By Tracy Zwick
Let’s Weekend!
January 10th to 12th, 2025
Experimental Theater at Under the Radar Festival: Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street; tickets and information here.
It’s one of the best times of the year for experimental theater in NYC, with the Under the Radar Festival in town featuring over a dozen performances at venues across the city. Three of the festival’s performances take place on the UWS at Lincoln Center. “Night Side Songs,” a communal musical-theater experience, gives voice to doctors, patients, researchers and caregivers, melding the realms of the well and the sick in an intimate setting that fuses story and song. It’s created by Richard Rogers Award-winners Patrick and Daniel Lazour. There’s also puppetry and storytelling in “Wonderful Joe” on Friday and Saturday evenings, with a matinee on Sunday, and a free event, “Coming Attractions,” on Saturday from noon to 2:00 p.m. The latter features six conversations between artists and supporters discussing projects in development or ready for touring.
Pets & The City at New York Historical, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, Open 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. all weekend with late hours Friday (open till 8:00 p.m.); tickets here.
If you have a dog, as I do, or simply love them, you can buy tickets this weekend for the Westminster Dog Show, which will be in NYC this February. While you wait for Westminster, visit New York Historical’s “Pets & The City” exhibition this weekend to get your animal fix. Explore the visual history of New Yorkers and their fluffy friends (not just dogs!) over the course of more than 200 years. Would your family enjoy learning about pets among the Lenape and Haudenosaunee? How about seeing the various ways our favorite furry companions made themselves essential to urban families? I’m hoping to check this exhibition out with my dog-loving 7th-grade nephew.
Read a Book!
On these coldest of days, I love to stay home under a blanket with a book and a warm drink, or get a coffee or tea and park myself somewhere like Qahwah House, Blue Bottle, or Plant Shed for a stretch of leisurely reading. For a no-purchase-required reading spot, don’t overlook the New York Public Library. I spent an hour recently at the Bloomingdale branch on West 100th Street peacefully reading and was pleased to get some new book recommendations from a friendly, discerning librarian. I received piles of books as holiday gifts and can recommend two that came from my family’s favorite UWS bookshops, Book Culture and Shakespeare & Co.: “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo, which won the 2019 Booker Prize, and “The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. “Girl, Woman, Other” tracks the intersecting lives of several black British women and examines contemporary womanhood, whereas “The Dutch House” centers on a broken white-Catholic family living on a lavish Dutch estate near Philadelphia. It takes place over a generation, exploring the bond between siblings, love and loss. In the comments below, please add your favorite warm UWS hideaway for reading, along with any book recommendations you care to share!
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Zelma’s Cafe on the west side of Broadway between 101-102. Cozy site with armchairs as well as tables. Good coffee and pastries. Friendly and caring owner.