2008 Woodie Awards
NYC has wealth of entertainment, cultural venues for every interest
Head to Head
Scott Henkle
Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: Opinion
Originally published: 11/13/08 at 5:43 PM EST
Last update: 11/14/08 at 5:02 PM EST
Actually, I'm leaving Nov. 25 to return to my home, New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn, worked in Queens and went to high school in midtown Manhattan. I've been to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and had doctors on Staten Island. I've had the experience of sitting in George Steinbrenner's private box and being mugged three times between the ages of 12 and 18. I've experienced the best and worst the city has to offer.
There's a wealth of entertainment and cultural venues beyond the hot clubs in New York City that fall within all price ranges. There are the landmark museums like the American Museum of Natural History. Then there are museums most tourists haven't heard of like El Museo Del Barrio, a museum dedicated to Latin and Caribbean art.
You can go to a Broadway show starring movie stars or former American Idol contestants. Or you could go to community theaters on the Lower East Side and watch bizarre adaptations of short stories, like when I went to see a stage interpretation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." It was a bizarre experience. The main character, a man who woke up as a giant roach, was played by a man in a sumo wrestler's thong and body paint.
There is the Bowery Poetry Club, a small storefront that has been converted into a theatre with a regular bar and a juice bar. On Tuesday nights, your admission charge of $7 gets you three hours of starving artists. There is an open mic portion featuring dabblers as well as regulars like Orion, a man who distorts his voice and shouts his poems about what he thinks of the modern pop culture. They then have a featured poet, always one who has been published. The third part is a competition between eight freestyle poets that the audience gets to judge. Part of the fun is being a judge and getting playfully booed by the rest of the audience, no matter what kind of score you put up. You leave Urbana Night, as the Tuesday program is called, feeling inspired.
The choice of cuisines is unrivaled in New York City. It seems every country has a representative restaurant that serves its food. Italian, Mexican, Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Thai, Japanese, Moroccan… we could be here all day. You can dine in expensive restaurants with cloth linens and fine china, or you can buy a hot dog from a cart whose license expired two years ago. Even the chains get into a New York state of mind. The two McDonalds on 42nd Street are adorned with the same flashing lights as every entertainment venue on the block is. One friend of mine from Florida asked her first New York boyfriend to take her there on their first date.
What I'm telling you in this limited space is confined only to Manhattan, and I don't even have enough space to do it justice. I can't even get started on the diverse land of Queens and Brooklyn, a place that should be a city unto itself. What makes New York great is that it has everything, and that means it has something for everyone. It is called the Capitol of the World for a reason. No one can appreciate New York City in a weekend. You have to live there long enough that you can think like a New Yorker to begin to. Most of you will be unwilling or unable to do that. But visit anyway. That way you can get some understanding as to why most people from New York City rightfully put on air of superiority when talking to someone from anywhere else in this country.
There's a wealth of entertainment and cultural venues beyond the hot clubs in New York City that fall within all price ranges. There are the landmark museums like the American Museum of Natural History. Then there are museums most tourists haven't heard of like El Museo Del Barrio, a museum dedicated to Latin and Caribbean art.
You can go to a Broadway show starring movie stars or former American Idol contestants. Or you could go to community theaters on the Lower East Side and watch bizarre adaptations of short stories, like when I went to see a stage interpretation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." It was a bizarre experience. The main character, a man who woke up as a giant roach, was played by a man in a sumo wrestler's thong and body paint.
There is the Bowery Poetry Club, a small storefront that has been converted into a theatre with a regular bar and a juice bar. On Tuesday nights, your admission charge of $7 gets you three hours of starving artists. There is an open mic portion featuring dabblers as well as regulars like Orion, a man who distorts his voice and shouts his poems about what he thinks of the modern pop culture. They then have a featured poet, always one who has been published. The third part is a competition between eight freestyle poets that the audience gets to judge. Part of the fun is being a judge and getting playfully booed by the rest of the audience, no matter what kind of score you put up. You leave Urbana Night, as the Tuesday program is called, feeling inspired.
The choice of cuisines is unrivaled in New York City. It seems every country has a representative restaurant that serves its food. Italian, Mexican, Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Thai, Japanese, Moroccan… we could be here all day. You can dine in expensive restaurants with cloth linens and fine china, or you can buy a hot dog from a cart whose license expired two years ago. Even the chains get into a New York state of mind. The two McDonalds on 42nd Street are adorned with the same flashing lights as every entertainment venue on the block is. One friend of mine from Florida asked her first New York boyfriend to take her there on their first date.
What I'm telling you in this limited space is confined only to Manhattan, and I don't even have enough space to do it justice. I can't even get started on the diverse land of Queens and Brooklyn, a place that should be a city unto itself. What makes New York great is that it has everything, and that means it has something for everyone. It is called the Capitol of the World for a reason. No one can appreciate New York City in a weekend. You have to live there long enough that you can think like a New Yorker to begin to. Most of you will be unwilling or unable to do that. But visit anyway. That way you can get some understanding as to why most people from New York City rightfully put on air of superiority when talking to someone from anywhere else in this country.
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