#Steven Crain my beloved
Note
I’m so excited you like Steve Crain too! He’s been a favorite character of mine for years at this point, and doesn’t deserve the hate he gets.
It bothers me when people don’t recognize the responsibility that weighs on characters. They essentially lost both of their parents at the same time, and you know Steve had to be the one to step up.
This isn’t just applicable to Haunting of Hill House, of course. But I’ve noticed that fans vilify the characters that aren’t victimized as obviously / aren’t the main character.
Anyways, just wanted to share with a fellow Steve-enjoyed lol
New Bestie - same. I got into a very heated discussion about how if the Crain siblings are supposed to represent the 5 stages of grief, the fandom has Steve and Shirley switched around, because everyone says that Steve is Denial and Shirley is Bargaining.
Meanwhile, in the show, Steve spends his adult life going around not necessarily trying to debunk ghosts, but hoping that maybe this time, it will be ghosts, because then maybe his family will just be a different kind of crazy. He says his mom and his sister are sick, and they needed help. He reminds me more of Fox Mulder - the "I want to believe" vibe. But he also is in the unique position of seeing ghosts and not knowing about it. All of his ghosts are people with jobs, moving around the house like normal people. Everyone hears the dogs at night, not just him. He doesn't hear banging on the walls, he doesn't see creepy zombies in the basement, he doesn't have his future self freaking the hell out of him his entire life. He sees his mom - and as far as he's concerned (because this is a horror show, not supernatural, the world he occupies is the one we're in - no vampires and ghosts, etc, and that is Understood) it's just the mental illness that has gone through his whole family finally catching up with him. Anyone in this world who has a family member swear they're being stalked by a faceless ghost while they're high on drugs is going to come to same conclusion Steve does, which is that they're nuts. BUT - he looks for any signs that he is wrong. And I'm still mad that they cut out part of the first episode that has Steve refusing to write about his family anymore, no matter the price, while driving by an accident where he sees multiple people standing around, but when he turns away and the camera is the only one on the accident, you only see the firefighters/first responders.
Meanwhile, Shirley is 100% in denial about everything, including what her own ghosts were. In her House Nightmare at the end, she even denies what actually happened - in her version, she doesn't have an affair. The House actually calls her out on "But that's not what happened, is it?" When Steve is doing CPR on his dying brother, Shirley's first words are "This isn't real". She denies Luke from going to Nell's wedding. She denies that their mother had anything wrong with her, she's in denial that she's running her own business into the ground, she's in denial about the death of the kittens, she's in denial about ghosts too - even though she has much more explicit contact with them with the knocking, and with a witness both times (Theo). She's in denial about the night that they had to flee Hill House. Like if she says it often enough, then it will be true that her family is fine and nothing is wrong.
Sorry. Long rant. But I love this character and this show so much and no one ever wants to talk about it (except @amandagaelic, and she has listened to me for literally hours at this point). One of these days, I will actually finish the Haunting of Hill House fic I have, and it will be posted.
We might all be dead from old age, or so senile we don't even remember the source material, but I'll stipulate in my will that it has to be posted. :-D
AND YES - people have a weird habit of like...picking one character to defend and that's the end of it. No one else can do any right and that character can do no wrong. I see it in Yellowstone fandom a lot. Or in Marvel (the Steve/Tony argument made me leave it altogether). I don't know if it's because fandoms are now predominantly younger, louder/more obnoxious from the safety net of internet anonymity or what, but Seeing Things from Someone Else's Point of View seems to be a lost art in both media and reality.
#thank you for coming to my TED talk#about haunted houses#and how people don't understand characters#I will talk to anyone who wants to discuss Steven Crain#Steven Crain my beloved#the poor older sibling who is the only one who actually wants to address issues#versus sweep them under the rug or just ignore them#and that poor baby unravels FAST after he sees Nell morph in front of him from his sister to a ghost#and I have a theory that's how Steven sees the supernatural#like it's everyday things until someone tells him otherwise#because Nell didn't change until his father told him she was dead#and as reality sunk in Nell morphed#and never looked human again#steven crain#haunting of hill house
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The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor really became my comfort shows and I don't do well with scary stuff at all! Like I'm being comforted and getting new nightmare fuel all at the same time.
