Tag Archives: things to do in New York City

Opera Beyond the Met — New York Opera Exchange and More!

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Tonight marks our final season ticket outing at the Met. We’re off to see Cosi Fan Tutte, and I’ll be back to tell you how it was.

This doesn’t end opera season for us. We’re planning to do rush tix this week for La Cenerentola, which will probably be our last Met outing till the fall. But that’s not all folks. Although the City Opera is dead, opera for the people isn’t. In addition to the cheap seats always available at the Met, there are other options for us latter day groundlings.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring a couple of them. Tomorrow I’m going to the final performance of Haydn’s Orlando Paladino at the Manhattan College of Music in bucolic Morningside Heights. Though we live in the neighborhood, I hadn’t heard a thing about this, until I stumbled onto something in The New Yorker. They need to do a better job of letting the neighbors know. Posters would be nice. It’s a student cast, and it sounds like an interesting take. There aren’t a lot of tickets left, but what they got is going for $30 for regular folk and $15 for students and seniors. The website was a little tricky to manevever. I kept winding up at a link that said the service wasn’t available. However, if you click here to the calendar and from there click onto the May 4th event, you should be able to order tickets for tomorrow’s performance. Selection is limited, so good luck!

The other cool thing we discovered is The New York Opera Exchange, which sounds almost like City Opera on a shoestring. It features emerging artists in interesting productions. They’ve apparently been around since 2012. Performances happen at a couple of different venues. We’re going to be seeing a production of La Traviata because you can never see that one enough times. It’s being performed in midtown at a church. It’s  set in “the rubble of post-Mussolini Italy” with Alfredo as an American GI. There are several performances in May. Tickets can be purchased online and all seats are $30. Sounds like fun and I will totally let you know, but since performances start 5/9, and we’re not going till the end of the run, don’t wait for our take.

(Seriously, Marion is busy editing her next great novel, and can hardly afford even the cheap seats these days. There’s no donation link because she’s just too proud, but you could help support her opera habit — and these informative posts– by checking out her work, including this acclaimed novella for less than a buck!)

Again, Idiots at the Opera – Don Carlo or We Weren’t Expecting the Spanish Inquisition

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In January when we showed up at the Met to see La Rondine, we were greeted with the news that our tickets were no good. After some confusion, it was determined the mistake was theirs, but it took more time than it should have, and we barely made it in. Being a certain kind of New Yorker, I sent a long detailed e-mail to customer service. I was rewarded with complimentary tickets to Don Carlo. Yay Met! Way to resolve!

Don Carlo, for my fellow ignoramuses, is a very, very long (five acts) opera by Verdi. Under no circumstances should this be the first opera you ever attend! Per the Wikipedia, there were various cuts made during the composer’s lifetime and many versions exist. There are librettos in both French (the original) and Italian. Both are still performed. The current production is in Italian. The opera is an epic set during the Spanish inquisition in the court of King Philip II. There’s thwarted love, father son mishigosh, true bromance – including a bromantic triangle, a ghost (maybe), and of course — the Spanish Inquisition.
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A Night at the Opera, Another Night at the Theater, A Weekend at Home

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The better half and I try to vacation at least three times a year — my birthday, his birthday, and our anniversary.  This being the Internet, I won’t tell you which one occurred last week, but we weren’t able to get away, and so decided to celebrate at home, in New York City.  Here’s what we did:

Wednesday:  Dinner at Hell’s Kitchen, a trendy “progressive”-Mexican place in (where else?), Hell’s Kitchen.  Being reluctant omnivores, we went for veggie choices.  A recent trip to Italy had made us more aware of the lovely artichoke, which is not on enough menus in the United States, so we started with the poached artichoke quesadilla with idiazabal cheese, roasted sweet corn, and poblano crema.  Yummy.  For main courses we ate light and shared family style:  We ordered  huitlacoche with avocado, and mascarpone cheese. Hutlacoche for the uninitiated is a truffle that grows on corn — or in simple terms a fungus.  It has a unique taste and texture, a bit smoky, a bit spongy.  We are fans.  Plus the cheese didn’t overwhelm the dish, which is one difference between “progressive” Mexican and run of the mill.  The crispiness of the taco created a perfect balance of textures.  As a second main, we had the burrito with wild mushroom,  guacamole and poblano sauce, which was also well balanced and delicious. The mushrooms tasted like they might have been sautéed with a teriyaki sauce, giving them a steak-like flavor.  We split a dessert, banana empanadas with chocolate sauce and fresh whipped cream.  The cream was unsweetened as it should be to help offset the sweetness of the sauce and the banana.  There were other dessert choices that sounded equally good.

