There are Broadway events, and then there are Broadway rituals. The Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction belongs firmly in the second category. On Sunday, September 27, the Theatre District once again turns itself inside out as casts, crews, producers, fans and collectors take over West 44th and West 45th Streets, Shubert Alley and Times Square for one of the industry’s most beloved annual traditions. This year carries an extra bit of history: the event celebrates its 40th anniversary.

What began four decades ago with two tables set up by members of A Chorus Line outside their stage door has grown into a full-scale Broadway bazaar, with more than 60 tables selling memorabilia, costumes, props, signed Playbills and the kind of wonderfully strange theatrical ephemera that becomes irresistible the moment someone tells you it was actually used backstage.

This year’s event runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with the silent auction in Shubert Alley and the live Grand Auction beginning at 5 p.m. in the Times Square pedestrian plaza between 45th and 46th Streets. For those who do not want to wait until September 27, online pre-bidding is already open on more than 150 auction lots and continues through 2 p.m. on Friday, September 25, with additional items being added along the way.

These are not your average charity-auction offerings.

Among the experiences currently available is the opportunity to make a one-night-only walk-on appearance in & Juliet. Fans can bid for meet-and-greets with Rachel Zegler after Evita, Tom Felton after Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, or cast members from The Lost Boys and The Rocky Horror Show. Other experiences include shadowing a stage manager at Paranormal Activity or The Lion King, conducting a portion of the exit music at Wicked, sitting in the orchestra pit at Hamilton or The Lion King, and even dancing with Jeremy Jordan in Just in Time.

For the collector who wants something tangible, there are stage-used props, set pieces and costumes, including Jonathan Groff’s signed fedora and bow tie from Just in Time, Patrick Ball’s signed Birkenstocks from Becky Shaw, oversized chess pieces from Chess and pieces associated with Moulin Rouge!. Earlier announced lots have included signed props from George Clooney and Leslie Odom Jr., along with stage-worn heels signed by Audra McDonald.

The tables themselves are half the fun. Productions scheduled to participate this year include & Juliet, Aladdin, Hadestown, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Just in Time, The Lion King, Little Shop of Horrors, The Lost Boys, Maybe Happy Ending, Oh, Mary!, Operation Mincemeat, The Outsiders, Schmigadoon!, Six, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) and Wicked.

There will also be a Curtain Call table devoted to productions that have recently closed, including Death Becomes Her, Dog Day Afternoon and Titaníque. Theatre organizations including the Broadway League, the Dramatists Guild, Playbill, the Metropolitan Opera, the Shubert Organization and the Entertainment Community Fund will also have a presence.

The fan-favorite Autograph Table and Photo Booth will return as well, with participating stars to be announced closer to the event. Located on the deck of Junior’s in Shubert Alley, it has become one of the day’s most popular stops, giving fans the chance to meet Broadway performers while raising money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Beneath all the fun is the reason the day matters.

Last year’s Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction raised a record $1,633,803. Across its previous 39 editions, the event has raised more than $21 million for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, supporting services including medication, meals, counseling, housing assistance and other critical resources for people living with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about Broadway raising money this way. Theatre is filled with things that would look meaningless almost anywhere else: an old prop, a worn shoe, a page of sheet music, a costume piece, a signed scrap of scenery. Put it into the hands of someone who saw the show, loved the performer or remembers exactly where they were when they first heard the song, and suddenly it becomes treasure.

That is what the Broadway Flea Market has understood for 40 years.

On September 27, the Theatre District becomes one enormous backstage closet, reunion, marketplace and fundraiser.

Somewhere in Shubert Alley, the thing you never knew you desperately needed is almost certainly waiting for you.

Over the years, T2C had the pleasure of covering Bob Mackie on several occasions, giving us our own glimpses—and photographs—of the man behind all that extraordinary glamour.

Bob Mackie, Marilyn Maye

There are costume designers who dress performers, and then there was Bob Mackie, who understood that sometimes a costume could become as famous as the person wearing it. Mackie, the legendary designer whose feathers, beads, rhinestones, sequins and wicked sense of theatricality helped define American glamour for more than half a century, died September 14 in Palm Springs, California. He was 87. His death from pneumonia was confirmed by his longtime design director, Joe McFate.