#Steven Crain#Shirley Crain#Theo Crain#Luke Crain#Nellie Crain#Olivia Crain#Bent neck lady is the stuff of nightmares#Bi-manor my beloved
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You did Bly Manor, so what about Hill House???
hill house my MOST beloved
favorite character:
theo crain
funniest character:
shirley ig, she has some of the funniest lines and reactions
best-looking character:
theo again!
3 favorite ships:
i don't really have any ships for this show
least favorite ship:
again, i don't have one xD
least favorite character
steven (derogatory)
reason i watch it:
the story-telling, the build-up, the foreshadowing, the easter eggs, the themes of generational trauma, mental illness and grief...it's immaculate.
why i started watching it:
i'd watched bly manor first without realizing that hill house existed, so i went back and watched it later and i loved it even more
tv series asks
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those mike flanagan shows for the fandom ask game!!
THANKS!! i'm absolutely going to make them all
Hill House
blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Dr. Theodora Crain, my beloved
scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): NELLIE
scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Poppy Hill! evil girlboss sexy ghost
glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): Trish!!
poor little meow meow (“problematic” / unpopular / controversial / otherwise pathetic fave): Olivia hsgjfhg
horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): steven
eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): those random guys that hurt luke :(
Bly Manor
blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Jamie!!!
scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): Dani Clayton, actually my favorite character ever but also the most Shaped
scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Flora!
glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): my emotional support plague doctor ghost <3
poor little meow meow (“problematic” / unpopular / controversial / otherwise pathetic fave): Viola or Perdita lol (both?)
horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): henry?
eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): Peter
Midnight Mass
blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): Bev Keene??? i know, i know, but i insist, she was the most exciting character to watch in that entire show
scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): Mildred!
scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Sarah!!
glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): the dog hgjdfhgjf
poor little meow meow (“problematic” / unpopular / controversial / otherwise pathetic fave): Erin?? i know she isn't very problematic or unpopular or controversial, but i think the vibe fits
horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): Father Paul
eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): Bev Keene hgdfjghj she's my favorite and also the absolute worst thing ever, what can i say
Send me a fandom!!
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also this is more than 3 characters but rank all 7 crains please
oh SCREAM will do<3
theo my beloved
nell </3
luke !!!
hugh
shirley
olivia
steven....
i will say that i don't hate any of them and i understand all of their motivations !!! they are all flawed but very real characters and i think that's part of what makes hill house so special <333
send me three characters and i will put them in order of favorite to least favorite!
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@polyfacetious big ass Christmas Drabble Extravagaza: Day Twenty One
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Steven looked at the blinking cursor at the end of the sentence on his screen, an accusing slow blink of black against the white background, and chews on the edge of his lip. He’s already worked his chapped lips past the point of being salvaged with chapstick. The next tug of his teeth against skin comes away with a strip of dead skin and the rusty taste of blood from the split against his tongue.
The line was good, he could feel the weight of it behind his teeth, and he could hear the ebb and flow of it in his own internal voice. It was melodic, it moved in all the right ways. So why was it that Steven couldn’t leave the line alone and move on? He’d been staring at it for seconds going on hours now, and it still wasn’t enough.
It was because something wasn’t sitting right, and Steven didn’t know how to suss it out. How did you root out the needle in the haystack when every time you ran your fingers through it, it came out just the same?
“You’re thinking too hard.” Luke’s voice, light and playful despite the depths it had plumbed to in the time between their last meeting years before and now, walking the same halls and living under the same roof again. Luke’s voice had been a puddle at Aunt Janet’s pitchy and splashy, full of ups and downs. It was deeper now, a little choppy at the tops of his words but you could feel the still waters running deep behind the consonants.
That wasn’t the only thing that changed.
Gone was the little brother with the coke bottle glasses and the lisp, with his big boy hat and his wide eyed hero worship of his older brother. Fine blonde baby hair had given way to something deeper, that cradled his skull and made his skin look brighter. It dusted across his forearms, down into the vee of his shirt when he wore the ones he slept in, worn out at the neckline into a soft scoop.
There was some alien creature in front of him, wearing the subtleties of his little brother around the edges but little else to tie the ‘then-Luke’ to the ‘now-Luke’. His brother had become a song that you could hum the melody to, but you couldn’t remember the words to the song, no matter how hard you tried.