Then we walked up to the Metropolitan Opera House to see La Traviata directed by Will Decker with Natalie Dessay, as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Germont,  I am an opera ignoramus.  The decision to go to the opera was made by my better-half, based on its being on both our bucket lists.  Neither of us had seen live “grand” opera before, except maybe once or twice on PBS.  We are now both fans, trying to figure out what we can sell to pay for season tickets next year.   We were expecting to be entertained.  We were expecting “theater.” What we got was an emotional wallop.  Even in the back of the orchestra where we were, when Gourmont slaps Alfredo and you hear him fall, there was more than a murmur in the audience.   To train the human voice to do what they do and do it while dancing, laughing, running and crying is amazing. To do it while acting is a miracle.  While we were expecting the tragedy of the lovers, Hyorostovsky’s nuanced performance made us feel Germont’s guilt and regret for separating them as well.  The stark set with its surreal clock ticking away the minutes of Violetta’s life, and the contemporary dress created a sense of timelessness.  This wasn’t a story about a nineteenth century courtesan, but about life, death, love and regret.

The following evening was theater night.  Ducking work, we got to TKTS at 2:20.  The main line was already huge, but the Play Express line was short.  By 3;15, we had two FRONT ROW seats to the Clybourne Park, which had opened earlier that week.   On the one hand, we were amazed at our luck; on the other, hand, it’s scary that almost all the non-musical plays had availability.  The play, itself has been described as a “sequel” to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.  More accurately it’s a re-imaging, with a first act taking place in 1959, the time when the original is set, and the second act fifty years later.  It’s been described as an  “uproariously funny”  comedy.  While it is that, it’s also an explosive drama.  There are several points at which violence seems imminent, and we weren’t prepared for the tragic tone of the first act.  When the curtain came down for intermission, my better half said, “After this, I’m going to need a drink.”  The second half is funnier, broader, more satiric, dealing with gentrification and reverse integration, but that too moves into dangerous territory.

We ate after the theater at Marseille, an unpretentious but stylish, French bistro on ninth avenue.  We ordered snails, of course.  Going carnivore, I ordered the honey glazed duck breast.  The better half had the mussels with fries.  Lots of mussels, and the best fries either of us had ever tasted, ever, in our lives.  We tried to figure out what made the fries so perfect.  Garlic might be one answer, but there was also the lack of grease and perfect crispiness.  The desserts are a bit more extensive than what’s on the posted menu.  We had something mousse-like with dark chocolate, so intensely rich that we were satisfied with just a few spoonfuls (rare for us).

We hardly left the house over the weekend, except for errands and long walks to local parks — Central Park, Fort Tryon, Morningside and Riverside, where everything seemed to be in bloom.  Saturday night, I started to read Just Kids,  Patti Smith’s memoir of her time in New York as a bookstore clerk/struggling artists/poet and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe.  I kept reading into Sunday morning when I finished. I mention it here because like our two nights out, the  book could only have taken place in New York, although the New York, Smith writes about where young artsy types could somehow eke out enough of a living to afford the smallest room in the Chelsea Hotel is long gone as are the bookstores where she worked Brentano’s and Scribner’s.  Argosy somehow survives.  Gotham Books which published her early work, gone as well.

Smith, herself, has been quoted as saying that New York is now beyond the means of struggling artists who would be better off going elsewhere. Still for those of us, artist and non-artist who remain or are just visiting, and have limited incomes, some discounts are available. Our two front row theater seats costs were about $60 a piece at TKTS, and though we paid full freight at the opera, discounts and standing room are available.  Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen offers many reasonably priced restaurants.  Walking is still free, as is browsing, and books remain here and elsewhere the most affordable form of entertainment going.

For those of you who might not make it to the Met this year, here’s a clip:

At Home She Feels Like a Tourist

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Through a series of unfortunate circumstances we wound up not traveling this past anniversary, and instead decided to simply take a day or two off and do some stuff on the island in which we live.  We are not snobs and would have been happy to travel to the bigger long island nearby or even the mainland up north or to the west,  but as it turned out, we stayed close to home.

