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I lived with a group of people in college in Chicago forty years ago and we used to stay up until three in the morning talking and laughing. We went to plays, concerts, dance performances, lectures, parties, poetry readings, movies, something almost every night. (Some of us were more easily distracted than others.) Somehow we all graduated anyway. Once every winter we gather again for a weekend in New York when it is so cold it reminds me of those long, gray Chicago winters. And we stay up talking and laughing and go to plays and concerts and restaurants and don’t even have to worry about that paper we’re putting off writing. Well, some of us don’t (because some of us are still more easily distracted than others).
This year there were five of us. Three arrived from various points in New England and one from the Washington, DC area. We converged on New York on Friday, January 29. We stayed at the Belvedere Hotel, on 48th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. This turned out to be an excellent choice. We got a terrific rate of $130 per room. This hotel has both renovated and unrenovated rooms. We made our initial reservations a few weeks before our stay. Then two weeks later the rates dropped so that the renovated rooms were less expensive than the rate we had reserved earlier for the unrenovated rooms. We canceled the old reservations and made new ones in the renovated rooms at the lower rate and everybody was very happy. Among the advantages of visiting New York in January are the lowest hotel rates of the year.
This location was perfect for our planned agenda, which was Broadway-intensive, with a show Friday night and another Saturday afternoon. Four of us had arrived by dinner time, and we all went out to Vice Versa, an Italian restaurant on 51st Street. I really enjoyed this place. I started with a half order of strozzapreti (strangled priest pasta) with duck ragout and black gaeta olives. Then I had a grilled rack of lamb with eggplant and olives. I thought everything was excellent. There was a fixed price menu for $35, but we all chose off the a la carte menu instead.
It was a short (but cold and windy) walk to the theater where we were to see the show Fela. The band was on stage playing lively afrobeat music when we arrived. The setting of the show is a night club in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1970s, so the atmosphere was more relaxed than a typical play. There was a bar set up and people were encouraged to bring drinks to their seats. There is nonstop singing and dancing throughout the show, which is based on the life of the man who originated afrobeat music and who was an activist figure with a very colorful personal and political life. The dancers in this show get an amazing workout. It is exercise just watching their hips gyrate. But the title role is so demanding that it is played by two actors who alternate between performances. It is hard to imagine casting this role, which requires an actor who can sing, dance, play the tenor sax really well and who has sixpack abs.
After the show, Barbara and Carol walked back to the hotel. But Ellen and I went to the West Bank Café’s after party, where we were meeting the fifth member of the group, who had arrived in New York too late for dinner and the play. The after party is held in the basement of the West Bank Café, which is located on 42nd Street at Ninth Avenue. As we make our way through the restaurant, Ellen grabs my arm. “We just passed Chris Noth!” Who, where? Did she see someone we know? “Chris Noth, back there, at the first table!” Oh, not someone we know then. Well, I can’t very well walk back to stare at him, so I get to see the back of his head.
At the back of the restaurant, stairs lead down to the theater where the after party is held every Friday night around 11:00. Denise is sitting at a table and we go join her. There is no cover and no minimum, and there is a menu if, like Denise, you are having a late dinner.
Before the show begins, I notice Patrick (one of my imaginary friends from the internet) at a table in the back. It is Patrick who told me about this show, and I knew he might be here. I make my way to his table and we talk briefly. A less celebrated sighting than Chris Noth, but hey, Chris Noth didn’t give me a hug.
The show is an absolute hoot. There is a young, gay guy hosting the evening, and his humor is a bit edgy (that which we understand, anyway; a lot of it goes over the heads of us three straight ladies). We are needing an interpreter. There is a piano on the stage, covered with songbooks- hundreds of them. The pianist will accompany anyone, whether or not he has music. When he doesn’t, he seems to do fine just making it up. Someone sings “Cry Me a River”, and the pianist plays a break during which he slips in a bit of “Stars and Stripes”. If I only had my piccolo.
A couple of times during the evening they pass a hat for the piano player. The guy who passes the hat apparently does a female impersonator act, but not tonight. He is sitting at the table next to ours, and I see him studying a Tom Lehrer song book.
A lineup of singers takes to the stage. Some have appeared on Broadway, some are hopefuls, some are the waitresses. At one point a guy gets up to sing “Nessun Dorma” and cuts out during one line for the audience to sing. And we hear lots of people joining in. It is a room full of singers. A woman who appeared in Hair gets up and does a routine about a cruise ship she was working on in Haiti during the earthquake. A female impersonator lip syncs Lucille Ball’s “Vitameatavegamin” routine.
