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      in Music

      Smoke Rises: A Jazz Room Returns on the Upper West Side

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      This storefront club that’s been mostly shuttered since spring 2020 has long been home to small-group jazz steeped in tradition. Now, it reopens, with some renovations.On a recent Friday evening at Smoke, the storefront Upper West Side jazz club that’s been mostly shuttered since the spring of 2020, owners and staff scrambled about as you might expect in the run-up to a long-awaited reopening. As the crowd took its seats for a preview concert, technicians climbed ladders and handled minor crises. One of the venue’s co-owners, Paul Stache, consulted with an engineer on the in-room and livestream sound, while the other, Molly Sparrow Johnson, kept tabs on a wait staff that will be serving an expanded capacity of about 80 when it reopens on Thursday.The band, meanwhile, couldn’t have looked more calm. On the newly widened bandstand, with red curtains as plush as the inside of a jewelry box as a backdrop, the pianist David Hazeltine and his longstanding trio — “the cats,” as Stache called them — beamed at each other, glad to be back. Their set, once it started, exemplified the sound of Smoke: warm, small-group jazz steeped in tradition but powered by in-the-moment invention. It’s inviting but uncompromising, sophisticated yet playful, the sound of a neighborhood jazz club with an international reputation.“It’s always been a musician’s dream to play here, even when it was a hole in the wall,” Hazeltine said in an interview between sets. “From the beginning, it’s been set up as a music room above all else, which is actually rare for jazz clubs. Smoke’s always had the greatest sound system, and the owners care deeply about the music itself and the musicians’ welfare.”Paul Stache and Molly Sparrow Johnson, the owners of Smoke, in their upgraded space.Geoffrey Haggray for The New York TimesThe storied singer Mary Stallings, who has performed since the early 1960s, concurs. “Smoke is home,” she said in an interview in early July. “It’s got that real jazz room feeling that’s hard to describe. It reminds me of when I was a kid and how the clubs used to be.” Stallings, who will perform at Smoke from Aug. 11-14, added, “In a setting like that, when you’re making music, you feel like you can do anything.”Stache and Frank Christopher founded Smoke in 1999 in the space at 2751 Broadway that had been Augie’s Jazz Bar, where the Berlin-born Stache had tended bar and waited tables upon moving to New York. “The inspiration at the time was to build a club that could fit a grand piano for Harold Mabern to play,” Stache said, referring to the bandleader and composer who would come to be associated with the club. Mabern died in 2019.Smoke didn’t just give Mabern a place to play but also a place to record his final half-dozen albums for Smoke Sessions, the label Stache and Christopher founded in 2014. “It was really at the urging of the cats who play here,” Stache said. He always had recorded the music in his club, sharing it with the musicians.Eventually, the sound quality was high enough that some of the musicians wanted to release the recordings. Smoke Sessions put out several of those live releases, recorded and produced by Stache, including Hazeltine’s 2014 “For All We Know” album (“a work worthy of high praise,” said The New York City Jazz Record).But, in the usual Smoke fashion, the enterprise soon became increasingly ambitious, as the label started booking studio time at Sear Sound in Hell’s Kitchen to document the work of several generations of top-tier musicians, including Renee Rosnes, Orrin Evans, Jimmy Cobb, Vincent Herring and Eddie Henderson. At a time when major labels tend to overlook mid- and late-career jazz players, Smoke Sessions has gone all in, with eight albums slated for 2023 release, including LPs from Al Foster, Wayne Escoffery and Nicholas Payton.Independent jazz labels, like neighborhood jazz clubs, aren’t exactly a growth industry in 2022. While venues like Smalls and Zinc Bar have weathered the pandemic, scene mainstays like the Jazz Standard and 55 Bar have shuttered. At the same time, many enterprising musicians have increasingly taken to performing outside of the world of clubs with drink minimums, in restaurants, homes and venues like the Downtown Music Gallery, a record store, or pass-the-tip-jar bars like Brooklyn’s Bar Bayeux. The moment suggests the early days of the 1970s loft scene, which led to a vital creative flowering but offered legacy musicians like the ones booked at Smoke fewer opportunities for well-paying gigs.Stache and Sparrow Johnson, who are married