Spooky stuff tends to hog the culture calendar in October, but I’m not mad. As a horror fan I live for scary season, which is why I put together a guide to celebrating Halloween in and around New York. But what else is there to do this month besides dress up like the “Weapons” witch and stuff your face with Snickers minis? Here are my picks.
Comedy
The amount of top-tier comedy in New York this month is so good, it’s not even funny. Jon Stewart, John Mulaney and Pete Davidson share the bill at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., on Oct. 15. With 10 new shows starting on Oct. 24, Jerry Seinfeld continues his residency at the Beacon Theater, which is home to other marquee names in October, including Bridget Everett (Oct. 16-17), Atsuko Okatsuka (Oct. 18-19), Larry David (Oct. 21) and John Oliver and Seth Myers (Oct. 26). Also, Druski is at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (Oct. 11), while John Cleese is at Town Hall in Midtown (Oct. 15).
Like Minds
The New York Blood and Ink Tattoo & Horror Convention (Oct. 3-5), at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, N.Y., brings together hundreds of tattoo artists from around the world — and hosts a Miss Inked Pageant! At the city’s annual geek-out, New York Comic Con (Oct. 9-12), at the Javits Center, expect to see celebrities like Sigourney Weaver and Laurence Fishburne. If obscure show tunes and witty banter are your thing, the New York Cabaret Convention is at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater (Oct. 21-23).
Music
Hispanic Heritage Month ends on Oct. 15, but keep the celebration going on Oct. 18 with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s family matinee “Who Is Celia Cruz?” or a concert from the Grammy-winning mariachi singer Aida Cuevas at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx.
And there’s always a show for every generation. Boomers: Diana Ross at the St. George Theater on Staten Island (Oct. 29). Gen X: Richard Marx at the Café Carlyle (Oct. 21-25). Millennials: Sam Smith’s “To Be Free” residency at Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (starting on Oct. 8). Gen Z: Billie Eilish at UBS Arena (Oct. 25-26).
Film
Among the highlights at this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival (Oct. 3-13) in East Hampton, N.Y., are two early Christmas gifts for musical theater fans: the latest adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Jennifer Lopez, and, on closing night, a filmed version of the recent hit Broadway revival of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.”
The month’s other cinephile-centric events include NewFest (Oct. 9-21), New York’s annual L.G.B.T.Q. film festival, at the School of Visual Arts Theater in Chelsea, and the Borscht Belt Film Fest (Oct. 31-Nov. 2), presented by the Borscht Belt Museum in Ellenville, N.Y.
Explorations
The next time you’re in Tompkins Square Park, look closely at an ornate granite kiosk near Avenue A and you’ll see that it’s not covering just any fountain, but a temperance fountain — a 19th-century monument to teetotaling. On Oct. 16, the author Stephanie Azzarone will be at Book Culture in Morningside Heights for a free talk about this and other prominent municipal waterworks that she writes about in her new book, “Fabulous Fountains of New York.”
Open House New York Weekend (Oct. 17-19), the annual (and largely free) opportunity for the nosy to nose around hundreds of artist studios, architectural landmarks and other often restricted spaces, this year offers access to attractions such as the recently restored Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch near Prospect Park, and the Yankee Ferry, a former Ellis Island vessel that’s now a floating home off Staten Island.
Art
The maverick multidisciplinary artist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992, posed for dramatic self-portraits around New York City in the late 1970s wearing a mask of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. At the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, those defining works are in “David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York,” starting on Oct. 1.
“The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” a sweeping survey of Black queer life here in the 1920s and ’30s, opens at the New York Historical on Oct. 10. Among the more than 200 objects featured are recordings from Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Earle Richardson.
Theater
In “The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella,” a boundary-pushing show inspired by a real-life murder, the Brazilian performer Carolina Bianchi drugs herself with a spiked cocktail, then remains unconscious for the rest of the performance. From Oct. 23 to 25, the piece makes its U.S. debut at Powerhouse: International, a multidisciplinary art and performance festival that Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn is presenting with L’Alliance New York’s adventurous Crossing the Line fest.
Kids
On Oct. 5, the New York Mycological Society — a.k.a. mushroom buffs — and the Randall’s Island Park Alliance team up for a free family-friendly Fungus Festival at Randall’s Island Urban Farm. The afternoon includes several fungi-related workshops, including how to photograph them and make paper from them.
In “The True Story of Little Red,” our leading lady is a Latina girl who navigates the Big Bad Wolf on her own terms. Good for ages 5 and older, the show runs Saturday afternoons through Oct. 25 at the children’s theater Teatro SEA, at the Clemente on the Lower East Side.
Dance
Dancers are athletes; boxers are on-the-fly choreographers. These concepts guide “Shadowboxing in Blue,” a new piece by Danse Theatre Surreality, a women-and-queer-run company. The dancer-boxers merge movement and combat training with music inside a ring at HAVEN Boxing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Saturdays through Oct. 25, starting this weekend. The show on Oct. 18 is in Spanish and English.
Classical Music
From Oct. 8 to 10, singers and instrumentalists from the vocal chamber ensemble the New Consort and the period instrument band Theotokos will descend into the dramatically eerie crypt under the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for “Relics & Martyrs.” The evening features the premiere of a new cantata by the composer and double bassist Doug Balliett.
Talks
Toward month’s end, a powerhouse mother-daughter duo has some words for us. On Oct. 23, Chelsea Clinton moderates “Empowering the Climate Generation,” billed as an “urgent and hopeful conversation” about education and climate change, at the American Museum of Natural History. On Oct. 28, Hillary Clinton joins her friend Melissa Ludtke, a barrier-breaking sports journalist, at 92NY for a conversation about Ludtke’s memoir, “Locker Room Talk,” and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women.”
Last Call
Be sure to catch New York City Ballet’s fall season before it ends on Oct. 12 with a contemporary program featuring works by Alexei Ratmansky, Jamar Roberts and others. Also, don’t miss the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Superfine,” a survey of Black style and fashion that Wesley Morris called “luminous and vital.” It closes Oct. 26.
The day before the Museum of Modern Art’s career-spanning Chantal Akerman retrospective ends Oct. 16, I recommend blocking out three and a half hours to see its screening of “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” her slice-of-life opus from 1975 about a widowed mother going about her days in Brussels. In 2022, Sight and Sound magazine named it the best film of all time.
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