Author

Catherina Gioino

Catherina "Cat" Gioino is a native New Yorker, a huge movie buff and an amateur pizzaiolo. She currently works in transportation policy in New York, and previously was a breaking news reporter for the New York Daily News, and had stints at MSNBC, NY1, PBS and the Queens Gazette-- and was at The Knock since the beginning. When she's not biking around her hometown of Astoria or testing out the train system of another country, you can find her slinging wine and drinks at a friend's local bar.

EntertainmentEventsEventsFeaturedLifestyle

Red Bull Brought The Knockturnal to Miami to Explore the World’s Largest Freestyle Competition – and it did not disappoint

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino

Attendees during Red Bull Batalla Miami Qualifiers at Skatebird in Miami, Florida on 26 of August, 2023 // Ian Witlen / Red Bull Content Pool

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all know Red Bull gives you wings, but did you know that it can also help people spit out fire? 

That was the case in Miami this weekend when the top Spanish-language lyricists from all over the country delivered some brutal and precise lines at the Red Bull Batalla Regional Qualifier. 

Now celebrating its 16th year, the Red Bull Batalla boasts the largest freestyle competition in the world, and the talent that flocked to Miami for the Regional Qualifier had The Knockturnal questioning if we were at the National Final instead. 

Sixteen rappers, freestylers, dancers, and artists all around compete in three different regional qualifiers–with the previous qualifiers taking place in Los Angeles in July and Houston in August–to test their quick-witted rhyming strengths and prove why they should advance to the National Final in Dallas in November. The winner of the National Final will test their chops with top MCs from all over the world in the Red Bull Batalla World Final, taking place in Bogotá, Colombia, on December 2. 

Sara Socas performs during Red Bull Batalla Miami Qualifiers at Skatebird in Miami, Florida on 26 of August, 2023 // Ian Witlen / Red Bull Content Pool

Ahead of the Miami Qualifier, Red Bull welcomed several journalists from across the country to stay in the art mecca neighborhood of Wynwood in Miami. This year’s contestants stayed at the Arlo Wynwood, a hotel with killer views of Wynwood Walls murals, and a gorgeous rooftop pool complete with occasional guest DJ parties. With the surrounding area of Wynwood full of art, culture, and great food, and with the influx of murals, graffiti, dancing, and Spanish-speaking hip-hop heavyweights intersecting at every corner, the stage was certainly set for the world’s largest freestyle competition.

In between graffiti workshop classes and Asian-Latin fusion dinners, the stage was also certainly set at an unsurprising venue where often these subcultures intersect: a skatepark. That’s right: the Red Bull Batalla Miami Regional Qualifier was set right in the middle of a half-pipe ramp, letting the crowd there certainly match the energy of the contestants freestyling for the Red Bull red, yellow, and blue-colored Batalla trophy, featuring a recording mic. 

Apache performs during Red Bull Batalla Miami Qualifiers at Skatebird in Miami, Florida on 26 of August, 2023 // Ian Witlen / Red Bull Content Pool

The weekend started with a graffiti workshop class at the Miami Art Society, which detailed how the Wynwood neighborhood came to be, artists works in the gallery, and how graffiti often intertwined with hip-hop and freestyling. This was then followed by a graffiti lesson by Entes, a Peruvian-born graffiti artist who not only enlisted in the help of Red Bull staff and reporters to ultimately make a freestyling avian he cheekily called “Rooster,” but also created a spot-on Red Bull logo just by using his naked eye. 

The night concluded with an Asian-Latin fusion dinner at El Chinito, just down the block from both Arlo Wynwood and the Miami Art Society. The dinner consisted of mixed fusion dishes such as carnitas shumai and watermelon “tuna” pizza; and Red Bull-inspired drinks such as the Chinito Summer (Red Bull Red Edition– watermelon – Tanqueray Gin, Peach Schnapps, lime juice, and simple syrup) and Buru Loko (Red Bull Coconut Berry, Tequila Blanco, Peychaud’s Bitters), as well as the standard Red Bull Vodka. 