The entertainment goes on nonstop. We finally leave some time after 1:30. I had hoped to get back to talk to Patrick a bit during a break, but there are no breaks, and by the time we leave, he is gone. Denise and I sit up talking in the hotel until three in the morning. Just like the old days.
Friends and the City: Nikki's New York weekend
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It sounds like you had a great weekend
The bargain hotel prices are tempting until I remember the temperatures in January!
Aargh, I want an edit function. The woman who sang about the cruise to Haiti was in Hairspray, not in Hair. Oh well.
Thanks for the tip about the after show. I'm not a night person but one of these days I'm going to go. It really sounds great. This morning, after doing personal projects at Apple, I walked back home through a quiet, cold, gorgeous Central Park and sighted Yoko Ono along the way.
FYI - Tom Lehrer is playing on my Ipod as we speak. Did the person with the songbook ever sing?
I had a friend who used to use "I hold your hand in mine dear" as an audition piece and invariably the casting people came in 2 flavors - those who knew every word and sang along silently and those who were hearing the song for the very first time.
Saturday morning I met Ellen and Carol for breakfast. I was not sure whether I would make it, but I always wake up early and didn’t manage to sleep late even after the late night festivities of Friday. We went to Pigalle, which is on the corner of 48th Street and 8th Avenue. I decided to opt out of the morning excursion to see the drawings of Carl Jung at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea. This new museum of Himalayan art is in part of the building that used to be Barney’s at 17th Street and 7th Avenue. Those who went did enjoy it. I caught up on some sleep, since we were planning another late night.
We all met at the theater for the matinee of God of Carnage. I found this play very, very funny. It is relatively short, with just one act. Jimmy Smits is a personal favorite as he seems to have been in every TV show I have ever liked. And we saw him a few years ago on our winter friends’ weekend in a play I really liked, Anna in the Tropics. This cast has gotten slightly less enthusiastic reviews than the one that opened the show, which included James Gandolfini, and I would have really liked to see him. But I had nothing to compare it to and I thought everybody was excellent. As they came out to take their bows, we could see them letting out the tension from their faces and their bodies after an emotionally draining performance.
We sat very close to the stage. This had its plus and minus points. On the plus side, it was a little hard to hear some of the dialogue, and I can only imagine it would be harder if one were farther from the stage. On the minus side, there is one scene in which we were all a bit nervous that the action was going to get us wet. It didn’t. I interpret the play as saying that there isn’t a lot of hope for humanity (just about the same amount of hope as for the pet hamster that has been let loose in the street) but that there is just a tiny chance, and the best we can do is to pick up the tulips when they are lying about in disarray. At least we can make the effort.
Or something like that.
We were not unanimous in our praise for this play. One of the group could not willingly suspend her disbelief to overlook some behavior on the part of Jimmy Smits’ character, an attorney, in which no attorney would actually engage. Another felt it was somewhat funny but found herself laughing when others did not, and not laughing when others did. My thumb is up though.
Hi Nikki, great start as usual. I look forward to the rest. $130/n is an incredible deal!
Part of the entertainment in this theater was our usher. She came around before the show to tell somebody to turn off their camera. No pictures allowed, even before the show starts. Don’t take any faces, even in the audience- you never know if “he” is with the right “she”. Don’t open your phone during the show. It distracts the actors. You don’t want someone to do what Hugh Grant did. He walked off the stage three times when he saw somebody texting during a performance, said “I’ll come back when you’re finished”. By then the woman with the camera was looking mortified.
We scattered for a bit after the show and then regrouped at the hotel to discuss dinner and evening activities. We were joined for dinner by another friend who lives in New York, and she had an acquaintance in a jazz band that was performing Saturday night. So we planned to go hear the band and have dinner in the same neighborhood.
We ate at Casimir, on Avenue B between 6th and 7th Streets. This is my old neighborhood. I took out my first books from the New York Public Library branch at Tompkins Square Park, across the street. Until fourth grade I used to walk to school on Avenue B and 12th Street. But the neighborhood has changed quite a bit since I moved away in 1960. Somehow it has become the sort of neighborhood that would support a lovely French bistro filled with young people eating foie gras and escargot.
I started with a salad of greens with sauteed chicken livers and shallots. Then I had duck confit with fantastic garlic roasted potatoes and frisee salad with bacon. Everything was delicious. Prices were quite reasonable, even though we were too late for the fixed price menu that is served until 7:00. My salad was $9.00 and the duck was $18.00.