(Elfin had been the first word that he thought of, when he was trying to slot some definition in his mind next to this new person in his life, overflowing from the old box in the back of his head that Steven kept him in. But nothing about Luke was elfin. Neither was he rangey, or coltish. There was too much weight to him, too much heft. Steven was still struggling to find the right word for him.)
“Sorry.” Steven scrubs a hand over his mouth and marvels at how different the voice that leaves his mouth is compared to the one he hears in his head. There are moments when it’s vertiginous, this separation between the inner and the outer. Sometimes, Steven isn’t sure which one is the right one. The real one.
The real Steven Crain. Was it the mild mannered, bespectacled author who signed books in a shop down the street from his house to auction off for charity? Or was it the man who stood beneath the shower’s spray and found his thoughts swirling down the drain just like the water from the faucet? Steven wasn’t even sure that he wanted to know the answer to that question.
“I’m having a hard time with this one.” Steven has made his name, and his living off of historical novels. Always with a sprinkle of the supernatural, a dash of despair. A winning recipe he’s not keen to change, even if there’s been half an idea brewing in the back of his head for months now that he doesn’t know what to do with.
A different kind of story, when you got down to the marrow of it. Sure, all of his stories carried the same sort of melancholy to them, the same sense of longing. But this was less a vein running through the center of a stone and more a river cutting through the rock to carve its own path. Steven hasn’t even mentioned it to his publisher. He doesn’t know if he will.
“What’s giving you trouble?” Luke’s hip juts out, a flash of skin between tank top and lounge pants, there and gone. He’s palming a bottle of juice, twisting and tightening the lid in the webbing between thumb and index finger. It’s oddly mesmerizing.
“It feels…” Steven lets the words fall off the cliff of his tongue with nothing to follow. Because this was the crux of it, wasn’t it? He didn’t know what the problem was. The words on the screen lined up nicely, there was a music to them. They should be practically perfect, good enough that Steven wouldn’t mind Nell over his shoulder, or his editor taking a look at it.
But something about them wasn’t sitting right with him. Steven pulls his gaze from Luke’s hands and turns it back towards the glare of the white screen, the cursor pulsing at the end of the last sentence like a lethargic heartbeat.
“Disingenuous? No. Dispassionate? No.” It’s somewhere in this ballpark, a word that starts with ‘d’ that Steven just can’t put his finger on. “Distant.” It’s not a perfect fit by a long shot and Steven shows his displeasure of it with a crinkle of his nose. But it was going to have to do, or this conversation would be stalled for God knows how long.
“Distant?” Luke echoes, the back end of it tugged up into a question. It’s a leading question, meant to give Steven the room to work it out on the free air, instead of the caged confines of his own head. Steven is more grateful than he can put to words right now.
“Usually, when I write, I feel myself in the main character.” Even with his female leads, Steven could find enough of himself in them to do a passably good imitation. He’d never know exactly how a woman’s mind worked, Leigh was sure to tell him that, but Steven did okay. But not with this piece.
“With this one, it feels like I’m standing over someone’s shoulder. Like I’m repeating their story instead of telling my own.” And that shouldn’t be a problem. Hundreds of stories were told that way, with limited perspective and distance to help control the narrative. Just not Steven’s stories. His stories were about being in the meat of it. Feeling what the character felt. No matter how painful.
“Do you think it’s the wrong main character?” It’s a perspective that Steven would have never thought of for himself. Of course, Luke was always good at things like that. He and Nell saw the world differently than Steven did. And it helped him immensely when they gave that insight into their world view.
“I don’t know.” Steven hums, drumming his fingers against the laptops casing in a rapid staccato. “Really, the story is supposed to be about the man who buys the house. He’s surrounded by this...maw. This gaping, ravenous darkness and he has no idea. It keeps growing around him, creeping in and he doesn’t even see it. Like the frog in the pot of water. He doesn’t know he’s boiling until it’s too late.”
Steven’s gaze slips to the window, unfocused enough that Luke is a series of soft shapes against the backdrop of golden sunlight. “It’s a ghost story, right?” The Luke shaped outline lifts the bottle of juice and finally takes a drink. Steven is grateful for the distance so he doesn’t watch the way that his throat works. “Why not write it from one of the ghosts perspective?”
