Wocka Wocka
Muppets and Mead
2025 is up and running for me 🥵! I started my new job this week and so far so good. I followed my grandma’s advice and made sure to start out on the right foot - literally, I made sure to enter the building right foot first. It was a superstition that Nan passed onto me and she’s only ever given me good advice so I’d be damned if I wasn’t gonna listen to her (she told me to never get married and I shan’t). I’m going to do my best to keep cranking this newsletter out weekly, but I also want to be honest and realistic that it’s possible I’ll miss a week here and there in the beginning while I’m ramping up. Sorry not sorry -I’m just a bitch out here doing my best!
I dropped a few polls in last week’s issue to gauge how you’re all feeling about the content here and the feedback was really helpful! I’m glad most folks like the longer form content, but I’ve also been experimenting with Substack’s Notes feature to post little snapshots and random thoughts a la Twitter, so if you’re missing the shorter stuff that’s a good place to be. I recently took on a hot chocolate crawl and mini posted about that! I’ve also been thinking of branching off the movie reviews to a separate newsletter, but honestly I don’t think my brain can handle that right now, so I’m going to continue to let that one simmer. The Learning and Exploring sections took the top spots as favorites, so that’s what we’re focusing on this week!
There is little I love more than taking advantage of free shit in the city, so you’re very likely to catch me at designated free museum hours. I recently revisited the Museum of the Moving Image for the first time in like 8+ years to see an exhibit I was really excited about! I also enjoyed a walk around my own neighborhood, Bushwick, on a not-too-cold day last week and went down a history rabbit hole of its brewery-laden past, so raise your glass and get ready to enjoy some beer baron chronicles.
Museum of the Moving Image 36-01 35th Ave, Queens, NY 11106 Neighborhood: Astoria, Queens Open: Thu-Sun Standard Admission: $20 Free Hours: Thu 2-6pm + reservable via Culture Pass
The Museum of the Moving Image is located in Astoria, Queens and is the only museum in the U.S. that explores the central technology of the present moment. Movies and TV are the obvious examples here, and they do make up the majority of the exhibits, but the museum also houses installations on video games and other digital media. In addition to their main and rotating exhibits, the museum also hosts film screenings and live conversations with artists, scholars, and filmmakers. There’s a lot going on under this roof and I decided to take advantage of their weekly free Thursday admission to have a visit. It should be noted that I went on Thursday Dec 26, the day after Christmas, so when I arrived around 15 minutes after opening the place was already jam freakin packed. That obviously affected my experience for the worse, but I imagine most of their free Thursdays aren’t quite as busy as the day after Christmas. My bad!
The museum’s main ongoing exhibits are Horrible Sites: Makeup and Production Design for The Exorcist and Behind the Screen. Both of these are great if you love seeing movie props, learning about the filmmaking process, and just want a nice behind the scenes look at how shit gets made. The exhibit obviously featured a lot of Exorcist-specific items including a full size Regan dummy (pictured below), production artwork, and f/x notes. There were also tons of wigs and face casts for other movies and it was really cool to see the step by step process of creating prosthetics and hair pieces. Folks don’t often think about prosthetics in movies because ideally they look so good that you just assume it’s a part of the actor, so this exhibit will give you a deeper appreciation of what Colin Farrell went through to play the Penguin, for example, among others.
You all know I love a museum with activities and the best parts of this exhibit, in my opinion, are all of the interactive bits. I didn’t get to play with many of them because the museum was crowded and particularly full of children who weren’t great at sharing, so I’ll have to go back 😤 But I passed by an ADR booth that allows you to match dialogue to images onscreen, a Foley studio to add sound effects to scenes, and a Stop Motion Animation computer that I used to create a short 10 frame movie. Back in high school I took some sort of computer class that allowed me to make a stop motion video in Microsoft Paint so this was something I was very happy to be able to play around with (I made a video of Gambit jumping out of a plane and throwing an exploding card; I was ambitious)! I’m obviously very passionate about movies and I can talk for hours on end about how difficult it is to create a film because of all of the moving parts, so I think it’s very cool that these stations allow for folks to get a small taste of the work that goes into filmmaking. Also - it’s just really fun to play around with this stuff!
