whew. My biggest challenge as a first-time maid of honor is over. I may have rushed around in turquoise and silver spiky heels like a chicken with her head cut off, but the mimosas were drank, the cookies gobbled, presents opened, and a good time was had by all. Ostensibly, I went to north Jersey this past weekend to throw my sister the best bridal shower I could manage. That happened {look for a post on Friday with pictures that do not include me...must remember that the photographer never gets photographed}, but the real highlight of the weekend was Sunday.
Sunday we ran into the city for a belated birthday celebration {me} and a relaxing shower gift day {Sari}. We had tea, saw The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, caught up with an old friend for a Venetian feast, and witnessed a wonderful concert by mandolin player Chris Thile in an impossibly intimate venue. It was an hectic, relaxing, upbeat, tear-inducing, sisterhood strengthening, fantastical day.
Let us begin with tea. Right where Chelsea bleeds into the West Village sits a tiny and hectic little tea shop, Tea & Sympathy. When we popped in, at 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon, we were barely seated. The place barely holds twenty, and signs on the door clearly indicate a lack of patience: "you will not be seated until all of your party is present." We snuggled in next to a table of hipsters, proving once and for all that buddy holly glasses are still in style, and were immediately surrounded by an interesting mix of English and New York accents. We may have been the only table to be comprised entirely of American-accented English speakers.
Our waitress was an adorable English girl with Weasley coloring and a Royal blue dress. There's no rush at Tea & Sympathy, but everything is all bustle nonetheless. Incredibly large pots of tea, scones, jam, and clotted cream came in a trice, then everything was jostled around as ten finger sandwiches {egg, chicken, and crab salad with watercress} overflowed our tiny table. Neither teapot {Assam and Chocolate Vanilla, respectively} nor one of the tea cups fit into an instagram photo.
Owner Nikki keeps everyone moving, an extremely important task when there is a line of people waiting outside. She wanted to pack up our leftover sandwiches, but we were off to the theater and had to leave them behind. The traditional English fare looked and smelled fantastic as it passed by to be eaten by others, but we did not have quite the time we wanted to waste. None of the staff would have let us waste much time, to be fair, as cheerfully polite as they all were.
Time got a bit tight then, as a street fair blocked traffic all around 8th. We managed to get two thirds of the way to the theater, but had to rush out of the cab and walk to make it before the curtain. The Richard Rodgers Theater {home to The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess for one more week before the show closes} is an old-fashioned gilded theater, perfect as a setting for a most famous American opera. We climbed the stairs and managed to gain our seats just as the overture began.
The first chord, the history this show contains, all the racism and furor, love and devotion, struggles, poverty, and storm-battered humanity was enough to close my throat with emotion. It never quite got unstuck. At its roots, Porgy & Bess tells the struggle of one man to keep with him the woman he loves. It also tells of the demons one woman possesses, and is possessed by, in her struggle to conform to society's standards of decency, and one small community's fight against the incursions of white power.
This production has been updated to better include the themes from the original novel {Porgy, written by DuBose Heyward} and to stamp out some of the paternal racism expressed in Ira Gershwin and Heyward's lyrics for the original production as an operetta. Though billed as "the American musical" on the production's website, the show is entirely sung with only flashes of speaking.
Audra McDonald sways through Bess' transformations from, quite literally, a "liquor-guzzling slut" to the lover and keeper of the crippled-from infancy Porgy. Norm Lewis, despite walking most impressively with a cane and later a brace he does not need in real life, is just as strong and determined to see Bess treated properly by those who surround her as he is full of life himself. When the near-final showdown occurs between Porgy and Crown, Bess' nemesis and Porgy's rival for her affections, Lewis defiantly filled the theater with Porgy's line, "Bess, you got a man now!" Never before have I heard an entire audience cheer and clap so loudly for the violent death of a character.
Never before, either, have I seen such a Broadway audience filled with so many African-Americans, proving that there is plenty of desire and disposable income within the community if only productions were produced to appeal to a broader base.
