Lead Trio in \'Evita\' To Depart Jan. 26

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Ricky Martin, center, in a scene from “Evita” with Elena Roger, left, and Michael Cerveris.

The hit Broadway revival of “Evita” will go on but without its stars, Elena Roger, Ricky Martin, and Michael Cerveris, who will finish out their runs with the show on Jan. 26, 2013, the producers announced on Monday.

The revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical opened to mixed reviews in April but has been a draw at the box office, thanks to the casting of Mr. Martin, a Grammy-winning pop star, as Che, opposite Ms. Roger as Eva Peron and Mr. Cerveris as Juan Peron.

In a news release, th e producers said the musical “will continue its open-ended run following the original stars' departure. The new stars will be announced at a later date.”

Zaro\'s Cited by OSHA Over Safety Issues at Bakery

Zaro's Bake Shop, the chain familiar to commuters for its half-dozen outlets in city train stations, has been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for workplace violations that carry proposed fines of $118,000.

The violations, announced Monday by OSHA, were found in April during an inspection of the Zaro's factory on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx. They include:

• inadequate guarding on moving machine parts;
• lack of procedures to prevent machines from starting up while workers service them;
• failure to provide eye protection for employees who work around corrosive materials; and
• lack of eyewash stations.

“Left uncorrected, these conditions expose workers to the hazards of lacerations, amputations, electric shocks, fires, explosions, eye injuries and being unable to swiftly exit the workplace in the event of an emergency,” said Diana Cortez, the director of OSHA's Tarrytown, N.Y., office.

Zar o's contested the violations, which were issued Oct. 11, OSHA said. It was not possible to leave a voice mail message at Zaro's main phone number Monday evening.

Audra McDonald to Host \'Live From Lincoln Center\'

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Audra McDonald.

Not since Beverly Sills, who died in 2007, has “Live From Lincoln Center” - one of the few regular sources of classical music on mainstream television - had a regular host. Now another soprano is following in her footsteps. Lincoln Center said that the singer and actress Audra McDonald would become the show's official host, presiding over at least seven broadcasts starting next month. The shows include “The Richard Tucker Opera Gala” on Dec. 13 and the New York Philharmonic's New Year's Eve gala celebrating Marvin Hamlisch.

Lincoln Center, in announcing the position, stressed Ms. McDonald's ties to the arts complex, including her stint as a stud ent at the Juilliard School; a role in the 1994 production of “Carousel” at the Lincoln Center Theater; and performances in several “Live From Lincoln Center” productions. She served as host of the series broadcast of the Philharmonic's opening night gala in September. Various individuals have served as hosts in recent years, including Yo-Yo Ma, Alec Baldwin, Renee Fleming and Alan Alda.

Free Perk-Filled Yankee Seats Prompt Fine of Ex-City Official

Jason Szenes for The New York Times Jorge Posada slugged a three-run homer in the Yankees' eight-run fourth inning against the Red Sox on Aug. 6, 2009. A city social-services commissioner who attended the game as the guest of a city contractor has been fined $3,000.

A former high official of the city's Human Resources Administration was fined $3,000 for accepting luxury-suite tickets to a Yankees-Red Sox game from a vendor trying to win the agency's business, the City Conflicts of Interest Board announ ced on Monday.

The official, Sanford Cohen, an assistant deputy commissioner for management information systems at the agency, stated in a settlement of the case that on Aug. 6, 2009, he attended a Yankees-Red Sox game as a guest of DynTek Services, an information-technology company that had active contracts with the city and was in competitive bidding for other contracts with the agency.

According to the settlement (see also below), the tickets included a suite with food, alcohol and a commemorative polo shirt. Mr. Cohen, whose salary in 2009 was $140,467, took a guest; the value of the two tickets was $1,425.62.

The Yankees thrashed the Red Sox 13-6 that night, driving John Smoltz, the veteran Sox pitcher, from the mound with an eight-run fourth inning in front of what The Times called a “feisty crowd” that filled the stadium for the first time since opening day and watched Muhammad Ali take part in a pregame ceremony. The victory, the Yankees' first over the Sox in nine tries that season, opened up a three-and-a-half game division lead.

