WTF
Guy Fawkes Night
Hit up Telephone Bar or the Bell House to fete that guy who tried to blow up parliament in 1605.

Drink Up
Dogfish Head Novemberfest
The top dogs of craft brewing bring some autumnal brews to Standings bar. Line your tum with free Ray’s pizza before quaffing $5 beers until 8pm ($6 thereafter).

Books
Rachel Sherman
Her artful novel Living Room offers an acidic and sometimes hilarious view of suburbia.

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When we think of crumbling urban landscapes, our minds tend to wander to Detroit, Baltimore and other cities far beyond our bustling metropolis. But needless to say, New York is not all shiny Frank Gehry buildings and perfect brownstones—vacant buildings dot the five boroughs as well, serving as reminders of industries, families and stories that have come and gone. Photographer and location scout Nathan Kensinger has spent time documenting these relics, and tonight at 7:30pm he’ll share the results in a free lecture at Pete’s Candy Store. “Pretty, Vacant: A Slideshow of Abandoned New York” is an eye-opening (and sublimely beautiful) look at a side of New York most people never see, including the abandoned mansions of Admiral’s Row at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, beached ships littering Dead Horse Bay and the ghostly interiors of the Domino’s Sugar Factory.

Classical & Opera
Axiom
Come see Jeffrey Milarsky and his stellar young new-music ensemble kick off their season.

Music
George Usher
A beloved fixture on the downtown scene for more than two decades, George Usher stops in for a solo set at Lakeside Lounge.

Lecture
“Pie in the Sky: All About Greenpoint’s Own Rooftop Farms”
The name says it all—a lecture offering the lowdown on Rooftop Farms, a 6,000-square-foot working farm in Brooklyn.

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Photo by Metin Oner

In the annals of bold claims, here’s one that can’t slip under the radar: “Almost 250 years into its storied history and America has yet failed to produce a single true artist on the scale of a Shakespeare or a Rembrandt or a Milton. With one exception: Barry White.”

This is the thesis of James Hook, a cultural scholar, author and committed evangelist for the satin-voiced crooner who may or may not have provided the soundtrack to your conception. Tonight, Hook takes the stage at Pete’s Candy Store (8pm, free) for a lecture entitled “Walrus of Love: Barry White and the American Experience.” With the help of PowerPoint and restrained use of clip art, he’ll argue “that those widely lauded ersatz monuments to our cultural and sociopolitical experiment—Mark Twain’s literature, Philip Johnson’s architecture, the cinema of Irwin Allen, etc.— are in fact not art, whereas Barry White’s body of work is.”

Fellow aficionados can revel in discussions of “[White's] early auteurist creation ‘Do the Banana Split’ for the TV show The Banana Splits and his breakthrough discoveries of the ‘wackawacka’ guitar sound (memorably deployed in ‘Love’s Theme’),” while Barry newbies will have the chance to be introduced to a potentially life-altering artist.

File under: hilarious acts of pop scholarship. (And get in the mood here.)

Photograph by Steve Duncan from the Manhattan Bridge.

If you were after the playgrounds of the rich and famous, you’d be in the Hamptons by now (and good riddance, frankly). If you’re still in the city, we’re counting you as an urban explorer, so explore your way over to Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for the 7:30pm start of tonight’s free installment of Open City Dialogue: Forbidden Playgrounds.

Photographer and urban explorer (no irony intended, this guy is for real) Steve Duncan will be presenting a slide show from his trips below the city into sewers and above it: Duncan has just completed taking photographs from the top of every bridge in Manhattan. Not only are his photos of rarely seen places incredible, the stories of finding the places and getting there (trespassing!) are as interesting as the shots themselves. Check out his work before you go at undercity.org.

Alice Neel's paintings are on display at Zwirner & Wirth.

Art
Alice Neel
The emotional aspect of portraiture comes through loud and clear in these expressive images.

Dance
Reimagining Utopia in New York City
This migratory performance-experience starts at Chez Bushwick, continues on to the Border, Brazil and other outdoor sites in Bushwick.

Tours
Public Tours of the Plaza Hotel
See how the other half lives with a tour of this opulent hotel, led by art and architecture critic-cum-author Francis Morrone.

Clubs
Old Enough to Know Better
Off-center disco, house and what have you in the intimate (er, tiny) basement party room of Noho drink spot Von.

Books
Mike Edison
Author of the preposterously titled I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World performs at Pete’s Candy Store.

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