June
23 Start (the rest of) summer off right with a dance lesson under the stars in Kew Gardens, Queens.
24 Indulge your campaign fever with “Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election” at the Museum of the City of New York.
25 Trance out to the dreamy electropop of Liverpudlian favorites Ladytron at Terminal 5.
26 He’s not just about geodesic domes: the Whitney presents “Buckminster Fuller: Starting With the Universe,” featuring drafted plans by the visionary architect for portable housing, climate-controlled biospheres, and “floating cloud structures.”
27 A trash-collecting robot? Or a thwarted gothic mistress? Take your pick as Pixar’s Wall-E and Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress open.
28 Celebrate the “shequinox” with drag icon Justin Bond (of Kiki and Herb fame) and his comedy and queer cabaret, “Lustre.”
29 Squirm as MoMA fêtes Salvador Dalí with a screening of Un Chien Andalou, the Luis Buñuel collaboration with that famous shot of a razor slicing a human eyeball.
30 Hear cricketer and former Underground Gourmet Joseph O’Neill read from his widely acclaimed Netherland at the Half King.
July
1 Oscar Wilde dubbed a sunset a “very second-rate Turner.” See for yourself at the Met’s J.M.W. Turner retrospective.
2 Wiry and polymorphously perverse, Alan Cumming is just the man to play the hedonistic androgyne Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, in The Bacchae, now at Lincoln Center.
3 Spend Independence Day Eve with The Wackness, Jonathan Levine’s cinematic look back at New York and hip-hop in the summer of 1994. (See profile of Olivia Thirlby, here.)
4 Twenty years later, Sonic Youth are still ferociously cool, as you’ll see at tonight’s free show at Battery Park.
5 Check out P.S. 1’s Warm Up, a.k.a. the best dance party in town. Featured acts: Nublu Orchestra and So Percussion…
6…and MoMA responds in kind, kicking off its more demure Summergarden series with the Attacca Quartet.
7 The Afro-Punk Festival screens the wicked-fun I’m Through With White Girls at BAM.
8 Stand on line to see Sam Shepard’s Kicking a Dead Horse at the Public Theater. And if you don’t get in, check out Puerto Rican “manchild” Lemon Anderson’s The Beautiful Struggle, a one-man coming-of-age-to-hip-hop play.
9 Pop prankster Neal Medlyn tackles Prince in his comedy revue titled (what else?) “Unpronounceable Symbol,” at P.S. 122.
10 If Mozart isn’t enough to lure you to Queens for a night of Concerts in the Park, go for the good old fireworks.
11 Pack a picnic and head to Prospect Park Bandshell for the thespian atmospherics of rock crew Brazilian Girls.
12 Whether you favor polka or Arcade Fire, squeeze in to the Main Squeeze Accordion Festival at Pier 1 at 70th Street.
13 Tonight at Fort Greene summer pit stop Habana Outpost: frozen mojitos and an outdoor screening of Scarface.
14 Are you having a laugh? Ricky Gervais brings his Live tour to MSG.
15 Support your local record store (if you still have one) by buying Stay Positive, the fourth album from Brooklyn rock mainstays the Hold Steady.
16 Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes appear in “Gate/Beckett,” a series of one-man shows at Lincoln Center.
17 Pulitzer winner Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) and Aleksandar Hemon (The Lazarus Project) read from their latest at SummerStage.
18 Three words: Meryl Streep and Abba. Yes, they’ve finally come together, in the film version of Mamma Mia!, opening tonight.
19 Downtown as they wanna be: The New Museum pays tribute to Bowery artists like Keith Haring, along with readings from the Bowery Poetry Club.
20 Paddle like mad during a free twenty-minute kayaking lesson on the Hudson at 72nd Street.
21 Get your eighties on with George Michael at Madison Square Garden.
22 Wig out at the Public Theater’s production of Hair at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
23 Contemplate Berlin Film Fest hit Boy A, about a man who reenters the world after committing murder as a child.
24 Twenty-seven breakout artists interpret the mixtape at Exit Art’s exhibit “Summer Mixtape Volume One: the Get Smart Edition.”
