It's only words unless they're true: Nikki's New York weekend
Feb 10th, 2009 | 07:24 AM
#1
Original Poster
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 15,646
Likes: 11
It's only words unless they're true: Nikki's New York weekend
Almost forty years ago, I moved into my college dorm and met the people who would be my friends for the rest of my life. Every winter some of us get together for a weekend in New York City. This year there were four of us staying for shorter or longer times, joined by a spouse or two. In about 48 hours, we managed to get to two Broadway shows, a jazz club, a comedy club, a concert, and some nice restaurants. Whew.
Friday, January 30. “Are you with the dating website?”
I arrive Friday afternoon and check into the Park South Hotel, on 28th Street near Lexington Avenue. My friend Carol and I are staying here; our other friends are not staying in hotels this trip. I have stayed at the Park South before and I really like it. It seems to be priced better than some similar hotels. I found a rate on www.quikbook.com for $150 per night, which was substantially better than the rate on the hotel’s website. Rooms are on the small side, but unlike many New York hotels, I can find rooms there with two beds. The hotel consists of two town houses, and in one of them there is the hotel’s restaurant/bar, the Black Duck. The bar has a very nice seating area around a fireplace, and Carol and I have arranged to meet our friend Ellen and her husband here for drinks.
We move on for dinner and music to the Jazz Standard, just over a block away on 27th Street (www.jazzstandard.net). The early show begins at 7:30 and doors open at 6:30. The club is downstairs from the restaurant Blue Smoke, and the restaurant’s great barbecue menu is available in the jazz club. We arrive just at 6:30 so we have time for a relaxed dinner. I get a sampler platter with Kansas City spare ribs (one of three different types of ribs served here), smoked chicken, pulled pork, and sausage. We order side dishes of collard greens, baked beans, and corn bread for the table.
We are not quite finished with dinner when the lights go down and the music begins. We are hearing pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, with a group including a trumpet, sax, bass, and drums. It is a little challenging finishing up the ribs in the near dark, but I manage. The music is great. We all enjoy it.
After dinner we leave Carol, who goes back to the hotel, and we head down to East 4th Street, to the EastVille Comedy Club (www.eastvillecomedy.com). We have tickets, so we go inside and get on line in front of the group waiting outside without tickets. We are therefore among the first to be seated. We choose our seats carefully. We don’t want to be up front because we don’t want to become part of the show. And we want a path to the door in case we want to leave early. We get a table with a good view of the small stage. We are just about the oldest people here; most people seem to be in their twenties and thirties. After we are seated, the waitress comes and asks, “Are you with the dating website?” We look confused. She tells us that the group from the “Meet Market” is sitting in a section she points out. We reassure her that we’re fine where we are. It takes a while for the waitress to take our drink order, and by the time she gets around to us I am really thirsty, so I order two Diet Cokes at a time. There is unlimited soda for $10. Once it comes, I am happy.
There are five or six comics. Most of them are very entertaining. We are glad we chose not to sit near the stage when one of the comedians starts picking on one of the few people older than us, a white-haired guy sitting with his son. He’s good-natured about it though, and the ribbing is pretty gentle. I haven’t heard of any of these people before. One of them has a TV show: Ben Bailey, the Cash Cab guy. Another guy I think is pretty funny is called Maddog Mattern.
The show begins at 10 PM. By the time the last comic, a guy named Godfrey, comes on, it’s approaching midnight and we’re not laughing as much. Could be he isn’t so funny; could be we’re getting tired. So we call it a night and leave before the show ends, hoping we don’t become part of the routine. I figure it’s like gatherings among my friends; whoever leaves first gets talked about. That’s why I always try to leave last.
Saturday, January 31. “It’s only words, unless they’re true.”
Continental breakfast is included in the room rate, so Carol and I take our time here and read the New York Times. There is a good assortment of pastries, fruit, cheese and cold cuts, bagels, rolls, cereal, yogurt, juice. Carol pronounces the coffee inadequate though. There is a TV above the bar showing news from a New York cable station. After a few segments about happenings in New York City, the show moves on to news from “beyond New York.” The first story is about something in Rochester. I wonder what the people in Rochester think about this. And I think of my father, who lived at Seventh Avenue and 54th Street and used to say that the suburbs began above 59th Street and below 34th Street.
