Open House New York

openhousenewyork weekend, America's largest architect and design event, opens doors throughout New York City each October. In 2007, the 5th Annual openhousenewyork Weekend will be held October 6 & 7.

Mark your calendars to explore boardrooms to bedrooms, crypts to clubs, factories to firehouses, lighthouses to lookouts, monuments to mansions, skyscrapers to substations, and so much more! Discover new neighborhoods, explore with friends and family, and experience New York City's architecture and design in all five boroughs.

To learn more about the Annual openhousenewyork Weekend, view sites and programs from 2006 to open up to openhousenewyork!

***

New York City Record Stores (Part Three)

Not just once but twice before, we rounded up New York's best record shops -- and each time, readers weighed in with additions (and varying degrees of indignation regarding same). We hear and obey. Therefore, here's a small army of NYC record vendors taken from voluminous mail and comments on the subject. Could there be yet more? We refuse to believe it. Please check out installments one and two before sending in your "I can't believe you forgot X!" rage-mail.

[via gawker.com]

***

New York City Record Stores (Part Two)

By Megan Zanke

Every music-loving boyfriend I've ever had has fought me on the music issue. For me it was, enjoying Horses absentmindedly, for them, it was knowing that the weight of their copy would stand against mine come nuclear war. Likewise, the last post on New York record stores spoke to New Yorkers (like myself) who rip iTunes libraries and spend their hard-earned dollars on albums with ambivalent whimsy. That is, we just need the basics when it comes to record stores (and sometimes, we don't need them at all). But alas, the ex-boyfriends and other true audiophiles deserve a little bit of attention too. As an olive branch, here are five NYC record stores that promote the agendas of vinyl-obsessed "does that copy of Sticky Fingers have an actual zipper on it" New Yorkers. As always, feel free to diplomatically note your favorite omission(s).

{via gawker.com]

New York City Record Stores (Part One)

As our participation in consumer culture is rather contradictory, New York is a place where both small businesses and Home Depots thrive (even within the same block) . One day we line up for the iPhone, the next we attend a poetry reading sponsored by East Village hippies. We're both nostalgic and cold -- loyally unfaithful. The record store is no exception. New Yorkers download MP3s and rip each other's iTunes libraries while also occasionally dropping a hundred bucks at a record store on the way home from work. If, this week, you're in a nostalgic, rather than criminally greedy mood, here are six record stores that will welcome your business even if they suspect they'll never see you again.

[via gridskipper.com]

***

Real Estate: What Color Is Schnabel's Hot Pink Building Really?

So Julian Schnabel's bright pink building—what color is that anyway, eh? And is that a leading question? Do we care? Where is Cuba? What is Cuba? These are the questions raised by the Villager regarding the hue of Schnabel's West Village crazy-house.

Schnabel called the building's color "Pompeii red...." [Schnabel's partner Brian] Kelly dubbed the building's color "dusty rose"—then later said Schnabel is describing it as "Venetian red." Or! "It's straight out of Cuba, or Venice, or Florence," Kelly said of the building's design and color. "Venice mostly—it's Venetian. There's buildings like this in Naples, in Palermo, Sicily. If you go to Cuba, you see buildings like this."

Eh, Cuba, Venice, Pompeii, Red, Pink, whatever. Same difference. We were going to go for Hustler Pink but then realized that Hustler Pink is the same thing as Dusty Rose which, we guess, is why there are so many strippers named Dusty Rose.
Venetian Red or Pepto Pink?

[via gawker.com]

***

Julian Schnabel's Hot Pink Craziness

Artiste, award-winning director and painter Julian Schnabel just exposed his massive West Village building and the neighbors aren't happy. We haven't seen Pink that hot since 2001's Missundaztood. But Schnabel's mind works differently than us normals. Did you really expect the thought process that gave way to his massive plate paintings would debase itself by soliciting neighborhood input? It's not like when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he was like, "Fellow Romans: better like this? Or better like this?"

The 14 story building has incurred no small amount of wrath, the most colorful of which flows from West Village preservationist crazy [Ed. Note: And total hottie] Andrew Berman, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's director.

"I don't know for sure -- but my fear is that this will be the color," he said. "I think virtually any other color would be more acceptable." Berman called the building -- with arched windows and clay roof tiles -- Mediterranean style. "What it actually looks like is a house you would see in the hills above Hollywood -- if it was two stories. On the Greenwich Village waterfront at 17 stories, it's a nightmare," he said. The preservationist thought this very may well be intentional -- that Schnabel wants to punish, with pink, those who opposed him..."It almost looks as though he went to great pains to make this building as ugly as possible and to make it stick out like a sore thumb," Berman observed.

Hmm, isn't that what they said about Picasso too?

[via gawker.com]

***