There was not an actor upon that stage who did not breathe life into a character, no matter how small the part or brief the appearance on stage. Old classics soared to the rafters and settled into your soul. I'm still singing. Perhaps the most delightful moments came from David Alan Grier as he sauntered and high-stepped across the boards as Sporting Life, or as he clashed with NaTasha Yvette Williams' community leader Mariah. Pages could be filled detailing the love shining between Nikki Renee Daniels' Clara and Joshua Henry's Jake, as they sang and flirted their way through raising a new baby.
After that brilliant performance {can't believe we got in just under the wire: the show closes on September 23}, my sister and I wandered through the street fair that caused so much traffic trouble earlier in the day. After a quick wander through Sephora for a makeup touch up {more than five minutes loose in a make-up store that actively encourages sampling and I look like a hooker} we strolled back down to Chelsea for supper.
Thanks to Yelp, Sari found Le Zie while we took the train into the city earlier in the day. A cozy Venetian restaurant with multiple rooms and a lounge, it was the perfect place to meet up with an old friend. We decided on the cichetti tasting sampler, comprised of little plates of stuffed fried olives, eggplant al Funghetto, stewed squid, beans and onion, cod mousse, shrimp cakes, sardines in Saor, octopus with celery, white baits in ceviche, meat balls, and chicken liver pâté, all served with white and yellow grilled polenta.
Personally I found the chicken liver pâté, stuffed fried olives, and shrimp cakes to be my favorites, though all were delicious. As three of us split the selection and ordered salads, there was no particular reason to consider more: we were far too full to even ponder dessert, no matter that a fig creme brulee was on offer that night.
I had the roasted red beet salad with warm Montrachet goat cheese, toasted walnuts, marinated leeks, string beans, and Sherry vinaigrette {bottom of above photo}, while David ordered the Tricolor Salad, with sautéed Shiitake, Apple Wood smoked bacon, tarragon vinegar dressing, and shaved Ricotta {top}. Sari had a stacked {photo below} Arugula Salad, with tomato, Feta cheese, cucumber, black olives, onion, Dijon Mustard, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil vinaigrette.
Afterward we went our separate ways, as Sari and I were off to our final destination for the evening. The Rockwood Music Hall would more aptly be called a bar with a stage and a tiny balcony. Though we were too distracted to bother counting, there is room for possibly fifty people standing around the stage and in the tiny tables at the foot of the stage and upstairs.
Chris Thile is the lead singer & mandolin player for the band Punch Brothers. Along with starting said band a few years ago, he is perhaps better known for his work as a member of Nickel Creek and his recent recordings with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer, put together in the album "The Goat Rodeo Sessions." I first recognized hearing him play when Sari and I saw he and the rest of Punch Brothers perform in New York during a live performance of Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" back in 2009.
They brought the house down then, and we fell in love. Classically trained, the band puts together bluegrass inspired bluesy alternative rock that they dubbed "plunk rock." Somewhat less bluegrassy than UK imports Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers is rather more eclectic and slightly less commercial. All highly talented, each band member performs solo and with other groups when not touring together. Sunday was such a night for Thile.
He played for two hours, including two encores, pieces that flowed from Bach's violin concertos to Radiohead to songs Punch Brothers cut from their most recent album {the fantastic "Who's Feeling Young Now?"}, to folk and back again. His playing is delightfully quirky and fantastic to hear in such a homey venue. Still, I felt a need to put my chunky glasses on just to fit in, no matter that I had on a floor length chiffon skirt and a chambray shirt. Thile inspires a serious number of hipsters, though the gathering included some older guests and a few seriously preppy folk. Somehow the waitstaff at Rockwood managed to refill drinks and take orders unobtrusively, never distracting from the performance.
It was the perfect end to a perfect day. Sari had a day away from the bride drama and her normal life. I had a fantastic celebration of my birthday, and we both got to gloat over the phone to family members chocked green to the gills with envy. We are never not going to Tea & Sympathy when we run into the city, and Le Zie is getting put in our supper rotation forever. Some days, you just need to fill full to bursting with fun and happiness. This one overflowed.
