(9/28-10/5) Each week City Guide's Things to Do in NYC brings you the best in special NYC events, exhibits, sightseeing activities, fun for kids, concerts, and nightlife. This week, turn up the heat at the annual Chile Pepper Festival at Brooklyn Botanic Garden! Plus, slurp away at the Grand Central Oyster Frenzy, bring your little engineers to the World Maker Faire, learn about the Battle of Brooklyn at the New-York Historical Society, take a new Brooklyn Chocolate Tour, and much more!
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: THE BIG EVENT
(10/1) Chile Pepper Festival 2016 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden heats up Saturday with 62 fiery food artisans and eight full hours of chile-chocolate debauchery. There’s also 52 acres of gardens to explore. Entertainment includes two fire breathers and live bands performing everything from psychedelic Cajun swamp music to Afro-Caribbean pop.
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(9/28-10/1) The Affordable Art Fair is back at Metropolitan Pavilion. The fair will welcome 74 exhibitors from locations as diverse as Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and Tokyo. This edition includes returning programs such as the Under $500 Wall and the Young Talent exhibition, curated by The Laundromat Project (Harlem, NY) and highlighting artist Dennis RedMoon Darkeem.
(10/1) Bring your appetite to the Grand Central Oyster Frenzy! It will be an all-day frenzy, a bivalve bonanza! Chef demonstrations, competitions open to the public, 16 varieties of oysters (eight each from the East and West coasts), six championship wines—including the "Grand Champion" to be selected by a blue ribbon panel of judges—and the top professional oyster shuckers on the planet vying for a grand prize of $3,000 will be among the highlights.
(10/1) The Hester Street Fair Hosts Grub Street Festival features dozens of great food vendors, a beer garden, and more!
(10/1) My Dog Loves Central Park Fair at the Naumberg Bandshell. Come, sit, stay, and celebrate Central Park and its dog community! Tails will be wagging as the Central Park Conservancy and its program for dog lovers, Central Park Paws, host you and your canine for an afternoon of contests, training tips, games, and more.
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: EXHIBITION OF THE WEEK
(9/23-1/8/17) The Battle of Brooklyn at the New-York Historical Society presents the dramatic story of the largest single battle of the American Revolution. On August 27, 1776, on the marshy fields of Gowanus and Red Hook, George Washington and his ragtag army of untrained soldiers fought Great Britain’s Royal Army, one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Things did not go well. In the first major armed campaign for the colonies after declaring their independence, the British seized control of the strategically important city of New York. Washington was able to make a surprising retreat that saved the day for his troops and ultimately for the American cause. Through 90 objects and documents, including Hugh Gaine’s printing of the Declaration of Independence, a camp bed used by George Washington during the war, Thomas Paine’s 1776 Common Sense, which lays out the arguments for independence, and a rare hunting shirt that became the first “uniform” of the Continental Army, this new exhibition presents the dramatic story of the near-disaster that played a major role in the making of America.
(now-1/17) Marking the 200th anniversary of her birth in 1816, Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will celebrates Brontë’s life and successes, tracing her life from ambitious teenager to celebrated novelist, at the Morgan Library and Museum.
(now-10/31) Warp speed ahead! In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the beloved series Star Trek, the Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum welcomes the new exhibition Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience. The museum is the first place in the U.S. to host this brand-new, immersive “Trek Tech” experience, which spans a starship-sized 12,000 square feet. Visitors become cadets, joining the Starfleet Academy’s Career Day in the 26th century. After “student orientation,” cadets visit zones that focus on the Academy’s special training in language, medicine, engineering, navigation, science, and command skills. Check out interactive activities and unique technology, including voice recognition to communicate in Klingon, a medical tricorder table, planet projection mapping, holograms, and a target game using the show’s iconic phasers. You can get your results and a certificate emailed to you. On your way out, take a selfie in the captain’s chair; you can also visit the fully restored Shuttlecraft Galileo, which carried the crew in the original series.
Click here for our Intrepid Coupon to save $5 off Star Trek Starfleet Academy admission!
Click here for our Intrepid Coupon to save $3 now (max 4 persons) off general admission!
