Things to do in New York this Saturday
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
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.
Sun Ra Arkestra
When avant-garde bandleader Sun Ra departed this planet in 1993, he left the funkiest, swingingest band in the Milky Way here on Earth. Captained now by saxophonist Marshall Allen, the Arkestra still plays the intergalactic, big-band free jazz favored by its founder (the sequined Afrofuturist costumes are also still a major part of the show).
Bitchcraft
Enter the bananas mindscape of Lauren Maul and Selena Coppock at their consistently lit monthly showcase, featuring stand-up, dance routines and buckets of wigs. For February's edition, they recruit Raj Sivaraman, Courtney Maginnis, Pat Wise, Gabe Morales, Jiji Lee and Larry Owens.
ThatShitRay
Best buddies and very funny power duo Rachel Pegram and Rachel Joravsky return with another glorious tag-team show at Union Hall. The February blowout features Dewayne Perkins, Karen Chee, Sydnee Washington, Fareeha Khan, Shalewa Sharpe and Sam Taggart. You will laugh. You will dance. You will leave with two new comedy crushes.
Harlem Fine Arts Show
The 10th annual Harlem Fine Arts Show, which includes a fine-arts exhibition and sale, celebrates African-American art in all its forms. The opening reception hosted by Madison Square Boys & Girls Club salutes African-Americans in Technology with a champagne toast and live jazz, Friday and Saturday focuses on youth empowerment among other outstanding events throughout the weekend.
Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Sized
Fashion designer, Project Runway: All Stars judge and media personality Mizrahi ventures back into singing with a collection of standards and pop songs (by Leonard Bernstein, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Webb, Cole Porter, James Taylor and more), accompanied by a jazz band led by Ben Waltzer. The ebullient storyteller promises to distribute hand-me-down swag from his party-going career to lucky audience members.
Tinder Live: Valentine's Day
Comedian, writer and musician Lane Moore takes the stage in this critically-acclaimed comedy show to open up her Tinder profile, swipe left, message guys that pique her (and the audience's) interest and even call them live. During this special Valentine's Day show, Moore is joined by Jo Firestone, Jean Grae and Sam Grittner.
Deerhoof & Tigue
The irrepressible Deerhoof—the world’s premier art-pop band and one of the top pop bands around, period—teams with kinetic percussion trio Tigue to perform the band's acclaimed 2007 album, Friend Opportunity, for the Kaufman Music Center's yearly Ecstatic Music Festival series.
Marilyn Maye: Always from the Heart
Maye’s stellar past includes a string of classy RCA albums in the ’60s and a nearly unequaled number of Tonight Show appearances, but this husky-voiced, earthy belter has never sounded better than she does now. Beyond her remarkable energy and musical acuity, the astonishing Maye has a bone-deep comfort that imbues familiar songs with fresh simplicity, truthfulness and power. Her Valentine's Day set centers on love songs from the Great American Songbook.
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
Sun Ra Arkestra
When avant-garde bandleader Sun Ra departed this planet in 1993, he left the funkiest, swingingest band in the Milky Way here on Earth. Captained now by saxophonist Marshall Allen, the Arkestra still plays the intergalactic, big-band free jazz favored by its founder (the sequined Afrofuturist costumes are also still a major part of the show).
The American Tradition
In Ray Yamanouchi's very dark comedy, set in a cockeyed version of the antebellum South, a light-skinned woman poses as a white male slaver and tries to escape to Pennsylvania with her husband—but gets derailed by various whites along the way. Axel Alvin Jr. directs the premiere, which whooshes by in a taut 75 minutes and features exceptionally committed acting from a cast of five: Danie Steel, Martin K. Lewis, Sydney Cole Alexander, Hunter Canning and the remarkable Alex Herrald as a hard-drinking, fast-talking plantation owner.
ThatShitRay
Best buddies and very funny power duo Rachel Pegram and Rachel Joravsky return with another glorious tag-team show at Union Hall. The February blowout features Dewayne Perkins, Karen Chee, Sydnee Washington, Fareeha Khan, Shalewa Sharpe and Sam Taggart. You will laugh. You will dance. You will leave with two new comedy crushes.
Bitchcraft
Enter the bananas mindscape of Lauren Maul and Selena Coppock at their consistently lit monthly showcase, featuring stand-up, dance routines and buckets of wigs. For February's edition, they recruit Raj Sivaraman, Courtney Maginnis, Pat Wise, Gabe Morales, Jiji Lee and Larry Owens.
Non Solus
The Hungarian neocircus company Recirquel presents an intimate evening-length duet for two men: acrobat Renátó Illés and dancer Gábor Zsíros, who dip into each other's disciplines in a hybrid cirque danse work created by company founder Bence Vági. The piece is set to a score that moves between Bach and modern electronic organ music.
Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Sized
Fashion designer, Project Runway: All Stars judge and media personality Mizrahi ventures back into singing with a collection of standards and pop songs (by Leonard Bernstein, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Webb, Cole Porter, James Taylor and more), accompanied by a jazz band led by Ben Waltzer. The ebullient storyteller promises to distribute hand-me-down swag from his party-going career to lucky audience members.
Tinder Live: Valentine's Day
Comedian, writer and musician Lane Moore takes the stage in this critically-acclaimed comedy show to open up her Tinder profile, swipe left, message guys that pique her (and the audience's) interest and even call them live. During this special Valentine's Day show, Moore is joined by Jo Firestone, Jean Grae and Sam Grittner.
