{"id":50304,"date":"2025-11-24T14:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T14:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/50304\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T14:24:07","slug":"protestors-interrupt-performance-at-uws-met-opera-nutcracker-star-olivia-mackinnon-dishes-on-her-favorite-uws-places-uws-deli-makes-the-list-of-best-pastrami-sandwiches-in-nyc-amnhs-first-post-pan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/50304\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestors Interrupt Performance at UWS Met Opera; Nutcracker Star Olivia MacKinnon Dishes on Her Favorite UWS Places; UWS Deli Makes The List of Best Pastrami Sandwiches in NYC; AMNH’s First Post-Pandemic Sleepover is a Hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Volunteers gathered yesterday at St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church to peel, slice, sugar and flour the apples \u2014 more than 700 of them! \u2014 that will go into pies for Goddard Riverside\u2019s Community Thanksgiving Dinner. The pies themselves \u2014 100 fruit and 50 pumpkin \u2014 will be baked tomorrow. Volunteers also made 1,200 oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, to supplement the 600 dozen pledged by friends and neighbors, organizer Charlene Floyd said. See notices (below) for information on the dinner. Photo by Ann Cooper.
\nToday is Monday, November 24th, 2025<\/p>\n

Expect sunny and breezy weather today, with a high of 52. The forecast for the rest of the week is variable: early showers tomorrow and Wednesday, but warmer, hitting 60 on Wednesday; Thursday and Friday should be sunny, but temperatures will drop back into the mid-40s.<\/p>\n

On this day in 1859, Charles Darwin published \u201cOn the Origin of Species,\u201d laying the foundation for the field now known as evolutionary biology \u2014 and setting off an uproar that continues, at least in some corners, to the present day.<\/p>\n

Notices<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0calendar<\/a>\u00a0has lots of local events.\u00a0Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.<\/p>\n

Goddard Riverside is serving its annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursday at its Older Adult Community Center, 593 Columbus Avenue. Everyone is welcome; one meal per person. More information \u2014 HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

City Councilmember Gale Brewer is offering 150 free countertop compost bins to constituents on a first-come-first-served basis. The giveaway is being held to mark a milestone in the Department of Sanitation\u2019s mandatory composting program<\/a>, which hit a new record earlier this month, collecting 6,025,480 pounds of compostable food and yard waste<\/a>. (The previous record was 5.9 million pounds.) The compost bins are available at Brewer\u2019s district office at 563 Columbus Avenue. Because quantities are limited, you might want to call before heading over there, to make sure they haven\u2019t all been given away. The number is 212-873-0282.<\/p>\n

Brewer\u2019s office is also collecting suggestions for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani via a Google form available \u2014 HERE.<\/a> Her office plans to forward the suggestions to his transition team.<\/p>\n

Community Board 7\u2019s Business & Consumer Issues Committee is seeking community input on neighborhood priorities, to help guide future committee discussions on issues that affect residents, businesses, and Business Improvement Districts. The survey is available \u2014 HERE<\/a>, with a deadline of next Wednesday, December 3rd.<\/p>\n

News Roundup<\/p>\n

Compiled by Laura Muha<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Protestors disrupted a performance of \u201cCarmen\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, with at least one of them climbing onto the stage and denouncing David H. Koch, the late billionaire industrialist who poured money into right-wing causes and discrediting climate change, eyewitnesses told The New York Times.<\/p>\n

The audience initially responded to the disturbance with confusion, with some attendees apparently wondering whether it was part of the performance and then, when it became clear that it wasn\u2019t, with anger and shouts of \u201closer!\u201d and \u201cput them in jail!\u201d the Times reported.<\/p>\n

Police arrested three people, and the performance resumed about 15 minutes later.<\/p>\n

Though eyewitnesses told the paper that the protestors shouted Koch\u2019s name during their demonstration, Jen Luzzo, the press director for the Met, told the paper that \u201cWe don\u2019t have all the information about what the protesters were protesting yet. It\u2019s still a little hazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the first time a performance at the Met has been interrupted by protestors, according to Operawire.com<\/a>. In 2023,<\/a> climate protesters interrupted the opening night of \u201cTannhauser<\/a>\u201d; in 2015, an anti-Putin<\/a> demonstration broke out during the curtain call of \u201cIolanta\u201d. And in 2014,<\/a> protestors interrupted the premiere of \u201cThe Death of Klinghoffer,\u201d claiming the opera glorified terrorism and was anti-Semitic.<\/p>\n

