Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Bowen Yang

When I meet Bowen Yang at Konditori in Park Slope, he is watching Britney Spears videos on YouTube behind the sleek geometry of his black glasses. This is not his usual state—his diva of choice, I will learn later, is actually Lady Gaga—but tonight the comedian is representing Ms. Spears at the monthly Diva Battle at Union Hall, a show defining itself as “if Roast Battle and Debate Club had a super gay baby.” Hosted by comics Matteo Lane and Christi Chiello, performers go head to head, presenting their hilarious and deliciously wicked cases for the divas they stand for that evening. Bowen’s competition tonight is comedian Matt Rodgers, also his best friend, who will be presenting the case for Christina Aguilera.

By day, Bowen is a graphic designer, but…also by day, he’s a performer, writer, and producer of shows all across New York, like the laugh-so-hard-I’m-in-pain “Live on Broadgay,” which features gay comedians performing an episode of Sex and the City. Bowen was also named one of the 50 Funniest People in Brooklyn by Brooklyn Magazine and a comedian on the rise by Time Out New York, the latter which praised him for “his signature arched-eyebrow cleverness and gleeful camp.” He has appeared on Broad City and The Outs, and has a successful podcast on iTunes with Matt called Las Culturistas (which they will be performing live at Littlefield in Brooklyn on March 21).

Bowen and I soon head to Union Hall, where he continues prepping his Britney presentation, “It’s Godney, Bitch.” After adding to his slideshow an image of Britney in a sparkly, rhinestone-covered nude bodysuit from her video “Toxic,” he grabs a glass of white wine at the bar, chit-chatting with the hosts.

Soon, the show begins, and Bowen and Matt execute ferociously cheeky tongue lashings against each other’s divas. Bowen is stern and forceful but in his signature campy way, as serious as anyone could be when arguing for the validity of a singing, dancing, now Las Vegas -based pop confection. Both he and Matt at one point cause their hosts roll around on the floor laughing in tears, thrusting a bundle of balloons to the ground and stabbing them into bursts in celebration of their sauciness.

Ultimately, though both receive rousing cheers from the audience, Matt wins, and Bowen graciously applauds. The room empties and they say hello to friends, then search for a place nearby to eat. The two have known each other since performing in comedy troupes as students at NYU and have been hustling their way through the comedy world since then, creating work for themselves and others whose work they love, and really getting noticed in the process. It seems like Bowen is always producing a show, always performing somewhere, never stopping, which is in some ways what being a young artist is all about.

We head to Calexico nearby in time for free margaritas on what is apparently National Margarita Day. Thank goodness, I think. These guys deserve a drink. 

Follow Bowen on Twitter and Instagram. 

Cheese and Sugar

RaGo's birthday was four months ago, but I didn't have a chance to celebrate with her until this week. There are few things in the world the woman loves more than cheese--especially gooey, melted cheese on top of, well, whatever you got--so I gave her a list of options of places I'd like to take her that might feature such an experience.

From the list, she chose Raclette in the East Village, where they do the real deal raclette thing: the edge of half a wheel of cheese heated and bubbling then scraped with a special knife onto your plate of potatoes, meat, salad, vegetables, you name it. I had never had raclette before, but I once flirted with a man on the train who was from Switzerland and told me it was huge there. Just cheese on cheese on cheese scraped for your life onto your plate. It was the perfect place to take RaGo.

What's interesting about Raclette is that they only do reservations online--I've become aware, at my old age, that this is not in fact unusual, but this was my first encounter with the experience. I even tried to call and there was a message saying the equivalent of "nah, you can't do that here" but, you know, a lot nicer than that. The other interesting part about this is that, though RaGo and I made these plans literally weeks ago, I did not find out until the day of that you even needed a reservation (though, to their credit, it does say so rather largely on their website, so the onus is totally on me). So there I was, hours before we were supposed to meet, frantically perusing their website for reservations and trying to call, but to no avail. I saw that they did, in fact, accept walk-ins, so I resolved to go down there early--like, way, way early--to see if I could snag us a table. I had made a promise to RaGo and there was no way I was going to mess it up. Just in case, I scoured Google for "fondue east village" and "melted cheese east village" only to find the most consistent recommendation was still Raclette. And I gathered my life together and headed down, arriving at about 6:45pm (we initially wanted to meet at 8). I explained my plight to the gal at the hostess stand, inhaling the scent of pungent cheese as soon as I walked in. She asked when we wanted to come in, looked down at her iPad, and found us a table. And that was it! I had done it! Praise RuPaul.

The evening was brisk, and I walked over to The Bean to have an iced tea and read from my book for a while. I returned to Raclette later and our table was ready, and they even let me sit down though RaGo wasn't there yet, something I find more and more is a rare occurrence these days. Shortly she came in through the door, though, and we began staring at the piles of cheese gliding onto plates, mouths watering in anticipation. We both decided on the Suisse plate, which included roasted potatoes, pearl onions, cornichons, arugula, and a meat of your choice (she chose prosciutto, I jambon de Paris). And what sort of birthday would it be without a bottle of wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, which we split.

