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    How Frankie Grande Spends His Sundays

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    The actor, singer and reality TV personality fills his day with video games, comfort food with friends and a teary trip to the movies.Frankie Grande likes to stay busy — even on Sundays.“From the moment I wake up, it’s go, go, go,” said Mr. Grande, a 41-year-old actor, singer and reality TV personality. This month, he returned to playing Victor Garber in “Titanique,” an Off Broadway parody musical of the movie “Titanic.” He first played the character in a fully staged production in 2022, and is now back for a limited run through Feb. 18.Mr. Grande, who is the half brother of the pop superstar Ariana Grande, was born in New York, grew up in Englewood, N.J., and Boca Raton, Fla., and graduated from Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. Now he splits his time between a two-bedroom penthouse apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and a home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He lives with his husband of almost two years, the actor and model Hale Grande, 31, and their red toy poodle puppy, Appa.While Mr. Grande was a relative unknown when he moved back to New York City in 2005 — he said he often wandered through Times Square wearing a pair of earbuds, soaking in the scene — he’s now a YouTube, Instagram and TikTok personality with more than 3.5 million followers across all three accounts.“I definitely can’t wander now without being recognized every four feet,” he said. “But I love talking with fans.”Mr. Grande can spend hours playing video games, like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, with his husband, Hale Grande.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesHERE COMES THE SUN I don’t usually get up before 10 a.m. — my husband is in Los Angeles for work, and we’d been up all night playing the new Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game — but I surprise myself and wake up at 8:45 a.m. I have a Philips alarm clock that mimics a natural 30-minute sunrise, and at the end it has birds chirping. It wakes me up like I’m on a farm with animal noises. It’s a really peaceful way to start the day.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?  More

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      At Time Spans Festival, New York Shows Off New Music

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      The festival is a bright spot on the August calendar, with casual yet tightly plotted concerts of modern and contemporary music.Classical music’s global summer season is full of destination-worthy presentations. In August, New York makes a contribution: The Time Spans Festival, a modern and contemporary-music event that is the equal of anything on the international circuit.So after a couple weeks covering operas and starry premieres in Europe, I made sure to be home in New York for the first shows in this year’s festival, which runs through Aug. 26. It all takes place in the refreshingly cool, subterranean hall of the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Hell’s Kitchen.Saturday’s opener was dedicated to works by the 20th-century composer Luigi Nono. This Italian modernist worked frequently with the resident electronic specialists of the SWR Experimentalstudio, a German public radio electronic studio from Freiburg. At the DiMenna Center, this group collaborated with musicians in Ensemble Experimental, giving these performances the feeling of deep investment and institutional know-how.Brad Lubman conducting the Nono concert.George EtheredgeFirst up was “Omaggio a Emilio Vedova” from 1961. A fixed-media piece — for tape only — it was spatialized in the hall by the SWR technicians, with eight speakers surrounding the audience. And though just over four minutes in length, this slashing, vertiginous work made a strong impression: its brief metallic shards of prerecorded sound revolving around audience-member eardrums with a grace that made Nono’s supposedly harsh aesthetic seem balletic.The short presentation also blasted into dust the recent, expensive and much-ballyhooed spatial-music presentation at the Shed, the Sonic Sphere. There, audience members were hoisted up into a giant dome, only to listen to a surround-speaker system with blurry low-end sonic fidelity. At the DiMenna Center, listeners kept their feet on the underground floor, but the whirling sound production was pristine — and transporting.When live instrumentalists from Ensemble Experimental joined the fray, this sense of fun continued, even during gnomic works with generally quiet dynamics, like Nono’s “A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum” (1985).Maruta Staravoitava (flute) Andrea Nagy (clarinet) and Noa Frenkel on Saturday.George EtheredgeJozsef Bazsinka.George EtheredgeHere, the subtle electronic processing of live instrumental playing was a consistent delight: When astringent live notes, played by a bass flutist and a bass clarinetist, came back around in the electronic part, they seemed somehow softened by the electronic merging and transformation. With those newly mellowed-out sounds crawling across the back of your head — courtesy of speakers in the rear of the room — the piece then turned its bass clarinetist loose, by asking for yawping but controlled overblowing from the reed player. (Here it was Andrea Nagy making those striated and punchy sounds.)That piece and one that came next — “Omaggio a Gyorgy Kurtag” — have been recorded on a fine SWR release on the Neos imprint. But that’s a two-channel stereo recording. Here, as led by the guest conductor Brad Lubman, both took on greater depth in the immersive surround-sound setting.The festival’s second night kept the European-experimentalist trend going, but in a fully acoustic fashion, with the JACK Quartet’s renditions of the second and third string quartets by Helmut Lachenmann.Electronic processing of live instrumental playing in the Nono concert was a consistent delight.George EtheredgeSpeaking from the stage between pieces, the violist John Pickford Richards described Lachenmann’s reputation as someone who makes Western classical instruments seethe and twitch in ways previously inconceivable. (His influence can be felt on other German composers of his generation, as well as adventurous American composers like David Sanford.)Richards also noted that “Grido,” the third quartet, which the ensemble had just played, was one that the JACK instrumentalists had performed together before they were a formal group. And so they think of Lachenmann as a father of the ensemble.That deep familial relationship was already apparent in JACK’s reading of that third quartet. That performance seemed to say: Forget everything you think you know about how weird this guy’s sound-production techniques are; just get lost in the confident, persuasive flow of these unusual ideas.

