Given how much New Yorkers love tacos and guacamole and margaritas, and all of the other wonderful culinary gifts that Mexico has given the world, Cinco de Mayo in NYC is a pretty big deal. To celebrate the spirited occasion, Astral Tequila has been hosting the first-ever MargaritaCon, a month-long celebration that brings Astral margaritas to 170-plus participating bars and restaurants across the country, with each cocktail contributing towards building homes for those in need. And on Saturday, May 4, MargaritaCon is taking over New York’s East Village (as well as Chicago and Charleston) for a boozy day of fun.
Join the tequila brand from 4pm to 8pm on May 4th for complimentary samples of Astral-splashed margaritas while supplies last at local spots like Onieals, Virginia’s, The Hidden Tiger and The Blind Barber. Other NYC spots like Mood Ring, Golden Wuish, Boske, Hold Fast Kitchen and Spirits, Asset, Monarch Rooftop and Blinky’s Bar will also be pouring Astral margaritas as part of the campaign. (You can check out the full map of participating bars nationwide at the Astral Tequila website.)
Astral Tequila upcycles spent agave from tequila distillation into bricks to build homes, so every margarita made with the brand’s booze goes toward a good cause. Along with partnering with Hábitat para la Humanidad México to build homes through their ongoing sustainability program, the Adobe Brick Project in Jalisco, Mexico, the tequila company will also be donating a total of $50,000 to Habitat for Humanity affiliates across the country, including Habitat NYC and Westchester, all in honor of MargaritaCon.
Equally exciting is the fact that at each participating NYC bar, you can enter a Cinco de Mayo Sweepstakes for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip for you and three amigos to Mexico. If you sadly can’t make it out to the fiesta in person, you can also enter the sweepstakes via the Astral Tequila website but, really, why would you want to miss a minute of this tequila-fueled fun?
It’s the soundtrack of summer—no, not “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter. We’re talking about that iconic Mister Softee jingle, tempting New Yorkers young and old alike with the promise of soft serve and sweet treats. The ice cream vans are ubiquitous on New York City streets when the temperatures start to rise, but you won’t have to strain your ears trying to hear for that whimsical jingle next time you’re craving a King Cone or a Chocolate Dip—the Mister Softee app makes it way easier to track down a truck.
Though Mister Softee is a throwback that’s been serving the New York area since the 1950s, the ice-cream truck company is solidly in the digital era with its own smartphone app, available on both the App Store and Google Play. You don’t even need to set up an account to utilize the application, which grants user the ability to plug in their zip code (the app assures that it won’t save your location data) and track down the nearest Mister Softee trucks in the area.
“Looking for the popular Mister Softee ice cream truck? Look no further, our popular and beloved trucks are now easier to find with our mobile app,” reads the app’s description. “Find the closest Mister Softee truck to you, set up your next ice cream party and more all from the app!”
Even more convenient, the mobile app allows sweet tooths to see exactly how long each truck has been parked at a given location by simply tapping on the truck icon, so you can gauge whether you have enough time to walk over before the vehicle gets moving on. Along with mapping the closest trucks to you, the app allows you to view the entire Mister Softee menu (and maybe expand from that basic vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles?), reserve a truck for your next ice cream-themed party and more.
That’s all much easier than physically chasing that Mister Softee truck down the street, right?
The nominations for the 2024 Tony Awards have now been announced, setting off a six-week period of campaigning, complaining and arguing before Broadway’s biggest prizes get handed out on June 16. We’ll have more Tonys coverage for you before then, including our predictions of who will win. But here are a few quick reactions to today’s crop of nominations.
David Adjmi’s long, beautiful play about a 1970s British-American rock band that is definitely not Fleetwood Mac recording an album that is totally not Rumours racked up an astonishing 13 nominations—the most of any play in Tony Award history. In large part, this accomplishment was made possible by the original music that Will Butler created for the show, which put it in two races usually reserved for musicals: Best Score and Best Orchestrations. (It’s the first play ever nominated in the latter category.) But Stereophonic also dominated elsewhere, earning noms in all four design categories as well as featured acting nominations for five of its seven cast members.
