As a first-time volunteer, I didn’t know what to expect.
I am assigned to Line 1, Vegetables. I accept a paper hat, a plastic apron and gloves and get in position between the Black Bean server and the Mashed Potato server. Line 1 faces a mirror image Line 2.
The first position in each line, Trays, grabs a beige plastic tray with built-in compartments from a stack that is being constantly replenished.
Bread adds two pieces of bread with a dab of grape jelly smeared on each. Then Dessert fishes exactly four strawberries from a watery gray bin for the small top compartment. Then the beige tray moves to Black Beans, Mixed Vegetables (me), Mashed Potatoes, Salisbury Steak, Gravy, Utensils and Drink.
The soup kitchen guest does not get to walk with a tray in front of the metal bins of food and customize his or her meal. Each guest receives a pre-assembled tray at the end of each line.
Two runners work between the two lines replenishing the metal bins of food as needed.
As the beige trays rush down the assembly line, I notice how haphazardly the grape jelly is applied; some pieces of bread lack the moistening smear of grape jelly entirely. Strawberries range from firm to a little soft to mushy.
Each tray gets what it gets: luck of the draw, or luck of each guest’s place in line.
Food Tray Approximation
Black Beans and I must share a tray compartment. Since the black beans are watery, it doesn’t matter if the mixed vegetables land on top. Still, I try to land the mixed vegetables away from the Black Beans; at the same time, I want to drain as much of the water from the pea, carrot and green been ensemble as possible.
The beige trays already hold a bit of water from Dessert (strawberries).
Bessie Smith sang the blues or “the devil’s music,” as some called it. She rose to fame during the bluesiest of eras, the 1920’s. Toughened by a poor childhood, Bessie’s hardscrabble life was interrupted by a few brief years in the sun.
During the 1920’s, Bessie signed a recording contract with Columbia Records and earned more money than any other black entertainer in America—in the world for that matter.
She lost her contract during The Depression, when musical tastes swung away from the blues. People were living the blues; they didn’t want to hear them, Bessie said. In 1937, with a comeback in her crosshairs, Bessie died in an auto accident on the dark, two-lane road from Memphis to Clarksdale, Mississippi.
The Blues Off-Broadway
Few people remember Bessie Smith now. Many never heard of her; some recall her name but can only recollect the ubiquitous sound of tinny recordings.
Bessie is played by Miche Braden, herself a big girl, who makes a powerful impression. Braden wears a sweeping purple gown accessorized with diamonds and a fur stole. When she sings, she throws her hands back and her hips forward, a gesture that says “this is me and I am real.” Her voice makes a powerful impression too, but she doesn’t sound like the real Bessie. Maybe it’s the tin that’s missing.
The show takes place in a “buffet flat,” a gathering place where black musicians and friends hung out. Bessie’s loyal musicians are behind her as they party together on the last night of her life.
Between swigs of hooch and bluesy songs, Bessie tells a life’s worth of stories in bits and pieces. She makes no excuses or apologies for her drinking, her temper, or her love of both men and women.
Tough Bessie chokes up only when she speaks of her adopted son and how she lost custody of the boy. Bessie accepts her no-good husband Johnny Gee’s greed, violence and philandering as that‘s the way love is. But the boy’s love meant everything to her, even if she wasn’t around much to care for him.
Every time Bessie utters the word “death” during the course of the show, she cramps up in pain. Ms. Smith knew she wouldn’t see a ripe old age, but her physical reaction to the word made me wince at the obvious device.
St. Louis Blues
Bessie asks the audience (mostly rhetorically) if they’ve ever seen her movie. She answers “Yeah, well, neither did anyone else.” The movie she’s referring to is the 1929 Paramount classic, “St. Louis Blues.” In the film, her man Jimmy leaves her alone and broke. It then transitions to Bessie at a bar singing a beautiful version of the W.C. Handy song.
In this performance, recorded live on a soundstage, Bessie is joined by a band and a Grecian chorus of extras portraying customers at the bar. The result is unique and fascinating. This is the only recorded version of this particular arrangement, and it is hauntingly beautiful.