Bob Mackie and Marilyn Maye Photo By Genevieve Rafter Keddy

Cher may have been his most enduring canvas, but Mackie’s extraordinary list of women included Carol Burnett, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli, Mitzi Gaynor, Bette Midler and Ann-Margret. He understood something essential about stars: you weren’t simply dressing a body. You were helping create the image the audience would remember. For Dolly, that included the glorious butterfly gown she wore for the 1979 television special Dolly & Carol in Nashville, another perfect marriage of Mackie’s extravagance and a performer whose personality could actually carry it.

Bob Mackie and Cher

And remember we did.

Mackie created Cher’s daring, feathered sheer ensemble for the 1974 Met Gala and the enormous feathered headdress and midriff-baring black ensemble she wore to the 1986 Academy Awards—looks that helped change what a woman could wear on a red carpet. Decades before today’s stars routinely arrived at premieres dressed to become the next morning’s photograph, Mackie and Cher understood fashion as an event.

The Costumes by Bob Mackie

But Mackie could be every bit as brilliant when the point was laughter rather than seduction. His work throughout the 11-year run of The Carol Burnett Show demonstrated an entirely different side of his genius. His most famous comic creation remains the green velvet curtain dress Burnett wore as Starlett O’Hara in the legendary Gone With the Wind parody “Went with the Wind!”—complete with the curtain rod still running through the shoulders. The joke worked because Mackie didn’t design something merely ridiculous. He made it ridiculous and fabulous.

His relationship with Broadway stretched across nearly five decades. Mackie’s Broadway costume credits began with the 1971 revival of On the Town, followed by Lorelei in 1974, where he designed Carol Channing’s costumes, Debbie in 1976, Platinum in 1978, The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public in 1994 and Moon Over Buffalo in 1995. He designed Carol Burnett’s costumes for the 1999 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together and Liza Minnelli for Minnelli on Minnelli that same season. In 2009, he designed Bernadette Peters’ gowns for her special Broadway concert benefiting Broadway Barks and Broadway Cares.

The Cher Show photo by Joan Marcus

Then came The Cher Show. Opening at the Neil Simon Theatre on December 3, 2018, the musical told Cher’s life through three actresses portraying the star at different stages of her career. There was really only one person who could design the costumes. Mackie had not simply dressed Cher during that history. He was part of the history.

Bob Mackie:,Diana Ross. Original Design for a Mattel Doll. Fashion. Motown Superstar. Diva. 1990s, ca.1990s

In one of Broadway’s more delicious pieces of theatrical symmetry, Bob Mackie became a character in The Cher Show while simultaneously designing the clothes surrounding that character. Michael Berresse portrayed him onstage, while the real Mackie recreated some of the extraordinary looks that had helped construct Cher’s public image over the preceding half-century. The production contained hundreds of costumes, including painstaking recreations of some of Cher’s most recognizable Mackie creations.

Bob Mackie during the 2019 Drama Desk Awards at Steinway Hall on June 2, 2019 in New York City.

In 2019, Broadway finally gave him the prize that had somehow eluded him. Bob Mackie won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical for The Cher Show. He also won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for the production. Remarkably, despite a Broadway career dating to 1971, The Cher Show brought him his first Tony nomination—and his first win.

Bob Mackie during The 69th Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards Dinner at Sardi’s on May 23, 2019 in New York City.

There is something particularly satisfying about that award. Mackie had spent his career creating clothes for people who walked onto stages to receive trophies. This time, he was the one walking up to collect one.

Bob Mackie attends The 69th Annual Outer Critics Circle Awards Dinner at Sardi’s on May 23, 2019 in New York City.

Broadway was only one part of an enormous career. Mackie won nine Emmy Awards, received three Academy Award nominations and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2002. His film work included Oscar-nominated designs for Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady and Staying Alive. In 2019, the Council of Fashion Designers of America honored him with its Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award.

Bob Mackie and Ken Page

His influence never became trapped in the era that made him famous. Generations of younger performers and designers continued rediscovering Mackie’s work, and his designs have been worn or referenced by contemporary stars including Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and Zendaya. What once scandalized red carpets eventually became the vocabulary of the red carpet itself.

Bob Mackie

That may be Mackie’s greatest legacy. He understood that glamour did not have to apologize for itself.