Before the show started on Saturday evening, several emcees chatted about their upbringings and how they got into freestyle, as well as what they had on their minds ahead of the competition. The scene was set once the show began: Red Bull brought out the Secret Walls crew to enter a real-time live painting battle during the qualifier. Artists Ruth Burotte Tamfee (@rutamfi) and Marlon Pruz (@marlonpruz) battled it out against artists @chnkfondue and @zoegen, unveiling an emcee-inspired work of art.

Judges for the qualifier included MC Snow, Chester, and Sara Socas, with co-hosts Racso White Lion and Sonja La Makina

Sourius competes against VNZ during Red Bull Batalla Miami Qualifiers at Skatebird in Miami, Florida on 26 of August, 2023 // Ian Witlen / Red Bull Content Pool

Leading the show and accompanied by DJ Cesar’s mixing abilities at the turntable. After the emcee was crowned the winner of the Miami Regional Qualifier–with a special guest appearance by El Misionero right before the final round–a Venezuelan rapper Apache gave the crowd a closing performance. 

The fantastic weekend truly showcased the opportunity for young emcees to hone in their craft at the Red Bull Batalla and unite emcees from not only all over the country but around the world as young emcees in the United States make their way to the global stage. 

Read our interviews with AdonysX, JD, and Crown here.

And our interview with Jay_Co “El Leon” and linked here.

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EntertainmentEventsLifestyle

Sit Poolside and Eat Hawaiian Street Food at The Dominick this Summer

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino
You’d be quickly forgiven if you mistook the seventh-floor rooftop pool and bar views of a Soho hotel as straight out of the first season of The White Lotus.
Thanks to The Dominick’s lusciously decorated exterior views and El Ta’Koy’s fantastic food and drink menu, you’ll have a pretty hard time convincing people you didn’t pop into a Hawaiian resort for the weekend.
Instead, bring Hawaii to you this summer at El Ta’Koy at Terrace on 7. Located on the seventh floor of The Dominick Hotel, the restaurant not only boasts authentic succulent pig roast and frozen cocktails to surely quench any summer hankering, but it also delivers you to the island of Kauai itself with its canopied cabanas and a four-foot deep pool with a lifeguard on duty.
Kauai is special to El Ta’Koy, being where Chef Luis A. Pous first came up with the Hawaiian street food-inspired restaurant while he was opening a restaurant of his own on the island. There, he was able to discover the mixing of cultures found at farmers markets and food truck events, and found that the food was influenced by Polynesian culture in addition to Caribbean, North Latin and South American, European and East Asian cultures as well.
The melting pot was all apparent on June 29 when The Dominick hosted a special VIP summer launch event. El Ta’Koy kicked off the start of summer with a succulent pig roast, passed taquitos, tostadas and lumpias, churros to wrap up the evening, and, of course, tropical drinks like frozen Daiquaris and Margaritas.

Hotel guests and visitors alike can trade the sights and sounds of the city streets below with poolside spa treatments and festive rum and tiki-inspired libations. Visitors can also reserve a private cabana with seatting up to six people and with complimentary WiFi, mineral water and scented towels to use at the pool.
Summer at The Dominick in SoHo is known for El Ta’Koy at Terrace on 7 – a lushly landscaped indoor-outdoor restaurant complete with cabanas and poolside spa treatments that have guests feeling more like they’re at a resort than a sleek urban hotel.

There’s still a chance to visit The Dominick’s next luau, set to take place monthly throughout the summer. The next scheduled luaus are on July 26 and August 30, with additional summer events including Taco Tuesdays, Rum Flight Wednesdays, and Wine Tasting Thursdays.

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ArtLifestyle

“In Praise of Caves:” Exploring Earth’s Natural Shelters through Art at the Noguchi Museum

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino

As industrialized societies and wealthy entities continue wreaking havoc on the earth’s climate and displacing millions of people in a mass migrant crisis, some artists are looking back and paying homage to how humans used to– and still do– live.

