Artists and friends gathered at 1 Centre Street for the opening reception of an art show called “Business Unusual II: Room at the Top” on Tuesday. The Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, sponsored the show, an opening event of the HOWL! Festival. Arteries, the fine-art contingent of the Federation of East Village Artists, produced the show.

The exhibition winds along both walls of a main corridor leading to the office of the Manhattan borough president on the 19th floor at 1 Centre Street. It is open weekdays and runs through September 29, but visitors should note that photo identification is required to enter the building.

The Knickerbocker spoke with British-born artist Marguerite Van Cook, who curated the show with her husband, James Romberger, Samara Sussman, and Roger DeGennaro. She said the show’s artists, rooted in the Lower East Side, shared a commitment to “giving back” to the community.

Ms. Van Cook’s work in the show included a self-portrait as Ophelia in “Hamlet.” A photograph showed her lying in a bathtub in a Lower East Side building with exposed brick showing. She is currently working on a movie, filmed partly in France, about a female highway robber involved in the spice trade.

Mr. DeGennaro is a conceptual artist, one of whose works in the show, “Golf Fetish,” consisted of a geometric figure made of Astroturf pierced with yellow golf tees.

Stephen Lack came with his son, Asher, who is a musician in a band called Lost at Sea. Mr. Lack had a painting of a violent urban scene with a man getting beaten up. Paired immediately below was a tranquil scene of a suburban house with a car in the driveway. Ms. Sussman’s relief paintings showed layers of natural and industrial materials, the final layer of which was silicon.

Asked what distinguishes East Village artists, Mr. DeGennaro, who is also a writer, said a common characteristic is that they “do more than one thing.” Ms. Van Cook added, “They are interdisciplinary and consciously so.” Among the artists in the show, a few are musicians; for example, Gibby Haynes, who has a band, Gibby Haynes and His Problem, and Thom Corn, who is an actor and drummer. Ms.Van Cook herself came to the East Village in the late 1970s and was the lead singer of the Innocents, a band that opened for the Clash.

Also in the show was Jody Culkin, who teaches in the music and art department at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. She told the Knickerbocker about her current participation in a group show at the Tompkins Square Branch Library Gallery. It features video animation and is about her landlord who, in 1997, tried to burn down the building in which she resides on Clinton Street. She is also working on art focusing on a 19th-century sculptor named Harriet Hosmer, to whom she is related.

The crowd gathered to watch a brief dance performance by C. Eule Dance Company. Fitting for this recent spate of hot weather, they performed a Hawaiian-themed dance called “Hula.” The piece and its wavy hand motions, said company artistic director Caron Eule, had been inspired by a video of a friend who spoke with his hands moving about in a “very gestural” way. They also performed a dance called “Face2Face” whose music was composed by Lower East Side resident Jeremy Kasha, who was present.

A connoisseur of cheese, Ms. Van Cook had selected a variety for consumption with wine. She was speaking with filmmaker and New School adjunct professor Mary Magdalene Serra, who wore a pin bearing the picture of musician Diamanda Galas. Ms. Serra is coordinating “Avant Garde(n)” six evenings beginning Monday and featuring film, videos, and cabaret in various East Village community gardens. Ms. Serra, Ms. Van Cook, and Mr. De-Gennaro are all members of the Garden at 6th Street and Avenue B.

The event ended at 8 p.m. as members of the Manhattan borough president’s staff headed to the Democratic mayoral candidates’ debate, involving another art, that of public speaking.

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PASTA AND PITCHES The host of Monte’s of Greenwich Village, Giovanni Mosconi, greeted guests who gathered this week to meet Bob McGee, author of “The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers” (Rutgers University Press). Photos on the walls of Monte’s showed baseball greats Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, and Yogi Berra. Don Larsen ate veal parmesan there.

Over pasta, Mr. McGee spoke about his book exploring the mystique and history of Ebbets Field from the first game in 1913 to its last in 1957.

The book opens with the story of how Charley Ebbets built the ballpark, but went broke and had his marriage fall apart while doing so. The book describes early pennant winners, and the ensuing “Daffiness Days,” such as the time in 1926 when three Dodgers once ended up on third base all at once; and the peak period of the late 1940s through the mid-1950s when the Dodgers faced the Yankees in the World Series.

“This is really about the fans as well as the players,” he said. The book examines why Ebbets Field and the Dodgers remained so endeared to fans, even after the wrecking ball. Partly, it was the ballpark’s unusual architectural angles and features, such as a scoreboard that could be blocked by spectators. In deepest left field, the railing had the foul line running atop it for the last 10 to 15 feet before approaching the left-field wall. “If you had your hands on the rail, you’d actually be in fair territory,” said Mr. McGee.

The right-field wall ran along Bedford Avenue, knitting the ballpark to the neighborhood, a closeness that was enhanced, he said, by ballplayers living in the neighborhood and team rosters remaining fairly stable from season to season.

The author grew up in Bay Ridge on the corner of Third Avenue and 97th Street.The area was home to Brooklyn Dodgers greats Duke Snider, on Marine Avenue and 97th Street; Harold “Pee Wee” Reese, on Barwell Terrace; and Carl “Oisk” Erskine, on 94th Street at Lafayette Walk.

The book contains a cast of famous figures like Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella. There are also humorous anecdotes, such as the one about Stanley George “Frenchy” Bordagaray, who got tagged out on a play in which he didn’t slide. Why not? As he told manager Charles “Casey” Stengel, he had cigars in his back pocket. Fined by Stengel, Bordagaray hit a home run the following day and proceeded to slide into every base that time around the infield.