One of their rotating exhibits is Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos (thru Jan 26). This exhibit made me feel absolutely ancient as it featured the form of media I grew up on: the VHS 👵 Ok to be fair by the time I was interested in watching skate videos they were generally on YouTube, but they were initially distributed via VHS! The exhibit had bios on popular skaters of the 80s and 90s as well as the cameras that they used to make their videos with. I know I just wrote about how difficult the filmmaking process is, but with the advent of handheld cameras it eventually became much easier and more accessible for folks to make their own low budget videos. These skate videos were as much exhibition pieces as they were instructional videos; they created a community and were in a way an early form of what we understand to be social media today. The eventual move to YouTube for skate videos was the natural extension of this community - YouTube’s original tagline was “broadcast yourself.”
But now it’s time for the pièce de résistance, the exhibit I came here for: The Jim Henson Exhibition. I thought I was pretty familiar with Henson’s work, but he did so much stuff that I didn’t know about. Of course most folks will be familiar with The Muppets and all of those associated properties and there’s a ton here on that. Multiple puppets are on view along with information about their creation, their tv/movie appearances, and how they were puppeted. There’s even a really cool mini theater that you can pop into to watch episodes of The Muppet Show. The exhibit has additional sections on Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth - each containing costumes, storyboards, and puppets from those productions. I really wish I could have played around with the interactive Muppet stations! One allowed you to create and film a short puppet show and another station was set up to help you create your own mix-and-match puppet. Background puppets were always needed in Henson’s productions, so he frequently had “dummy” puppets around that he could swap hats, eyes, hair, etc on to make one offs. Some of those one offs even became core characters!
What I didn’t know about Jim Henson was that he was a really accomplished experimental filmmaker! In between creating innovative puppets and puppeteering processes, he also made a bunch of short films that experimented with various filmmaking techniques. The museum had storyboards and clips from some of these films and this information really helped me to form a bigger picture of who Henson was as an artist.
“Back in the sixties, I thought of myself as an experimental filmmaker. I was interested in the visual image for its own sake―different ways of using it―quick cutting and things of that sort. I loved what one could do with the montaging of visual images, so I was playing with that in several experimental projects.”
—Jim Henson
This exhibit is an absolute must for Muppet fans, but also for folks who just want to learn more about Jim Henson and his career. Yes the Muppets were probably the biggest thing that he did, but I was delighted to learn about everything else that he worked on that I didn’t know about. The Jim Henson exhibit is listed as ongoing on the museum website, so it looks like it’s gonna stick around which is great news because I really need to go back and try my hand at puppeting. And if you want some additional Muppet content in your life, have a listen at a recent podcast about Muppet Christmas Carol that my pal
was on!
Former Diogenes Brewery 1090 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood, NY 11385 Neighborhood: Ridgewood, Queens
Do you ever see a cool building and think to yourself:
I was walking around Bushwick last week and I ventured east on Wyckoff to an area I don’t visit often. It’s mostly residential over there, but a small chunk of the land is also designated as a Superfund Site, which is not nearly as “fun” a place to hang out as the name might suggest. Anyways, there I am, moseying down Wyckoff Ave, drinking the worst chai of my life 🥲, when I notice it:
The blue paint at the bottom is certainly a choice, but would you look at that fancy brickwork? This building stuck out amongst its neighbors and I immediately circled around the block so I could get a good look at every angle. I’m sorry in advance to anyone who walks anywhere with me because I very often get distracted by cool looking buildings and then immediately need to investigate. I popped open my handy Urban Archive app and my suspicions were confirmed: this building was the former Diogenes Brewery!
The Diogenes Brewery opened in 1898, a banner year for NYC since that’s when all of the boroughs were incorporated to form one happy little NYC family (and every happy family picks on the younger brother so thank you, Staten Island, for playing the part). There’s not much info on the history of the brewery, but it appears it was named after the Greek philosopher Diogenes. Diogenes was said to have lived a “simple lifestyle and…had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly non-traditional fashion,” so maybe that’s the type of customer they were hoping to attract? Anyways, during the latter half of the 1800s beer-making was absolutely booming in Brooklyn (Ridgewood is technically Queens but it shares a very deep history with Bushwick and I promise I’ll write about it another day) because of an influx of German immigrants and those folks brought their beer-making knowledge to their new home. Now I don’t drink beer and I know next to nothing about beer, so please take everything that follows with a grain of malt (teehee) as I only know what I’ve read.
