Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Coming to NYC!

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July 17 Update–A Note to Great Gray Bridge Readers: A reader of my blog saw the post below and thought it’s possible that Alamo Drafthouse Cinema may not come to the Metro Theater in NY after all, that it may not happen. I agree there’s certainly been no improvement to the site yet and I concede the news was reported in Huff Post more than 4 months ago. There’s a possibility something could go wrong, but I doubt it. I’ve found the Huff Post story was triggered by a blog post on the Alamo site. I just don’t think they’d have announced the Metro renovation without a proper deal. We shall see soon, if they really are planning to open in 2013.

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I was excited to discover that Austin, TX–based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema–an innovative chain of movie houses that combines film and food–are going to renovate and reclaim the handsome Metro Theater on Broadway at 100th Street in Manhattan, which has been neglected and empty for nearly a decade. This is great news for the Upper West Side! Coincidentally, the Metro Theater marquee is featured in the series of urban marquees that my wife Kyle Gallup has recently been painting, as seen here. Following Kyle’s piece is shot of the Metro’s Art Deco facade, in a photo borrowed from the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Facebook page, which you may ‘like.’

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is also opening a location in Yonkers, just north of New York City, so they’re clearly aiming for a major presence here in the metropolitan area. On the web page for the Yonkers location, they are already soliciting local applicants for positions with the company.

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Brave Woman Fends off Grizzly Bear

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Over at the Great Gray Bridge tumblr, I’ve posted an article and a photo of an Alaskan woman who, brandishing only with a walking stick and a spray bottle of insect repellent, prevented an aggressive grizzly bear from attacking her, her nieces, and her husky dog. H/t journalist @BrendanKoerner who first tweeted about this story. From the amazing story by reporter Tim Mowry:

“If somebody had told me I would hold off one or possibly two bears with a walking stick and a can of natural insect repellent I would have told them they were crazy, but you do what you gotta do,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let that bear eat my dog and I definitely wasn’t going to let it eat my nieces.”

 

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Mitt’s Friday the 13th TV Adventure–Weak Talk & Condescension

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In the round of network interviews Mitt Romney sat for yesterday, which he and his campaign doubtless hoped would quell the growing demands that he reveal more about his Bain years and his opaque finances, he uttered some really weak stuff that remind me of the moment in the primaries when he suggested people should talk only in “quiet rooms” about his business dealings. This is what he said to Wolf Blitzer yesterday.

“I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more,” Mr. Romney said on CNN. “And, you know, we’re putting out what is required plus more that is not required. And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that’s–that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances.”

“People always want to get more.” Such blazing condescension! “Understand something about my finances” Is that all the media and the people are entitled to learn, something?

Do Mitt and his advisors really believe this weak talk is going to quiet the demands for more information? They may wish it were so, but it ain’t gonna happen. Surely, over the next four months, other issues will take center stage but I predict that between now and Election Day this is going to be a continuing feature of the campaign. It will hover over Mitt’s campaign like a dark cloud continually threatening a downpour, and the people underneath it will never know when they’re going to get drenched.

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Best TV Ad of the Campaign Season

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The most damaging thing a candidate can to his political opponent is make him seem ridiculous, teasing him in such a way as to reduce his gravitas. We’ve seen that Mitt Romney always tries to maintain his gravitas, and this new ad by the Obama campaign utterly punctures that veneer of seriousness, using Mitt’s singing voice, not to mention making a fair point about Mitt’s business dealings.

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#FridayReads, July 13–“The Double Game” by Dan Fesperman

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#FridayReads, July 13–Finished The Double Game, a brilliant and compelling espionage novel by Dan Fesperman. I loved the end as much as the first half. The mark of quality here is defined by the appendix of 218 books at the back of Fesperman’s book that he read and drew from in writing his latest work. As I posted in my #FridayReads last week, “Terrific dialogue, characters, and use of dozens of classic espionage books as clues and plot points. Sonny Mehta’s letter on the back of the galley is right: ‘For anyone who loves a good spy thriller–and who has loved them for years–this will be a treat.’”

