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    Eboni K. Williams and Her ‘Harlem Jewel Box’

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    The broadcaster and author’s brief to her designer was simple: ‘Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like.’When Eboni K. Williams moved to New York from Los Angeles in 2014, to take a job as a correspondent at CBS News, she knew exactly where she was going to live.“No disrespect to any other borough or any other part of the city, but being a Black woman from the South, it had to be Harlem U.S.A.,” said Ms. Williams, 39, a native of Charlotte, N.C. “It was important for me to walk out my door every day and feel the spirit and energy of the ancestors who lived there — James Baldwin and Malcolm X and Lorraine Hansberry and Josephine Baker.”Ms. Williams, a lawyer, writer and broadcaster (Fox News, WABC Radio and REVOLT and GRIO cable networks), who is probably best known as the first Black cast member of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” landed at Riverton Square, a large rental development near the F.D.R. Drive, between 135th and 138th Streets.“Looking at it, you would think it was a housing project, but it has a real legacy. Baldwin lived there, and so did David Dinkins,” said Ms. Williams, referring to the former mayor of New York. “If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me.”But life is complicated, and love sometimes requires a change of address. From 2019 to 2021, Ms. Williams, the author of the recently published “Bet on Black: The Good News About Being Black in America Today” and the host of the podcast “Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams,” found herself in TriBeCa, in a three-bedroom sublet at the Four Seasons Private Residences, with her fiancé, a financier. They have since ended their relationship.Eboni K. Williams, an author, lawyer and TV, radio and podcast host, lives in a one-bedroom condo in Harlem with her tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesEboni K. Williams, 39Occupation: Lawyer, journalist, authorHarlem on my mind: “It meant something to me, as a Black woman, to land in a neighborhood that has meant so much to Black people.”“I’m glad I had that experience,” Ms. Williams said. “Because as gorgeous as the unit was, when I went to buy a place coming out of the lease, I had learned what was really important to me.”For starters, that meant an apartment that was a little more down-to-earth, literally. “We were on the 67th floor, which was not my jam,” she said. “I have a fear of heights.”An open kitchen was also a must. “That was a $7 million apartment, and it had a galley kitchen,” she said. “I love to cook, so I hated the galley kitchen.”And also: Who needs a dining table? “I never used it,” she said. “I ate in front of the TV.”But having three bedrooms was nice. It allowed for a dedicated office, and she realized she “needed a separate work space.”“Oh, honey, aesthetics are very important to me,” Ms. Williams said. “I know what I want my house to look like.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnd she will not soon forget the abundance of storage space at the Four Seasons. “That place introduced me to California Closets,” Ms. Williams said, referring to the company that creates custom organizing systems. “I had them do every closet in my new apartment.”About that new apartment: Ms. Williams went into contract two and a half years ago, based on the model unit, in a building under construction in central Harlem — one bedroom, floor-to-ceiling windows, nine-foot ceilings, high-end finishes — and moved in last June after many delays, with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James (named for her grandfather).“It was the only place I looked at. I’m very decisive in that way,” she said.“I’m a girl from the South, and I’m a pageant queen, and the finishes were very important to me,” Ms. Williams continued. “It was important for me to have Carrara marble countertops. It was important for me to have the beautiful white-oak herringbone floors throughout. I’m allergic to carpet. Not really, but you know what I mean.”Ms. Williams’s brief to her interior designer, Ty Larkins, was simple and to the point: “Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like. I want it to be a Harlem jewel box.”Bunches of flowers add pops of color. (Ms. Williams is partial to pink.)Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIn something of a nod to Ms. Baker’s adopted city, Paris, a 19th-century French mirror leans against the wall in the living room. A French desk of the same vintage anchors the work space. Baccarat candlesticks catch the light on the coffee table.Ms. Baker sometimes performed in head-to-toe pink. For her part, Ms. Williams used to be “pink, pink, pink, pink, like a 12-year-old lives here,” she said. But she has learned moderation. True, the two velvet accent chairs in front of the tall windows in the living room are dusty rose, the side chair has pink-and-gray stripes, and the grasscloth on the walls is a very pale blush, “but there are also some masculine elements,” she said, pointing to the oversized chocolate-brown tufted sofa.If you want to get invited back, don’t touch the earth-toned Hermès blanket that’s neatly folded over an arm of the sofa. “It’s just for show,” she said.Although Ms. Williams chose her apartment quickly and surely — and although her determination to plant roots in Harlem was unswerving — it was an emotionally complicated business.