Desperately seeking air-conditioning? A new month-long thematic film festival will offer a glamorous option for a summer activity in the cool air.

The Roxy Cinema is hosting a Madonna Film Series, kicking off July 27 and running through August. And the start date is no coincidence: July 27, 1983 was the date Madonna dropped her eponymous album and started her 40-plus year reign as the Queen of Pop.

This year, on Thursday, July 27 celebrate with a special screening of Desperately Seeking Susan, the 1985 dramedy about a bored New Jersey suburban housewife’s fascination with a free-spirited woman (Madonna) whom she reads about in the newspaper’s personal columns. (She’s soon being mistaken for the woman herself.) Set in New York City, it’s a classic. Director Susan Seidelman will appear after the film for a Q&A. 

The film series will continue with films showcasing Madonna’s starring roles as well as some lesser known works in her oeuvre. The Roxy screenings will include Shadows And Fog, a Woody Allen serial murderer classic shown in 35MM; Girl 6, Spike Lee’s film about a young black woman trying to make it as an actor; Dick Tracy; Bloodhounds Of Broadway; Dangerous Game; and Body Of Evidence, a sexual thriller released in conjunction with Madonna’s SEX book and “Erotica” music video, notorious for only being played after 10 pm on MTV. 

Madonna’s seminal movie musical moment, Evita, will also be screened in August, as well Truth Or Dare, the documentary following Madonna and her dancers across the world performing the Blond Ambition Tour.  

The Roxy Cinema offers $250 annual memberships, which include unlimited access to all showtimes, plus popcorn at every show. General admission tickets are $17. Wine, beer, cocktails and soft drinks are all on the menu, as is plenty of classic theatre candy, at bodega prices.  

With Madonna’s Celebration Tour postponed until future notice (the Madison Square Garden shows in late August have yet to be rescheduled), this may be your best shot to celebrate Madonna this summer. 

* This article was originally published here

This article was originally published on Jul 17 5:00am EDT by THE CITY

After the Canadian wildfire smoke that blanketed the city in early June cleared, an idea for next time emerged: creating clean air centers.

The centers would be indoor public spaces with clean air where New Yorkers could retreat if they had nowhere else to go, or if the air inside their homes was not healthy.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is pursuing legislation with the City Council to establish a network of the centers, which already exist in California and Washington state.

Staying indoors doesn’t always mean people are out of the way of particulate pollution contained in smoke. Older buildings tend to be draftier and may lack filtration systems. The pollution may even leak into newer housing stock and remain in the air if the space is not equipped with high-quality filters. This kind of pollution is harmful to health, especially for children, the elderly, pregnant people and those with respiratory or heart issues.

NYC Emergency Management, which manages preparations for and the response to emergency events, has not commited to or ruled out clean air centers for future smoke events.

“Our actions and strategies are constantly guided by and from our trusted scientific and medical experts,” said spokesperson Aries Dela Cruz. “In line with this, following any emergency, our team conducts thorough after-action reviews with a commitment to learn, adapt, and improve.”

But Williams says the time to act is now. “It’s no longer enough to reflect and develop plans for what we’ve already encountered thus far; we must also anticipate and prepare for the unforeseen in order to keep our city safe and healthy,” he said.

Tried and Tested in California

Unless indoor air is clean, staying inside is not necessarily the solution to avoiding the worst of the pollution that comes with wildfire smoke, as THE CITY previously reported.

“In the context of climate change, this problem is not going to get better. It’s going to get worse with the fires,” said Dr. Mary Johnson, a research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We really need to become more educated about indoor air quality.” 

A report released by Williams’ office this month recommended the city establish clean air centers, upgrade HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, air filters and air monitors in public schools, and better educate the public on how to make clean air rooms in their homes.

The report largely incorporated ideas from West Coast-based officials.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District in California launched the state’s first official clean air center in San Francisco last year. The effort includes 331 locations across the region, which are activated when the air quality index exceeds 151, denoting unhealthy air.

The centers are located in libraries, senior centers and recreation centers — and in homeless shelters for the unhoused, and in schools for students. One of the centers underwent a $500,000 HVAC upgrade, but the majority were equipped with portable air cleaners certified by the California Air Resources Board with HEPA filters, which cost about $2,000 each, according to a spokesperson.

If New York City were to implement clean air centers, it could stand to incorporate lessons from the West Coast, too.

Ryan Treves, a research fellow at Stanford Law School’s Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab, authored a paper examining the gaps between the intention behind California’s centers and how they’re actually used.

Challenges appeared in how to find space for the centers and staff them. Those in charge of setting them up reported that sometimes not many people showed up to use them.

“Clean air centers must be made accessible through easy transportation options, robust outreach and extended hours,” Treves said. “They must be a part of a holistic strategy that prioritizes those most vulnerable, such as the unhoused and protects people first and foremost where they are.”

Wear a Mask

City Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) on Wednesday questioned — during a Council oversight hearing on the administration’s response to the smoke — why the city did not make available places for people who couldn’t escape, even in their homes, from the terrible air quality.

“Oftentimes, problematic outdoor air gets into people’s apartments even when the windows are closed. It’s really important for there to be a safe place to go,” Restler said. “Opening up the network of centers that are traditionally cooling centers and operating them as clean air centers, getting air purifiers out to them would have been a rapid effective response to better keep New Yorkers safe.”

Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol noted that New Yorkers would have to go out into the haze to travel to a center via walking or public transit, and that would further threaten their safety.

“We think it would actually be putting New Yorkers in danger by having them go outside of their homes to go outside,” Iscol said. 

But experts said that while it’s true that traveling to a center would expose people to the harmful pollution outside, it ultimately would be better than staying inside a home with poor air quality — or without air conditioning, which would make it more likely for a person to have to open their windows.

“By wearing an N95 mask and making that exposure short as possible, the benefits of spending hours in a clean air center would outweigh the short risk of getting there,” said Dan Westervelt, an associate research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Not Just a Cooling Center

The city opens cooling centers when the temperature hits 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or the National Weather Service issues a heat advisory with a forecasted heat index (combining heat plus humidity) of 95 degrees or higher for at least two days. None have been open during the smoke events so far this summer. But simply designating those cooling centers as clean air centers during a smoke event isn’t enough.

“Operating a clean air center is not as trivial as adding purifiers in a cooling center,” said Ilias Kavouras, professor of environmental sciences at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health, who said officials should start working on a network of clean air centers for the next smoke event.

“There are no easy or cheap fix-ups. It is a matter of preparedness so it won’t be an issue of significant adverse health outcomes including health,” Kavouras added.

The city would have to ensure that those cooling centers — air-conditioned libraries, NYCHA buildings, and senior and community centers — have good indoor air quality by monitoring it and employing high-performance filtration systems to clean the air.

And the city would need to make improvements to its network overall, as a 2022 report from the city comptroller found disparities in the number of centers, their locations and hours open.

Eunice Ko, deputy director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, also encouraged the creation of clean air centers and said the city should make sure it would “distribute them equitably in environmental justice communities.” Those are neighborhoods that already suffer from worse air pollution on a regular basis because of traffic and facilities like power plants.

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

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* This article was originally published here

Imagine playing basketball or hanging out with your pup above the clouds? Well, this soaring skyscraper coming to Brooklyn will soon make that possible!

The Brooklyn Tower Sky Park is taking guest entertainment to new heights as it will soon be home to the Western Hemisphere’s highest basketball court, dog run, and outdoor playground, while its Sky Lounge will be the highest amenity floor in all of Brooklyn.

As Brooklyn’s first supertall skyscraper, The Brooklyn Tower stands at 93 stories and is over 1,000 feet tall–though it doesn’t quite reach NYC’s Central Park Tower, which is home to the highest apartment in the world.

Residents making their home in one of the building’s 150 condominiums and 400 residences for lease will have access to almost 100,000 square feet of retail at its base and 120,000 square feet of lifestyle amenities—among the most robust in NYC.

Situated on the 66th floor is one of the building’s amenities, the Sky Park. This spectacular open-air loggia contains a basketball court along with foosball, ping-pong, air hockey, and a children’s playground with three distinct play structures for various age groups.

19 floors above the Sky Park on the 85th floor is the Sky Lounge, offering an incomparable vantage point to experience the extraordinary sunrises and sunsets over NYC.

Exclusive to condominium owners, the Sky Lounge amenities include a fireplace nook and lounge, observation deck, garden terrace, a cocktail bar, and outdoor dining for elevated entertaining with expansive views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines, East River, and New York Harbor.

Covering 4,630 square-feet of space, the lounge’s light and dark granite, white and black marble, blackened metal, frosted glass, and dramatic bronze wall with integrated lighting make for a stunning space.

Both the open-air Sky Park and Lounge make for the perfect places to gather, exercise, celebrate, relax, and more, and are among the most innovative outdoor amenities in the city. They both offer seemingly-endless 360-degree views of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the New York Harbor, the Atlantic Ocean, Brooklyn, Long Island, and beyond.

Beyond the park and lounge, additional amenities include three outdoor swimming pools, a movie theatre, a billiards room, a luxury athletic club, and a library with co-working spaces and a conference room.

If you’re wondering if it’s possible to get your hands on one of the condos, you’re going to have to dig deep into your wallet–pricing for the condominiums ranges from approximately $965,000 for studio residences to approximately $8 million for four-bedrooms, with a limited number of trophy penthouses.

Rentals range from studios to three bedrooms, starting at $3,411 for studios, $4,371 for one bedrooms, and $6,085 for two bedrooms.

“We are proud to announce another record-setting accolade for The Brooklyn Tower,” said Michael Stern, Founder and CEO of JDS Development Group, the developer and builder of the project. “Imagine playing basketball at the top of the Empire State Building—that is the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime experience that we offer to our residents every day.”

The Brooklyn Tower is situated in the burgeoning neighborhood of Downtown Brooklyn. It’s designed by award-winning SHoP Architects with amenities interior design by Krista Ninivaggi of Woods Bagot and residential interiors by Gachot Studios.

For more info and to stay up to date on the project’s progress, you can visit their website or Instagram.

The post This 93-Story Brooklyn Skyscraper Will House The Western Hemisphere’s Highest Basketball Court appeared first on Secret NYC.

* This article was originally published here