Three life-changing words: New York City.
07.09.2023 - 21:23 / forbes.com
Combine one of New York’s top bars, an adventurous distillery and a famous troupe of three men painted in blue and you wind up with the bedlam of Mindcluck II — an interactive cocktail + theater experience where the drinks are part of the story.
“We wanted to do something totally original, trippy and exciting” says GN Chan of Double Chicken Please, which was just awarded the number one spot in North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. “Our ultimate goal is for people to have that ‘WTF?’ moment — you don’t even know what you just saw or experienced but it stays with you.”
To provide that sensation Chan turned to the Blue Man Group, which has been performing shows in New York since 1991 and has branched out to tours and shows around the world. “They’ve customized an amazing evening just for our space,” says Chan. “And people won’t be sitting down, they’re part of the plot! They’ll be moving around the space and helping to find the chicken.”
“We’ve never done anything like this,” says Bhurin Sead, one of the Blue Man performers. “It’s been incredibly colloborative and forward thinking. There’s a little bit of everything. Some elements from our show that we’re making fit into their space and things we’ve created just for this event. There’s a lot of audience particpation.”
To make the cocktails as imaginative as the show, Chan will be serving five drinks all made with products from Empirical — a Denmark-based distillery that produces what they call ‘uncategorized’ spirits that concentrate on ‘unique and unexpected’ flavors. “Empirical and Double Chicken Please have similar approaches to how we want to create flavors, experiences and memories. We try to utilize everything they make. We’ve even used the for small bites.”
“Having Empirical as a part of Mindcluck is obvious,” says Lars Williams, CEO and Distiller at Emprical. “It's innovative and genre-bending and we fit right in. Our spirits are ‘uncategorized’ and so is this concept. Anything GN and the Double Chicken Please team put together we want to be a part of.”
All of the cocktails will be based on the plot of the performance and best of all — some people will be getting their drinks directly from blue-painted men. “They will be dispatching cocktails which are incorporated into the show and some will be coming out of a pipe,” says Chan, referring to a prop traditionally used in the Blue Man Group’s main show. “The drinks will be in different formats, some will be regular cocktails, some will be shots and some will be dessert.”
And will the blue men be trying the drinks as well? “I sure hope so,” says Sead. “For me the biggest thing to come from this event is that the audience gets an up-close and personal experience with the Blue Man Group. When we’re on
Three life-changing words: New York City.
A recent visit to Governors Island came a few days after a conversation I’d had with my father in which he’d instructed me to act like a tourist in my own city. He’d started by asking simply how I was filling my summer weekends, and I answered honestly that most of my free time was spent reading in one park or another and going to bars in my Brooklyn neighborhood. “New York City,” he reminded me (with earnest intention to inspire, no righteousness detected), “has more things to do in it than you’ll be able to see in a lifetime.”
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In late May, I flew with my daughter from California to Kennedy International Airport in New York, where I rented a car from Avis and headed to Connecticut for a three-day family visit. On day two, I parked the car in Waveny Park in New Canaan and when I returned, it was gone. The local police told me they had impounded the rental because Avis had reported it stolen to the New York Police Department. I had planned to spend the last day of my trip with my 80-something mother, whom I had not seen for three years because of the pandemic, but had to waste precious hours on hold with Avis’s customer service department. They eventually offered me a new car but I was unable to coordinate picking it up, so we ended up relying on my sisters to get around. I was only able to spend a few hours with my mom and had to take a $100 Uber back to the airport. I asked Avis not to charge me for the rental, but they did, $653, and when I disputed the charge with Capital One, Avis fought me. I can’t believe Avis is renting out cars they have reported stolen, and then charging its clients. Can you help?
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