NY Press & Virgin Vines invite you to High Society at High Chai.
On November 16, 2005 from 6pm-9pm, High Chai, a new restaurant/bar in the East Village,
will be sampling both complimentary exotic teas and Virgin Vines Wine for the public.
Hors D’oeuvres will be provided by High Chai.
Virgin Vines will be showcasing their new line of Chardonnay and Shiraz at this event.
To attend, please email marketing@nypress.com with your full name and the name of any guest that will be attending.(21+)

by Nick Gallinelli

Bansky Rat Mural - photo courtesy of Flickr Commons

We’ve all had the dream— where we’re standing in front of a large audience, larger than reasonably possible, and we’re stark naked. Fortunately for us, we’ve probably never actually experienced that dream in reality. Unfortunately for Ana Vargas, a 40-year-old New Yorker, she did (albeit in front of a much, much smaller audience) experience that in real life.

Vargas, while riding the A train on June 8, was accosted by a rat that crawled up her pants and forced her to divest her pants, exposing her underwear, and pride, to the entire train car.

“He was very big. I was shaking, but nothing was coming out . . . I had to pull my pants down in front of everyone on the train,” Vargas told the Daily News.

After the frisk, police and EMTs were quick to respond and met Vargas at the next station, Columbus Circle. They brought her to the hospital and treated her for scratches, and fortunately Vargas wasn’t severely hurt. The furtive rat ended up fleeing the scene, and the NYPD has surprisingly made no plan to track down the frisky critter.

In retrospect, there of course is a humorous hint to the story, but it does get one to think— at what risk are we of rodent attacks? How often does it even happen?

The answer: It’s not impossible, but not very likely.

Since the beginning of 2011 there have been three reported rat attacks on NY citizens, including Vargas’s.

1. January 2011 – CBS reported that a rat, trapped in a subway car, scurried along the floor looking for a way out when he latched on to a man’s leg and crawled up to his face. The man seemed to be unharmed despite clumsy defense tactics.
2. September 2011 –A woman waiting on a J train platform in the Brooklyn City-City Hall station when she suffered a rodent attack. This time, she wasn’t used as a ladder, but as a snack. A rat bit her foot, causing the woman to bleed, according to the Daily News.

Three attacks in 18 months doesn’t seem extreme, but there are a few other numbers that make the case a bit more creepy.

Throughout NYC’s history there have been a variety of different rat species. Decades ago there were up to five different types living both above and underground, but that number has been reduced to two. Brown rats and ship rats are the only species inhabiting New York currently. But that’s because the brown rat has violently extirpated the other species and is known to attack any other specie of rat at first sight. These rats, though often unseen, do indeed mingle among subway riders.

A study released by the Straphangers Campaign released in February found that rats were present in roughly 11% of underground subway stations, although it didn’t specify as to where (It also found exposed wiring in 28% of platforms).

These facts, overall, caused Reuters to name New York the U.S. city most vulnerable to rat attacks in 2007, specifically citing deteriorating infrastructure.

At least the Bronx Zoo seems to have its tigers under control.

Illustration by Brian Taylor

It’s still the early part of the season, the good part, when summer hours kick into effect (for the luckiest among us), before the tourist invasion starts and the city starts to heat up and emit that special odor that’s uniquely New York in August.

There’s no better time to be in the city for those who love culture or the outdoors. Every street corner seems to sing with its own event or festivity, and even the most jaded New Yorker can find something to pique their interest.

Those fortunate enough to live here are in the epicenter of a marathon celebration that runs all the way through the dog days of August.
Inside, we’ve created a handy-dandy guide to the best live concerts, film festivals, theater openings, museum shows, outdoor events, summer reading series and more that will help you plot out the next few months of your life.

So heat up the grill and pour yourself a cold one. We hope you’ll find something that will brighten your summer within these pages.

-Allen Houston, Executive Editor of Manhattan Media

Music
Top 10 Concerts
Reading Summer Film
Film
Best June Events for Kids
Cultural Events & Festivals
Hamptons Events
Celebrity Summer Guide
Out of Town
Summer Reading Series
Theater
Eats & Drinks
Top Food of Summer
Museums
Outdoor
Bike Share
Top Bike Trails
TV Guide

Summer Guide was compiled by Allen Houston, Marissa Maier, Megan Bungeroth, Adam Rathe, Robby Ritaco, Laura Shin, Armond White, Regan Hofmann, Rachel Khona, Angela Barbuti, Sean Creamer, Anam Baig, Andrew Rice, Magdalena Burnham, Doug Strassler, Max Sarinsky, Whitney Casser, Robin Elisabeth Kilmer and Andrew Bartel, Ed Johnson

Picked up by TWC at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, the film focuses on the effects of bullying by following five teens—of differing races and socio-economic backgrounds—throughout the school year. The company is targeting teen and tween audiences, hoping the film will imbue a message of standing up to, instead standing by, similar abuses. Bullying, the film and advocates assert, has become an epidemic in American schools. Director Lee Hirsch, who has discussed his own history of being bullied as a child, claims that the film is meant to educate parents, teachers, school officials and children.

