OK, maybe we’re not the “best book group” in all New York. But back in 2004, author Wayne Barrett nominated us to the Village Voice’s annual “Best Of ” list, and so the name Best Book Group (BBG) stuck… Alex Herzan and I were having a sushi picnic …. when this idea was hatched. I mentioned to Alex that I had decided to mark my 10th anniversary as a New Yorker by reading a year of books about NYC. I hadn’t come up with a list of books yet, but I had decided to start with Ragtime. Alex was excited about my plan and had the great idea to make it a book group.
New York City
Raquel Z. Rivera
A portrait of an important Puerto
Rican traditional artist in New York City, Raquel
Z. Rivera, told in her own words—through a conversational
interview with folklorist Eileen Condon
and through excerpts from Raquel’s creative and
scholarly writing.
Downstate
You need to read this book [Annie Lanzillotto’s L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir} because it’s the most powerful depiction I have ever read of how a human being can draw on her folk culture, her humor, and her poetic insight to pull life-affirming meaning out of the gutter like a lost Spaldeen.
Hittin’ The Streets With The NYC Tranzformerz
For almost four decades, b-boying,
otherwise known as breaking or
break dancing, has been a staple of New
York City street life. B-boying is an artistic
and improvisational mode of non-verbal
communication and competition between
individuals and groups, usually in relationship
to music. It arose out of the streets of
the South Bronx in the early 1970s and, at
times, became an alternative to gang fighting:
that is, a non-violent resolution to the
problems of the street through the creative
use of the body, mind, and space without
weapons.
Songs
Ned took to the sea as a teenager, first to Gulf
Coast ports, later to California, where he found
work as a caulker in San Francisco Bay shipyards
by day, moonlighting as a singer, accompanying
himself with the banjo. Eventually, and with
strong support from many maritime trades workers
there, he became a full-time entertainer. Back
in New York as a well-established performer,
Harrigan began to stretch vaudeville skits into
full-length plays. They were anything but static
pieces. He refined, added to, and reintroduced
them frequently.
Play
On July 20, 1858, nearly 10,000 fans gathered at the Fashion Race Course in Queens to watch what may have been the most important game in all of baseball history…. baseball was governed by the rules and practices of an amateur association formed only the year before. Although this body called itself the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), in truth, the new game was an exceedingly local affair, little played outside what is today the New York metropolitan area.
Downstate
In my work as a folklorist, I have long realized
that we are not so much studying the
folks we interview and celebrate, but rather
documenting their work and partnering with
them. They are not our “informants,” a sorry
term often used in the discipline, but our
collaborators. We are not “studying them,”
but learning from them. Much of my work
as a folklorist involves documenting cultural
forms, but much of it, too, is about connecting
with kindred spirits from other walks
of life, and collaborating with them to find
creative ways to give out-of-the-mainstream
art forms and individuals the attention they
deserve.
A Staten Island Education
The author shares a memoir of her days at PS22R in Staten Island, when wearing a peace button was controversial, and how she navigated the political culture in the fifth and sixth grades, learning about civil disobedience.
Downstate
Most New Yorkers recognize … the heart of New York
City is not only found at the Met or Lincoln
Center, but in the hustle and bustle, the
c acophonous mix of ethnic groups, social
classes, folk, pop, and high art….With passionate interest in what’s distinctive
and local about New York, we have
issued, for the fifth year, the People’s City
Report Card 2015.
An Inside View of Contra Dancing in Brooklyn, 2015
Brooklyn Contra is the latest addition
to a contra dance subculture that for over
half a century has been hidden in plain
sight among the glittering distractions of
New York City. The latest contra dance
growth spurt started some 15 years ago at
the Manhattan contra dance series, when
an influx of younger dancers arrived on
the scene and kept coming back every week
for more.
ALN8BL8MO: A Native Voice
It was Arthur C. Parker
who, through his extensive writing, his
professional career as a museologist (his
own description of his work), and as an
activist, did much to dispel the stereotypes
about Indians that characterized his time
and make visible to the wider world the
history and the contributions of the
Haudenosaunee.
How I Spent My Summer (1967)
So now I had a job as a showroom model. I had to wear a black dress, heels, makeup, and my hair put up. Quite a change from jeans and sweatshirts. I took the subway from 116th Street to 34th Street and walked to the Brooklyn & New York Fur Manufacturers on 29th Street. When a buyer came—say from a department store in St. Louis or Des Moines—I would slip into a fur coat and walk across the show room, turn, pause, hold the coat open, then closed, and then leave the room. Unless the buyer had a question or wanted to look some more, I would not speak except to say the model number.
Downstate
Samuel Untermyer purchased what was then the Greystone Estate in 1899, and in 1915, he hired William Welles Bosworth, a École des Beaux Arts-trained architect and landscape designer, to createthe “greatest gardens in the world.” The centerpiece is the Walled Persian Garden, inspired by the Indo-Persian gardens of the ancient world, which, in turn, were inspired by descriptions of the Garden
of Eden.