Author: Kirstin Fawcett

Halloween is still more than a month away, but an upcoming party in New York City wants to give you an excuse to break out your Catwoman costume a little early. On Wednesday, September 28, TIME reports that ailurophiles can attend the city’s “first annual purrrty for cat lovers,” hosted by local artist SuZen in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

SuZen is perhaps most famous for her iconic photo of the Empire State Building’s silhouette, as glimpsed through shutters, which was transformed into a Times Square mural in 1984. But she’s nearly equally well known for her love of cats. The artist released a photo book of her two Siamese kitties, Sushi and Sashimi, in 1990, and is currently raising funds on Indiegogo to create the “JacCAT,” a jacket emblazoned with her recently deceased cat Ari’s silhouette. Now, SuZen is celebrating her passion for all things feline (and promoting the JacCAT) by throwing a giant soiree.

SuZen’s “Cat Purrrty” will be held in the community space of Westbeth Artists Housing, a nonprofit housing and commercial complex for artists and arts organizations in Greenwich Village. (SuZen, herself, is a longtime resident.) According to DNAinfo, attendees will be provided with cat ears, and they’ll dance to “cat-themed music”—think “The Siamese Cat Song” from Lady and the Tramp (1955), or the soundtrack to the Broadway musical CATS. A face-painter will paint noses and whiskers, and partygoers can try on and purchase the JacCAT. (A portion of sales proceeds will be donated to cat rescue groups.)

The “Cat Purrrty” runs from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., and is open to all members of the public. Tickets are available online. The event is free, but donations to cover overhead costs and support cat rescue groups are welcome.

[h/t Time]

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Joan of Arc was a force to be reckoned with, but she probably would have been far less intimidating without her famous sword. According to the Associated Press, National Park officials announced earlier this week that a bronze statue of the French heroine in Washington, D.C.’s Meridian Hill Park is missing its weapon.

D.C.’s Joan of Arc is a replica of a statue at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims, France, created by sculptor Paul DuBois in 1889. It was dedicated in 1922, and was a gift from Le Lyceum Société des Femmes de France, a French women’s society, to the women of the United States. Normally, the work depicts the warrior astride a horse, brandishing a sword. But someone vandalized the statue, and officials say its blade appears to have been broken off.

Nobody knows quite when the sword went missing, but the National Park Service thinks the theft occurred on Tuesday, September 20. A similar act of vandalism occurred in the 1970s, and the statue didn’t receive a replacement weapon until 2011. But this time around, local art lovers won’t have to wait four decades to see Joan of Arc get fixed: Park authorities are already arranging for her to receive a new blade.

[h/t Associated Press]

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Langston Hughes was one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most influential leaders. But in the decades that followed the writer’s death in 1967, his New York City brownstone—located on East 127th Street—fell into disrepair. Now, thanks to an activist group of writers, the home will get a second life as an arts center, the New York Daily News reports.

Hughes lived in the three-story building for the last 20 years of his life, and it was later marked as a national landmark. Still, it remained empty and derelict for many years. It was briefly used as a performance space in 2007, but its tenants were evicted—and in 2010, The New York Times reports, its current owner tried to sell the house for $1 million, but nobody purchased it. Currently, the structure has 20 open Department of Building violations.

Concerned that developers would try to transform the historic building into an expensive co-op, members of the Harlem-based I, Too, Arts Collective—which describes itself as a “nonprofit organization committed to nurturing voices from underrepresented communities in the creative arts”—have collected $130,000 through fundraising initiatives and donations. They aim to eventually reach $150,000, which is the estimated cost to renovate and run the center for one year.

The I, Too, Arts Collective plans to sign a lease in the next few weeks, and hopes to get the arts center up and running by Hughes’s birthday anniversary on February 1. Eventually, the organization plans to host children’s poetry events and visual arts programs.

