Friday October 28

Location: Tribeca, NYC
Music: John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: City Winery
Food: Pakistan Tea House
Drink: Mocca Lounge
Miscellaneous: Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders returns to City Winery for a second season this fall. These shows, featuring a host of specially invited guests from the worlds of comedy, literature, arts and music realms, features performances by John Darnielle (Mountain Goats), Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), Paul Harding, John Hodgman, Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen), Eugene Mirman, and Emma Straub. Nearby, Pakistan Tea House is a buffet style Indian restaurant where you can choose between chicken, meat, fish and vegetables. It’s affordable and very good. For drinks, check out Mocca Lounge. With a funky interior and a menu of Italian inspired fare, it’s also a bar with a large list of coffees with or without alcohol, beers, and frozen shots. Smack dab in the heart of Chinatown, the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory makes gourmet ice cream flavors like Black Sesame, Ginger, Durian, and more exotic flavors like Taro and Wasabi. Don’t worry, they have the go-to’s like Vanilla, fruits, and chocolate flavors too.

Friday October 28

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Music: (Almost) Halloween Covers Show
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Death By Audio
Food: Dumont Burger
Drink: Radegast Hall & Biergarten
Miscellaneous: Verb Cafe

Get your spooky on a little earlier at Death By Audio’s (Almost) Halloween Covers Show with a lineup of local acts who will be performing the songs of some truly scary bands. Performers include The Marsh Hens (as The Stooges), Heaven’s Gate (as The Cramps), Sleepies (as Smashing Pumpkins), Little Victory (as The B-52s), Necking (as Karp), and Passive Aggressor (as Roky Erikson). With one of the best burgers in Williamsburg, Dumont Burger offers theirs with gourmet toppings, sandwiches, salads, and their amazing mac & cheese. So you consider yourself a beer connoisseur and like to party. You can do all that and eat at Radegast Hall & Biergarten. The Austrian/German menu perfectly complements the 12 beers on tap and more than 30 German and Austrian bottles at this large beer hall. One of the oldest and best hipster hangout coffee shops, the Verb Cafe offers up excellent coffee and baked goods, a boho vibe, and big windows to watch the days pass while collecting unemployment!

Saturday October 29

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Bands: Spindrift Get Tickets Here
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Music Hall of Williamsburg
Food: Fornino
Bar: D.O.C. Wine Bar
Miscellaneous: Verb Café

Anyone a fan of psych rock should see this show as one of my personal favorite bands Spindrift, who make Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western inspired music play on the same bill as The Black Angels, who make drone heavy fuzz infused rock. What also rocks is finding a decent pizza! Fornino offers just that, wrapped up in an original concept. Serving wood oven burning pizza, the menu is broken up into three generations, the first being your basic pizza ingredients while the second and third go off the gourmet deep end, giving you more than 20 options total. For drinks, the D.O.C. Wine Bar has a homey atmosphere and an excellent wine list of strictly Italian wines and small plates of food. If coffee is your thing, The Verb Café offers not only coffee but sandwiches, desserts, and soup. Chill at a table and write that novel, look for jobs online, or hang with a friend like everyone else there.
Saturday October 29

Location: Midtown East, NYC
Music: Eyes Wide Shut Dance Cruise
Show time: See website for schedule; Through November 27
Venue: Pier 40 Houston St. & West Side Highway
Food: Peking Duck House
Drink: Blackstones Pub & Restaurant
Miscellaneous: New York Milkshake Company

At Eyes Wide Shut Dance Cruise, take in some of the best views of New York City, like the Statue of Liberty, while you can dance the night away to sounds of some of the best NYC DJs, serving up the best in house, Top 40, hip hop, and rock. It only gets better as the party features a cash prize for best Halloween costume on the boat! At one of my favorite places to get duck, The Peking Duck House, the meat is succulent and the skin crunches like a potato chip. Sometimes you just want to grab a pint without paying a cover charge or playing host to a group of people after work, which is why I like Blackstones Pub & Restaurant. It looks like an old-time saloon and has two pool tables in the back and plenty of other games, while also being big enough to grab traditional American food from the menu. If you’re still hungry, check out the New York Milkshake Company for one of the best $6 shakes of your life.

Sunday October 30

Michael Richards (American, 1963–2001). Untitled, 1997. Fiberglass and resin with iron oxide, 72 x 24 x 19 in. (182.9 x 61 x 48.3 cm). Contemporary Art. Anonymous gift in honor of Michael Richards, 2007.20

Location: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Art: Ten Years Later: Ground Zero Remembered
Show time: See website for schedule; Through October 30
Venue: Brooklyn Museum
Food: Tom’s Restaurant
Drink: Soda Bar
Miscellaneous: Old Brooklyn Parlor

In recognition of the tenth anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Ten Years Later: Ground Zero Remembered honors those who were lost and those who have suffered and triumphed in the face of that day’s adversities. On view are works by the artists Michael Richards and Christoph Draeger. While Richards’s sculpture is a tribute to the African American aviators of World War II known as the Tuskegee airmen, it can also be seen as a commemoration of all those who died in the World Trade Center attack, including Richards himself. Draeger’s giant jigsaw puzzle deals with memory in a different way, commenting on the dissemination of press images in the wake of a disastrous event. In addition, two reflection books on view contain comments from Museum visitors responding to images of Ground Zero exhibited at the Museum for the first anniversary of 9/11, in 2002. It’s the place where Susanne Vega wrote “Tom’s Restaurant,” but Tom’s Restaurant is just as famous for its food. With a near insane breakfast menu, expect items like pancakes with apples and pecans to be brought to you by the sweetest waitresses in Brooklyn. Soda Bar is a great place for drinks. The alcohol is cheap, there’s surprisingly excellent food, and there’s even another room where DJs spin. If it’s too much, you can hang outside in the backyard patio under the stars. The Old Brooklyn Parlor specializes in old school drinks like the Brooklyn Egg Cream and the Lime Cherry Rickey, making it an excellent anchor to this neighborhood.