Soon it was our turn to be cheesed, and our plates came out followed by a gal holding that giant half-wheel we both stared at lovingly. We watched as the waterfall of cheese fell first on my plate then, after another heating session perhaps, on her plate. The waterfall somehow expertly fell over the whole plate of food, and we began digging in, mouths somehow still watering as we continued to eat. We drank our wine, we ate our cheese, we chitted and chatted and after the bottle was finished (don't worry, mom, my liver is fine) we had spent nearly two hours in the restaurant, perhaps in true European style.

But RaGo's birthday was not done yet, and we made our way to Chikalicious, a dessert bar where you can get a prix fixe dessert menu featuring an amuse bouche, "entree," and petit fours (there's also the Dessert Club across the street where you can get funky a la carte items like black sesame ice cream in a churro cone). The menu changes every day, but we got the Warm Chocolate Tart with Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream and Red Wine Sauce, preceded by orange and brown sugar sorbet and followed by a teeny coconut marshmallow, teeny alfajor (Argentinian caramel cookie), and teeny vanilla ice cream on top of a teeny chocolate cookie. Praise RuPaul yet again.

Everyone deserves a little bit of luxury on their birthdays, I think. Whether that's in the form of melted cheese or not is entirely up to you.

Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...with Hannah Orenstein

Hannah Orenstein’s navy pleated skirt swings as we walk down Avenue A in the East Village. She eases a pair of circular tortoiseshell sunglasses onto her face then gestures toward a curio shop with a red leather -sleeved arm. “Have you ever been to Obscura? I love it here!”

Today, the Assistant Features Editor at Seventeen is taking me on a tour of some of her favorite spots in the neighborhood, the quirky and unusual places she has been known to frequent since moving to New York in 2011.

Hannah knows who she is down to the velour Juicy Couture sweatsuits I loathe but she loves without even the smallest trace of irony. Even if I hated her guts I would tell you she’s a great writer and a rising star in magazine publishing, with eloquence, elegance, and panache beyond her years. But I don’t, so I’ll also tell you she recently sold her debut novel, Playing With Matches, to Touchstone Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint. I’m delighted to be able to call her a friend, one with whom I continue to bond over a shared, undying love of New York, 1950s style, and good magazine writing. 

We walk into antiquities and oddities store Obscura and my eyes dart from torn-apart baby dolls to vintage postcards to human skulls that may or may not have once been real. While my brain shivers at the thought of the latter, Hannah seems at home. 

Traveling south, we go first to Enchantments, New York City’s oldest occult store, to peruse various candles and herbs and pet their pair of black cats. People ask sincere questions about the correct ingredients to use in spells and receive sincere answers. 

Next we enter to Flower Power, a healing herbs store run by women who identify as Green Witches, to sniff more concoctions. Hannah picks up a jar of their Love Potion No. 9 mixture and inhales. 

“Would you ever use a love potion?” I ask. She laughs, then considers. “Would I?” 

We leave for coffee at The Bean on 1st Avenue. Her red lipstick sticks to the drink’s white lid between sips as we head down East 9th Street to Dusty Buttons, a vintage clothing store that has since closed. Hannah purrs with delight as she runs her hands over the cinched 1950s waists of sequined and plaid dresses while urging me to get a vintage Black Sabbath t-shirt. I chuckle. Hannah knows who we both are. 

Peckish, we avoid the looming rain and duck into Cozy Soup N’ Burger, one of Hannah’s favorite haunts from her NYU days. In the unadorned diner, there since the 1970s, we order omelets—hers her usual Ranchero, mine mushroom—and chit chat, trying to avoid the going back into the rain. We do have to leave eventually, and as the downpour continues we jump into a cab, where she checks email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat as we motor across the East Village. An umbrella just doesn't go with this outfit.

Follow Hannah on Twitter and Instagram. 

Columbia Loves Eddie

“What should we do for our anniversary?” I asked SE.

The truth was, we had already thought of a fantastic idea to celebrate one year since our first date, an idea that was “us”—staying at the Waldorf Astoria before it closed last month. We had fallen in love with the hotel on my birthday, and as soon as we left we wanted to go back. But we dragged our feet and the opportunity passed us by.

But surely there had to be something else that would be just as good an option?

There were. And we ended up coming up with not just one idea, but five. Sort of.

The first idea wasn’t ours and, technically, it wasn’t even “really” part of our anniversary celebration.  J & R invited us to see Rocky Horror Picture Show in Chelsea and only when we sat down in the theatre did SE realize that this was the most “us” thing we could have been doing—beyond the Waldorf, beyond all the other things we had planned that day. Sitting in a theatre yelling obscenities with the rest of the crowd at Richard O’Brien’s 1975 cult classic (because, if you’ve never been, that’s what you do), while a group of college students acted out Brad and Janet and, of course, Dr. Frank-n-Furter in front of the screen, doing the Time Warp, and listening to first-time Rocky viewers (“virgins”) make faux-orgasm noises to an audience of people they’ve never met.