The city's conflicts of interest law prohibits public servants from accepting gifts worth more than $50 from anyone doing or seeking to do business with the city. Mr. Cohen, who had worked for the Human Resource Administration since 1997, left its employ in January. It was not immediately clear if his departure was linked to the disciplinary proceeding.

Sanford Cohen Settlement (PDF)

Sanford Cohen Settlement (Text)

Central Park, 10:14 A.M.

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Musicals Draw Best During Thanksgiving Week on Broadway

More Thanksgiving theater-goers attended big-budget Broadway musicals like “Wicked” and “The Lion King” last week instead of Broadway plays starring such Hollywood celebrities as Jessica Chastain (“The Heiress”), Katie Holmes (“Dead Accounts”) and Paul Rudd (“Grace”), according to box-office data released on Monday.

While musicals almost always do better than plays over Thanksgiving and Christmas, play producers had hoped that casting movie and television stars would attract strong numbers of holiday tourists who like seeing celebrities live on stage. But as Thanksgiving visitors thronged the Broadway theater district last week, only one play with a big-name actor â€" “Glengarry Glen Ross” starring Al Pacino â€" did strong business, grossing $853,737 for just five performances, according to the data released by the Broadway League, a trade association of theater owners and producers.

Among other plays, “The Heiress” grossed $505,468, down nearly 20 percent from the previous week; “Dead Accounts” took in a modest $402,460; “Grace” had $320,199; and “The Anarchist,” Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet's new play starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, grossed $317,201. (“Dead Accounts,” “The Anarchist” and “Glengarry” are still in preview performances.)

Several musicals set box office records for their theaters last week, including the Tony-winning hit “The Book of Mormon” ($1,801,672), the new revival of “Annie” ($1,499,879), and the Disney musical “Newsies” ($1,106,383). The long-running blockbuster “Wicked,” meanwhile, had the highest gross of any Broadway show in history for a standard eight-performance week, taking in $2,290,819.

The record for a nine-performance week, which usually occur between Christmas and New Year's Day, was set at that time last year by “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” with $2.94 million.While “Spider-Man” had the fourth highest gross of any Broadway show last week, $1.78 million, the show's comparable gross last Thanksgiving week was about 17 percent higher, $2.07 million.

The worst-performing musical at the box office last week was the newly opened “Scandalous,” which has a book and lyrics by the television personality Kathie Lee Gifford. “Scandalous” grossed $194,511 last week, or only 15.51 percent of the maximum possible amount â€" a strikingly low figure at any time, but especially during a major holiday week. A spokesman for the musical declined to comment on Monday about whether “Scandalous” would be closing this week.

Overall Broadway musicals and plays grossed $27 million last week, slightly less than the $28.1 million during Thanksgiving week in 2011.

Watchlist: Alan Moore Tries His Hand at an On-Screen Original

Alan Moore has been a big cheese in the comics world for 30 years, going back to his work on “Swamp Thing” and his creation of “V for Vendetta” in the early 1980s. But recently he's been known less for his writing than for his carping: to the moviegoing public, at least, he's the guy who's never happy with the films made from his books. (Of James McTeigue's “V for Vendetta”: “It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy.” Of Zack Snyder's “Watchmen”: “The ‘Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms.”)

Now Mr. McTeigue and Mr. Snyder, along with Stephen Norrington (“The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”) and the Hughes brothers (“From Hell”), have their own chance to sit in judgment. The first film Mr. Moore has written directly for the screen, a 32-minute metaphysical-mystery called “Jimmy' s End,” made its debut Monday on the tech-oriented YouTube channel Motherboard. (The film is the first in a projected series of shorts for Motherboard, which is part of Vice Media, but no further titles have been announced.) It's time for the rest of the world to watch the Watchman.

