:00 pm @ Rumsey Playfield: near Summerstage in Central Park

The opening night feature at the 44th New York Film Festival, The Queen goes behind giant, gold-crested closed doors to give a revealing look at an all-but useless monarchy in the age of democracy. The new film by Stephen Frears (The Grifters, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things) dramatizes the strained, awkward relationship between Elizabeth II and then-newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair in the week following the sudden death of Princess Diana back in ‘97. I suppose the mark of a good film, or any piece of art, is its ability to make meaningful that which isn’t necessarily riveting. There aren’t too many things in this world I care less about than the old hag’s handling, or mishandling of Lady Di’s death, and yet, I was fully engrossed in this movie. I guess that’s what you call a success. Helen Mirren, fresh off playing Elizabeth I in some long TV miniseries, is amazing as Liz II, half respecting the royal order, half mocking its unbelievable pomposity.

The Queen plays twice tonight, at 8:15 at Alice Tully Hall and at 9 at Avery Fisher Hall. Expect director and cast, which also includes everyone’s favorite talking pig handler James Cromwell, to be in attendance at Avery Fisher. Mirimax Films is opening the film in NY next Friday.

WHEN: Saturday, October 7, 2006, Noon to 6pm
WHERE: 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Aves
WHAT: This is a FREE event!

COME JOIN US FOR…

The Lower Eastside Girls Club Block Party, celebrating the grand opening of LA TIENDITA: “The little store with a big mission!”

La Tiendita is New York City’s first and only “girl-made and fair trade*” social venture gift shop, featuring select handmade items by Girls Club members and local artisans, as well as fair trade products from groups around the world.

Be here at noon for the ribbon cutting ceremony with local politicians, plus our favorite home-girl ROSARIO DAWSON (with Voto Latino and friends!) Blessing by the REVEREND BILLY and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir (finally, a store he’ll shop at!)

And then… a party all day hosted by MAHOGANY L. BROWNE with performances by:

DJ DROOPIST DaRIDDLAH’
NYC B*GIRLS
URBAN WORD NYC’S YOUTH POETS
GRACE (“neo-soul acoustic jazz”)
ALL-GIRL BANDS FROM WILLIE MAE ROCK CAMP FOR GIRLS
GIRLS CLUB FLAMENCO DANCERS

and more to be announced!

Get ready for other fun stuff including:

- Organic farmers market tables
- Organic (and healthy) baked goods from our own Girls Club Sweet Things bake shop
- Girls Club Street Studio: professional portraits in front of a backdrop created by our girls
- Custom T-shirt designs by legendary street artist, Chico

Saturday, October 7 2:00 PM - 9:00 PM (2:00 PM doors)
Oktoberfest featuring Rich Medina / DJ Spinna / Bobbito Garcia

Oktoberfest has the same goal around the world, Merriment and Beer. Around the world, cultures converge on a keg and pints with the utmost passion in October. Brisk fall air is perfect for tossing back a pint, listening to good music, and watching the fall leaves turn. Our Brooklyn version of Oktoberfest will be located on the Gowanus Canal. To get to the event, guests will be able to take a boat from Chelsea piers for a never before ride up the canal. This journey will transport the audience to another world without ever leaving the city. Arriving at this idealic waterfront location peppered with trees and foliage, DJ’s will be spinning and guests can sit around the blazing fire and help decorate the Graffiti pumpkins while they sip on a hot apple cider.

Tickets are $15 in advance from Ticketweb.

What's wrong with a little culture? ABC 7 highlighted Graffiti Free NYC, a graffiti cleanup program sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and videotaped their work power washing illegal tags and throw ups off walls. Though the video is chock full of the illegal stuff, they illustrate the story with a photo of a Puerto Rican flag mural. Since the mural is legal and not technically graffiti, they should really rename the article, “Getting rid of NYC’s Puerto Rican culture.” That or differentiate between whitewashing walls and whitewashing residents.

