Recently, artist Jose Carlos Casado created a special video installation with the singer/rapper M.I.A. This was part of the Soho House launch of her new album, Matangi. The event took lace at the 1896 Studio in Brooklyn as everyone rocked out and had a blast. The party took place inside a massive warehouse and was part of SPIN and Soho House’s “Satellite Nights” concert series.
M.I.A. played some crowd favorites which included “Paper Planes” and “Bad Girls”.
It’s amazing how much underwear people will buy. Or how much Under Armour at least expects them to buy. They will soon be opening their first NYC location in early 2014, much to the anticipation of their many fans. While company executives will admit that they are planning to open in Soho, they won’t yet disclose a location.
As North American division president Henry Stafford told WWD, “New York is an area where we’re significantly underpenetrated and we’re going to open in a great location.”
The store will carry sportswear for men and women.
In addition to this exciting news, Under Armour is also planning to launch a men’s lifestyle line. Called the 35th and ) for the Georgetown address were Under Armour got its beginnings, the line allows customers to wear their products in and out of the gym.
If you just can’t wait to get your hands on their products in Soho, you can enjoy the sample sale that will take place from Tuesday, October 29 through Sunday, November 3rd at the 260 Fifth Avenue store between 28th and 29th streets.
Whether you loved John Lennon, you love art, or you just want to be part of the latest thing to hit SoHo, get to 72 Green Street soon. For what would have been John Lennon’s 73rd birthday, an exhibition is being showcased there of his drawings.
It includes 100 drawings and song writing that he created between 1964 and 1980 and includes a wide range of expressions.
As Peter Haskell of WCBS880 explained, “The nature of his drawings are pretty simple for the most part, cartoonish almost. Very, very cool stuff with some amazing history.”
The suggested donation for entering is $3 and all proceeds will benefit a nonprofit group that offers meals to homebound elderly people in New York. As Citymeals-on-Wheels executive director Beth Shapiro said, “I’m hoping that we reach $20,000, which is about what we did last year and it’s huge for us. Every meal that we deliver is $6.42, $20,000 goes a long way.”
All of the works in the show are available to be purchased. The show is presented by Yoko Ono, Bag One Arts and Legacy Fine Arts and Productions.
Paddle8 auction house has a new worker. And all eyes will certainly be on her. Princess Eugenie of York was recently spotted shopping in SoHo with her mom, Sarah Ferguson. She has started working at Paddle8 and has been seen around SoHo where she rented an apartment. The 23 year old princess and the youngest daughter of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew, Duke of York, will continue to turn heads as she makes her way around New York.
Having spent the summer in Venice with her sister and her mom, Princess Beatrice is now ready for action in New York.
In Brooklyn’s Park Slope, a number of teenagers are showing the rest of us what giving back looks like. Groundswell is a community mural service organization that is hosting the Recovery Diaspora Project. This project, created by the street artist Swoon is bringing together kids from all five of NYC’s boroughs with the purpose of painting their Sandy stories from the terrible hurricane that ravaged the area a number of months ago.
The murals will grace the walls of five of the hardest hit area including Coney Island, Red Hook, the Rockaways and Staten Island. In addition to the murals they plan to put in each location, the organization will combine elements of their murals for a piece on the Houston Bowery Wall for the one year anniversary of the storm on October 29.
As lead artist Yana Dimitrova said, “When it comes to Sandy, we’ve talked about the difference in how men and women are often affected by storms. Women are often tasked with taking care of more than just themselves.”
As Al Huang wrote on the National Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog, “The grim reality is that the storm disproportionately impacted our city’s most vulnerable populations—low-income people, people of color, and the elderly—in communities that are already overburdened with an unfair share of toxic pollution and health problems.”
The Recovery Diaspora Project is trying to bring beauty where there was destruction. As Tasleem Sheikh, a 17 year old senior at Brooklyn High School of the Arts said, “No one else is going to make our point. We want to keep our voices heard and speak to what really happened.”
As Shawntell James said about the project, “This is one way for people to express that we’re stronger than Sandy.”
Unfortunately, if you’ve enjoyed shopping at Treasure & Bond, the SoHo store whose profits all went to charity, you won’t be able to do so any longer. They recently closed the store at 350 W. Broadway between Grand and Broome streets. The commendable goal of the store was to donate 100% of the profits to charity to benefit kids in NYC. The store first opened in August of 2011 and pledged to donate to locations like The Edible Schoolyard NYC and the Association to Benefit Children.
