To days of inspiration
Playing hookie
Making something out of nothing
The need to express
To communicate
To going against the grain
Going insane
Going mad
--"La Vie Boheme," RENT, Jonathan Larson
I started with a Jonathan, and I guess I'm ending with one, too.
The moment I knew I was coming to New York, two things immediately made their way to the top of my to-do list:
To be honest, the idea of going on a RENThead pilgrimage to the Life Café is what really started the travelogue in the first place. Jon Larson had worked there constantly and held what he called peasant feasts at the café for his friends and the cast of RENT. He set the last scene of Act I in the Café itself and based many of the colorful characters on actual patrons that he had come to know and love. If one place could be so important to him, I thought, then surely there must be places that were important to other writers as well.
So I suppose this was my way of saving the best for last.
Jonathan Larson's 1996 musical about starving artists living in the East Village struck a chord with a new generation, especially with its focus on the very present problem of AIDS. It also struck a chord with hundreds of people across the country who had nothing to do with AIDS or New York, who knew nothing about being broke and squatting in a loft with no heat.
But there was something exuberant about this rock opera that was exciting and contagious. The sheer love for life couldn't be contained, and it spread like wildfire, making the cover of Newsweek and earning ten Tony nominations that same year, winning for Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score, and Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for Wilson Jermaine Heredia. It won many other major theater awards as well, and eventually, it would go on to garner a Pulitzer Prize, one of the most prestigious awards a piece of American literature can possibly achieve.
Sadly, Larson wasn't able to see his masterpiece become a success. He passed away suddenly and without warning the night before RENT debuted on off-Broadway of an aortic aneurysm, believed to be caused by Marfan syndrome. The cast, who had originally planned a simple sing through in memory of Jon for their debut show, ended up acting it out halfway through the musical, saying that they couldn't stay off of their feet for something so passionate. Positive reviews fueled the musicals quick rise to popularity, and it would become the seventh longest running Broadway musical in history, running continuously for 12 years (for fellow RENTheads, that's 6,307,200 minutes, not including leap years) before it closed at the Nederlander on September 7th, 2008.
I was lucky enough to be able to see the show the night before it closed. In total, I've seen it twice, but for a long time, the lyrics were burned into my memory.
The musical was an important part of my teenage years, and it remains a memory that is vital to me. So it's no surprise that I would want to visit the Life Café, where it supposedly all started and where the famous scene took place.
I headed down to East Village in the evening and arrived at the corner of Tompkins and Avenue B at around six. It was so dark inside that for about fifteen minutes, I wandered around outside wondering if it was open. Because of the show, I'd always thought it would be a small diner that was always packed with people, but this was apparently not the case at all.
When I finally went in with some trepidation—was it some holiday that I didn't know about?—I saw one other person there, Macbook open on the table, so I figured I was safe. Quirky indie music played in the background as I stared at the café. The walls were a bright red, but they were dimmed by the lights, which pretty much consisted only of copious strings of pink Christmas lights wrapped around the bar and the corners of the room. Half the table tops were covered in collages of old Life magazine covers while the other half was a simple black. Words were scrawled in chalk all over the room, from the border of the walls to various blackboards placed around the restaurant.
I looked above me, and the walls read, "Taste life Sip life Suck life Chew life"
A big red one in the back was titled, "THANKSGIVING SURVEY – WHAT ARE YOU'LL THANKFUL FOR?", filled out with a list written in the same hand.
An entire back wall was dedicated to RENT, with framed pictures and magazine covers featuring the cast and Jonathan himself. Three books titled RENThead Register sit on the makeshift mantle. Posters around the café read, "Forever Jonathan."
When the waiter comes by with the menu, I'm surprised by how price-y everything looks. Out of the entrees, all of them are over $10, many of them near $20.
No wonder Mark couldn't afford anything here.
But then again, maybe it was more wallet-friendly back in 1996.
I order a bowl of turkey and rice soup, which turns out to be quite good. Despite the lack of people, the mood is unmistakably happy.
Although it wasn't what I'd call an ideal visit—eating by yourself gets really boring really fast—it was nice to see where it all started. I did, at the last minute, ask to sign the register. It's set up like a yearbook, full of blank pages for people to write what they will, and as I flipped through, looking for an empty space, I saw messages in all different languages, long passionate letters and short meaningful one-liners.
I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to write myself, but there was really only one thing left to say.
Directions:
343 E. 10th St.
New York, NY 10009
L train to 1st Ave.
6 train to Astor Pl.
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