The three-day event will feature tastings, a banana-themed multimedia art show and street fair, era-themed events like a car rally and sock hop, and, of course, a do-it-yourself banana split bar.
(One World's Fair-era photo shows a girl at the wheel of a toy car tooling down Route 83 out of Fredonia).
Inside an unused section of the World's Fair-era hulk, the Mets have built a showroom that depicts what the 10 Sterling and 40 Excelsior luxury suites will look like (the former will have bathrooms modeled on the Four Seasons restaurant's).
That almost describes the gallery, which was widely lampooned in its day as a bit of World's Fair-era kitsch but has since gained admirers, particularly for the way its concave facade and street-level arcades reinforce the sense of a great traffic circle.
Those About to Die Salute You, a battle on water wielded with baguette swords and watermelon cannon balls by New York's art dignitaries, will take place on Thursday, August 13 , 2009at 6 pm in a flooded World's Fair-era reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, just outside of the Queens Museum of Art.
Over time, I had the opportunity to interview people I admired and found interesting, from Kathy Griffin (who surprised me with a serious discussion of Matthew Shepard's life and legacy) to Jewel and Sarah McLachlan (big deal for a Lilith Fair-era kid!).
You could argue that to dramatize such events is premature to the point of tasteless, yet "United 93" and "World Trade Center" have turned their gaze upon a closer and greater calamity, and, to be fair, the era in which the arrival of the Blair administration was greeted as a fresh dawn, bedewing a hopeful electorate, now seems about as recent, and as realistic, as Atlantis.
The role of Southern white members of Congress in the New Deal and Fair Deal eras is not a new subject for Katznelson, but he dissects it here compellingly, reminding us painfully how crudely racist American society was just one human lifetime ago.
Between the two events lies Mr. Wiser's collection of profiles and anecdotes, which read a bit like an extended issue of the Vanity Fair of the era.
