Are people who FaceTime while walking down the street literally insane?

This Friday, March 6, the Empire State Building will host its first-ever comedy show, transforming one of the world’s most famous landmarks into an intimate stand-up venue for one night only. The event pairs the Art Deco icon with Underground Overground Comedy, the NYC collective known for staging sold-out shows in venues ranging from Katz’s Deli to laundromats and vintage shops.

The 7:30pm show (doors open at 6:45pm) will take place inside the Empire Lounge, an event space that’s typically not open to the public. Guests can expect a 75-minute live set from Underground Overground’s secret lineup (they never announce performers in advance), along with complimentary food from Katz’s Deli and an open bar serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks throughout the show. (In other words, no wallet juggling between jokes.)

After the final punchline lands, the night continues with post-show access to the building’s second-floor museum experience and the iconic 86th-floor observation deck. It’s a rare chance to wander through one of New York’s most visited attractions without the usual daytime crowds—and this time with a buzz from both the skyline and the bar.

After a sold-out 2025 run, Edge and live-event producer Fever are bringing back their Candlelight Evenings series, this time with a string quartet worthy of Lady Whistledown.

Bridgerton Candlelight Evenings at Edge will take place from 8pm to 9pm for just five nights (February 28, March 1, March 6, March 7 and March 13). Expect standing-room-only indoor pop-up performances featuring classical takes on the show’s swoony pop covers, all set against 360-degree views of the Manhattan skyline from 100 stories up. Thousands of candles will illuminate the space, transforming the sleek observation deck into something closer to a royal ballroom in the clouds.

The experience is open to all Edge ticketholders, meaning you can pair your concert moment with a wander onto the outdoor sky deck with its glass floor, angled glass walls and skyline steps spanning the 100th and 101st floors. During non-performance windows, all guests can take part in Bridgerton-themed photo ops, including an 8-foot wisteria arch and a Victorian-inspired gold-framed mirror.

At the moment, everyone (us included) is obsessed with Love Story, Ryan Murphy’s glossy take on the courtship and marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. And on Sunday, March 8, New Yorkers especially enamored with the relationship (and with JFK Jr. himself) should make their way to Washington Square Park, where a JFK Jr. lookalike competition is set to take place. The contest is scheduled for 1pm, right beneath the iconic Washington Square Arch. There’s a $250 cash prize for the contestant who most resembles JFK Jr. 

New York’s ongoing matcha obsession is getting a serious carb-forward upgrade this spring. Starting March 5 through the end of the month, Breads Bakery is rolling out a limited-time, matcha-packed menu that leans just as heavily into pastries and desserts as on cafe classics.

The brewed lineup includes a classic matcha latte, available hot or iced and made with your milk of choice, plus a straight-up whisked matcha for purists who want the full grassy, bold flavor without distractions. The real headline, though, is the baked menu. There's now a playful green twist on some of the bakery’s signature formats, including the Matchalach, a flaky laminated take on rugelach filled with creamy matcha, as well as matcha brioche buns stuffed with smooth pastry cream. A velvety matcha pound cake brings understated sweetness and crisp shortbread cookies with dark chocolate chips lean into the tea’s slightly bitter edge.

The limited-time lineup will be available at Breads Bakery locations across Manhattan—including Union Square, Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side—so consider this your cue to lean fully into green tea season while it lasts.

Everyone's favorite foul-mouthed teddy bear is back this March, and Peacock is rolling out the red carpet with a night of bowling, debauchery and '90s nostalgia. To celebrate the new season of Ted, Peacock is taking over The Gutter for a house party that will take things all the way back to 1994. The Lower East Side bowling alley will trade its usual dive-bar cool for two nights of senior-year chaos, inspired by Ted and John’s latest misadventures.

The goal here is to get your head out of the clouds and back into the gutter, right where Ted likes to be. The party is set to be a throwback basement bash, complete with analog charm and IRL energy. There will be bowling (with a Ted twist), classic games, retro surprises, exclusive clips from the show, a few irreverent Easter eggs and nods to the show’s working-class Boston roots.

The party runs Friday, March 6 from 4pm to 1am and Saturday, March 7 from 1pm to 1am. It’s first-come, first-served and free to enter, with 18+ welcome until 7pm and 21+ after.