“I think it’s important for the young people who still live in Harlem to know that in their own neighborhood, blocks away from where they’re playing basketball, … that a literary giant lived there,” Renee Watson, executive director of I, Too, Arts Collective, told NPR. “And not just lived there but created there and was a part of the community.”

[h/t New York Daily News]

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Want to be the most stylish athlete at the country club? Vanity Fair reports that Caddyshack (1980) star and real-life golf fan Bill Murray has teamed up with his younger brother, actor Joel Murray, and website The Chive to design a line of golf apparel. The brand is called William Murray Golf, and its aesthetic is equal parts quirky and quintessentially preppy.

To celebrate Murray’s 66th birthday on Wednesday, the clothing line released its first two designs: a limited-edition Chicago Cubs-inspired polo ($75)—Murray’s favorite baseball team—and a baseball hat ($32) emblazoned with the label’s official logo, a silhouette of Murray tossing his putter aside. (The image pays homage to a famous photo of Murray, taken at The Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament in 2011.) A portion of the proceeds for both items will be donated to the Murrays’ favorite Chicago charity, Mercy Home for Boys & Girls. 

Happy birthday, Bill Murray! We love the Chicago Cubs gear you released w/ @theCHIVE! https://t.co/TsKfbrUoqz @BillMurray #GoCubsGo

— Dani Dudek (@fancypantsLATX) September 21, 2016

The remainder of the line’s designs are playfully reflective of Murray’s personality. According to Bloomberg, one button-up is sprinkled with little highball glasses—a homage to the actor’s fondness for mixed drinks. Another is patterned with bunker rakes—a sly nod to Murray’s greenskeeper character in Caddyshack.

“With William Murray Golf, we’re looking for that perfect combination of style, humor and subtle irreverence as a way to make things more laid back, relatable and fun,” Joel Murray told Vanity Fair‘s website in an email.

A full catalog (and an expanded website) is slated to arrive later this fall, and the entire WMG line—which will include shirts, shorts, hats, and T-shirts—will be officially available on October 20. Until then, you can follow the brand on Instagram.

[h/t Vanity Fair]

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Archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest known fishhooks—23,000-year-old implements carved from sea snail shells—inside a cave on Japan’s Okinawa Island, Science reports. The findings, recently published in the journal PNAS, provide new insights into both Okinawa Island’s history of human habitation and the early use of maritime technology in the Asian Pacific. They suggest such tool use began in the region far earlier than experts had believed.

Humans moved to Okinawa Island and its surrounding sister islands around 50,000 years ago, but scientists used to think that the region’s resources were too scant to support early people for prolonged periods of time. According to CNN, this notion was challenged by a group of Japanese archaeologists, who have been excavating Sakitari Cave, a limestone cave that sits a little over a mile inland from Okinawa Island’s southern coast, since 2009.

Long ago, fishermen hung out in the cavern to catch crabs and freshwater snails migrating downstream. Archaeologists discovered the fishhooks—one finished, the other unfinished—along with other artifacts including beads, tools, human remains, and the burnt residue of foods including frogs, birds, and eels. Thanks to these findings, the researchers propose that humans may have continuously lived on Okinawa Island for 35,000 years now.

These ancient inhabitants were also sophisticated enough to know that certain foods taste better seasonally, The Guardian points out. The burnt crab remains suggest that the crustaceans were caught during their fall migratory period, when they’re largest and tastiest.

Perhaps most importantly, the fishhooks help reshape the timeline of maritime technology. Experts knew Paleolithic people had created and adapted tools to exploit marine resources in Australia and Indonesia, but until now, they had no evidence that they did so in other geographical regions.

[h/t Science]

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Polish music group GlassDuo is famous for playing eerie, high-pitched tunes on a giant glass harp made from wine glasses. In the above video, which was spotted by Atlas Obscura, members Anna and Arkadiusz Szafraniec play the iconic “Hedwig’s Theme” from the Harry Potter movies at the 2013 Festival of Nations in Dollywood, Tennessee.