Due to some harsh language, however, the film was slapped with an R rating making it difficult for its intended adolescent audience to see the documentary. Under current MPAA guidelines, PG-13 films can only include the f-word once. TWC appealed the decision in February but refused to cut content from the film. During an appeal, Bully lost its chance at PG-13 by a single a vote.

In protest, TWC will be releasing the film without an MPAA rating. Major theatre chains may not carry the film as exhibitors usually side with the ratings system. The notable exception is AMC CEO Jerry Lopez who criticized the automatic R rating of the MPAA.

“The message, the movie and its social relevance defy that kind of formulaic, conventional thinking. AMC will show this movie, and we invite our guests to engage in the dialogue its relevant message will inevitably provoke,” Lopez reportedly said.

Lopez was not alone in his support for Hirsch’s film. Politicians, schools, parents, celebrities and activists have argued for the film’s PG-13 rating. Michigan student, and bully victim, Katy Butler gathered over half a million signatures on Change.org in support of Bully.

“The small amount of language in the film that’s responsible for the R rating is there because it’s real. It’s what the children who are victims of bullying face on most days. All of our supporters see that, and we’re grateful for the support we’ve received across the board. I know the kids will come, so it’s up to the theaters to let them in” Hirsch has said.

Joan Graves, chairman of the Classification and Rating Administration with the MPAA, issued a statement declaring that “The MPAA also has the responsibility to acknowledge and represent the strong feedback from parents throughout the country who want to be informed about content in movies, including language.  The R rating is not a judgment on the value of any movie.  The rating simply conveys to parents that a film has elements strong enough to require careful consideration before allowing their children to view it.”

One scene, which helped pushed the film to an R-rating, depicts a ride on the bus where one student tells another that he’ll “f—ing end [him] and shove a broomstick up [his] a–. I’ll cut [his] face off and s–t.” The films creators contend that this is no worse than what kids hear everyday on the playground and provides a dose of gritty reality. This goes hand in hand with Bully’s theme that the real damage of bullying isn’t only physical, but rather that it creates deep, and perhaps irrevocable, emotional and mental scars.

Bully isn’t TWC’s first brush with the MPAA. In 2010, they clashed over the film Blue Valentine which garnered an NC-17 rating after depicting an oral sex scene. TWC won an appeal with that film without making content changes.

Bully opens in New York City at the Angelika Theatre and AMC Lincoln Square on March 30.

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If eating a plant-based diet seems like a sacrifice, the fashionably ethical vegan Joshua Katcher is out to change your mind, one deliciously indulgent meal at a time. His new biweekly dinner series, Gracious Gourmand, features a rotating roster of vegan chefs and puts pleasure (with a conscience) at the forefront.

Katcher is tapping into a burgeoning market, since it’s not just health-obsessed yogis and anti-establishment punks touting the animal-product-free lifestyle these days. A slew of well-known personalities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Clinton, advocate a vegan diet, and awareness of the link between livestock and climate change is spreading. So it’s no surprise that Katcher says he’s found plenty of eager eaters looking to expand their palates since the dinner series at Williamsburg’s Second Stop Cafe began in August.

“Whether it be for environmental reasons or health reasons or ethical reasons, people are moving towards a plant-based diet,” says Katcher, who’s been vegan for 13 years, as we sit talking at Second Stop.

Katcher is something of a Renaissance man. A Brooklyn-based sculptor and filmmaker who focused on art and environmental studies at college in Syracuse, in 2008 he launched The Discerning Brute, a men’s lifestyle website that features sweatshop-free, eco-friendly vegan fashion and exceptional vegan food, as a resource for combining aesthetics with ethics in a sustainable way of life.

Through The Discerning Brute and his years of work in animal advocacy, Katcher has encountered scores of talented vegan chefs, and he decided that he wanted to provide an arena for them to pursue culinary experiments. So he created Gracious Gourmand as a tangible extension of The Discerning Brute.

“You can have the most convincing arguments in the world, but what would trump all of those things is handing someone an amazing plate of food,” Katcher says.

And though proponents of a plantbased diet have often detailed what’s subtracted from your meals, Katcher focuses on what’s added.

“I call it conscientious hedonism.