Read the full story \u2014 HERE <\/a>and see video of the incident, posted on X by an audience member \u2014 HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>UWSer Olivia MacKinnon as the Dewdrop in George Balanchine\u2019s The Nutcracker \u2122. Photo by Erin Baiano, courtesy of New York City Ballet.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re on the subject of Lincoln Center, here\u2019s a happier story: Forbes magazine recently caught up with Nutcracker soloist Olivia MacKinnon, an Alabama native now living on the UWS, for a Q&A about the things she loves most about her adopted hometown.<\/p>\n

MacKinnon, who joined the New York City Ballet in 2012 as an apprentice and was promoted to soloist in 2023, told Forbes she\u2019s an \u201cuptown girl at heart,\u201d and that, while she also loves the Upper East Side, she finds the UWS to be \u201cartistic, grounding, and where I call home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among her favorite places: the 79th Street Greenmarket (\u201ca wonderful way to support local farmers while stocking up on delicious, healthy ingredients and food for the week\u201d); Two Boots Pizza (\u201cMy vote for the best pizza on the Upper West Side\u201d); and Caf\u00e9 Fiorello (\u201cFun fact: The restaurant posted a plaque with my name on it due to being such a devoted customer \u2026!\u201d)<\/p>\n

MacKinnon, who has been dancing since she was 3, is a lead dancer in this year\u2019s Nutcracker, which premiers Friday at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n

Read the full interview \u2014 HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A sandwich from Pastrami Queen. Photo courtesy WSR archives.<\/p>\n

6sqft.com recently did a deep-dive into the unexpectedly fascinating history of pastrami (it originally was made with goose \u2014 who knew?), followed by what it calls \u201cthe seven absolute best pastrami spots in NYC.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should be no surprise that the UWS\u2019s own Pastrami Queen made that list; after all, on the day it opened in 2020, a Rag reporter counted more than 70 people waiting<\/a> in a line that stretched from the shop\u2019s entrance \u2014 mid-block on West 72nd Street \u2014 almost to Amsterdam Avenue.<\/p>\n

The article also gives a bit of history for the shop and its Upper-East-Side counterpart; originally named Pastrami King when it was founded in Brooklyn in 1956, it served what the late chef Anthony Bourdain once described as \u201cthe real deal pastrami sandwich<\/a>.\u201d (He was referring to the sandwich made at the shop\u2019s Upper East Side location, but, hey, at the time, Pastrami Queen hadn\u2019t yet opened its UWS location!)<\/p>\n

Originally known as \u201cpastirma\u201d or \u201cpastrama\u201d in Romania and other Eastern European countries, pastrami is believed to have made its way to New York with the estimated 75,000 Jews who emigrated from Romania to the Lower East Side between the 1880s and early 1900s. When they got here, they discovered goose was hard to come by, but beef brisket was not, reports 6ftsq, which is published by City Realty and focuses on real estate, lifestyle, and design. So the immigrants swapped meats and began dry-curing the brisket in salt and spices, then smoking and steaming it \u2014 and a New York classic was born.<\/p>\n

Read the full story \u2014 HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The iconic blue whale in AMNH\u2019s Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life. Photo courtesy WSR archives.<\/p>\n

To wrap up this week\u2019s Monday Bulletin, here\u2019s a good-news story for those of us who weren\u2019t at the American Museum of Natural History\u2019s first sleepover since the pandemic<\/a>, but wish we could have been.<\/p>\n

The New York Times sent a reporter and photographer\/videographer to capture the excitement of the children, who traveled last month from as far as Miami and as close by as Harlem to sleep \u2014 or not sleep, as the case may be \u2014 on cots set up beneath the famed blue whale in the museum\u2019s Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a brief safety lecture, in which a staffer congratulated the children on answering the call to adventure, guests were loosed among the museum\u2019s halls, nearly all of which were open,\u201d wrote Alexis Soloski, who covers culture for the paper. \u201cChildren ran, some of them in stocking feet, through the displays, with abandon. (Running had been discouraged in the safety lecture, but this did not dissuade a young boy who shouted \u2018I have to look for the animals that will hunt us in the night\u2019 as he sped on.)\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full story and see the photos and videos \u2014 HERE.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

ICYMI<\/p>\n

Here are a few stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week \u2014 or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)<\/p>\n

From 16 Pies to 10,000 Cookies: UWS Tradition Powers a Community Thanksgiving Feast<\/a><\/p>\n

Why Residents of an UWS Building Are on a Rent Strike: \u2018Only Negotiation Power We Had\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

UWS Columbus Circle Train Station Escalators Reopen After More Than a Year<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers gathered yesterday at St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church to peel, slice, sugar and flour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24031,28195,28196,28197,9,11451,56,63,65,64,18314,18321,11450],"class_list":["post-50304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-amnh","tag-amnh-sleepovers","tag-goddard-riverside","tag-metropoitan-opera","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-ballet","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-pastrami","tag-pastrami-queen","tag-the-nutcracker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}