We were the oldest people in the restaurant, except for one other table. Everyone else could have been our children. We split up after dinner. Some were ready to call it a night and go home, but Barbara, Ellen, Denise, and I forged on to our next destination: the 5C Cultural Center and Café, 68 Avenue C, at 5th Street. http://www.5ccc.com/index.html. This is a corner storefront housing a vegetarian restaurant that hosts jazz, experimental music, and spoken word. It serves beer and wine (but no soda). I had a seltzer to satisfy my need for fizz.
The band was taking a break when we arrived, and we juggled chairs to find a place where we could sit together. Quite a few of the people there were talking to members of the band. In fact, they all seemed to know members of the band. Unlike the restaurant crowd, this group looked more like us: middle aged.
The band was led by pianist Jeff Franzel. They started playing around 10:30 and stopped around midnight. There was a ten dollar cover charge for the band, and no minimum. This was a great way to finish the day.
We all piled into a cab and took the scenic route past my childhood memories (Look! There’s the Con Ed station! I used to hate walking past there on the way to the river because of the noise. And over there, that’s where Gristedes used to be! And the Good Humor Man was on that corner!). Back at the hotel, we said our good-byes to those who were leaving early, and made breakfast plans for the rest of us. And then to bed.
Fabulous report and thanks for all of the recommendations.
Great Trip Report!
What great report - really enjoyable and well-written - thanks for writing it. Just an FYI - strozzapretti actually means "priest stranglers" - that is, pasta that strangles the priest, not pasta made of strangled priests!
Thanks for all the nice comments!
Sue, it never occurred to me you could get Tom Lehrer on an iPod, great idea, thanks!
YK, yes, the hotel was a great deal at $130, and we could have gotten the unrenovated rooms for $109. I didn't see those so can't pass judgment, but the rooms we had were very nice.
Final thoughts a bit later.
Glad you came back downtown. If you ever come back to NYC in the nice weather, Casimir, has a small outside "garden". There are a number of them in the East Village and besides the decor of the restaurants, there is often laundry and fire escapes. All contributing to an ambience most visitors have not experienced.
The laundry and the fire escapes I remember from my youth. The trendy bistros, not so much.
1960 and today are world's apart.
Sunday morning Denise and Barbara left early, while Ellen, Carol and I went to breakfast again at Pigalle. There was a buffet breakfast available in the hotel, but we did not try it out. Pigalle was a fine choice, and I had a good omelet. By the time I got back to my hotel room it was after 11:00 and time to pack and check out of the hotel.
Driving back home to Massachusetts, I had plenty of time to reflect on the weekend. I was very pleased with the activities we had picked, which is a good thing given the amount of time it takes for us all to come to a decision on anything. The things I enjoyed the most tended to be the things that cost the least: the after party Friday night, the jazz at the vegetarian café, the dinner at Casimir, and above all, the time spent visiting with my lifelong friends.
It is always bittersweet saying good-bye, and I have felt this way since we broke up the house we shared to move our separate ways after college. So we talked about the possibility of coming back to New York for another weekend, trying to look forward to another gathering. And about the next time that we are all planning to meet: the wedding of my daughter in July. With any luck, we will all be there along with our children, who have known each other since infancy.
Among the many topics we discussed late into the night forty years ago, I do not think that any of us imagined the future in quite this way. I did not foresee marrying Carol’s brother, for instance, whom at the time I had not yet met. But in retrospect I can not imagine our lives playing out in any other way. Thank goodness.
Well, Nikki, I'm really bummed. Did you honestly suggest that Chris Noth was a better celebrity sighting than MOI???
Nikki, how wonderful it is for all of you to maintain friends for all these years, and for all of you to commit time to one another for a weekend getaway.
Congratulations to your daughter's upcoming marriage.
Nikki...
Great report! It made me feel like I was in the city too! Thanks for taking the time to post!
I loved your trip journal. Thank you so much for sharing. I miss those old college days.
I really miss Chris Noth's jazz bar. I saw a few good acts there. Thanks for the after-party info, I will try that out over Valentine's weekend when I am in NYC again.
The best friends are old friends..still in contact with my college roommates from the 60's and we had a rolicking good time in Las Vegas last year together.
Thanks for the continuing comments.
No Patrick, you were by far the better sighting. I didn't even get to see that other guy's face.
I didn't know Chris Noth had a jazz bar. Oh well, just one more place I'll never get to try.
Thanks for the good wishes, yk. Now if we can only get through the wedding with everything working smoothly and everybody still on good terms, my job will be done.
Yes, good to have those old friends, but I'm glad I'm not back in college. Too much drama.
It was called "The Cutting Room." When he closed it, he said he was going to open in another location, but it hasn't happened. The website is still up.
http://www.thecuttingroomnyc.com/aboutus.html