Despite Brooklyn experiencing a beer boom around this time, beer was by no means new to NYC. In fact, nearly everyone drank beer because it was generally safer to drink than the nasty ass swamp water. If you look up old beer ads, they usually show entire families indulging, kids included. Folks mostly made their own small batch family or tavern brews, though, and there wasn’t much large scale beer production because, again, the water was nasty. But then a thing happened in 1842 - The Croton Aqueduct opened and brought fresh water to NYC! Suddenly, water was plentiful (ish) and that, coupled with the influx of Germans with brewing knowledge and the eventual incorporation of NYC, created the perfect storm for the number of breweries in NY to reach 121 at their peak. Remember how I wrote about Clinton Ave being Brooklyn’s “Gold Coast?” Well Bushwick Ave was, for a time, known as Brewer’s Row because it was lined with mansions built by the beer barons of the area!
Business was a-boomin and German style Lager beer became incredibly popular. Several articles in the Brooklyn Eagle from the 1860s and 1870s documented the growing popularity of lager, with the Eagle even calling it our National Beverage. That is, until a bunch of wet blankets passed the Volstead Act in 1920 - aka Prohibition. I know we always hear fun stories about bars with secret cellars and whatnot that would be used to get around Prohibition, but the truth is that this law practically decimated the breweries located in Brooklyn. It’s one thing for a bar to deal some scotch under the table, but it’s a little hard to hide a big ass brewery.
And so Diogenes Brewery, like many others, experienced a decline. Diogenes actually rebranded in 1920 to become the Malt-Diastase Co and began producing malt syrup for candy and home-brewed beverages. Lots of other breweries also tried a rebrand and either produced very low abv beer (which on one wanted because gross) or malt-adjacent items. Ultimately, Prohibition did most of them in with only about 23 breweries still around when it was repealed in 1933. What happened next is a tale as old as time as those remaining 23 breweries also began to shutter one by one as it simply became too expensive to operate in Brooklyn. In 1976 Brooklyn’s last two breweries closed (Rheingold and F & M Schaefer), marking the end of Bushwick’s beer era. Of course later in the 80s and 90s microbrewing and tiny mustaches would become popular and some smaller breweries have since popped up, but the industry is nothing like it was at its height in the late 1800s.
As I mentioned earlier, Bushwick Ave was (and still kinda is) lined with a bunch of mansions that belonged to these pre-Prohibition beer barons. I walk past these buildings on Bushwick Ave constantly and it really goes to show that you take for granted what’s in your own neighborhood. I’m very quick to tell folks how much I love the mansions in Clinton Hill, but as it turns out we have mansions at home (not my home unfortunately 🥲). Hopefully you’re interested in the beer mansions too because as soon as I snap a few more pics I’m gonna work on a follow up to this!
Congestion Pricing in NYC is here! I don’t drive so I haven’t really looked into the ins and outs of the program much; all I know is that it’ll hopefully lead to less traffic, which means cleaner air, and possibly more money towards funding public transit. If you do drive into the city and will be affected by this, check out the guide that Untapped Cities published on all of the details!
The Bed-Stuy Aquarium drama never ceases - one of the co-founders of the aquarium has just been sentenced for murder! The pond itself has actually been empty for about a month now with the goldfish apparently having been moved to a local koi pond for the winter.
It’s Winter Warrior season at NYC’s Greenmarkets! To reward yourself for schlepping outdoors to markets from Jan-Mar, you can pick up a punch card at their info tent. Once you get 10 punches, you’ll win a prize and be entered into a larger raffle. You can also fill up as many cards as you’d like during those 3 months, so get at it and let me know what the prize is if you get it!
I also don’t drink, but I stumbled upon this cool wine series happening over the next few weekends. Each class will cover different wines and will run you $40 for an hour (though I imagine drinks will be included).
I had a reservation at Modern Love for the second week of March…in 2020. So suffice it to say I never made it there. But this month for Veganuary they’re offering BOGO 1/2 Off Entrees! So if you’ve been looking to up your veggie intake for the month, grab a friend and get a deal.
I don’t like ice skating, but I kind of want to try Bryant Park’s Ice Bumper Cars. From Jan 10-Mar 1 you can rent a car and bump around on the ice! Rides are $25 and 10 minutes long - be sure to reserve a time on their website if you wanna bump!
Restaurant Week has sort of been waning in quality over the years; it’s usually a whole month now and you’ve really gotta dig to find good deals. Grand St Restaurant Week runs from Jan 6-20 and it looks like all dinners are $21-35, which is a pretty good deal. I can personally vouch for Lucy’s Vietnamese and BK Jani being good!
Wow that is wild about Hajj!
Also must know: why the worst chai of your life?!?!?