monkey town, originally uploaded by R.bean.
Monkey Town is my favourite place to take people. It’s a little hard to find behind its nondescript door, but once in you are in a strange and wonderful place. Up front is a strangely decorated (homemade dream catchers and a monkey nest mural at one point) small restaurant and bar.
But keep walking…. to the left of the bar is a door leading to a painfully bright corridor and the bathrooms, which usually have some kind of sound installation in them. Keep going and you reach the hidden screening room at the back, which is furnished with low sofas around the edges of the room and four screens, one on each wall.
Settle in for a series of artsy shorts (I saw some of the same films at Tate Modern in London some months later), porn week (annually near Christmas) or pure cheese (Dirty Dancing and the Bollywood version screened simultaneously. Genius).
Check the website before you go to see what’s on – I’d recommend avoiding the live performances as twenty minutes of experimental triangle is enough triangle for a lifetime. I did it so you don’t have to. You can reserve seats beforehand, but you can usually just rock up on the night.
They serve dinner and drinks during the screening – the food is good and reasonably priced.
If you catch the early show you generally get out in time to catch the end of a gig at Zebulon, which is just around the corner on Wythe.
58 N3rd b/tween Kent and Wythe, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(Bedford Road stop on L train)
