The Goings On mobile app, which débuts today, presents all the listings from The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town section, plus a good deal of additional material, in an easy-to-use format. It’s available for free, for both Apple and Android mobile platforms.
In the decade that I have edited the Goings On About Town section, New York’s cultural landscape has changed while somehow staying the same. Each year has brought new theatre troupes, film series, bands, painters, and dancers that reassert New York’s place as one of the world’s great cultural capitals. If New York’s cultural wealth has remained constant, the amount of information about the city’s offerings, delivered both by us and by others, has increased geometrically. But the same new technologies that have flooded us with information can also help us find our way through it. The app is not intended as a replacement for the section in the print magazine. Rather, it offers an alternative with several immediate advantages: maps for every event, G.P.S. locations, links to buy tickets and contact venues, date and location filters, and clip-and-save features that let you keep a list of your favorite events.
In addition to collecting the magazine’s listings for theatre, art, night life, classical music, dance, movies, restaurants, and more, the app has exclusive new features. More than a dozen of the magazine’s artists and writers have contributed entries to the My New York section, which showcases their personal cultural enthusiasms: Alex Ross introduces readers to Max Neuhaus’s Electronic Sound Installation in midtown; Susan Orlean revisits the Temple of Dendur, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Roz Chast drops by the Tiny Doll House, a unique Upper West Side shop. Critics also lead readers on audio tours created specifically for the app: Peter Schjeldahl tours the Frick Collection; Paul Goldberger walks the High Line; Calvin Trillin shares his favorite downtown food; and Patricia Marx goes in search of vintage clothing. And the editors of Goings On About Town furnish a running commentary on cultural events within the app, via the department’s Twitter feed.
Get it, enjoy it, and let us know how the experience suits you, whether you’re using it to navigate galleries in Chelsea or sitting in San Diego planning a holiday trip to the city.
