New York has never been particularly interested in the idea that dogs should stay home while the humans have all the fun. On Wednesday, August 26, National Dog Day gives the city’s four-legged social set an excellent excuse to hit the town, with restaurants rolling out treats, swag, special menus and a proper Yappy Hour. Frankly, considering how many New York dogs have better wardrobes and social calendars than the rest of us, it seems only fair.

At Loulou, 176 Eighth Avenue, National Dog Day takes over the restaurant’s outdoor cabana beginning at 11 a.m., turning it into a celebration for pups and their people. Humans can settle in with a specialty Tito’s cocktail while their companions discover that “dog food” has taken on an entirely different meaning in Chelsea.

Loulou already has a dedicated dog-friendly menu, and these are not exactly scraps from the table. Four-legged diners can choose from Steak & Eggs, Grilled Chicken, Seared Salmon and the “Loulou” Burger, followed by a “Pup”sicle made with yogurt, peanut butter, banana and apple. Somewhere, a Labrador is currently wondering why every Wednesday isn’t National Dog Day.

There’s also a little something to take home. Every dog arriving with an owner beginning at 11 a.m. will receive a complimentary swag bag filled with Tito’s branded toys or accessories, additional dog toys and treats, while supplies last.

For pups whose tastes run more café chic than cocktail hour, Loulou is also partnering with Isshiki. Guests purchasing a matcha will receive a complimentary Pup-Cha for their dog—a pup-friendly cup of whipped cream topped with green spirulina. Because apparently even the dogs have entered their matcha era.

Downtown, Clinton Hall FiDi, at 90 Washington Street, is answering National Dog Day with an all-day Yappy Hour beginning at 11:30 a.m. Bring your dog and the humans receive happy-hour pricing throughout the day, including $6 draft beers, $7 well drinks and house wines, and $8 select bites. The guest of honor gets a complimentary dog treat or branded bandana while supplies last.

The restaurant’s Supercraft beer program will also be flowing, while Giant Jenga, Giant Connect 4, chess, Uno, Cards Against Humanity and other complimentary games provide entertainment for the humans. The dogs, naturally, will be busy doing what dogs do best: meeting everyone, investigating everything and quietly determining which table presents the greatest possibility of dropped food.

National Dog Day began as a celebration of dogs and a reminder of the enormous number still waiting in shelters for homes. There is something rather wonderful, then, about giving the dogs already sharing our lives a day devoted entirely to them. They ask surprisingly little of us considering what they give back: food, walks, somewhere comfortable to sleep and the occasional opportunity to accompany us somewhere far more interesting than the living-room sofa.

On August 26, New York is giving them the good table. Really, hasn’t your dog earned it?

I am not particularly good at routines. There, I said it. I admire people who appear to have their lives organized into neat little compartments: wake at a certain hour, exercise, meditate, take their vitamins, eat precisely what their bodies need and somehow arrive at the rest of the day looking composed. I have never quite been that person. My days have a tendency to take on lives of their own.

Getting ready for fall has made me realize something. A routine does not have to mean turning your life into a schedule. It means deciding that certain things matter enough that you are no longer going to negotiate with yourself about them every single day. There are vitamins I know I need to take, so I have decided they need to become part of my day rather than something I remember when I happen to see the bottle. After being on so many antibiotics, I want to eat yogurt every day to help replenish what those medications have disrupted. I have a trampoline, and I need to get on it. Not for an hour. Not because I suddenly intend to become an Olympic athlete. Five minutes counts. Fifteen minutes is terrific. What matters is that my body moves and that I do it again tomorrow.

None of these things is revolutionary. That is precisely the point.

We have made changing our lives far too dramatic. We announce enormous goals, buy equipment, download apps, create schedules we could never realistically maintain and then feel that we have failed when the elaborate new life collapses under the weight of the life we were already living.

A useful routine should fit your actual life. That means looking at yourself without fantasy. When do you really wake up? When do you have energy? What are you consistently forgetting? What makes you feel better when you actually do it? What have you been telling yourself for months that you need to start doing? Then make it smaller. If you cannot exercise for an hour, move for ten minutes. If ten feels impossible today, move for five. Five minutes done every day has more power than the perfect 45-minute workout you keep promising yourself you will begin next Monday.

The same principle applies far beyond exercise. It can mean taking your supplements with breakfast instead of relying on memory. Putting ten minutes aside each evening to put things back where they belong. Drinking water when you first get up. Reading instead of automatically reaching for the phone. Preparing tomorrow’s clothes tonight. Going outside every day. Calling someone you love. Writing one page. Doing one thing that consistently makes your life work better.

Routine becomes powerful when the argument disappears. You stop asking, Do I feel like doing this today? You simply do it because it has become part of the architecture of your life.

