The glory of the Interweb is that information can be transmitted almost instantly. That’s also its greatest drawback—by the time you realize something isn’t what it seems, it’s spiraled out of control and sent an army of homosexuals marching into the shampoo aisle to stage a kiss-in.
Eyewitnesses at the Rite Aid on Sixth Avenue and West 13th Sreet reported seeing this rather homophobic notice posted outside the pharmacy’s front door early Sunday morning. By Monday, the story was posted on Queerty,Good as You and several other homo blogs.
Eventually, Queerty updated its post to say a Rite Aid spokesperson told them that neither Tom Marquez, who is actually the store’s regional manager, nor any other Rite Aid employee was involved in the incident.
She also told them that the sign’s message “doesn’t represent the views of Rite Aid or their employees.” The police have been contacted and they’re trying to track down the culprit, who Rite Aid hopes will be prosecuted to “the fullest extent of the law” for this “vandalism."
Unfortunately, by then, Queerty’s comment field had been filled with 40-some angry messages promising a world of trouble for Rite Aid, and a Facebook group had been formed to stage a kiss-in at the store on Friday afternoon. Let’s just hope the word gets out and this is all resolved peaceably. (Although any LGBTs looking for some action might want to swing by on Friday just in case).
But honestly, if I were going to go jihad on any pharmacy, it would be CVS—those bastards have screwed up my prescriptions three times in the past six months!
With our new Tour New York feature, TONY is slowly but surely making its way through the New York City subway system, and whipping up cool itineraries for each stop we hit. Along the way, we’ve witnessed some of the ingenious ways our crafty citizens are defacing rebranding various subway posters and signage. Somehow we missed this one:
Despite a bit of misty weather this morning, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s The New York City Waterfalls turned on today without a hitch. So Team Around Town—myself and first mate/writer Erin Clements—set sail aboard Classic Harbor Line’s 80-foot yacht, the Manhattan, to see the aquatic art installation for ourselves. As we settled into our berth, I suddenly realized the excitement of seeing four man-made waterfalls made me forget I get seasick on the Staten Island Ferry. Fortunately, crew member Sarah filled me in on an age-old sailor’s cure: pinch your wrists. I think it worked, although it could’ve just been the complimentary champagne.
It actually takes a while to get from Chelsea Piers to lower Manhattan, so when we encountered our first fall, splashing down at the tip of Governors Island, it was like happening upon Shangri-La after being lost in the Himalayas. It had a certain beauty to it, but more cute than majestic. Isolated from the iron, grit and steel of Manhattan, it kind of reminds you of a giant waterslide.
When TONYinterviewed Paul St George about the Telectroscope, his Victorian-style contraption that allows sightseers at Fulton Ferry Landing to wave at passersby in London’s South Bank, we had trouble getting a straight answer. Does the machine really use a series of subterranean tunnels to transmit images from one side of the Atlantic to the other? Did his grandfather Alexander Stanhope St George really invent the device more than a hundred years ago? Why doesn’t he use a period in his surname? Our probing questions were mostly stonewalled, but the 53-year-old Brit still entertained us with the idea of a visitor proposing to his girlfriend across the pond, and you can try to suss out the truth for yourself: The 37-foot-long oddity, which looks like it’s straight out of a Jules Verne novel, is up and running through June 15.
After the bump, check out a video clip of Londoners and New Yorkers making first contact.
This weekend is full of momentous occassions. Catholics cheered the arrival of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Jews groaned about sacrificing leavened bread for eight days. And comic-book fans stormed Javits Center for the third annual New York Comic Con.
After a late start, I met up with TONY art director Adam Fulrath and we made our way across the show floor. I could sit here and wax rhapsodic about the cool books, artists, writers, action figures and video games we saw (the Iron Man game is pretty kick-ass) but we’ll let the pictures tell the tale. By the way, if you’re itchin’ to see what it’s all about, check out TONY’s handy Best of Comic Con guide and then head over to Javits on Sunday. The madness continues 8am–5pm.
The show floor was packed from the time the doors opened at 10am till after the day ended at 7pm.
Governor Spitzer illustrates the booty size he prefers.
Will a taste for punani do what Joe Bruno couldn’t? Any minute now, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer will make an announcement regarding his involvement in a secret prostitution ring, as reported by The New York Times. The irony is quite delicious, considering Spitzy made his reputation busting pimps and hookers and other vice-peddlers. And it perfectly dovetails with Time Out’s current Secret Lives cover story. Thanks for the assist, Eliot!
In addition to double-barreled strollers and rabid real-estate agents, Park Slopers will now have to keep an eye out for runaway sex toys. Babeland—the venereally venerated purveyor of such devices as the Kegelcisor, the Nubby G and, of course, the Rabbit—has announced it’s opening its first Brooklyn location, on Bergen Street between Flatbush and Fifth Avenues. Since the proposed site is just down the street from a Gymboree, some of the neighborhood’s less adventurers natives aren’t thrilled. The way we see it, the more sex toys people use, the fewer babies they end up making.
Performance artist Issa Nyaphaga is giving the Lab at Roger Smith Hotel(501 Lexington Ave between 47th and 48th Sts) a makeover this week. For the next four days, the Camaroonian refugee will be staging "Urban Way," a site-specific work in which he paints his body, face and hands–as well as the gallery’s floor and walls–as an expression of tolerance.
