Good afternoon, this is W42ST Lifestyle Editor Sarah Beling with “Make Way For The Weekend” — your curated guide to the best of New York events in one convenient newsletter!
If you ever need a reminder of why exactly you came here in the first place, I recommend revisiting someone else’s first memories of New York. In my case, it’s listening to Barbra Streisand read her own memoir (CANNOT RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH/ IT IS LIKE GOING OUT TO COFFEE WITH BABS) — in which even a born-and-bred Brooklynite like the author finds mystery and magic during her first years solo in Manhattan. The marquees! The automats! An apartment on W48th Street! A tiny club in Greenwich Village that will make you a star!
If it’s good enough for Babs, it’s good enough for me. Have a wonderful weekend!
…when you can only think as far ahead as Monday!
🎶 there’s a ton of the twist but we’re fresh out of shout
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t cranked LCD Soundsystem’s iconic New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down and moodily wandered the sidewalks on more than one occasion. I love this place but you know I am also Dramatic!!!! Anyway they are playing Brooklyn Steel November 16-19!
🎭 hello, gorgeous
Playhouse 46 at St Luke’s hosts the New York premiere of Make Me Gorgeous, a solo show starring Broadway’s Wade McCollum, portraying the true life story of “Kenneth Marlowe, an oft-overlooked trailblazer in LGBTQ history. Described as one of mid-Century America’s gayest and most openly homosexual personalities, Marlowe took on many roles in life. Kenneth was private hairdresser to the stars; the madam of a notorious gay prostitution ring in Hollywood; an author; a hustler; a female impersonator; a private in the US Army; a call boy; a Christian missionary; a mortuary cosmetologist; a newspaper columnist … and for the final decade of an incredibly lived life, Marlowe was a woman, having transitioned to become Kate Marlow.” It’s on stage now through December 31!
🎶 swing guitars
Dance on over to the Django Reinhardt Festival at Birdland now through November 19 for a celebration of the Romani-French composer and guitarist’s work, featuring performances by fellow French jazz musicians Dorado Schmitt, Samson Schmitt and Amati Schmitt!
✨ west side festival of lights
Stop by the free Diwali Sound and Lights Show at Hudson Yards November 18 from 4-6pm for holiday festivities including a Diwali Puppet Show by WonderSpark Puppets, a dance workshop and performance by the Shehnaaz Dance Academy and a concert by Little Ustaads!
🧥 winter warmer
Donate your gently-used coats and support fellow New Yorkers at the Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries and Community Board 4 Coat Drive November 18 from 1-3pm at 410 W40th Street!
👯 that soldier domino fall!!
Santa works hard but The Rockettes work harder, my friends — and you can check out their knife-edge precision for yourself at the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes opening November 17. Cue the reindeer!
🎶 ants marchingIt’s 1999 in your college dorm room It’s 2023 and Dave Matthews Band is playing Madison Square Garden November 18, where the indefatigable rock group performs three decades of hits.
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Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors is a high-octane, low-down, hilarious reimagining of the gothic classic. With fangs of fury and abs of steel, the stakes are high for Count D as he flees lady vampire hunter Jean Van Helsing and her motley entourage. If you’re a sucker for a bash brimming with bits, bites and bats, you can B Positive that this 90-minute, gender-bending, quick-change Stoker-joker is just your type. This Dracula has got the chops to make it on stage and leave audiences dying for more. He may not be the next Phantom, but he’s in the same vein. You can Count on it. draculacomedy.com
🎭 he writes the songs
Tackling the true story of a six-man, interfaith singing group gaining prominence against the rise of Nazi Germany, Barry Manilow’s Harmony has finally arrived on Broadway after a 26-year development period — that’s persistence, baby!! Let’s see it and discuss!! We owe it to Barry!
🎭 what’s this
There’s something truly glorious about a group viewing experience where you are encouraged to get a little rowdy and share your commentary (RIP the glory days of Savalas Bar in Williamsburg, where you could truly LOL at True Blood in good company). This holiday season, head to The Bell House November 17 for A Drinking Game Presents The Nightmare Before Christmas where actors recreate the Tim Burton classic in a raucous, interactive live reading!
🎶 nothing but respect for MY president
Have your ever heard Broadway star Joshua Henry sing??? It’s a transcendent experience. The unparalleled baritone performs his solo show, Get Up Stand Up November 18 for an evening of “classic songs by Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, John Legend, Lin-Manuel Miranda and others, and including a breathtaking ‘History of Soul in 25 Minutes,’ Henry swings as naturally from epic Earth, Wind & Fire to a Rodgers & Hammerstein gem.”
🖼️fine arts
There are two new, exciting femme-focused art exhibitions happening around town: Making Their Mark, a curated collection from the Shah Garg Foundation of over 80 women artists from the past eight decades, showing now through January in Chelsea and Judy Chicago: Herstory now through January at the Bowery Museum in a retrospective that will trace the artist’s work “from her 1960s experiments in Minimalism and her revolutionary feminist art of the 1970s to her narrative series of the 1980s and 1990s in which she expanded her focus to confront environmental disaster, birth and creation, masculinity and mortality.”
…what’s happening before and just after I hit your inbox next!
🎈watch out, barney
When you think about it, the fact that dozens of Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons are assembled overnight in the streets of New York — a place where there’s barely enough room for outdoor dining lol — is kind of wild. If you want to see it for yourself, you can stop by the official balloon inflating by the American Museum of Natural History November 22!
🕺 diwali dance
Keep the Diwali festivities going with DiwaliGiving, a free dance party November 24 at HK Hall, where world-famous DJ Dharak will spin “a pulse-pounding soundtrack of Bollywood, Top 40, House and Mashups!”
🎭 new work alert!
The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute presents an alternative Thanksgiving weekend event in their premiere of In the Valley of Coming Forth November 24-25, a new play by Dr Herukhuti tackling “themes of European settler-colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy through the story of a Black woman’s struggles, post-apocalypse, to save her non-binary child in the year 2169.” The two-day event also includes an artist talkback and live DJ sets, and guests are invited to attend in Afrofuturist attire!
…for when you need to secure those hot tickets before they sell out!!!
🎭 um always relevant lol
Without revealing spoilers, John Patrick Shanley’s theatrical classic Doubt — premiering a new Broadway revival opening in February for a limited run and selling fast — has one of the most quotable last lines out there. It’s also starring Tyne Daly, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Zoe Kazan and Liev Schreiber?! Run don’t walk!!!
🔥 Hot tip
Maybe you too were inspired by this month’s New York City marathon but, like me, aren’t exactly ready to run 26.2 miles. Dip your toe in the NYC road race fun at the free Outdoor Voices Tiny Turkey Trot November 18 where, hosted by runner Samantha Dong, founder of Asian Trail Mix, you can complete a 2.62 (notice the decimal!!!) run-walk-trot and enjoy race portraits, finish-line medals and tiny treats (while supplies last). All ages and paces welcome!!
⚠️ Omg I forgot to tell you
The new skating rink under the Brooklyn Bridge is now open
It’s Emo Night at Brooklyn Bowl November 18
There’s a Thanksgiving-food-themed Grand Bazaar November 19
Stylistas! A Vivienne Westwood sample sale opens November 21
That’s it for now! Call me beep me if you want to reach me! (sarah@w42st.com)
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