That is very different from discipline as punishment. A good routine is an act of respect toward your future self. The person you will be tomorrow benefits from what you quietly do today. The person you will be in October is being constructed by what you repeat in August. Repetition is where transformation actually happens. Fall itself understands this.

By January, you won’t need a resolution. You’ll already be living it.

Labor Day weekend always arrives with a strange mixture of celebration and denial. Technically, summer isn’t over. Emotionally, however, New Yorkers know exactly what the weekend means. The white shoes are living on borrowed time, evenings are beginning to arrive earlier, and somewhere in the distance September is already sharpening its pencils. Before we surrender to fall, New York is giving us one final long weekend—and there are some wonderful ways to spend it.

For music lovers, begin at Lincoln Center, where The Metropolitan Opera’s 17th annual Summer HD Festival returns to Josie Robertson Plaza from September 2 through September 7. Approximately 2,500 seats are available each evening on a first-come, first-served basis, no tickets or reservations are required, and the screenings include open captions. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts becomes particularly magical on late-summer evenings, and watching grand opera projected outdoors as the city darkens around you is one of those experiences that reminds you why living in New York can still be extraordinary.

The festival opens Wednesday, September 2 at 8 p.m. with Act I of Wagner’s monumental Tristan und Isolde, followed Thursday at 8 p.m. by Acts II and III. Friday brings Bellini’s I Puritani at 7:30 p.m., followed Saturday at 8 p.m. by Tchaikovsky’s exquisitely romantic Eugene Onegin. Sunday offers something decidedly different with Gabriela Lena Frank’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, a magical-realist reunion of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera set around the Day of the Dead.  What could possibly be more appropriate for the unofficial farewell to summer than ending with heartbreak?

On Labor Day itself, September 7 at 8 p.m., the festival concludes with Puccini’s La Bohème. Parisian garrets, starving artists, impossible love and one of opera’s most devastating endings—under the Manhattan stars and completely free.

For something considerably brassier, head to Bryant Park on Friday, September 4 from 7 to 9:30 p.m., when Bryant Park Picnic Performances presents its first festival devoted to all things brass. Two-time Grammy nominee New Breed Brass Band headlines the free evening alongside Aberdeen and New York’s all-female Brass Queens. Bring your own blanket or snag one of Bryant Park’s on a first-come, first-served basis, find yourself a piece of lawn and let Manhattan become New Orleans for a couple of hours.

Then, on Labor Day evening, Bryant Park changes personalities again. The lawn becomes an enormous outdoor movie theatre for a free screening of the wonderfully ridiculous 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest. The lawn opens for picnicking at 5 p.m., with Hester Street Fair food vendors beginning at 4 p.m. Arrive early, claim your territory and settle in beneath the skyscrapers.

There is something particularly delicious about watching a movie outdoors in Midtown. Cars are honking a block away, office towers surround you, somebody’s picnic invariably becomes considerably more elaborate than yours—and then darkness falls and several thousand strangers collectively disappear into a movie.

Maybe you want to spend Labor Day weekend somewhere that doesn’t feel remotely like Midtown. Then get on the ferry. From September 5 through September 7, the Richmond County Fair takes over Historic Richmond Town, transforming 25 acres into one of New York City’s most wonderfully old-fashioned end-of-summer traditions.

This isn’t merely a carnival dropped onto an empty parking lot. Historic Richmond Town is an extraordinary open-air museum containing 38 historic structures, with the site’s history reaching deep into Staten Island’s past. The modern Richmond County Fair dates to 1980, while the tradition behind it reaches back to the 19th century.

For three days, costumed historical interpreters bring that world back to life through demonstrations of blacksmithing, tinsmithing, carpentry, hearth cooking and basket making, alongside hands-on crafts and living-history presentations. Then history collides rather wonderfully with the county fair.

There are carnival rides, games, pony rides, face painting, aerialists, a butterfly vivarium and more than 100 local vendors selling crafts, antiques and the sort of food for which nutritional information should probably remain confidential until Tuesday. Naturally, there are eating contests. Hot dogs, Chicken wings, Pie, because apparently merely eating fair food wasn’t sufficiently competitive.

There is also a three-day music festival featuring Staten Island bands, DJs and tribute acts, while the Staten Island Culture Crawl near the entrance introduces visitors to local arts, cultural and community organizations.

The fair runs noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, September 5 through Monday, September 7, with general admission currently listed at $15, $12 for seniors 65 and older, $7 for children ages 3–11, and free admission for children under three. Proceeds support Historic Richmond Town’s preservation and educational work. That makes the Richmond County Fair particularly appealing. You aren’t merely buying admission to another festival. You’re helping preserve a physical piece of New York history.