      Complete String Quartets (mode267) by Helmut LachenmannAs on a recording for the Mode label, the JACK players proved they know how to get the most out of this pathbreaking music, savoring the crisscrossing flurries of steely motifs. (They did it with enviable clarity, creating a spatialized feel through purely acoustic means.) At other points, the violinist Christopher Otto in particular seemed to relish the brief touches of more familiar vibrato that Lachenmann allows into the piece.Lachenmann’s second quartet, which on Sunday followed the third, came across more like a notebook of ideas — ideas that would later find their ideal expression in the third quartet. Still, it was a pleasure to experience such a focused, hourlong tour through this composer’s string writing.George EtheredgeAnd audiences seem to have caught on to the Time Spans model — of casual yet tightly plotted concerts, usually lasting an hour to 90 minutes, with no intermission. This weekend’s programs looked close to sold out. And affordable tickets, just $20, are still available to most remaining shows.There are no dress codes, and no complicated advance-festival planning is required. In this way, Time Spans is part of the (necessary) genre-wide effort to make classical music more approachable. Crucially, the festival does that assuming that new audiences can handle new music. More

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      Silver Saundors Friedman, Who Helped Found the Improv, Dies at 89

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      She ran the famous New York comedy club with her husband for years as they launched the careers of many comic stars.Silver Saundors Friedman, a former Broadway chorine whose hankering for an affordable after-work hangout in Manhattan inspired her future husband to open the original Improvisation, the grandfather of comedy clubs, which she later owned outright, died on Dec. 3 in Santa Monica, Calif., She was 89.Her death, in a hospice, was caused by a hemorrhagic stroke, her daughter Zoe Friedman said. Budd Friedman, her former husband, died on Nov. 12 at 90.For years Ms. Friedman auditioned talent for the club, in the theater district, helping to launch the careers of many famous comedians. And she operated it by herself for more than a decade after the couple divorced.When they opened the Improv in 1963, they were so cash poor that they set up shop in a former Hell’s Kitchen coffeehouse, a leased space on West 44th Street near Ninth Avenue, because they couldn’t afford a liquor license. Then they ran out of money remodeling the place — after stripping paneling from the walls — and decided to leave bare brick as the backdrop to its tiny stage.With an open mic available for impromptu appearances, the club became a platform for established comedians to experiment with new material before a sophisticated audience and a springboard for fledgling comics. On a given night Robert Klein, Jay Leno, Richard Pryor or Lily Tomlin might mount the stage. The Improv became a model for comedy clubs across the country.The Friedmans ran the New York club and later a branch in Hollywood until their divorce was finalized in 1979. Ms. Friedman was granted rights to the brand in New York, and Mr. Friedman retained the club in California, which he started in 1975.He opened 22 others in 12 states west of the Mississippi. He and his partner, Mark Lonow, sold their company in 2018 to Levity Entertainment, which later expanded the Improv chain to 25.Ms. Friedman was born Silver Schreck on Aug. 28, 1933, in Los Angeles and raised in Chicago. She was named for Sime Silverman, the founder of the entertainment trade newspaper Variety, where her father, Jay, was an editor. Her mother, Isabelle (Brown) Schreck, worked as an executive assistant for the Marshall Field department store company in Chicago.Silver Schreck graduated with an associate degree from Chicago Teachers College, now Chicago State University.She changed her surname when she decided to pursue a singing career. Her daughter Zoe explained:“With a first name like Silver, it was important that her stage name didn’t make her sound like a stripper. Silver Slippers could have been a great stripper name, but that wasn’t who my mom was. So she and a friend came up with a few options that made Silver sound legit. Saundors was the winner. First audition after claiming that name, the casting person yelled, ‘Silver Sandals. Silver Sandals.’ To which my mom said, ‘It’s Saundors.’ And he said, ‘Just shut up and sing.’”Ms. Friedman is also survived by another daughter, Beth Friedman; and a grandson.Ms. Friedman fared better on Broadway, Mr. Friedman recalled in “The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club That Revolutionized Stand-up” (2017), which he created with Tripp Whetsell. She was appearing in the chorus of “Fiorello” on Broadway when she met Mr. Friedman at Logan Airport in Boston as both were headed for New York from Nantucket, Mass., he with dreams of becoming a Broadway producer.When he tried to date her, she begged off, she said in the oral history, explaining that she was already seeing someone else. Eight months later, when she was cast in the chorus of the hit “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” they met again.“After the show got out each night, Silver and I would go out to eat with some of the cast to places like Sardi’s and Downey’s in the theater district, which none of them could afford on a chorus kid’s salary,” Mr. Friedman told The Washington Times in 2017.“My idea was to open something up in the theater district that was affordable, and where they could get something cheap to eat, sing if they wanted to, and where I could expand my contacts enough to maybe produce my first show,” he said. “It was never going to be anything but a temporary venture.”Ms. Friedman with the comedian Robert Klein at the Improv in Manhattan in an undated photo. Jay Leno, Richard Pryor and Lily Tomlin were among the comedians who also appeared there. Jim DemetropoulosThey married six months after the Improv opened.“Even though we continued to present singers for many years to come, about six months after I opened, a very popular comedian named Dave Astor came in and asked if he could do a few minutes,” Mr. Friedman said. “It gradually evolved from there.”“Anything went, which is how I came up with the name ‘the Improvisation,’” he said.Ms. Friedman would audition prospective comedians on the first Sunday of each month. She rejected Eddie Murphy on his first tryout for being “too vulgar,” Mr. Friedman recalled, although Mr. Murphy eventually honed his act and performed at the Improv in Los Angeles.Comics still get laughs at the Improv’s franchises across the country, but Ms. Friedman closed the original New York venue in 1992. She blamed television for the decline in customers.“They demystified it,” she told The New York Times in 1994. “They made it common.” She added, “You can stay home and see all the bad comedy you want.” More

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      Ars Nova Introduces a Name Your Price Ticketing Model

