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Landhaus bacon. Photos by Benjamin Lozovsky
Landhaus is a partnership between Matthew Lief, a chef, and Jakob Cirell, a butcher from Arcadian Pastures farm. They launched their farm to sandwich business this summer at the Smorgasburg in Williamsburg. Thick slabs of grilled bacon, on a stick or in a BLT, quickly became a Landhaus signature specialty.
You can find Landhaus selling sandwiches and other treats at the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg.
Santorini Grill: “Pay what you feel the food is worth” starting November 4th for one month.
On Grand Street in Williamsburg, Paula opens her heart and her kitchen during tough times, and wants to wrap us all in warm phyllo dough of generosity.
Not all Greeks are looking for a bailout, and some are even giving one.
The sidewalk outside the entrance to Co-Op 87,covered with crates and boxes of $1 records, feels like your old college buddy’s apartment: stockpiles of stuff that live where it lands. But inside there’s a sense of cozy calm, like a warm library. That is, if libraries played loud post-punk albums.
This new Guernsey Street record store is small but not sparse. Record bins flank visitors on all sides and new releases paired with rare lps line the walls. The back wall, painted like a chalkboard, features handwritten new release titles between two caricatured record store patrons. It’s all very, very endearing.
It’s not uncommon for an established, beloved and critically-acclaimed TV show to take a sudden plunge into generic, hackneyed, unwatchable dirge, never to recover. In fact, this is such a common occurrence on TV that there’s a term for it. However, from such depths or from a place of mediocrity, to one of sudden and undeniable brilliance, that is uncharted territory, until now.
Boardwalk Empire is a series that’s been met with major ambivalence from both TV critics and the viewing public. With its veritable dream team of HBO production mercenaries, spendthrift budget and ostentatious Marty Scorsese-directed premier, Boardwalk Empire needed to quickly make a splash in order to win over the public. It’s a condition being grappled with right now by NBC and Whitney Cummings due to their network’s overzealous support of her new sitcom, Whitney. Americans like an underdog story, and in the generation of the 99 and the 1 percent, a non-underdog has perhaps more to prove to a potential audience than ever before. As the first season of Boardwalk Empire played out, critics were mainly lukewarm on it’s efforts and while ratings were mainly high, the show’s viewership seemed as if they were waiting it out to see if something big was going to take place.
As we all recover from the CMJ Festival, which brings together bands from all over the world, I started thinking about bands like the recently retired R.E.M. and Pearl Jam, and I recalled the days when record companies had relevance and would look to regional acts to nurture and grow into stars—when A&R (Artists & Repertoire) people not only mattered, but also cared. Athens, Georgia, gave us R.E.M. and The B-52s, and Seattle gave us Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, just to name a few. And all of those bands had a distinct sound and sensibility that was a symbiosis of music and art with the intrinsic values of their region. Isn’t R.E.M. the perfect sonic accompaniment to Faulkner? Can’t you feel the weather in the sounds of Alice in Chains? Clearly the natural and cultural surroundings and history influence artists, specifically musicians, right?
So I started thinking about Brooklyn—specifically North Brooklyn—and how this place impacts today’s musical output. I wondered if it did, and if it did, how? Did the musicians playing at Glasslands, Death by Audio, or Pete’s Candy Store have a specific sound? I wondered why my girlfriend had not kicked me out for my endless prattling.
Long before the invention of electric guitars and amplifiers, Brooklyn’s history of artistic and eccentric personalities goes all the way back to Walt Whitman, perhaps the first real Brooklyn (dare I say it) hipster. If you doubt me, just take a look at Whitman’s photo on the Library of Congress edition of Leaves of Grass and walk out on Bedford Avenue on any Saturday afternoon. Let’s just say that look has stood the test of time.