Things to do in New York this Saturday
The best things to do in New York this Saturday include amazing shows and parties to keep you going all day and night
It’s the weekend, you’re in the greatest city in the world, and its time to get wild—but what are the best things to do in NYC this Saturday exactly? We’ll tell you! Hit up some of the best New York attractions and events, and be sure to fit in a disco nap for our picks of the best parties in NYC. Strapped for cash? Fear not! We’ve picked out some of the city’s top free things to do so that you’re not broke by Sunday.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do in NYC this weekend
Featured things to do this Saturday
Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward
Theater review by Helen Shaw The Noël Coward touch was always a light one. His music scampers like a mouse; his lyrics bounce like balloons. In his plays, even suffering has an upward tendency. But when his work is excerpted and performed by others, that glancing quality can turn coy and saccharine, as it sometimes does in Barry Day’s two-handed cabaret Love, Noël. Reading from Coward’s letters and covering nearly two dozen songs, cabaret stars Steve Ross and KT Sullivan pay Coward tribute. Sometimes Ross, the longtime king of café cabaret, is his own tuxedoed self, and sometimes he’s pretending to be Coward; an amused-seeming Sullivan takes on all the women. (She does a great, gloomy Marlene Dietrich.) Day’s text is a spindly framework, built from constructions like “Wasn’t it Lord Mountbatten who said…?” that lead into quotations about or by Coward. These nonmusical sequences are a bit gluey, and as source material, the letters are strangely non-intimate. Luckily, the banter’s just a pretext to get Ross’s hands moving confidently over the keys again. The duo sings “Mad About the Boy,” “Together with Music” and “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart,” and Sullivan’s fairy-footed soprano gleams like metal. Ross creaks a little (he’s been performing in New York since 1968), but his affinity for the music sustains and buoys him. You can hear the effort—but the songs convince us that we’re wrong, that we’re hearing only lightness and the dance. Irish Repertory Theatre (Off Broadway).
Smorgasburg
Everything you need to know about visiting Smorgasburg (90 Kent Ave; East Dr at Lincoln Rd). At this massive grub hub, there’s only one rule: Come hungry. The Brooklyn Flea spin-off draws more than 20,000 to 30,000 visitors per week, with a slew of 75 to 100 incredible food vendors doling out everything from Dutch waffles to pasta doughnuts. Where is it?Depends on when you go. For the spring/summer 2019 season, the fest is in Williamsburg’s East River State Park (90 Kent Ave) on Saturdays and Prospect Park’s Breeze Hill (East Dr at Lincoln Rd) on Sundays. Additionally, starting April 12 2019, Manhattanites won’t have to cross the river to taste the treats. A Smorgasburg market at Westfield World Trade Center, Oculus Plaza is open every Friday from 11:30am to 7pm. When can I go?Smorgasburg is open year-round. The summer months might be the most popular, running from April through October at 11am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, but in the winter months (November to March), the market joins forces with Brooklyn Flea and moves indoors. This past winter, the indoor Smorg was located at Atlantic Center (625 Atlantic Ave) on weekends from 10am to 6pm. Is there anywhere to sit?There are some picnic tables set up by the Smorgasburg team, but don’t plan on snatching one unless you have patience of steel. The organizers encourage you to bring picnic blankets with which to sit on the lawns of East River State Park or Prospect Park. Are there rain dates?Nope. The grub will be there rai
Side Ponytail
This free weekly getdown from Carolyn Busa, Julia Shiplett, Ben Wasserman and Emily Winter is a reliable night for solid laughs and surprise stars in Crown Heights.
Accomplice
Tom and Betsy Salamon’s unique adventure—part interactive theater, part scavenger hunt, part walking tour—draws participants into an amusing web of puzzles and intrigue. You can choose between the three-hour New York tour, which takes participants through various neighborhoods of lower Manhattan, or the two-hour Village tour, which travels through quirky Greenwich Village. Groups of as many as 11 are booked every half hour.