Carol goes out on a short shopping excursion after breakfast and brings back some great leather boots that she bought on sale. She also brings sandwiches with venison pâté and very mustardy gherkins on ciabatta. After lunch in our room, we head out to the theater. We meet Ellen and her husband there, as well as our friend Barbara, who has taken the train down from Boston for the day to join us, and another friend Helen, not from college though, who lives in New York.
We are seeing Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet, with William H. Macy, Raul Esparza, and Elisabeth Moss. Fast paced and very talky, just the way I like it. The role played by William H. Macy was originally played by Jeremy Piven, who plays essentially the same character on the TV show Entourage. This is the third year in a row I have seen Raul Esparza in a Broadway show. This role is full of energy and hyperactivity, and he does that really well. Two years ago I saw him in Company, and I thought he (or maybe the character) was very bland. Last year in The Homecoming, he played a snarky wise-cracking guy very well. The play is full of good lines. I’m waiting to read the play when I receive the copy I’ve ordered from Amazon, but my favorite line is, “It’s only words, unless they’re true.”
It is a short one-act play, so we have time to kill before we are meeting my husband at a restaurant for dinner. We stop at Blue Fin, a fairly peaceful restaurant right on Broadway in the Times Square madness, for drinks and conversation while we wait. We catch up with each other, and there is lots of good news and bad to share and absorb. It is so good to see all these people together. We spend a little longer than we anticipate here, as Barbara and Helen are leaving us before dinner. We are meeting my husband Alan at the bar of the restaurant where we’re having dinner, and I figure he won’t mind waiting for us; he’ll know how to cope in that environment on his own.
Dinner is at Piano Due, in the Equitable Center Arcade off 51st Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues (www.pianoduenyc.net). There is a very attractive, high ceilinged bar on the ground floor, with a huge colorful mural surrounding the room. Alan is having a drink and chatting with the bartender; he hasn’t noticed that we’re late. We spend some time here and then go upstairs to the restaurant. Ellen’s son joins us for dinner; he is visiting friends in New York but can make time from his busy social life for a free dinner in a nice restaurant.
I really enjoy my dinner. There is a pre-theater menu for $40, including appetizer, main course, and dessert. I have penne with mushrooms to start, then some nice pork chop presentation of which I forget the details, and finish up with a great chocolate dessert. Perfect.
After dinner, we’re off to a concert by Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Town Hall. Our seats are in the very last row of the balcony, in the absolutely no legroom section. But the great music takes my mind off the discomfort and puts us all in a good mood. Last summer I heard the Soweto Gospel Choir at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and this made for a nice comparison of South African a cappella music. Ladysmith Black Mambazo is all male and sings more traditional arrangements than the Soweto Gospel Choir, which is a mixed choir and performs some contemporary songs. Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s founder still directs the group and is joined by his four sons and a couple other singers. They sing wonderful close harmonies and we all walk out humming.
Alan is leaving to go to his father’s house for the night before driving home to Massachusetts on Sunday, so I go back to the hotel with Carol. Another great day.
Sunday, February 1. “An intricately unhappy life, lived out in compensatory splendor.”
Carol and I meet Ellen and her husband for brunch at the Café at Country, in the Carlton Hotel on Madison Avenue and 28th Street. There are some real service issues here. Ellen requests a dessert menu several times before one appears. Her husband gets the wrong omelet, which is taken away and replaced after some time. The omelets come with toast, but there is no butter or jam until we request it. Ellen’s Irish oatmeal is inedible. The waitress does take the oatmeal off the check and gives Ellen a salad for no charge. I don’t think we’ll be going back though.
