My grandma texted me hadn’t gotten an email from me in over a week and feared I was dead, so I guess it’s time for Geistlist. Unsubscribe at the bottom.
Oh real quick: I’m involved in another Kickstarter. We’re making theawl.com (RIP): The Book (OMG). I’m designing it!
$. Roll 10 dice, donate the total
every Saturday & Sunday at 10:30pm in the West Village, NYC, but see below
This year I joined the advisory board of the New York Neo-Futurists. For 20½ years we have run the same show twice per week, in which the cast attempts to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The plays change every week, the name changed once in 2018¹, and the venue changes whenever the beloved Kraine Theater becomes a comedy club.
It may be the best, most brutal, most stupid, most serious art that ongoes in NYC today. An extreme example: I have become privy to intel that the board once voted to advise the cast not to perform anal sex onstage: something which I vow never to do.
The show is 50% Chicago style improv, 50% SNL-style skits, and 50% immersive hellscape which preys upon your audience insecurity by flickering the 4th wall on and off like an electrified one-way mirror strobe. It also follows four strange principles for theater
We are who we are
We are where we are.
We are doing what we’re doing
The time is now.
Which is to say: nobody is acting. You may have heard about it on This American Life.
The whole thing is powered by random chance² and money, which is why I ask you—if you can—to roll ten 6-sided dice and donate the total.
Beside that one time with the live sex thing (long story, before my time), I am proud that this board exists to and largely succeeds at staying out of the way of our artists, and also places a high financial priority on paying them. We exist to remove obstacles, not create.
Unfortunately, last month, we failed. We missed our break-even funding goal for September 2024. The current cast took a pay cut. Our creative director voluntarily cut her own pay in half, then wrote a play about it, in which she laid on the stage like Ozymandias, facing away.
Please help us get payroll back on track, then help us keep going another couple decades.
And please come see the show! Every Friday and Saturday night. Use code 20for20 for a discount. Money tight for you too? Email me. We want you there.
¶. 7:30pm: Roller Derby 2024 Championship: Manhattan vs. Brooklyn
LeFrak Center, Prospect Park, NYC, $40 or free, kinda
It’s sold out but LaFrak Center is weird: you can kinda just walk up the sloped greenroof from the park and watch from there. But please consider buying a hat or throwing the Gotham Roller Derby some cash, violet feminist contact sports are expensive to put on. They usually sell some slick enamel pins & patches onsite. Bronx vs. Queens (for 3rd place) just started, and I’m on my way over as soon as I get this thing sent out.
Also, on Monday, want to try out for 2025?
¶. 8pm: SECRET
over Grand Central, Midtown, NYC
First person to reply and ask for it gets a ticket to SUMMIT 8:00pm with me. Party like Mayor Eric Adams (2022 – ∞). Make sure you can actually make it in an hour though.
¶. Tomorrow 10am–3pm: visit a seltzer bottle refill plant and a hand signpainting shop
Noble Signs: 10am–1pm, Brownsville, NYC, free
Brooklyn Seltzer Boys: noon–3pm, Cypress Hills, NYC, free
This weekend is Coachella for architecture, and I’m in charge of the East New York/Brownsville region. Tomorrow, I’ve got two rare gems: New York’s newest signpainting & fabrication shop (featured in the New Yorker), and the last remaining glass-bottle seltzer refill & delivery plant (featured in my fridge, come over sometime). Both free and totally open to the public, no reservations required. And both in the early stages of forming craft museums!
Bonus: ever wonder where the 3 train gets its detailing done?
¶. Friday 6pm: New York Nico’s Book Launch
Shopify NYC, SoHo, NYC, free
I found one of the secret gift cards last month.
¶. Satuday noon–?am: Bike Kill
secret location that isn’t Wolcott & Ferris, Red Hook, NYC, free
The Saturday before Halloween is always Bike Kill, where Black Label Bicycle Club brings out their most dangerous welded mutant bicycles (my favorite last year was a bike made entirely out of welded chain). Starts noon kinda kid-friendly. Ends whenever with jousting and shooting fireworks at each other.
¶. Monday Oct 28 7–10pm: Open VCR Night
Wonderville, Bushwick, NYC, free
On Wednesday at the O Mansion in DC I found a VHS in the basement labeled “2033 Dinner Reel” so I’m excited to see what that’s all about.
∞. The Internet Archive
I’m off to San Francisco Monday for the Internet Archive’s Annual Celebration, and capstone to last week’s Library Leaders’ Forum. You have probably used the Archive’s Wayback Machine or found yourself on their Open Library. Recently they were victim to a strange attack of unclear motivation, as well as a data leak. It’s not pretty, and I feel bad.
I’m proud to be working with them and fighting on their side over digital books.³ Early in the internet it was assumed everything would last forever and everybody could be trusted, but of course not. Archives are the closest thing to neutral truth we have. Protect them.
¹ from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind to The Infinite Wrench
² Tickets used to be $10 + the roll of a 6-sided dice, but see the money part. One of my goals is to bring the dice back though. Lot of the rest of the show is still out of the cast’s control through, you’ll see. And it’s not all sex and nudity okay. Sometimes the entire show is fully clothed.
³ I help build BRIET.