05/22/13 2:00pm

MemorialDayTopTen

A member of the Coast Guard participates in last year’s Memorial Day events. Photo courtesy of  USCG News. 

Who doesn’t love Memorial Day weekend? The sun is (usually) shining, the weather is just rounding the corner of hot and hotter, and the city air is thick with the smell of rooftop barbecues. Street fairs and parades clog almost all of the main avenues, and the sidewalks swarm with sweaty tourists. (If you’re not a fan of bumbling tourists, you’ll really want to avoid the Midtown West area–the popular neighborhood heads up the the list of the top 50 Memorial Day destinations in the U.S., according to a recent Priceline.com analysis).

So perhaps not always the seasoned New Yorker’s favorite holiday. Still, there’s a lot of fun to be had, if you know where to look. Here is our round-up of this year’s top ten places to celebrate the national Memorial Day holiday in NYC.

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05/17/13 2:00pm

smorgasburg brooklyn bridge park

Brought to you by the same people who run Brooklyn Flea, Smorgasburg, is a gastronomic delight. Smorgasburg is open, rain or shine, from 11:00AM to 6:00PM on Saturdays, in East River State Park (Kent Ave. and N. 7 St. on the Williamsburg waterfront), and on Sundays it is located in the Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The vendors feature packaged and prepared foods, beverages, and more from purveyors from New York City and across the region, for a total of 75-100 vendors. We recently interviewed Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby, the creative minds behind Smorgasburg.

Below are a sample of the artisinal (and hipster) culinary delights that await you at Smorgasburg:  (more…)

05/16/13 11:00am

As we compile our 5 favorite quirky museums in New York City, we feel like we’re revisiting them by looking at the images, reading our own enthusiastic impressions and remembering the particular things that remained with us long after we left. Also, there is a sense of appreciation as they remind us of how quirky can mean so many different things, how even two elevator museums in the same city can be complete opposites. It is a great testament to how the wildly diverse denizens and sides to New York City combine to form a multi-faceted yet harmonious whole. Without further ado, here they are. May you enjoy reading about them and visiting them as much we enjoyed getting to know them.

1. Lower East Side Troll Museum 

Troll Museum_New York_Untapped Cities_Sharon Wong-041

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05/15/13 9:00am
Image courtesy of Lori Zimmer, Art Nerd New York

Image courtesy of Lori Zimmer, Art Nerd New York

ICY (born 1985) and SOT (born 1991) are stencil artists from Tabriz, Iran. Their works are about peace, war, love, hate, hope, despair, children, human rights and Iranian culture. The two brothers have held numerous exhibitions and unofficial street works in Iran and foreign countries. You can view more of what they have been up to in the states recently in their latest East middle west tour / San Francisco/Los Angeles/Houston/Chicago facebook album.

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05/09/13 11:00am

Domino silos with graffiti

New Yorkers are only learning about the grandeur and glory of the Brooklyn waterfront just as its industrial past fades and dies. For much as we like to talk about “reopening” the waterfront to the public, the truth is that the waterfront was historically closed so long as it was industrial. And nowhere was that more true than in Williamsburg, where the immense sugar refineries and warehouses ruled the East River from the Civil War foreword, barring all casual wanderers. Sugar’s reign came to a whimpering end in January 2004 when the American Sugar Refinery Company shut down operations at the Domino Sugar refinery site. A few months later, the 11-acre site was sold to developers for $55 million.

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05/02/13 10:28am

Smorgasburg_Untapped_New_York_Isabelle_Steichen_First_Day Apr 6, 2013 11-44 PM Apr 6, 2013 11-44 PM

Since its creation in 2011, Smorgasburg has creation quickly become one of the hippest places to hang out and get a bite. Little did we know about the creative minds behind the market and that’s why our meeting with one of them, Jonathan Butler, on a fresh April morning, was full of surprises.

The location is slightly different this year, as the Saturday market now takes place at the East River State Park in Williamsburg. The Sunday market is still at the Tobacco Warehouse in DUMBO. What changed as well, are the vendors, as there are over 20 new ones. From Monsieur Singh’s Indian Lassis to The 3 nuts, offering delights such as Salted Caramel Peanut Butter, to Orwashers with their traditional NYC bread loaves, there is something for everybody.

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