NYC Unicycle Festival
For far too long people have looked down upon the unicycle, ridiculing riders for how silly they look perched up high above a single wheel. It's time that one-wheel lovers unite and take over the streets of New York! That's just what the NYC Unicycle Festival is planning to do. There's going to be a ride from Battery Park up to Central Park on Thursday, a parade through Brooklyn on Friday (from Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island) and an entire weekend of celebration on Governors Island. Witness some unicycle sumo, unicycle basketball and top riders performing tricks as DJ Sky King provides a soundtrack.
"Leonard Cohen: A Crack In Everything"
The late poet turned singer-songwriter’s legend lives on in this tribute, which makes its way to the States from Cohen’s homeland of Canada. In it, a dozen artists have been commissioned to create new works that interpret the lyricist’s themes. Spread over two floors, the exhibit, which was green-lighted by Cohen before his death, will also feature original drawings by the man himself, as well as a multimedia area where you can listen to Cohen covers by the likes of the National, Feist, Moby and Sufjan Stevens.
Hester Street Fair
This Lower East Side flea and street fair hosts one of Manhattan’s best collections of vendors, with more upstarts joining the fray every week. Standouts from recent years that have gotten their start at the fair include Macaron Parlour, Petee’s Pie Company, Melt Bakery, La New Yorkina, Arancini Bros and Cheeky Sandwich. Eeach weekend, each fair covers a specific theme from Vintage Day to a CBD Fair and Lobster and Beer Fest. Check the website in advance to see what's happening next.
Shoshana Bean
Best known to theater audiences for replacing Idina Menzel as Elpheba in Wicked and, more recently, starring as Jenna in Waitress the big-voiced Bean dips into the Broadway catalog in her Feinstein's/54 Below debut. Although she has diversified into pop in her four studio albums, this concert is devoted exclusively to musical-theater songs from roles she has played onstage, would like to play onstage or knows she will never play onstage.
Orrin Evans Trio
One of the leading pianists of his generation, Evans regularly blurs the lines between bluesiness and abstraction, muscularity and tenderness. He's been busy as of late replacing the masterful Ethan Iverson in jazz-pop crossover trio the Bad Plus, but here he's heading his own combo. Over this four-night engagement, expect him to play from his most recent release, The Evolution of Oneself.
54 Sings Broadway's Greatest Hits!
Broadway by the Year impresario Scott Siegel curates this monthly concert series, in which Broadway stars sing some of the Great White Way's best-loved tunes.
Popular things to do this Saturday
Smorgasburg
Everything you need to know about visiting Smorgasburg (90 Kent Ave; East Dr at Lincoln Rd). At this massive grub hub, there’s only one rule: Come hungry. The Brooklyn Flea spin-off draws more than 20,000 to 30,000 visitors per week, with a slew of 75 to 100 incredible food vendors doling out everything from Dutch waffles to pasta doughnuts. Where is it?Depends on when you go. For the spring/summer 2019 season, the fest is in Williamsburg’s East River State Park (90 Kent Ave) on Saturdays and Prospect Park’s Breeze Hill (East Dr at Lincoln Rd) on Sundays. Additionally, starting April 12 2019, Manhattanites won’t have to cross the river to taste the treats. A Smorgasburg market at Westfield World Trade Center, Oculus Plaza is open every Friday from 11:30am to 7pm. When can I go?Smorgasburg is open year-round. The summer months might be the most popular, running from April through October at 11am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, but in the winter months (November to March), the market joins forces with Brooklyn Flea and moves indoors. This past winter, the indoor Smorg was located at Atlantic Center (625 Atlantic Ave) on weekends from 10am to 6pm. Is there anywhere to sit?There are some picnic tables set up by the Smorgasburg team, but don’t plan on snatching one unless you have patience of steel. The organizers encourage you to bring picnic blankets with which to sit on the lawns of East River State Park or Prospect Park. Are there rain dates?Nope. The grub will be there rai
Hester Street Fair
This Lower East Side flea and street fair hosts one of Manhattan’s best collections of vendors, with more upstarts joining the fray every week. Standouts from recent years that have gotten their start at the fair include Macaron Parlour, Petee’s Pie Company, Melt Bakery, La New Yorkina, Arancini Bros and Cheeky Sandwich. Eeach weekend, each fair covers a specific theme from Vintage Day to a CBD Fair and Lobster and Beer Fest. Check the website in advance to see what's happening next.
