Get into all the brews you can handle at the Tapped craft beer festival, which is taking over the Barclays Center on Sunday. Photo: Tapped
Greetings on this gorgeous October Wednesday! Have you all gotten started on your Halloween preparations yet? It’s beautiful weather and I for one have itchy feet–thinking a day trip involving apple-picking/hiking/leaf-peeping/pumpkin-carving or some combination thereof might be in order. Maybe now is the time to get my visit to Beacon or Storm King in before it gets too cold, or maybe I’ll stick closer to town and head to Blue Hill: Stone Barns for some communing with livestock. The North Fork always beckons with tasty wine tours, but then again I could always hop on the subway and take in the majestic views from the Cloisters or catch the Frida Kahlo exhibit at NY Botanical Garden before it closes. There is no lack of great day trips available to New Yorkers who want to fully immerse themselves in our prettiest season.
If I get lazy and stick around Brooklyn, though, I am intrigued by “or, The Whale,” a play based on Moby Dick and produced by the Threadbare Theater Workshop. There are four performances running Thursday through Saturday aboard the Lehigh Valley Barge #79 Waterfront Museum in Red Hook (you know, the one moored next to the Fairway parking lot), and the staging alone makes me feel like the experience will be well worth the $18 ticket. While you are in the area, check out Chiang Mai, the Thai pop-up restaurant that seriously wowed our food reviewer Brendan Spiegel.
The Barclays Center will be awash in suds on Sunday, when Tapped, which is being billed as the ultimate craft beer festival, will present the best quaffs from some 100 beer, wine, and cider purveyors. Tickets to this day-drinking extravaganza, which includes three hours of booze, Sunday football games on the big screen, cornhole, beer pong, Jenga, burgers, and more, start at $39. Cheers, and take a tip from us and reschedule any Monday morning meetings now.
We’ve got a lot of other ideas on how to cram as much action into this Ideal Week as possible, so please read on. Whatever you end up doing, we’d love to know what you’re up to, so do us a solid and throw #idealweekbb into your Instagram posts! And don’t sleep on your Halloween costume–one thing is certain and that is that Ricky’s is not gonna be fun next week.
Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully will be discussing their new cookbook, NOPI, in Park Slope on Thursday night. Photo: Brooklyn by the Book
Thursday, Oct. 22
One of the best presents I’ve received over the past few years is Yottam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s fantastic Jerusalem cookbook, a collection of consistently great recipes from the city of the same name that has seriously upped my dinner party game. Ottolenghi has teamed up with the head chef of his London restaurant, NOPI, to write another sure-to-be-bestseller named for the acclaimed Asian/Middle Eastern spot. On Thursday night at 7:30pm, Ottolenghi and Chef Ramael Scully will be appearing in conversation with Mark Russ Federman at an event sponsored by Brooklyn by the Book in Park Slope. Tickets are $10 each and $7 with your Brooklyn Public Library card, which you can apply toward your cookbook purchase. –K.H.
Spend Friday night busting a move as some of the world’s best beatboxers battle it out at the 2015 American Beatbox Championships. Photo: Fabian Farbeon Saucedo
Friday, Oct. 23
This Friday is opening night of the 2015 American Beatbox Championships at Littlefield, which is exactly what it sounds like (totally f’ing awesome!). How often do you get to see live beatbox battles between some of the best human drum machines in the world vying for a spot in the top 16? Not part of your regular weekend routine, eh? Don’t let the opportunity pass, silly– the show starts at 7 and tickets are $15 a pop. –K.H.
Immerse yourself in Brooklyn farm-to-table food culture at Brooklyn Bites Harvest Festival this Saturday from 11am-3pm.
Photo: Rodale Organic Life Magazine
Saturday, Oct. 24
If you can’t get enough of the farm-to-table phenomenon, you won’t want to miss Saturday’s Bites of Brooklyn Harvest Festival at Villain in Williamsburg. Organic Life Magazine has gathered together some of Brooklyn’s most beloved seasonal, local, and sustainable chefs (think the folks behind Egg, The Finch, Allswell/Bar Bolinas, The Pines/Willow and more) and convinced them to give us a half-day of tasting tables, cooking demos, and interactive presentations on topics like urban gardening, flower arranging, and canning. Tickets are $65, but you can save 30% by using the code HARVEST at checkout. –K.H.
To everything there is a season, and Sunday is the time for the Greenpointers Fall Market. Photo: Greenpointers
Sunday, Oct. 25
With every turn of the season, the folks over at Greenpointers bring together the best that Brooklyn’s northernmost neighborhood has to offer at a popular pop-up market, and Fall 2015 is no exception. This Sunday, head to the Greenpoint Loft for an afternoon of food, drink, dress, arts, shopping, and entertainment based around the theme of “Foliage & Foragers.” Enjoy soul-warming, spicy buttered rum (Mike’s Hot Honey + Sailor Jerry) or a cold local brew while checking out the food and browsing tables of one-of-a-kind, handcrafted items from 50-plus vendors. Afterwards, get your body art on at the henna tattoo and face painting booths before receiving a tarot card reading courtesy of local yoga guru Lindsay Myers. Admission is free, doors open at 1pm. –N.R.
There’s nothing better than a home-cooked meal and that’s especially true when the cook is an award-winning chef. This Monday, head to The Warehouse for a family-style supper club dinner with chef David Colston, who currently works as the executive chef at Midtown gastro-bar The Upsider and whose resume includes stints at Prime Meats and Ko. Attendees will be treated to a seasonal menu of plates like marinated Brussels sprouts with green apple, pumpkin seeds and an assortment of fall citrus, wood roasted lamb shank, and a scrumptious slice of whiskey pound cake topped with grapefruit posset. What’s more, there will be wine pairings to further please the palate. $75 tickets can be purchased here; the dinner starts at 7:30pm. –N.R.
One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. . . at Standard Toykraft’s Wes Craven Festival this week. Photo: New Line Cinema
Tuesday, Oct. 27
It’s been nearly two months since director Wes Craven passed, leaving a Ghostface-sized hole in the wide world of horror films. Now that we’re within spitting distance of Halloween, we encourage you to celebrate the life of the master of death with Standard ToyKraft’s Wes Craven Film Festival, a three-night event featuring back-to-back screenings of three Craven masterpieces each night from Tuesday through Thursday. For $20, you get all the Freddy Kreuger, Swamp Thing, and Scream you can handle, plus beer, popcorn and intermission puppet shows. And speaking of the creepy crawlies, Nitehawk Cinema is hosting two special screenings of the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead with a live score by Morricone Youth on Wednesday and Friday nights. See the film that gave birth to our endless fascination with zombies, complete with the added drama of a live horror soundtrack, for the price of a $16 ticket. Just don’t walk home through any dark alleys. . . . –N.R.
Laugh in the face of fear at What Are You Afraid Of? with Mara Wilson at Over the Eight on Wednesday night. Photo: Mara Wilson Writes Stuff
Wednesday, Oct. 28
It’s a spooky time of year, and not just because you are actually scared of the number of those damn fun-sized Snickers bars you are scarfing down per day (NB: stop bringing those into the office, evil coworkers!). Wednesday presents the perfect opportunity to face your fears– both legitimate and crazy– when What Are You Afraid Of? with Mara Wilson returns to Over the Eight. Wilson, the adorable child star turned writer/storyteller/comedian, will be joined by Selena Coppock (The Moth), Katrin Higher (The Frisky), and Morgan Pielli (Relationshit) to laugh in the face of their own anxieties and apprehensions. Tickets are $8 if you buy them in advance and $10 at the door.–K.H.
Tips by Nikita Richardson and Kate Hooker.