After brunch we say good-bye to Carol, who is taking the train home to Connecticut. Ellen and I are going to see The American Plan, a play by Richard Greenberg, the author of Take Me Out, which I loved when I saw it a few years ago. I enjoy today's play very much; Ellen likes it but thinks it is somewhat dated. The American Plan is set in the same time period and general setting as Dirty Dancing, across the lake from an over-the-top Catskill resort and viewing it from the outside rather than from within. One of the characters talks about visiting the resort and seeing a woman eating "a steak the exact size and shape of a jack boot." The characters in the play are also in some ways viewing life from the outside, and their interactions are fascinating and dramatic, with some very good lines. "What is the best we can hope for? An intricately unhappy life lived out in compensatory splendor."
Ellen and I say good-bye outside the theater, and I retrieve my car from the garage near the hotel. As I drive up the FDR Drive, headed home to Massachusetts (and when and why did they rename the Triborough Bridge? I almost get lost!), I reflect on the many years I have known all these people and about the ways our lives have connected in an intricate tapestry. I am so glad to have been able to watch it all unfold. No well-crafted plots, and we don't have the good writers, but we get in a good line here and there. No tragic points to make, thankfully. Not the stuff of theater, but of life.
Friday, January 30. “Are you with the dating website?”
I arrive Friday afternoon and check into the Park South Hotel, on 28th Street near Lexington Avenue. My friend Carol and I are staying here; our other friends are not staying in hotels this trip. I have stayed at the Park South before and I really like it. It seems to be priced better than some similar hotels. I found a rate on www.quikbook.com for $150 per night, which was substantially better than the rate on the hotel’s website. Rooms are on the small side, but unlike many New York hotels, I can find rooms there with two beds. The hotel consists of two town houses, and in one of them there is the hotel’s restaurant/bar, the Black Duck. The bar has a very nice seating area around a fireplace, and Carol and I have arranged to meet our friend Ellen and her husband here for drinks.
We move on for dinner and music to the Jazz Standard, just over a block away on 27th Street (www.jazzstandard.net). The early show begins at 7:30 and doors open at 6:30. The club is downstairs from the restaurant Blue Smoke, and the restaurant’s great barbecue menu is available in the jazz club. We arrive just at 6:30 so we have time for a relaxed dinner. I get a sampler platter with Kansas City spare ribs (one of three different types of ribs served here), smoked chicken, pulled pork, and sausage. We order side dishes of collard greens, baked beans, and corn bread for the table.
We are not quite finished with dinner when the lights go down and the music begins. We are hearing pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, with a group including a trumpet, sax, bass, and drums. It is a little challenging finishing up the ribs in the near dark, but I manage. The music is great. We all enjoy it.
After dinner we leave Carol, who goes back to the hotel, and we head down to East 4th Street, to the EastVille Comedy Club (www.eastvillecomedy.com). We have tickets, so we go inside and get on line in front of the group waiting outside without tickets. We are therefore among the first to be seated. We choose our seats carefully. We don’t want to be up front because we don’t want to become part of the show. And we want a path to the door in case we want to leave early. We get a table with a good view of the small stage. We are just about the oldest people here; most people seem to be in their twenties and thirties. After we are seated, the waitress comes and asks, “Are you with the dating website?” We look confused. She tells us that the group from the “Meet Market” is sitting in a section she points out. We reassure her that we’re fine where we are. It takes a while for the waitress to take our drink order, and by the time she gets around to us I am really thirsty, so I order two Diet Cokes at a time. There is unlimited soda for $10. Once it comes, I am happy.
There are five or six comics. Most of them are very entertaining. We are glad we chose not to sit near the stage when one of the comedians starts picking on one of the few people older than us, a white-haired guy sitting with his son. He’s good-natured about it though, and the ribbing is pretty gentle. I haven’t heard of any of these people before. One of them has a TV show: Ben Bailey, the Cash Cab guy. Another guy I think is pretty funny is called Maddog Mattern.
The show begins at 10 PM. By the time the last comic, a guy named Godfrey, comes on, it’s approaching midnight and we’re not laughing as much. Could be he isn’t so funny; could be we’re getting tired. So we call it a night and leave before the show ends, hoping we don’t become part of the routine. I figure it’s like gatherings among my friends; whoever leaves first gets talked about. That’s why I always try to leave last.