"Be well. Do good work. Keep in touch." - Garrison Keillor
{all photographs taken with my terrible phone camera and filtered via the Android version of Instagram}
Sunday we ran into the city for a belated birthday celebration {me} and a relaxing shower gift day {Sari}. We had tea, saw The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, caught up with an old friend for a Venetian feast, and witnessed a wonderful concert by mandolin player Chris Thile in an impossibly intimate venue. It was an hectic, relaxing, upbeat, tear-inducing, sisterhood strengthening, fantastical day.
Let us begin with tea. Right where Chelsea bleeds into the West Village sits a tiny and hectic little tea shop, Tea & Sympathy. When we popped in, at 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon, we were barely seated. The place barely holds twenty, and signs on the door clearly indicate a lack of patience: "you will not be seated until all of your party is present." We snuggled in next to a table of hipsters, proving once and for all that buddy holly glasses are still in style, and were immediately surrounded by an interesting mix of English and New York accents. We may have been the only table to be comprised entirely of American-accented English speakers.
Our waitress was an adorable English girl with Weasley coloring and a Royal blue dress. There's no rush at Tea & Sympathy, but everything is all bustle nonetheless. Incredibly large pots of tea, scones, jam, and clotted cream came in a trice, then everything was jostled around as ten finger sandwiches {egg, chicken, and crab salad with watercress} overflowed our tiny table. Neither teapot {Assam and Chocolate Vanilla, respectively} nor one of the tea cups fit into an instagram photo.
Owner Nikki keeps everyone moving, an extremely important task when there is a line of people waiting outside. She wanted to pack up our leftover sandwiches, but we were off to the theater and had to leave them behind. The traditional English fare looked and smelled fantastic as it passed by to be eaten by others, but we did not have quite the time we wanted to waste. None of the staff would have let us waste much time, to be fair, as cheerfully polite as they all were.
Time got a bit tight then, as a street fair blocked traffic all around 8th. We managed to get two thirds of the way to the theater, but had to rush out of the cab and walk to make it before the curtain. The Richard Rodgers Theater {home to The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess for one more week before the show closes} is an old-fashioned gilded theater, perfect as a setting for a most famous American opera. We climbed the stairs and managed to gain our seats just as the overture began.
The first chord, the history this show contains, all the racism and furor, love and devotion, struggles, poverty, and storm-battered humanity was enough to close my throat with emotion. It never quite got unstuck. At its roots, Porgy & Bess tells the struggle of one man to keep with him the woman he loves. It also tells of the demons one woman possesses, and is possessed by, in her struggle to conform to society's standards of decency, and one small community's fight against the incursions of white power.
This production has been updated to better include the themes from the original novel {Porgy, written by DuBose Heyward} and to stamp out some of the paternal racism expressed in Ira Gershwin and Heyward's lyrics for the original production as an operetta. Though billed as "the American musical" on the production's website, the show is entirely sung with only flashes of speaking.
Audra McDonald sways through Bess' transformations from, quite literally, a "liquor-guzzling slut" to the lover and keeper of the crippled-from infancy Porgy. Norm Lewis, despite walking most impressively with a cane and later a brace he does not need in real life, is just as strong and determined to see Bess treated properly by those who surround her as he is full of life himself. When the near-final showdown occurs between Porgy and Crown, Bess' nemesis and Porgy's rival for her affections, Lewis defiantly filled the theater with Porgy's line, "Bess, you got a man now!" Never before have I heard an entire audience cheer and clap so loudly for the violent death of a character.
Never before, either, have I seen such a Broadway audience filled with so many African-Americans, proving that there is plenty of desire and disposable income within the community if only productions were produced to appeal to a broader base.