The annual Flamenco Festival returns for its 25th edition, showcaing a wide range of variations on the Spanish form at a dozen New York venues (New York City Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, etc.) from February 25 through March 15. A delegation of over 80 participants from 16 companies, including singers, guitarists, dancers, and technicians, will present their latest creations across the Atlantic for this year's programming — artists such as Manuel Liñán, Eva Yerbabuena, Sara Baras, Olga Pericet, Andrés Marín, Rocío Márquez, Ángeles Toledano, Dani de Morón, Gerardo Núñez, and Antonio Rey, among many others, will headline the New York edition. Information and ticketing for all shows can be found on Flamenco Festival's Spanish-language website.

New York’s most debated staircase is ready for another comeback. Vessel, the towering honeycomb-shaped structure at Hudson Yards, will reopen to visitors on March 9, just in time for the late-winter thaw and the start of spring sightseeing season.

The 150-foot-tall landmark will once again welcome guests daily from 11am to 7pm, offering panoramic views of the Hudson River, the West Side skyline and the ever-expanding Hudson Yards campus. Tickets are already on sale online, but locals get a perk: New York City residents can score free Thursday reservations with proof of ID, plus a limited batch of free day-of tickets released each week.

Queens' own Robert Mapplethorpe is the subject of an expansive (literally) new photography exhibition at the Gladstone Gallery. From March 5 through April 18, the West 24th Street space will display 16 new large-scale, limited-edition photographs by the American photographer, organized in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Most of the pieces will be presented in sprawling 60x60 inch format, ranging in subject from florals to female nudes to famous folks (Grace Jones, Patti Smith) and much more. Altogether, the works "demonstrate Mapplethorpe’s obsession with perfection, which he employed in his practice as a whole," per the gallery. 

The talk in Clare Barron’s icky, tender, gorgeous You Got Older is sometimes so small it nearly vanishes completely. Alia Shawkat plays Mae, a youngish lawyer whose life is in ruins—she has lost her job, her apartment and her boyfriend in one fell swoop—and who has moved back to rural Washington to spend time with her father (Peter Friedman). Between awkward pauses in the play’s opening scene, they discuss gardening, toothbrushes, sleeping arrangements; what they don’t discuss is his recent cancer diagnosis. You Got Older is less about disease than about the unease that surrounds it, and it beautifully captures elusive things about avoidance: It’s about the denial of death, but also the denial of living.

The original Off Broadway production of Barron’s extraordinary play was one of my favorite shows of 2014, and this revival at A24’s Cherry Lane Theatre—impeccably directed, once again, by Anne Kauffman—is as funny and discomfiting as the original. I’ve gotten older, but the play hasn’t aged a day, and the new cast is terrific. (So are Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design, Isabella Byrd’s lighting and Daniel Kluger’s sound and music.) As her very name suggests—and as did the names of Shawkat’s characters Maeby in Arrested Development and Dory in Search Party—Mae is uncertain and lost, and Shawkat is a master explorer of confused interior landscapes. Her quizzical depression plays beautifully against Friedman’s understated understanding, and his desire to impart to her some kind of wisdom about living as he faces what may be the end; moments of real connection poke through the characters’ guilt and distraction. (“I’m always itching to go do something else even when I’m in the middle of having a nice moment,” Mae’s father admits.) Barron presses on tender bruises—loss, comfort, fear, concern—in ways that often leave you laughing with a strange pleasure of recognition. But if you find yourself in tears by the end, the play can handle that, too. It holds you in a bracing embrace, as close as it needs to—which is to say, too close.  

NYC kids are so cool, they even get their own film festival. Running through Sunday, March 16, the New York International Children's Festival is back for its 30th edition, taking over venues like the IFC Center, the School of Visual Arts and Scandinavia House with three weekends full of kid-friendly programming. Highlights on this year's lineu include the opening spotlight film, Disney and Pixar’s all-new animated comedy adventure Hoppers; the centerpiece screening of Remaining Native, a live-action doc about college-hopeful track superstar Ku Stevens; and the U.S. premiere of the award-winning animated short My Life in Versailles.