Amber Benham

Four Indicted in Rape, Forced Prostitution

Amber Benham — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:46:16 PDT

Four men were indicted Wednesday for allegedly repeatedly raping, beating and forcing a 13-year-old girl into prostitution in Brooklyn in 2003, authorities said.

Queens Bodega Is Stained By Murder a Second Time

Amber Benham et al. — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:35:58 PST

A Brooklyn man who began working at his brother's Queens bodega after a clerk was slain in a 2002 robbery was himself shot to death during an apparent holdup there late Saturday, police and the victim's family said.

ioby: A Big Idea that Funds Little Projects

Amber Benham — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:02:45 PDT

Brandon Whitney, Cassie Flynn and Erin Barnes wanted to make a difference in their Brooklyn neighborhoods and they noticed that a lot of awesome grassroots efforts were starting up and then starving for cash. So, last April the Earth-loving Yale alums launched In Our Backyards (ioby), an online microphilanthropic initiative.

Slideshow: Why Latte Art is More than Steamed Milk and Coffee

Amber Benham — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:56:08 PDT

Last week Dean & Deluca, with help from Counter Culture Coffee, hosted its first ever arte latte competition in its Midtown cafe. The soon-to-be-annual event brought talented baristas from near and far (seriously, they hailed from Soho, Seattle and Kansas) to see who could pour the best latte art. Unlike your average cup of joe, arte latte requires the skills of both an artist and a scientist.

Slideshow: For the Love of Cheese

Amber Benham — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:55:22 PST

Vernon, N.J.: I can’t say this speck of a town ever made my must-visit list, but when my friend Ilana suggested a weekend getaway to her childhood home, I couldn’t resist. Besides, she promised, the leaf-peeping was fine and the local cheese out of this world.

Showcase: No Relief and Little Attention

Amber Benham — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:55:52 PST

Sexual violence, civilian casualties, child soldiers, wounded refugees and malnutrition — there is no shortage of suffering in Congo.

Tokens: Love In Infant Monkeys

Amber Benham — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:07:43 PST

Celebrities and animals collide in Lydia Millet’s Love in Infant Monkeys, a collection of stories which breeds pure invention with historical fiction. The celebrities are real and the content is based in part on actual events, but Millet bases the work’s sometimes poignant interior monologues and the motives of its celebrity-characters on an excessively tabloidesque understanding of their lives.

Asbury Park, New Jersey

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:04:27 PDT

Need to escape the bustle of city life, but want to stay close to home? From tranquil beaches to chic restaurants, Asbury Park is a must-see on your next getaway.

Brothers in Strife: Compadre

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:57:26 PDT

What does it mean to call someone a brother? This question resonates with Swedish director Mikael Wiström after having befriended Daniel Barrientos, a strong-willed man who struggles against polio and the severe poverty that threatens his family in Lima, Peru. Over the course of his more than 30-year friendship with Daniel, whom he calls hermano, Wiström is met with the challenge of understanding how much responsibility he must take for the inequality in the two men’s lives. Compadre is the second of Wiström’s films to document the extraordinary poverty faced by the Barrientos family.

NYCity Snapshot: Brooklyn CD 15

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:39:17 PDT

Days before the election, Brooklyn voters shared their hopes (and fears) for the next four years.

CD 15: Til America Do Us Part

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:56:02 PDT

When Katya Virchenko enrolled at Kingsborough Community College to learn English after immigrating to the U.S. from the Ukraine in 2002, she did not think it would be the beginning of the end of her marriage.

Smack Mellon Bridges Artists' Styles: Recapturing 'Kindness and Imagination'

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:53:03 PDT

In a densely decorated studio, Emcee C.M. Master of None showcases his vision of “transforming the world through play” while the metallic chiming of monastery bells plays on an old record player. His displays – a chaotic mix of photographs, prints, playing cards, hand-drawn posters and found items like a dead tree – embody the artist’s mission to get anyone and everyone involved in the creative process.

Scenes from a Marathon: Chafing Under the Pressure

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:49:31 PDT

At Mile Five on the marathon route, volunteers in red shirts greeted sweaty runners with cups of water, salt packets and — wooden tongue depressors smeared with globs of goopy petroleum jelly.

Principal Issues at Hebrew School

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:46:40 PDT

Brooklyn’s first publicly funded Hebrew-English dual-language school is set to open in August, with 150 kindergarten and first grade students — and one principal who doesn’t speak Hebrew.

New Yorkers Share Drinks, Politics

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:42:10 PDT

The lower level of the showroom at Comix, a comedy club on West 14th St., was humming with Friday night energy on Tuesday. But instead of shouting over a thumping base beat, patrons had to compete with the surround sound broadcast of CNN’s election night coverage.

The Naming of Sheepshead Bay

Amber Benham — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:38:37 PDT

Even residents of Sheepshead Bay will sometimes say the bay got its name from its resemblance (at one time) to the outline of a sheep’s head. But if you talk to a fish expert, you’ll get a different story.