BIRD SHOW Closing, Time Traveling Salon, Lute To Guitar Converter Party

Three consecutive days of culturally noncontiguous events this week. So happens they’re all at the City Reliquary where I serve on the board, starting tomorrow evening with the closing party for my proud little exhibition.

¶. Tomorrow 6–10pm: BIRD SHOW Closing

Taxonified incorrectly as science fair, fairly as art show but most specifically as nature exhibition, BIRD SHOW looks at people watching birds, and the birds staring back.

This is its final week, before it makes way for Wonder Woman and her myriad NYC connections.

Come celebrate its final week with live remixed birdsong by DJ Stylus, birdlike jams by Elijah Shiffer & Yuma Uesaka. Couple other folks might bring some instruments. Free & open to public. No RSVP, just show up. Go wild.

¶. Thursday 7pm: Acoustic Time Travel Salon

Late night at the museum with musicians throughout. $10 in advance or at the door (or free for museum members).

BYO instrument (again, but this time even moreso). Bring cash for drinks, which for this event support the musicians directly.

I’ll just be hobnobbing all night, and probably giving museum tours.

¶. Friday 7pm: BYOB Groupmuse + Classical Guitar

Liz Hogg taught me at her mom’s birthday last week that pretty much all classical guitar was written when guitars didn’t exist, so are transposed from lute or harpsichord.

One of those funny things where what’s esteemed and enshrined was actually very loose & new once.

Groupmuses are casual, BYOB gatherings in homes, apartments, & small spaces with classical musicians. This would be a great first one. $5 to reserve, $20 tip onsite to Liz if you’re able.

∞. A story of Strategic Farewells & preservation, leading to & in service of

¶. Monday June 13: Open VCR Night

I live precisely across the street from what used to be Kim’s Video on Saint Marks Place. Before that it was a mosty gay bathhouse shut down due to pandemic fears. Now it is Barcade, which just last week got Robocop pinball, and hosted the book launch afterparty for the fantastic book Saint Marks Is Dead. The Barcade staff can (and do) watch my cat Colson sunning in my window from the bar when they’re bored.

Kim’s was before my time in this city and I never went, but those who discover, research, and admire a scene after the scene’s gone have a special way of loving it, mostly sans mourning.

Yongman Kim collected and rented obscure VHS tapes in that way good & old retail can act partially as museum or archive.

Then it became one, by strategically closing. Kim posted a note on the door: “We hope to find a sponsor who can make this collection available to those who have loved Kim’s over the past two decades.” The were three conditions, and a place that could meet them would inherit the collection for free:

1. Keep the collection intact.
2. Continue to update it.
3. Make it accessible to Kim’s members and others.

The 2009 institution who could was an ancient tiny town in Italy called Salemi, due to a global couchsurfer who had dinner with a woman who know a photographer who had just been appointed Salemi’s Alderman of Creativity, with a colleague Alderman of Nothing.

Then last month, it came back to NYC 4 stories under a Financial District skyscraper surrounded by still-unrented (prebandoned?) marbly & glass underground retail suites in the newest Alamo Drafthouse. A laseretched plaque dedicates it to the Municipality of Salemi “and its commitment to the promotion, maintenance, and return of the collection,” and also it shares a home with a collection of 50,000 film advertising printing blocks you can pull on a Vandercook yourself.

Geistlist-exclsuive factoid: there’s some film flong on column in front of the bar with wall text edited by Geistlist’s Flong Specialist in Residence, Glenn Fleishman. The suite next to it is also where all the Sing For Hope public pianos are stored & tuned, though I suppose not for much longer.

You can rent up to 3 VHS tapes at a time, for free, for 3 days. I recommend doing so in roughly a ¾-fortnight, so you can bring them to Open VCR Night on June 13 at Wonderville, which will soon be listed here, and probably be highlighted in the next installment of this, Geistlist: a semi-regular somewhat secret newsletter for People, about Things, by Jacob.