Art Battle to Empower Youth
Thursday, October 5 at the Five Spot
459 Myrtle Ave
Brooklyn, New York
9 PM - 2 AM

Tomorrow marks the opening night of the 44th annual New York Film Festival up at Lincoln Center. Unlike its downtown cousin the Tribeca Film Festival, which over the past few years has spread like a mushroom cloud over Manhattan, hell bent on dominating the public’s consciousness every May, the NYFF remains small and manageable, presenting a mere 28 features (Tribeca had over 250 this year). This year features an especially New York touch to the overly European artsiness of the fest: Lincoln Center is being ripped up for impending construction and looks like garbage, so all those stereotypical snooty French cinephiles will have to navigate through a construction yard to get to the venues.

As the snobbiest film festival on the East Coast (if not the Western Hemisphere) you may think the lineup has nothing to offer those of you who spent this past Friday sneaking flasks full of bourbon into Jackass: Number Two. Not so. This year’s edition of the fest features the first US showings of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (Oct. 13-14), with Kirsten Dunst as the doomed queen and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI frollicking around Versailles in 1780 to the sounds of Gang of Four, New Order, and The Strokes. Bow Wow Wow is used not once, not twice, but three times. And I could’ve sworn that was Phoenix in the background as the royal violin quartet.

The closing night selection (Oct. 15) is Pan’s Labyrinth, the new horrorshow from Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy) and it’s the creepiest, most horrifically violent fairy tale I’ve ever seen. Picture some crazy-ass mix-up of Tim Burton, Harry Potter, and a bloody Spanish Civil War thriller. Fans of David Lynch will be happy to know that the maniac is back with another epic mind-fuck, The Inland Empire (Oct. 8-9). This one clocks in at just over three hours, and one story thread centers on a human family with oversized rabbit heads that act out sitcom scenarios on a stage set. What! Ah but the real treasure of the fest is a straight-up monster flick from South Korea: The Host (Oct. 7 & 9) is about a mutant fish that’s born when toxins from a U.S. army base flow into the Han River. An enormous pissed off guppy with teeth proceeds to terrorize the residents of Seoul, and I’m sure they all blame George Bush.

The 44th NYFF runs September 29- October 15 at Alice Tully Hall and Walter Reade Theater. Check the full schedule. Over the next two weeks, Razor Apple will give you the low down on the films screening.

On October 8th we present to you a challenge:
A flat-out road, city and track race that runs from Nyack to Kissena.

HERE’S THE DEAL:

Racers must register in 2-man teams. This is a team race. At least one team member MUST be on a track bike.

On the morning of race day there will be a relaxed group ride from the city up to Nyack and the start line. That afternoon, the race begins. Teams will wind their way back home to NYC and through the beloved city streets that lead to Kissena Velodrome, where they will then compete in a Time Trial for points and victory.

Are you up to the challenge?

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is proud to present a slide show and discussion of the Miss Rockaway Armada, an artist-organized journey down the Mississippi River on a flotilla of hand-fabricated rafts.

Initiated by Greater New York 2005 artist SWOON, the Armada is a group of approximately 25 performers and artists from all over the country, including members of the Toyshop Collective, Visual Resistance, The Amateurs, The Floating Neutrinos, The Infernal Noise Brigade, The Madagascar Institute, and The Rude Mechanical Orchestra. In July, the group converged in Minneapolis to construct rafts and have since been journeying down the Mississippi, stopping in towns along the way to host musical performances, vaudeville variety-theater, and workshops focusing on arts and environmental issues.

For their presentation at P.S.1, Armada members will share photo-documentation and explain the project’s influences and goals; the details of construction, engineering, and day to day life on the boat; and the unexpected encounters along the way. Armada members participating in the discussion include filmmaker and musician Todd Chandler; arts organizer and media activist A’yen Tran; Visual Resistance member and stencil artist Knife Knife; and Nonsense NYC editor Jeff Stark.

Saturday, September 30, 3:00 pm. FREE with museum admission.
@ P.S.1: 22-25 Jackson Ave at 46th Ave in LIC
www.ps1.org | 718.784.2084

Are we approaching an end to the Clean Train Movement? Probably not, but it’s amazing what risks artists will take to create something so ephemeral it lives only in photographs. Halfway crooks need not apply.