“I was going to buy a million-dollar condo somewhere in New York,” she said. “But because people are paying that and more in my building, it’s displacing many of those who have called Harlem home for years. That’s the truth. It’s like any privilege — what do I do with that privilege? To me, it’s about preserving the culture that came before me, so it still lives beyond me. The moment you walk through the door, there is this explosion of Black-centeredness and Black celebration.”The canopy bed adds a touch of Hollywood glamour.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBusts of the journalist Ida B. Wells and the abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are on display in the cozy alcove Ms. Williams uses as her office. The bathroom walls are papered with designer Sheila Bridge’s pattern Harlem Toile de Jouy, which trades France’s classic pastoral motifs for those reflecting an African-American heritage.On one wall of the living room is a print depicting the stowage of a ship carrying enslaved Africans. Almost directly opposite is a painting by the Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai featuring a Black woman in front of a line of microphones. “This is about the amplification of the struggle and liberation,” Ms. Williams said.“This place,” she added, “is dripping with Black identity. That’s me. Literally. It’s my name: Eboni.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Why the Queen of Christmas Refuses to Leave Battery Park City

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      Home is important to Elizabeth Chan: “Every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”Elizabeth Chan is very clear on the matter: Christmas is not a competition.“You can love whatever you want about it as much as you want,” Ms. Chan, 42, said. “It’s how much it fills you with joy, and everybody has different levels of joy in their heart. But that doesn’t mean one way of being is better than another.”These are all very reasonable points. Very gracious, too. But there is no altering the fact that Ms. Chan wins Christmas. Hands down. Game, set and match.It is not because she named her daughters Noelle and Eva (for Christmas Eve). Or because the palette of her apartment in Lower Manhattan tilts toward a rich dark red and celadon green. Or because she has half a dozen Advent calendars in heavy rotation. Or even because the fragrance of the liquid hand soap in her kitchen and bathrooms is generally limited to gingerbread, peppermint, pine fir and such. (Ms. Chan stocks up when the holidays are over and everyone else has moved on from spiced plum and winterberry.)“My goal when I write Christmas music is to inspire thoughts of love, family and home to anyone who listens,” said Elizabeth Chan, who lives with her family in a two-bedroom rental in Battery Park City.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesElizabeth Chan, 42Occupation: Composer and performer of Christmas songsA new perspective: “When I became a mother, my music changed immediately, because suddenly the story of the birth of Jesus and the story of trying to find a place for the baby became very relatable.”It’s because of this: Since leaving her job as a marketing executive a decade ago for what, at the time, seemed like a quixotic pursuit, Ms. Chan has written more than 1,000 Christmas songs (she stopped counting at 1,200) in assorted genres — pop, jazz, disco, electronic, you name it — and recorded 12 albums of her holiday-themed compositions. Some have turned up on Billboard’s adult contemporary and holiday charts. She also ghostwrites Christmas songs for performers who need a Santa’s helper.Like its predecessors, her latest collection, “12 Months of Christmas,” released in October, plays around the country in malls and stores like Walmart, Ikea, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma, providing Ms. Chan with an annual income that she says is in the high six figures — there’s no business like Ho-Ho-Ho business — and prompting some in the industry to refer to her as the Queen of Christmas. (Last year, when Mariah Carey, she of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” filed an application through her company to trademark the phrase “Queen of Christmas” for future use on products like music, perfume, sunglasses and even coconut milk, Ms. Chan opposed the registration, believing that no one should have exclusive and permanents rights to the title. Ultimately, she prevailed.)Ms. Chan’s office, two floors down from the family home, is perennially decked out for Christmas.