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A New Dawn for Night Life in the Catskills
Spending time in Phoenicia, N.Y., as a child, I watched as boutique hotels, revamped diners and so-called glamping sites opened their doors in the Catskills, an area known as the home of borscht belt comedy and Woodstock. Now, a new wave of businesses is focusing on enriching the late-night scene. Among them is the bar Sunshine Colony from the owners of the liquor store Upstream Wine and Spirits in nearby Livingston Manor, who wanted a community hangout to drink with regulars and weekenders alike. There’s also the event space Bills, which took over an erstwhile bank and regularly hosts poetry readings; it’s set to open as a full-fledged bar in the spring. Finally, there’s the Avalon Lounge, a new music venue outfitted with crushed-velvet furniture, a dance floor and a kitchen that serves mandu (Korean dumplings). It’s run, in part, by the musician Liam Singer, who also owns the nearby HiLo cafe, a coffee shop that functions as a gallery. This trifecta is nearly enticing enough for me to move there, as if I needed another reason.
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From an Outspoken Artist, a Timely Show (and Lecture)
The output of Vaginal Davis — part video art, part music video, part punk rock legacy act, part intersectional cultural critique — has been called “terrorist drag,” a term coined by the critic José Esteban Muñoz. And it’s as good a term as any for her work. As the artist, whose moniker is a riff on the political activist Angela Davis’s name, put it to The New Yorker in 2015: “I was always too gay for the punks and too punk for the gays. I am a social threat.” One of her greatest pieces is the 1999 video “The White to Be Angry,” which will soon go on view at the Art Institute of Chicago and shares a name with the full-length album by her hard-core punk band, Pedro, Muriel & Esther. A mishmash of styles and stories, it plays not unlike a compilation of music videos with divergent aesthetics and includes a disturbing segment that features a skinhead discussing the sexual longing he feels for the people he also terrorizes. To say that “The White to Be Angry” has become more relevant as it has aged is both too easy an interpretation and true. “Vaginal Davis: The White to Be Angry,” is on view Feb. 1 through April 26 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, artic.edu. As part of the show, Davis will give a lecture at the museum on Feb. 5.
There’s no shortage of worthy places to drink natural wine in New York City, but Peoples, a new wine bar and store from the rising wine-world talent Daryl Nuhn and the chefs Fabián von Hauske and Jeremiah Stone (of the buzzy restaurants Contra and Wildair) doesn’t strike me as more of the same. Hidden in the basement of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, Peoples is reminiscent of the standing bars of Paris and Barcelona: You can just drop in for a glass and nothing more. Stay a while, though, and you can sample von Hauske and Stone’s clever takes on bar food, like an interpretation of the classic Basque skewer called gilda; they use umeboshi-marinated beef instead of anchovies. Just as exciting is the adjoining shop, punctuated by carefully stocked cubbies devoted to different themes, from an importer’s favorite bottles to releases from winemakers who have influenced one another. “The idea is to highlight connections and personalities,” says Stone, who wants the store to embody the tight-knit spirit of the global natural wine community. “We called it Peoples for a reason.” peoples.wine.
Listen to This
A New Album From a Country Music Legend
With a masterful blend of allegorical lyrics and honky-tonk hooks, the artist and musician Terry Allen has been steadily solidifying his stature as a reigning deity of a certain kind of country music since the mid-70s. His sophomore album, “Lubbock (On Everything)” (1979), is my personal favorite — I routinely play all 21 tracks in full — but his newly released album, “Just Like Moby Dick,” could make me rethink my rankings. Recorded in Austin, Texas, with an all-star cast of musicians and co-produced by the venerable Charlie Sexton, the record shows off Allen’s gravelly but warm voice as it he spins dark tales of life and death, inflected with dry wit and backed by a soft pillowy bed of twang. When I asked him about the album’s connection to the Herman Melville novel in its title, Allen told me, “I thought a lot about the whale, just that thing of plowing through. The dice are rolling and the trains are coming, you just keep on going the best you can.” “Just Like Moby Dick” by Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band is out now on Paradise of Bachelors.
It has long surprised me how underserved tween girls are when it comes to fashion. Even before I had a daughter of my own, I noticed the particular anxiety of friends who would seek the advice of others on Facebook about the best place to find something for their child to wear on an important occasion that isn’t silly, stuffy or disconcertingly sexy. To answer the need is Jeune Otte, a new clothing label for girls ages 8 to 15, created by the Chicago-based designers Heiji Choy Black and Elise Bergman. The sustainably minded collection (the garments are made from dead stock or remnant fabrics using local labor) reads as laid-back with hints of glamour, and the color palette isn’t ultrafeminine — Black and Bergman understand that some girls will not be parted from their sneakers or Dr. Martens, whatever the event. It’s that kind of versatility, and an emphatic respect for individuality, that makes the line a hit. After all, that’s how we want our girls to feel (and what we want them to convey): a sense of ease with themselves in the world. From $95, jeuneotte.com.
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