Things You Find on the Upper East Side That You Don't Find in San Francisco

• Tulips
• Men who hold the door for you 
• Twenty-something guys who wear loafers and tucked-in polo shirts
• Preppy nicknames (I went to brunch yesterday with a Scottie and a Wooley, among others)
• Hipster-looking men who make the sign of the cross in public
• Conversations about having to take Latin in school
• Drugstores where everything except the (exorbitant) prices seems to have been frozen in time in the 1980s or earlier
• Lots of off-leash, purebred dogs
• Park benches that you can lie down on
• Women in black pencil skirts and stilettos, smoking cigarettes as they stride down the sidewalk
• A man in a double-breasted blazer, carrying a bowler hat and a trench coat and a little white lapdog in a dog carrier, who stops by your brunch table and informs you that the dog is named "Ellie" after a prep-school classmate of his daughter's, who also happens to be at your brunch table (this is probably the most surreally UES thing to happen to me yesterday, especially as I was jetlagged)

Questions, Reactions, Explorations of Race in Theater (new Theater Pub column)

Who'd have thought that a madcap, farcical comedy would prove to be one of the more controversial plays in New York? But when a Filipino-American actor wrote a blog post revealing that he had been passed over for the role of a "tribal chief" in favor of a white performer, it caused a stir on Facebook and Twitter.

Despite reading the actor's post and thinking I'd probably boycott this play if I ever got the chance to see it, I unwittingly ended up buying tickets to the show, and saw a preview when I was in New York last week.

Of course, I had to write about the experience -- my thoughts, my questions -- for my new Theater Pub column. What should I have done when I realized that I had bought tickets to a play whose casting reflected values that I do not agree with?

Feel free to post your suggestions in the comments of my Theater Pub post. The comments also contain a more straightforward review of the show in question (The Explorers Club by Nell Benjamin) as well as brief thoughts on the other play I saw while in NYC -- Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.

East Coast Girl (at least for a week)

Tomorrow, I'm traveling to New York for a week to attend my 5-year Vassar reunion (where did the time go?!), catch up with East Coast friends, see some Off-Broadway theater, avoid getting attacked by cicadas... you know, the usual.

There'll probably be no new posts while I'm away (well, except for a link to my new Theater Pub column when it's up). But I do hope to have some fun adventures, and to share them here once I've returned home!

Song for the moment, a.k.a. New Favorite Song: "East Coast Girl" by Cayucas.



When I first heard this song on the radio, a couple of months ago, I liked it a lot, but I also thought "This band sounds like they are trying to out-Vampire-Weekend Vampire Weekend." Turns out I'm not the only person who thinks that: the good people of Pitchfork have come to the same conclusion regarding Cayucas' musical style. Unlike the snooty Pitchforkers, though, I'm not so bothered by the way that Cayucas sounds like a breezier, less substantial version of one of my favorite bands. Music need not be epic or groundbreaking to have value, and it's hard to hate such summery, charming indie-pop.

I bought Cayucas' album, Bigfoot, the week it came out, and listened to it while I was on my way to a hipster barbecue in the Mission District. The sun was shining. I was wearing cut-off jean shorts. I rode the J-Church train past Dolores Park and saw San Francisco's golden youth spread before me, day-drinking and sunbathing on the grass -- full of beauty and promise and entitlement and absurdity. And with Bigfoot playing in my ears, it was a perfect moment.

This isn't to denigrate "darker" or more ambitious music -- in fact, I love the way that Vampire Weekend's new album, Modern Vampires of the City, deals with twentysomething angst and despair and "the nagging pressure to make the most of their finite youth." Goodness knows, I've been feeling a lot of that lately, as the realization "Marissa, you graduated college five years ago" sinks in, deeper and deeper. But sometimes you need an antidote to such negativity: lilting music that speaks of summer fun, a weekend reconnecting with old friends and celebrating the good things that have happened in the last five years.

That's what I hope Reunion will be like, at least.

Things That Are Making Me Ridiculously Happy

NOW, AND IN THE NEAR FUTURE

• Today is my 2-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco. I love this city and feel so grateful for my life here--my apartment, my neighborhood, my roommates, my new friends, my old friends reconnected-with, my finding my way into the theater community here, the supportiveness of that community and the great art they make...
• Speaking of which, the premiere of my play at Theater Pub on Monday night was a huge success. I couldn't have asked for a better cast, director, or venue in which to make my local playwriting debut. I'm still kind of on a high from Monday evening, which is why I haven't blogged about the experience yet... in the meantime, I'm looking forward to the 2 other performances! August 23 and 30th, 8 PM (but get there early!)
• A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is finally out in paperback, so I finally am reading it! I started it Monday morning and am about 200 pages in (out of nearly 900). There are a ton of characters and I'm excited to find out what happens to all of them. It's the longest book I've read in quite a while; it's the most excited I've been about a new novel in quite a while; I'm enjoying it so far.

IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS

• I just bought my tickets for a long weekend in NYC at the end of October--my first trip back there since graduation! I look forward to the East Coast autumn, to traveling, to catching up with old friends... Now I've just got to decide what show to get tickets for.
• The day after I return from NYC, Stephen Sondheim's book about lyric-writing will be published! 480 pages of (as the subtitle has it) "Collected Lyrics, with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes." Not sure I'll be able to wait for the paperback with this one...