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This Week at The Great Gray Bridge

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In the past week I’ve blogged about an urban skunk I encountered in Riverside Park;  a great new espionage novel called The Double Game by Dan Fesperman; the shameful lack of recognition for women in tech, as revealed by Change the Ratio’s Rachel Sklar; a well-deserved honor for Jim Tully: American Writer, Hollywood Brawler, Irish Rover, my fave biography of 2011; the lack of public transportation for wage-earners which means they often can’t get to jobs they would otherwise be able to fill; a new genetics study that may shed light on how the Americas were peopled in prehistoric times; a personal essay I’m contributing to a new book called Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology; Mitt Romney’s most secret offshore investment, Mitt and Ann’s Jet-Ski vacation, and a NY Times Editorial that hit Mitt. I also put up a guest post by my son Ewan Turner, a blended short story that fuses an actual incident from Bob Dylan’s career with an imagined episode involving the singer.

Over at The Great Gray Bridge tumblr, my site for quick hits and diverting photography, I put up a photo of Donald Trump that the Scots must find hilarious (h/t TPM and Zuma Press/Newscom and a post about the personal effects of lawman Eliot Ness, which have been put for auction.

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Contributing an Essay to “Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology”

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I’m pleased to have been invited to submit a contribution to the upcoming  Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, a book that is being assembled and edited by Anne Trubek and Richey Piiparinen. With several dozen contributors, it will be published in September as a trade paperback and an ebook. I completed my piece and submitted it yesterday, a personal essay titled “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” on a venerable Cleveland bluesman and the venue where he played for many years, which proved personal gateways to my lifelong enjoyment of live music. A bit closer to publication I will cross-post the entire essay here on this blog. For now, here are some lines from it.

“The club included a central music room with a low stage for the band and a dance floor, an outdoor area in back, plus a basement bar. It was a veritable cruise ship of nightlife. During breaks between sets I often made new friends in my ambles around the lively deck. In the room opposite the stage was the main bar, a long hitching post of a drinks station where multiple bartenders pulled beer taps and poured liquor. Behind and above them was a sign that became a watchword in my life: “It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re on the ground with the turkeys.”

Clevelander or not, if you’re eager to support this exciting self-publishing initiative in cultural urban renewal, you can pre-order copies of the book via this link. You can also support the effort by

–Following us on twitter at @rust_belt_chic

–Liking the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rust-Belt-Chic-The-Cleveland-Anthology/385206038193184

–Bookmarking the website: http://www.rustbeltchic.com. The site will be updated frequently.

Please help us spread the word.

In the weeks to come I will post more information and additional links related to the anthology and its contributors. For now, here’s a current photo of the Euclid Tavern taken by my sister Pamela Turner along with shots of the artwork and sleeve from the LP that Mr. Stress released in the early 1980s, the period covered in the piece.

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Surprise in the City, Learning about World Book Night

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I had a meeting yesterday morning to present the excellent Web platform of my client Speakerfile, which I often tell people is like eHarmony for the conference industry, matching up event planners with authors who do public speaking. My meeting was with Gail Kump, Director of Membership Marketing for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). It was a fitting meeting, since it’d been Gail who’d referred Peter Evans, Speakerfile CEO, to me during the Digital Book World conference last winter. It is thanks to her that I’m working with them now. I’ve known Gail for a few years and we had a good talk, with each of us seeing ahead to many ways that the AAP and Speakerfile can work together. After sharing our ideas and swapping names of new contacts, I thanked Gail for her time and our meeting ended. Rather than immediately leaving the cool and pleasant AAP offices, I decided I’d sit on the comfortable couch in their lobby and do some work on my IPad and make a few phone calls before heading out to my next Manhattan meeting.

After a productive half-hour, I packed up my kit and prepared to leave. But first, peering back into the conference room where Gail and I had met, I noticed a familiar figure seated at a table. It looked like longtime book biz friend Carl Lennertz of World Book Night. Walking back that way, sure enough, it was him. Voicing a surprised “hello” greeting, I greeted Carl and we shared a few minutes of conversation. I learned that he and a colleague there with him, Laura, were assembling results of the enormous book giveaway they’d engineered this past April, when 23,000,000 copies of thirty different books were handed out gratis in North America, Ireland, and Britain. The non-profit program’s motto is “Spreading the love of reading, person to person.” The titles included Just Kids by Patti Smith, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Carl and Laura showed me the Manhattan phone directory-sized bound volume that covers the myriad international locations where volunteers gave away books, with maps, charts, graphs, and narrative summaries of volunteer reports. Carl mentioned it will be made available as an ebook. I told them I’ll be eager to learn more about World Book Night’s plans for 2013.

It made for a pleasant morning, seeing Gail and Carl, and meeting Laura. I hope to see them again soon!

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