On the positive side, “Jimmy's End,” which was directed by Mitch Jenkins, has high ambitions for an online original. Mr. Moore's script, which sends a silver-haired, well-dressed burnout named Jimmy (Darrell D'Silva) into a nightmarish underground lounge, is elliptical and high on languid menace. And the music, hypnotic reimaginings of 1950s and ‘60s British pop by Mr. Moore's collaborators Andrew Broder and Adam Drucker, is excellent - it's the real reason to stick with the film.

“Jimmy's End” as a whole doesn't cast the same spell as those songs, however. The midcentury music-hall surrealism, including smeary, victimized women and a spooky vaudeville act called Matchbri ght and Metterton (Robert Goodman and Mr. Moore), is so derivative of Dennis Potter and David Lynch that it's hard to take quite seriously - you keep waiting for the dancing dwarf to pop out. And Mr. Moore's screenplay, meant to be suggestive and scary in a noir sort of way, is mainly just pretentious, simultaneously obscure and heavy-handed. The death metaphors suggested by the title really start to pile up.

A lot of Mr. Moore's comics writing suffers from a similar affectation, but his tremendous storytelling skills can take hold over the course of a graphic novel, and brilliant artists like David Lloyd and Stephen R. Bissette give life and shape to his rhetorical excesses. Mr. Jenkins, a director of music videos, gives the film an attractive sheen but not much else.

Mr. Moore doesn't just write action comics or dystopian thrillers - he has a large body of work that includes erotica and occult mystery as well as short stories and novels. Watching “Jimmy's End ,” though, you can see the wisdom of those benighted filmmakers who have chosen to adapt Mr. Moore's more mainstream works: he's really best at putting intelligent dialogue into the mouths of superheroes.

New Harlem Cultural Center Ready to Open

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Roland Laird, chief executive of My Image Studios, with Alexa Birdsong, director of programming, earlier this year.

MIST Harlem, a long-planned cultural center at 40 West 116th St., will open to the public on Wednesday, according to its owners.

The space, with a restaurant and three theaters showcasing film, theater, live music and other black and Latino-flavored arts and culture, will present film screenings, host fundraisers for the Harlem Dowling child welfare agency (Dec. 3), the Museum for African Art (Dec. 5) and a “Def Poetry” reunion on Dec. 12. A Samuel L. Jackson film r etrospective is planned for Dec. 14-24. “Django Unchained,” the new Quentin Tarantino film, will have at least a one-week run beginning Dec. 25.

The theaters will also host musical artists on weekends, beginning Dec. 7 with Jarrad Anthony and Krissy Krissy. Other artists are Kym Hampton and Onaje Allan Gumbs on Dec. 8 and LIVRE on Dec. 9.  The opening date for the restaurant has not yet been determined. The 20,000 square-foot, for-profit center, located on the  ground-floor retail space of the Kalahari condominium, will eventually offer live entertainment at least five nights a week, including dance parties and spoken-word performances, said Taneshia Nash Laird, the chief marketing officer. More information on the events can be found at www.MistHarlem.com.

‘It's pretty incredible,” Ms. Laird said of the culmination of the two-decades-long effort to create the center. “The response we got from the creative community is overwhelming. People are interested in all the events. And we got over 1,000 job applications for 80 positions.”

Ms. Laird's husband, Roland Laird, is the chief executive officer of MIST. Mr. Laird owned the independent comic book publishing company Posro Komics and has over 15 years of experience in software development and project management. Ms. Laird was a former media relations director of Afrika Bambaata's record label. Their director of programming is Alexa Birdsong, a former executive producer of Central Park SummerStage and an associate director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Things were not always so rosy. When the Lairds and their partners sought investors for the $21 million project, it was not an easy sell. One bank suggested that they use the space for something a bit more sensible, like a drugstore.

New Harlem Cultural Center Ready to Open

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Roland Laird, chief executive of My Image Studios, with Alexa Birdsong, director of programming, earlier this year.

MIST Harlem, a long-planned cultural center at 40 West 116th St., will open to the public on Wednesday, according to its owners.

