The Oak Room Closes

WCK3 texted me: "I can't believe you have not posted about the Oak Room closing". I must admit, up to the minute as I attempt to be, I can't be on the Internet or watching TV 24 hours of the day. This scoop slipped past me. I immediately searched for an account of this announcement.

Oak Room at The Plaza

WCK3 most likely felt a special sentiment for this NYC spot. On December 24, 1976, we had attended the theatre & after a rousing good time seeing The Royal Family (Rosemary Harris, George Grizzard & Eva Le Gallienne), as we came out of the theatre we treated to big fat, perfect, magic, stage worthy snowflakes that had been falling as we had witnessed theatre magic. It was like stepping on to a stage set of NYC at Christmas. The streets were mostly empty & the city grinned at us like it had been lit by a baby pink spotlight.

Some guy I picked up at The Oak Room at The Plaza

We decided to walk home to the Upper West Side & as we crossed Central Park South, I suggested ducking into The Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel. We prolonged the evening with cocktails & nibbles at the famed dining room.

A warm glow has fallen over you readers... but, WCK3 was a bit confused. The Oak Room at the Plaza (now condos) still exists. The Oak Room that is being shuttered is the bar & cabaret space at my beloved Algonquin Hotel. Part of the room’s history includes a link to the famed Round Table whose acerbic members included Dorothy Parker & Robert Benchley. The literary salon first met there is 1919.

Andrea Marcovicci at the Oak Room at The Algonquin... known to steal my material

The ghost of Dorothy Parker is still sipping her martini, but the space that has been the toast of the Cabaret world for 35 years, with regular gigs by: Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall, KT Sullivan, & Karen Akers, is finished. Andrea Marcovicci sang her last sad song on the tiny stage. This only leaves The Carlyle as a top notch, A list cabaret in NYC. Is this style of music, great singers swinging the Great Standards, ready to be boarded up also?

I have a special place in my heart for the room that goes beyond the Algonquin Round Table Gang. I had planned on shocking the show biz world with the resurrection of my act: Steve Sings Sad Songs for the Soused
Sweethearts. Here was my abandoned Set List for the much anticipated return of my Supper Club Show:
1. Whip My Hair
2. Sister Morphine
3. The Crane's Wife (Decemberists cover)
4. Back In Baby's Arms
5. As Tears Go By
6. A Wonderful Guy
7.Straight To The Top
8. Do Do Do
9. I Enjoy Being A Girl
10. Mean To Me
11. Prisoner Of Love (Kitty Wells cover)
12. Alone When It Rains
13. A Small Day Tomorrow
Encore Medley:
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
Wild Horses
Horse With No Name
One Trick Pony
Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
Bring On The Dancing Horses
(featuring the cast of War Horse)
Final Encore:
Let's Stay Together in a duet with surprise special star: Barack Obama

The Encore for Steve Sings Sad Songs For The Soused Sweethearts

December 26th

Today's the big day... that day that we eagerly await for as soon as the Halloween pumpkin is tossed on the compost heap- the Feast of Stephen or Boxing Day or Wren Day. Well actually, this is the start of The Week of Stephen. It begins today - the Feast Day of St. Stephen, to whom it shall be noted, was the first Christian to be stoned, no small significance to me personally.

At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, birthdays are celebrated with a week long celebration honoring the recipient with a series of celebrations & kindnesses. We start today with St. Stephen’s day & wraps up on January 3rd with the birthday of yours truly. Today, I am going to start to prepare for my birthday with a week of being celibate, doing a cleansing fast: no alcohol, no pizza… unless I should slip up & end up getting drunk & getting laid.

St. Stephen was stoned to death in 34 AD by a mob led by Paul (when he was still Saul). In Acts 1 it says:
Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, "We have heard Stephen speak words of blasphemy against Moses & against God." So they stirred up the people & the elders & the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen & brought him before the Sanhedrin. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place & change the customs Moses handed down to us." Since Stephen was the first martyr, he's referred to as a protomartyr, a word we only get to use once a year.

Good King Wenceslas is the big musical number for St. Stephen's Day. The tune was originally written for the song, Tempus Adest Floridum (It is time for flowering), a 13th-century spring carol first introduced in the 1582's Swede/Finn co-production: Piae Cantiones. Perhaps you have seen it? If you've never really listened to the lyrics to Good King Wenceslas, they deal with the Bohemian King going out on St. Stephen's Day to give alms to the poor. A rich Duke’s page is freezing to death but Wenceslas's footprints provide magical warmth…. or something like that.

If you live in the Anglo-land, then you don't need to have Boxing Day explained... unless you're from the USA or Ireland, the only Anglo-ish countries that do not celebrate it. On Boxing Day, you give a gift to your inferiors. This seems to me to be very patronizing & classist, or rather-very English. "Oh it's nothing. Just a little something I, your superior in class, got for you, one of the lower orders." Even the English seemed to have realized this seemed a bit condescending, now they just use today to take advantage of after-Christmas sales, to buy stuff for themselves. Back in a time far way, the Husband & I would travel from our home in Seattle to one of our favorite cities- Vancouver BC, to enjoy the Boxing Day sales. Merchandise at the Canadian stores- Eaton’s & The Bay Company etc, would be marked down 60%, which with the strength of the US dollar against the Canadian(those were the days!), would make for terrific savings. We would then spend our saved money on dining out at the swellest spots in Vancouver, & leaving tips for our inferiors.

In Wales, the people of my own heritage, they have their own peculiar brand of St. Stephen's Day acknowledgement. On what they named- Gŵyl San Steffan, it is customary to bleed the livestock & slash female servants with holly branches. How can we can explain the Welsh?

Why no Boxing Day in Ireland? The Irish celebrate- Lá an Dreoilín, or Wren Day. Before I looked it up, I thought- "Oh, Wren's Day. They must venerate the little birds on this day." Actually, traditionally on this day, young hooligans called- Wrenboys got together & hunted down the tiny, defenseless creatures. Then they'd go around with the dead wren's tiny corpse fastened to the end of a pole, singing songs & drinking. Wrens have a reputation for treachery in Irish culture & legend has it that wrens betrayed Irish forces during a Viking attack & so the Irish on this day kill the wrens out of revenge. By the 1930s, wrens were almost extinct in Ireland. That will teach a lesson to those traitorous wrens!

& now, at the end of the feast day of Saint Stephen, I leave you to be stoned & go to bed. I am to pooped to post.