25 Revisit Brideshead Revisited, a new film version of which opens tonight.
26 Reinvigorate your inner child with an afternoon of cartoons at BAM’s second annual Animation Weekend.
27 It’s American-hero overload as Bruce Springsteen plays Giants Stadium.
28 Yes, it’s crowded. Yes, it’s worth it. Camp out for a free screening of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment in Bryant Park.
29 Start the week on the dance floor at Black Betty with local bands rockin’ out as if it’s a Saturday.
30 Louise Bourgeois, Max Ernst, and Damien Hirst are the high-art highlights in MoMA’s “Wunderkammer,” or “cabinet of curiosities.”
31 Sin and vice, fear and loathing: Bronx-reared Richard Price (Lush Life) and Vegas pawnshop poet Charles Bock (Beautiful Children) talk shop and read excerpts at SummerStage.
August
1 Escape the heat with the Sundance Award–winning film Frozen River, about a woman who shuttles illegal immigrants across the St. Lawrence River.
2 Set sail at the Ship and Boat Model Festival at South Street Seaport, where kids can build their own model boats for just $2.
3 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings of Berlin’s ladies in plumed hats (read prostitutes) arrive at MoMA—the series’s first-ever showing in New York.
4 Indie favorites the National touch down at SummerStage.
5 Take an interactive tour of the charted universe at the Hayden Planetarium, created in cahoots with NASA.
6 Get to SummerStage for Sonny Rollins, a.k.a. the “Saxophone Colossus.”
7 Missed a few Broadway hits? Catch free highlights of Spring Awakening, Gypsy, Wicked, and more at Bryant Park.
8 Existentialism and carnal desire: the perfect antidotes to summer heat. Take the prescription with Isabel Coixet’s film adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. With Penélope Cruz.
9 Car Free Day! Manhattan cordons off a 6.9-mile stretch for gas-free frolicking.
10 Unwind to the surprising sounds of the Kate McGarry Quartet beside the Hudson.
11 Enjoy a solo evening with Monica Yunus, one of the world’s most promising young sopranos. Details at rivertorivernyc.com.
12 The Ensemble Caprice presents a soundtrack of 1730s Gypsy music amid the Frick’s summer shows.
13 Saddle up for Wilco at McCarren Park Pool.
14 Trio Blonde Redhead send their heavenly sounds across the Hudson at Pier 54.
15 Man on Wire, a documentary about Philippe Petit, who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974, is the perfect alternative to blockbusteritis.
16 Yacht around Brooklyn with author Barnet Schecter, in a two-hour cruise commemorating the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn; details at sailnyc.com.
17 One sunset, two soundtracks: soul revivalists Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at SummerStage, or the Zukovsky Quartet aboard a Brooklyn barge.
18 Step up as the Indo-American Arts Council curates the first annual Festival of Indian Dance.
19 Last chance to see Steven Sebring’s motley noir documentary Patti Smith: Love of Life at Film Forum.
20 Flip those collars for Chris Isaak at Nokia Theater.
21 Tasteful pop and chipper jazz: The J&R Musicfest at the foot of Manhattan is like Woodstock for adults.
22 Serious-movie alert! The fall season starts with Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford and Sean Penn.
23 Lincoln Center rings in two days of brass, soul, rock, and jazz at the 25th annual Roots of American Music Festival.
24 An underwear salesman and a Polish acrobat negotiate love in the last night of George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance in Central Park.
25 The Grand Slam grunt is now the official sound of tennis, so expect a symphony as the U.S. Open kicks off. Unhhh!
26 Settle in with a flask (of soda!) for readings by Asian-American poets in Bryant Park.
27 Three days, four nights, a multitude of blisters: The Hilton New York welcomes the New York Salsa Congress.
28 Fun fact: The autoharp is not a harp at all, but a zither. And it will lend a delicate grace to the discordant art rock of Xiu Xiu at the Bowery Ballroom.
29 Woody Allen tackles Spain (for the first time) and Scarlett Johansson (again) with Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
30 Board the tall ship Peking at Pier 16; then attend an outdoor performance of the shipwreck comedy Twelfth Night by Pulse Ensemble Theatre.
31 Frolic among gorgeous Brazilians for the Brazilian Festival.
September
1 Catch the last day of “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” at the Met, open on Monday for a change.
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