The space, with a restaurant and three theaters showcasing film, theater, live music and other black and Latino-flavored arts and culture, will present film screenings, host fundraisers for the Harlem Dowling child welfare agency (Dec. 3), the Museum for African Art (Dec. 5) and a “Def Poetry” reunion on Dec. 12. A Samuel L. Jackson film r etrospective is planned for Dec. 14-24. “Django Unchained,” the new Quentin Tarantino film, will have at least a one-week run beginning Dec. 25.

The theaters will also host musical artists on weekends, beginning Dec. 7 with Jarrad Anthony and Krissy Krissy. Other artists are Kym Hampton and Onaje Allan Gumbs on Dec. 8 and LIVRE on Dec. 9.  The opening date for the restaurant has not yet been determined. The 20,000 square-foot, for-profit center, located on the  ground-floor retail space of the Kalahari condominium, will eventually offer live entertainment at least five nights a week, including dance parties and spoken-word performances, said Taneshia Nash Laird, the chief marketing officer. More information on the events can be found at www.MistHarlem.com.

‘It's pretty incredible,” Ms. Laird said of the culmination of the two-decades-long effort to create the center. “The response we got from the creative community is overwhelming. People are interested in all the events. And we got over 1,000 job applications for 80 positions.”

Ms. Laird's husband, Roland Laird, is the chief executive officer of MIST. Mr. Laird owned the independent comic book publishing company Posro Komics and has over 15 years of experience in software development and project management. Ms. Laird was a former media relations director of Afrika Bambaata's record label. Their director of programming is Alexa Birdsong, a former executive producer of Central Park SummerStage and an associate director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Things were not always so rosy. When the Lairds and their partners sought investors for the $21 million project, it was not an easy sell. One bank suggested that they use the space for something a bit more sensible, like a drugstore.

HBO Buys \'Revealing\' Film about Beyoncé, Made by Beyoncé

HBO has bought the rights to a documentary about Beyoncé Knowles directed and produced by none other than: Ms. Knowles. No wonder, then, that it's being billed as “intimate” and “revealing,” with “unprecedented access,” as a news release from the cable network put it on Monday.

Representatives of the pop star started shopping the film to distributors last summer. According to HBO the finished product will include footage shot by Ms. Knowles on her laptop, along with concert footage, home movies and other material.

With HBO, Ms. Knowles gets a best-in-class home for an image-enhancing project; with Ms. Knowles, HBO gets a big star who's all but guaranteed to bring in an audience. “Some of my favorite shows are on HBO, so I am excited that my film will be part of its bold programming,” she said in a statement on Monday. The film is scheduled to have its debut on Feb. 16.

After Going Blind, Starting a New Career With Help From Two Guide Dogs

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Lloyd Burlingame, a Broadway set designer until he went blind, has written a book about the experiences of his two guide dogs, including Kemp, and how they have managed to steer him safely on the streets of Manhattan.

Lloyd Burlingame was in the prime of his career as a prominent Broadway set designer and the chair of the design department at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, when something ended all that.

He went blind.

< p>It happened gradually, beginning in the late 1980s. By the late 1990s, he began using a cane, until one day a cruel jokester advised him that it was safe to cross a busy stretch of Seventh Avenue, only to laugh as Mr. Burlingame was nearly hit by a cab.

Mr. Burlingame, 77, essentially retreated to his apartment for six months until a friend took him to the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library on West 20th Street, where he was told that he could be paired with a guide dog at The Seeing Eye guide-dog school in Morristown, N.J.

Today Mr. Burlingame is on his second dog â€" first Hickory, now Kemp â€" and they have led him out of darkness and into a series of daily adventures in the big city, which he has chronicled in a new book called “Two Seeing Eye Dogs Take Manhattan! A Love Story.”

He insists that the book, which is self-published and available online, was actually written by his two dogs, who are the book's narrators. It was selected re cently to be recorded for an audio version by the Heiskell library.

“Going blind isn't something I'd wish on anyone, but one thing has led to another in a positive way,” he said recently while visiting the library's sound studio, where his book was being recorded by an actor, A.J. Stetson.