That was...a very interesting thought. “I do have a couple of spirits who aren’t inherently evil and haven’t been driven mad by the house.” The ‘yet’ feels heavy on his tongue, but Steven doesn’t want to commit to anything, not when they’re rebuilding on top of the very foundation of the story right now.
“Yeah? Like who?” Luke moves away from his perch against the counter and comes back into focus in Steven’s peripheral before he slinks down into the kitchen chair across from the laptop, knees wide and shoulders rolled down loosely. So much new muscle and length that he didn’t know what to do with yet, or how to move.
“There’s one…” It comes out guarded to his own ears. Steven tends to keep his stories to himself until he can filter the biggest parts of himself out through the narrative. “An heir who dies to keep the rest of his family safe.”
An older brother who dies to protect his siblings, both the beloved and the ungrateful alike. But Steven can’t say that out loud, he can’t admit how much of his writing is just wish fulfillment turned into something just different enough to pass muster.
“There you go.” If Luke catches on, he doesn’t say anything about it. And he doesn’t wear any of it openly across a face that has never kept a secret in all its life. Steven was grateful for that. For as much as Shirl and Theo had grown and changed into people unrecognizable from the siblings he grew up with, there was still enough Nellie and Luke left in this young adults who moved in with him just last year for Steven to find comfort in.
He’d never mistake this kitchen for Aunt Janet’s, but at least he could look at his brother and still see someone who cared for him looking back.
Luke says it like it’s so simple. There you go. As if shifting the entire narrative was just that simple. Make a choice, and commit to it. It couldn’t really be that simple, could it? Steven scrubs a hand against his stubbled cheek and finally looks at something other than his brother or his words. He looks at his coffee cup, and buys himself precious seconds with an overly sweet mouthful of still too hot coffee.
Just like that. A new perspective. The same story, just told through a different lens.
You could turn a villain into a hero with a new perspective. And you could excuse things that might be inexcusable otherwise.
“There I go.” Steven parrots it back to him with a slow, wonder drenched shake of his head. “I don’t know how I finished any books without you here.” He’s rewarded with a big, bright grin that lights up Luke’s entire face, somehow reminding him of the kid he knew while simultaneously making him look every bit the adult he was now.
“Y-you’re welcome.” That stutter sets off something warm and pleased in Steven’s chest. Luke didn’t stutter nearly as much as he did when a kid, but it was just as often a good thing these days as it was something stressing him out.
Steven takes another sip of his coffee, this time so that he can hide his smile behind it. Given the eye roll he gets from Luke, Steven doesn’t think it’s very successful. But when he says “How many porch light metaphors are too many?” and gets a laugh in return, it all feels successful enough.
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It’s been a minute since I was so taken with something that I felt compelled to share my Thoughts, but such is the power of THoHH. (I’ve spent a lot of time reading other people’s takes, so I’m not sure I have anything original to add, but I will proceed stubbornly onward. Additionally, there’s a decent chance most of this will be about Theo Crain and Kate Siegel)
I love Theodora Crain so fucking much. I can’t express how sad I am at the idea that I don’t get to spend anymore time with her. I like the resolution of the show, and I don’t necessarily want a traditional second season, but I do think a spinoff with Theo is worth at least exploring.
I don’t think I would have responded to Theo the way I did if Kate Siegel hadn’t been playing her. She was absolutely fantastic; a lot of the acting was. I think that I’m especially happy for Kate for a few reasons: (1) As I acknowledged above, I fucking love Theo; (2) She’s in her mid-30s and she really hasn’t worked a ton, and she truly is fantastic, one of the top 3 performances on the show imo; (3) When you’re not as established as Emily Blunt, there can be a lot of judgment that comes with being cast in your husbands prestige Netflix show, and the fact that she has emerged from this as one of the most beloved characters, and one of the best performers on the show makes me so happy.
It is ridiculous how much the actors physically resemble one another, especially when half of them come from Mike Flanagan’s personal troupe of actors. I don’t know a ton about the casting process, but Carla Gugino, Elizabeth Reaser (and Lulu Wilson), and Kate Siegel had already worked with Mike and they really do look related. And with the exception of Luke, all of the adult and child actors look so much alike, and they’re all really fucking talented. It’s pretty absurd.
