EXTRAAVAAGAANZAA + NORTH AADAAMSAA
HEADS UP NYC + uhhh WESTERN MASS?
This FRIDAY Aa is heading up a party being thrown at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in Manhattan - this is the COMPLETE text of a flier I picked up at this weekend's bike war (raw photos of the madness here from Tod):
EXTRAVAGANZA OF RIDICULOUS PROPORTIONS IX
Fantasy verse Sci-fi Costume Dance Party and Show
with
Big A little a
I Love You
Space Robot Scientists
A Benefit for the Free Store and The New World In Our Hearts Infoshop and Cafe
Friday, July 1st
9pm into the Night!
CSV 107 Suffolk
Rivington and Delancy
$7, $6 with good costume!
7 pm for the $4 GIANT & DELICIOUS dinner! (Vegan & not)
DJs that dance with you!
Bubble Spaceship Dance Room!
Amazing Visuals! Interactive Art!
Puppet Sci-fi Dance Battle!
Delicious Cupcakes!
For future parties or more info email extravaganzas [at] gmail.com
Varied and delicious drinks, deserts will accompany an amazing meal!
Wow, I guess I am pretty pumped, maybe this sounds like fun to you too? We played another party these guys threw at the Brecht Forum a little while back and it was way fun, nice, mostly non-Brooklynite crowd partying down unselfconsciously in crazy outfits. Also, I really like "DJs that dance with you!" as a feature.
PLEASE NOTE NYCers that this is like probably your second-or-third-to-last chance to see the incredible (and incredible looking) Michael Colin drumming with us before he heads to Tel Aviv, DO NOT MISS HIM NOW OR YOU WILL MISS HIM MORE WHEN HE'S GONE. Buy the kid a drink, or if he turns it down b/c he has to stay sharp to play and he's self-controlled like that, just tell him to give it to me -
ALSO, this Sunday we are playing a show at the end of this art opening at this huge museum in western Massachussetts (the Berkshires!) this weekend called MassMoca - which sounds pretty cool -
For generations, people in North Adams, Massachusetts, just off the Appalachian Trail, worked at Sprague Electric Co., making capacitors for the Apollo moon missions and the first atomic bombs. If you didn't work at Sprague, a friend or a relative almost certainly did.
And then, Sprague was gone, a casualty of the mid-1980s collapse of New England's manufacturing economy. When the company finally left town, it took not only 4,000 jobs, but a part of this community's soul. Skilled workers and businesses fled. Unemployment in the city of 15,000 reached 25 percent.
"A lot of families grew up with the company," says Joe Zona, 73, who worked at Sprague for 32 years until he was laid off in 1975. "I think in the back of their minds, people felt the company owed them more loyalty."
This stunning and isolated mountain town was left with little more than a painful reminder of past prosperity: the Sprague complex of 27 19th-century buildings, crumbling and leaking yet with handsome brick facades and plenty of space.
If only someone could figure out what to do with them.
And then came a crazy idea: Why not save an old, blue-collar mill town with a museum of cutting-edge, contemporary art?...
Apparently, the idea worked, or is working, or whatever - Gothamist tells me that it won an award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Hopefully we can play outdoors or something, I don't know, but I'm pretty siked regardless of where in the complex we end up - apparently the space is huge, the town is beautiful, I am excited to check it out, excited to play out of town, excited for rafting and fireworks the next day for the 4th, &c &c
I'll post more exact info on the location and time when I get it, but NY amigos, if any of you are interested in coming up with us to party and chill in North Adams for the 3rd and 4th of July, there'll definitely be room to crash at the big loft place where we're staying (thanks Maggie's friend, whoever you are!), so hit me up for directions and to coordinate travel plans - we might even have room for a couple in the car.