There are now two front-runners in the race for Best Musical.
The 2023–24 season was notable for its large number of new musicals: 15 in all, the most of any season in decades. The Tony nominations have put two of them at the front of the pack in the race for Best Musical, the biggest prize of the season: Hell’s Kitchen, a jukebox show drawn from the catalog of Alicia Keys, earned 13 nominations, including for four cast members and all of its designers; The Outsiders, a musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s young-adult novel, earned 12, including one for Best Score. The season’s other contenders for Best Musical got significant but smaller tallies across the board: seven nominations for Water for Elephants, six for Suffs and five for the dance show Illinoise. That doesn’t mean they’re out of the race, but the other two shows have pulled noticeably ahead.
The lead acting categories for plays are star wars this year.
More and more, nonmusical productions tend to rely on big names to draw audiences, and that’s reflected in this year’s nominations. The Best Actress category is a face-off between American Horror Story mainstays Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson, with Rachel McAdams a potential dark horse. Best Actor is a battle between HBO stars Jeremy Strong (Succession) and Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire), but I wouldn’t rule out Hamilton‘s Leslie Odom Jr.
Tony nominators and theater critics don’t always agree.
Although this year’s Tony nominations matched my own choices exactly in only two categories—Best Revival of a Play and Best Lighting Design of a Play—I can’t object to most of this year’s Tony nominations, which recognize fine work. That said, there are interesting points of divergence, in the aggregate, between the nominations and the overall critical consensus on certain productions. The Outsiders, which was met with mostly middling notices, received more nominations than the reviews might have suggested—as did the outlandish Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, which sharply divided critics but earned eight nominations, including for stars Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin. Conversely, the flashily designed reimagination of The Who’s Tommy, which critics loved, got a nod for Best Revival but nothing else. (A desire to support current shows may also play a role in this crowded season for musicals; there’s no way to know, but I suspect that the critically lauded Here LiesLove and Days of Wine and Roses would both have gotten more love if they were still running.)
Photograph: Courtesy Matthew MurphyThe Outsiders
It may finally be Michael Greif’s year…
As far as the Tonys are concerned, director Michael Grief can’t get no respect. He did not win Best Director for Rent, which won Best Musical in 1996. Nor did he win for Next to Normal or Grey Gardens, two of the best Broadway musicals of the 2010s. Nor did he win for Dear Evan Hansen, which won Best Musical in 2017. But this year—when he directed or co-directed three new musicals, an unprecedented feat in modern Broadway history—he may finally get his flowers. He’s nominated for Hell’s Kitchen, but his very fine work on Days of Wine and Roses and The Notebook could help give him the edge over Merrily We RollAlong’s Maria Friedman and his other competitors this year.
…but other prolific contenders got overlooked.
I tend to dislike talk of snubs because there are only so many nominations to go around, and many worthy candidates are always going to be left out—especially in perpetually overcrowded categories such as those for featured acting. But I will single out two people whose omissions seem especially egregious because, like Grief, they had more than one worthy contender this year: Lorin Latarro, who choreographed The Who’s Tommy and The Heart of Rock and Roll; and Paul Tate dePoo III, the scenic designer for The Great Gatsby, The Cottage and Spamalot. Both should have been shoo-ins, I think.
Photograph: Courtesy Matthew MurphyThe Who’s Tommy
Category sizes still confuse many people.