I want to know more about how Theo’s power works. Is how sensitive her powers are coextensive with the sensitivity a normal person’s skin would have to touch or pain? Or are her hands just more sensitive than the rest of her body, hence the gloves, while she leaves other parts of her body exposed.
Is she only capable of receiving visual images when she’s in Hill House, or maybe just with her family members, or do we just not see what she’s seeing as an adult?
Does she ever touch one of her siblings with bare hands as an adult? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure
I’m really curious about how Theo processes people and objects that give off positive emotions/impressions. I think it’s implied that she feels everything, not just negative things
@morningmightcomebyaccident has talked about the hug b/w Leigh and Theo, and it kind of fascinates me -- I think the most straightforward takeaway is that Leigh knows that, even if Theo is uncomfortable with most kinds of touching, she is comfortable with Leigh hugging her. It strikes me as implausible that Steve wouldn’t have discussed his siblings, his relationships with them, and his judgements about them with his wife. At some point, the words, “my younger sister Theo, doesn’t like to be touched” must have come out of his mouth, but Leigh hugs her anyway. Not to mention the fact that people that are uncomfortable with being hugged make it abundantly clear.
I like the idea that Theo liked hugging Leigh, maybe Leigh gave off some sort of safety, warmth, or security that was completely devoid of the sort of childhood trauma the Crains all suffered through
There are two other times I can recall seeing Theo look comfortable with casual physical affection, and they both happen at Nell’s wedding
She looks wildly comfortable with Stacy while they’re dancing (Is she less overwhelmed by a person after they’ve been physically intimate? Is this part of Shirley’s shock lol? Maybe she’s more shocked that Theo is being physically affectionate w/ her gloves off than she is that she’s gay). The other time is with Nell
Thinking about the relationship between Theo and Nell makes me desperately sad. The moment between Nell and Theo (and Steven I guess) is so sweet. There’s a second of surprise, and Theo genuinely looks a little vulnerable and chagrined, but Nell gets over her shock tells Theo she loves her, and zips up her dress. And there’s moment when they separate and Nell looks up at Theo with her enormous eyes, and then just tucks her head into Theo’s neck. And it just speaks to such a level of comfort between the two of them. It makes me wonder how close Theo and Nell were.
It’s pretty wild that Shirley and presumably Steve were just fully in denial about Theo’s abilities despite a all evidence that they were real
In conclusion, please write more fanfiction about Theo, I need it.
#thohh#theo crain#theodora crain#the haunting of hill house#kate siegel#apologies for the length#and for any repetition#I probably fucked up somewhere but I'm too lazy to re-read it
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The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix) review
I approached Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House" with great trepidation. The 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson is, after all, one of my favourite books, and the premise of "reinventing" such a beloved tale via modernity in serial TV format with an entirely new story and characters seemed.. daunting, no doubt even more-so for Writer/Director Mike Flanagan.
My fears were occasionally realised. But so were my wildest hopes. It's confusing.
Flanagan walks a difficult line between adhering to the spirit of the source material (which he clearly understands deeply), and satisfying the expectations and attention spans of a 2018 TV audience. Often this succeeds spectacularly, demonstrating beyond my wildest dreams the unsettling power of terror over mere horror, more-so by a staggering margin than any other modern attempts at on-screen gothic horror. It regularly verges on genius, the season's mid-point in particular. But too often, it slips towards shock, spectacle, and cliche, its attempt to deliver the requisite number of scares-per-episode undermining its more subtle psychological groundwork. There were moments in the latter half of the season where I wondered whether they'd pulled in Jan de Bont, director of the 1999 Razzie nominated film adaptation (it wasn't even good enough to win that), to guest direct.
The book itself is retconned into the show as the childhood memoirs of celebrated author and paranormal researcher Steven Crain, an explicit erasure of Jackson that I found disrespectful to her memory. Almost as disrespectful was the jarringly out-of-context and random insertion of chunks of the novel's flowery prose into the mouths of characters who otherwise speak like they live in 2018/198? (poor Mrs. Dudley gets some of the worst of this). It's an odd tic for a show which otherwise has such confidence in its own vision.
