Food is Art: Saul at The Brooklyn Museum

Food is life. Food is politics. Food is love. Food is the new rock. Food is food is food is food is food.

Andy Warhol had his bananas & soup cans. Food is art. MOMA has Warhols. MOMA also has The Modern, the restaurant from Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group that opened back in 2004 and is helmed (for now) by Gabriel Kreuther. Over the years, they've received a Michelin star and two and three star reviews from The New York Times.

Not to be outdone by its Manhattan counterpart, today The Brooklyn Museum opens Saul, the newest incarnation of the Michelin-starred restaurant that held court on Smith St. for the last fourteen years before closing down in July and upgrading to new digs just off the museum lobby, where the Museum Cafe once stood.

It's the next in a continuing tradition of improvements for Saul. Pete Wells, in his 2009 two-star review of the restaurant, described Saul's then ten-year journey as one where Saul and Lisa Bolton were "(l)ike couples in a starter apartment, they dressed the place up as money came in." Ten years later, where there were once "thick plates from Fishs Eddy," there was now "white Bernadaud china." Since then, Saul Bolton has gone on to open The Vanderbilt and Red Gravy in Prospect Heights. Now Saul's come to join them in the 'hood.

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Brooklyn Museum Treats Us Like The Small Town in Footloose By Taking Dancing Away

Photo via The L Magazine

In a surprising move that’s sure to prove unpopular, the Brooklyn Museum announced on Friday that, for the time being, they will cancel the Target Free Saturday dance parties. According to a blog post on the museum’s website written by Elisabeth Callihan, Manager of Adult Programs, this change is a result of “challenges with capacity crowds and traffic flow throughout the building.” Of course, everyone knows that the correct way to handle an event that’s TOO popular is to cancel it.

A large part of the appeal of Target Free Saturdays is the dance party. Every month, thousands of young Brooklynites flock to the museum to admire its unique exhibits and dance in the third floor atrium. I’ve been to several of these events, and it’s really the combination of artwork and dancing that attracted me. Surrounded by European paintings of religious figures, one might feel awkward shaking his or her ass to pop and dance music. Yet the juxtaposition of those tunes against the museum’s grand archways and palatial glass ceiling made for a truly unforgettable and unique Brooklyn experience. Without the dance parties, these nights at the museum will likely feel less joyous and communal.

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FIPS Visits Keith Haring at the Brooklyn Museum

When our Managing Editor Kerri asked me to check out the Keith Haring exhibit at the BK museum last week, my first thought was "I have no idea how to write about visual art." I mean, I like museums and I like art -- I just don't know how to actually convey the experience of art in writing. Basically, I'm pretty sure that any review I wrote of the exhibit would be the art world equivalent of the much-blogged-about Olive Garden review by that old lady in North Dakota. Luckily for me though, the exhibit turned out to be awesome and offers sufficient context, analysis and criticism that even someone as retartded (ha!) as me will still have something to say.

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5 Ways to Get Fit in Park Slope...Minus a Gym Membership

I must confess...I love the gym. 

I like being in a big sweaty room, commiserating with a bunch of strangers about how our fat asses need to be less fat. There's something to that. 

BUT -- not everyone wants, needs, or can afford a gym membership...so we've gotta' come up with some ways to stay fit in the Slope, sans the gym. And if you have a membership at a YMCA or NYSC, you can still add these into your normal workouts to spice things up, like when that Cardio Dance Salsa Boxing class is full.

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The Old-New Servant Problem And (Maybe) Its Solution!

 Djuna Barnes (American, 1892–1982), Sketch of a woman with hat, looking right, for "The Terrorists," New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, September 30, 1917. Ink on paper, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. (32.4 x 21.6 cm). Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Ah-ha!  Caught you!  You just read this headline and were rightly horrified. But this subject matter makes sense to you, Park Sloper, living as you unfortunately do among the ever-expanding universe of millionaire brownstoners in BK, and their apparently endless need for nannies and maids.

Well relax, FIPster, ‘cause this headline didn’t come from our pens, but from gifted and edgy reporter Djuna Barnes, who in 1913 wrote an article for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about the lives of our borough's nannies way back when. The piece is about the bullshit that “the girls” (as they were called by the head of their employment agency) endured in Brooklyn households at the time, which totally proves that domestic employers were demanding assholes way back then, too!

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