Traditional hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure at any cost. It’s very selfish,” says Katcher. “Conscientious hedonism, I believe, is knowing that your pleasure will be heightened when you have the knowledge that what you’re indulging in didn’t hurt anyone along the way.”

He teamed up with Second Stop Cafe, which has a cozy back room that’s perfect for the intimate supper club, for the Friday night feasts. Second Stop also has an established relationship with Brooklyn Grange, the massive organic rooftop farm in Long Island City, so chefs can use this connection or their own resources to create multi-course, fixed-price vegan meals that are gourmet, local and sustainable.

Neal Harden, former executive chef at Irving Place’s raw food haven Pure Food and Wine, and Ayinde Howell, the former executive chef at JivamukTea Cafe (in the Jivamukti Yoga Center), have concocted lavish spreads at Gracious Gourmand. Pam Brown of Woodstock’s Garden Cafe, Ella Nemcova of The Regal Vegan fine foods and catering and Matteo Silverman of the 4 Course Vegan dinner series are on the roster for November and December.

At a Gracious Gourmand dinner in September, Howell, a lifelong vegan, delivered a spectacular raw fusion menu that included raw cucumber rounds with smoky habañero-pepper-flecked quinoa, a raw chard salad in roasted squash bowls topped with caramelized pumpkin seeds, and a spicy jerk bolognese, which consisted of a savory tomato and tofu sauce over ribbons of raw zucchini.

For the Gracious Gourmand meals, Howell say he tries to source most of the food from his neighborhood CSA in Bed-Stuy, with a goal that 90 percent of the ingredients be organic, which he says is crucial in preparing a vegan meal that is so exceptional that carnivores won’t miss the meat.

“With vegan food, you have to really dazzle the palate, so people won’t be focused on it being tempeh or tofu or seitan,” Howell says. “I try not to force veganism on people. I try to make really good food so that they can just say ‘Oh, I can do this.’” For this Friday’s Gracious Gourmand dinner, he’ll rely on cilantro, cumin and paprika to craft a spicy Moroccaninfluenced menu of chermoula tempeh over raisin couscous and seitan shawarma “street meat” skewers, as well as a pomegranate arugula salad and a hearty Mediterranean mushroom soup.

Howell anticipates that the demand for the kind of innovative, high-quality vegan dining experience that Katcher is providing with Gracious Gourmand will only grow.

“It’s a good way to expose people who might not otherwise be interested in vegan food, because it’s cool, and it’s something you can go to with your friends,” he says. “What’s better than having a good dinner party? Come eat, get full, enjoy flavors and textures, and talk and laugh.”

>> Gracious Gourmand Oct. 22, Second Stop Cafe, 524 Lorimer St. (at Ainslie St.), Brooklyn, 718-486-6850; $50.

The brainchild of Stitelman,
Neighbors manifested in 2009 when Jacksonknife, the band he was previously part
of, was on the brink of breaking up. A departure from his past band’s alt-country
rock sound, Neighbors takes listeners off the beaten indie-rock path and onto
an experimental route combining various instruments, like keys, violins and
drums with poppy synths. “When I started doing the Neighbors stuff, I didn’t
want to make rock music so much anymore,” Stitelman says. “So I just started
making electronic music instead.”

Recording the four-track Hooligans almost entirely on his own in his Williamsburg
apartment, Stitelman reached out to longtime friend Matt Rubin, who helps runs
San Francisco’s Paper Brigade Records. Meeting at school in San Francisco where
both were studying photography, a passion that Stitelman still pursues today,
the two have remained friends throughout the years and decided to join forces.

Another friendship-fueled
collaboration came in the form of mixing and producing the EP. Stitelman
recruited renowned engineer, producer and his “oldest friend” Kyle Johnson, who
has worked with Modest Mouse, The Hives and Rogue Wave in the past. “That guy
is a genius,” Stitelman says about working with Johnson, who he’s known since
the third grade and played music with before. “He’s really good at what he
does, so I learned most of what I know from just watching him.” And while
Stitelman recorded most of Hooligans himself, it wouldn’t have been complete without the help of his five
bandmates.

Meeting Evan Johnson, Steph McCarthy,
Anne Miner and Eric Beug through friends and finding Brian Harney via a
Craigslist ad for a violin player, the group came together toward the end of
the recording process and put the finishing touches on the album together.

With a surprisingly limited
electronic background, the Neighbors mastermind relied on his musical tastes
and the Harry Potter franchise for motivation to complete this record.
Listening to a variety of indie rock and looking to old-school idols including
Jimmy Dorsey and Dean Martin, a pair whose music Stitelman would “rather make,”
and finding his muse through J.K. Rowling’s magical Hogwarts-centered series, Hooligans began to take shape. “Actually it’s funny the
movies I was watching the most and books I was probably reading the most was
Harry Potter,” he reminisces. “I distinctly wanted the record to sound more
fantastical in a way that those movies and books seemed, and for it to sort of
be very bubbly or colorful…w which I guess isn’t very cool.”

