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36 Hours in Cape Town, South Africa: Things to Do and See
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- in Movies
Bar Built for “Banshees of Inisherin” Is For Sale
A bar set built for “The Banshees of Inisherin” was discarded in a backyard after filming, then resurrected by a pub in Ireland. It’s up for sale.It’s a quiet Thursday evening in Ireland’s rural midlands, and Mee’s Bar in Kilkerrin, County Galway, is hardly buzzing. The large space is mostly dark, the stools are mostly empty, and out front, on the only road through town, most cars roll by without stopping — foreboding features that have marked many an Irish country pub for dead.Still, even in this tourism drought between Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, a man raises himself from the counter and wanders toward the pub’s backyard. He just needs to see it, he says.The “it” is nestled under a tin overhang, with bright yellow walls and a hand-thatched roof, a shrine to a fictional Irish darkness: the salvaged set of J.J. Devine’s, the claustrophobic bar that served as a main stage in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Academy Award-nominated 2022 film set on an isolated island off Ireland’s west coast.It’s a bizarre but charming juxtaposition in this quiet beer garden. Where’d the set come from? How’d it get here? Why in Kilkerrin, hours from the sea or any “Banshees”-related setting? Just — why?The set of the fictional pub had been discarded on a property on Achill Island off the coast of Ireland before it was brought to Kilkerrin.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersMusician Niamh Ni Bheolain chats with friends in the pub.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Television
What to Do in Miami, According to the ‘Griselda’ and ‘Narcos’ Creator Eric Newman
The magic of Miami is that “you can still discover places,” said the writer and producer Eric Newman. “It doesn’t feel like people have a chip on their shoulder. There’s a healthy civic pride and gratitude.”Mr. Newman, who created the Netflix show “Narcos” and produced “Griselda,” starring Sofia Vergara, has, over the years, spent months at a time on location in Miami. To Mr. Newman, a California native, the appeal of this southern Florida playground isn’t just what it is — it’s also what it’s not. “There’s an appreciation in Miami that you don’t see in other places,” he said. “Maybe it’s because a lot of people here came from somewhere else. Maybe you came to escape East Coast winters, or you came to escape Castro, or you came to escape taxes. People in Miami are genuinely happy to be here.”Mr. Newman, 53, produced the Academy Award-winning movie “Children of Men” and, more recently, was the executive producer of “Painkiller” and “Narcos: Mexico.” He favors a side of Miami not easily found in guidebooks. An after-hours salsa club, a Xanadu hiding in plain sight, the best Cuban sandwich around: These are the secrets that Miami has slowly revealed to him.Over the years, Eric Newman has spent months at a time on location in Miami.Scott Baker for The New York Times“The diversity of Miami makes it feel like the least American city, which is kind of what makes it incredibly American,” Mr. Newman said. “It feels wonderfully foreign and yet uniquely American.”Here, his five favorite spots in the city.1. Café La TrovaLa Trova is beloved for its impeccable drinks and its theatricality.Scott Baker for The New York TimesThe décor is deliberate — a long bar lined with red barstools, low lighting and an impressive wall of spirits.Scott Baker for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
36 Hours in Austin: Things to Do and See
9 a.m.