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      For its upcoming season, audiences can pay what they wish. Tickets will start at $5 and increase in $5 increments up to $100 per ticket.The Off Broadway incubator Ars Nova will allow audience members to pay what they wish for theater tickets in a new initiative called “What’s Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price,” the company announced on Wednesday.“It’s not income based, it’s not age based, there’s no demographic basis,” said Renee Blinkwolt, the producing executive director of Ars Nova. “It’s just radically accessible — the doors are wide open to any and everyone to pay what they will.”Beginning on Oct. 6, theatergoers can choose their ticket price for any Ars Nova show at its base on West 54th Street in Hell’s Kitchen — as well as the company’s two productions at Greenwich House — for its 2022-23 season. Tickets will start at $5 and increase in $5 increments up to $100 per ticket.Ars Nova’s Off Broadway season includes the world premiere of “Hound Dog” (Oct. 6-Nov. 5), in which a young musician returns to her hometown, Ankara, Turkey, to look after her widowed father, and the world premiere of “(pray)” (March 9-April 15), a choreopoem that follows the form of a Sunday Baptist Church service while transporting audiences to an ancestral forest.Tickets to Ars Nova’s most recent production, “Oratorio for Living Things,” started at $35 and went up to $95 for premium seats. In a time of persistent drops in attendance, removing the financial barrier could be the extra incentive that gets people to the theater.Talks around a name-your-own price model started around this time last year, Blinkwolt said, knowing that audiences might feel nervous returning to in-person performances. After a year of planning and debating, the company is introducing the initiative for its 20th-anniversary season — and second in-person season since the start of the pandemic — during “a time of great change and transition,” Blinkwolt said.The pay-what-you-wish tickets idea is, of course, nothing new. For instance, in 2013, the Forum Theater in Silver Spring, Md., instituted “Forum for All,” under which patrons could attend performances for as little as 25 cents. And in 2017, the Off Broadway play “Afterglow” offered 10 pay-what-you-wish tickets to some performances at the Loft at the Davenport Theater.Still, having that ticketing for an entire season could signal a new standard in arts accessibility in New York City. Ars Nova says it will treat the effort as a learning experiment, with plans to assess the financial impact at the end of the year along with evaluating if the model succeeded in motivating attendance and diversifying the demographics of the audience.“My hope is that people are curious about it, they’re excited about it, and they build back that habit of getting together with friends, enjoying each other’s company in real time and space and taking in a show,” Blinkwolt said. More

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      How a Broadway Producer Spends His Sundays

