SPOTTED:

Just a few weeks after the opening of her boutique, Dash, Kim Kardashian was back in NYC yesterday to launch her new jewelry line at the Bebe store in SoHo. Kim Kardashian for Bebe features both affordable and trendy pieces with inspiration from around the world. Tweet This

Oh the treasures you can find hidden in Bobst

Marvin J. Taylor kind of resembles Hulk Hogan and is as dedicated to the history of punk as a six year old boy is about his lego collection. Taylor is the director of Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University. “I’m living proof that you could take a dissolute childhood turn it into a career,” he said.

Fales Library is a part of Bobst that I didn’t know existed and is located on the third floor. It contains over 200,000 volumes of the country’s rare book collection. It is composed of the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections. The Downtown Collection is the largest collection of archival materials of the Downtown New York art scene anywhere and the only one in an academic library.

My Reporting Downtown class toured the Downtown Collection with Taylor last Thursday morning. Not that the collection was boring, but I didn’t appreciate it as much because I wasn't familiar with the names or cultural references.

One of the current exhibitions is a tribute to that church that NYU students walk past everyday on their way to class. The exhibit takes a look at Judson Memorial Church between 1954-77, a site for the first safe abortion clearing house, various social movements of the 1960s and home of the first gay support group.

Judson Memorial Church


Among what we saw was a recording of Yvonne Reiner's “The People’s Flag Show,” a 1964 modern dance performance in the Judson Memorial Church, with the dancers only wearing American flags over the front of their otherwise nude bodies. The press showed up and were outraged. “I think it’s absolutely brilliant,” Taylor said. “How liberating it must be to do this.”

Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy was another delight. It was like a sexualized synchronized swimming performance on stage. Undoubtably, very uncomfortable to watch with my class. It’s all about the body movements and the way the men are positioning the women. Partially clothed dancers writhed on stage. Women are sticking raw fish between their legs and men are putting raw chickens in their pants. “This totally changed dance and turned dance into performance,” said Taylor.

Moving the tour along, Taylor showed us what he considers “the best collection of punk rock anywhere.” I’m not into punk, but punk has certainly influenced fashion and many aspects of today’s culture. As Taylor put it, “[Punk] is so many things to so many other people.” The East Village is the birthplace of punk; what a better place than Greenwich Village to preserve these relics for artifactual value. "We believe the physicality of the object is just as important as the text in understanding the work," said Taylor. The primary sources are impressive, including the Richard Hell papers, the first copy of Punk Magazine from Jan. 1976 and a priceless interview tape with performer John Sex duping the interviewer.



Fales Library is open to all NYU students, faculty, and serious researchers. Fales is an example of a passion turned into something that all can enjoy, as well as an impressive documentation of the 70s, 80s and 90s in lower Manhattan. Tweet This

What's Good in SoHo for the Week of Nov. 1

The sidewalks of Broadway below Houston were extra packed with shoppers on the hunt for last minute Halloween costumes, but look past the crowds and you’ll see a number of stories emerged over the past week. Black Friday started early, a scandal surfaced among food vendors, Nordstrom announced plans to expand to SoHo, and Babeland encouraged people to get out and vote.


Love is love. Chelsea's Gay Men's Health Crisis center’s "Art & AIDS: Loving Life," an annual exhibit, ran last week at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in SoHo. This exhibit provided an outlet for gay and lesbian artists to express themselves through art. Read more


Last Thursday, Nordstrom announced that 350 West Broadway will be the future location of a new non-profit store that will have a different name and will not have any ties to the brand.


To get shoppers out of a sluggish shopping mood and in the holiday spirit, retailers introduced Black Friday deals last week and are promoting early this holiday season. The New York Times has the scoop on the deals.



A New York State of mind? The Post investigated SoHo food vendors who sleep in their cart to have a prime spot on the street. However, the city Department of Health requires that vendors clear the streets and store the carts where they are cleaned. Grody.

SoHo may have a new nickname. Known to be an artsy and fashionable neighborhood, SoHo is being called a “silicon alley” for new design and technology businesses opening up in the area. Wanderfly is just one of many new tech-savvy businesses to open up shop. Read about it

Babeland’s SoHo and LES locations gave away free vibrators to anyone who hit the polls on election day. Tweet This

IT'S ALL POLITICS; A DAY AT THE POLLS

I don’t follow politics as often as I should. Especially during midterm elections when all I’m really thinking about are my midterms. Before a day full of class and work, I got up while it was still dark outside to check out the polls for the first time on Election day. What I learned: if you want to be a journalist, be prepared to get rejected.

Polling site 10982, one of SoHo’s polling centers, is located at the Children’s Museum at 182 Lafayette Street between Broome and Grand streets. At 8:00 AM, temperatures outside were frigid.

It was weird to walk into the colorful museum for children that was turned into a makeshift poll site. I felt like it was a trip to the DMV, with multicolored walls. A tri-fold describing how to vote using the new system stood by the door, however, no one paid any attention to it.

There were six people present upon my arrival. I introduced myself to one of the poll workers right away as an attempt to get some quotes. She had a loud and raspy, but surprisingly chummy, voice that you wouldn’t expect to come out of such a gruff-looking woman. She told me that I could get as many quotes as I wanted and would even give me a picture “for my newspaper.” Referring to the new vote scanner she said, “Would you look at that machine? It looks like an industrial garbage can. $50,000.”

A woman named Pat, (she wouldn’t give me her last name) came over to me on a power-trip and said that I couldn’t ask any questions and I couldn’t speak to voters. A female police officer guarded the door so I couldn’t even get voters on their way out.

Instead, I observed the people coming in and out. It took about 10 minutes from start to finish to vote. Thirty-six people voted between 8:00 and 9:00 AM. “SoHo is light,” said one poll worker. “It’s not as heavy as others.” Fifty people came in between 9:00 and 10:00 AM. This site seemed to get many people who appeared to be 55 and older as well as the handicapped. Some voters had their children with them. Schools were closed for the day. Others were accompanied by their dogs.

I heard people chatting about the new polling procedures as they exited. New doesn’t always equal better. “I like the old way better,” said one man. “I was used to it.”

“Things are too small on the ballot,” said one older-looking woman. “The lighting was horrible.”

While waiting for his wife to vote, one man chuckled, “There was a third side? I never turned it over.” Tweet This