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Hospitality Under Siege, Episode 1: Moto Distillery & Kato Sake Works

Hospitality Under Siege, Episode 1: Moto Distillery & Kato Sake Works

L to R: Marie Estrada of Moto Distillery and Shinobu Kato, owner of Kato Sake Works For those of us born into circumstances commonly, if chauvinistically, described as “First World”, the notion of security - of being cushioned like a lot of pampered, powdered Marie Antoinettes from a pitiless, fickle and treacherous universe - is very often seen as something like a birthright. Undergirding that notion is the assumption that everything, even here in one of the industrialized d

Bushwick Distilleries: A Guide

Bushwick Distilleries: A Guide

Compared to beer and wine-making, distillation is a violent process. Where the former substances gently bubble away under fermentation’s yeasty ministrations, distillates like whiskey, gin, rum, and tequila, result from the hellish boiling of already-fermented liquids and the subsequent condensation of highly concentrated vapors. According to Colin Spoelman, founding owner of Kings County Distillery, Staten Island was the home to America’s first distillery, a nameless entity

Your Guide to $1 Oyster Happy Hours

Your Guide to $1 Oyster Happy Hours

For centuries in New York the slippery, opalescent oyster dominated the shores, their bone white shell fragments crunching underfoot. They were so ubiquitous as to be almost an afterthought, a cheap one at that, costing nothing at all before the arrival of the Dutch. That was then. Now, a plump, innocent-looking little Kumamoto from Puget Sound will easily rob you of $3.50 in even a mid-range New York restaurant. This rampant inflation...click here for the full article. #oyst

Bushwick: A Latin American Buffet

Bushwick: A Latin American Buffet

[Editor's note: The following six paragraphs were from the writer's original edit of this Bushwick Daily article - which were not included, sadly, in the final version. Enjoy!] First of all, the superficial nature of this, a cursory survey of a group of Bushwick restaurants that constitute a kind of Latin American “buffet,” cannot be overemphasized. It is the smooth rock skipping over the glassy surface of Lake Titicaca, the long, curved knife yielding a razor thin curl of or

Bushwick's Moto Spirits Distills Rice Whisky and Jabuka

Bushwick's Moto Spirits Distills Rice Whisky and Jabuka

Asked if there had been any notable disasters or setbacks in the few years she and her partner, Hagai Yardeny, had been operating the ultra-boutique MÔTÔ Spirits in north Bushwick, co-owner Marie Estrada thought for a second before answering, “Oh, yeah! There was the explosion.” Laughing at her interviewer’s taken-aback expression, the Phillipines-born American entrepreneur...click here to read the full article. #ricewhisky #jabuka #motospirits #bushwickdaily #fattmink #fattm

Local Activist to Create Music Label For Incarcerated Artists

Local Activist to Create Music Label For Incarcerated Artists

For Brooklyn activist Fury Young, Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” proved to be an important catalyst in the creation of Die Jim Crow, a non-profit dedicated to giving currently or formerly incarcerated musicians avenues to creative self-realization. The book concerns...click here to read the full article. #diejimcrow #furyyoung #mattfink #fattmink #organgrindcom #organgrind #hiphop #prisonart #prisonhiphop #prison

An Intro to Jazz & Classical For Plebians

An Intro to Jazz & Classical For Plebians

Somewhere along the road of our musical acculturation, we were set upon by various forces, both sinister and benign. They told us what to like and what to shun, lest we lose standing in whatever playground social circle we occupied. Various sub-genres of hip-hop, r&b, and rock were safe, while country music meant permanent exile. Meanwhile, jazz and classical were so far down the musical food chain that there wasn't even a need to be warned away from them by your supposed be

Gianluca Vacchi Creates a Masterpiece of Cringeworthy Narcissism

Gianluca Vacchi Creates a Masterpiece of Cringeworthy Narcissism

Italian pop is huge in Italy, but only occasionally reaches the shores of America, gaining a foothold for a time, only to lose it. Even the country's biggest stars are only slightly more than obscure among the majority of Americans, except for icons like Andrea Bocelli, whose oeuvre straddles...click here to read the rest of the article. #GianlucaVacchi #italianmusic #italianpop #italianpopmusic #popdust #popdust #mattfink #fattmink #organgrind #organgrindcom

Blick Bassy: Musician, Cultural Attache

Blick Bassy: Musician, Cultural Attache

Blick Bassy's new album, named for the year a key figure in Cameroon's struggle to cast off the colonial yoke was murdered, reminds us that freedom, political stability, and material security remain elusive for many African countries. While many of these countries are technically free from Western control, they continue to suffer from the effects of colonialism. All this and more is expressed in 1958, produced by Feist and Manu Chao collaborator, Renaud LeTang. From a mid-tow

Latin America's 36th Best Restaurant is the beauty to Guadalajara's beast

Latin America's 36th Best Restaurant is the beauty to Guadalajara's beast

Escamoles, or ant eggs, on a puree of cauliflower and parsnip, course four at Alcalde Without a doubt the jewel piercing the otherwise linty outie bellybutton of Mayor Alfaro’s recently-christened “gastronomic corridor” (being a collection of restaurants dotting Avenida Mexico between the perpetually congested Lopez Mateo and Golfo de Cortes roundabouts), Restaurante Alcalde is also a headliner on the city’s capacious culinary scene as a whole - perhaps its chief attraction,

Book Review: John A. Chakeres' First Flight

Book Review: John A. Chakeres' First Flight

Courtesy of © Daylight Community Arts Foundation I’ve often thought that, of all the things which can be glimpsed by our eyeballs across the world’s crowded panorama, that which compels the greatest attention are the multifarious objects of the modern world that weren’t created with “art” in mind. Not to say that a Dyson vacuum cleaner, for instance, isn’t designed deliberately with an eye towards some sort of rigorously thought-out design criteria, only that its function ten

Is Timothy Swischuk making America's most interesting sandwiches?