Embrace Austin’s breakfast taco addiction
Breakfast tacos are essential in Austin, and Veracruz All Natural is a top spot for them; the yummy smoothies are a gratifying bonus. The sisters Reyna and Maritza Vazquez opened their first Austin food trailer in 2008, and now there are seven Veracruz locations, including East Austin, South Austin and inside the Line hotel — visit whichever is closest. The meat is consistently tender and well seasoned, and the tortillas are pillowy. Try the popular migas taco, with fluffy eggs and avocado, or the (somewhat) healthier La Reyna, which is loaded with veggies. Pair with fresh juices like the Mr. Verde, a combo of celery, green apple, spinach and more, or smoothies like the Mexico Lindo, with lime juice and cantaloupe, for an ideal, all-in-one morning stop. Most tacos and smoothies cost around $5. More - in Music
Reports of Cabaret’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
The art form has faced challenges as nightlife norms shift — and as its audience ages — but it has also evolved. Five figures from the New York scene discuss.Cabaret has been integral to New York nightlife for more than a century, but every so often, reports of its death — however exaggerated — cause a stir. The singer and educator Natalie Douglas, who arrived from Los Angeles in 1988 and has performed steadily at the storied jazz club Birdland and other venues, figures the premature mourning started “at least 70 years ago — as soon as people moved from the cities to the suburbs and had room to entertain at home.”Douglas (age: “Not as young as I look”) is noted for her tributes to Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and the great Stevies of pop (Wonder and Nicks). Recently on a brisk afternoon, she arrived at a loft in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, for a confab with four other veterans of the cabaret scene. Tammy Lang, 57 — who has earned a devoted following through her titular comedic persona as Tammy Faye Starlite, an evangelical country crooner, and through her homages to Marianne Faithfull and Nico — perched beside her on a sofa.Jennifer Ashley Tepper, 37, the creative and programming director of 54 Below — a Midtown hot spot known for showcasing Broadway stars, cult heroes and aspirants — joined, along with Lance Horne, 46, an Emmy-winning composer, arranger, singer and music director whose collaborators include Liza Minnelli and Kylie Minogue. Horne holds court Mondays at the East Village’s Club Cumming, playing piano for singalongs that stretch into the wee hours. Such late revelry is less common than it used to be, pointed out Sidney Myer, 73, who, as longtime booking manager of Don’t Tell Mama near Times Square, has nurtured careers for decades and is a performer himself.“I don’t appear onstage with all-white bands anymore because I can’t be the only Black person onstage, especially since my shows are so political,” Douglas said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesMyer mused that when he got his start in cabaret, some 50 years ago, “the whole culture was different” in a few key ways. “People didn’t have a thousand channels at home; they didn’t have the world in their hands in the form of a phone.” And, he added, “They weren’t as health-conscious; there was smoking in all the rooms, and people weren’t watching their alcohol intake as much, or thinking about getting up to jog.”Since originating in Europe, cabaret has accommodated both traditional and experimental artists; here it has encompassed comedy, drag and burlesque alongside curated American songbook compilations and more contemporary and quirkier musical fare. In New York, venues range from the tony Café Carlyle to downtown “alt-cabaret” spots such as Joe’s Pub and Pangea. At 54 Below, where Tepper programs some 700 shows a year, guests can catch rising composers and performers or the cast of a musical on its night off; Myer noted that award-winning stars were born at Don’t Tell Mama — “even a Pulitzer Prize winner.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
Market Hotel, A Brooklyn D.I.Y. Club, Changes With the Times
Just before midnight on Saturday, hard techno began pulsating from the Market Hotel, a D.I.Y. music venue located beside the elevated tracks of a Myrtle Avenue subway station in Bushwick, Brooklyn. A crowd of 20-somethings, many of them wearing sunglasses, ripped jeans and fanny packs, lined up in the cold before they threw themselves onto the dance floor.The party, “Market Hotel Sweet Sixteen,” was meant to commemorate the venue’s legacy as a D.I.Y. rock club. But as the beats continued toward dawn, the celebration was more about the current moment in a vastly changed underground scene.Over a decade ago, the Market Hotel nurtured a middle-class bohemia, providing a stage to punk and indie bands like Real Estate, Vivian Girls, Titus Andronicus and the So So Glos. Defiantly underground in its early years, it operated without a liquor license and offered housing to musicians who slept in its cubbies. Its address was passed along by word of mouth. If you knew, you knew.They were at the Market Hotel’s Sweet Sixteen.Allen Ying for The New York TimesFounded by the So So Glos and Todd Patrick, the music promoter known as Todd P, the Market Hotel became a hotbed of millennial Brooklyn nightlife back when a Pitchfork writer could lift a noise rock band from obscurity with a favorable review. At the recent Sweet Sixteen party, it was clear that the place had moved beyond the moment when flannel shirts were in vogue and craft beers were sipped from Mason jars.“I don’t really know much about the indie rock scene that used to be here but I’m grateful for this space as it is now,” said Ashley Van Eyk, 26. “It’s become a liberating queer space I feel I can express myself in.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Music