The book itself features many spooky happenings, but no actual apparitions. When the show introduced these, I was pleasantly surprised to see them at first presented tastefully and with a surreal flair that made them seem, indeed, as creatures from a dream. And yet as the show progressed it came to rely more and more on these horrors, who became increasingly kitschy and ghoulish, an increasing weight on the show's suspension of disbelief.
Part of the problem is that horror, as a format, tends to narratively progress in a more-or-less straight slope from "everything's mostly okay!" at the beginning to "everything is the worst imaginable and we're all dead/insane!" at the end. This makes long-form horror difficult to pull off; you stretch that line too far and it starts to feel pretty flat. You cannot keep "upping the ante" in the horror realm without eventually approaching absurdity. Hill House more than dips its toe into it by its conclusion.
And yet, for all of those significant frustrations, I'll be good-goddamned if this isn't the most effective TV horror I've ever seen. I am a genre veteran. I am rarely shook. I have seen everything. I hadn't seen this. I had to sleep with my light on last night. That's a first for adulthood.
On that note, the show delves deeply and unrelentingly into mental illness, trauma, grief, suicide, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, child abuse, PTSD, and other such cheerful and uplifting topics. There is stuff in there which may be triggering for some of my friends. There is stuff in there which will be upsetting for most human viewers. It's frequently fucking harrowing - one of the opening monologues had me pausing mid-way through to catch my breath and watch funny YouTube videos for a while. It's very, very good, but it's not for everyone.
It's a shame that the only ray of hope the show provides for its characters is so jarringly saccharine; copping out on its own setup at the last mile and mutilating Jackson's sacred words to deliver a fake and forced "happy ending". It did not surprise me in the least to learn that Flanagan originally had a darker ending planned, before a last-minute change of heart. He absolutely should have stuck to his guns. The show as a whole is significantly weaker for that one directorial decision.
Still, if you can handle scares and difficult themes (and they are.. difficult), and especially if you're a horror fan, you absolutely MUST watch this show. Fans of the novel or 1963 film will need to check their expectations at the door lest its liberties/atrocities detract from the experience. Fans of the 1999 film will need to put down that glue IT'S NOT FOR EATING.
There are 10/10 moments and 1/10 moments. Forgiving the latter is more than worth it for the former. I'm feeling both stingy and generous when I give it a 9/10. Really, it's an "it's complicated" out of 10. The series is as schizophrenic as the house itself.
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13 Things to Do in NYC This Week: November 8th – November 15th, 2018
Image via Flickr, gigi_nyc
Whether you want to dive into New York City’s jazz scene, film scene, history or marine life, there is an event for you going on this week. As we head into the middle of November, here are our Untapped Picks for things to do this week in New York City:
Photograph Courtesy of The River Project
Help return marine life to the water at the River Project’s Release of the Fishes, a beloved annual event that marks the winter closing of The River Project’s Wetlab. This year, visitors will have a rare opportunity to see Big, the largest oyster found in New York Harbor in some 100 years! Guests can also touch crabs, snails and other native invertebrates, look at plankton under a microscope, and see blue mussels. This is a free family event, with refreshments and raffles, that will take place at the end of the south side of Pier 40 at Houston and West Street in Hudson River Park from 4:00p.m. to 7 p.m.
Join journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and leading youth activists Brea Baker, Ramon Contreras, and Hebh Jamal at the Museum of the City of New York’s “Activist New York: The Next Generation,” where they will discuss the key mobilizations of our moment—from gun control to immigrant rights—and how they draw on a long history of protest. The discussion will be followed by a reception with a performance by Carnegie Hall’s Future Music Project Ensemble. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!
Revisit the 19th century Upper West Side at Landmark West!’s illustrated lecture “Nevermore: The UWS of Edgar Allan Poe with Esther Crain.” Crain skillfully weaves together historical facts, anecdotes, and imagery of the time to paint a picture of Poe’s Manhattan and examine his journey from Greenwich Village to the fields of the Upper West Side. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!