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(now-9/30) Final days! Richard Avedon-Moving Image presented by Visionaire and The Richard Avedon Foundation at the Gallery at Cadillac House. This exhibition celebrates the legendary photographer Richard Avedon and his 60-year tenure as a preeminent fashion photographer who shaped contemporary image-making and influenced international aesthetics through his iconic fashion work, portraiture series, reportage, and sheer mastery of technique. The gallery will be filled with various forms of Avedon's work, from his roles as photographer, filmmaker, or casting director.
(now-1/8/17) Who Shot Sports, A Photographic History, 1843-Present at the Brooklyn Museum gathers together approximately 230 works—from daguerreotypes and salted paper prints to digital images—that capture the universal appeal of sports, highlighting unforgettable moments of drama and excitement from around the globe.
(now-1/17) The exciting new exhibit Dinosaurs Among Us, at the American Museum of Natural History, examines how one group of dinosaurs evolved into the birds of today.
(now-10/11) Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits at the Museum of the City of New York shows off the work of some of the leading American painters circa 1700-1860, as they fixed the likenesses of that era's 1% for all time.
(now-1/17) The American Museum of Natural History welcomes an exhibit with bite: Crocs: Ancient Predators in a Modern World provides a fascinating look at the world of archosaurs, a group that includes alligators and crocodiles as well as extinct dinosaurs and modern birds.
(permanent) New York’s latest resident is a 122-foot-long dinosaur so new it has yet to be formally named. Going by “Titanosaur” for now, it has taken up residence at the American Museum of Natural History, in a cast of 84 fossil bones uncovered in Patagonia in 2014. The find included a colossal 8-ft. thigh bone, whose shape and size indicated a new species—and one of the biggest dinosaurs ever found. The titanosaur is so large, in fact, that it doesn’t fit in the gallery: a 39-ft.-long neck in a new permanent exhibit extends out towards the elevator banks.
(ongoing) On The Line: Intrepid & The Vietnam War is up at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Intrepid made three tours of duty in Vietnam between 1966-1969.
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: COMEDY
(9/29) The Gotham All-Stars with Drew Fraser, Annie Lederman, Ryan Hamilton, Kendra Cunningham, and more, at Gotham Comedy Club. It's a professional showcase featuring comics from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show The Daily Show, Conan on TBS, Comedy Central, HBO, and various TV shows and films.
PLUS
(10/1) Stand Up NY Showcase, featuring Marina Franklin, Christian Finnegan, Dante Nero, Jared Freid, and Brian Scott McFadden, at Stand Up NY.
(10/1) Stand Up NY Showcase, featuring Dante Nero, Sue Costello, Ryan Reiss, James Goff, and Justy Dodge, at Stand Up NY.
Get free admission for two to Stand Up NY!
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: KIDS
(10/1-10/2) The popular, competitive World Maker Faire returns to the New York Hall of Science in Queens! Get inspired to make, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, build, think, and play while celebrating art, science, and technology. Hundreds of "makers" will present fun and unusual creations such as rockets and robots. There will also be arts and crafts, artisanal foods, live music, and much more. 10am-6pm. Specially priced family passes available. nysci.org, makerfaire.com
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(now-10/9) Arcade Classics: Video Games from the Museum's Collection at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Check out vintage arcade games including Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest, Centipede, Berzerk, and more!
(Ongoing) Explore the beautiful interactive exhibit Connected Worlds at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: SIGHTSEEING
(New!) Sample a taste of heaven on the brand new Slice of Brooklyn Chocolate Tour! Sure to be a hit this fall season and beyond, TripAdvisor's top-rated NYC tour company A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours has launched its Brooklyn Chocolate Tour, which visits artisanal chocolate sites Jacques Torres Chocolate in DUMBO, The Chocolate Room in Cobble Hill, Raaka in Red Hook, and Li-Lac Chocolates in Industry City, Sunset Park.
(now-11/6) Enjoy a foliage-filled ride along the Hudson while sampling tasty brews and listening to live Oktoberfest music on Circle Line Bear Mountain Cruises, complemented with craft vendors and the largest pretzels known to mankind. You can burn off all those beer and brats, plus stock up on fresh air, with a gorgeous three-hour hike along one of the 50 hiking trails in Bear Mountain State Park. Every weekend, setting sail Columbus Day, too. $65 adults, $52 kids. Boards 8:30am sharp, Pier 83, W. 42nd St. and 12th Ave., NY, 212-563-3200, circleline42.com. *You can also check out their Hello, Brooklyn cruise, the first dedicated boat ride to New York's hippest borough, which also departs from Pier 83.