There was not an actor upon that stage who did not breathe life into a character, no matter how small the part or brief the appearance on stage. Old classics soared to the rafters and settled into your soul. I'm still singing. Perhaps the most delightful moments came from David Alan Grier as he sauntered and high-stepped across the boards as Sporting Life, or as he clashed with NaTasha Yvette Williams' community leader Mariah. Pages could be filled detailing the love shining between Nikki Renee Daniels' Clara and Joshua Henry's Jake, as they sang and flirted their way through raising a new baby.
After that brilliant performance {can't believe we got in just under the wire: the show closes on September 23}, my sister and I wandered through the street fair that caused so much traffic trouble earlier in the day. After a quick wander through Sephora for a makeup touch up {more than five minutes loose in a make-up store that actively encourages sampling and I look like a hooker} we strolled back down to Chelsea for supper.
Thanks to Yelp, Sari found Le Zie while we took the train into the city earlier in the day. A cozy Venetian restaurant with multiple rooms and a lounge, it was the perfect place to meet up with an old friend. We decided on the cichetti tasting sampler, comprised of little plates of stuffed fried olives, eggplant al Funghetto, stewed squid, beans and onion, cod mousse, shrimp cakes, sardines in Saor, octopus with celery, white baits in ceviche, meat balls, and chicken liver pâté, all served with white and yellow grilled polenta.
Personally I found the chicken liver pâté, stuffed fried olives, and shrimp cakes to be my favorites, though all were delicious. As three of us split the selection and ordered salads, there was no particular reason to consider more: we were far too full to even ponder dessert, no matter that a fig creme brulee was on offer that night.
I had the roasted red beet salad with warm Montrachet goat cheese, toasted walnuts, marinated leeks, string beans, and Sherry vinaigrette {bottom of above photo}, while David ordered the Tricolor Salad, with sautéed Shiitake, Apple Wood smoked bacon, tarragon vinegar dressing, and shaved Ricotta {top}. Sari had a stacked {photo below} Arugula Salad, with tomato, Feta cheese, cucumber, black olives, onion, Dijon Mustard, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil vinaigrette.
Afterward we went our separate ways, as Sari and I were off to our final destination for the evening. The Rockwood Music Hall would more aptly be called a bar with a stage and a tiny balcony. Though we were too distracted to bother counting, there is room for possibly fifty people standing around the stage and in the tiny tables at the foot of the stage and upstairs.
Chris Thile is the lead singer & mandolin player for the band Punch Brothers. Along with starting said band a few years ago, he is perhaps better known for his work as a member of Nickel Creek and his recent recordings with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer, put together in the album "The Goat Rodeo Sessions." I first recognized hearing him play when Sari and I saw he and the rest of Punch Brothers perform in New York during a live performance of Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" back in 2009.
They brought the house down then, and we fell in love. Classically trained, the band puts together bluegrass inspired bluesy alternative rock that they dubbed "plunk rock." Somewhat less bluegrassy than UK imports Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers is rather more eclectic and slightly less commercial. All highly talented, each band member performs solo and with other groups when not touring together. Sunday was such a night for Thile.
He played for two hours, including two encores, pieces that flowed from Bach's violin concertos to Radiohead to songs Punch Brothers cut from their most recent album {the fantastic "Who's Feeling Young Now?"}, to folk and back again. His playing is delightfully quirky and fantastic to hear in such a homey venue. Still, I felt a need to put my chunky glasses on just to fit in, no matter that I had on a floor length chiffon skirt and a chambray shirt. Thile inspires a serious number of hipsters, though the gathering included some older guests and a few seriously preppy folk. Somehow the waitstaff at Rockwood managed to refill drinks and take orders unobtrusively, never distracting from the performance.
It was the perfect end to a perfect day. Sari had a day away from the bride drama and her normal life. I had a fantastic celebration of my birthday, and we both got to gloat over the phone to family members chocked green to the gills with envy. We are never not going to Tea & Sympathy when we run into the city, and Le Zie is getting put in our supper rotation forever. Some days, you just need to fill full to bursting with fun and happiness. This one overflowed.
"Be well. Do good work. Keep in touch." - Garrison Keillor
{all photographs taken with my terrible phone camera and filtered via the Android version of Instagram}
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