So, in case you may be visiting, here are few tips from our recent travels:

Getting Around

In really inclement weather, when especially tired, the better half and I have been known to hop into a cab.  Taxis are expensive and depending on where you are going and when, they can be slow, but they are plentiful.  Despite Sex in the City, most real people take trains and buses most of the time. The “yellow” cabs all use meters.  If you happen to be staying north of 110th street or in the boroughs, and a strange black car pulls up beside you, chances are the driver is not a serial killer.  If the license plate says: TLC, then it is a livery or “gypsy” cab.  It is technically illegal for them to stop and pick up passengers on the street, but it’s commonplace especially in neighborhoods that aren’t served by a lot of cabs. They have set prices although who knows what they are?  Generally, you can negotiate a bit with the driver.  They may not be willing to take you too far out of their comfort zone.

The subway is generally the best choice. There are parts of Manhattan that may be a few long blocks east or west from the station, but most New Yorkers are walkers and can handle it.  While the bus system is great, buses are amazingly slow and if I were a tourist with a limited amount of time, I’d avoid them altogether.  There used to be good discounts for buying Metrocards costing $20 or more. They’ve now lowered the discount to a flat 7% on all cards costing $10 or more, so those cards aren’t as much of a bargain.  If you think you’ll be using the system at least one round trip each day, then invest in a seven-day unlimited Metrocard for $29.

While I don’t want to get sued if you get stabbed or killed on the subway, I will tell you that the subway is very safe and runs frequently 24/7.  Weekends, however, things get weird as a lot of repair work gets done and this causes route changes and delays.  The MTA website offers updates and travel advisories. There are maps in every station and in most train cars.  You can use the “trip planner” on the MTA site or on HopStop for directions.  As a native, I’ve found both these sites a bit hinky, but Hopstop offers a little more flexibility.  You also should not be shy about ASKING a New Yorker if you aren’t sure what train to take. New Yorkers LOVE to talk and will be happy to give you directions. If they know languages, they LOVE to speak them, so even if you are a fluent in English, you can always mess with us by speaking something else and seeing if there’s anyone who can help you.

Movies

There’s no reason to see a film in New York City.  There are better things to do that you can’t do at home.  Back in the day, there were tons of revival and art houses in the city where one could watch film “classics” and foreign films on big screens.  The revival houses are long gone.  Most of the smaller art houses as well, but there are a couple of places left that still show foreign and indie films.  Our two favorites are the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Angelika Film Center.  Lincoln Plaza, which the better half and I have taken to calling the Lincoln Plaza Home for Adults, because it tends to skew old, is located near Lincoln Center, barely north of midtown on the southern tip of the Upper West Side. It’s not that far from us, but it’s not the one we’d be most likely to recommend to tourists.  Ever since the nearby Barnes & Noble closed, there’s not much to do if you get there early or need to meet someone. The lobby is small and crowded, and the employees tend to be a surly bunch.

Angelika on the other hand, makes a night at the movies a worthy destination.  It features a lobby level cafe with plenty of tables and no ticket required. Though the coffees may be overpriced, it’s located on Houston Street at the border between the East Village and Soho, with big glass walls that allow for street watching.  The staff is helpful and friendly.  When I balked at a $4.00 charge for bottled water, I was given a paper cup with cold water free of charge. While that may seem like a small thing, believe me in this town, it’s anything but.

Personally, I think they could better use the space, add a bookstore, or throw in a small laundry service where locals could drop off, go to a movie and pick up their stuff when they leave, but that’s just my obsession with maximizing real estate.  The theatres themselves are small, but well designed and clean.

Times Square and the Theater

I get it.  Most tourists want to go see a Broadway Show.  Whatever.  There’s a lot of live theatre to be seen in New York that’s not on Broadway.  Actors live here.  You can see plays that aren’t on  Broadway for the fraction of the price, but over the last few days, we went to see a Broadway show, so I’ll give you the scoop on discount tickets.

You’ve probably heard of the half-price day of the show, TKTS booth. Not all shows area available, and those that are, aren’t necessarily half-price, but it’s still a great resource. The website will even tell you what was available within the last week.  (There’s an app that gives you real time information about availability.) There are now satellite counters in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan that offer matinee tickets a day in advance.  The discounts range from 30-50%.  A particular show might only have a discount of 30% and only on the most expensive seats, so you still may wind up spending a lot, especially for musicals.

