Blog: The Tank

Life has been busy. I'm finally catching up on pictures from January, when Jen Donovan departed from The Tank with a fun party, and Danny cooked the latest incarnation of the Guest Chef series, featuring artichokes, the lobsters of the vegetable world (eating them requires extensive disassembly and involves dipping in butter, the edible part is a small minority of the overall mass, and they are delicious).

42nd Street between Dyer and 10th Avenues used to be home to the Houseman Theater, the Fairbanks Theater, several small studio theaters, and The Tank. The block was eventually bought by Bloomberg administration buddies The Related Companies, the theaters, diner, and other businesses kicked out, and the structures torn down.

This was all expected and anticipated for years. But the real insult was when Related announced that they hoped to qualify for the "theater bonus," which allowed taller buildings than normal in that neighborhood for developers who included theaters in their buildings, by creating a permanent home for Cirque de Soleil... a very far cry from the kind of off-Broadway arts spaces the law was designed to encourage. Neighborhood activists and elected officials protested, but the Department of City Planning was the one to decide, and the Department of City Planning is overseen by Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, who has repeatedly arranged sweetheart deals for Related.

Today, however, the Times reported that DCP actually denied the petition. We still don't know what Related will build on the site (perhaps they should consider creating a permanent home for The Tank instead) but at least the former home of an innovative space for emerging performing and visual artists won't be succeeded by a circus.

The heat's been off for a month, but the lights finally went out on 42nd Street for The Tank after one last huge party.

Time Out New York wrote, "Leftist — and always right — Air America personalities and quintesential alternative comics Garofalo and Seder braodcast their popular radio show in front of a live audience on the eve of the Tank's demise."

Sam and Janeane were indeed left, and they were right. And Time Out was right about this show taking place on The Tank's penultimate night on 42nd Street. The word "demise" wasn't quite right, however, as The Tank will continue, for now, at a temporary space on 37th Street.

But for this night, The Tank was packed with eager liberals watching Sam Seder and Janeane Garofalo, and their guests Jason Bateman of "Arrested Development", Oscar-winning actor (and star of my favorie movie) Tim Robbins, and Paul Rieckhoff of Operation Truth.

I have a photo in Time Out New York this week, on page 89: this one, in fact, featuring Janeane flipping off Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam sporting a vintage "I Only Drink With Liberals" Drinking Liberally button.

The photo ran this week to publicize Friday's return of Sam and Janeane to The Tank. Dispatches and a few early photos not taken by me are up at the Majority Report Radio blog. My photos coming soon!

It's been another action-packed few days, taking place almost entirely between The Tank and Rudy's:

Wednesday, a rally with the Alliance for Quality Education with Laughing Liberally comedian Katie Halper, State Senator Eric Schneiderman, and actress Cynthia Nixon, who is a very sweet person, put on the Drinking Liberally button I presented her, and then stayed around to talk to people after the event.

Thursday, Drinking Liberally featuring special appearances by Congressman and mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who stopped by and made a few brief remarks, and City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Gifford Miller, who went one better by staying around for almost an hour, drinking, eating Rudy's free hot dogs, and impressing many attendees.

And on Friday the Thirteenth, the final 42nd Street performance of ImproVision, and Brian Rosenthal's 27th birthday.

I need nearly a whole day off just to edit the photos!

Cosmopolity is best known for the calendar and for Drinking Liberally, but we also organize many other activities. This past weekend, on May Day, we hosted Get the Campaigns Cooking: A May Day Cook-Out, where volunteers from 2004 met the campaigns of 2005 and 2006. New York City has an election coming up this fall, meaning there are a lot of very interesting races going on right now, not to mention Congress in 2006.

We heard from Congressional candidates Chris Owens (Brooklyn) and Ben Shuldiner (northern Westchester and surrounding area), Manhattan Borough President contenders Scott Stringer and Carlos Manzano, Mark Peters running for Brooklyn DA, and three City Council candidates, Eric Cesnik (Upper East Side), Gur Tsabar (East Village/Lower East Side), and Darren Bloch (same district). Representatives from Gifford Miller's and Anthony Weiner's mayoral campaigns, Borough President candidate Brian Ellner, and several others joined in, talking to potential supporters and recruiting volunteers.

And I got to meet Al Franken the next evening.

It's become fairly routine - another Drinking Liberally chapter gets started (this time, in Park Slope just in time for the State of Delusion the Union address), I go to a few parties, and The Tank hosts a terrific event (this time, a screening of Eyes on the Prize, a very important documentary about a pivotal time in our nation's history, now nearly impossible to see due to copyright restrictions).

Thursday, January 20 was an evening of many parties. While Bush was being coronated - I mean inaugurated - for his second term in Washington, New Yorkers celebrated in protest at the UnAugural Ball, featured on Air America Radio. The exposure also led to over 12 new Drinking Liberally chapters, and counting, in cities from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Fort Collins, Colorado.

Thanks to Arielle Krebs for the great pictures of the UnAugural Ball, which I sadly wasn't able to attend - since at the same time, high in the Sierra Nevada, Google had rented out every hotel room in Squaw Valley for its annual ski trip. This year the company had grown so big we had to hold the party out in the parking lot, under five tents erected just for the occasion. Each tent had a different kind of music, with the main tent featuring 80s cover band and Tellme favorite Tainted Love, returning for the second year in a row. I joined a game of Mafia and successfully fooled the others as a Mafia member in my first game. The trip was definitely fun, though it's too bad we couldn't fit all the activities - dancing, talking, board games, poker, guitar playing and singing, and more - inside a single building, as we could last year. Next year, who knows?

Everybody knows the first verse of "Auld Lang Syne," but few know what it means. At the stroke of midnight at The Tank, we sang the complete words of the song - though very off-key, and with a certain amount of confusion as early as the second verse when we encountered, "And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp." But we all did "tak a right guid-willie waught" (a goodwill draught) for auld lang syne (times gone by) and more importantly, times to come with good friends present.