Laura_Silver

I had mixed feelings about going to Yidish-Wokh, an all-Yiddish week-long retreat for speakers of all ages, backgrounds and levels sponsored by Yugntruf - Youth for Yiddish.

I am a beginner, newly graduated from the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture. I spent the six-week program lugging books, pulling all nighters, singing songs, conversing with classmates about pleasantreies designed to bolster our language skills — do you have an alarm clock in your room? What time do you wake up? What time do you get out of bed? When do you take a shower?   Read more...

Where do artists go for advice, camaraderie and shop talk?

Sure, there’s the coffee shop, the bar, and Master of Fine Arts programs around North America and the world. But for cheaper, more instant access to career strategies and collective wisdom, they can now turn to Pablo Helguera’s Estheticist. The monthly publication debuted in July.   Read more...

I was out the door at 7:00 a.m. and in the dumpster by 8:00 a.m. No waiting, immediate dunking in the four and a half feet of water in the modified dumpsters just south of Grand Central Station. My friend Ian and I biked from Brooklyn - over the Manhattan Bridge and across to Lafayette Street, where white tents replaced cars. A few bikes were on the route of Summer Streets, but mostly it was a view of tarmac and a sense of calm. A few cars lined up at cross streets, where people in neon vests held up paddles they shifted from “Stop” to “Go” to accommodate cross-town bound motorized vehicles.


We went up Lafayette to Park Avenue - no worries about the usually hair crossing at 14th Street, nor at 23rd or 34th. We stopped a few blocks shy of 42nd Street. Ian chained his bike to a pole. I surrendered mine to a free valet bike parking operation in a small corale manned by people from Cliff Bar and Transportation Alternatives. We entered the pool area, popped into the navy and white-striped cabanas on the sidewalk, stashed our street clothes in bins alongside the foot of the overpass, rinsed our feet as directed and plunged in.   Read more...

“Hey baby, you know you want me.”

“Hey, baby, you’re so beautiful.”

“Hey baby, I’m talking to you.”

These are no longer lines women hear only on the street. They're part of Hey Baby, a recently released first-person shooter video game.   Read more...

Once upon a time the World Wide Web wasn't for communicating on a massive scale.

That was four decades ago and Deanna Zandt argues, light years away.

The media technologist and author of the recently released Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking is now sharing (obviously) her book's message, on her blog, twitter and in live presentations around the U.S.   Read more...

Tuesday is Brooklyn Borough Hall. Wednesday is Times Square. Thursday is West 175th Street.

That's when and where drinking water is disseminated via outdoor drinking water stations, for New Yorkers and tourists.   Read more...

Summer in the city can be hot, sticky and downright suffocating. Ditto getting out of town.

But not if someone else takes care of all of the logistics.   Read more...

Calling all artists and designers. Here's your chance to make your mark on New York. The city is looking for creative types to spruce up its construction sites. Winners get $7,500 each, thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation.

Want to be a part of it? You have until July 28 to enter the urbancanvas Design Competition; questions about the contest are welcomed through July 23.   Read more...

David Mahfouda came up with the idea for New York City cab sharing while he was riding Trans-Siberian Railroad in 2006. Now Weeels.org hits the steamy streets of Gotham.

Weeels Infomercial from Weeels on Vimeo.

Ten years. Twelve original shows, tens of thousands of somersaults, trapeze maneuvers and torques of the female torso. LAVA, the Brooklyn-based all-woman acrobat troupe known for its self-titled “earth-moving performance,” recently celebrated a decade of hoop jumping and synchronized feats of physical strength.

  Read more...

Kim Severson has reported on the foods of Alaska, San Fransisco, New Orleans and the New York City school system. Her new memoir, Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life introduces eight women who fed her and nourished her career. The New York Times journalist tells stories of culinary interactions with cooks across the culinary spectrum, from Rachael Ray, to Alice Waters and her own mom.

In the Dining pages of the Times, Severson reports the facts. In Spoon Fedshe churns up feelings and ladles out recipes linked to her mentors.   Read more...

It’s not just for hipsters. Brooklyn, New York, is also home to cultural movements and institutions that highlight local history beyond night spots and fixed gear bikes.

For example, 227 Abolitionists Place, which was the home of abolitionists Thomas and Harriet Lee-Truesdell. The site is located at 227 Duffield Street in downtown Brooklyn, near the bustling Fulton Mall shopping strip and within a mile of the Brooklyn Bridge and is open to visitors seven days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The site of an Underground Railway stop borders local development projects and is a hub of community activism.   Read more...

Apply to be a Kiva Fellow and you could find yourself in the West African nation of Togo, helping someone like Mrs. Sikiratou Salami (pictured here) raise funds for her cosmetics business.

Kiva, the Swahili word for "unity" or "agreement," has come to stand for the power of microfinance and the internet. Founded in 2005 as the first micro-lending platform in the world, Kiva secured the first free payment processing agreement from PayPal.   Read more...

How do you get disenfranchised populations to share—and amplify—their voices in the public realm?

Mobile phones and the web. That’s according to Barcelona-based artist Antoni Abad, whose megafone.net project has spanned four continents to turn GPS-enabled mobile phones into loudspeakers for the experiences of Sahrawi refugees in western Algeria, sex workers in Madrid and displaced people in Columbia.   Read more...

Ahh, graduation season. Departing seniors leave the relative security of the college campus, juniors, sophomores and freshmen move up a grade and the dorm furniture? Well, it often stays put.

That's not the case at Michigan State University where the MSU Surplus Store’s Residence Hall Furniture Sale began on Friday, March 14 and will last until everything is gone. "Everything" includes bunk beds ($30, mattresses are $10 apiece), dressers ($45) and desks ($10).   Read more...

They want to take it higher. And they do.

During their first full-fledged appearance in New York City, members of the Northampton, Massachusetts-based Young @ Heart Chorus— belted out a medley of pop songs from Blondie’s “Dreaming” to the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care.”   Read more...