Bob Mackie

He was not afraid of too many feathers, too many beads, too much sparkle or a woman walking into a room fully aware that every eye was about to turn toward her. Yet beneath all that extravagance was extraordinary technical discipline. Those costumes had to move. They had to survive dancing, quick changes, television schedules and eight-performance Broadway weeks. Fantasy only looks effortless when someone has done an enormous amount of work.

Mackie’s life also contained profound personal loss. His only son, Robin, died in 1993 from an AIDS-related illness, and his longtime partner and fellow costume designer Ray Aghayan died in 2011. Mackie is survived by his former wife, Lulu Porter, his granddaughter Alyssa Townsend and great-granddaughters Kyla and Keira Townsend.

Bob Mackie spent his life making entrances possible.

Cher walking onto a stage seemingly wearing little more than strategically placed beads and absolute confidence. Carol Burnett descending a staircase with a curtain rod across her shoulders. Diana Ross shimmering beneath stage lights. Bernadette Peters wrapped in a gown that seemed designed specifically for the color of her hair. Broadway exploding into a parade of Cher’s life in The Cher Show.

Those images remain because Mackie understood that costume design isn’t decoration. At its best, it tells us who someone is before that person has said a word.

Bob Mackie made clothes that spoke. Most of them said essentially the same thing: Look at her. And we did.

For nearly two decades, Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit have been traveling remarkably parallel Broadway roads. They arrived as young performers at almost exactly the same moment, became identified with some of the defining musicals of their generation and repeatedly found themselves performing within blocks of one another without actually sharing a Broadway stage.

That finally changed with Chess. Now Michele and Tveit are taking the partnership beyond the musical with Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit: Live in Concert, a one-night-only event at the Beacon Theatre on Thursday, November 19.

It is a pairing that makes almost absurd sense when their careers are placed side by side. In 2006, Michele was preparing to break through as Wendla in Spring Awakening while Tveit was making his Broadway debut in Hairspray. Both became part of a generation of musical-theatre performers who developed enormous followings just before social media fundamentally changed the relationship between Broadway stars and their audiences.

Michele, of course, had been on Broadway long before Spring Awakening. She made her debut as a child in Les Misérables, followed by Ragtime and Fiddler on the Roof, before originating Wendla and subsequently becoming internationally known as Rachel Berry on Glee. Her return to Broadway in the 2022 revival of Funny Girl proved that television fame had done nothing to diminish the instrument that made Broadway notice her in the first place. Her Fanny Brice became one of the theatrical events of the season and helped transform the revival at the box office.

Tveit’s Broadway trajectory followed a different route but produced an equally formidable résumé. After Hairspray came Wicked, followed by originating Gabe in Next to Normal and Frank Abagnale Jr. in Catch Me If You Can. Then came Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, earning Tveit the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He later returned to Broadway as Sweeney Todd, demonstrating that the polished leading man possessed a considerably darker theatrical edge than some audiences had previously seen.

For years, the two careers kept almost touching.

Then came the Broadway revival of Chess, with Michele as Florence Vassy opposite Tveit’s Freddie Trumper and Nicholas Christopher’s Anatoly Sergievsky. It was the first time Michele and Tveit had actually worked together after spending so much of their careers occupying the same Broadway universe.

More importantly, Chess revealed what happens when two singers with that kind of vocal power are placed opposite one another. Neither performer has to compensate for the other. Tveit can meet Michele’s considerable vocal force, Michele can meet his, and both have enough stage experience to understand that a duet isn’t a competition for the final note. The electricity comes from having two performers capable of pushing each other without overwhelming the music.

The Beacon concert will allow them to take that chemistry somewhere Chess could not. Rather than being confined to one score and two characters, Michele and Tveit will draw upon nearly 20 years of Broadway and popular music, performing separately and together while revisiting songs associated with their individual careers. They are also expected to venture into each other’s musical territory, which may prove to be one of the evening’s more intriguing pleasures.

And there is plenty of territory.

Between Spring Awakening, Funny Girl, Glee, Next to Normal, Catch Me If You Can, Moulin Rouge!, Sweeney Todd and Chess, Michele and Tveit have accumulated an extraordinary contemporary songbook. There is even considerable crossover between Michele’s Glee repertoire and the pop catalogue woven through Moulin Rouge!, opening the door to combinations audiences have never heard from the pair.