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      Theater may be struggling, but Ron Simons is committed to opening his next show, “For Colored Girls,” this spring.Ron Simons, one of a handful of Black Broadway producers in New York, has won Tony Awards for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” “Porgy & Bess,” “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” and “Jitney.” Not to be outdone by the pandemic, he recently produced “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which closed last month, and his next show, “For Colored Girls,” is scheduled to open this spring.“Recent events have allowed us to be fully expressed,” said Mr. Simons, alluding to the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the unrest and conversations about race that followed. “If done correctly, through storytelling, shows like ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ and others will help dispel ignorance and hatred.”Even though Broadway attendance is down and casts and crews are struggling to evade the Omicron variant, Mr. Simons remains optimistic. “People forget how long Broadway has been around,” he said. “Broadway is an institution that is not going away. It’s still strong and becoming more inclusive.”Mr. Simons, 61, lives with his partner, Jbya Clarke, 53, a personal trainer and wellness professional, on West 54th Street.THEATER HOURS Depending upon what time I got to bed the night before, Alexa wakes me with an obnoxious beeping sound around 10 or 11 a.m. When I’m raising money for a show, like I am with “For Colored Girls,” I tend to work into the wee hours of the night on Saturdays. I pick up the phone to see if there are any fires with the shows and if they need to be put out.“I tend to work into the wee hours of the night on Saturdays,” said Mr. Simons, who likes to sleep in on Sundays. Laila Stevens for The New York TimesPURGE Jbya is already up and has made coffee. Right now we’re drinking two coffees from Café Britt, one that’s Hawaiian and another that’s Costa Rican. I’ll drink it in whatever mug is available with cream and Stevia. That’s followed by a green juice made with spinach, pineapple, mango, collagen and MCT oil. It’s very cleansing. I have an addiction to fast food, it’s cheap, fast and easy. This helps the detox process. Every year I do an 11-day purge in mid-January. All I have is green drinks with protein powder. I like to start the year off with a healthy disposition. The purge makes me feel lighter and makes my brain clearer.SPIRITUAL STREAM I’m a member of The R.O.C.K. church in Houston. My cousin is married to the pastor. She preaches and oversees operations, so I watch the morning service on my computer. I find her inspiring. I’m always looking for inspiration and beauty. That’s how I counteract the news that’s been spreading over the country. I might meditate as well.He likes to tune in to services from a Houston church whose pastor is married to his cousin. “I’m always looking for inspiration and beauty.”Laila Stevens for The New York TimesBRUNCH By noon we are thinking about places to have brunch. Our favorite is Cookshop. I always say I won’t get a cinnamon roll, which come out warm and delicious, so I order wheat toast. I end up getting the cinnamon roll, too. And French fries. They’re my nemesis. We have one or two friends join. Sometimes we make brunch at our house, or we do it potluck, which is a good way to reconnect with some important people in our lives.MATINEE I’m a Tony voter, so I have to see all the new shows. If we don’t eat brunch we