Adam X
Even aside from his recent activity with his inscrutable deep-creep Traversable Wormhole persona, Gothamite turned Berliner has been an unsung techno hero since he helped open the Groove Records shop in the early ’90s. The genre vet is a unflinching purveyor of maximalist EBM, industrial techno and other caucophonous sounds, so expect a truly punishing set.
NYC Unicycle Festival
For far too long people have looked down upon the unicycle, ridiculing riders for how silly they look perched up high above a single wheel. It's time that one-wheel lovers unite and take over the streets of New York! That's just what the NYC Unicycle Festival is planning to do. There's going to be a ride from Battery Park up to Central Park on Thursday, a parade through Brooklyn on Friday (from Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island) and an entire weekend of celebration on Governors Island. Witness some unicycle sumo, unicycle basketball and top riders performing tricks as DJ Sky King provides a soundtrack.
Shoshana Bean
Best known to theater audiences for replacing Idina Menzel as Elpheba in Wicked and, more recently, starring as Jenna in Waitress the big-voiced Bean dips into the Broadway catalog in her Feinstein's/54 Below debut. Although she has diversified into pop in her four studio albums, this concert is devoted exclusively to musical-theater songs from roles she has played onstage, would like to play onstage or knows she will never play onstage.
Orrin Evans Trio
One of the leading pianists of his generation, Evans regularly blurs the lines between bluesiness and abstraction, muscularity and tenderness. He's been busy as of late replacing the masterful Ethan Iverson in jazz-pop crossover trio the Bad Plus, but here he's heading his own combo. Over this four-night engagement, expect him to play from his most recent release, The Evolution of Oneself.
Side Ponytail
This free weekly getdown from Carolyn Busa, Julia Shiplett, Ben Wasserman and Emily Winter is a reliable night for solid laughs and surprise stars in Crown Heights.
Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish
Theater review by Raven Snook Folksbiene's Yiddish-language Fiddler became an unlikely hit last summer—see our original review, below—prompting multiple extensions and now, a move to a larger theater uptown. Those who get shpilkes imagining what that migration might do to Tevye the dairyman and his brethren can breathe easy. They've arrived with their stripped-down aesthetic and emotionally lucid production intact. In fact, it feels even more resonant thanks to beautifully evolved performances, the recasting of a few key roles and, sadly, a heightened sense of vulnerability due to the recent spike in anti-Semitism. (Be prepared to be wanded at the door.) Once again, Steve Skybell's Tevye is rich and real as he avoids the trap of scenery chewing. (Beowulf Boritt's barely-there set of parchment wouldn't make much of a meal, anyway.) Under Joel Grey's actor-friendly direction, Skybell consistently goes for nuanced naturalism instead of laughs or apoplexy, and he has a lived-in chemistry with newcomer Jennifer Babiak as his anxious wife, Golde. The strong-voiced Drew Seigla as Pertshik, the Bolshevik revolutionary who woos Tevye's second oldest daughter, is another welcome addition. The rest of the returning romantic leads are as charming as ever, making sure never to cross into cloying, and Jackie Hoffman's Yente provides plenty of comic relief without succumbing to caricature. Admittedly, this may not be the most spectacularly sung, danced or designed Fiddler ever to hit the
Lady Capulet
Melissa Bell imagines the life of Juliet's mother in the years before the events of Romeo and Juliet this classical prequel. Emily Gallagher directs Barefoot Shakespeare Company's free alfesco production in Central Park.
54 Sings Broadway's Greatest Hits!
Broadway by the Year impresario Scott Siegel curates this monthly concert series, in which Broadway stars sing some of the Great White Way's best-loved tunes.
