In Solidarity with NYC

How Raven McRae, a Broadway Dancer, Spends Her Sundays

Photo Credit: Alex Wroblewski/The New York Times

Raven McRae, a 22-year-old dancer who was trained as an actress at LaGuardia High School, is the only native New Yorker in the cast of “Paramour,” a Cirque du Soleil musical currently on Broadway. Ms. McRae, who spent much of her childhood on Staten Island, lives there with her mother in an apartment in St. George. On Sundays, she commutes by ferry to Manhattan for two performances. Ms. McRae made her Broadway debut as a dancer two years ago in “Motown: The Musical.”  
SHOWER WITH SPOTIFY I wake up at 8 and immediately check my iPhone, which is also my alarm clock, to see if stage management left any message regarding schedule changes. I need to catch a 9 o’clock boat into Manhattan, so I run into the shower and use Spotify on my phone to listen to Kendrick Lamar, who I love. I time my shower to the length of two Kendrick songs. I don’t consider him a rapper; I consider him a poet and an artist. He sings so passionately and doesn’t hold anything back, and that puts me in a good mood and inspires me to give 100 percent of myself on stage. Then I’m running out the door without eating breakfast because for me, chewing is just too much work that early in the morning.

ROLE-PLAY During my walk to the boat, I put on my headphones and sing along to Cynthia Erivo from the soundtrack of “The Color Purple.” I literally pretend I’m Cynthia. I have a nice voice but I never considered myself a singer until I got into “Motown.” Now I’d like to be a principal performer one day, like Cynthia. She’s very inspirational.

GIVE HER FREEDOM, NOT LIBERTY I get on the boat around 9:30 and sit on the side that does not face the Statue of Liberty because that’s where all of the tourists are and it’s just too noisy. I’m going to the city to do two shows so I want to be alone and relaxed, not crazed. I take advantage of the free time by checking Instagram or Facebook, or just staring at the water.

HIT THE BARRE When I get off the boat I jump on the 4 train up to Union Square, where I take an open ballet class for about an hour to get my body loose before I head to the theater. When I get there I usually have a granola bar and some coconut water before I warm up. It’s a great atmosphere; everyone is just focused on getting their bodies in the right alignment. When I have a good class, I have a good day on stage.

PRE-SHOW PASTA I usually get to the theater by noon, an hour earlier than call-time, and I order shrimp and spaghetti from an Italian restaurant and take little bites while I’m putting on my makeup, and the entire dressing room starts smelling like pasta. I spend about a half-hour doing my makeup and another half-hour doing my hair, and then I stretch a bit more. It gets hectic at that point because the dressers start putting our clothes out. About 1:40, I start getting excited because I can begin to hear the crowd coming in. Right before the matinee starts, I like to go on stage and watch the acrobats rehearse and check my marks and maybe run through the beginning of a few dance numbers with some of my cast mates.

INTERMISSION After the matinee, a bunch of us like to walk over to Bryant Park to unwind, even though we’re still in makeup and wearing hats to cover our wig preps. Some days I’ll get ice cream, or I’ll just take my spaghetti and shrimp with me and eat it there. Sometimes we get recognized, and people want to take pictures with us.

KEEP IT LOOSE We get back to the theater by about 5:30, and I take a short nap in the greenroom on a little bed I made using a big lawn cushion from Kmart, a small pillow and a kid’s blanket. By our next call-time, I like to drink a milkshake while I work on my makeup. Then I’ll get loose again by doing some chin-ups or using the elliptical or exercising with some other gadget. They call “Places” at 7:30.

HOME AGAIN After our second show, I catch the 10:30 boat and get home by 11. I like to get into bed and binge-watch “Orange Is the New Black,” which helps settle my nerves before I fall asleep sometime in the middle of the night. International New York Times