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesCreatively and fiscally, Ms. Chan has gone far. Geographically, it’s a different story. She grew up in Battery Park City and has remained there even after 9/11 caused many, including her traumatized parents, to relocate.“I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go,” said Ms. Chan, who found a one-bedroom rental blocks away from her childhood apartment. “I thought it was going to be temporary. I think I’ve stayed because every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”When Ms. Chan married 13 years ago, her husband, Andy Fraley, who designed her website and also designs her album covers, joined her in the apartment. And when she decided to ditch corporate life and become a struggling artist, the couple stayed put, although it meant making room for six keyboards, three guitars, a ukulele, a Chinese stringed instrument called a gu zheng, speakers and then, eventually, their first child, Noelle, now 5, and the attendant baby paraphernalia. Oh, and did we mention the dog?Four years ago, through a local mothers’ group, Ms. Chan learned that a family in the building was moving to New Jersey and was hoping to find someone to take over their two-bedroom apartment.“My husband went to look at it, and things were in a crazy state of affairs,” Ms. Chan recalled. “There were crayon and magic-marker marks on every wall, and he said, ‘We’ll take it.’ He knew I was never going to leave the neighborhood — that I was never going to leave the building — because it’s home.”Shelves have been stripped of books to make space to display a Lego Christmas Village scene.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesMs. Chan puts a heavy emphasis and great value on home. Many of her songs have the word “home” in the title or the lyrics. Home frequently figures in conversations with her. Dilating on the topic, she gets unapologetically weepy.Even though the family has settled fully into the more spacious apartment — their numbers now include Eva, 2 — Ms. Chan clings to the other space because that, too, is her home. It’s easily identified by the sleigh bell-encrusted Christmas wreath.“In the way you walk into your house and it smells familiar — that’s this place, for me,” she said.There she wraps and hides her children’s Christmas presents, writes songs, does business Zoom calls and records promos for the radio stations that play her music. Ms. Chan gets inspiration from the fully decorated artificial Christmas tree that, like the wreath, remains in place year-round; from the decorative holiday pillows, of which there are many; and from a photo of her maternal grandmother presiding over a Christmas pageant in her village in the Philippines. “She taught me what matters,” Ms. Chan said.“I usually take January off and start writing Christmas songs again in February,” Ms. Chan said.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesOn a Friday morning in early December, the holiday spirit was ascendant two floors up, in the family quarters. The bookshelves had been given over to displays of Lego Christmas Village scenes and a Fisher-Price Little People Nativity set. Red stockings were hung with care over the red-painted wood console. A “Santa Stop Here” tree-topper was ready to be put in place, and the marble-topped dining table where Ms. Chan sat, a decade ago, to map out her business, had been cleared off to make room for a gingerbread house or two.“This is what Christmas looks like to me,” she said, gazing around the living room. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable living anywhere else. Since my songs are focused on love and family and home, uprooting would affect my music.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Rupert Holmes, on Creating a Victorian-Flavored Escape in Upstate NY

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      The artist you know from ‘The Piña Colada Song’ has a new play about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a new novel coming out next year — but still no plans to live in the city.Over the decades, the playwright, novelist and singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes has collected quite the haul of trophies and treasures. They include — deep breath, now — two Tony Awards (for the book and score of his 1985 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”), two Edgar Awards, 16 gold records, and 15 platinum records, including for his 1979 earworm “Escape.” (You undoubtedly know it as “The Piña Colada Song”).In his home studio, Mr. Holmes has a framed thank-you note from Barbra Streisand, for his contributions to her 1975 album “Lazy Afternoon,” as a composer and co-producer, and a signed Rosebud matchbook from Orson Welles, whom he met on a talk show. He also has a piano bench that belonged to Marvin Hamlisch, a gift from Mr. Hamlisch’s widow.But there is one thing that Mr. Holmes does not have — has never had and never wanted to have — despite all of his Times Square-centric pursuits: a permanent address in New York City.