see theater instead. Because I’m so exhausted from the week, I tend to fall asleep at night, so Sunday makes me more of an alert audience member.Socializing in Chelsea, the Manhattan neighborhood where Mr. Simons and Mr. Clarke will often go for brunch. Laila Stevens for The New York TimesLUNCH WITH LIGHTING After theater Jbya and I walk around Hell’s Kitchen. I’m on a mission to have dinner at all the Hell’s Kitchen restaurants. Eating out is a different energy than eating in front of the TV. I look at the menus, what they’re serving and how are they rated. If there are a number of dishes that appeal to me I’ll consider going in. And it has to be clean with nice lighting. I’m a man of the theater. I always talk to people about the mood that lighting brings. Then we walk home because I’ve gained 20 pounds since Covid.PILES OF THINGS From 5 to 7 p.m., Jbya and I split up. He goes into his man cave, which is our media room, closes the door, turns off the lights and draws the shades. Then he watches something about the royal family, RuPaul or the Kardashians. I talk myself into opening mail, which I have let pile up for a month so that my box is so full it has to be given to our doorman to hold. Mail creates action items — like responding to an invite, paying a bill or cashing checks, all of which I hate doing. Or I try to organize my office, which usually looks like a hurricane hit it. Everything ends up sitting on my desk. Even though I create piles of things I need to do, it still looks like a mess. I’m a borderline hoarder. I love tchotchkes.The terrace of their home in Midtown Manhattan is one of their favorite places. Laila Stevens for The New York TimesTRAYS, TALK By 7 we’re deciding where to order in from, Seamless or Uber Eats. We might do Chinese food or Burger King. Jbya is a vegetarian and loves their Impossible Whopper; I usually order a Whopper, French fries and Diet Coke if I don’t have any at home. I finally bought TV trays, which makes me feel retro, which we bring into the media room. This is the best time for us to spend together. Evenings during the week are hard. We’ve both had very different days. He’s ready to talk and I’m all talked out from doing it all day. I’m still trying to navigate that so Sunday is a real coming together time for us.ACTION-PACKED ESCAPE We just finished “Tales of the City.” We like thrillers and science fiction, which is what we look for. I’m finishing the casting for “For Colored Girls” and am still in the capital-raising phase, so all week I’m dialing for dollars. Nights like this, I want something thrilling to wash over me like “The Bourne Identity” series, which we can watch over and over again, or “The Matrix” or “The Lord of the Rings.”Sunday evenings are for dinner and light viewing. “This is the best time for us to spend together.”Laila Stevens for The New York TimesGAMES PEOPLE PLAY By 1 or 2 a.m. we’re back in the bedroom. I call Alexa and she glows. I ask for a reminder about something or I’ll set the alarm. Then I tell her to play thunderstorm noise. It’s our version of white noise. Jbya falls asleep first. If I can’t, I play games for 45 minutes on my phone. I take West Game very seriously. It’s a fighting game where you build your town and battle against other players, and Toy Blast, which is a pattern-matching puzzle game. My lids get heavy and I fall asleep.Sunday Routine readers can follow Ron Simons on Instagram @ronaldksimons More

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      With a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a Show

