Snow White, Again

ERA Theatre, one of the companies at the Theatre Crawl, was working on a variation of the Snow White tale. The finished version is to be presented at the St. Louis Fringe Festival next month. It had something to do with apples and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I didn't completely get it. It should be more fully formed if I shoot it again in a few weeks.         

Audience

My main assignment at the Grand Center Theatre Crawl was to record the performances. However, while I was at it, another objective was to have a look at the people, the patrons of live theater in St. Louis. There was record attendance and plenty to choose from.     

Grand Center Theatre Crawl

Back home. I've been doing some volunteer shooting for small arts organizations. The night before we left for New York was the first of two days of the Grand Center Theatre Crawl, now in its fifth year. Twenty four local theater (c'mon, American spelling, please) music and dance companies put on short performances. The audience rotates every half hour to see whatever calls out to them. The companies get publicity.

The Crawl assigned me to a group of venues east of Grand Boulevard. First up was Fat Dancer, produced by the St. Louis Fringe, which I also shoot for. Themes of body image, shaming and self-acceptance. (The Fringe main festival is coming soon in August. Go. GO. And go to the warm-up event, Act Your Pants Off, on July 25! It's a hoot! Not that warm-up events are really necessary in St. Louis in July.)

More to come.    

Four Boroughs

Didn't get anything of Brooklyn on this trip except for the bridge shot already posted. Otherwise, from top to bottom:

Queens - Silvercup Studios in Long Island City. When I was young Silvercup was the major brand of white bread (which everyone ate) in NYC. When our family drove back to Sunnyside on Sunday nights after visiting my father's family, the air would be full of the aroma of fresh baked bread as we passed. Now it is an enormous film, photography and television production site. 

Manhattan: a halal street food trailer outside the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Street food in the city used to be mostly Hebrew National kosher hotdog carts. Now things are more ecumenical. Note the worker wearing the soccer jersey of the Argentine (and therefore presumably Catholic) Lionel Messi. 

The Bronx: nothing needs more explanation. I went to high school in this borough.

Staten Island: floor mat on the ferry.

NYC political nomenclature is confusing. There are five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island. But each of them is also a separate county of the State of New York, sometimes with different names. Manhattan is New York County. Brooklyn is Kings County. Staten Island is Richmond County. It's just to confuse the tourists. 

On High

Working through more New York pix pending new local material (but I have to work today). The top photo features One World Trade Center, now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. On the left is the Oculus, the new shopping center and transit hub in the WTC.

The bottom picture is the Brooklyn Bridge, taken from the observation deck on the 102nd floor of One WTC.        

Your Moment Of Zen, From New Jersey Transit

On the commuter train from New York to the town where my sister lives in the New Jersey suburbs.       

A Town So Nice They Had To Name It Twice

New York, New York, a helluva town.

The Bronx is up, but the Battery's down.

The people ride in a hole in the groun'.

New York, New York, it's a helluva town!

From Leonard Bernstein's 1944 Musical, On The Town. You might say that this was the pre-show on our hotel terrace before the fireworks started.

The top picture is the Queensboro Bridge, sometimes called the 59th Street Bridge for the latitude where it enters Manhattan. Us geezers will remember the song made famous by Simon and Garfunkle. The bottom one looks straight into midtown at about 55th and 56th Streets.