Even if the show you want to see has been available at TKTS, that doesn’t mean that the day you get on the line it will be available, so if you really want to see something specific, you might consider just getting your ticket online before you come to town.  Generally, on a weekday especially in lousy weather, if you get to the line 50 minutes before it opens, you won’t have to wait more than ten minutes once it opens.  If you arrive later, you could be waiting more than an hour.  If you do come later, some of what was available might be sold out, but sometimes new shows are added write before the curtain goes up.  One feature that’s relatively new, or that I didn’t know about is “Play Express.”  Play Express is a separate line for non-musical plays at discounted prices.  Because most tourists want to see musicals, the Play Express line tends to be very short, and availability is pretty good.  We saw Chinglish with 8th row orchestra seats, and completely enjoyed the show, which unfortunately will close January 29th.  So if you are a “culture vulture” who just wants to see great (non-musical) theatre and doesn’t want to spend your whole afternoon waiting in line, Play Express is the option for you.

Times Square itself is a nightmare.  It’s like some horrid outdoor mall in hell.  Gone is any trace of grit.  It is Disneyfied and family friendly, although absurdly overpriced.  There are no good restaurants in Times Square, but if you have to use the bathroom there are a couple of McDonald’s (including an extremely large one on 42nd street).  There is also a homey Starbucks with clean restrooms across from the TCKTS booth.  Feel free to ignore any signs suggesting that bathrooms are for customers’ use. If you’ve ever bought anything at a McDonald’s or a Starbucks, you are a customer.

I would avoid at all costs the “Discovery Store.” We got to Times Square before TCKTS opened, but then decided to use Play Express, so there was no need to wait on line. (In New York you wait on line. You skate in line.)  One of the giant billboards was hawking “the Dead Sea Scrolls” at Discovery Times Square, so we decided to check it out.  The admission was a whopping $27.00 for adults and $19.50 for kids 4-12.  Maybe it’s a great exhibition, but there are many terrific museums with outstanding regular collections and special exhibitions in this city.  None of them are this overpriced.  Some are by donations.  Some have special  “free” days or evenings.  By all means enjoy our museums, the real ones, not the Discovery Store or Madame Toussand’s.

(Tip: If you want to go to a museum between the time you pick up your evening tickets and get to the theater, MOMA is walking distance (or a very short cab ride) from the TKTS booth. They have “free” Friday nights starting at 4:00.  So if you get to TKTS before it opens at 3:00, and then go to the museum for a couple of hours, you’ll still have time for dinner before the show.)

Restaurants

Real New Yorkers are appalled by chains, with the possible exception of Dunkin Donuts which is local.  There are a few Applebee’s mostly in outer borough malls or Times Square.   There’s an Olive Garden in Chelsea that people eat at ironically, but I’m not sure that’s good for your digestion.  Generally, the better half and I go for ethnic food in Queens because chances are it will be more authentic, better and a whole lot cheaper than in Manhattan. However,  I’m trying to stick to our recent tourism, so  I’ll tell you where we ate this week.  On our movie night at Angelika we had planned to go to Angelica Kitchen, no relation, a popular vegan/organic place.  It was packed. I’m not sure whether or not they take reservations, but I’d recommend calling to check and/or being prepared to wait.  Because we couldn’t go there, we went to our favorite place for comfort food, Veselka’s.  Veselka’s describes itself as Ukranian soul food and was in the East Village when the East Village had edge — still easy on the wallet, and authentically delish.

When we went to the show, the plan was to dine after the theater, and we wanted to stay in the area.  This does not mean we would consider Times Square itself.  46th Street starting at 8th Avenue is known as New York’s “restaurant row” and is a short walk from the Broadway theaters.  There are some very good restaurants there that aren’t tourist traps.  MenuPages offers tips and “real people” reviews for almost all. .  We chose to avoid the row and head for 9th Avenue away from the hubbub. This is the area now called Clinton that used to be known as Hell’s Kitchen.  Like the rest of Manhattan, it’s ridiculously safe for a major city.  While plenty of people may go to 9th Avenue, it’s not a tourist trap.  We had a craving for Indonesian food which isn’t as ubiquitous as other cuisines.  We chose Bali Nusa Indah and were not disappointed.

Honestly, I don’t write enough about things to do in the city or getting around.  Seriously, if you are planning a trip and have some specific questions, write me, I’ll either blog about it or get back to you via email.