as well as being business partners, acknowledge that for the club and label to thrive, and for the players to get paid, the bar and restaurant must thrive, too. Hence the expansion.The old Smoke was tight, so intimate that during a ballad, audiences might overhear more than they would wish of what was happening in the bathroom. During the pandemic shutdown, while Smoke experimented with sidewalk concerts and livestreaming, the co-owners finalized a deal with their landlord to take over the leases of two vacant spaces next door, a former law office and dry cleaner’s. Now, the bar and the bathrooms have been moved into a fully separate lounge area. The revamped music room offers audiences more personal space than many jazz clubs, and boasts sightlines clean enough that someone sitting at a back-row table can still see the pianist’s fingers.Geoffrey Haggray for The New York TimesSparrow Johnson is excited about the lounge, a welcoming space designed to invite in people — like the many passers-by who peek into the storefront windows during a performance — who just want a drink or conversation but might feel intimidated by a jazz club or cover charges. She’s also moved by signs of Smoke’s established place in the neighborhood vibe of a club where it’s not unusual to see children in the audience. She said, “I had someone come to interview as a server recently, and he said, ‘I have really formative memories of my parents bringing me here.’ That’s what it’s all about. People have these memories, and also it’s an ongoing living thing that’s still happening.”Those memories now stretch back decades — and are still works in progress. The act that Stache and Christopher booked for Smoke’s first opening, back in 1999, was the saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master George Coleman, who will also be headlining this week’s official reopening. This will be the third time that Coleman, now 87, has kicked off a new era for the club; in 2001, a Coleman group played the first Smoke sets after 9/11. “People were sitting there kind of broken, and he went up there and soothed people,” Stache recalled. “He wasn’t trying to cheer people up. It was more about we’re here together, and I’m going to play what I can for you.”That night Coleman and company did what musicians always do at Smoke: They played the room in its moment. Hazeltine and his trio did the same two Fridays back, offering an ebullient set of standards and originals. Stache has heard these musicians countless times over the years, at the club or in the studio, but still, near the end of the first set, he stood in the back of the club, filming a Hazeltine solo on his phone. Surely, as the co-owner, he could just catch it again on the livestream recording. But in the room, in that moment, he couldn’t help himself. More

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      in Television

      Why an NPR Quiz Show Panelist Loves Her ‘Messy Apartment’

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      Faith Salie, known for, among other things, her role on ‘Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,’ is ‘evangelical about the Upper West Side.’Faith Salie — a panelist on the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” a contributor to “CBS News Sunday Morning,” a podcast host (her latest, “Broadway Revival,” debuted Nov. 18), an actor, an author, a baker (her Coca-Cola cake, made from her mother’s recipe, is serious business), a Rhodes scholar (life isn’t fair) and a charmer — lives with her two children and one husband, as she puts it, in a postwar high-rise near Lincoln Center.“We love this area so much that it’s hard to look elsewhere for something more spacious or more affordable,” said Ms. Salie, 50, whose solo show, “Approval Junkie,” based on her 2016 essay collection of the same name, runs through Dec. 12 at the Minetta Lane Theatre. (It will also be recorded as an Audible Original.) “I’m evangelical about the Upper West Side.”She could probably learn to warble hosannas about other parts of town — yes, Ms. Salie can sing, too — but since moving to Manhattan from Los Angeles in 2006 to be the host of the short-lived news-and-entertainment radio show “Fair Game,” she has lived exclusively in a square-mile-and-a-half area bordered by Central Park West and Broadway.The art wall in the dining area is very well populated.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesFaith Salie, 50Occupation: journalist, performer, authorManhattan matriculation: “A friend told me, ‘You are so lucky to live in this apartment, because when you live in New York it’s like you’re at university, and the whole city is your campus and your home is your dorm.’ I try to remember that.”