Watch them transform ordinary glassware into musical magic, and visit the duo’s YouTube channel to view even more performances.

[h/t Atlas Obscura]

Banner image: iStock

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Fans of Keith Haring’s work can see his graffiti images of dancing figures, barking dogs, glowing infants, and flying saucers in museums and cities across America. But according to NPR, one of the late American artist’s lesser-known public works—a stairwell mural inside a former New York City convent—is now in danger.

Haring painted the mural inside the Grace House, a home for Catholic teenagers on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, between 1983 and 1984. The artist was scouting locations for a film, and Grace House asked him to decorate the stairwell. By then, Haring was already famous, but he obliged and covered the walls with his signature radiant babies, dancers, and dogs. The entire project was completed so quickly that viewers can still see paint drips on the walls.

The lost Keith Haring mural in Manhattan (@stavziv – @newsweek) https://t.co/S1c4G8aNTY

— MediaREDEF (@MediaREDEF) September 16, 2016

Keith Haring died from AIDS-related complications in 1990—six or so years after painting the Grace House mural—at the age of 31. Today, it’s one of less than 30 worldwide public works created by Haring. Soon, this number might drop even lower: A local church, the Church of the Ascension, owns Grace House—and thanks to financial difficulties, its officials want to sell it.

Most of Grace House’s tenants have moved out, but two tenants named Robert Savina and Yana Sabeva have hired a local law non-profit to help them fight eviction. They want to stay in their homes—and they also worry about the mural’s future.

“My fear, and I think other people’s fear, is that if they sell the building that anybody could go in and tear the building down,” Savina told NPR. “There didn’t seem to be … any forethought in: How do we preserve the mural?”

For now, the work’s future is in limbo: The Church hasn’t sold Grace House yet, but tenants say that realtors are showing it to prospective buyers.

[h/t NPR]

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If you love the ambience of candlelight but dislike handling matches or lighters, Gizmodo reports that a company called LuDela has created a candle that can be lit and extinguished with a smartphone. The LuDela Smart Candle is made from wax, and its flame is real—but its wick is controlled by a downloadable app.

Here’s how the smart candle works: Each battery-powered purchase comes with a shell-like wax base and a smaller 30-hour candle that you stick inside. Simply tap your phone’s touchscreen to ignite or reduce the candle’s flame, and when the wax core finally melts, refill the base with a fresh one.

The LuDela Smart Candle costs $99. See how it works in the video above, or visit the company’s website for more information.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Banner image courtesy of LuDela.

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Forget bathrobes and Bibles—former guests at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts have stolen valuable antiques like silverware and historic documents. The hotel first opened as Howe’s Inn and Tavern in 1716, and today advertises itself as the country’s oldest operating inn. Now, as part of the Wayside’s 300th anniversary celebration, The Boston Globe reports, the hotel is extending thieves an offer of reprieve: Return the goods, and you won’t be questioned—just forgiven.

Innkeeper Steve Pickford told The Boston Globe that he borrowed the idea from other hotels that provide guests with similar amnesty bargains. People can return missing items—which include dishes, pewter serving pieces, and even wall decorations, among other things—to the inn’s front desk, or deliver them to him, he says. They can return the goods at any time, even after the anniversary celebration ends.

Most notably, a mysterious guest once made off with a copy of the Declaration of Independence that belonged to original innkeeper David Howe’s son, Ezekiel. The document survived a fire in December 1955—but it disappeared soon after. Pickford hopes to recover it and display it inside the historic inn (hopefully near a burglar alarm this time).

[h/t Boston Globe]

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Football season’s finally here, and while potato chips and beer are a popular game-night pairing, we know you don’t need an excuse to bring these two great tastes together: it’s really a match for all seasons. Still, this infographic by wine website VinePair helps sports lovers elevate the traditional snack to gourmet levels by matching different chip varieties with complementary brews. Whichever combo you choose, it’ll be a win for your taste buds.

[h/t VinePair]

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