IN THE MORE DISTANT FUTURE

• Whit Stillman, of Metropolitan fame, is preparing to shoot another movie! Working title is Damsels in Distress, a comedy about a "charming, eccentric clique of stylish but possibly quite mad" college girls, whose values "appear to derive from the late lamented Zelda Fitzgerald." Sounds like vintage Stillman (and one of my friends recently described me as "Zelda Fitzgerald without the insanity," so it is any wonder that the description of this new film has me ridiculously excited?)
  

Overheard: The "If You're That Jaded, Maybe You Do Belong in New York" Edition

Geary Street bus, about 4 PM this afternoon. It is over 90 degrees outside and very sunny, though thankfully not humid.

GIRL #1: If it has to be this hot outside, I wish I was in New York City.

ME: Thinking of New York City when the temperature is above 90...the oppressive East Coast humidity...the crushing crowds of people...the dirty littered streets...the way that the subway platforms become like grubby saunas...ugh ugh ugh, thank God I'm not there.

GIRL #2: Why?

GIRL #1: Because you're always exited when you're in New York. But this is just San Francisco. Ho hum.

Sunday in Manhattan

Sunday. My first NYC day in nine months, and the first stirrings of fall weather in the air. I got out out my black leather blazer that made me feel so Manhattan-chic when I wore it to the city during high school.

Of course there's always something to do in New York--both what you plan and what you just stumble upon. Last time I was in the city, last December, I had a really great stumble-upon moment, which I'll blog about sometime. But this Sunday was pretty good, too. First, near Grand Central Station, the Mexican Day Parade was going on. Crowds of people dressed in red, white, and green--some from head to toe. Sombreros and banderas on sale in front of the Public Library. Since I was near the start of the parade route, things were very chaotic, so didn't stay long.

One of my favorite parts of city is "Library Way," the bronze plaques with quotes about books, libraries, learning, set in the sidewalk on 41st Street, leading up to the Public Library. One of them is by Tom Stoppard:

and I always pause a bit reverentially before it. (Go here and scroll down for a link to all the plaques. Beautiful stuff.)

When I got to Times Square, everything north of 42nd Street was blocked off. There seemed to be a crowd, and big echoing loudspeakers... "It's Broadway on Broadway" said a policewoman to a group of curious passerby.

Now, I faithfully check playbill.com, but it had slipped my attention that there would be this huge Broadway-promoting concert the day I was in the city. I set out to find the way into the barricaded area. Had to walk over to 8th Avenue, and then up to 46th or 47th... and as I entered that massive crowd in Times Square, I couldn't even see the stage, but I heard the singing, a huge brassy chorus of "New York, New York," and the confetti machines perched atop billboards and buildings were going like mad, and the semi-autumnal sunlight hit me in the eyes, and... New York, I'm back! I wanted to shout.

This was the final number of the concert (which explains the big chorus and the confetti) so soon I was filing out of Times Square again, snapping photos with my camera, the confetti drifting down only to get swept up... When I returned to Times Square about 4 hours later, there was no trace of it.


I continued on down 42nd Street to Playwrights Horizons--a nice, new theater building, with hanging banners printed with quotes from plays they have produced, which, again, just thrill my heart. I had to stop myself from snapping photos of everything (I got into that habit in Paris).

At the play I was sitting next to some girls my age or a little younger...college freshmen or sophomores, I'd guess. Those of you who are sick of Hollywood actors with no stage experience getting cast in the lead roles of Broadway shows, I have to tell you it's not going to change anytime soon, not when it leads to scenes like this one:

GIRL 1: (Reading her playbill, sees the Roundabout's ad for Pygmalion starring Claire Danes) Look, Claire Danes is gonna be on Broadway!
GIRL 2: Ooh, when?
GIRL 1: "Previews start September 21." That's soon!
GIRL 2: I love Claire Danes!
GIRL 1: Me, too! We should get tickets.
GIRL 2: Pygmalion...is that like Pygmalion and Galatea, the myth?
GIRL 1: I don't know.
GIRL 2: We should totally go!
GIRL 1: Totally!

I wanted to lean over and say "It's Shaw's play that got adapted into My Fair Lady," but refrained. Hey, at least these girls are getting excited about theatre, and Pygmalion's a good play to know, regardless of who's cast in it.

On my train back to Poughkeepsie I absolutely loved the way the conductor talked--with a West Indian accent, old-fashioned words and phrases, and an old-fashioned sort of concern for his passengers and human decency. Saying things like "I do beseech you, do not leave your belongings on the seat next to you" and "Please do not annoy your fellow passengers, everyone has the right to a pleasant trip," and "Let us all be on the good side of courtesy, folks!"

It's nice to hear that message, since even though I love New York, it can be a tough place. I honed some of my big-city survival skills living in Paris for 4 months this year, but it's still nothing like New York. In Paris, I feel, you can afford to be leisurely--there is always time for an espresso or a crepe, and if you don't like the looks of one café there's another on the next corner. But in New York, if you don't want to eat in Times Square because it's too crowded, you go two blocks over and you're in Hell's Kitchen and there's nowhere good to grab food before your matinée. Or, you arrive at Grand Central Station at 6:45 to find your train leaves at 7:10 and you need to eat something and the restaurants in the basement are already closing down for the night. In New York you cannot afford to be aimless or indecisive, or else the city will defeat you. So, despite my love for it, I don't know if I could live there. And yet I don't know of any other place in the world that has so much wonderment packed into so small an area.