A judge issues an injunction against the Transport Worker’s Union’s planned transit strike, set to paralyze the city on Monday. As you can imagine, Manhattanites are watching this standoff, and Bloomberg’s handling of it, with bated breath.
Category: NYC
Not-so-Safety Dance.
“Two years ago the only places it was illegal to dance were Manhattan and Afghanistan. And now you can dance in Afghanistan.” The Village Voice delves into Manhattan’s bizarre cabaret law, used since the Giuliani era to preserve “Quality of Life” and to stop New Yorkers from spontaneously getting their groove on. Speaking as somebody with happy feet (or, in the parlance of this article, an “incidental dancer,”) I find this particularly annoying, and can think of a lot of other bar habits I’d rather see made verboten.
Trust Elvis.
The Elvis Costello show at the Beacon the other evening was superb (set list here)…I was surprised how good he sounds live. I expected his voice to be a little more off, but he could hit all the notes and wavers from the studio versions. If I could pick three Elvis songs I had to hear, they’d be “Man Out of Time,” “Indoor Fireworks,” and – most importantly – “I Want You,” so I was not disappointed. (Yeah, “Alison,” “Beyond Belief,” or “Everyday I Write the Book” would’ve been cool too, but I’ll take what I can get.) The third encore in particular, the blue-lit, NIN-esque version of “I Want You” paired with “Almost Blue,” was truly a thing of beauty. As for Underworld the other night, I was underwhelmed…mostly by the venue, which was way too small and overbooked for a dance show. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on the Hammerstein as a venue by this point. (More on the Underworld show in the comments of this post at Do You Feel Loved.) Did I mention that Elvis is King?
…and Terror in the Aisles.
If ballet’s not your bag, Lincoln Center is going against type and offering some blood-spattering good fun with Scary Movies: 30 Years of Horror. I’d like to catch some of these if possible. particularly Ringu, Deathdream, and Horror Express.
Harlem Renaissance
The Voice takes a snapshot of the current real-estate battle over Harlem.
C’mon Aboard, Join Hands.
Lonely New Yorkers create a new venue for meeting singles: the first subway car (Via Caught in Between.)
Construction Time Again.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. releases six plans for WTC rebuilding. I’d say my favorite is the Memorial Garden (pictured at right), with the Memorial Promenade ranking a close second.
Swans and Toddlers.
Gillian gets a very positive review in the NYT for her performance as Odette/Odile (the lead) in Swan Lake over the weekend. No mention is made of the ridiculously bratty kid who was screaming through most of Act II, nor of the overly reactive shushs and gasps of utter disbelief made by most of the ballet cognoscenti at the child’s behavior. Gill and her partner (Jose Carreno) were real troopers through it, though, and it definitely got the crowd even more behind them for the rest of the show.
Short Term Thinking.
Mitch Lawrence doesn’t like the McDyess trade.
Memorial Politics.
Speaking to the families of 9-11 victims, Governor Pataki declares that nothing will be built on the site of the former WTC. While obviously some kind of memorial on the premises would be appropriate, I don’t agree with Pataki at all on this one. NYC doesn’t need another park…the city should stay true to its organic nature and rebuild on the (extremely valuable) space, particularly if you consider the fact that the WTC project tore up several blocks of historic Dutch Manhattan back in 1973.