“When I came here, I was separated from my wasband, which is what I call my first husband,” Ms. Salie said. “And over a period of four years, I sublet three furnished apartments. That was my journey until I met my second husband,” she said, referring to John Semel, an education technology executive, whom she married in 2011.“I felt some sort of comfort in the transience of the places I was living,” Ms. Salie continued. “I was actually relieved, because I didn’t feel settled personally. I had so many questions: When is my divorce going to come through? Am I going to marry again? Will I ever become a mother? How will I become a mother on my own?”There was one question she didn’t have to answer, she said: “What kind of furniture do you want? The furniture I want is whatever is here.”The living room in the two-bedroom rental that Faith Salie shares with her husband, John Semel, an executive in education technology, and the couple’s two children, Augustus, 9, and Minerva, 7, is a permanent construction site.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesMs. Salie was pregnant at her wedding, something she loves to mention because, she said, it makes her sound modern. Thus, there was some urgency to finding a rental in her preferred neighborhood and settling in before baby Augustus, now 9, was born. (Daughter Minerva followed two years later.)“John had always lived on the Upper East Side,” Ms. Salie said. “And he always tells me, ‘You were adamant about staying on the Upper West Side, and I was adamant about staying married to you.’”Besides being a good guy, Mr. Semel is good with spreadsheets. He laid out all the possibilities and found the right place: a two-bedroom with nice light and a terrace. Also, fortunately, he came to the union with some “grown-up man” furniture “that he was very proud of,” Ms. Salie said.The haul included a Minotti sofa, a Ligne Roset glass-fronted curio cabinet that was a floor model, a Ligne Roset dining table and chairs, and a pair of Charles Pollock chairs, along with an Eileen Gray marble-topped coffee table that had been in Mr. Semel’s childhood home.“John’s furniture was just fine,” Ms. Salie said. “It’s not my taste, but I don’t know that I have such fully formed taste that I can articulate what my taste actually is. When you’re renting and when you have kids, there are many times when you say, ‘It’s fine.’”To be sure, many things here are a good deal more than fine to Ms. Salie. They tend to be pieces from her travels with Mr. Semel: two rugs and a fanciful painting from the Medina in Fez; a Berber door, also from Morocco, that sits atop the credenza in the entryway; cushions from Paris, London, Venice and Hong Kong that line the sofa; and a large cloth napkin from a restaurant in Florence, Italy, that hangs over Minerva’s bed.The dragon cushion is a replacement for the one Ms. Salie and Mr. Semel bought on a trip to Hong Kong. “We loved it hard,” Ms. Salie said of the original.Katherine Marks for The New York Times“The chef heard that we were on our honeymoon,” Ms. Salie recalled, “and he came out from the kitchen with a box of markers and made the most whimsical drawing on the napkin, put his hand in John’s espresso and threw some on the picture, then brought out some limoncello and sprinkled that on the picture.”But Ms. Salie seems to derive the greatest pleasure from the furniture and objects that speak to the discreet charms of family life: the purple recliner in the bedroom that she sat in to nurse her children; the artwork taped or pushpinned to a wall in the dining nook; the battery of Legos; the picture books arrayed on a library-style cart in the living room; the photos and magnetic alphabet letters affixed to the refrigerator; Augustus’s stuffed animals gathered on a section of his bed that Minerva, 7, calls “the dairy-o” (perhaps a reference to “The Farmer in the Dell,” but no one in the family is certain).The blessed patch of fresh air otherwise known as the terrace is where Mr. Semel smokes one of the more than 300 pipes in his collection, where he and Ms. Salie snap the children’s first-day-of-the-school-year photos and where they gathered every evening during the height of the pandemic to cheer for frontline workers.“It’s a very emotional place,” Ms. Salie said.A large, framed cloth napkin from a restaurant in Florence, Italy, hangs over Minerva’s bed; it’s a memento from her parents’ honeymoon.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesWhen she and Mr. Semel moved into the apartment, the space seemed ample. Ten years on, they’re bursting at the seams. It helps some that Ms. Salie has rented a one-bedroom unit a floor below to use as an office and as a studio where she records her podcasts.When she is feeling most frustrated — perhaps she has just stepped on an errant Lego piece or is futilely trying to make room on a wall for her children’s latest masterpieces — she quickly regroups.“I think, ‘You know what? If I were a set designer for a play and I wanted to show a house that was fun and not too fancy and a place of joy with parents who treasured their children, what would it look like?’” Ms. Salie said. “And I think it would probably look just like our messy apartment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      in Theater