“When I’m working on a show, I get some sort of accommodations in Manhattan for a couple of months,” said Mr. Holmes, 75, whose new play, “All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” will be at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, N.Y., from Nov. 3 to Nov. 27, and whose thriller “Murder Your Employer,” the first book in a new series, is due out in February. “But for me, New York has always been a place that’s like a thermonuclear reactor, where everything interesting and exciting happens. And then you want to leave at the end of the day and calm down.”Rupert Holmes, the Tony Award winning writer and composer of the 1985 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “The Piña Colada Song,” lives with his wife, Liza, in a colonial-style house in Cold Spring, N.Y.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesRupert Holmes, 75Occupation: Playwright, novelist, singer-songwriterLost in translation: “When I was three and a half, my parents told me we were moving from England to a place called Long Island. I thought, ‘Oh, pirates and lagoons.’ And it turned out to be Levittown, Long Island.”In 1980, Mr. Holmes and his wife, Liza, a lawyer, settled in Tenafly, N.J. They had a snug house they loved in a nice community that was within quick reach of the city. But when the couple’s 10-year-old daughter, Wendy, died suddenly from an undiagnosed brain tumor in 1986, “we couldn’t stay there,” he said. “Her friends would walk by the house; her bedroom was empty. We just couldn’t do it. So we moved to Scarsdale.”Again, nice house, quiet street, easy commute. There they stayed for 22 years. “Then, once again, a child issue,” Mr. Holmes said.Timothy, the younger of the couple’s two sons, is “severely autistic,” he said. “He doesn’t have language, really,” and he was aging out of a local care facility. There was an excellent adult-treatment program farther afield, but it was open only to residents of Putnam and Dutchess Counties. Relocating was less than ideal, “but we tried to make the most of it,” he said. “We wanted this to feel like a good thing.”Thirteen years ago, the Holmeses moved to a hillside colonial-style house in Cold Spring, N.Y., where, depending on the room and the window, they could see woods, gardens, the Hudson River, Storm King Mountain, Crows Nest Mountain, West Point or some fine combination.The piano bench in the basement studio once belonged to Marvin Hamlisch, with whom Mr. Holmes collaborated on a stage adaptation of the 1963 movie “The Nutty Professor.”Andy Ryan for The New York TimesThe couple chose Cold Spring in part because of a key resemblance to Nyack, where they both grew up and were high school sweethearts: The main stem in both villages slopes down to the Hudson. The house was also appealing for its proximity to the train station — a 12-minute walk, critical for Mr. Holmes, who has never learned to drive. “One of my eccentricities,” he said.But the move was not without drama. The couple stayed in Scarsdale for several months after closing on the property so that Mr. Holmes could finish a project in Manhattan. It was winter, and the pipes in the new house froze and burst, flooding the place. To focus on the good news, the house was insured. And because they hadn’t yet shuttled their possessions upstate, nothing was lost. Plus, they now had an opportunity to make some design adjustments.Borrowing square footage from a porch, they built a sunroom adjacent to the dining room. On the second floor, a wall between two small bedrooms came down to make a more expansive office for Mr. Holmes. Soil was excavated so that he could have a window — let there be light — in his basement studio. And the powder room was redone in a symphony of black-and-gold lacquer to serve as a color-appropriate backdrop for his many framed gold records. When a plumber comes to do repair work, Mr. Holmes said ruefully, “his quote changes after he’s been in the bathroom.”The British-born Mr. Holmes began life as David Goldstein; he changed his name when he got into the music business in the late 1960s. “Rupert” was a nod to the poet Rupert Brooke. “Holmes” was a tip of the deerstalker to …. well, it’s pretty elementary.A kidney-shaped platform is a favorite spot where Mr. Holmes likes to read al fresco.