Whether he believes his
bewitching inspiration was cool or not, Neighbors blends haunting vocals,
exploding synths and wondrous melodies
reminiscent of the mythical elements that the films offer. Enforcing a
song evolution by meticulously going through each track from the lyrics to the
melodies, the creative process for Stitelman is a slow, but rewarding one. “In
the beginning you’re not really comfortable with the song, you don’t really
know it yet,” he explains. “The melody doesn’t stick, it’s not sort of
ingrained in your head, yet. But the better you can pick apart your stuff and
know it before you call it finished, the better it’ll be in the end.”

And while this method of
revisiting his work and improving it has remained a constant, the manor in which
songs are created varies. While the electric guitar and percussive tinged track
“I’m A Building, I’m On Fire” gradually
transpired and went through many different incarnations, the idea for the
enchanting, accordion-laced “Hooligans,” on the other hand, was randomly
stumbled upon. “I was just sort of sitting down and screwing around, and not
having any idea of what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “I just started messing
around with the accordion line, and out of that, sort of built that song.” “Hooligans” boasts softly sung lyrics
about not being “100% honest with people
and how that sort of manifests in your daily relationships,” multi-instrumental
orchestrations and electronic beats, all of which are elements spread
throughout the EP.

Pairing lush, other worldly
melodies with very real and relatable lyrics centered around themes of
withdrawal and relationships, Neighbors is making its mark in Brooklyn and has
plans to hit Philadelphia, Boston and D.C. in the upcoming months, with hopes
of expanding their fan base, playing different venues and seeing what the music
scenes there have to offer. But for now, Stitelman will continue to work on his
music in Brooklyn, the place he feels most at home, with his band of Neighbors.

Pavement
Sept. 19 through 24, various locations. Oh, happy day(s)! The shows that people were buying tickets for a year ago have finally arrived! Sprawling from Central Park to Williamsburg, indie rock’s biggest boy band will play five shows this week, leaving most of the people we know with a gaping hole on their bucket lists. Bottom Line: Even if you didn’t wear out your tape of Slanted and Enchanted in the ’90s, there’s no sense in fighting it: You should really go to see Pavement.

Unison Fetish
Sept. 18, 19, 25 & 26, Bleecker & W. 11th Sts.; 3 and 5, Free. Fed up with the lines of tourists waiting for Magnolia cupcakes, choreographer Sue Hogan has organized Unison Fetish, a buttercream frostingfocused performance that, according to Hogan, is “a response to the conversion of Bleecker Street into a luxury shopping mall,” complete with pink-clad dancers enthralling and teasing the fanny-pack set.

Bottom Line: Letting people know that their 45-minute wait for a $4 gut bomb is silly is just fine with us… just don’t start blocking Sugar Sweet Sunshine when we’re craving banana pudding, Hogan.

Taste of the Village
Sept. 15, Washington Square Park; 6-8, $40. We’ve all got our usual spots to snack, but if you want to sample some of the best that Greenwich Village has to offer and maybe discover a new favorite, hit the 8th annual Taste of the Village and sample the grub from dozens of the neighborhood’s best eateries. Bottom Line: Gusto, Rabbit In the Moon, Otto, The Lion… We could drop $40 in a blink at any one of these places, so why not try them all (and more)?

Superstar DJ Record Fair
Sept. 19, The Vault at Skylight One Hanson, 1 Hanson Pl. (at Ashland Pl.), Brooklyn; 10 a.m.-5, Free. Consolidate your Sunday afternoon record shopping and stop into this fair, where more than 30 vendors, including shops like Halcyon and Other Music, will be selling vinyl, CDs, collectibles and more to nerds from the five boroughs and beyond. Bottom Line: Turn your normal habit of wasting money on wax relics into a shopping adventure in a place that also serves incredible roast pork sandwiches.

Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival
Sept. 16 through 19, various locations. For information, visit www.eugenemirmancomedyfestival.com. Hopping from The Bell House to The Rock Shop and Union Hall, the third year of this annual comedy festival is made up of events like “An Evening of Comedy From 1986” and “A Night of Gay or Foreign Comedy,”and features the chuckleinducing talent of John Mulaney, Max Silvestri and Kristen Schaal.

Bottom Line: Three days of laughs the likes of which haven’t been seen since that Columbus Day weekend you learned This dog likes Eugene Mirman. about pot butter.