Welcome to The Interpreter newsletter, by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, who write a column by the same name. (Right now Max is on book leave, though, so Amanda is flying solo.) |
On our minds: New York, New York. |
A (Slightly Less) Wonderful Town |
 | | The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in the East Village in 2011, one of several spaces run by the organization.Marcus Yam for The New York Times |
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F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his essay “What I Think and Feel at 25,” wrote of his newly gained status as a loving family man as a source of vulnerability. Now, he wrote, he could “not only be wounded in the chest, the feelings, the teeth, the bank account, but I can be wounded in the dog” — not to mention in the child and the wife. |
Live in New York for long, and you’ll find you have the same sort of vulnerability to being wounded right square in the city. I’ve always thought that existing in that city requires so many compromises and sacrifices that the only way to make it work is to just give in, fall in love, and talk yourself into the benefits of a 500-square-foot apartment that has a beautiful view of the skyline at sunset (even though it costs thousands per month and doesn’t have a thermostat, laundry facilities or dishwasher). |
But then, blammo: The place around the corner with the amazing egg sandwiches and awful bagels, the one that nursed you out of hangovers and where you cried in front of a plate-glass window when someone called with bad news, closes. And it lands like a physical blow, because emotional attachment to a city creates vulnerability, too, in the form of attachment to places you don’t own, and can’t actually protect. |
I moved away more than five years ago, and yet reading this week’s tribute in New York magazine to the places that have closed during the pandemic left me close to tears. Ow, my New York. |
This newsletter is usually framed around policy, or a big question about how the world works, or something else similarly serious. Today’s isn’t like that, not least because I’m not sure I trust myself to discuss the policies that brought the city to this point without straying over to the wrong side of the news/opinion dividing line. But I mostly just wanted to remember the places that I loved, and to say I’m sad that they’re gone. (If you want to share your own memories of places that have closed, please do send them. I read every message that you send to interpreter@nytimes.com.) |
Some of the hurts came as a surprise. I never loved the food as much as I felt like I was supposed to at Caridad 78, the famed Cuban-Chinese greasy spoon on the Upper West Side a few blocks from my old apartment. And I don’t think I ever had a good time at B Bar, where my memories are of sticky tables and stickier finance bros. But it simply didn’t occur to me that they might one day be gone, any more than I wondered if there would continue to be squirrels, or weather. |
Other losses cut much deeper. Otto, Mario Batali’s pizza and pasta joint near NYU, had that elusive quality of feeling elevated but still being cheap enough to afford. I used to pay waiters cash for my own stash of the truffle honey that came with the cheese plate, handed over in an unmarked jar tucked into a paper bag for me to take home. |
It was a place for special occasions. When parents and friends visited from out of town, I took them there. One night, after a terrible day at the law firm where I worked at the time, my boyfriend surprised me with dinner there, then proposed when we got home. (I said yes.) |
Otto certainly had its flaws, most notably its association with Mr. Batali, who stepped down from his company after revelations that he sexually harassed staff at his restaurants. But to me it felt like a place where many of my happiest memories existed in corporeal form, and now that it’s gone, it’s as if those memories are fading, too. |
Perhaps the saddest pandemic closure of for all me, though, is the Upright Citizens Brigade. Like all comedy theaters, UCB put on a lot of terrible garbage — but also a lot of perfect and wonderful garbage. |
I went there about once a month for years. Their flagship weekly show, ASSSCAT, was free. The others only cost a few dollars. Watching them was a chance to see future stars, not just before they were famous but before they even knew what they were doing — and then to see them getting better and better until they finally turned into whatever it was that they were becoming. |
I saw many, many terrible sketches. But I also I saw Aziz Ansari do an after-hours standup show that made me laugh until I cried. And Charlie Sanders do a moving and hilarious one-man show about growing up Muslim in Minnesota. One night I was there, Natasha Rothwell put the audience into such hysterics with this sketch about a panicking flight attendant that I worried someone might need medical assistance. My sister Melinda’s old sketch group, Bellevue, found indie fame with their Seinfeld live show, but my favorite sketch of theirs will always be this insane little number. |
The pandemic isn’t totally to blame for UCB’s closure. It had already shut down its Chelsea performance space in 2017, and had lost luster after many performers and students accused the theater of chaotic and unfair working conditions. |
But great cities need places where people can help each other to transform ambition and talent into successful art, and also into friendships and communities. (And they need them to not be graduate schools that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year.) UCB used to be one. Now it’s gone. |
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