Free things to do this Saturday
Smorgasburg
Everything you need to know about visiting Smorgasburg (90 Kent Ave; East Dr at Lincoln Rd). At this massive grub hub, there’s only one rule: Come hungry. The Brooklyn Flea spin-off draws more than 20,000 to 30,000 visitors per week, with a slew of 75 to 100 incredible food vendors doling out everything from Dutch waffles to pasta doughnuts. Where is it?Depends on when you go. For the spring/summer 2019 season, the fest is in Williamsburg’s East River State Park (90 Kent Ave) on Saturdays and Prospect Park’s Breeze Hill (East Dr at Lincoln Rd) on Sundays. Additionally, starting April 12 2019, Manhattanites won’t have to cross the river to taste the treats. A Smorgasburg market at Westfield World Trade Center, Oculus Plaza is open every Friday from 11:30am to 7pm. When can I go?Smorgasburg is open year-round. The summer months might be the most popular, running from April through October at 11am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, but in the winter months (November to March), the market joins forces with Brooklyn Flea and moves indoors. This past winter, the indoor Smorg was located at Atlantic Center (625 Atlantic Ave) on weekends from 10am to 6pm. Is there anywhere to sit?There are some picnic tables set up by the Smorgasburg team, but don’t plan on snatching one unless you have patience of steel. The organizers encourage you to bring picnic blankets with which to sit on the lawns of East River State Park or Prospect Park. Are there rain dates?Nope. The grub will be there rai
Hester Street Fair
This Lower East Side flea and street fair hosts one of Manhattan’s best collections of vendors, with more upstarts joining the fray every week. Standouts from recent years that have gotten their start at the fair include Macaron Parlour, Petee’s Pie Company, Melt Bakery, La New Yorkina, Arancini Bros and Cheeky Sandwich. Eeach weekend, each fair covers a specific theme from Vintage Day to a CBD Fair and Lobster and Beer Fest. Check the website in advance to see what's happening next.
NYC Unicycle Festival
For far too long people have looked down upon the unicycle, ridiculing riders for how silly they look perched up high above a single wheel. It's time that one-wheel lovers unite and take over the streets of New York! That's just what the NYC Unicycle Festival is planning to do. There's going to be a ride from Battery Park up to Central Park on Thursday, a parade through Brooklyn on Friday (from Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island) and an entire weekend of celebration on Governors Island. Witness some unicycle sumo, unicycle basketball and top riders performing tricks as DJ Sky King provides a soundtrack.
Side Ponytail
This free weekly getdown from Carolyn Busa, Julia Shiplett, Ben Wasserman and Emily Winter is a reliable night for solid laughs and surprise stars in Crown Heights.
Lady Capulet
Melissa Bell imagines the life of Juliet's mother in the years before the events of Romeo and Juliet this classical prequel. Emily Gallagher directs Barefoot Shakespeare Company's free alfesco production in Central Park.
Othello
The Drilling Company wraps up its 2019 Bryant Park season with an account of the Bard's fast-paced tragedy of jealousy and misplaced trust, in which a villain preys on the insecurities of a Moorish war hero married to a white woman.
Hercules
Disney's 1997 animated musical about the mythic Greek strongman finally makes it to the stage, with a book by Kristoffer Diaz to go with songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel. This free outdoor production in Central Park is directed by Lear deBessonet for the Public Theater's civically ambitious Public Works program, which is devoted to collaborating with multiple New York communities to create large-scale theater. A robust cast of professional actors—Jelani Alladin (Frozen) as our muscle-bound hero, plus Roger Bart, Jeff Hiller, James Monroe Iglehart, Ramona Keller, Tamika Lawrence, Krysta Rodriguez and Rema Webb—performs alongside some 200 members of local arts groups as well as singers from Broadway Inspirational Voices. Tickets will be distributed through an advance digital lottery that can be entered from noon on August 12 through noon on August 28.
