Death and Company, Hope and Anchor

Friday night, after the performance of Off the Hook, all the directors of the shows and actors who had just played abused teens, drug dealing fathers, and gang members went out for a little drink.

Hope and Anchor is a fabulous little diner on the corner of Van Brunt and Wolcott in Red Hook. It's a brunch joint, it has a full bar, burgers, and I learned is a karaoke hot spot run by drag queens on Friday nights. One of the drag queens, incidentally, when not wearing a tight black skirt and heels, is one of my lead actors.

Karaoke is an entire phenomenon built around the need to sing along.
Try not singing along to My Girl in a crowded room full of people. Some things cannot be explained.

I think the highlight of the evening was our five-foot-one white waitress getting up and singing Baby's Got Back, really, really seriously, but with no rhythm.


After I had heard as many New York centric songs as I think were available, and members of my group finished their rounds of such crooning love songs as Mack the Knife, I headed out to Manhattan to meet up with some Fashionables.

At Death and Company, I imbibed in a Brava Fresca and a plate of chocolate and strawberries with the lovely and talented Jenny Yuen. If you haven't made it there yet I highly recommend it. It's a pretty sexy place, if not obviously overpriced, but worth it as a treat.

The bar's whole gimmick is to bring back the golden age of the cocktail.
Cute and fun.

Death and Company is a also a poem by Sylvia Plath, just as a side note. I think the two are unrelated.