Is Timothy Swischuk making America's most interesting sandwiches?

Disclaimer: This food review is blatantly partisan: the writer is acquainted with the owner/chef of the restaurant under discussion, and is a close friend of one of his chief providers of organic produce. That being said, the reviewer is NOT receiving any sort of kick back for his troubles…thus far, at least. Driving east on highway 50 towards South Lake Tahoe, the dry, pine-speckled hills of El Dorado County rear up from the hot wastes of the Sacramento River Valley. These

A Year On, Ai Wei Wei's Human Flow Is More Relevant Than Ever

Last week, on a gusty afternoon of spotless blue skies, the global refugee crisis arrived on the Upper East Side, roosting beneath the looming shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. However, its coming was heralded not by the wails of children or the echo of white supremacist gun fire - nor the mendacious fear-mongering of a presidential usurper - but by the soft tinkle of glass and restrained clatter of silver cutlery against ceramic dinnerware. Hundreds of battle-scarred donor

Sex, Death and Butterflies in Michoacan

Sex, Death and Butterflies in Michoacan

The migration of the North American monarch butterfly between Mexico and Canada is a journey of life, death and rebirth, a testament to the tenacity and ingenuity with which one generation ensures that life continues after it has alighted on its last leaf, sprig, twig, or patch of soil, the desperate flutter of wings slowing down until it lies still and dead in the sunlight, its brilliant raiment of orange-red gradually fading to the sepia tone of an old photograph. Life and

Exhibition Review: Eugene Richards' The Run-on of Time

Exhibition Review: Eugene Richards' The Run-on of Time

Courtesy of © Eugene Richards In the arts, context plays various roles, be it to make sense of a work, enhance and deepen its meaning - or construct around its edifice the leaden scaffolding of useless hearsay. For instance, it may be interesting to know that Beethoven composed his 3rd symphony as a tribute to his idol, Napoleon Bonaparte, but it’s far from essential to the listener’s experience. On the other hand, an expansive, career retrospective of the work of photographe

Book Review: The American Fraternity, An Illustrated Ritual Manual

Book Review: The American Fraternity, An Illustrated Ritual Manual

Courtesy of © Andrew Moisey Have you heard of Diane Fossey? She was a pioneering primatologist who spent years studying packs of silver-backed Rwanda’s gorillas, savage jungle societies dominated by lumbering, violent humanoids liable to haul off on anybody whose actions didn’t in some way respect and pay tribute to their alpha status. A tragic figure, she was martyred at the pitiless hands of poachers. Fossey’s seminal work has good company in that of Andrew Moisey, a photo

Book Review: Mirror Mirror

Ryan McGinley’s book, a companion piece to his show “Mirror, Mirror,” is, plainly put, a collection of nude selfies taken by people in the comfort of their apartments, one which seems to comment - deliberately or accidentally - on the self-obsessed quality of our current cultural moment. But within a few paragraphs of its artist-authored introduction, a thorny question is conjured which lends the work a deeper dimension: in the process of art’s creation, where lieth the grea

Memory Connection and Loss: The Work of Hope Herman Wurmfeld

Memory Connection and Loss: The Work of Hope Herman Wurmfeld

Courtesy of © Hope Herman Wurmfeld When photographer Hope Herman Wurmfeld moved from New York City to Rome in early 1964, post-war Italy’s so-called “Economic Miracle” was still taking shape, with companies like Fiat attracting with the promise of gainful employ impoverished occupants of the nation’s heel, arch and toe (and Sicily, the boot’s deflated soccer ball?) to relatively affluent northern cities like Turin and Milan. But while it was a nation swelling with renewed pro

Murder in Paris Park Highlights Shortcomings of Prostitution Law

Murder in Paris Park Highlights Shortcomings of Prostitution Law

Back in the dog days of mid-August, 36-year-old Vanessa Campos was murdered in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne park. Her death came a year-and-a-half after the French parliament government passed a law designed to both stem prostitution and protect its practitioners - among whose ranks Campos counted herself. A transgender woman from Peru, she was shot by thieves taking advantage of her and her john’s vulnerability in an isolated corner of the park, widely known as one of Paris’ m

Samadhi Cafe: Haven for the beer-obsessed teutonophile

Samadhi Cafe: Haven for the beer-obsessed teutonophile

When your first opportunity to eat currywurst is inside a massive, drafty suburban shopping mall in Guadalajara, Mexico, you may found yourself meditating upon the un-predictable ways the strands of our complex human universe are interwoven. Also, reflections on the au courant issue of cultural appropriation may occur, being that this dish (an already Frankenstein-esque German street food staple created by a Berliner housewife using local sausage, ketchup, and curry powder c

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