(now-10/30) Get in the spirit of the season with Scarecrows & Pumpkins at the New York Botanical Garden.
(Ongoing) Grab a date or friend and enjoy the most incredible views of NYC at Top of the Rock.
(new) Catch the new Ghostbusters Experience (walk through/immersive) and Ghostbusters Dimension, a Virtual Reality Experience at Madame Tussauds. Get ready to strap on some gear and laser some ghosts against breathtaking, realistic backdrops. The technology puts you right there!
(ongoing) Take a one-hour tour of one of the world's most important buildings, the United Nations, now celebrating 70 years. (Tours offered weekdays only.)
Explore NYC with a magical live interactive experience when you take THE RIDE and The TOUR!
Check out the new "tour about nothing" When Harry Met Seinfeld with On Location Tours.
There’s only one tallest. Only one strongest. And only one destination selected as the Best New Attraction in the World. These superlatives belong to One World Trade Center, and its pinnacle, the One World Observatory, rising over 100 stories in the sky. Catch 360° sights of the city and beyond, from the rivers to the harbor, and from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building. Click here for information about ordering tickets and getting a free collectible pin!
Explore NYC's Financial District with Wall Street Walks.
THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK: NIGHTLIFE & MUSIC
(10/1-10/2) The Meadows Music and Arts Festival at Citi Field. Kanye West, the Weekend, Chance the Rapper and Kygo are set to headline the first-ever Meadows Music & Arts Festival to be held at Citi Field in Queens. Plus, Empire of the Sun (pictured), Metric, and others.
(9/29-10/2) The New York Burlesque Festival is back, hotter than ever! With starting events at Brooklyn Bowl and Bell House, the festivities continue at Highline Ballroom and culminate with the Saturday Spectacular at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in the heart of Times Square! The festival's sexy finale features 20+ of the best Burlesque performers on the circuit, in a 1920s supper club atmosphere. bbkingblues.com, thenewyorkburlesquefestival.com. Tickets can be bought here.
(9/29) The Growlers at The Music Hall of Williamsburg.
(9/30, 10/3) Richard Wagner’s classic Tristan und Isolde opens the Metropolitan Opera season in a new production. A cast of outstanding Wagnerians (Nina Stemme as Isolde, Stuart Skelton as Tristan, Ekaterina Gubanova as Brangäne, and René Pape as King Marke) will perform, with a rare Met appearance from Sir Simon Rattle, serving as conductor.
(10/1) Elvis Costello & Larkin Poe at The Town Hall.
(10/1) Known as “The Hendrix of the Sahara,” Vieux Farka Touré is the son of Malian Desert Blues legend Ali Farka Touré. Vieux has received critical acclaim from across the globe, moving out of his father’s shadow and garnering a loyal worldwide following. He’ll be performing with DJ Henri at (Le) Poisson Rouge in the West Village.
(10/1-10/2) The Roots Picnic in Bryant Park will feature John Mayer, Wu Tang Clan, Questlove, D'Angelo, and others.
(now-10/2) Final weekend! Philip Seymour Hoffmann, A Film Retrospective will be presented at Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.
SNEAK PEEK, NEXT WEEK
(10/6-10/9) Get your cosplay on for New York Comic Con, back at Javits Center. Special guests will include Doctor Who's Matt Smith & Karen Gillan, Stan Lee, Star Wars' Carrie Fisher, John Cusack, and many more! newyorkcomiccon.com.
PLUS
(10/3) British singer James Blake at Radio City Music Hall.
(10/5) Wild Women of Planet Wongo at Parkside Lounge.
(10/8) Freak Out Experience! Let's Dance (FOLD) Experience will feature a smorgasbord of talent, including Chic featuring Nile Rodgers, Earth, Wind & Fire, Alex Newell, DJ Cassidy, Village People, and DJ Nicky Siano of Studio 54, at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
(10/9) The final concert of the season at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens is none other than Van Morrison.
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