Harlem Fine Arts Show
The 10th annual Harlem Fine Arts Show, which includes a fine-arts exhibition and sale, celebrates African-American art in all its forms. The opening reception hosted by Madison Square Boys & Girls Club salutes African-Americans in Technology with a champagne toast and live jazz, Friday and Saturday focuses on youth empowerment among other outstanding events throughout the weekend.
Deerhoof & Tigue
The irrepressible Deerhoof—the world’s premier art-pop band and one of the top pop bands around, period—teams with kinetic percussion trio Tigue to perform the band's acclaimed 2007 album, Friend Opportunity, for the Kaufman Music Center's yearly Ecstatic Music Festival series.
“God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin”
Intent on proving himself to be as brilliant a curator as he is a writer, Hilton Als filled Zwirner’s galleries two years ago with Alice Neel’s portraits of friends and neighbors of color, an overlooked yet critical part of her work. Now, he mixes art and archival materials in a magisterially spare paean to the great American author James Baldwin (1924–1987). The first part of the show centers on Baldwin’s relationships with artists, such as his high-school friend and longtime collaborator Richard Avedon, and Beauford Delaney, who daubed a 1941 Fauvist portrait of a nude Baldwin sitting in a garden in prismatic colors. Radiating the sacral power of one of Gauguin’s Tahitian figures, the painting attests to the intensity of even Baldwin’s teenage presence. Glenn Ligon’s huge 2013 black-on-black canvas with the opening lines of the essay “Stranger in the Village” disappearing in the artist’s signature stenciled coal dust makes the author’s words, about being a black man in a small Swiss hamlet, material and glittering, but also poignantly relevant. The second half of the exhibition more glancingly suggests Baldwin’s experience as a black gay man, with Alvin Baltrop’s documentary photos of men cruising for sex on Hudson River piers, and Ja’Tovia Gary’s video An Ecstatic Experience (2015), a hallucinatory meditation on Civil Rights. Most dazzlingly, Als suggests that Kara Walker’s 2005 video of a shadow puppet show refracting the history of slavery through Disney’s Song of the
Free things to do this Saturday
"Crusader: Martin Luther King Jr."
This exhibition at the Schomburg Center features intimate, lesser-known photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including photos of his pilgrimage to India, his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in Norway and other moments of travel, rest and celebration throughout his life. The exhibit marks the 60th anniversary of the first biography of King, Dr. L.D. Reddick's Crusader Without Violence.
Movies to see this Saturday
Vice
Utterly transformed via a small phalanx of makeup artists, Christian Bale anchors Adam McKay's biopic of Dick Cheney
On the Basis of Sex
Felicity Jones stars in this impressively brainy dramatization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s rise to legal prominence
Cold War
Pawel Pawlikowski’s epic love story is an achingly romantic and melancholic joy
If Beale Street Could Talk
Barry Jenkins follows up Moonlight with more evidence of his emotional gifts
Mary Poppins Returns
Emily Blunt is hypnotically charming in this big-hearted contact high
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Nutso yet often inspired, this animated Spidey reboot is worth shelving your Spider-fatigue for
Suspiria
Luca Guadagnino's creative and creepy spin on the horror classic finds moves of its own
Burning
Unfolding with grace and precision, Lee Chang-dong’s slowburn Korean mystery is beautifully executed
Shirkers
Sandi Tan reckons with the indie film she almost made as a teen—and the man who stole it
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
It's a powerhouse acting showcase for Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant
Concerts to see this Saturday
Sun Ra Arkestra
When avant-garde bandleader Sun Ra departed this planet in 1993, he left the funkiest, swingingest band in the Milky Way here on Earth. Captained now by saxophonist Marshall Allen, the Arkestra still plays the intergalactic, big-band free jazz favored by its founder (the sequined Afrofuturist costumes are also still a major part of the show).
Isaac Mizrahi: Queen Sized
Fashion designer, Project Runway: All Stars judge and media personality Mizrahi ventures back into singing with a collection of standards and pop songs (by Leonard Bernstein, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Webb, Cole Porter, James Taylor and more), accompanied by a jazz band led by Ben Waltzer. The ebullient storyteller promises to distribute hand-me-down swag from his party-going career to lucky audience members.
Deerhoof & Tigue
The irrepressible Deerhoof—the world’s premier art-pop band and one of the top pop bands around, period—teams with kinetic percussion trio Tigue to perform the band's acclaimed 2007 album, Friend Opportunity, for the Kaufman Music Center's yearly Ecstatic Music Festival series.
Marilyn Maye: Always from the Heart
Maye’s stellar past includes a string of classy RCA albums in the ’60s and a nearly unequaled number of Tonight Show appearances, but this husky-voiced, earthy belter has never sounded better than she does now. Beyond her remarkable energy and musical acuity, the astonishing Maye has a bone-deep comfort that imbues familiar songs with fresh simplicity, truthfulness and power. Her Valentine's Day set centers on love songs from the Great American Songbook.
Interpol + Car Seat Headrest + Snail Mail
Interpol's churning, melancholic Turn on the Bright Lights holds up as one of the most memorable debuts of the '00s. You're sure to hear some hits from it as well as last year's Marauder, as the indie-rock heavyweights take NYC's glitziest stage alongside two recent indie luminaries: Snail Mail, which features the weary lyricism of stellar young songsmith Lindsey Jordan, and Car Seat Headrest, the vehicle for Will Toledo's rough-hewn anthems.
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.
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