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesWith its show posters, Hirschfeld caricatures, framed sheet music and shelves of scripts, awards and branded mugs, the house could be viewed as celebration of Mr. Holmes’s life in the entertainment business. But really, it’s a valentine to Victoriana and to Baker Street’s most famous resident.The Victorian hat stand in the foyer sets the tone. Three rare Sherlock Holmes movie posters and an Inverness cape hang in the dining room, along with a painting of the legendary detective and Dr. Watson that Mr. Holmes commissioned. The Victorian cabinet that he and Ms. Holmes bought early in their marriage sits in the living room. A rose-colored globe lamp on a marble-topped Victorian-style table keeps the theme going in the sunroom. A Victorian student lamp helps light the office.Just before the pandemic, Mr. Holmes’s next-door neighbor decided to sell his house and an adjoining parcel of land. “I realized this was the last piece of property in Cold Spring with a view of the Hudson that did not have a house on it,” Mr. Holmes said. “And I was probably the only person in the world who wouldn’t want to develop that land and build a house on it to sell or live in.”The view from the bay window in the living room takes in the Hudson River and Storm King Mountain.Andy Ryan for The New York TimesHe knew that if he didn’t buy the land, someone else would. Hello bulldozers, goodbye expansive water views. “Without a moment’s thought, I offered him well above what he was asking,” he said. “So now I’ve gone from having a house with a small footprint to having around three acres.”Cleared of scrub and weeds, the terrain has become a sloping pocket park complete with a gazebo. A small platform beneath towering oaks is a favored destination for Mr. Holmes when he wants a break. Or, as he once so lucratively put it, an escape.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      A Rising Designer Brings Hip-Hop to Homeware

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      Sean Brown is the creative force behind Curves, a home décor brand inspired by African American pop culture. “I always aim to celebrate Blackness,” he said.The Toronto-based designer Sean Brown made a splash in 2020 with rugs inspired by classic CDs that you might have come across while scrolling through Instagram. In just a few years, Curves, which started with an event at a Toronto gallery, has grown into a contemporary homeware brand that offers products inspired by hip-hop (a color-changing umbrella featuring lyrics from Mobb Deep and Missy Elliott; a grocery tote depicting music video stills), stocked by stores around the globe.But Brown, 35, did not have a typical designer’s childhood filled with trips to art galleries and museums. Growing up in a strict household in Toronto, he rebelled after his parents’ divorce, landing in a group home at 14 and then in a foster home until he was 19. (He’s since reconciled with his parents, he said.) As he bounced around high schools without graduating, he started designing T-shirts.He would eventually do a year at a design school, where his interest in fashion and hip-hop intensified. Diddy in particular had an outsized influence on him. “I studied every outfit, I studied every step, I studied every chain,” he said of the rap mogul. “Everything about him I studied. The cover art. The art direction. The jiggy, the shiny suits. He has so much to do with my outlook on aesthetics.”A view of some of Brown’s CD rugs, left, and his vintage magazine collection.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesIn 2013, he and a friend started a pop-up vintage store, then came NEEDS & WANTS, a men’s sportswear brand from Brown and his partners. (The label’s varsity jacket landed in GQ.) Brown began working with the Canadian R&B singer Daniel Caesar on wardrobe styling, photography, graphic design and directing. Thus began a career in the music industry, where he’d handle design in various capacities for artists like SZA and Baby Keem.Meanwhile, he released a number of design objects, including a throw blanket and a puzzle set. When the pandemic hit, “I was like, I don’t think it’s going to get normal anytime soon, so let me settle into this new apartment,” he said. “I need a rug, I need a coffee table. Then it just turned into home décor.” Curves recently issued the Archway Chair and Puddle Mirror.At an interview in Brooklyn, where he was shooting and interviewing subjects for a new biannual magazine, tentatively set to be released in early 2022, Brown spoke enthusiastically about making design accessible, the influence of the video director Hype Williams and Brown’s very short stint in Diddy’s universe. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How do you define the Curves brand?To encourage people to think about the space that they occupy or where they come from, how it looks, how it affects their quality of life. A contemporary take on everyday objects. The starting point usually has cultural nuances. I’m always injecting culture into it. Black culture, Black music, Black art — always celebrating that. The other part about Curves is making design accessible to the people who need to be introduced to design.So far, most people know you for those rugs that look like CDs. Any worry that they will overshadow your newer work?It’s important to always keep doing things that people care about and to keep creative and to keep curious. That’s why I was like, yo, let’s do mirrors, let’s do incense hands, let’s do shelving, let’s do chairs. It’s almost like a hit song. Once you get three hit songs, people know you’re here to stay.Two of Brown’s decorative floor mirrors.James LeeWhat is the process from idea to physical product?So it’s like, OK, I really want to do a puddle mirror and then Iva Golubovic [his manager and a co-owner and creative producer of Curves] will be like, ‘I feel you, slow down.’ Then she’ll go and find someone like a manufacturer who can do the thing and just work through it with them, the technical aspect, and then bring in an engineer.Now we linked up with these guys who are our mill workers and they’re just as passionate as we are. And now we’re going to go full blown into furniture at this point, like bed heads, tables.You collect vintage magazines like Vibe. Why do you like print so much?Starting to own media, by way of the internet, I didn’t have to go to a library and open up books anymore. But then once my brain felt like the information was too overloaded, that’s when I wanted to dial it back, start being like, remember all the magazines you used to collect? Remember all the tangible data where you could just flip through? I was a liner notes kid, you know what I mean? So I think that that’s getting lost right now, heavily. People’s reference points and their research is very shallow. I have the physical data of history to be able to go back to these magazines and be like, yo, there was a time Foxy Brown [was] in the Calvin Klein ad or Erykah Badu for Gap. I have all of it. The tangible, beyond Tumblr.Where else do you turn for inspiration?Old music, old movies, old commercials, old media, but only to reference and not copy. Like, how can I reimagine this thing? Still Tumblr, honestly. Tumblr is like my collection of media in digital form. It doesn’t come with the social aspect of social media. You can just be on there, in your own world, dictating your own tastes, whatever you want to see.You also seem to have a real affinity for the director Hype Williams, who made his name making music videos for artists like Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and the Notorious B.I.G. in the 1990s.Him and [the artist and filmmaker] Kahlil Joseph, they can take something like the hood or like a housing project and make it look so beautiful. They make it look like high art. I was watching as a child without knowing the political side of it, like how the government takes these people who are disenfranchised and throws them in a housing project. But then out of it you get a genre like hip-hop. That’s why when I think through design, I always aim to celebrate Blackness because a lot of it is birthed out of disparity. We’re given these [expletive] circumstances and then we can make something so beautiful out of it.You can see the lineage from a Hype, who was so influenced by Stanley Kubrick. You can see connections if you watch [“2001: A Space Odyssey.”] You can see Missy Elliott and Busta videos in a lot of that, if you’re really paying attention. But obviously Stanley Kubrick wasn’t coming from a housing project in New York. And that is the missing link. There have to be people in history who can make connections. I’m always at the intersection of things.The Archway Chair is one of the latest products from Curves.James LeeYou contributed creative direction to Diddy’s Combs Enterprises for only eight months, before parting ways.I was 34. I wasn’t a kid who was looking for an opportunity; I wasn’t trying to be an intern. I knew who I was and I was there to tell the truth. And what I believe was the intent to protect his creative and to take his creative to another level. Once we realized that that wasn’t sustainable, I just couldn’t go along with the program of being a yes man, I just wasn’t going to do it. The truth is, for a person who wants things done a certain way and wants everyone to go along with the program, I’m a cancer to all that. I have to be honest. If that meant losing a gig with him, then so be it. The next day I went right back to wearing Sean John. [A spokeswoman for Combs Enterprises declined to comment.]You don’t seem bitter.No. Look where I’m coming from — I’m the little foster kid.How much do you think Instagram is shaping how we’re designing our homes, and is that good or bad?It’s why I love Tumblr, because it’s the media without the social, so you could pick apart inspiration, download it, be inspired by things, decorate your home off that and there’s no pressure of the social community. Instagram is like the same thing: You have access to information overload, seeing everyone decorate their homes, but now you’re under pressure because, like, who likes it? I just think the social part of things is bad, but I don’t think the sharing part is bad.I think it’s great that you could see into so many people’s homes. I think that’s fire.Brendan Ko for The New York TimesThat could be an added layer of pressure, because so much homeware is expensive. A millennial person could think, “I want to show off my house, but I can’t afford all that.” There’s a class boundary and a level of insecurity that comes up for some people.Start small. You ain’t got to have the large three way couch. Start with a shower curtain. The CD rugs.Is there a dollar amount that equals success for you?Not a dollar amount, but I would say enough, enough provision. So that I’m content in a sense where I’m not trying to be filthy rich. I don’t need to own a basketball team, but I like nice things. I want to be able to provide for my family. I want to be able to put money away. I want to be able to give things back. It has to do with the word completion, being complete, feeling complete, completing the mission, being your complete self. More

