Have relatives in town for the long weekend? Or did you ditch out on family time to enjoy the city at its best — quiet with no lines anywhere for four wonderful days — like a true New Yorker? Here’s our guide to making the most of the holiday weekend, with or without family and friends in tow.

WEDNESDAY: Not So Silent Film
Tonight, Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin,” aka that essential piece of cinema that you watched once in film class, gets the Monkeytown treatment with a live soundtrack from composer Matt Darriau and the Paradox Trio. Reservations are recommended.

THURSDAY: Hot to Trot
Pre-emptively burn off your dinner: Justify that extra piece of pumpkin pie by running Brooklyn’s annual-since-’77 Turkey Trot. The five-mile Turkey Day fun run, which doubles as a fundraiser for the Bishop Ford High School track teams, starts at 9am near the Oriental Pavilion in Prospect Park.

WEEKEND: Anarchy in the BK
Spike your hair and break out the safety pins, it’s time for BAM’s Punk ‘n’ Pie film series. On Saturday, Grant Gee’s documentary “Joy Division” gets close to the legendary band’s remaining members, while punk rock’s most storied couple gets their close-up in “Sid and Nancy,” playing Sunday night (as we mentioned earlier).

Open Air Browsing
Though it’s closed on Thanksgiving Day, you can still spend the rest of the weekend browsing through jewelry, cards, artwork and other handcrafted gifts at the Union Square Holiday Market. Site>>

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Today’s Tip Sheet is brought to you by Dunn & Overwith, who want you to enjoy a peaceful holiday season with the help of their Holiday Elves and unique “Gift of Time” gift cards.

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Skating Away
Ice skate at the city’s two new rinks: Enjoy the view of the New York Harbor while circling Seaport Ice, a 325-skater rink at Pier 17, open every day from 10am to 10pm (Brooklyn bonus: take the Water Taxi over from Fulton Ferry Landing after pizza at Grimaldi’s). Or try skating on synthetic ice (environmentally friendly!) at the American Museum of Natural History’s Polar Rink. Check their site for hours.

Drop in the Bucket
Bushwick art space English Kills Art Gallery is hiding a gem in their current show, “In The Way…” David Button contributes a piece that occupies most of the gallery space, but make a beeline for the blink-and-you-miss-it dark room just left of the entrance to see the show’s achievement, ‘George,’ by Jason Peters. While the sculpture’s form appears chaotic — its loopy incandescence is reminiscent of an animated, three-dimensional light-scrawl — it’s actually made out of several hundred interconnected buckets drilled and fastened at exactly the same place, betraying an exercise in carefully executed geometric precision. Through Nov. 30. Open Sat.-Sun., 1-7pm. Site>>

UK Masters
The Brooklyn Museum marks the final stop on Gilbert and George’s career retrospective tour, an exhibition of more than ninety works produced from 1970 to the present, several of which can only be seen in this final presentation (see our review). Now that Brooklyn’s new Culture Bus is up and running straight to the museum’s front door, the four-day weekend is the perfect time to take it for a test ride.

(Un)Sloppy Seconds
While the most innovative thing you might make from leftovers in the next few days is a turkey sandwich, the artists of MAD’s “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary” have culled discarded, used, or valueless objects and repurposed them to fashion magnificent artworks of sometimes dazzling ingenuity. Even better, these works, all located at the intersection between art, craft, and design, promote sustainable practices. Stuart Haygarth assembles an eccentric, luminous chandelier from 1,042 pairs of prescription glasses that provides a welcoming “Spectacle” to the exhibit. Paul Vilinski’s, “My Back Pages” most closely embodies the theme of transforming materials and giving them Second Lives — his old LP’s are melted, cut, and remodeled until they emerge as a swarm of butterflies. Of course, MAD’s sweet new building (itself an example of artful revitalization) is excuse enough to make the trip.

Be Good and Do Good
Give back and help your community: see our ideas for volunteering in Brooklyn here.

Sent by Chrysanthe, Keith, Nina and Jocelyn. Photos: Turkey Trot photo by t.shirbert via flickr, Union Square Holiday Market by kristenmarie82 via flickr, “George” image courtesy of the artist, Paul Villinski “My Back Pages” courtesy MAD.