From May 1st to May 7th, attend 7 Days of burger tastings and events citywide; Downtown Manhattan to host three events

“Meat” some of the best burgers in New York City during Burger Week, brought to you by the Food Film Festival, and Burger Conquest, one of the top burger blogs in the country. Each burger tasting and pairing event costs somewhere between $30 and $70, and some of the events, like the Guns N’ Roses burger pairing dinner at Idle Hands at East 3rd Street and Avenue B, are already sold out.
The week of beef kicks off at Idle Hands, with a rockin’ event put on by That Burger. Chef Dan Petersen will be serving up the Guns N’ Roses-themed mini-burgers, named after tracks on “Appetite for Destruction.” For $35, guests can sample “Welcome to (That) Burger” (sauteed onions, jalapenos, american cheese), “Out to Eat Me” (bacon, bourbon ketchup, blue cheese), “Paradise Burger” (lettuce, guacamole, red island sauce, cheddar cheese) and “Sweet Burger O’ Mine” (sauteed pineapple with teriyaki sauce, honey ham, cheddar cheese).

“Twelve songs, six beers, four different burgers, tater tots and a lot of bourbon ketchup,” is how “The Rev” described the headbangin’ hamburger event.

Burger Week started with David “Rev” Ciancio, who came up with the idea while working for another company. Rev has been creating events for National Hamburger Month for five years now, though this is the first year Hamburger Week is officially being branded.

When he first started out in the food industry, he wrote a cheesesteak blog, then a steak blog and finally found his hamburger calling.

“When I eat a burger I’m looking for that snap, that popping, savory moment, that’s what I crave,” said Rev. “I’m not eating burgers for health reason, so give me the greasiest kind.”

Other events this year involve the “burger crawl” in Murray Hill, where customers will go to 10 different locations, and get loaded up with beer and mini burgers.
Rev’s event is a “three b’s” festiva l- “Beer, Burgers and Bowling” at Bowlmor in Times Square, where he will serve up a gourmet pickle tasting, gourmet cheese tasting, and his favorite burgers including “The Rev’s Hot Hog and Honey” with Jarlsberg cheese, honey, bacon and hot sauce.

Another noteworthy event downtown is the Bourbon and Burger event at the brand new Harding’s at East 21st and Park Avenue, where Chef Ariel Fox will be making her house burger—an 8 ounce juicy creation blended with skirt steak, chuck and short rib, topped with a thick slice of classic melted American. The burger mounted on a challah bun, and topped with housemade pickles.

“We could have gone complicated but we thought, what if we could do a really good cheeseburger? Mine is more a grilled cheeseburger—very cheesy,” said Chef Ariel Fox. “The burger for a long time was something chefs didn’t want to put on their menus, but every chef, no matter where, has that burger on their menu.”

The tempting sandwich is paired with a bourbon tasting, and a bourbon cocktail lesson where head bartender Trevor Schneider teaches each patron how to make a Harding smash, a twist on a bourbon lemonade, made with Larceny bourbon, spearmint leaves, pressed lemon wedges, lemon juice and simple syrup.

Hurry and get tickets fast, which are avaialble online at theburgerweek.com

Photo by thezartorialist.com. Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

Andrew Rausa celebrated Independence Day on a brownstone stoop in Boerum Hill last Wednesday like countless other Brooklynites: with friends, a grill and a few beers. When an unmarked police car stopped in front of them, he told the New York Times, he thought they might be in trouble for the grill.

Instead, they were all issued summonses for drinking in public.

“We were all kind of stunned for a second,” Rausa said to the Times. “It happened over the gate. It was a very tangible physical divide — when [the police] said the words ‘public property,’ it just didn’t make any sense.”

Convinced that his friend’s stoop was in fact private property, Rausa, a rising third year Brooklyn Law student, pulled up New York’s administrative code on his smart phone and argued with one of the officers that no law was broken.

According to Rausa, the officer replied, “I don’t care what the law says, you’re getting a summons.”

Rausa and his friends decided to plead not guilty to the charge instead of paying its $25 fine. They follow another Brooklyn resident, Kimber VanRy, who received the same summons for drinking on his stoop in 2008. His case was dismissed on a technicality.

Stoop drinking remains a gray area in New York’s open-container law, so the outcome of Rausa’s case may set a new precedent for future court rulings.

Rausa’s court date is to be determined. “My issue is not some yuppie, I-think-I’m-above-the-law issue,” he told the Times. “It’s the fact that I brought to the attention of the police officer that he was not in the right and he was not receptive at all.”