This Labor Day weekend is the moment to resist doing what we New Yorkers so often do: staying home because everywhere will be crowded, complaining that summer disappeared too quickly and promising ourselves we’ll do all these things next year.

Go hear Wagner under the stars. Dance to a brass band in Bryant Park. Pack a picnic and watch Galaxy Quest surrounded by skyscrapers. Take the ferry to Staten Island, watch somebody forge something the way it might have been done more than a century ago, ride something mildly inadvisable and eat something even more inadvisable.

Summer is leaving whether we approve or not. We might as well give it a proper New York goodbye.

Every January, we perform the same rituals….. new year, new beginning, new diet, new exercise program, new haircut, new wardrobe, new promises. We wake up on January 1 and somehow expect ourselves to become an entirely different human being because a number changed on the calendar overnight. I think we’ve got it backwards. What if September is when we begin?

Fall has always been a season of transformation. Nature changes color before it releases what it no longer needs. The air changes, the light changes, children return to school, vacations end and life acquires structure again. There is something about September that has always felt more like the beginning of a year.

I want to begin somewhere we’re frequently told is superficial: the outside. We are constantly told that genuine transformation has to happen from the inside out. Certainly some of it does, but I think the reverse can also be true. Sometimes changing something on the outside gives the inside permission to follow. Sometimes seeing yourself differently begins the process of thinking about yourself differently.

So the first assignment is deceptively simple: figure out what you want to look like. Not what fashion magazines tell you to look like. Not what your partner prefers, what your mother always liked, what somebody on Instagram is currently selling or what you’ve been told is appropriate for your age. Forget all of that. When you look into the mirror, who do you want to see?

Have you secretly wanted short hair for years but kept it long because everyone tells you how beautiful your long hair is? Cut it. Have you always wanted long hair but continually give up during the awkward growing-out stage? Start growing it now. By January, you’re four months closer. Have you wanted pink hair, silver hair, bangs, no bang, curls, sleek, something dramatic or something completely natural? This isn’t really about becoming prettier. That’s precisely the trap you should avoid. It is about becoming more recognizable to yourself.

If you don’t know what that looks like yet, make a vision board. An actual one. Go through magazines, photographs, fashion pages, Pinterest, whatever speaks to you, and collect images instinctively. Don’t overthink them at first. Then look at what you’ve chosen. Vision boards are harder than they sound because eventually you have to stop collecting pretty pictures and ask yourself why you’re attracted to them. Perhaps every person you’ve chosen has short hair. Perhaps everyone is wearing enormous glasses, tailored jackets or bright colors. Perhaps the homes you’ve selected are peaceful and uncluttered. Perhaps every image contains nature. Your choices are telling you something. Listen.

Then make the hair appointment. Get the manicure and pedicure. For me, manicure’s and pedicure’s have always been part of my personal checklist for returning to myself. If I’ve been sick for a long time, one of the first things I want when I begin feeling human again is a manicure and pedicure. There is something wonderfully restorative about looking down at my hands and feet and thinking, “There. That’s better.” Does a manicure solve your life? Not, bt sometimes we don’t need to solve our lives before we begin caring about them again.

Next, go through your makeup. Open the drawers, bags and cabinets and throw away what is ancient, dried out, broken or hasn’t touched your face in years. Then go play. Go to Sephora. Look through the new fall collections. Look at magazines and photographs and see what people are doing with color, texture and shape. Remember that you are gathering possibilities, not accepting instructions. Maybe this year’s dramatic burgundy lipstick makes you feel fabulous. Maybe it makes you look as though you’ve been dead since Tuesday. Both discoveries are useful. The purpose isn’t to become fashionable. The purpose is to become intentional.

Transformation rarely happens because of one enormous decision. It happens because hundreds of tiny decisions eventually begin pointing in the same direction. That is why fall is perfect. September doesn’t demand completion; September simply asks us to begin. October gives us another month to continue. November lets us adjust. December allows us to look at what worked, what didn’t and what still needs attention.

Suddenly New Year’s Eve is no longer an emergency meeting with ourselves. There is no desperate list of ten things we’re going to change beginning tomorrow. No punishment for everything we failed to accomplish during the previous year. No fantasy that midnight possesses some transformational power unavailable to us at 3:17 on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Instead, December 31 becomes an inventory. What did I miss? What still doesn’t feel like me? What needs attention? What do I want to carry forward? What can stay behind?

Time to look into the mirror and meet yourself.

For four decades, Ken Fallin has been looking at famous faces and seeing what the rest of us miss.

Joan Crawford

A few strokes of ink become a raised eyebrow. A slightly exaggerated jaw becomes an entire personality. A familiar silhouette suddenly tells you everything you need to know about the person inhabiting it. That is the peculiar magic of caricature when it is done brilliantly: exaggeration somehow produces something closer to truth.

