• POEMobile • Locating the Sacred • Haitian Rhythms • New York City Honey Festival
• Kickflip Film Festival • Great North Tug Boat Race • Spontaneous Street Music

Dear Citylorists,

Please enjoy our Tours and Tales August-September 2012 e-letter!

Photo by Abby Ronner

• POEMobile – Quoth the Raven: Edgar Allen Poe en El Bronx • The POEMobile strikes again, and this time it’s Edgar Allen Poe with a Latin twist! Join us for an evening of poetry and live music featuring some of the poems by Edgar Allen Poe, written when he lived in the Bronx in the late 1840s, set to Afro-Cuban rhythms. Music provided by multi Grammy-nominated drummer Bobby Sanabria & Quarteto Aché. Poetry by Caridad de la Luz aka La Bruja. On this night, the POEMobile becomes the POEmobile!

See this event on our calendar!

And while we’re talking about the POEMobile, here’s a heads up on our next event:

September brings another great POEMobile collaboration, this time with Cave Canem Foundation, North America’s premier home for black poetry. As part of the annual DUMBO Arts Festival, Cave Canem poets will read selected work, while their lines are projected by the POEMobile onto the outside of DUMBO buildings and bridges. Reception at 20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A follows. Additional information about the festival can be found here.

When: Friday, September 28, 7:30pm–9:30pm
Where: Bridge Park 2 in DUMBO, next to the York St. train station.
Admission: FREE
For more information: 212.529.1955 ext 308 or cfletcher@citylore.org, and follow us on Twitter @ POEMobile.

• Locating the Sacred • What places are sacred to you in New York City? As a part of the Asian American Arts Alliance’s Locating the Sacred Festival, our Place Matters program has teamed up with a4 to offer you a unique opportunity to nominate places that are sacred to you in New York City. Place Matters is a program designed to foster the conservation of New York City’s historically and culturally significant places. To nominate yours visit the Place Matters’ Census here and take a look through the Place Matters’ Census Map, which enables you to call out the sacred sites identified to date.

City Lore is also proud to take part in a Locating the Sacred event on Friday, September 21st. Our Executive Director, Steve Zeitlin, will be featured on a panel alongside Robert T. Hayashi (author, Haunted by Water: A Journey through Race and Place in the American West), Marita Sturken (author, Tourists of History: Memory, Consumerism, and Kitsch in American Culture), and Hiroshi Sunairi (artist and filmmaker). This discussion will seek to locate the sacred at the intersection of art, public space and memorialization with examples from projects from around the world.

See this event on our calendar!

The Locating the Sacred Festival will begin September 12th with an opening concert at the Church of Ascension and close on September 23rd. There are a variety of cultural events that round out this festival, all in the hopes of reconnecting with the sacred and bringing communities together. For information on more festival events, visit their website here.

• Haitian Rhythms at Pwezi Ak Mizik Anba Tonèl • Building on last year’s Haitian POEMobile event, our friends at Haiti Cultural Exchange (HCX), will host the last installment of HCX | Mizik Ayiti! Summer Music Series entitled Pwezi Ak Mizik Anba Tonèl. The evening will feature outdoor multilingual poetry performances, live music and refreshments. Haiti Cultural Exchange is proud to announce renowned poet Anthony Phelps as their featured guest poet. The evening’s stellar line up includes poets such as special guest and playwright Syto Cavé, Josaphat-Robert Large, Jany Tomba, Ibi Zoboi, Jeffrey "MrJeffDess" Dessources, Jean-Dany Joachim, and Jean Francois "A20" Avin all gracing the stage for what is sure to be a monumental performance of Haitian poetry. Musical performances from Vo-duo and La Troupe Makandal.

For more information please visit this event on our calendar!

• New York City Honey Festival • If you happen to have an insatiable sweet tooth, like most of us at City Lore, then you don’t want to miss the New York City Honey Festival. This festival includes everything from honey tastings, to beekeeping classes, food stands, mural painting, and even a honey-themed dinner. Organized by the Brooklyn Grange Farm and the Rockaway Beach Club, this festival is all you need to stave off sweet cravings for several months…or at least until your next meal.

For more information see this event on our calendar!

Intervewing Rodney Torres

• Kickflip Film Festival • This summer City Lore’s education department and our partners at Reelworks and the Harold Hunter Foundation engaged a talented group of skateboarders to document the culture of the NYC skateboarding scene. We gave them equipment, lessons on filmmaking and community research. Together with teen filmmakers from The Reelworks youth filmmaking program they skated around the city interviewing and filming. The final edited pieces will be screened at our Kickflip Film Festival on Sunday September 9th at 12 & A Skatepark, located on 12th street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A. The celebration will include a skate contest, food and an outdoor screening of the fantastic student work via City Lore’s own POEMobile. The Program is part of the Mozilla Hive Program, and is funded by New York Community Trust and the MacArthur Foundation.

See this event on our calendar!

Photo by Bernie Ente © 2009

• 20th Annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition • On Sunday, September 2nd, more than a dozen tugboats will battle for harbor honors in a river-churning race, bow-to-bow tugboat pushing contests, line-throwing, spinach eating, mascot and tattoo competitions. The best viewing is from a Circle Line spectator boat that will depart Pier 83 (West 43rd St.) at 9:30 a.m. Advance ticketing recommended (Cost: Adults, $30; kids, $25). If you don't want to pay the admission you can also find excellent shoreside viewing of the race and parade from Hudson River Park Pier 84 (West 44th Street) and along the riverfront between West 44th and West 79th Streets!

Here is the schedule:

– 9:30 a.m.: Spectator Boat departs (boarding begins at 9 a.m.)
– 10 a.m.: Tugboats parade north on the Hudson from Pier 84 to West 79th St.
– 10:30 -11 a.m.: Tugboat race begins near West 79th St. and finishes at Pier 84.
– 11 a.m. - noon: Bow-to-bow pushing contests and line-toss competition
– noon -1 p.m.: Tugboats and crews gather at Pier 84; spinach eating contests for adults and kids, amateur line-toss competitions; food and beverages available for purchase.
– 1 p.m.: Awards

When: Sunday, September 2, 9:30am–2:00pm
Where: Hudson River between West 43rd and West 79th Streets in Manhattan.
For more information and purchase tickets: Visit workingharbor.org or call Betsy Frawley Haggerty or John Doswell at 212-757-1600.

A Scene from Feiras Novas

• Spontaneous Street Music • In September, 2011, City Lore's Exexutive Director and folklorist, Steve Zeitlin, and our Education Program Director and folklorist, Amanda Dargan, traveled to the Feiras Novas Festival in Ponte de Lima in northern Portugal. We were delighted to stumble across a spontaneous burst of traditional music along the main thoroughfare. We couldn’t resist sharing this joyous moment which captures some of the spirit of this vibrant celebration which has been celebrated continuously since 1826. You can watch it at YouTube.

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Steve and Abby

City Lore is part of a cultural coalition called CATCH, to promote the City’s cultural heritage. Check out the web sites of our wonderful partners, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the Latino Children’s Theater, SEA, and the World Music Institute.