Friday February 15

Location: Lower East Side, NYC
Music: Lee Fields & The Expressions
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Bowery Ballroom
Food: San Loco
Drink: Max Fish
Miscellaneous: Sugar Sweet Sunshine

One of the best authentic soul bands out there today, Lee Fields & The Expressions are one of those acts that are even more impressive live than on wax. If you’ve never seen them before, I highly recommend it. At San Loco, the Mexican food is inexpensive, you can get a heaping amount of nachos for as little as $3.75, and telling by the heavy traffic, the place is doing just fine. What I like about Max Fish is that it’s a local bar for local artists. It’s walls play host monthly for art exhibitions, there’s a pool table in the back, and drinks aren’t pricey, like many new bars springing up in this neighborhood. For one of the best cupcakes in the city, Sugar Sweet Sunshine has 10 varieties, on top of cakes. Try the Sexy Red Velvet or the Bob, a yellow cupcake with chocolate almond buttercream.

Friday February 15

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Music: Vivian Girls
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Music Hall of Williamsburg
Food: Fornino
Bar: D.O.C. Wine Bar
Miscellaneous: Verb Café

All girl Punk band Vivian Girls share the stage with an all-star line-up of up and coming acts that include Widowspeak, Eternal Summers, and Heliotropes. 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 February 16

Location: Midtown West, NYC
Music: Yo La Tengo
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Town Hall
Food: Empanada Mama
Drink: Xai Xai
Miscellaneous: Vintage

Indie rockers from Hoboken, Yo La Tengo have been putting out incredible music for nearly 30 years and their newest album Fade is their thirteenth studio album and getting rave reviews. Though small, Empanada Mama packs a hefty punch with more than 40 kinds of empanadas. Choose from a wheat or corn flour shell to start as ingredients include basic rice and beans to what they have dubbed “Viagra,” a wheat flour empanada stuffed with shrimp, scallop, and crab ($3). For drinks, I’d recommend the wine bar Xai Xai. With a South African theme, this darkly designed spot is great for a date as well as for before or after event drinks. The wines are incredible and they even have fondue! An alternative wine bar, Vintage has a wine list with over 200 wines by the glass or bottle from most of the boutique wineries in Long Island and Upstate New York.

Saturday February 16

Location: Union Square, NYC
Event: The Awesome 80s Prom
Show time: 8 PM
Venue: Webster Hall
Food: Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar
Drink: McSorley’s Old Ale House
Miscellaneous: Mudd Cafe

Relive the best and worst of coming of age in high school at The Awesome 80s Prom. This interactive show is part musical and full-on party as the audience gets to drink, dance and vote for the Prom King and Queen. For eats, check out Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar, a sandwich shop offering Thai sandwiches with 7 Steamed Fried Vegetables and a choice of chicken, veggie, tofu or beef on a baguette with 3 types of sauces for $7. One of the city’s oldest bars, at McSorley’s Old Ale House you can feel the history when you enter as memorabilia, since its beginnings in 1854, are all over the walls. Aside from it being a frat hangout nowadays, it’s worth the trip. You’ve seen that orange Mudd coffee truck parked on Astor Place and on various other streets, but check out their Mudd Cafe on East 9th for coffee and a healthy, vegan, and vegetarian menu.

Sunday February 17

Grosse Tischruine (Large Table Ruin) (with Björn Roth & Eggert Einarsson), 1978—1998
Mixed media installation
Dimensions variable

Location: West Village, NYC
Art: Dieter Roth + Björn Roth
Time: See website for schedule; Through April 2013
Venue: Hauser & Wirth
Food: Le Gigot
Drink: ‘Ino Café & Bar
Miscellaneous: Washington Square Park

Dieter Roth + Björn Roth, is a landmark exhibition of masterworks that highlights this remarkable twenty-year collaboration and, through it, the diversity of the practice that has established Dieter Roth as one of the most inventive and influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. Afterwards, skip your main course and go straight to what’s most important—dessert. Le Gigot offers some of the best sweets, especially their Le Gateau au Chocolat à la Crème Anglaise and La Banane Flambée au Cognac. Later, head over to ‘Ino, and take hold of something full-bodied and European. No no, I don’t mean that mysterious Parisian man behind the counter, I mean a nice chianti or merlot! And to finish off the evening, a delightful stroll in Washington Square Park.