Michael Watford, a Minister of Gospel House Music, Dies at 64
His signature hit, “So Into You,” was omnipresent in 1994 — the rare record “you heard at every club,” one D.J. said. But his time at the top was brief.Michael Watford, a church-trained club singer whose baritone boomed over the world’s dance floors for much of the early 1990s, and in the process helped birth a subgenre of club music known as gospel house, died on Jan. 26 in Newark. He was 64.His cousin Lorie Watford said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was dementia.Mr. Watford’s signature hit was “So Into You,” a jubilant ditty that paired his romantic, yearning vocal, inspired by Luther Vandross, with insistent strings, a lush piano line, and frequent handclaps and drum rolls. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance chart in April 1994, only to be replaced a week later by Barbara Tucker’s “Beautiful People” — on which Mr. Watford provided backing vocals.“There were different styles among house D.J.s, and different songs that appealed to their particular crowds,” said Tony Humphries, a D.J. and producer who helped push Mr. Watford to the top of the dance-music heap by playing his early records on his weekly radio show on WRKS (Kiss-FM) and during his marathon sets at Club Zanzibar in Newark (where the video for “So Into You” was shot). “But there was a smaller number of records everyone had to have, songs you heard at every club, and ‘So Into You’ was absolutely one of those.”Little Louie Vega, a producer and D.J. who between 1992 and 1994 had his hand in more than a dozen songs that reached the top of the dance charts, said of Mr. Watford: “He comes from church. You could tell that from the way he sings, and he brought that to the music.” Mr. Vega worked with Mr. Watford on “My Love,” a song from his first and only album, “Michael Watford,” released by EastWest/Atlantic in 1994.Michael Wayne Watford was born in Suffolk, Va., on July 20, 1959, but grew up largely in Newark. His mother, the Rev. Betty Brower of the Clinton Memorial AME Zion Church, was a gospel singer who performed in the 1970s with the Alvin Darling Ensemble. His stepfather, George Brower, was also a gospel singer.He is survived by his mother; two younger brothers, Duncan and Terrance Artis Watford; his children, Michael Watford Jr., Symphony Watford and Taylor Watford; and two stepsiblings, Ruby Washington and Erroll Brower. His marriage to Joanne Collins ended in divorce. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
- in Movies
Looking to Watch Movies and Make Friends? Join the Club.
Around New York City, there’s a robust circle of film enthusiasts showing offbeat movies in bars and shops, where lingering afterward is welcomed.At Heart of Gold, a cozy bar in Queens, a mad scientist recently brought to life a corpse that went on a blood-drenched rampage. But the people nursing their beers there didn’t call the authorities. They cheered.That’s because the undead were marauding on a screen, set up at the front of the bar, that was illuminated by “Re-Animator,” Stuart Gordon’s 1985 horror-science fiction splatterfest. The occasion was a Monday night gathering of the Astoria Horror Club, which meets regularly to watch scary movies over hot dogs, mulled wine and other anything-but-popcorn concessions.Before the film, Tom Herrmann and Madeleine Koestner, the club’s co-founders, introduced “Re-Animator” with a trigger warning about a sexual assault scene and a reminder to generously tip the staff. About 35 people watched the movie seated, but others stood, complementing the onscreen mayhem with shrieking, gasping and, as a decapitated head got tossed around, an explosion of applause.The Astoria Horror Club is just one of many film clubs that, while not new in concept, are quietly thriving in and around New York City. At many of these events, movies are shown not in traditional theaters but in bars, shops and other makeshift spaces, for small groups of people, many of whom arrive early for good seats and stay afterward to gush and vent.The screenings are open to the public, but mostly it’s Gen Zers and millennials who are joining strangers to watch movies that, in many cases, are for niche tastes and were made before streaming was a thing.These kinds of films are programmed regularly at the city’s revival houses, like Film Forum and Metrograph. But what these film clubs offer is ample space and time, where debate and friendships can blossom without leaving your seat. For cheap, too: At chain theaters, tickets can be more than $20 apiece, not including food and drinks. Many of these film clubs are free to attend, although patrons are asked to pony up for beer or bites.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