Being a person who has suffered intolerance and persecution, I would have liked to stop being a victim and live like anyone else. But the past reminds me of who I am: an outsider. That is why my philosophy of including certain parts of my body in my art–namely my hands and face–to convey my emotions is for me therapeutic. On one hand I draw a series of points, where each point symbolizes subjects, people in society. On the second hand I paint perpendicular and the circular lines, which symbolize the magnetism, vibrations, and energies of the world. It is also an act of protest, the rebellion of a man who cannot return home.
Since watching paint dry offers only limited entertainment value, an array of creative types will perform starting each night at 6pm, including guitarist Anthony Booth (tonight), opera singer Una Karina (Wed 27), dancer Kristina Skovby (Thu 28) and musicians Surabhi and J. Medly (Fri 29). The resulting installation will remain on view through March 7.
After the bump, check out a video depicting Nyaphaga in action.
The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum let Brazilian designers Fernando and Humbero Campana riffle through its permanent collection to select offerings for "Campana Brothers Select," a diverse array of furnishings and other items that tickled the brothers’ rather unique fancy. In return, the museum got to commission the latest piece in the Campanas’ TransPlastic collection, the Trans…chair.
The scantily clad "Cupids" who paraded around Times Square this morning to publicize the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC Animals’ I Love NYC Pets month should thank Jebus the weather was so mild. But even if they had been forced to endure nipple-stiffening temperatures, it would’ve been for a good cause: All through February, the Alliance is sponsoring pet adoption events in all five boroughs, low-cost spaying and neutering programs, and extended adoption hours at area shelters. Of course, it’s a little funny how the dudes advocating for our furry friends are completely hairless themselves.
I don’t really "get" squash. The name makes it sound fun—like you run around a meadow sitting on each other’s heads—but whenever I meet up with my lawyer friend after he’s played a match, he’s always bitching about bruises and sprains. I think it’s for people who think tennis is for fags (which totally negates my whole sitting-on-heads theory).
If there’s ever a metropolis that could out–New York New York, it’s Paris. The locals are as stylish, sophisticated and frustratingly self-assured as they are in the Big Apple. Which is probably why I have such an affinity for the City of Light.
I’m not a film reviewer by profession, and it’s very likely I’m off the mark, but it felt like 2007 saw an inordinate number of films—both French and American—set in Gay Paree. Below, I list a few I’ve enjoyed. (I’m sure there are many I’m forgetting or haven’t seen yet, including Paris, je t’aime.)
Like Paris itself, these movies have their flaws, but they confound expectations and deliver rich delights to the intrepid. All are available on Netflix, so consider one for the next cold winter night you decide not to brave the elements.
Julie Delpy directed, wrote, starred in and scored this wry rom-com about a Frenchwoman (Delpy) who brings her Jewish-American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) to Paris to meet her folks (played by Delpy’s real-life parents, Marie Pillet and Albert Delpy). Inappropriate ex-boyfriends, travel sickness, culture shock, a psychotic taxi driver and more threaten to destroy their relationship—and Paris’s reputation as a city for lovers. Quick-witted and realistic, 2 Days is totally not the fromage-laden pabulum you’re expecting.
It’s Thursday. We’re over hump day, our holiday-party hangover has abated, and the weekend is in sight. But we could all really use a little boost of insane cuteness to make our brains smile.
Latrina and Dirty Martini stand under the mistletoe
While we were busy murdering "Love Is a Battlefield" at the Time Out Christmas party Tuesday night, TONY nightlife spy Latrina Bidet (the eye-patched elf above) represented us at the annual David Barton Gym toy drive, benefiting St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
Seen making like Santa at the event were Debbie Harry, Marc Jacobs, Amanda Lepore, Johnny Dynell (who worked the turntables), Village Person Randy Jones, Alan Cumming, hostess Susanne Bartsch and "wall-to-wall Chelsea fags." Danny Thomas would be so happy.
Lest you think these denizens of the demimonde would never set foot inside a gym unless there was a guest list involved, we’ve used the leg press at DB after Amanda Lepore. Girlfriend can sweat!
Most museums are closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, but if you simply must check out a cultural institution today, may we humbly suggest the Moscot Museum?
I was okay when she sidestepped the Larry Craig jokes. No comments about America being "No. 2"? Fine. But to not mention the untimely passing of Mr. Whipple, who admonished generations of toilet-tissue shoppers not to "squeeze the Charmin," was unforgiveable. It leaves a skid mark on her character that won’t easily come out. Taipei may have johns so clean you can eat off them, but where are their lovable spokescurmudgeons, I ask you? Where?!?
I’ve already started hitting some of the party bars highlighted in the latest issue of TONY (one of the perks of seeing copy before it hits the newsstand), so I don’t really need any more suggestions about where to get my drink on. But then I came across myopenbar.com, a handy site telling you which clubs, bars, stores, galleries, day-care centers and nuclear facilities have free potables on any given night.
TONY staffer (and fellow cord cultist) Nicole Tourtelot joined me at the annual meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Club, held on 11/11–the date that most resembles corduroy–at Park Slope’s très elegant Montauk Club. Read her report of the affair after the jump (my amateurish snapshots don’t do her prose justice).
Did you know there’s a secret city underneath Central Park? Apparently it’s sheltered everyone from Czar Nicholas to the aliens from Roswell to King of All Media Howard Stern (but, oddly enough, not Elvis).
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Governor Spitzer illustrates the booty size he prefers.
I was okay when she sidestepped the Larry Craig jokes. No comments about America being "No. 2"? Fine. But to not mention the untimely passing of 
