The Time Out New York Blog

Since it’s opening in 2014, One World Trade Center has gotten knocked by a lot people—everyone from the New York Times’s architecture critic to Banksy—who find the building uninspiring. But New Jersey artist Greg DiNapoli would beg to differ. In fact, he considers the tower so iconic that he’s given it the ultimate accolade: Building a scale replica of it out of LEGO blocks. Measuring eight feet in height, DiNapoli’s version is made up 25,000 Lego pieces and took eight months to build. The final product features elements that light up, including miniature versions of the streetlights surrounding the plaza at the tower’s base. You can check out DiNapoli’s handiwork at the BrickFair LEGO in Edison, N.J. September 23–24. And if you can’t make it out to Jersey, we’ve got a few more photos below.     Photograph: Greg DiNapoli   Photograph: Greg DiNapoli     Photograph: Greg DiNapoli       Photograph: Greg DiNapoli    

Billionaire Elon Musk is bringing American infrastructure into the future one ambitious project at a time. The tech mogul is behind Tesla, which has been a leading force in the rollout of electric cars domestically; SolarCity, a company that hopes to bring solar roofs to homes worldwide; and SpaceX, which has engineered a line of reusable rockets that have been sending commercial satellites into orbit before landing on a remote barge.  Now, another Musk initiative, Hyperloop, aims to provide incredibly fast train service that will make a trip between New York City and Washington, D.C., in less than 30 minutes.  Musk tweeted on Thursday that he received verbal government approval for The Boring Company (a tunneling company he launched on a whim in 2016) to build an underground Hyperloop connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in a cool half an hour. Each stop on the line would go through each city's center and would have approximately 12 entry and exit elevators.  This isn't Musk's first foray into Hyperloop, a maglev-powered transportation concept that hurls trains through pneumatic tubes at speeds upward of 800 miles per hour. He initially pitched the idea in 2013 in response to a proposal for the California High-Speed Rail, which would make a trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours (Hyperloop could, theoretically, make that trek in 20 minutes). In 2016, he constructed a test track in Hawthorne, California, and held

1. The Fourth of July is over, but you can still see fireworks at Coney Island! Head to the beach every Friday through September 1 for the free show. 2. Watch a movie under the stars at Cedar Grove Beach tonight. Jaws is playing at 8:30pm, right before Shark Week starts on Sunday. 3. Head to Riis Park Beach Bazaar today to see musician Yazan perform. Be sure to grab dinner at the pop-up food vendors first. For more events, check in with Time Out throughout the day.

We recently gave you advice about what to see in the first half of the 2017 New York Musical Festival, a smorgasbord of new musical-theater works that continues through August 6. Now, as promised, we're following up with recommendations for the second part of the festival. Good luck! RECOMMENDED: Our complete guide to the New York Musical Festival 2017 (NYMF)   Photograph: Courtesy John Quilty Temple of the Souls (Acorn Theatre, July 19–23) Most musicals involve a love story, but this may well be the only one in which a Puerto Rican cave drawing sucks a pair of modern tourists back in time to reenact a forbidden 16th-century romance between the daughter of a Spanish conquistador and a young man from the indigenous Taíno people. The director is Lorca Peress, who cowrote the book with Anita Velez-Mitchell and Anika Paris (who cowrote the score with Dean Landon).     Photograph: Courtesy Tripp Clemens The Shakespearean Jazz Show (The Green Room @ Yotel, July 21–26)"O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag — / It’s so elegant / So intelligent” wrote Cats lyricist T.S. Eliot in a lesser-known poem called The Waste Land. Now composer Patrick Greeley jazzes up the Bard anew with New Orleans–style settings of classic verse (including sonnets as well as dramatic material). Emily Skeggs, who earned a Tony nom as Medium Alison in Broadway's Fun Home, leads the cast of this concert staging.   Photograph: Courtesy Russ Rowland The Goree All-Girl String Band (Acorn Theatre,

Get your popcorn ready: New York's juiciest real estate drama just took an interesting twist. The plan for Pier 55, a massive island park that developers are hoping to construct in place of the dilapidated Pier 54 on the Hudson River, was unexpectedly denied in March. The denial came in the form of a federal court ruling, which was the latest twist in a string of lawsuits against the project filed by the City Club of New York.  The judge ruled that the park, which is being funded largely by billionaire power couple Barry Diller and Diane von Fürstenberg, is not sanctioned in the area because it is a maritime wildlife sanctuary. The land for the project was given to developers by the Hudson River Park Trust for a mere $1 per year, and it was initially slated to open in the fall of 2018.  The ruling threw a wrench in those plans.  But this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio personally urged Douglas Durst, who is financially supporting the lawsuits by the City Club, to change his tune. The New York Times reports that Durst was not initially involved with the legal battle (he was once chairman of Friends of the Hudson River Park) but has recently grown critical of the Hudson River Park Trust and has used his organization's financial resources to drop the suit.  Whether or not the mayor's conversation swayed Durst is unclear—but it could be a major step in bringing both parties back to the negotiating table and getting the $250 million public space back on track.  We really couldn't