Braden’s reference to the long-forgotten film is followed by her excellent rendition of “St. Louis Blues,” performed mostly a few feet away from us (she moved among the audience frequently throughout the show).
We immersed ourselves in The Silence of the Lambs this weekend. We watched the movie twice straight through, then watched the outtakes, then the documentary and then the movie straight through again.
All this watching was preparation for Silence! The Musical, a parody of the 1991 movie playing Off-Broadway at PS 122 (150 1st Ave). A Greek chorus of dancing “lambs” dressed in black with floppy white ears, white fuzzy gloves and black plastic “hoof” cups opened the show.
Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling nailed Jodie Foster’s West Virginia accent and slight lisp that escaped my notice when watching the movie. David Garrison played a remarkable Hannibal Lecter, not an easy task considering Anthony Hopkins’ classic blue-eyed glare is burned into the public memory.
The Silence! cast acted out the entire movie with sped-up dialogue, pouncing on the many lines in the film that are ripe for parody. (“It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.”)
Some of the most memorable songs are Buffalo Bill’s “Are You About a Size 14?” and “Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket” and of course, the song I can’t get out of my mind, “If I Could Smell Her Cunt.”
The production did so much with so little–just a bare set save three rolling racks of patchwork-sewn “skin.” The dance numbers were choreographed cleverly, especially the dream dance sequence with Clarice and Hannibal. Glitter Hannibal spun Glitter Clarice whose legs split parallel from floor to ceiling, adding extra dimension to the production’s most memorable song.
I highly recommend that you see the movie before you see Silence! Some of the funniest bits in the musical require the audience to remember details of the movie. Well, Clarice, maybe the lambs have stopped screaming, but they are still dancing.
When everyone seems to have their hand out, how does a city food bank grab a New Yorker’s attention?
I can’t think of a better way of engaging people in charitable giving than the CANstruction® competition. In CANstruction®, teams of designers, architects or engineers create exhibits using canned food as their medium. After the competition, the structures are dismantled and the food is donated to local food banks. Cities all over the United States and the globe participate in CANstruction®.
I stumbled upon the New York exhibit last week (without knocking anything over). A couple dozen over-sized aluminum can sculptures were displayed throughout the World Financial Center. Most teams went with a “feed-the-hungry” theme with smart titles like Paint the Town Fed or Feaster Islander.
Stand too close and the pieces look like a grocery store aisle. But step back a few paces and oh yeah, that’s what it is. The placard beside each piece tells how many cans in the design and how many New Yorkers each will feed. The numbers are staggering, but so is the need.
Enjoy my photos below and also check out the CANstruction® photo gallery for images from other cities and earlier years.
My first visit to Tribeca Grill was sometime during my first year in New York, in 1992 or 1993.
I was overly impressed that Robert DeNiro owned the restaurant that I WAS EATING IN. I really thought DeNiro might be standing quietly at the end of the bar, notice me and my friends and raise his glass to us in a subtle Robert-DeNiro-kind-of-way.
Tribeca Grill’s longevity is not unheard of in New York restaurants, but against the odds. Many restaurants that were once white-hot dissolve into the ether of the forgotten. Good restaurants too—not just the trendy ones. A New Yorker’s memory is short.
Each annual update of Zagat’s contains a tribute page of once-loved restaurants that bit the dust in the last year. Oh yeah, I remember that one . . . too bad, but where are we going to eat tonight?
Celebrity-owned restaurants have an especially high mortality rate. Remember Planet Hollywood? Remember Britney Spears had a restaurant for five minutes? Five points if you can think of the name.
Gene and I ate at Tribeca Grill for the billionth time recently. The place has become a standard for us. Not trendy anymore, like its sister restaurant next door, Locanda Verde, but comfortable. The brick walls emit a homey warmth and the upside-down sombero chandeliers, well, what can you say about the audacity of lit-up, upside-down sombreros?
I ordered an red-wine braised octopus salad and herb-roasted monkfish with lobster ravolini. Gene had the charcuterie plate as an appetizer and the alaskan halibut as a main course. A booth and a bottle of wine made our late, romantic Sunday night dinner perfect.
Will Tribeca Grill still be there next year? The year after? I hope so.
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