DON’T MISS!: ON THE AVENUE
A cavalcade of culinary delights, dance troupes and brass bands will line a mile of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue during tomorrow afternoon’s first-ever Atlantic Avenue Extravaganza.
Among the 300 businesses at the bash, which toasts the new Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District, are longtime Middle Eastern shop Sahadi’s (since 1948), offering free tastes of four new hummus flavors, and newer Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches, with free banh mi samples.
Nonfood festivities include calligraphy and kendo (Japanese martial arts) demos at Silk Road Antiques and a performance by the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band.
“I think you can consider Atlantic Avenue as Brooklyn’s main street,” says Josef Szende, Atlantic Avenue BID’s executive director. “All of Atlantic Avenue’s past is here today . . . there are a lot of Middle Eastern businesses, antique stores that we’re known for and also new boutiques that are [forming] the next phase of Atlantic Avenue.”
It’s all free from 1 to 5 p.m. on Atlantic Avenue from the BQE to Fourth Avenue. Details at atlanticavenuebid.wordpress.com.
—Christina Amoroso
2 of 5
SEE THIS!: ARTISTIC THREESOME
SOME shows are too big for a single building. Take “Caribbean: Crossroads of the World,” an eye-popping exploration of colliding cultures from the 18th century to today, spread among the Queens Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem and El Museo del Barrio. Most of it’s at El Museo, which has a dizzying mash-up of styles and textures: surrealism from Haiti, impressionism from Puerto Rico, op art from Venezuela. Here and there are artists you know — Pissarro and Gauguin, who worked on the Panama Canal. And many you may not know, such as Surinamese artist Patricia Kaersenhout, who made a self-portrait photo as ‘‘The Girl With the Pearl Earring.’’ Another, Felipe Jesus Consalvos, was a Cuban living in Philadelphia in the ’30s, who made the collage “Uncle Sam Wants Your Surplus Fat” with bits of $1 bills. “His family thought he was crazy,” says curator Elvis Fuentes. But what an investment! Fifth Avenue at 104th St.; elmuseo.org
— Barbara Hoffman
Courtesy of Patricia Kaersenhout
3 of 5
DISCOVER THIS!: NO BONES ABOUT IT
IT’S time to pull out that old rock your grandma claims is a brontosaurus fossil and
put it to the test at the American Museum of Natural History’s 19th annual Identification Day. Eleven scientists with specialties ranging from paleontology to botany will be on hand to ID those knicks and knacks. Past finds have included a hand ax found in a Staten Island backyard estimated to be at least 3,000 years old, fossilized whale vertebrae and fossilized shark teeth.“We get a mixed crowd, but we do have a select few people who show up with coolers full of objects waiting outside the museum before the doors even open,” laughs Kira Lacks, the program’s coordinator. Since it’s all in the name of science, not profit, gems won’t be identified and appraisals won’t be given.
Tomorrow, noon to 4 p.m. at Central Park West and 79th Street; amnh.org. Price included in suggested museum admission ($19 for adults, $10.50 for kids).
— Gregory E. Miller
Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley
4 of 5
WATCH IT!: ‘BORN’ AGAIN
Judy Garland, who was born 90 years ago last Sunday, earned an Oscar nomination for her role in George Cukor’s “A Star Is Born’’ (1954), a lavish Technicolor CinemaScope musical remake of the 1937 backstage Hollywood classic about a rising star married to a fading one (James Mason). The three-hour film flopped when it was artlessly cut by 25 minutes shortly after its opening, but in 1983 it was reconstructed to something close to its original form, using outtakes and black-and-white photo stills. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is showing a gorgeous 2010 restoration today through Thursday as part of a series devoted to classics shown on the Digital Cinema Package format (rather than the traditional 35mm). Walter Reade Theater, 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue; filmlinc.com
—Lou Lumenick
Everett Collection
5 of 5
CHECK IT OUT!: FOR PETE’S SAKE
The roots of the this weekend’s annual Clearwater Festival go back to the mid-1960s, when Pete Seeger had the sloop Cearwater built to draw attention to cleaning the pollution-choked Hudson River; he also staged a series of concerts to raise funds for the cleanup. Today, as a cleaner Hudson thrives, it’s a two-day fest featuring more than 100 music acts including Arlo Guthrie, Ani DiFranco, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Béla Fleck. The environmental thrust is still there, though, down to the solar-powered stages. “If you come for the mission, we hope you’ll be inspired by some great artists. And if you come for the music, hopefully you’ll come away with a piece of the mission,” says festival director Steve Lurie. Although Seeger isn’t scheduled to perform, the 93-year-old troubadour will be there — and likely to land on a stage somewhere, banjo in hand. Tomorrow and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, NY (on MetroNorth’s Hudson line). Tickets start at $60; clearwaterfestival.org.
— Chris Erikson