      A Playwright Has a Message: Anti-Asian Hate Isn’t New

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      Lionelle Hamanaka wrote “Covid Crime” to bring the conversation surrounding such attacks to her neighbors in Manhattan.On Sunday afternoon, a pigeon flew through a performance of “Covid Crime,” a one-act play taking place at a Manhattan intersection, where yellow taxis whizzed by against the backdrop of a halal food cart.The show, written by Lionelle Hamanaka and directed by Howard Pflanzer, was unfolding in Richard Tucker Park, a tiny cobblestone triangle on the Upper West Side. It was more of a reading than a staging — its seven actors sat in metal folding chairs, as did the audience of about 50 people.“I saw this TV coverage of a woman being assaulted on a bus with an umbrella. She was an older woman, an older Asian American,” Hamanaka said last week, before the play. “I thought it would be interesting to see how the community’s affected by it. Because we see the outside story, but we don’t necessarily see every case.”At the start of the pandemic, the coalition Stop AAPI Hate — AAPI stands for Asian American Pacific Islander — formed and began its own tally of such attacks. From March 19, 2020 to June 30, 2021, the group received 9,081 reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans across the United States. That number was not just a mere statistic to Hamanaka, who is Japanese American.“My parents were in the concentration camps, and of course that caused a great deal of hardship for our family,” she said, referring to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. “My grandparents both had businesses, and they had to sell them in one week. They had to pack up all their things and leave. And that leaves a scar in your mind.”The playwright Lionelle Hamanaka spoke to the crowd ahead of her show, “Covid Crime.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesSo Hamanaka, a playwright and onetime jazz singer who describes herself as a senior, funneled her frustration into art. She’s written a series of plays about Covid-19, including “Covid 10,366,” about the April 2020 spike in Covid-19 deaths, and “The Spitter,” about a supermarket dispute over mask wearing. But this is the first time she has addressed the recent rise in anti-Asian American hate crimes in her work.Hamanaka noticed that much of the organizing surrounding the #StopAsianHate movement in New York was taking place in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where about 33 percent of the population identified as Asian in 2019, according to the N.Y.U. Furman Center, which studies housing and urban policy.She wanted to bring the movement to her neighborhood, the Upper West Side, where about 10 percent of the population identified as Asian. “Then the people who are there have to look around and look at Asian Americans in a slightly different way,” Hamanaka said. “‘Like, ‘Have I excluded them? Do I treat them as a foreigner?’”“Covid Crime” was presented by Crossways Theater, a group formed in 2018 by Hamanaka and Pflanzer. It aims to develop playwrights that reflect the diversity of their neighborhood.“The idea is to bring the audience closer to these issues,” said Pflanzer, 77. “Get them to engage and participate in understanding and being aware of this very important issue of anti-Asian hate in our communities.”In the play, the character Dr. Leo Chan (John Bernos) arrives home from a shift at Bellevue Hospital. He lives with his mother, Chunhua (Hamanaka), who is asleep on the couch in the living room.“It’s just me, Ma,” Leo says. Chunhua grunts, and he notices a bandage on her head.“What’s that?” he asks. “What happened?”“Woman hit me with umbrella,” Chunhua says.“Where?” Leo asks.“On a bus,” Chunhua replies. “She say I bring Chinese virus to New York. Now everybody dying.”Bernos, a Filipino American actor from Ann Arbor, Mich., drove nine hours to New York for “Covid Crime.” After the performance, an audience member asked him about the hardest part of the role.About 50 people attended the performance, which was followed by a community forum.