A quick glance at the nomination list raises an obvious question for many people, which I’ve seen a lot on social media: Most categories have five nominees, so why does one have only three and another has only four, but one has six and another two have seven? The answer is mostly straightforward, and has to do with the number of eligible candidates. When there are at least nine candidates, as in most races, there are five slots; when there are fewer (as is usually the case for revivals), the number of nominees shrinks. There were only five play revivals this season, so Best Revival of a Play has three nominees; there were six musical revivals, so Best Revival of a Musical has four nominees. But here’s where it gets more complicated: If there is a tie for the bottom slot in a category, the category expands to accommodate it. That’s why there are five nominees for Best Actress is a Play this year, even though there were only eight candidates, and it’s also why there are six nominees for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. But the categories can only expand to seven at most: If there is still a tie at that point, it triggers a somewhat complicated tie-breaking vote on weighted ballots.So we don’t know exactly what happened in the two categories—the very competitive fields of Best Featured Actress in a Play and Best Scenic Design in a Musical—that have seven nominees; all of the tying candidates may have been included, or there may have been others who tied on the first round but were subsequently cut. Either way, though, the expansion of a given category is the result of an automatic process determined by Tony rules, and does not reflect a conscious decision by nominators to widen the field.
Let the bickering begin!
Photograph: Courtesy Evan ZimmermanThe Great Gatsby
Solopress conducted a comprehensive study to identify the most social media-friendly restaurants around the world, looking at the number of TikTok and Instagram posts associated with the restaurant’s hashtag. Picturesque Paris had the strongest showing on the list, with three venues hailing from the City of Lights: Le Meurice, Pink Mamma and Le Train Bleu. And a London dining room, that Insta-favorite Sketch, came out on top as the most social media-friendly restaurant in the world, boosted by its popularity on Instagram, with a whopping 93,849 posts.
But New York was no slouch, coming in ninth thanks to the social-media popularity of Le Coucou, the graceful French spot from the prolific restaurateur Stephen Starr (Buddakan, Morimoto) and chef Daniel Rose. The beautifully appointed Soho dining room—which we wrote looked like “a scene out of Ratatouille” in our review, “the open kitchen lined with copper pots and hand-glazed tiles, churning with chefs whose two-foot-high toques blanche skim the range hoods as they plate hazelnut-freckled leek vinaigrettes”—garnered 15,824 Instagram posts as well as 208 TikTok posts at the time of the study, which clinched Le Coucou’s top-10 status.
A larger-than-life hourglass will take over the Meatpacking District’s Chelsea Triangle next week as part of a day-long event that’ll award New Yorkers with free JetBlue flights to Bermuda.
Every 90 minutes, when the last grain of pink sand lands at the bottom, the companies will give away five free trips that include JetBlue roundtrip flights to Bermuda for two and a hotel stay. Those who participate can also get JetBlue TrueBlue points and JetBlue Vacations certificates.
All you need to do to try and win is answer one trivia question via a QR code onsite. Every 90 minutes, there will be a new question to answer, so you can come back and rescan. There will also be Bermuda beach lounge chairs and a soundtrack of waves and AR sunshine.
The event takes place from 12:30pm to 7:30pm on Thursday, May 2.
You can currently book JetBlue to Bermuda New York’s JFK and Boston on jetblue.com. Learn more about travel to Bermuda visit gotobermuda.com and consider staying at the beautiful Cambridge Beaches.
Massive news from Billie Eilish! She’s just announced a giant world tour.
It’s called Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour after her new album “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” which is out on May 17. It’ll kick off in Canada in September 2024 and get around to NYC in October.
Want to get tickets? Here’s everything you need to know.
When is Billie Eilish playing at Madison Square Garden?
She’ll play three dates in October 2024: October 16, 17 and 18. She’ll also stop at the Prudential Center in Newark on October 9, in case you miss out on the MSG shows.
On Tuesday, April 30, American Express cardholders can get early access, starting at noon EST.
Photograph: Frontier Touring/William Drumm
How much will tickets cost?
Ticket prices have not yet been confirmed, but we’ll update this page when we have further details.(Keep an eye on Ticketmaster, too.)
Where else is Billie Eilish touring as part of her 2024 U.S. and world tour?
Across North America, she’ll be stopping in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Nashville, Cincinnati, Saint Paul, Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Jose, Glendale, Inglewood and across Canada.
She’ll also play in Australia, Europe, the U.K. and Ireland.