Mr. Burlingame lost his sight as a result of Stargardt's disease, and it was a crushing blow - a crushing blow for a man who designed his first Broadway show at age 25 and became a main designer for the famous Broadway producer David Merrick, including the shows “Philadelphia, Here I Come” and “Midsummer Night's Dream” and “Marat/Sade.”

As his sight was deteriorating, Mr. Burlingame started painting; some of his artwork was on display at the Heiskell library. (Some of his work was ruined by Hurricane Sandy, because it was in a ground-floor storage unit in Chelsea that was flooded).

“For a visual artist to lose his sight and then reinvent himself li ke Lloyd has, I thought our other library users would like to read about that,'' said Susan Mosakowski, a playwright and theater producer who runs the Heiskell library's book-recording program, which makes versions of books that are not available in audio form.

This is the first time the library has recorded an adult book about being blind that was written by one of its patrons, Ms. Mosakowski said

The book essentially begins with Mr. Burlingame visiting The Seeing Eye and working with one of its few dogs unflappable enough to work in Manhattan: a yellow Labrador named Hickory. He needed to avoid being rattled by the many distractions like bike messengers, police sirens, truck back-firings, huge lunch crowds, construction crews and people trying to pet him.

For Mr. Burlingame, Hickory's big test was that spot on Seventh Avenue where he was nearly hit by a cab. Hickory aced the crossing, and Mr. Burlingame included it in the journal he had begun about his g uide-dog experiences that evolved into the book.

The early entries were boring, he said, “but I realized they wouldn't be boring if it was told from the dog's point of view. You really get plugged into the dog in a special way, so it's like living two lives.”

He found that people - friends and strangers alike - who had heard about him, loved these serialized adventures of being sightless in New York and soon, his periodical entries were being shared, by e-mail, with more than 80 fans and friends. They followed along when after eight years of service, Hickory was adopted by a family and Mr. Burlingame was paired with Kemp, a Labrador-golden retriever mix who has been with him for six years.

Stories included the time at Carnegie Hall when Hickory broke into a high-pitched howl to sing along with soprano Renée Fleming. Mr. Burlingame is an opera buff, and both Hickory and Kemp have been with him to performances dozens of times. In April, Kemp's wagging ta il kept thumping a woman next to them, who was “not amused,” Mr. Burlingame recalled on a recent weekday as Kemp guided him out of his East Ninth Street apartment on errands, first to the pharmacy to buy some shampoo and then to the liquor store for a bottle of vodka.

With each approach of a curb, the dog stopped, and Mr. Burlingame listened to the whoosh of traffic, to determine the timing of the green traffic light, a test that is tougher when traffic is light.

“I guess I'm the only person in New York who wants more traffic,” he said, adding that having a guide dog is like a marriage. “It's a wonderful way to lead an independent life.”

After Father\'s Objection, Play About Amy Winehouse Is Canceled

The Royal Theater in Denmark has canceled a play about Amy Winehouse's life because Mitch Winehouse, the singer's father, refused to grant permission to use her music and photographs of her, The Associated Press reported. A spokesman for the Danish copyright agency, which had initially given the theater permission to use the material, said that Mr. Winehouse had not given a reason for his objection.

The play was to have opened on Jan. 30 in Copenhagen. It was based on Ms. Winehouse's turbulent life drawing from interviews, videos of concerts, letters and newspaper articles. Eleven Danish playwrights were involved in writing the script, which reportedly delved into the singer's addiction to drugs and alcohol. Ms. Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27, having won several Grammy Awards for her second album.

Tina Packer\'s Look at Women in Shakespeare Will Play Off Broadway

Kevin Sprague Tina Packer and Nigel Gore in “Women of Will.”

For more than 15 years, the director and actress Tina Packer has been shaping a theater piece exploring the likes of Desdemona, Rosalind, Juliet, Kate and other women characters in Shakespeare, a population that she estimates is outnumbered more than four to one by men.