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“I’ve had my share of having a person tell me to go back to China,” Bernos said. “It wasn’t cool. So I think the hardest part is having to dig back into that memory and face that again. It’s always tough.”Though the play revolves around Chunhua’s assault, it also features Dylan Omori McCombs as Corky Lee, the only character in the play based explicitly on a real person. Lee was a Chinese American photographer, journalist and activist from Queens. (He died in January at age 73 after Covid-19 complications.).css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The sad part is that, the more I researched him as much as I could, the more I really wished that he was someone that I had learned about in my history textbooks,” said McCombs, wearing a hoodie that read “Not Your Model Minority.” “He obviously is of the caliber of someone that would be very much worthy of that.”“Covid Crime” ends on a rally set in Chinatown’s Columbus Park.“We’re here today because of the attacks against Asian Americans,” Lee says. “That’s been news in the pandemic, and the news is my business. My photos are proof that we exist — that we do a lot of things.”The performance was followed by a community forum. Shirley Ng, a community organizer at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Jacqueline Wang, the head of marketing and communications at Welcome to Chinatown, both spoke to the small crowd.“Just like the play, many seniors will come home and not know what to do,” Ng said. “They could’ve gone to the police precinct or called 911, but there’s always this fear that they may get turned away, because they don’t have someone who speaks their language, or there’s just this fear of stepping in and not knowing — what is the process?”“Covid Crime” was presented by Crossways Theater, which aims to develop playwrights that reflect the diversity of the Upper West Side.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe fund, a 47-year-old national organization based in New York, works to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans — including encouraging seniors to report any hate crimes that may occur. Welcome to Chinatown, founded last year, is a grass roots initiative that supports Chinatown’s businesses and amplifies its voices.“Another thing covered by this play is that, when you don’t know someone — you don’t look like them, you don’t speak their language, you don’t know their culture, you don’t eat the same things — it’s really easy to just label them as ‘other,’” Wang said. “That’s something not new to the pandemic, but something that was exacerbated and highlighted.”In the last act of “Covid Crime,” Dr. Leo Chan speaks a common Chinese phrase. “We have a saying, ‘Swallow bitterness.’ Leave that behind. Won’t work these days!” More

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      in Television

      The ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah Stiles

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat I LoveThe ‘Sentimental Excess’ of Sarah StilesThe actor, who stars in the Netflix series ‘The Crew’ and is a regular on ‘Billions,’ is like a slightly goofy sitcom neighbor with an otherworldly home.Sarah Stiles’s Otherworldly Style14 PhotosView Slide Show ›Katherine Marks for The New York TimesMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSarah Stiles’s first address in New York was the Stratford Arms, an Upper West Side building that serves as campus housing for students at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Fittingly, the experience had its share of theatrics.The year was 1999. Ms. Stiles’s parents, though long divorced, jointly shepherded her from “the hippie woods of New Hampshire” to the urban jungle of West 70th Street. “And when we got there, there was a giant inflatable rat in front of the building, and people were picketing,” said Ms. Stiles, 41, a star of the new Netflix comedy series “The Crew” and a recurring cast member — Axe Capital trader Bonnie Barella — on Showtime’s “Billions.”The room at the Stratford Arms was too small to accommodate a standard twin bed, and at the time, some of the building’s nonstudent residents were being treated for mental illness, she recalled.“There was a guy who would scream ‘Maria’ at me every night in an angry voice,” said Ms. Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee — for her performance in the play “Hand to God” and her showstopping turn in the musical “Tootsie.” “Things could only go up from there.”The Upper West Side apartment shared by Sarah Stiles, a two-time Tony nominee and a star of the new Netflix series “The Crew,” and her husband, Jeff Dodson, has an otherworldly feeling. She prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesSarah Stiles, 41Occupation: ActorHome comforts: “I’m the kind of person who makes a home out of anywhere I go. If I’m working regionally or shooting a movie far away, I bring things like photos.”And they did. After bouncing around the boroughs, followed by a brief marriage that landed her in Washington, D.C., and a lot of couch-surfing when she returned to New York, Ms. Stiles got the fairly steady use of a two-bedroom rental not far from that Upper West Side residence hall. Now she lives there full-time — and officially — with her husband of almost six months, Jeff Dodson. (The second bedroom has been outfitted to accommodate Mr. Dodson’s two daughters, Lily and Addy, who spend part of each week there.)“This place has major history for me,” Ms. Stiles said.It began almost 20 years ago, when she visited the apartment as a plus-one for a game night; her future first husband was a pal of the host. Soon, Ms. Stiles became the host’s pal, too. The friendship survived the breakup of her marriage, and Ms. Stiles often used the apartment as a crash pad.“When ‘Hand to God’ came around, my friend’s roommate was moving out and my friend was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles,” she said. “So, basically, it was my own place for this really incredible time in my life both personally and professionally. I did a lot of growing up here.”In the fall of 2018, two years after she met Mr. Dodson, who is the head electrician at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Ms. Stiles moved from the apartment she loved to the Inwood apartment of the man she loved. Three months later, just about the time she had finished redecorating Mr. Dodson’s apartment, and right before the start of rehearsals for “Tootsie,” her friend called. He was vacating the apartment for good and wanted to sign the lease over to her. “He said that he wanted me to live there with Jeff and Jeff’s daughters,” recalled Ms. Stiles. She was happy to oblige.Ms. Stiles has a thing for squirrels, so the acorn lamp makes perfect sense.Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York Times“We moved everything in, like, a weekend,” she said. “We repainted. We got some furniture, and now it’s our house.”Several years and several rentals ago, Ms. Stiles made an unsuccessful stab at minimalism. Recently, she has contemplated following the example of a friend whose apartment was done in shades of cream and gray. “It was beautiful,” she said.But she knew perfectly well that the red plastic chair that is part of her reading nook in the main bedroom, and the layered, multicolored tasseled rugs and pea-green side chair in the living room would be out in the cold with such a restrained palette. She loves bright colors. She loves bold patterns.Ms. Stiles is the square root of a charming but slightly goofy sitcom neighbor. Her apartment reflects those qualities. The aesthetic may best be summed up as otherworldly woodland: tarot cards and an abundance of crystals mix with tiny figures created from sticks and twigs. A bird made of straw seems poised for flight in one window. In another, there’s a plush pigeon — a gift from Mr. Dodson, who, when he was first courting Ms. Stiles, saved the day when an actual pigeon flew into the apartment. Squirrels and their accouterment are represented in many forms: The base of a bedside lamp, for example, is shaped like an acorn.Ms. Stiles prefers the term “sentimental excess” to describe her style.Paintings by her aunt, her grandmother and great-grandmother hang in the living room and the main bedroom. Every window sill has a vignette, composed in part of drawings by Ms. Stiles’s niece and nephew, keepsakes from friends and tender mementos like the pine cone from a hike Ms. Stiles and Mr. Dodson took the day before their wedding.“This apartment, the way it is with Jeff and his kids and me, is the most comfortable space I’ve ever had,” said Ms. Stiles (in Riverside Park with Mr. Dodson and her stepdaughters, Lily Dodson, left, and Addy Dodson).Credit…Katherine Marks for The New York TimesA map of Oklahoma, Mr. Dodson’s home state, hangs in the bedroom. “Everything is here for a reason, and it all means something to me,” Ms. Stiles said.The apartment isn’t perfect, and she’d be the first to say so. It’s either too hot or too cold. No matter how often she scrubs the bathtub, it doesn’t look clean. Because of a wall, the refrigerator barely opens a foot.And yet. “It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel as safe and comfortable in a physical place as I do in this apartment,” Ms. Stiles said. “The things that my family and I love are here. We don’t think, ‘Oh, we’ll get nicer versions when we have more money.’ We’d choose them regardless.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More