Apparently the greater problem will be deciding what not to sing. The amount of material already under consideration has reportedly grown large enough that an intermission may be necessary—which seems entirely appropriate when attempting to compress two decades of two Broadway careers into a single evening.

What makes the concert particularly interesting, however, isn’t simply the possibility of hearing familiar songs sung exceptionally well. Michele and Tveit represent a very specific Broadway generation. They emerged at a moment when Spring Awakening, Next to Normal and eventually Glee were changing how younger audiences encountered musical theatre. Broadway fandom was becoming something different, but it had not yet become completely inseparable from Instagram, TikTok and the machinery of instantaneous celebrity.

Their audiences grew up with them. Now those same audiences have watched Michele return triumphantly to Broadway, Tveit move from contemporary romantic leads into Sondheim and both finally collide in Chess. The Beacon concert effectively turns that shared history into its own theatrical event.

There may be surprise guests. There will certainly be Broadway. There will be pop. And considering the vocal firepower involved, there is very little chance anyone will leave complaining that the evening needed a bigger finish.

Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit: Live in Concert plays the Beacon Theatre for one night only on Thursday, November 19. Presales begin Tuesday, September 15 at 10 a.m., with the general public sale beginning Friday, September 18 at 10 a.m.

After nearly 20 years of performing a few blocks apart, Michele and Tveit have finally discovered something considerably more interesting than parallel careers:

what happens when those two lines finally meet.

Broadway and Off-Broadway are heading into fall with major stars, surprising crossovers, record-breaking runs and a few farewells. Julia Roberts is returning to Broadway after two decades, & Juliet has set its closing date, Billy Porter is about to sing about paying bills, Hamilton is heading to MetLife Stadium and Oh, Mary! is making the leap to HBO.

Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd and Sarah Paulson to Star in Small Mouth Sounds. Bess Wohl’s acclaimed Small Mouth Sounds will finally make its Broadway debut with the kind of cast that could sell tickets without saying a word—which is particularly appropriate for a play largely built around silence. Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd, Sarah Paulson, Martin Freeman, Greta Lee and Isaac Powell will star as six strangers attending a silent spiritual retreat, where their attempts at enlightenment inevitably collide with everything they brought with them. Joe Mantello directs, with previews beginning February 18, 2027, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre ahead of a March 18 opening. The production marks Roberts’ first Broadway appearance in more than 20 years and reunites her with Rudd and Mantello, with whom she worked on Three Days of Rain in 2006. It will also mark Freeman’s Broadway debut. Wohl, meanwhile, arrives with considerably more heat following Liberation, which won both the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play.

After More Than Four Years, & Juliet Will Say Goodbye to Broadway. The Max Martin-powered musical will play its final performance at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on January 3, 2027, ending a Broadway run that began previews in October 2022 and officially opened November 17 of that year. By closing night, & Juliet will have played 1,723 regular performances and 20 previews, placing it among the 50 longest-running Broadway musicals of all time. The David West Read musical, which imagines Juliet deciding that perhaps dying over Romeo isn’t the best life choice after all, has grossed more than $175 million on Broadway, welcomed more than 1.5 million audience members and recouped its investment in 2024. The production earned nine Tony nominations and has become an international franchise, proving that Shakespeare, Max Martin and an astonishing quantity of confetti made a surprisingly durable Broadway marriage.

Billy Porter, Billy Zane and Jessica Vosk Are Going to Broadway to Pay the Bills—Literally. In one of the stranger Broadway announcements of the season, Tony winner Billy Porter, Billy Zane and Jessica Vosk will headline Bill Pay The Musical, a one-night-only musical comedy at the Broadhurst Theatre on September 25. The fully staged production is being produced by financial technology company Ramp to promote its bill-payment platform, reviving the wonderfully peculiar mid-century tradition of the “industrial musical,” when corporations commissioned elaborate shows about everything from automobiles to appliances. Kevin Zak wrote the book, Jason Michael Snow provides music and lyrics, Keaton Wooden directs and Antoinette DiPietropolo choreographs, with Rema Webb among the additional cast. What sounds like an elaborate Broadway joke is apparently quite real—and with Porter, Vosk and Zane involved, paying invoices may never again seem quite so theatrical.