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      ‘The Opposite of Airlines’: When Larger Audiences Require Fewer Seats

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      Yes, the comfy chair. The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco put in roomier seats just in time to try to lure audiences back from the couches they got used to during the shutdown.SAN FRANCISCO — Wagner was the worst. Five hours — sometimes more — of squirming in 1932-era seats at the War Memorial Opera House here, sinking into lumpy, dusty cushions, suffering the bulge of the springs and the pinch of the wide armrests, craning for a glimpse of the stage around the head of the tall person one row ahead.“Particularly on a long opera — oh my God,” said Tapan Bhat, a tech executive and a season-ticket holder at the San Francisco Opera since 1996.When the San Francisco Opera opens Saturday, starting its scaled-back 99th season with Puccini’s “Tosca” after a shutdown of more than a year, those punishing seats will be gone. The opera has used its forced sabbatical to complete a long-planned $3.53 million project to replace all 3,128 seats with more comfortable, roomier ones. The opera used its forced sabbatical to complete a long-planned $3.53 million project to replace its 3,128 seats. Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesAnd San Francisco is not alone. Theaters, concert halls and sports arenas around the country have been increasingly investing in comfort in recent years — with wider and plusher seats — to try to accommodate audiences that have grown in breadth, if not in numbers. In the early 1960s, when the War Memorial Opera House was only a few decades old, the average weight of adult men in the United States was 168 pounds, according to federal data; it is now 199.8 pounds.Since the pandemic struck, the owners of theaters and live venues have come to see such investments as more urgent than ever. As coronavirus restrictions are dropped, presenters face the challenge of luring back patrons who, during more than a year without theaters, have grown accustomed to consuming home entertainment from the sprawling comfort of their own couches and recliners.“The entire patron experience has really been under a lot of scrutiny,” said Gary F. Martinez, a partner with OTJ Architects, a Washington-based firm. “Venues are working diligently to improve that experience. We’ve never spent so much time on seats.”The Lyric Opera of Chicago put in wider seats in the summer of 2020, following the example of the Music Hall in Cincinnati and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. On Broadway, where older theaters have been notorious for cramped quarters, the Hudson Theater added wider seats during a recent renovation. The seats in the new Yankee Stadium are wider than those in the old one, and venues including the Daytona Speedway and Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore added wider seats during recent renovations.The old seats were thick with faded cushioning and challenging to climb out of, and had wide armrests that made them feel narrower.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesEven before the shutdown, audience members of all sizes were growing accustomed to ever-larger, ever-sharper television screens with an ever-broader array of streaming options. And when people did go out, many had seen the what-could-be potential in movie theaters that had installed wide, comfortable stadium-style seats, which recline and have slots for drinks and, sometimes, trays for snacks. Why pay as much as 20 times the cost of a movie — tickets at the San Francisco Opera go for up to $398 a seat — to be scrunched up in a cramped holdover from the last century?“I think anything we can do to break down barriers and improve the experience we should be doing,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. “If someone is having an uncomfortable evening at the opera that is an experience they should not be having.”“The seats have historically been patrons’ No. 1 concern for the building,” he said. “Letters to me. Letters to the box office. Letters to the city. And with some justification. We had springs coming through some of the seats.”San Francisco put in its new seats just in time for the reopening of the opera and the San Francisco Ballet, which share the stage of the War Memorial. The new seats have wooden backs, which could improve the acoustics, and cup holders. (No clinky ice cubes will be allowed, though.)Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesThe new, ergonomically tuned chairs are slightly higher, roomier and firmer than the old ones. There is 2.5 inches more leg room, and the chairs have been staggered to improve sightlines, giving even the shortest operagoers and balletomanes a better shot at seeing what is taking place onstage. The seat widths are about the same as before, ranging from 19 inches to 23 inches, but the new armrests are narrower, making seats feel roomier. And there are cup holders for those who want to bring a drink to their seat. (Ice, though, with all its clinking distractions, is not permitted).Comfort comes at a cost: This will mean a loss of 114 seats, and the revenue they bring.The situation in Chicago was not quite as dire as in San Francisco — its seats were at least renovated in 1993 — but they were decidedly in need of replacement. The widths of Lyric seats ranged from 18 to 22 inches before the renovation; now they range from 19 to 23 inches. The number of seats there was reduced from 2,564 to 2,274.“We are doing the opposite of airlines,” said Michael Smallwood, the technical director at the Lyric Opera, referring to the practice of cramming more narrow seats onto planes. “Now you can sit at home and watch Netflix. People want to be comfortable. Operas want to be long. People expect different things.”“To put it bluntly, it takes a lot more effort to sell a ticket these days,” Smallwood said. “You want it to be comfortable so they’ll be here again.”Many of the seats in the New York Philharmonic’s Lincoln Center home, David Geffen Hall, will be a bit wider as well when its current renovation is complete. While most of the seats in its old hall were 20 inches wide or less, more than three-quarters of the new seats will be 21 inches wide or wider.The San Francisco Opera will return to the opera house on Saturday with “Tosca.” Alfred Walker, left, and Michael Fabiano sang at a recent rehearsal.Cory WeaverThe seat backs in San Francisco were once covered with cushioning. The back of each seat is now wood; doing away with that cushioning means more leg room for those sitting behind. “I am 6-foot-1 without shoes,” said Danielle St. Germain-Gordon, the interim executive director of the San Francisco Ballet. “And I have very long legs. They were the type of seats that when I sat in them, my knees came up to my belly button.”The old seats at the War Memorial had become vintage relics, thick with faded cushioning and challenging to climb out of, a particular concern to the opera crowd, which tends to skew older.“Like those seats you saw when you went to your grandma’s,” said Jennifer E. Norris, the assistant managing director of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, who oversaw the project. “You know, when your grandma had her favorite chair and it sits a little too low, and was a little too worn.”With uncushioned seat backs, the sound in the hall should be crisper. “Applause won’t die in the room, so you’ll have a great sense of enthusiasm around you,” Norris said. “It’s also possible the lady with the candy wrapper will annoy us more. I am hoping that peer pressure will remind her to unwrap her candy before the performance begins.”The renovation began in 2013 with replacement of seats on the box level, and it includes 12 bariatric seats, designed to hold weights of up to 300 pounds, that will be 28 inches wide, as well as 38 spaces for wheelchairs, an increase of six from before the renovation. The project was funded by a ticket fee ranging from $1 to $3.The new seats were designed by Ducharme Seating of Montreal, which also installed seats at the renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, as well as halls in Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Toronto. The historical nature of the Beaux-Arts building near San Francisco City Hall — it opened in 1932 — and the exacting demands of its high-end opera house and ballet made this project particularly complicated.“This is the most extensive design we have ever done on a seat,” said Eric Rocheleau, the president of Ducharme Seating. “The opera houses are always the most stringent customers.”Germain-Gordon said that theaters probably have little choice but to invest this kind of money as the world slowly returns to normal after the pandemic. “People can have in their home a beautiful media room,” she said. “Back in the olden days, if you wanted to see something you had to go see it. Nobody had TVs the size of movie screens, or La-Z-Boys. But people are investing in their comfort and they want to see it when they go out.”Bhat, the tech executive, said anything would be better than the seats he had suffered over 25 years of long nights at the opera.“They were creaky,” he said. “The upholstery would be fraying. So if you’re sitting in an opera in less than comfortable seats, something that’s going on for four and a half hours, or the first act of ‘Götterdämmerung,’ which is like 90 minutes long — it’s torture.” More