Starlight cinema

WEEK 20

One of my favorite things about living in NYC – what endears the city to me when it’s at its best – is that New York is a lived-in city, with life seeping into every available inch of space. With 8 million people and nearly all of us stacked on top of one another, life inevitably spills out of doors: Parks, benches, sidewalks, corner basketball courts, grassy lots, soccer fields on the pier, volleyball and tennis courts, skateboard parks, miniature golf, playgrounds and hundreds of miles of paths for biking, running, strolling.

I have been no other place in the world where the city itself plays such a central role in the rhythm of life. And the pinnacle (of course) are the city’s rooftops. A few online searches revealed the data point that NYC has an astonishing 40,000 acres of rooftop – surpassing its 28,000 acres of parks.

Sadly, I spend very little time on Manhattan rooftops – just the occasional rooftop bar and restaurant in summer – but I romanticize these spaces. I often look skyward when I walk, taking in the tops of buildings, and on every block, I catch glimpses of rooftop gardens, patios, water towers, lights strung across a dining pavilion.

I learned as well that in the late 1800s, Manhattan rooftops became massive and incredibly elegant entertainment spaces, with bars, restaurants, open air theatre, even performances with live animals. When you think about it, before the invention of the elevator, prime real estate filled the lower floors with their high ceilings and tall windows. Then a new world opened up, a chance to escape the chaos of the crushing crowds on the sidewalks below.

Digression aside … one thing I’ve always wanted to do in Manhattan is rooftop cinema. Doesn’t that sound romantic? Watching a giant screen in the dark in the open air? You’d think an activity as simple as going to a movie would not have eluded me for the past five years, but alas, here we are, Irena and I, walking up Fifth Avenue in Midtown at 9:30 p.m. on a muggy night in early October, headed to the Rooftop Cinema Club for the first time …

We took the elevator to the “skylawn,” and given the name, I was expecting a more expansive sky and city views. But the cinema was sandwiched between buildings on all sides, with a slim plot of roof covered in astro-turf. In some ways this made it feel more authentically New York – as I wrote, life filling every inch of available space.

We got our headphones and settled into the green folding chairs with our bottomless popcorn. We loved that there was a full bar and servers bringing out cocktails in martini glasses. (We went old school and brought our own flask of bourbon.)

We were there to watch Love Jones, a movie we first saw when it was released in 1997, with a slightly goofy and aspirational love story between Darius and Nina that held up remarkably well. But really, it’s all about the killer soundtrack: Dionne Farris, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Marcus Miller, Cassandra Wilson, even The Brand New Heavies.

As anticipated, the movie itself played supporting actor to the experience. Every so often, I’d lift off my headphones to take in the sounds around me — sirens, cars honking, garbage trucks, our movie mates cracking up over silly dialogue. It even started sprinkling at one point, and several of us opened umbrellas to form a little fort and got cozier under blankets.

With fall in full swing, rooftop cinema closes for the season next week … but I expect to be back next year when the days get warmer and the nights longer.