Saturday, January 31. “It’s only words, unless they’re true.”
Continental breakfast is included in the room rate, so Carol and I take our time here and read the New York Times. There is a good assortment of pastries, fruit, cheese and cold cuts, bagels, rolls, cereal, yogurt, juice. Carol pronounces the coffee inadequate though. There is a TV above the bar showing news from a New York cable station. After a few segments about happenings in New York City, the show moves on to news from “beyond New York.” The first story is about something in Rochester. I wonder what the people in Rochester think about this. And I think of my father, who lived at Seventh Avenue and 54th Street and used to say that the suburbs began above 59th Street and below 34th Street.
Carol goes out on a short shopping excursion after breakfast and brings back some great leather boots that she bought on sale. She also brings sandwiches with venison pâté and very mustardy gherkins on ciabatta. After lunch in our room, we head out to the theater. We meet Ellen and her husband there, as well as our friend Barbara, who has taken the train down from Boston for the day to join us, and another friend Helen, not from college though, who lives in New York.
We are seeing Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet, with William H. Macy, Raul Esparza, and Elisabeth Moss. Fast paced and very talky, just the way I like it. The role played by William H. Macy was originally played by Jeremy Piven, who plays essentially the same character on the TV show Entourage. This is the third year in a row I have seen Raul Esparza in a Broadway show. This role is full of energy and hyperactivity, and he does that really well. Two years ago I saw him in Company, and I thought he (or maybe the character) was very bland. Last year in The Homecoming, he played a snarky wise-cracking guy very well. The play is full of good lines. I’m waiting to read the play when I receive the copy I’ve ordered from Amazon, but my favorite line is, “It’s only words, unless they’re true.”
It is a short one-act play, so we have time to kill before we are meeting my husband at a restaurant for dinner. We stop at Blue Fin, a fairly peaceful restaurant right on Broadway in the Times Square madness, for drinks and conversation while we wait. We catch up with each other, and there is lots of good news and bad to share and absorb. It is so good to see all these people together. We spend a little longer than we anticipate here, as Barbara and Helen are leaving us before dinner. We are meeting my husband Alan at the bar of the restaurant where we’re having dinner, and I figure he won’t mind waiting for us; he’ll know how to cope in that environment on his own.
Dinner is at Piano Due, in the Equitable Center Arcade off 51st Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues (www.pianoduenyc.net). There is a very attractive, high ceilinged bar on the ground floor, with a huge colorful mural surrounding the room. Alan is having a drink and chatting with the bartender; he hasn’t noticed that we’re late. We spend some time here and then go upstairs to the restaurant. Ellen’s son joins us for dinner; he is visiting friends in New York but can make time from his busy social life for a free dinner in a nice restaurant.
I really enjoy my dinner. There is a pre-theater menu for $40, including appetizer, main course, and dessert. I have penne with mushrooms to start, then some nice pork chop presentation of which I forget the details, and finish up with a great chocolate dessert. Perfect.
After dinner, we’re off to a concert by Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Town Hall. Our seats are in the very last row of the balcony, in the absolutely no legroom section. But the great music takes my mind off the discomfort and puts us all in a good mood. Last summer I heard the Soweto Gospel Choir at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and this made for a nice comparison of South African a cappella music. Ladysmith Black Mambazo is all male and sings more traditional arrangements than the Soweto Gospel Choir, which is a mixed choir and performs some contemporary songs. Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s founder still directs the group and is joined by his four sons and a couple other singers. They sing wonderful close harmonies and we all walk out humming.
Alan is leaving to go to his father’s house for the night before driving home to Massachusetts on Sunday, so I go back to the hotel with Carol. Another great day.
Sunday, February 1. “An intricately unhappy life, lived out in compensatory splendor.”
Carol and I meet Ellen and her husband for brunch at the Café at Country, in the Carlton Hotel on Madison Avenue and 28th Street. There are some real service issues here. Ellen requests a dessert menu several times before one appears. Her husband gets the wrong omelet, which is taken away and replaced after some time. The omelets come with toast, but there is no butter or jam until we request it. Ellen’s Irish oatmeal is inedible. The waitress does take the oatmeal off the check and gives Ellen a salad for no charge. I don’t think we’ll be going back though.