Willis claims Pakistani beer—such that it was described in the police report—does not in fact exist. Yes, that’s her defense. The Brown University student’s defense lawyer, Stacey Richman, is arguing the particular kind of beverage exists, but not in the eight ounce can detailed in the complaint, says the Post. Furthermore, the beverage distributed by the brewery is in fact a non-alcoholic beer, according to inquiries with Pakistan’s only brewery.

Richman is demanding prosecutors produce the “beer” can or drop the charge, saying for all she knows it “could be a Sprite.” Willis will be in court on July 31, at which point her fate will be determined.

—Alissa Fleck

Scout Willis, 20-year-old daughter of divorced movie stars Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, was arrested on Monday for presenting a fake ID to police after being caught with an open beer in the Union Square station.

According to the Daily News, which first reported the incident, Court papers said that a transit cop spotted the Brown University student at 6:30 p.m. with an 8-ounce “Pakistani beer.” The criminal complaint explained that Willis gave the officer a New York ID card with the name Katherine Kelly. The officer continued to question her, and she revealed her actual California ID. “My name is Scout Willis,” she said. “The first ID isn’t mine. My friend gave it to me. I don’t know Katherine Kelly.”

Police charged Willis with two misdemeanors: criminal impersonation and breaking the open container law. She was reportedly released without bail on Tuesday and is scheduled to return to court on July 31. The impersonation charge has the potential to land her in jail, but the Daily News says that is unlikely.

Willis attracted media attention a few months ago with a Twitter feed that claimed she hated her parents and used designer drugs. She later said the tweets were a classroom experiment designed to entice followers with shocking personal details.

The real story here, of course, is of Pakistani beer, which apparently is a real thing. An article on Willis’s arrest in the Los Angeles Times points to the Guardian’s profile of the country’s single brewery, which began shipping to non-Muslim nations last winter after a 1977 exportation ban was lifted.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Crossroads of the World
You don’t have to head south to the Carribean to the beach this summer, just take the subway up to the El Museo del Barrio. It, along with The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Queens Museum of Art, is presenting the culmination of the decade-long collaboration of research and scholarship Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, which includes more than 500 works of art spanning four centuries from the Caribbean islands and coasts. The exhibit covers topics such as politics, pop culture, language, the various cultures and history, among many others.
June 12 – Jan. 6, 2013, El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 5th Ave., elmuseo.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940
An artist searching for his muse is a theme that reverberates back to Greek mythology. French artist Edouard Vuillard found inspiration in his career stretching from the 1890s to the 1940s in a variety of sources, from experimental theater to urbane domesticity. This exhibit at The Jewish Museum looks at six periods of the artist’s career and the impact his friends and patrons had on his work, from his artistic beginnings to his later portraits.
Through Sept. 23, The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave., thejewishmuseum.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Women Work
With conservative politicians intent on rehashing decades-old debates that everyone thought were long settled, it’s fitting that the National Academy Museum & School has chosen now to kick off its new exhibit, Women Work, featuring the artwork of women from the 19th century to present day. The series brings together works by Mary Cassatt, Colleen Browning and May Stevens, as well as female sculptors.
Through Aug. 26, The National Academy Museum & School, 1083 5th Ave., nationalacademy.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Activist New York
New York City has always been a city that thrived in the midst of social change and progress. Activist New York, the new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, brings that history into focus, exploring the history of social activism in the city from the 17th century right up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. From picket lines to civil rights, the exhibition uses artifacts, photographs, audio and video to tell the history of agitation in the city.
Through the summer, The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave., mcny.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective
The Guggenheim hosts this mid-career retrospective of Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra. The artist, best known for her striking portraits of humanity in transition—adolescents and new mothers have been prime subjects for her lens—has been working for more than two decades at her craft. Like all great portraitists, Dijkstra’s work captures fleeting moments and fills them with meaning. “I make normal things appear special,” she said in an interview for the book Image Makers, Image Takers. That this is not a brag but a statement of successfully fulfilled artistic intent says it all.
June 29 – Oct. 3, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., www.guggenheim.org.

UPPER WEST SIDE
Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History
New York has a rich (albeit unheralded) history of brewing that stretches back to colonial times. The New-York Historical Society hopes to rectify this with its new exhibit. With artifacts and documents that showcase the city’s long-lived love of suds, Beer Here covers what the soldiers were drinking in the Revolutionary War, famous hometown brewers and the Prohibition era. When you are finished, step on over to the beer hall for a taste of New York City and state’s best local brews.
May 25 – Sept. 2, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park W., nyhistory.org.