Movies to see this Saturday
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut
Forget the addition of those draggy, didactic scenes and re-submit to Francis Ford Coppola’s spectacular vision in IMAX
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino puts Hollywood history in a bong and smokes it in this wildly entertaining shaggy-dog story
Booksmart
Sheltered high-school besties expand their horizons in a confidently weird comedy
The Souvenir
Writer-director Joanna Hogg dredges up bad romance in this ravishing reminiscence
Hail Satan?
The documentary is possessed not by evil but by a clear eye, a cool head and a sense of humor
High Life
Robert Pattinson deepens his post-Twilight career in an arrestingly strange sci-fi film
Shazam!
Boldly—even proudly?—silly, a superhero movie weaponizes its own boyishness
Gloria Bell
Julianne Moore delivers a signature performance as a rumpled romantic survivor
Dogman
Italy's Matteo Garrone crafts an intimate parable of a downtrodden dog groomer
Apollo 11
A definitive documentary about the historic 1969 moon shot is the right stuff
Concerts to see this Saturday
Shoshana Bean
Best known to theater audiences for replacing Idina Menzel as Elpheba in Wicked and, more recently, starring as Jenna in Waitress the big-voiced Bean dips into the Broadway catalog in her Feinstein's/54 Below debut. Although she has diversified into pop in her four studio albums, this concert is devoted exclusively to musical-theater songs from roles she has played onstage, would like to play onstage or knows she will never play onstage.
Orrin Evans Trio
One of the leading pianists of his generation, Evans regularly blurs the lines between bluesiness and abstraction, muscularity and tenderness. He's been busy as of late replacing the masterful Ethan Iverson in jazz-pop crossover trio the Bad Plus, but here he's heading his own combo. Over this four-night engagement, expect him to play from his most recent release, The Evolution of Oneself.
54 Sings Broadway's Greatest Hits!
Broadway by the Year impresario Scott Siegel curates this monthly concert series, in which Broadway stars sing some of the Great White Way's best-loved tunes.
Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward
Theater review by Helen Shaw The Noël Coward touch was always a light one. His music scampers like a mouse; his lyrics bounce like balloons. In his plays, even suffering has an upward tendency. But when his work is excerpted and performed by others, that glancing quality can turn coy and saccharine, as it sometimes does in Barry Day’s two-handed cabaret Love, Noël. Reading from Coward’s letters and covering nearly two dozen songs, cabaret stars Steve Ross and KT Sullivan pay Coward tribute. Sometimes Ross, the longtime king of café cabaret, is his own tuxedoed self, and sometimes he’s pretending to be Coward; an amused-seeming Sullivan takes on all the women. (She does a great, gloomy Marlene Dietrich.) Day’s text is a spindly framework, built from constructions like “Wasn’t it Lord Mountbatten who said…?” that lead into quotations about or by Coward. These nonmusical sequences are a bit gluey, and as source material, the letters are strangely non-intimate. Luckily, the banter’s just a pretext to get Ross’s hands moving confidently over the keys again. The duo sings “Mad About the Boy,” “Together with Music” and “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart,” and Sullivan’s fairy-footed soprano gleams like metal. Ross creaks a little (he’s been performing in New York since 1968), but his affinity for the music sustains and buoys him. You can hear the effort—but the songs convince us that we’re wrong, that we’re hearing only lightness and the dance. Irish Repertory Theatre (Off Broadway).
Belle Skinner
Belle-Skinner is a dark nostalgic indie-folk songwriter based in Brooklyn and Upstate New York. With a hauntingly beautiful, lilting soprano and innate sense of melody she crafts tales of songbirds, sirens and desert nomads - nuanced and layered stories which bridge the gap between past and present. Though her influences cover a broad range of genres - from French chansons and Russian folk to contemporary alt-pop and rock - her voice often draws comparisons to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, and Lana Del Rey.
Looking for the perfect brunch?
The best brunch in NYC
Consult our comprehensive guide to the best brunch NYC has to offer and enjoy the perfect late breakfast this weekend