by Paul Riegler

Still somewhat frozen in time, Cuba’s capital city, Havana, is nonetheless in a state of flux. President Obama made history in 2016 when he became the first U.S. leader to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Other travelers want to follow in his footsteps.
While it became easier to visit the island nation thanks to new travel rules that went into effect at the start of 2015, the current administration …

3 Tips to Keep Your iPhone or Android Smartphone Charged During the Day

by Jesse Sokolow

Today’s smartphones have so many apps running in the background that sometimes it’s just a matter of hours before a user goes in search of a place to refresh the battery charge.
Here are three tips that will ensure your device is charged and still good to go at the end of the day.
1.) Carry a portable charger.
Instead of spending time searching for an outlet or putting your smartphone in a …

Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ at John Golden Theatre

by Jonathan Spira

Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is a three-act play first performed in 1879. It is set in a small Norwegian town of that era. It addresses the fate of a married woman, Nora Helmer, who, as a married woman in late 19th century Norway, lacked the legal status and ability to simply be herself. At the end of the play, Nora leaves the house, a slammed door heard around the …

Lobby Bar – July 21: Killer Selfies, Flight Attendants Get Naked, and a Concussion Shower

by Jeremy Del Nero

Lobby Bar – The Only Article That Loves You Back
Two of a kind. Join Jonathan Spira at the theater for a look at “Assassins,” a roughly two-hour light-hearted look at the assassinations of past United States presidents. Next week, we’ll review “Survivors,” a 43-hour play about all of the other presidents. Bring a sleeping bag and diapers: there is no intermission but covlefe will be served.
Powdered hospitality. Take a quick flight …

Review: ‘Puffs’ at New World Stages: It’s ‘Third or Nothing’ for Those Other Three Student Wizards

by John Buckley

This week, the hit play “Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic” moved seven blocks uptown to New York’s favorite off-Broadway theatre, New World Stages, for its third staging of the show.  Even if you’ve been one among the lucky few thousand to have seen one of the original adaptations of the play, you’ll want to return to your favorite school of magic if …

Dear Selfie Taker: Please Don’t Break the Artwork or Kill Yourself

by Jeremy Del Nero

The recent news that a woman in Los Angeles had knocked over 11 crowned pedestals, part of an art installation by Simon Birch, while taking a selfie came as little surprise to those who experience a type of Schadenfreude around selfies, selfie sticks, and the problems they occasion.
As Jonathan Spira noted in these pages two years ago, selfies, and by extension selfie sticks, can be dangerous to both the photographer …

Four Seasons Hualalai, Kona, Hawaii – Hotel Review

by Jonathan Spira

After a long day of travel that included the world’s longest non-stop domestic flight (from New York to Honolulu, before continuing onto Kona), we knew we had arrived as we were welcomed by hotel staff at the airport with a traditional and beautiful lei and oshibori towel, the latter to wipe away the hectic pace resulting from spending the better part of a day in transit. Yet there we were, …

Review: ‘Assassins’ – Encores Off Center at City Center

by Jonathan Spira

Four U.S. presidents, namely Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy, were assassinated while in office, all by gunshot, and all within a period of one hundred years. In addition, two U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, were injured in attempted assassinations and others, including Andrew Jackson and William Howard Taft, were the targets of assassination plots, as was Richard Nixon, whose would-be assassin planned …