Taylor Mac and Matt Ray Bring Songs From Bark of Millions to the Delacorte. Taylor Mac and composer Matt Ray are bringing a special concert version of their epic rock-opera Bark of Millions to the revitalized Delacorte Theater September 18–20 as part of Joe’s Pub in the Park. The work, originally conceived as an enormous musical meditation on queer history and culture, becomes a two-hour Central Park concert featuring songs inspired by queer figures across generations. Mac provides lyrics and direction, Ray supplies music and musical direction, and performers include André De Shields, Heather Christian, Machine Dazzle, Mama Alto and members of the original company. The Public is offering both reserved donation seating and free day-of-performance tickets, making this three-night engagement an unusually expansive way to welcome audiences back to the Delacorte.

Broadway Meets the NFL as Hamilton Takes Over Halftime. Former Hamilton cast members will perform at halftime during the New York Giants’ season opener against the Dallas Cowboys today, September 13, at MetLife Stadium. Tony nominee Nicholas Christopher returns as Aaron Burr, joined by Mandy Gonzalez, Morgan Anita Wood and Candace Quarrels as the Schuyler sisters for a medley arranged by Hamilton musical mastermind Alex Lacamoire and Don P. Roberts. The Broadway performers will be joined by marching bands from Morgan State University and Penn State as well as percussionist Jaheim Lee. The game will also commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11, honoring first responders, service members and 9/11 families, with members of the NYPD and FDNY performing the national anthem. It is an unusually New York collision of Broadway, football and remembrance—and certainly a halftime show unlike anything the Giants have staged before.

Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! Is Heading to HBO. Those who never managed to get into Oh, Mary! will finally have another way to see the theatrical phenomenon. A live capture of Cole Escola’s Tony-winning comedy will premiere on HBO and stream on HBO Max in 2027. Rather than filming the Broadway production, the performance was captured in July during the show’s West End engagement at London’s Trafalgar Theatre, with Escola once again playing their gloriously unhinged version of Mary Todd Lincoln. The filmed cast also includes Giles Terera, Bianca Leigh, Tony Macht and Michael Urie. What began as an Off-Broadway oddity became one of the most unlikely Broadway sensations in years; an HBO release now gives Escola’s wildly revisionist First Lady an audience far beyond Broadway and the West End.

Gina Torres

Gina Torres Is Joining Buena Vista Social Club. Suits star Gina Torres will return to Broadway this fall, stepping into the role of Omara Portuondo in the Tony-winning Buena Vista Social Club. Torres will appear at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre from October 13 through November 29 while Natalie Venetia Belcon takes a planned leave of absence to play Claudia in New York City Center’s gala presentation of In the Heights. Although Torres is best known to television audiences for Suits, Pearson and 9-1-1: Lone Star, Broadway isn’t foreign territory: her earlier credits include Face Valueand The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public. Her casting gives the already musically formidable Buena Vista Social Clubanother distinctive presence for its fall run.

Off-Broadway’s Little Shop of Horrors Makes History. Feed it long enough and apparently Little Shop of Horrors will just keep growing. The hit revival at the Westside Theatre has surpassed the 2,210-performance run of the musical’s original 1982 Off-Broadway production, making the current staging the longest-running production of Little Shop in the show’s history. The revival began previews in September 2019 and opened the following month, survived the pandemic shutdown and resumed performances in September 2021. Its longevity has been helped by an ever-changing roster of performers stepping into Seymour and Audrey, turning the intimate revival into something of an Off-Broadway institution. More than four decades after Alan Menken and Howard Ashman unleashed Audrey II on New York, audiences apparently still haven’t learned the fundamental lesson: never feed the plant.

Times Square smelled considerably better than usual Wednesday afternoon as Taste of Times Square returned September 9, turning Broadway and Restaurant Row into one enormous outdoor dining room. More than 30 neighborhood restaurants participated in the annual Times Square Alliance food and music festival, which stretched along 46th Street from Seventh to Ninth Avenues and across the Broadway plazas between 45th and 47th Streets.

