Lost AT E Minor

Rubik’s Cube contest

Damn! Ten years of practice, and I still struggle to fill one side. And here’s this guy at the World’s Rubik’s Cube contest nailing the entire thing in around ten seconds. Ten seconds! Mind you, check out his concentration. The last time I focused so intensely on something was when ordering off the menu at Brooklyn’s River Cafe. Now, if only there was an International Menu Solving contest. Hmm.

Matt Van Schie ups the Bush Tetras

Says Van She bassist and vocalist Matt Van Schie about the Bush Tetras track — Too Many Creeps — from 1982: ‘I LOOOVE this tune. It opens with a perfect snare roll, and then the counter bass and guitar rhythms make it so cool. The lyrics are even more valid today. They’re one of my favourite bands of all time, and so many people try to do what they did for real. What a time! I wish I was born back then in New York, hanging out with these kids. Ahhhh!!’

A Cultural Guide to New York: Barcade

We asked some of New York’s more creative residents where they like to hang out in the city, and got a mixed bag of responses back. We’ll be running their insider tips over the next few weeks. This is illustrator Marcos Chin on his favorite arcade bar, aptly named … wait for it … Barcade: ‘Barcade is a time-warp into the 1980s when going to the arcade was the major past time for many of my friends and I. Lined throughout the space are a series of classic 25 cent video arcade games, like Q-bert, Donkey Kong, Arkanoid and Tetris. There’s also a pool table near the back of the space, and a terrific selection of beers to choose from. And yes, you can drink-and-play. It’s located near the Lorimer stop on the L train, at 388 Union Avenue, in Williamsburg’. Read more

Andreas Gursky’s new book: Architecture

German-born Andreas Gursky is a giant in the photography world. His masterpieces have consistently dazzled and bewildered, focused as they are on making the incomprehensible believable. Gursky’s photos theorizes how architecture can shape people’s life by having a decisive influence on their social and cultural structures, in the process underlying how fleeting and fictional today’s values are. His latest book — simply titled Architecture — is accompanied with lengthy essays about his works and is an engrossing introduction to this master photographer. Read more

Marking The Land: Jim Dow in North Dakota

Marking the Land was named one of the ten best photo books of the year by American Photo magazine. Photographer Jim Dow is no stranger to critical acclaim, and he has a knack of making you feel sorrow and emptiness in his most current book which focuses its attention on the mass immigration of people from country to cities, and the desolation that fills the romantic countryside of the Northern Plains. It forces us all to rethink our conceptions of America’s forgotten frontier. Read more

Ambroise Tézenas’s Beijing: Theatre of the People

Right now, the 2008 Beijing Olympics are cleaning up the mess left behind from the millions of people that passed through their city. Their forty billion dollar sporting event has come to a close and fans from around the world will take away memories of an interesting city that opened up to the world like it has never done before. One person in particular, who used China as a backdrop for his phenomenal photography project, was a French photographer by the name of Ambroise Tézenas. Read more