5 Things to Do This Weekend

Jazz

A New Day at the Vanguard

Ron Miles is the headliner for the reopening of the Village Vanguard. His sets will be at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sunday.Credit…Elliot Ross/Blue Note Records

Before the coronavirus struck, the Village Vanguard was among the more charming rooms in the West Village. With the pandemic stretching on, this burgundy-hued basement on Seventh Avenue South might feel almost too cozy for comfort. But the club’s management has made adjustments ahead of its post-lockdown reopening this week: They’re limiting the seating capacity, selling tickets only online and enforcing strict vaccination requirements — for employees and musicians, as well as listeners.

Musically, the Vanguard is putting a fresh foot forward: This week’s headliner is Ron Miles, who until recently was one of the most alluring but overlooked improvisers in jazz, and had never before played the Vanguard as a bandleader. A musicians’ darling for decades, the Denver-based Miles has only recently earned widespread national attention, largely thanks to his work with the slippery, folk-inflected quintet that he’s fronting this week: Bill Frisell on guitar, Jason Moran on piano, Thomas Morgan on bass and Brian Blade on drums. (Moran will appear at only the Saturday and Sunday shows.) Sets are at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sunday; tickets are $40 and available at villagevanguard.com.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Comedy

Trivia Subversion

Martin Urbano is sincerely subversive. Two years ago, the comedian parodied MasterClass by teaching his own series called “Comedy Amateurclass,” which was featured on episodes of “Chris Gethard Presents” on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. During the pandemic, Urbano simultaneously lowered and heightened the stakes of trivia by writing and hosting “Who Wants $2.69? With Martin Urbano.”

To present this twisted take on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” Urbano assumes the character of an exiled-if-not-yet-canceled comedian and torments his funny friends — as well as audience members — with his own multiple-choice questions. For each correct answer, he indeed pays out $2.69.

On Sunday at 8 p.m., the show, which had been streaming on Planet Scum’s Twitch channel, will be live and in-person at Union Hall. Urbano’s contestants will include the comedians Marcia Belsky and Tom Thakkar. Tickets are $10 in advance ($15 on the day of) at Eventbrite.
SEAN L. McCARTHY

Film Series

Racing Cars and Surfing Waves

What links a film about car freaks, a surfing movie, Kelly Reichardt’s two-hander “Old Joy” and compilations from bygone downtown cultural scenes? A current Anthology Film Archives series that is tied to a new book, “Common Tones: Selected Interviews With Artists and Musicians 1995-2020.” Its author, the musician Alan Licht, is a guest curator for the program.

“Two-Lane Blacktop” (on Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday), from Monte Hellman, who died earlier this year, is screening on 35-millimeter — the appropriate aesthetic for Hellman’s grungy chronicle of a cross-country road race whose speedy participants (James Taylor and Dennis Wilson vs. Warren Oates) are in no hurry to get anywhere. Ripe for revisitation is John Milius’s “Big Wednesday” (on Friday, Monday and Sept. 23), which follows three surfer pals (Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt and Gary Busey) through the Vietnam era and its fallout. Even during the climactic swell, Milius directs it like a western. Retrograde gender politics exist uneasily with the pop tunes and anti-establishment attitude.
BEN KENIGSBERG

Kids

Fun That Covers All the Bases

Children will find plenty of chalk at the back-to-school celebration in Lower Manhattan on Friday, but they won’t use it to write on blackboards.

Called BPC Back to School — the initials stand for Battery Park City — this free outdoor festival replaces a community field day that wasn’t held at the end of the last, rather unusual academic year. Taking place in Rockefeller Park from 4:30 to 9 p.m., the fun kicks off with a soccer show on the basketball court by the New York Red Bulls Freestyle Crew. The festivities, which are presented by the Battery Park City Authority, continue at 5:30 with music by the D.J. Susan Z. Anthony, the creation of chalk drawings on the path between the North and South Lawns and games like tug of war, cornhole and T-ball. (Only heavy rain will result in the event’s cancellation.)

You’ll find more team spirit during a 7:30 screening of “The Sandlot,” David Mickey Evans’s 1993 coming-of-age sports comedy (rated PG), in which nothing is quite what it seems, including a boy’s athletic prowess and the nature of a fearsome neighborhood dog. The movie is set in the 1960s, but it has a timeless subject: baseball.
LAUREL GRAEBER

Art & Museums

The Garden of Many Delights

Wave Hill is not only a remarkably unique public garden in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, it also has a nearly 50-year history of mounting captivating art shows.

Wave Hill’s offerings this fall are no exception. In its Glyndor Gallery through Dec. 5, it is displaying “Now,” the first half of “Eco-Urgency: Now or Never.” This two-part exhibition explores our ecological crisis through works by 15 multidisciplinary artists (the Lehman College Art Gallery will host the second half, “Or Never,” starting on Dec. 4). Additionally, two solo shows by Wave Hill’s fellows, Katherine Miranda and Jake Brush, are on view until Oct. 10 in the gallery’s Sunroom Project Space; and in the Wave Hill House, also through Dec. 5, David Benjamin Sherry’s photographs of the American West remind us why nature is worth preserving.

On Saturday at 11 a.m., there will be an hourlong tour of the Glyndor Gallery. And “Eco-Urgency” will serve as inspiration for an outdoor concert by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. All exhibitions and events are free with admission to the garden.
MELISSA SMITH