Javier Senosiain, El Nido de Quetzalcóatl (1998–2007). Model fabricated by Enrique Cabrera. © Javier Senosiain / Arquitectura Orgánica

On view now at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens through February 26, 2023, “In Praise of Caves: Organic Architecture Projects from Mexico” is the culmination of decades of work by four Mexican artists-architects who explored the natural landscape of caves and created them in the modern context. Taking over the entire first floor of the museum, the exhibition offers a thought-provoking look at how humans live and move today, and how we might experience the future years to come. 

The exhibition, with works by Carlos Lazo, Mathias Goeritz, Juan O’Gorman, and Javier Senosiain, questions how humans might reconnect with nature through shelter, bringing forth environments that came forth in Mexico during the 1900s. The Knockturnal was invited to the exhibition’s opening night ceremony on October 18, where art lovers packed into the museum’s first floor and were joined by the last living artist Javier Senosiain, who described his inspiration for such works and how he interacted with his fellow artists and Isamu Noguchi himself.

“To be an originalist, we have to go back to the origin of things,” Senosiain said through a translator, before asking the audience to close their eyes and imagine themselves in the womb at the time of their birth. “We are like astronauts floating in space, in a round shape with no windows, and feel this urge to be pushed through, with the lights shocking us.”

Senosiain explains that psychologists describe the action of being born as a traumatic experience, and explains this is due to the shape of where we find ourselves in.

“If we are born early, we are put in a glass box,” he says. “When we leave the square room, we take the rectangular train to our boxy apartments in New York, where we get pushed into these cradles with boarded sticks.”

“As we continue to grow, we crawl around the apartment, through the rectangular doors, and see the kitchen with boxes and squares on the wall.”

The artist continues down this path of reasoning until the very end. “And when we die, we get put into a box and lowered into a square in the ground.” Because of this, Senosiain puts forth, “we lose three very important aspects of our career: creativity, spontaneity, and freedom.”

Instead, he offers that we should reconsider how humans live on earth and how we interact with our natural landscape— in a not-so-square-ish way. By paying attention to the earth’s natural shelters and more specifically, its shapes, we can ensure humans, in general, will never lose the most important aspects of our lives, all the while helping mitigate the very crises that [some] humans helped create. 

“We can return to the earth again,” Senosiain ended. “We can become human again.”

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EventsLifestyleThe Latest

Fancy Drinks and even Fancier Views at the New Rooftop Bar Nubeluz atop the Ritz Carlton New York, NoMad

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino

Inside the new rooftop bar Nubeluz at the Ritz Carlton New York, NoMad

Set your sights straight to the 50th floor of the Ritz Carlton New York, NoMad where world-renowned Chef José Andrés opened a new cocktail bar that is just dying to be your next Insta background. Aptly named Nubeluz – a portmanteau of the Spanish words “nube” and “luz” for cloud and light, respectively – the rooftop bar is an electrifying 21st-century reiteration of velvet conversation pits, domed golden chandeliers, and eclectic geometric lamps, bringing the 1970s open plan living fully to [night]life. 

Ahead of its Saturday opening, The Knockturnal was among a few special guests to tour the rooftop bar – which boasts 270-degree views of the city from two outdoor terraces, complete with full frontal views of the Empire State Building just up the block. The generously poured sparkling wine during the event certainly matched the bold and bright colors of not only the interior bar but also the bar’s developers, Dayssi and Paul Kanavos of the Flag Luxury Group. 

Designed by the London-based Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, the sights and sounds were all front and center ahead of Nubeluz’s opening. “When we first envisioned this property with Rafael Viñoly,” the Uruguayan architect behind 432 Park, “we knew that the views would be spectacular and we needed to create an equally striking space inside for guests to be fully immersed in the beauty and glamour of New York at night,” said Flag Luxury Group President Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos.

Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Paul Kanavos

“Nubeluz draws energy and inspiration from the great city of New York, which completely surrounds you here 500 feet in the air,” Chef Andrés said in a press release.

The bar’s floor-to-ceiling windows bring that love for New York’s nightlife into new … light. One can stand at one edge of the bar and feel like they’re grabbing drinks with the Met Life Tower itself, and be able to look across the open concept bar to spot people atop the Empire State – if the massive line of people looking to grab a drink at the onyx-counter bar ever dissipates. 

Now open, the bar deliciously serves up opulent bar bites such as oysters, foie gras, sweet cones, and the ever-popular caviar bump. For those who really want to ball out, you can grab 125 grams of Giaveri Beluga caviar for only $950. The drinks are no laughing matter – led by Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup’s cocktail innovator Miguel Lancha, the moderately priced mocktails and cocktails will surely leave you wanting more.  You can check out the extensive wine list and other small bites on the menu here. 

Afraid of heights but want good bites? Not to worry – you can still have the José Andrés food at a much lower elevation. The Ritz Carlton New York, NoMad features two additional Andrés restaurants for guests and visitors alike. The street-level Zaytinya offers a Turkish-inspired Mediterranean mezze menu, while the Bazaar by José Andrés gives hungry visitors an “Avante Garde” delectable dining option.

Nubeluz is open Sunday through Wednesday from 4 PM to 12 AM and Thursday through Saturday from 4 PM to 1 AM. You can make a reservation here.

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EntertainmentFilmThe KontendersThe Latest

The Woman Beneath ‘The Cave’: How Dr. Amani Bellaur Saved Lives While Combatting Sexism

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino

Caught between the precipitous explosions of IEDs overhead and the continuous stereotypes received by women in Syrian society below, Dr. Amani Bellaur opens her heart and Underground Hospital operations in Feras Fayyad’s latest documentary, The Cave.

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Fashion & BeautyLifestyleThe Latest

Manhattan Knights Deliver a Spectacular-filled Show for NYFW

by Catherina Gioino
written by Catherina Gioino

Towering over Midtown Manhattan with awe-dropping views of clothes and the Empire State Building, streetwear clothing brand Manhattan Knights shows off their new collection for the upcoming season.

The rules?

Plastic, transparency, honesty.

In a move to accept a wider range of fashion-minded individuals, Manhattan Knights’ collection features non-gender conforming clothing with a unique twist on fashion throughout the centuries. Different materials come into play, just as our generation’s typical cynically is featured right on our chests.

Chainmail and plastic provide an excellent material for our mood—the transparency of plastic forces people to get to know us, to know our personalities with the sleeves on our shoulders, or in this case, the plastic front of our shirts. Chainmail, on the other hand, shows our hard exterior, bounded together with meticulous care, telling people we care about our appearance on the outside just as much as the inside. That we’re hard to know but working through that will provide the greatest of relationships with that inside person.

Material takes over Manhattan Knights’ show, held on a penthouse floor of a building directly aligned with the Empire State Building a block over. And with its location comes its delivery. Sticking with streetwear’s rejection of normality, Manhattan Knights decided to disrupt the cliché catwalk for a more casual—and more enjoyable—living look. Models sat on couches, danced to live music, and just hung out while acting like any streetwear-wearing person would. In that living arrangement, not only did they show off their clothing brand as a new approach to an already new fashion, but they showed their personality through their atmosphere.

Amazing window views of midtown surrounding the models, with already chic clothing featuring an upside-down Nike logo with the words “Just Don’t,” Manhattan Knights forces consumers to question what they’re buying, and onlookers to ask how those got to confident.

Like Manhattan Knights describes themselves as being “inspired by a deep love for New York, its culture, its people, and its humor,” Manhattan Knights’ new collection depicted just that. New Yorkers’ cynicality came out just as our uniqueness was shown. Our hard exterior followed by remarkably cute interior shows how we view ourselves, just how those who don Manhattan Knights’ clothing.

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