If you bought a new record in the past year, you’re hardly alone: U.S. music fans purchased 43 million vinyl records in 2023, representing a 10 percent growth year over year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. And that’s not even counting the massive secondhand market, which has been more-or-less cornered by the online marketplace Discogs. But Discogs is hardly without its problems. And with Record Store Day landing on April 20, there’s no time like the present to shop locally. Record Store Day is an annual event, launched in 2007, aiming to celebrate independently ow ..read more

This weekend sees the return of the triumvirate that is 4/20, Earth Day and Record Store Day. Nice. The sun should cooperate this weekend. Either way, there’s no shortage of things for you to do indoors and outside the bulk of the weekend. Cypress Hill will be swinging through town to celebrate the very sane-in-the-membrane legalization of weed. The Lifted 420 Festival has 12 hours of green-filled fun for you at The Meadows and the Weed Auntie will pop up at the annual FLAMER picnic in Prospect Park. The hit indie dark comedy “The People’s Joker,” which reimagines the DC character and feature ..read more

It’s 10 p.m. on a drizzly Thursday and a herd of animal-horned, face-painted adults are gathered at Bushwick nightclub Three Dollar Bill. Performance artist Tiresias is leading the evening’s debaucherous activities, and tonight, dressed in a furry, mesh skinsuit and a silver, coral-like crown, they’re cosplaying as Dionysus — the Greek god of madness, theater and ecstasy. “On the count of three, we are going to make beautiful, horrifying music,” they boom to the guests assembled around the dancefloor. “We are going to scream — the primal scream from your guts, an animal scream.” Tiresias ser ..read more

It’s 11.30 a.m. on an overcast Sunday morning and about 30 people, wrapped up in rainbow anoraks and sherbet-striped hats, are clustered by the entrance of McCarren Park. Standing in a circle, the group introduces themselves to newcomers — their names, their pronouns, and most importantly: their favorite bird. “We’ve been into woodcocks recently,” smiles one birder, gesturing towards their partner. “I love chickens,” says another. The occasion is a birding and social gathering hosted by NYC Queer Birders, a birding collective launched by Anna Kremer and Hannah Kirshenbaum for LGBTQ+ folks to ..read more

From its scrappy beginnings some 16 years ago, when it first opened in what was then a grim industrial patch of Bushwick near the Morgan L train stop, Roberta’s has grown into an empire. There are outposts in Williamsburg now, and Nashville, and Singapore, and, soon, near Penn Station. I’ve eaten their signature bee sting pie (cheese, funky meat, hot honey — pretty much every pizza place in town offers a version of this now) out at Rockaway on the Beach 67 boardwalk and among the art swells at Frieze on Randalls Island. They’ve launched fancy offshoots like Blanca and Foul Witch. You can ..read more

For over a decade, Sinkane — real name Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab — has quietly released a steady stream of Afrobeat-inspired rock and jazzy pop while living in Brooklyn. He’ll probably be here for a while, too, since he described the apartment he and his partner share in Greenpoint as an absolute steal. “We have golden handcuffs because our apartment is so cheap and it’s so quiet,” he says. Before making music as a solo artist, he drummed in an array of prominent indie groups, from Caribou to Of Montreal to Yeasayer. His new album “We Belong,” which debuted last week, takes a slight turn into fu ..read more

Julian (Photo by Johnny Cirillo) If you ask me when I first started following Johnny’s Watching New York account, I don’t remember the exact moment, or how many years I’ve been following it. I do remember that his photos sparked the same joy that walking through the city and people-watching do for me. We all tend to see a repetitive group of public figures being photographed and published in their well-known styles, but to me it’s refreshing to scroll through people I don’t know who are so clearly expressing themselves in their own way. The Bell Brothers (Photo by Johnny Cirillo) New York ..read more

Like what you’re hearing? Subscribe to us at iTunes, check us out on Spotify and hear us on Google, Amazon, Stitcher and TuneIn. This is our RSS feed. Tell a friend! Dan Perlman is a comedian, writer and director in Brooklyn. He is perhaps best known as the co-creator, writer and star of Showtime’s critically-acclaimed comedy series, “Flatbush Misdemeanors,” which was sadly not renewed after its much lauded and pitch-perfect two season run. Don’t count Dan out though. He’s still making things — short things, for now. Much as “Flatbush Misdemeanors ..read more

It’s 10 a.m. on a wet, windy Saturday morning and a cluster of New Yorkers have gathered under a pop-up canopy tent in Travers Park, Queens. Clutching umbrellas and paper cups of coffees, they take turns flipping through a laminated menu of sorts, ruminating over an important question: What type of tree would they like to take home? An elderberry? A Northern red oak? An American persimmon? A sweetbay magnolia? Thanks to New York Restoration Project (NYRP), New Yorkers can register online to receive a free tree this spring, a scheme that has distributed over 75,000 trees across all five boroug ..read more

New York has always been a city of superlatives, and here’s a good one: It’s the most linguistically diverse city not just in the world, but in the history of the world. So says linguist Ross Perlin in his revelatory new book, “Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York.” Perlin is co-director of the Manhattan-based Endangered Language Alliance, which both documents the city’s embattled languages and provides support for its vast linguistic diversity. (The ELA’s ambitious mapping project has found more than 700 languages spoken in the metropolitan area.) In add ..read more