The ever-evolving show, “Women of Will,” is now coming to New York for the first time. Previews begin on Jan. 27 at the Gym at Judson for an Off-Broadway run scheduled to go through June 2, the creators said on Monday.

Ms. Packer, the founder and former artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., wrote and will act in the piece along with Nigel Gore. Eric Tucker is the director and Sarah Hancock the producer.

The show, which focuses on six Shakespeare plays, has previously played in Lenox, the Denver and Boston areas and most recently at the Prague Shakespeare Festival in the Czech Republic, according to a news release.

Garage Attendant Is Crushed by Car

A 45-year-old parking attendant was killed on Monday after a car rolled on top of him during the morning rush at a garage in Lower Manhattan, the police said.

The man, who was not immediately identified, had been parking the car on a lift inside the basement garage at 21 Barclay Street, around the corner from City Hall, and had just left the vehicle when it rolled onto him, the police said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. The cause of the accident, which occurred around 8:15 a.m., is under investigation.

Yellow caution tape hung across the entrance to the garage, a 24-hour lot owned by Icon Parking, later in the morning. An attendant outside directed would-be customers away from the garage.

The attendant, who refused to be identified, said he had worked for the company for 26 years, and “all that happens in a parking garage is an accident.”

BAM to Double Down on Kids Programming

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, known for its adventurous offerings across cultural disciplines, like “Red, black & GREEN: a blues” (a recent show about black environmentalists) and Ivo van Hove's “Roman Tragedies” (an epic created by merging three Shakespearean plays), is more than doubling its programming for children and families. The academy's roll-out of its redoubled efforts will begin Jan. 19 at the Fisher building with a celebration that includes storytelling, poetry and puppetry workshops. A three-year campaign to raise $15 million to finance family/education programs is also in the works. The academy's ambitions include building on existing school performances and programs, while starting a film festival for teenagers and hosting family concerts and five international theater, dance, and storytelling productions.

Among the upcoming offerings: the Canadian company Théâtre Tout à Trac's presentation of “Alice in Wonderland” on Jan. 26 and 27;  the “Big Screen Bash” festival of films from New York filmmakers ages 13-18, on April 20 and 21; and “In the Garden,” a production by Spain's Teatro Paraiso Antzerkia from Spain and Belgium's Théâtre de la Guimbarde  designed for theater-goers ages 1 to 4, from May 3-5. The BAMkids Film Festival will also return, on Feb. 2 and 3, with 75 international feature length films and shorts and related events.

The academy's newest theater, the Richard B. Fisher building at 321 Ashland Place, will play host to many of the events. Unveiled in June, the renovated hall is the first addition to the academy's campus since 1987. Its opening signals the cultural renaissance in the area designated as the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District and the academy's own ambitions to reach out to the surrounding community. The academy currently sends artists into the schools, hosts after-school programs and serves about 28,000 public school childre n annually. Some of the BAMfamily programs, aimed at children 1 to 18, are free. All tickets are $20 or less.

“Our mission altogether is to be the quintessential New York cultural home for artists and ideas,” Karen Brooks Hopkins, the academy's president said in a recent interview. “The new building has given us a focal point that allows us to work more directly with families. We have a very robust family community in downtown Brooklyn. We have so much diversity, in terms of ethnicity and age, and this is a cohort we want.”

Elton John Dedicates Concert to Chinese Dissident

Elton John dedicated a concert in Beijing on Sunday night to the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei but received no applause, only expressions of shock and a wave of murmuring, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. John was a few minutes into a two-hour show when he told the audience his performance was dedicated “to the spirit and talent of Ai Weiwei.” Mr. Ai, a sculptor and installation artist, is an outspoken critic of China's authoritarian government whose work often calls attention to social injustices in China. He was jailed for 81 days last year without being charged, and in September, the government denied him permission to travel to the United States for a retrospective of his work at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.

Mr. John met briefly with Mr. Ai before the concert, and later the artist posted a message on his Twitter account, which has been banned in China, saying he was fond of the pop star.

