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!

Movie Magic!

While I worked Easter Brunch yesterday, Ryan and our friend/collaborator/DP/business partner Renzo Spirit Buffalo shot the final shots of Ryan's short film, "Billy." Ryan conceived of, wrote, stars in and produced the short. I helped him brainstorm about it, held a boom, schlepped a few bags and produced, largely in name only. This was definitely Ryan's labor of love. Our friend Larry Tobias appears in it in an HILARIOUS turn, and he helped shoot the inside shots. Ryan's friend Elizabeth Durham also appears in it, and is wonderful. The whole thing cost about $600, but it looks like a million damn dollars. It's a simple story, well told by good actors and a DP who made every single outside shot look like it was shot on a $250,000 camera. It doesn't hurt that Renzo has shot big studio feature movies on $250,000 cameras before...

Anyway, all that's left to do now is post-production: editing, music, titles. The stuff Ryan does at work every day. I think he'll probably have a rough edit within a couple of weeks! His first movie. Our production company's first personal project! As Ryan said at our wrap dinner celebration last night - "My whole life I've dreamed of making my own movie, and now I've done it!" I'm SO proud of him. He had an inspiration for a character about 4 months ago, and now he has his first short film shot and ready for editing. He believed in it and made it happen: on his days off, after long days at work, before long days at work - whenever he could steal some time. He borrowed cameras, rented equipment, got friends excited and involved in the project. He schlepped all around the city, asked for favors, bartered trades. Whatever it took, he made it happen. The power of the creative spirit and the determined will. There's still a lot of work left to do, but the hardest part has been completed, the rest is just lovingly laying it out on a timeline and letting it tell its story. And then, of course, marketing the hell out of it. Creativity meets the real world! As the movie progresses, I will document it here!

Happy Passover

About twice a month, I work for a nice little catering company called 2 Peas and a Pot. It's run by two chefs, Lauren and Phil, who also happen to be a couple. They are really cool and fun to work for and we always have a good time at the dinner and cocktail parties that they cater for their upscale Manhattan clientele. Some of the clients are crazy - after all, it's Manhattan, and the clients all have money. Some of them have money and no manners, or money and no taste. For example, a Rockefeller (yes, as in THE Rockefellers) didn't tip the waitstaff, nor did the philanthropic widow with 15 Matisses adorning her 5th Avenue apartment's dining room wall. Nice. Other clients are low-key, fun and fabulous. You just never know who you'll be working for. It's also cool to see the inside of luxury multi-million dollar Manhattan apartments. No matter how large and lavish the apartment, the number one most common denominator in all these places is that every one of them has a small, inconveniently laid out kitchen - proof that no one in Manhattan cooks.

Last night, I worked a Passover Seder for a family in Soho. Their apartment takes up an entire floor of their building. I've worked for them before. The husband is either a partner at a large legal firm, or a high-powered investment banker. Don't know, really. He's a cypher. He completely ignores the "non-essential" people - I don't know that he's ever said anything to me besides, "I'll have a gin and tonic." Otherwise, he looks through me like I'm invisible. It's a little disconcerting, but I treat him the same way, so it's fine. The wife is a former speech writer for the Clinton administration turned Manhattan housewife, complete with the late-fertility child accessory, pill addiction and laundry list of philanthropic events and parties she participates in. I wouldn't say that she's horrible, but I wouldn't call her nice, either.

Anyway, the chefs were not working last night, they had their own family Seder to attend, so they prepped the meal and dropped it off, and it was my job to basically do the final food prep and serve it with another waiter. The plan was, we would arrive at 4pm to begin food prep, guests would arrive at 5pm for an hour of hors d'oeuvres and cocktails, and then dinner would be served buffet style at 6pm. At 4:30pm Natalie, the other waiter, and I had been standing in front of the building for 30 minutes when the nanny returned home with the child and kind of casually asked us if we were the help for the night, and let us in. The hostess didn't arrive home until 4:45pm. The first guests started arriving early at 4:50pm, asking for food, which wasn't ready yet, and drinks which hadn't been delivered from the market yet. The dinner was supposed to be for 15, and I immediately noticed that the table was set for 20. Right off the bat we are short on food, and late on prep - non of which was our fault. What a mess.

Around 5pm, the hostess announced to Natalie and I, "I hope this won't be a problem, I hate to even mention this because people just get so weird around celebrities, but we will be having celebrity guests tonight - Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts. Please just be yourselves and don't gawk." Coincidentally, I've already worked a party where Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts were in attendance. This is New York and I cater waiter, lady. I've seen it all. I've seen Victoria Secret models doing blow and throwing up in 23rd Street Armory bathroom, ok? The hostess went on to say, "I really feel that the famous should just stay in their own circle, but they're my husband's clients and they have no Seder to go to on Passover, so I HAD to invite them, I couldn't turn them away..." How gracious of her.

As expected, all anyone talked about after the celeb couple arrived was them. Naomi had no makeup on, had her hair pulled back in a ratty unwashed ponytail, and looked really cute, but normal, by the by. Liev hadn't shaved. In days. Frankly, they both looked like they'd rolled out of bed late that afternoon just in time to make dinner. They brought cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery for dessert. Naomi had to use the bathroom like 5 times - she's in her second trimester of pregnancy. Liev asked me for horseradish and when I found it for him, he was thrilled. I think it may have been his favorite moment of the whole meal. It was pretty surreal to be standing in someone's tiny kitchen and have a film actor of international renown come in and ask you for a paper towel because he'd dropped a glass of water on the rug in the living room. By the by, Natalie and I were the only people at the party who didn't gawk at them, and Liev and Naomi were hands down the most down to earth, gracious guests at the party. The hostess, who was so concerned about "the help's" reactions to being in the company of greatness, proceeded to put on a three hour show while they were there - playing adoring, gracious hostess-with-the-mostest, and Manhattan Power Wife. It was pretty hilarious. She even made her kid sing for them. I'm sure she spent all day today telling EVERYONE she knows how she had Liev and Naomi over for Passover, and pretending that it was a real hassle to have them show up. Whatever. She ate it up like kugel.