Shoppers on the Fulton Street Mall in earlier times. Courtesy: Kelly Anderson

Following the second inauguration of President Obama this week, now is probably as good a time as any to take up the questions of race, class and commerce posed by Kelly Anderson’s piercing documentary, My Brooklyn: Unmasking the Takeover of America’s Hippest City. The film is a sincere, albeit unresolved, attempt to highlight the ways in which connecting to our neighborhoods as consumers can be way more consequential than connecting to them as active members of the community.

(more…)

Blockhead, aka Tony Simon, hard at work on the turntables at Paper Box (all photos by Kaitlin Parry)

When we saw that the hip-hop producer and Ninja Tune label mainstay Blockhead was going to headline a DJ showcase at Paper Box on Saturday night, we felt a little bit of perverse curiosity to see whether or not would his live performance be underwhelming.  His latest release, Interludes After Midnight, as well as the excellent Music Scene from 2010 are ponderous down tempo affairs, seemingly better suited to a quiet solitary walk home from the subway station than to the cavernous and graffiti-inspired chic of the Paper Box performance space.

(more…)

At The Narrows (all photos by Kaitlin Parry for Bushwick Daily)

Let’s face it, there’s no real reason for you to drink at a bar during the next couple months. …But since curtailing your alcohol intake simply isn’t an option, two Bushwick bars—The Narrows and Brooklyn Fire Proof—are planning to set-up heated outdoor areas to keep you warm and fuzzy without having to drink half a dozen Hot Toddy’s.

According to the bar owner, the planned set-up for The Narrows is going to include a sort of futuristic, infrared heating system for the bar’s annex area that will pipe in warm air from three different angles.

(more…)