SE has before spoken of another couple we’re friends with. “You know how they’re kind of sweet and cute and 1950s?”
I nodded.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re not that.”

And I happily agree. I feel like our regular state of mind is less in a 1950s living room and more backstage at an ‘80s comedy club. But without all the coke.

Both of us had gone to Rocky Horror in high school. Which, it seemed, was also the case this evening as young goth kids waited in line behind us to get in, swapping fake IDs to see who looked most like the picture on the card. They wore corsets and white pancake makeup and combat boots, and there we were, already or nearly 30, sensible sweaters under sensible coats, noshing on popcorn, very possibly the oldest people there. I’m happy the children continue to find out about Rocky Horror; in some ways, I think it draws the people who need to see it, to know they’re not freaks in a world where being weird isn’t cool yet (read: high school). Maybe in a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania” they can find part of themselves.

Neither of us were goth kids at our respective high schools, but I wouldn’t say we also fit perfectly into any categories—I was an overachiever and aspiring punk, he a lacrosse player who also sang in an emo band—but I know for me at least it helped to learn there were other cool, weird kids out there who became cool, weird adults and maybe found other cool, weird adults to spend time with and, if they were lucky, even love.

*

But don’t get me wrong, the rest of our day was amazing, too.

We started with pastrami salmon sandwiches at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side. All of the synagogue services were getting out at the same time, but luckily we beat the rush to this legendary, hundred-year old appetizing spot (“appetizing” the noun, not the adjective—it’s a store in the Jewish tradition where fish and dairy products are sold. Learn more here!), to which neither of us had actually been before. We were seated by a table near the fish counter, to which pregnant moms wobbling with toddlers in tow sidled up and ordered whitefish salad to go. Our waiter, maybe in his late forties with graying hair and chunky metal bracelets on his wrists, was decked out in a head-to-toe white uniform and hustled our orders out of us with an old-school New York accent (“What can I get for ya? Orange juice, coffee, just water? Open face sandwich or closed? Onions, tomato, capers?”), then ambled across the linoleum floor to retrieve them. We dove into fluffy but not dense bagels with  smoked salmon and cream cheese, and I added a little crunch of red onion later on for some extra spice.

Then we made our way to Levain Bakery for their renowned chocolate chip walnuts cookies. The place, open over 20 years, has become an institution for their cookies. They’ve been written up in almost every major publication and somehow neither of us had never been there, either. We expected to wait in line, but given what I had heard about how long it usually takes and how the line can extend down the block, I was expecting much worse than the maybe 15 minute wait that we actually encountered. And praise RuPaul and all that is holy, was it worth it. We got two cookies and headed to Central Park before sitting down to eat them on some rocks near a lake, breaking open the still-warm gooey cookies with our hands. It was so rich, a little crunchy on the outside and mushy on the inside, absolutely perfect. And I don’t even usually go for cookies with nuts in them, but these were the business.

Later on that night, we went to another iconic New York spot, Minetta Tavern. The restaurant opened in the ‘30s and used to be a hangout for writers like Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas, but it was bought and renovated by chef Keith McNally in 2009. It has since become known for its Black Label Burger, a patty blended of three different cuts of beef (prime ribeye, skirt steak, and brisket) then topped with clarified butter and onions. Your arteries may be screaming after reading such a thing, but until you’ve tried it (and maybe you did or did not stop talking immediately after eating it, felt a weight in your heart when you realized half of it was gone, and can still taste it in your mouth) keep an open mind. We went there explicitly for the burgers and ended up also ordering the famed roasted bone marrow appetizer, and…I have to say I have never known such decadence in my life. I had never eaten bone marrow before but I didn’t know its texture was basically fat that melts in your mouth, to be utterly cliche about it. And then when the burgers arrived we took our first bites and it was just as mouth-melty and wonderful, the juicy yet somehow creamy and still totally cooked???? meat of the burger in my mouth, pressing against the thick brioche bun that prevented all of this lusciousness from rushing down my chin. AND THEN we put some leftover bone marrow on them and I thought my brain was going to fall out. WHAT IS HAPPENING I DON’T UNDERSTAND. Such decadence! And from a burger, no less! My brain was melting along with the bone marrow. It was our anniversary but while we were eating we barely spoke, this experience freaking out our mouths in the best way possible.

“Oh my god,” we said in turns in the back of a cab, minds still reeling from these burgers, as we headed to the Waldorf for cocktails. The next weekend would be the last weekend of its existence for a while and we wanted to take it all in and say goodbye. We clinked our glasses and sipped on some liquid artistry, looking around at the glass and wood and leather that made up this place we had known for such a short time but had only begun to adore. I almost didn’t want to leave as we finished our cocktails and took pictures in the lobby. “How can a place we’ve only been a few times mean so much?” SE said to me. With any luck, after its renovation it will be just as wonderful as we remember, and maybe for another anniversary in the future we’ll be able to go back.

Backstage Beauty, Fall/Winter 2017

As ever, some sights and scenes from backstage at New York Fashion Week.