MIDTOWN
Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper
What better way to spend your summer than hanging out in a library, especially if you’re going to see the Morgan Library & Museum’s Josef Albers exhibit. Albers, the iconic 20th-century artist who died in 1976, is best known for his painting series Homage to the Square, in which he explored color relationships in concentric squares. This exhibit displays the less well-known studies and sketches for these paintings. The materials in this exhibit were never shown during Albers’ life and are rarely displayed since his death; The Morgan is the only U.S. stop for this exhibition before it heads back to Europe.
July 20 – Oct. 14, The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave., themorgan.org.

MIDTOWN
Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets
Filmmaking identical twins the Quay Brothers—or The Brothers Quay, in their preferred nomenclature—end the summer with a major retrospective of their work at the Museum of Modern Art. Born in Philly but developed as European surrealists in the grime of London, the Quays have been conjuring up their creepy-crawly, stop-motion animated work since the late ’70s. Featuring repurposed doll heads and other unsettling motifs of mold and decay, the Brothers’ oeuvre became a major aesthetic touchstone for the burgeoning industrial goth movement of the late ’80s and ’90s. This collection promises a rare view inside their work, with never-before-seen images, moving works, installations and artistic output, as well as screening of their best shorts and filmic output.
Aug. 12 – Jan. 8, 2013, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., www.moma.org.

DOWNTOWN
The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg
Bird is the word at the New Museum’s Studio 231 space as Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg, known for her nightmarish animations, and videographer Hans Berg show off five trippy animations and an unnerving menagerie of more than 80 free-standing bird sculptures. These hybrid, sometimes monstrous forms speak to the artist’s interest in physical and psychological transformation, as well as pageantry and perversion.
Through Aug. 26, The New Museum, 235 Bowery, newmuseum.org.

YOGI's S DREW DIVERSE CROSS-SECTION OF SOCIETY: MEN AND WOMEN, OLD AND YOUNG, YUPPIES AND BUMS, FOREIGNERS AND REGULARS, COLLEGE KIDS AND SPORTS NUTS. PHOTO BY: ADAM BLOCH

“I love it. I haven’t been to any bar in New York this fun,” said Sarah, one patron enjoying the final hours of Yogi’s on Saturday night. “It’s a good late-night place. I’ll never begin a night here, but this is where I’ll end it.”
Most of those present, though, preferred to focus on what made the place great.
“It’s a fun bar-people dancing on top of the bar, singing the same songs together,” said Cherif, a bouncer who has worked at Yogi’s for five months.
When he showed up around 10 p.m., one visitor immediately announced, “I am here to drink tonight, nothing else. I am going to get drunk.”
It was hardly a solitary sentiment. Yogi’s has always been about drinking and little else. With pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon sometimes going for less than $6, it was about as cheap as a bar gets on the Upper West Side. Those prices drew a diverse cross-section of society: men and women, old and young, yuppies and bums, foreigners and regulars, college kids and sports nuts.
And they were rarely put off by some of Yogi’s charming yet repellent features. The bathrooms were always disgusting, the floors littered with discarded peanut shells and the interior dim and dank. On the other hand, the bartenders often danced atop the counter and were always scantily clad. The music consisted entirely of country and rock classics played at ear-shattering levels. Outside, a small statue of a bear, one that matched a 12-foot version indoors, greeted visitors, along with a chalkboard that carried different witty puns every day. The rest of the décor included mostly beer paraphernalia and the occasional bra hanging from the ceiling.
Though rumors had swirled for months, nobody knew Yogi’s fate for sure until a sign was posted in the front window a few weeks ago announcing its closure. It said, in part, “Big money wins again. … Look for the bear in the neighborhood, we will be back.”
Alongside the sign, the bar’s countdown timer-customarily employed for New Year’s, St. Patrick’s Day and the arrival of The Allman Brothers Band for its annual visit to Beacon Theater-measured the days and hours until closure. The ownership plans to open a new bar called The Duck this week at Second Avenue between 111th and 112th streets.
This past weekend, though, some were fairly direct with their anger over the demise of Yogi’s, which is making way for a new apartment building.
“It’s becoming a cliché in New York to talk about gentrification, but when you lose a bar like that or any neighborhood institution and it’s replaced by generic bank branches and upscale cosmetics shops, I think it takes value off the table,” one regular said. “I don’t want to live in a generic American mall. I want to live in a neighborhood with some character.”
And Yogi’s certainly had plenty of that.