Greenpoint’s Culinary Ghosts via Eat By Francis Lam

When I moved to Brooklyn in 1999, I’d never heard of Greenpoint — a working-class Polish community out past Williamsburg with questionable subway access — before the apartment broker sold me on it. My landlords lived upstairs, among clear vinyl tablecloths and a shrine to Pope John Paul II. I ate bigos, a savory, tart stew cooked so long that its many meats fell to nearly spreadable shreds, and incredibly cheap pirogi in fluorescent restaurants, where I would laugh in amazement at how much pork and potatoes five bucks could get you. I walked around my new neighborhood, looking into shops filled with sacks and sacks of rye bread and hundreds of sausages dangling in the windows, wondering how long it would take me to learn all their names. I wanted to be a part of the community, to integrate, but I never became anything more than an interloper. The cold looks I sometimes got on the street confused and bothered me, until I realized that I wasn’t just a new neighbor, that by paying more in rent than the families around me, I’d made living in Greenpoint just that much more expensive for them. I realized those fluorescent dining rooms were populated mostly by single men, men who’d left their families back in Poland while they tried to make some money in America. I realized that, when I was amused by those massive plates of food, I’d never really thought about how hungry I’d be if I spent the day building furniture, or moving it, as many of them did. By the time I moved away a couple of years later, I hadn’t learned the names of any of the sausages. So I was glad, a few weeks ago, when Monika Woods showed me how sweet her life in the old neighborhood had been. Woods also landed in Greenpoint when she first arrived in New York City, about half a dozen years after I left. With her stylish, oversize glasses, she might also be taken for an outsider. But she moved to the neighborhood because she was born in Poland and missed hearing strangers talk to one another in Polish; because the first restaurant she went to used the same plates her grandmother kept in Poland. Woods agreed to show me how to make her mom’s bigos, and we ambled to her favorite meat market. Walking the main drag of Manhattan Avenue, she pointed out the places that always transported her back to Poland: an entire shop devoted to her favorite brands of Polish candy; a storefront completely obscured by its selection of Polish bottled waters; a store that carried Polish beers that are hard to find even in Warsaw. She pointed to a liquor store that once featured live bunnies and chicks in an adorable Easter window display. She’d come back a few weeks later and asked what happened to them. ‘‘To eat,’’ she remembers the owner saying, with Old World matter-of-factness. But her Greenpoint is changing, in the way I think my old neighbors feared. The candy shop now sits empty, for rent. The restaurant that had her grandmother’s plates closed; next door is a new location of an Anthony Bourdain-approved Chinese noodle shop. When we walked by a hip new restaurant, the kind whose dishes feature swooshes of purées and swipes of sauce, we noticed an odd postscript on the menu: ‘‘Owned and operated by residents of Greenpoint.’’ The story of gentrifying communities is always about the dynamic between the new and the old, the outsiders and the insiders, but that friction is palpable when you feel as if you need to stake your claim to the neighborhood on your restaurant’s menu. ‘‘It’s funny,’’ Monika said. ‘‘I moved away a few years ago, but now, when I come back with my baby and go to a cool coffee shop, the people look at me like: ‘Great. Here come the stroller people. There goes the neighborhood.’ ’’Inside the Polam International Meat Market, though, you could easily be convinced that nothing had changed on these blocks for decades, and that nothing should. There were curtains of smoked sausages, tray upon tray of unidentified cured, smoked, roasted, poached, emulsified, rolled, cased, cubed, caul-fatted meats. It’s a museum of meats, and just 20 minutes inside the store will leave your clothes smelling of salt and smoke for hours. That old pang of wanting to know what all this stuff was hit me, and when the kindly counterwoman offered to slice some chicken-and-parsley sausage for me, I thought it might not be too late to start finding out. We bought ribs and wonderfully smoky kielbasa, and, back in my kitchen, Woods showed me her mother’s method for a bigos that marries butter-soft cabbage with the tense pop of sausage in its skin. Hours later, I supped on silky broth rich with fat and gelatin, kept lively by tart sauerkraut and the sweet, almost floral taste of caraway. What should have served eight was just enough for my brother and me. Woods didn’t have any, though — it turns out that she doesn’t eat meat. But she wanted to show me what a proper bigos is like, from the inside. The New York Times Magazine

Added: Back home near Chicago, we have the best Polish Bakery, "Olympia Bakery", and Polish Deli's. I'm in search of more than one Polish Restaurant, although the one I think of is the Prime Rib of Sunday Brunch. A Banquet Hall catering to the whole population. What's especially appealing about the Polish is their work ethic. And everything they set their hearts on is successful. Including, most importantly, their families. My parent's church is home to three Polish Masses every Sunday, with people travelling up to 15 km to be at Mass. The Bakery is one of my first stops when I arrive in my hometown. And although the Polish candies are tempting, it's more about the Kolackies and sweet & nutty coffee cakes. As I'm not the biggest fan of pork, I do instead love a meal of Polish Kraut and Pierogi's made with potato. Chicago can be proud of its Polish Community as they are meticulous in their business endeavors and never cause a fuss for anyone. And yep, the Millennials are pushing strollers now. Maybe the Polish moved out of New York City to be with their compatriots in Chicago. As per my take on bigos I would prepare the dish with a Beef Chuck Roast with Kraut, simmered with a lil wine and onions, and served with a German Spätzle. To the Polish, I'd say, "Nazdarovya", to a great many years of Polish neighbors, businesses and cuisine. Eat your hat Greenpoint NYC. Our Chicago Polish are here to stay. Photo

Christopher Cross

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Staten Island's best place for coffee & a snack: Pasticceria Bruno is your 2014 Reader's Choice Award winner By Pamela Silvestri

Pasticceria Bruno

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Whether it's an after-school stop for
a teenager or an oasis during the day for a harried parent, a most treasured place is an outfit that offers a great cup of coffee and snack to go along with it. Here are your 2014 Readers' Choice Award picks for such spots.

And the winner is: Pasticceria Bruno — 1650 Hylan Blvd., Dongan Hills, 718-987-5859; 676 Forest Ave., West Brighton, 718-448-0993,  PasticceriaBruno.com — with 3,405 votes. Of course it's a winner with 3-star Michelin chef Rick Laakonnen at the Dongan Hills location, Food Network's "Chopped!" champ Franco Franzese in West Brighton and acclaimed Biagio Settepani as pastry chef for both operations. The pretty cafes offer both sweet and savory treats for the discerning patron looking to savor an espresso or cappuccino, not necessarily have a full meal. SILive Pasticceria Bruno