Generally the Chinese government exercises strict control over live concerts, requiring musicians to submit a detailed set list in advance. That censorship has been tightened since 2008, when Björk expressed support for the Tibetan independence movement at a concert in Shanghai, embarrassing the government.

The First Snap Was in 1954, and They\'re Still Playing

The 59th Swine Bowl got under way in Central Park at 2:10 p.m. on Saturday, 70 minutes after its theoretical start. In other words, this annual game of touch football began more or less on time.

Two things are not to be counted on at the Swine Bowl. Punctuality is No. 2.

Most elusive of all is anything that resembles touch football of the sort favored by weekend warriors, those oppressively serious types who act as if life itself were on the line. For example, when players showed up in smaller numbers than usual at Swine Bowl LVIII last year, the rules were hastily altered.

“People could be on either side, not only at the start of the game but on any given play,” recalled Dan Breslaw, who has been in all but a few bowl games since the first one in 1954. “In other words, each time the ball was snapped, you had no idea who was on your team and who wasn't. Naturally, this had a stylistic effect on the game. Chaos, it's fair to say, reigned supreme. ”

I first became aware of the Swine Bowl five years ago, and decided to check in on Saturday - the game is faithfully played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving - to see if tradition held. It did, admirably. A solid contingent of 36 went to the park on a blustery fall afternoon. Organizers, a word used loosely here, had no way to predict the turnout. As ever, people either showed up or they didn't.

Those on hand included seven Swine Bowl originals, men now in their 70s, plus wives, friends, children (several taking a bead on 50) and grandchildren, whose devotion to the game seemed unimpeachable.

Some came from afar, like Tony Hill, an original who lives in Berkeley, Calif. When he caught a pass for a touchdown on Saturday, he couldn't resist announcing with conviction, “Let that be a lesson to you.”

Richard Greeman, another original, came back from his home in southern France in time for the game. His former wif e, Julie Greeman, was there, too. Their daughter, Jenny, 37, has assumed her father's longtime role as a co-captain of the teams, which don't actually exist until they are formed just before game time.

When I expressed mild surprise to Julie Greeman that she had remained a regular even though she and her husband divorced more than 30 years ago, she reacted as she might upon hearing a blasphemy. “Omigod,” she replied. “It's a tradition.”

Enough said.

Indeed, the pride of the Swine Bowl is that it has to be the longest-running sports event in the country featuring the same players. Name another contest that has continued uninterruptedly with an unchanging core group for nearly six decades.

As you surely guessed by now, the game has always been less about football than about enduring friendship.

It started with teenagers who went to New Rochelle and Mamaroneck high schools in the early 1950s. They enjoyed one another's company so much that they regrouped for rounds of football when they returned home from college on Thanksgiving break. The game migrated to Central Park in the 1960s after one of the originals, Mark Bloom, moved to the Upper West Side. About 15 years ago, it settled into its present location, a patch of the park at the West 86th Street entrance.

How did it come to be called Swine Bowl? Theories abound, but no one has a clear answer. Mr. Greeman suggested that “it was to make fun of all the bowls, and we came up with the most disgusting thing.”

There are, to be sure, rules. But the most important of them are that the game must end in a tie and that it should maintain what Mr. Breslaw described to me five years ago as “a steady and solid atmosphere of buffoonery.” (Kind of like the New York Jets, you might say.)

Time has taken its inevitable toll. Two Swine Bowl originals have died. And while the survivors are a hardy bunch, they cannot be indifferent to their mo rtality and to the fact that the younger generations are now dominant on the field.

Mr. Breslaw, who came down from West Corinth, Vt., put it this way in an e-mail before the game: “With each passing year, the question looms larger: Do we just keep going till most of us have died and only a few geezers in wheelchairs are out there being pushed around by caretakers? Or do we call a dignified halt after some appropriate milestone?”

But, he said, “at this point we're still having a hell of a lot of fun, so it's hard to think of quitting.”

E-mail Clyde Haberman: haberman@nytimes.com