For four hours, the neighborhood became a tasting menu of itself. Italian, Mexican, Caribbean, Cuban, Indian and classic American dishes appeared within steps of one another, with longtime Theatre District institutions joining newer arrivals and giving New Yorkers and visitors the chance to graze their way through the neighborhood without committing to a full dinner. Most tastes were priced at $5, with several larger offerings at $10.

Among the participating favorites were Bond 45 NY, Brooklyn Chop House, Ellen’s Stardust Diner, Hard Rock Cafe, Carmine’s, Becco, Havana Central, Le Rivage, Junior’s, Serendipity 3, Toloache, Tony’s Di Napoli and Virgil’s Real Barbecue. It was a rather wonderful reminder of something those of us who actually live and work here already know: Times Square may be famous for its lights and Broadway theatres, but there is an extraordinary amount of food tucked into these blocks.

Toffee Sticky Pudding from The Long Room

We started with dessert—or at least made very certain we didn’t miss it. The Toffee Sticky Pudding from The Long Room proved one of our happiest discoveries of the day. Sweets were surprisingly scarce, particularly compared with the number of savory offerings, making that pudding even more welcome. Between it, Serendipity 3’s Frozen Hot Chocolate and Junior’s cheesecake, the neighborhood’s sweet tooth was represented, but only just.

Toloache’s pork taco

Then came Toloache. Their pork taco was delicious enough to accomplish exactly what an event like Taste of Times Square is supposed to accomplish: it made us want to go back and review the restaurant properly. A few bites can be a far more persuasive advertisement than any press release.

Palermo Argentinian Bistro Steak and cheese bread

We already knew what Palermo Argentinian Bistro could do, having previously reviewed and loved the restaurant, but its steak and cheese bread provided a useful reminder. The steak was quite simply melt-in-your-mouth tender. There is also another Mexican restaurant, Rosa Mexican, preparing to enter the neighborhood, and we are more than ready to see what it brings to the increasingly interesting Theatre District dining scene.

Food, however, was only half the atmosphere. Music spilled through the plazas, including TSQ LIVE + MTA Music performer Bella Breen at Broadway and 47th Street, while the Broadway Dreams Foundation and Ellen’s Stardust Diner’s Stardusters were among the scheduled performers farther downtown. Street musicians filled in the spaces between, and at one point models were being filmed in the middle of it all. It was Times Square doing what Times Square does best: food, theatre, fashion, music and complete visual chaos somehow occupying the same few blocks without asking one another’s permission.

Catherine Russell

One of our favorite encounters was with Catherine Russell, who has spent nearly four decades playing Margaret Thorne Brent in the Off-Broadway thriller Perfect Crime. Russell isn’t simply part of Theatre District history; she is one of those people who actually makes the neighborhood feel like a neighborhood. She owns The Theater Center and Patzeria Perfect Pizza, and there she was Wednesday, not posing beside the booth but serving pasta to the people who stopped by.

That accessibility is part of what made Taste of Times Square work. For one afternoon, the barrier between restaurant and customer, performer and audience, Broadway and sidewalk largely disappeared. Restaurant owners and workers served food in the street while musicians performed a few feet away and thousands of people wandered from table to table deciding what smelled too good to pass up.

New York has an unnerving ability to place celebration and violence almost side by side.

Just a block from Restaurant Row, two people were stabbed Wednesday afternoon inside a West 47th Street building. Early reports differed on the precise address, ages and conditions of the victims, but police confirmed that a man and woman suffered stab wounds in the incident at approximately 2:45 p.m. Later reporting said both victims had been taken to Mount Sinai West and were in stable condition, while police were searching for a suspect. Contrary to some initial information circulating Wednesday, the latest reporting I found does not confirm that the male victim died or that a person of interest was in custody.

The contrast was impossible to ignore. A block away, people were eating tacos, listening to music and celebrating the restaurants that make Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square feel like home. Nearby, police were investigating a bloody act of violence.

That, too, is New York: glorious and maddening, communal and frightening, sometimes within a single city block.

For most of Wednesday, though, Taste of Times Square offered the version of the neighborhood worth fighting to preserve. Restaurants opened themselves to strangers, performers turned sidewalks into stages, Catherine Russell handed out pizza, and thousands of people ate their way through a community that is far richer and more local than the flashing billboards sometimes allow the rest of the world to see.

Somewhere in all of that, we discovered a sticky toffee pudding worth going back for.