BAM Good!

So, like at least 80% of artistically inclined New Yorkers, I wait tables part time to pay the bills. It makes sense, because it takes a minimum of your time and provides maximum money. By that, I mean you can live on it. Even in New York, because like everything else in New York, eating out is horribly expensive, which means bigger tips. I'm not saying you can raise a family of 4 and own property on a wait staff salary, but you can keep the lights on, keep food in your belly and pay the rent on time. I work for a cafe at the Asia Society Museum on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. It's lunch only, but I still make more than I've ever made anywhere else waiting tables. And it's pretty easy. Lots of support staff, cool management (see Bobby Miranda, I told you I'd mention you in my blog!), a great menu, nice clientele - UES ladies who lunch, museum patrons, Asia Society staff, neighborhood locals and of course, tourists - but the type who come to NY to see Sasanian Art, as opposed to the type who want to find the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company... Anyhoo, it's a good job, in a beautiful environment - our cafe is a glassed atrium designed to be an Asian meditation garden, complete with live trees growing inside - and I average 22 hours a week which pays my bills and leaves me time to pursue the other slashes that I do.

The company that runs my cafe is called Great Performances. They also run several other high-end museum/art/cultural center cafes in NYC. Our sister cafe is at BAM - the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Our cafe is only open from 11-4 and BAMcafe is only open from 5-8, so sometimes, our staffs will pick up shifts for each other when needed. My first shift at BAM was last night. If you're going to see a performance at BAM, you should definitely check out the cafe beforehand. It's got a full bar and full dinner service served in the Gillman Opera House lobby, which is gorgeous! The menu is yummy, the wine list is great, and obviously the service is fantastic. The craziest thing about it is, as a server, you get there at 4pm, eat a staff meal, and then you set up the space. By 5pm the cafe opens... And no one comes in. I had one person from 5-6pm. The other waiters kept telling me, "Just wait until 6pm!" At 5 till 6pm, I got another table. I took their order and entered it into the system. When I turned around, I had 4 more tables. At the same time. Then my other 3 tables got sat, and at 6:10pm I had a full section who all wanted to order at the same time, get drinks at the same time, get their food at the same time, get dessert and coffee at the same time, and pay their checks at the same time. It was like serving one big table with 22 people at it. CRAZY! And suddenly, it was 7:25pm, the bells were ringing to let people know that it was almost curtain for their shows, and magically, everyone got up and left. 7:30pm - it was over. Another 30 minutes of settling up the cash and checks and by 8pm, shift over, out the door and on the train! And I made pretty good money, too, since the average check was over $100 (drinks, appetizers, dinner and dessert/coffee). WOW.

This is another thing that amazes me about New York. People eat out all the time. In my previous "Happy Passover" post I mentioned that no one, not even the rich, have functional kitchens. And people pay a lot of money to eat out. The company I work for is particularly good at installing semi-permanent food venues in convertible spaces. Sort of a hybrid between catering and restaurant food service. They find a needed niche and really exploit it - and I mean exploit in the nicest of terms. I mean, I'm grateful for it - I made an average of $50/hour last night and was home before 9pm! You can't beat that.

Now, I don't want to wait tables forever, it's hard work. Lots of running, lots of details - people get pretty picky about their food... But this city has a lot of really unique ways to earn money. It's just another example of New York's possibilities. Which opens up time to explore all those other NY possibilities! Like taking a class, auditioning, writing a screenplay, running your own business... Crap, I gotta wrap this up, I've got a lot of stuff to do today!