The annual Fool's Gold Day Off is back for another full summer day of sunshine, hip-hop and house music. This year the Brooklyn-based record label is taking over the Coney Art Walls on Saturday, August 19. Headliners include rapper Jay Electronica, electro trap dance DJ Flosstradamus, long-time house music staple A-Trak and R&B and hip-hop artist PnB Rock. See full lineup below.  Last year's New York leg of the popular series was moved at the last minute from 34th Street Heliport to a spot in Queens. During the performance, Atlanta trio Migos's set was cut short by the police—let's hope there's not a repeat of that this year.  Fool's Gold Day Off is at Coney Art Walls, 3050 Stillwell Ave, Brooklyn (foolsgoldrecs.com). Aug 19 at 3pm. $10–$125, tickets available here.  2017 Fool's Gold Lineup: Jay ElectronicaFlosstradamusA-TrakPnB RockRemy BanksLEAFK$ACESwooshNick CatchdubsNYCK @ Knight

Bathroom sex—it's probably the safest form of public intercourse if you're looking to avoid an indecent exposure arrest. Sure, you might get some looks when you come out of the stall followed by your partner, but, y’know, sometimes you just can’t wait until you get home. (We’re not here to judge.) But if, for whatever reason, you need to get it on and need a good public restroom to do so, OKCupid is here for you. The popular online dating site released its first ever Dater’s Choice Awards, collecting votes from millions of users. The multi-city dating guide includes useful resources such as “No-bro Sports Bars," “Instagram Filtered Bars," and most importantly, “Best Bathrooms for Sex." And guess who won the prestigious romp-worthy lavatory award? Lower East Side haunt Home Sweet Home! The reason why Home Sweet Home is the “best” bathroom for bumping uglies is unknown. Perhaps it's the height of the sink fixture, or the ambient noise level. We can only hope cleanliness was taken into account. Maybe it’s the bar's taxidermy and chandelier décor, making it feel like the setting of a bad vintage porno that puts people in the mood. Or maybe Home Sweet Home’s weekly Friday night "SHAKIN' ALL OVER UNDER SIDEWAYS DOWN" 50s/60s rock and roll dance parties that inspires folks to go get their, er, rocks off. Try it out and let us know—just be sure to lock the bathroom door, will ya? 

Unless you've been living under a bridge, you're probably aware of the rampant issues that have plagued New York City's subway in 2017. From a sweltering F train stuck between stations for nearly an hour to a derailment that gummed up most of the system, the MTA has had a pretty rough year. A track fire on Monday that led to major service disruptions on A, B, C, and D trains and lengthy delays on the 1 train has new MTA chairman Joseph Lhota considering a solution to the subway's woes: banning food. Like almost every track fire, garbage that pooled up on the tracks was the source of the blame. On Tuesday,  Lhota said that banning food may be one way to curb the amount of garbage on the system after recounting a story in which he saw a passenger spilling Chinese food all over a 2 train. The MTA has a system in place to remove garbage from subway tracks, which includes vacuum train cars and regular service closures for maintenance. Subway fires have dramatically reduced in the past few decades—there were 5,800 in 1981, and that figure has reduced by 90 percent since then. Still, Lhota wants to eliminate track fires altogether, which means finding better methods to keep the notoriously dirty subway tracks squeaky clean (the MTA already removes about 40 tons of trash from the subway every day). While a stinky train meal can be frustrating for straphangers, you'd be hard-pressed to find a New Yorker who is willing to give up their train bagel. Passengers could always, you know,

Every morning on the walk from the subway to work, I have to go stone-faced for about a minute as I walk past those guys hawking their CDs at Times Square. Only by presenting a visage of cold mercilessness and blasting Carly Rae Jepsen's E*MOTION B-Sides on my headphones can I survive. And I always wonder: who would fall for this?  Apparently, Ryan Seacrest would. While on a subway ride over the weekend, the American Idol host, Hollywood Ken Doll and Live with Kelly and Ryan star videotaped a run-of-the-mill subway performance of "Stand By Me" (with generous cuts back to himself failing to sing along). "I've traveled the country listening to people sing," Seacrest explained to Kelly Ripa, but "it was the first encounter of this kind of a performance for me." What kind of a performance? I don't know which publicist told Seacrest to brave the MTA, but for those of us who take it daily and have been conditioned to ignore (if not actively critique) entertainers and religious zealots, this ain't anything special. Seacrest found the whole scene unbelievable. "I was the only one making eye contact!" he said, shocked. You think this is the first time any of those other riders heard "Stand By Me" on the train?  "That's what I love about the subway!" Ripa said. Girl, don't even bother. 

One quirky feature of New York at the moment is that the city has developed a clear, useful letter grading system for restaurants that you may spend an hour or two in, but not for the buildings that you could potentially be lease-shackled to for years. Bon Appétit!  Thankfully, the site Rentlogic hopes to fill that informational void with a useful new piece of software that they launched earlier this week. The service provides letter grades for residential buildings in NYC based on eight years worth of open source data from government agencies. The data covers past issues that may have afflicted the property such as mold, legal actions against the landlord and rodents. Interesting that we live in a place that has to develop multiple systems for reporting the abundance of rats in the near vicinity, isn’t it? In order to access the data, download the browser extension here. The A-through-F letter grade of a building will then pop up in a box as you browse the real estate listings on more than 200 different rental sites.