As the Nordstrom spokeswoman explained, “Treasure & Bond was always meant to be an experiment where we could try something new to give back to the NYC community. We’re really proud of our efforts, but after two years we had yet to turn a profit.” Over their two year run, they did raise $200,000 for charities.
Achievement First was established in 1998 by a group of individuals from New Haven who wanted to give urban students the same academic opportunities as their affluent suburban counterparts by changing the system. Thus Amistad Academy was born.
Since its establishment, the Academy garnered outstanding Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) results. In addition, these students have beat state averages in both reading and math, proving that wealth has nothing to do with intelligence and success in the educational system, if, as co-founder Dacia Toll – also Achievement First’s co-CEO – realized.
Toll’s priorities today are to develop and expand Achievement First and the success of all their schools. She is responsible for all internal and external operations and relations, as well as planning; coaching; training; recruitment; outreach; fundraising and more. The experience she brings to the helm includes being the leader of Amistad Academy’s founding team and serving as school principal from 1999 to 2005.
Elm City College Preparatory, a second school, was opened in 2004, expanding the original model to elementary grades. The following year it moved over into Brooklyn as well, first, opening two new schools there – Achievement First Crown Heights Charter School and Achievement First East New York Charter School – and then a little while later the Amistad Academy High School and Amistad Academy Elementary School. This encouraged the opening of Connecticut’s first K to 12 public charter school. Two new middle schools and an elementary school in Bridgeport and Hartford, followed. Today, Achievement First boasts 20 academies under 10 charters in 4 cities. In the 2011-12 academic year, it serves 6,210 students in grades K to 12.
Some of their schools in NY include:
Charlie Bird, the new Soho restaurant, from Robert Bohr and chef Ryan Hardy is ready to impress. It just opened a few days ago and shows an amazing food section that is split into five categories. These include Raw, Pasta, Small Plates, Vegetables and Large Plates. They focus on Italian flavors as they describe on their website, they have an “Italian influenced, American executed, and entirely New York.”
They are a very inexpensive place to enjoy, with only one dish over $30. Their win list includes a section called “Shameless Plug” which features wines made by sommeliers who are friends of the house. These include Aldo Sohm of Le Bernardin and Bobby Stuckey of Frasca Food & Wine, in Colorado.
As they describe on their own website,
“The menu comes from New York’s farmers markets, Long Island fishing boats, country fields and the wondrous meanderings of spirited travelers with passionate palates. We’ll be crushing seafood, roasted meats, crazy good wine and creamy espresso. We’ll present a wine list broad enough for you to come by and enjoy wine with us every night or, you can be a baller and order something you can’t get anywhere else in the world. We’re Italian influenced, American executed and entirely New York.”
The bikes are ready and the stations are in place for the bike sharing program to start in SoHo. But, some people in SoHo aren’t taking to the new Citi Bike racks well.
There are now two bike racks in Lt. Joseph Petrosino Square at Lafayette and Kenmare streets. And, as Sean Sweene of the SoHo Alliance said, “The people of New York will have to view this ugly Citibank advertising in a place formerly reserved, and preserved, for art.”
There have been complaints all around from people saying that the bike stations are on landmark blocks and others arguing that there will be lost parking spots. Recently, people in Greenwich Village were given tickets after a new bike stand was installed.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, blowing off the criticism, said on WOR Radio on Friday that the anti-bike criticism “makes good theater.”
9000 bikers will start riding on Monday who have signed up already and the bikes will then be available to the general public starting June 2. An annual membership costs $95 and a day pass is $9.95.
In a bit of a strange move, Delta has a pop-up shop coming to a store near you. They have recently converted a cast-iron building on West Broadway and Broome Street into a mini-airport for a three week promotion they are conducted. The company wants to show off their $1.4 billion Terminal 4 that will open on May 24 at JFK, and they are created a simulation of the terminal in SoHo.
As Gail Grimmett, Delta’s senior vice president in New York explains about the new terminal, “We have a Shake Shack and Blue Smoke plus two entries from Marcus Samuelsson. Our lounges are equipped with showers and full media offering. Travelers will want for nothing.”
The replica terminal opened on Wednesday at 11 am. It’s being dubbed “T4X” and it will have all of the amenities of the real JFK portal. As an extra perk, visitors can enjoy a $4 lunch box served on a conveyor belt that will stimulate baggage pick-up.
Grimmett explained why they created the replica, “We wanted to give New Yorkers something they can touch.”
Wednesday night there was a gala bash with football stars Victor Cruz and Justin Tuck. T4X then became open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 am until 3 pm until May 22.