Photograph by Nir Arieli
Attend a live jazz concert as part of the Kingsborough Lighthouse’s Jazz at the Lighthouse series. Blues and the Golden Age of Jazz will feature vocalist Nicole Zuraitis and the Israeli MusicTalks Jazz Quartet who will perform nostalgic blues and jazz standards by such legends as Duke Ellington, Charlie Bird, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday while you enjoy the music, wine and cheese, and views of the sea from the lighthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
Image courtesy of Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence
Catch a documentary screening at DOC NYC, a weeklong film festival that celebrates the various genres of documentary film, from reportage, memoir, history and more and encourages further boundary pushing and collaboration. One film to look out for is The Cat Rescuers, a documentary about four Brooklyn volunteers who are working to save the hundreds of thousands of feral cats that roam the streets of New York. The Cat Rescuers will screen on November 10th and 15th.
Image Courtesy of the Alice Austen House
Celebrate the art of vintage cameras at Vintage Camera Day at the Alice Austen House. Get your hands on real vintage cameras, learn about your own vintage camera from “Camera Doctor” Eric Mayr, take part in a hands-on demonstration of the platinum-palladium print process, and learn how to improve your own photography skills. This event is free and open to the public!
Be an urban explorer for a day as you venture into the abandoned hospital complex at Ellis Island. Closed off to the public over sixty years ago, this 22-building complex used to be the standard of American healthcare. Now, you can gain access to the site on a Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour. Explore the off-limits contagious disease wards, morgue, former laundry facility and other spaces, and see pieces of the site specific art installation Unframed by world-renowned artist JR, all while learning the history of the complex and stories of the immigrants who flowed through it.
Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour of the Abandoned Ellis Island Hospital
Image via Flickr, gigi_nyc
Uncover the secrets of Central Park and maybe catch a sighting of the mysterious mandarin duck on Untapped Cities’ Secrets of Central Park walking tour. Learn about the curious origins of the Central Park Zoo, uncover the hidden meaning in Bethesda Terrace’s sculptures and the forbidden love that inspired the park’s most famous statue, see the secret bolt left behind from the creation of Manhattan’s street grid, discover the secret navigational device that keeps pedestrians from getting lost on the park’s winding paths and so much more!
Secrets of Central Park Walking Tour
Photograph by Carly Gaebe / Steadfast Studios
Test how good your eye sight is with the intricately detailed artworks in the International Print Center New York’s exhibition Edge of Visibility. This exhibit presents over 50 elusive works that are intentionally difficult to see and consequently challenging to reproduce in the medium of printmaking. The pieces range from the 17th century through the present and contain features like laborious micro-engravings, subtle watermarks, and evanescent images printed with UV-reactive inks. ICPNY will be providing magnifying glasses, iPad digital enlargers, and special lighting for enhanced viewing, and to encourage viewers to slow down and uncover the hidden messages within these works.
See artwork that spans Andy Warhol’s entire career at the first retrospective on his work in thirty years. Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again opens today at the Whitney Museum. The exhibit features work from his early days as an advertisement illustrator to his experimental films, his iconic movie star screen prints and everything in between. Admission is by timed ticketed entry, so reserve your spot now!
Compare and contrast the film genres of comedy and horror at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies program, “Ha! Aaah! The Painful Relationship Between Humor and Horror.” The class will be taught by the Emmy-nominated writer of the sitcom of Mork & Mindy, David Misch. The class will examine horror’s relationship with philosophers’ explanations of comedy, explore the mechanics of both film genres and see how they both exhibit a love for a loss of control, anarchy, the breakdown of rules and conventions and a mordant view of our relationship to pain.
Image via The Skyscraper Museum
Hear from Gary Hack, author and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, at a Skyscraper Seminar Book Talk inside the Skyscraper Museum. Hack’s new book, Site Planning: International Practice, is a summary of his life’s work, and a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated state-of-the-art guide to the subject. Hack will discuss how sustainability can be achieved through the development of sites from small to large, emerging technologies in resource management, and the implications of new mobility technologies on the planning of sites. You must RSVP to this event to [email protected]!
Explore renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins’ relationship with New York City at the exhibit Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center. The exhibit traces Robbins’ life and dances alongside the history of New York, inspiring viewers to see the city as both a muse and a home.
See the full lists of Untapped Cities Insiders Tours and our upcoming Public Tours!
central park, Ellis Island, events, New York City, NYC, things to do, top 10 events, Top 10 NYC Events
Source: https://untappedcities.com/2018/11/08/13-things-to-do-in-nyc-this-week-november-8th-november-15th-2018/
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