After brunch we say good-bye to Carol, who is taking the train home to Connecticut. Ellen and I are going to see The American Plan, a play by Richard Greenberg, the author of Take Me Out, which I loved when I saw it a few years ago. I enjoy today's play very much; Ellen likes it but thinks it is somewhat dated. The American Plan is set in the same time period and general setting as Dirty Dancing, across the lake from an over-the-top Catskill resort and viewing it from the outside rather than from within. One of the characters talks about visiting the resort and seeing a woman eating "a steak the exact size and shape of a jack boot." The characters in the play are also in some ways viewing life from the outside, and their interactions are fascinating and dramatic, with some very good lines. "What is the best we can hope for? An intricately unhappy life lived out in compensatory splendor."
Ellen and I say good-bye outside the theater, and I retrieve my car from the garage near the hotel. As I drive up the FDR Drive, headed home to Massachusetts (and when and why did they rename the Triborough Bridge? I almost get lost!), I reflect on the many years I have known all these people and about the ways our lives have connected in an intricate tapestry. I am so glad to have been able to watch it all unfold. No well-crafted plots, and we don't have the good writers, but we get in a good line here and there. No tragic points to make, thankfully. Not the stuff of theater, but of life.
Feb 10th, 2009 | 09:30 AM
#6
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 895
Likes: 0
Great report,so well written, Nikki. Sounds like a wonderful time, made better by reconnecting with old friends!
Love Ladysmith Black Mombazo. Would enjoy seeing them again.We're heading into the city in April, but introducing two young grandchildren to the city- won't quite be the same!
Love Ladysmith Black Mombazo. Would enjoy seeing them again.We're heading into the city in April, but introducing two young grandchildren to the city- won't quite be the same!
Feb 10th, 2009 | 10:13 AM
#7
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 16,715
Likes: 0
What a great trip, Nikki. You make great restaurant, theater, music selections-even when they do go quite right. I was standing next to Mercedes Ruehl yesterday and for the life of me, couldn't remember what she was in currently. You've reminded me.
Trending Topics
Feb 10th, 2009 | 07:18 PM
#8
Original Poster
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 15,646
Likes: 11
Thanks for all the nice feedback.
Capecodshanty, Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed in Cambridge this past weekend.
Mclaurie, the selections are a joint project. My friends and I have perfected our technique of deciding where to go over decades. We come up with a bunch of alternatives, spend hours discussing them, make a decision and then someone throws another idea into the pot that we hadn't even considered, and then we can spend another few hours discussing it. And that's just when we want to go out to dinner. This weekend we actually decided more efficiently than usual, but I don't expect the newly streamlined technique to last.
Capecodshanty, Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed in Cambridge this past weekend.
Mclaurie, the selections are a joint project. My friends and I have perfected our technique of deciding where to go over decades. We come up with a bunch of alternatives, spend hours discussing them, make a decision and then someone throws another idea into the pot that we hadn't even considered, and then we can spend another few hours discussing it. And that's just when we want to go out to dinner. This weekend we actually decided more efficiently than usual, but I don't expect the newly streamlined technique to last.
Feb 10th, 2009 | 10:07 PM
#9
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,211
Likes: 0
Nikki, thank you. what a great report. We will be in NYC in Oct and although its our third visit its the first without out 'kids'. We are hoping for a much more 'grownup' time. The way you described your time and the places you went, make it very easy to consider 1 or 2 of them.
Sometimes we walk around like 'rabbits caught in the headlights' not really knowing where to go or what to do.
So thanks, our first jazz club, here we come.
.
Sometimes we walk around like 'rabbits caught in the headlights' not really knowing where to go or what to do.
So thanks, our first jazz club, here we come.
.
Thread
Original Poster
Forum
Replies
Last Post
lizcdn2
United States
10
May 11th, 2009 05:44 PM
Maggi
United States
8
Nov 30th, 2005 05:02 AM