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith a Beloved Cafe Threatened, Broadway Stars Put on a ShowFans in the theater world, including Matthew Broderick and Debra Messing, will appear in a Christmas Day telethon to try to save the West Bank Cafe.Janet Momjian performs for a GoFundMe video for the West Bank Cafe at the restaurant in Manhattan.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Updated 1:29 p.m. ETWhen Tom D’Angora got the news that the West Bank Cafe — a popular show business hangout whose basement theater hosted the first “Sunday in the Park With George” rehearsals and Joan Rivers’s final performance — was in danger of closing, he sprang into action.“You’re not closing,” D’Angora, a theater producer, told the restaurant’s owner, Steve Olsen, in an early December text. “Over my dead body.”But Olsen could see no way out: His outdoor dining revenue had dropped to almost nothing since Thanksgiving as temperatures plunged, and, even before the city moved to ban indoor dining, his new air filters and constant cleaning efforts had failed to draw many eaters into the 42-year-old restaurant. He was already thinking about how to empty out the space, and considering where to put the artwork.D’Angora wouldn’t hear of it. He and his husband, Michael, a fellow producer, put their heads together about trying to save the restaurant, a Hell’s Kitchen mainstay on 42nd Street just west of Ninth Avenue.Broadway stars have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“I was like, ‘Between the six billion famous, talented, brilliant people who also love this place, we’re going to figure this out,’” D’Angora said.The actor Tim Guinee overheard their conversation while picking up an order of chicken enchiladas at the restaurant, and together they came up with the idea for a virtual Christmas Day telethon that would feature musical performances, skits and West Bank Cafe stories from as many actors as they could find. In the meantime, D’Angora created a GoFundMe page, and within 10 days, more than 1,400 donors had raised more than $168,000 of the $250,000 goal.“We’d seen ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” D’Angora said, referring to the film in a which a community comes together to save an endangered family banking business. “And we just told Steve, ‘OK, it’s your George Bailey moment.’”The telethon, which will begin streaming at noon on Friday, will include appearances by around 200 artists, among them Matthew Broderick, Pete Townshend, Debra Messing, Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming, Isaac Mizrahi and Alice Ripley. Joe Iconis, the composer and lyricist of the Broadway musical “Be More Chill,” is producing the fund-raiser, which he said would last at least five hours.Broderick, the star of “The Producers” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and a cafe regular, said he was sad to see another New York City business with a rich history on the verge of closing forever.“There are whole swaths of places that have closed since March, not just in Hell’s Kitchen or Times Square, but everywhere,” said Broderick. “It’s terrifying. These places are what make New York New York.”Broadway stars including André De Shields and Nathan Lane have gathered at the restaurant to celebrate Tony Award wins and commiserate over losses, and Bruce Willis, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller all dined there.The cafe’s 100-seat basement theater, which opened in 1983, a few years after the restaurant, has had its own memorable moments: Warren Leight’s Tony Award-winning play “Side Man” had its debut there, Lewis Black spent more than 10 years as its playwright in residence, and it staged early Aaron Sorkin plays and occasional drag shows.Olsen, 66, has spent his entire adult life running the restaurant, which he opened in 1978 in a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that was still considerably grittier, and more dangerous, than it is today. “This location was considered Siberia,” Olsen said. “42nd Street and Ninth Avenue was as far west as anyone was willing to venture.”Members of an Irish gang, the Westies, were among the fledgling restaurant’s clientele. He resisted pressure to hire one of their men as a bartender, and to bring in their female friends as waitresses. “Everyone said it was because I was courageous,” he said, laughing. “But I just didn’t know. I was in my early 20s. I was immortal.”The empty bar at the West Bank Cafe in Manhattan. Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWhen Broadway theaters shut down in March, D’Angora remembered, Olsen was the one worrying about his clientele. “He was concerned about how I was holding up,” D’Angora said. “He’d hand me a bottle of champagne or wine. He was never worried about himself.”Now that clientele wants to return the favor. After closing the second week of March and laying off all but six of his 53 employees, Olsen reopened with outdoor dining last summer. The restaurant also began delivering out of the neighborhood, which brought in a few thousand dollars a week. “I was making deliveries down to TriBeCa in eight minutes,” Olsen said. “There were no cars on the streets. I racked up four speeding tickets from the cameras in the first three months.”“But after Thanksgiving, business went down to nothing,” he said. “I don’t know very many people who can put up $10,000 a week indefinitely to keep a business going out of their own pocket.”Olsen said the $250,000 goal for the GoFundMe campaign would pay off the debt the restaurant has taken on because of the pandemic, and make a dent in some of their future expenses to help them get back on their feet in the spring. “At first, I was a little bit embarrassed to admit I needed help,” he said. “But my family and friends have stepped up, and I’m grateful.”He’s given himself some homework. “I owe the 1,400 people who’ve donated so far thank you letters,” he said. “Those will come out — individually — after the holidays.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More