Alfred Hitchcock’s website

This fall, Fallin celebrates that remarkable career on two fronts. On Wednesday, October 7, from 5 to 7 p.m., New World Stages will host the opening reception for an exhibition of his work, offering audiences an opportunity to see the drawings beyond the pages and screens where so many first encountered them.

Gregory Peck

At the same time, Fallin is assembling a self-published book featuring selected drawings from his 40 years as an illustrator and caricaturist—and for those who think they know his work primarily through Broadway, the collection may contain a few surprises.

Ethel Merman in London

Because Ken Fallin’s world has always been considerably larger than the theatre district.

Karl Lagerfeld

The proposed book reaches through an astonishing range of subjects and assignments: actors and filmmakers, politicians and journalists, fashion royalty including Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, architect Jean Nouvel, and hundreds of figures drawn during Fallin’s long association with The Wall Street Journal. Taken together, the images become something more interesting than a conventional career retrospective. They are a visual record of the people who shaped several decades of American culture.

Fallin’s first major break came in 1983 when he began creating the posters and advertising artwork for Gerard Alessandrini’s deliciously wicked Forbidden Broadway. It proved an ideal marriage of artist and subject. Fallin’s ability to lovingly skewer a famous face mirrored exactly what Forbidden Broadway was doing musically to Broadway itself.

Andy Warhol

Those drawings eventually traveled far beyond Manhattan, with Fallin’s Forbidden Broadway artwork appearing as productions reached London, Tokyo and Sydney. His visual language became inseparable from the show: you could recognize Forbidden Broadway before reading its title.

Bassets

By 1987, The Boston Herald had commissioned Fallin to create a weekly celebrity caricature for its Sunday arts and entertainment section. But another chapter of his career would eventually introduce his work to an enormous national readership.

Jean Nouvel

For The Wall Street Journal, Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable figures, ranging from presidents to movie stars, cultural figures and newsmakers. His subjects have included Barack Obama and Paul Newman, as well as journalist Tim Russert, whom Fallin drew for Peggy Noonan’s memorial following Russert’s death.

Bernard-Henri Levy

That work reveals something particularly interesting about Fallin’s gift. Caricature can easily become cruelty. Fallin rarely needs cruelty. His drawings can certainly be wicked—and anyone who has followed his theatrical work knows that his pen possesses teeth—but underneath the exaggeration is observation.

Warren Buffett

He isn’t merely drawing what someone looks like. He is drawing what makes us recognize them.

Cole Porter

Sometimes it is posture. Sometimes hair. Sometimes the architecture of a face. Sometimes it is simply attitude. Fallin understands that likeness has surprisingly little to do with photographic accuracy. Capture the right three things about somebody and suddenly there they are.

DOVER Quartet

That ability made him equally valuable outside editorial illustration. His commercial clients have included American Express, HBO, Showtime, CNBC and Walt Disney Productions, while assignments have taken his distinctive line into national advertising campaigns and commissioned work far removed from Broadway.

Patti LuPone

LuPone Carnegie Hall

Then there are the subjects themselves.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Sunset Blvd. Gloria Swamson

Fashion designers. Architects. Movie stars. Presidents. Broadway legends. Journalists. Cultural eccentrics. Fallin has spent forty years quietly assembling an extraordinary paper cocktail party populated by people who, in many cases, would never otherwise have occupied the same room.

John Williams

The forthcoming book promises finally to invite us into that room.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg

What makes the project especially appealing is the possibility of seeing work that even longtime admirers may never have encountered. Editorial illustration is ephemeral by nature. A drawing appears beside an article, advertisement or review and then disappears into an archive. Decades later, an artist can discover that he has created an enormous visual history almost accidentally. Fallin has.

Lani Bell

While the mediums surrounding illustration have transformed dramatically during those forty years—from newspapers and print advertising to digital publishing and social media—the fundamental appeal of his work hasn’t changed. A Ken Fallin drawing remains unmistakably a Ken Fallin drawing.

Robert Glasper

That may be the greatest achievement of all. In an age increasingly dominated by photographic perfection, filters, digital manipulation and now artificial intelligence capable of manufacturing faces that never existed, there is something wonderfully human about the visible intelligence of a hand-drawn line. You can see the decision. You can see the joke. You can almost see the instant when Fallin looked at his subject and thought, Ah. That’s it.

Steve Jobs

The October exhibition at New World Stages brings that line back where so much of Fallin’s story began: the theatre.

Yves Saint Laurent

The book promises something larger.

Vivek Ramaswamy

It reminds us that Ken Fallin hasn’t simply been drawing Broadway for forty years. He has been drawing his time. And what a cast he has had.

Ken Fallin