Kicking Off the Lunar New Year

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Nocturnalist at the Super Bowl | A Near-Cigar With Mike Ditka

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Mike Ditka on ESPN’s Mike and Mike show. Mr. Ditka signed autographs and footballs for fans after the event.

The air pooled with machine-generated smoke, wisps rising into the rafters of the cabaret bar, where the presently chic tropes of such places - taxidermy creatures like a fox and a crow - peered down into the audience. But on stage, flanked by velvet curtains, in place of a sultry singer was a very different sort of star: the septuagenarian former football coach, Mike Ditka.

Mr. Ditka, who has three Super Bowl rings to his name, including one as head coach of the Chicago Bears, bemoaned the open-air cold weather Super Bowl. “When we played, you got to go to Miami or New Orleans,” he said. “New Jersey? And you get stuck in the bridge on the way?”

Mr. Ditka held a Q. and A. with an audience of devotees at “Citi Presents Evenings With Legends,” an event series put on by Citibank. The tickets were $79 and available only to cardholders. The unlikely venue was The Heath, a restaurant at The McKittrick Hotel, home of the immersive theater production “Sleep No More” â€" all facts a slew of publicists repeatedly reminded Nocturnalist throughout the night to mention.

The discussion was called “Mike, Mike and Mike” and was led by the ESPN sports talk show hosts Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic. But the former football coach, with his somewhat crotchety opinions of football these days â€" “those pretty boys,” he said â€" stole the show. Questions from the audience, who all addressed him as “Coach” with such reverence it might as well been “Your Honor,” were frequently about what it felt like to be tackled by various players. Some landed blows that “just about undressed me,” Mr. Ditka said.

Backstage, Mr. Ditka spoke about choosing which of his three jewel-encrusted Super Bowl rings to wear - his favorite is the diamond dazzler won coaching the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX - and offered Nocturnalist a Ditka brand cigar that was secreted in his jacket pocket. “You got a man?” he asked, proffering the cigar, before tucking it away. (Nocturnalist never knew that only men were capable of smoking cigars. Party reporting is so edifying.)

We headed out with him, warmed by his respect for his fans, for whom he nearly always stops to give signatures, no matter the downsides. “When the fans quit coming to the game, the game is over,” he said. “You get a stalker here and there - that’s O.K.”

Outside, his words were put to the test. Two young men, Jake Fleece, 22, and Jimmy Brooks, 26, had waited in the cold. They rushed at the coach on 27th Street. “I can’t feel my feet!” said Mr. Brooks plaintively, shoving several deflated footballs at Mr. Ditka, who dutifully signed them before fleeing in a van.

They were no superfans. “I just said that because the coach was there,” Mr. Brooks said, revealing they were in the business of selling sports memorabilia, and had spent the week trolling the streets for football players. Since arriving in New York City from California three days earlier, Mr. Fleece said he had already accrued over 90 signatures.

In the dark street, he carefully wrapped the football in plastic. He unzipped his duffel bag. Inside were 20 more.

At a Concert Full of Musical Stars, a Spotlight on Their Teacher

It’ll be 70 years this spring since a 17-year-old Gabriel Kosakoff shouldered his trombone and marched out of the High School of Music and Art, dreaming of fame and fortune in the world’s top concert halls.

But soon it was a rifle he was shouldering â€" it was 1944 â€" and by the time the war was over, the would-be virtuoso was on a different career track that would put him in front of an orchestra, conducting promising young students in what today might be called Mr. Kosakoff’s Opus.

Which is to say he became a passionate teacher, inspiring generations of future classical and jazz headliners set to salute him at a gala concert next week.

“I felt I could make a better contribution to music teaching than behind a trombone,” Mr. Kosakoff, a gangly 87-year-old six-footer, said this week in the alumni office where he shows up regularly to assist in events.

Passionate he certainly still is. “No child left behind? Are you kidding?” he snorted. “Without the arts, all children are left behind.”

Many of his former students speak of him with reverence. “You could really feel the love in him,” said Kim Laskowski, associate principal bassoon at the New York Philharmonic, a 1972 graduate of the high school and a teacher herself now at Juilliard. “He loved the job. He loved the kids. He loved the music.”

Mark Sherman, a 1975 alumnus, award-winning vibraphonist and percussionist now also teaching at Juilliard, called Mr. Kosakoff “always a positive force.”

“Everyone ended up with careers,” he said.

So when a constellation of jazz stars takes the stage Monday night for the second annual jazzfest at the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts on Amsterdam Avenue at 65th Street, near Lincoln Center, the spotlight will fall on Mr. Kosakoff as honoree, the first school graduate to win a permanent appointment to the school’s teaching staff.

That was in 1956, when the school, founded 20 years earlier by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia as “my most hopeful achievement,” occupied Gothic towers at 135th Street and Convent Avenue. Mr. Kosakoff went on to become chairman of the instrumental music department starting in 1969, and he retired in 1991.

He forged the city’s top student instrumentalists into the All-City High School Band and recruited a leading jazz educator, Justin DiCioccio, to run the school’s jazz program.

While continuing to take part in school functions, Mr. Kosakoff also became a board member and consultant on the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, which raises money to distribute instruments to poor schools across the country. The foundation was organized in 1996 by another of his students, Michael Kamen, from the class of 1965, who composed the score for the 1995 movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

Mr. Kosakoff was born into a musical family. His father, Reuven, was a prolific American composer of Jewish liturgical music who studied with the Austrian classical pianist Artur Schnabel in Berlin and returned to New York where Gabriel and his twin brother, Raphael, were born on Dec. 24, 1926.

Both boys were admitted to the fledgling Music and Art school in 1940. Apart from the piano, Gabe chose to study the trombone. “They always seemed to march first in the parade.”

He was struck by the school spirit. “Every student wore a pin,” he remembered. “You were so proud.” The principal was Benjamin Steigman, a Swedish-born teacher who wore cuff links and a boutonniere. “When he walked into the classroom, you stood up,” Mr. Kosakoff recalled. “He left me his cuff links. I’ll wear them Monday night.”

Two weeks after getting his diploma, with soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, he enlisted. The Army tried to make him an engineer. “They figured out pretty soon that was not what I was good at,” he recalled. So he was assigned to Paris â€" Paris, Tex. â€" for heavy weapons training. “I fired bazookas, cannons,” he said. “It was fun.”

Landing in Manilla after the Japanese surrender, he was made fourth trombone in the 396th Army Ground Forces Band. Unfortunately, they needed only three trombones. So, as he recalled, “The colonel decided, ‘You’ll be the band leader â€" you’re tall.’”

“Who said you can’t learn a trade in the Army?” Mr. Kosakoff said.

“I want you to know,” he confided, “my presence in the Army didn’t make the war any shorter.”

Back home he studied music education at New York University and with his brother worked as house managers of the Kaufman Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y where he met one of the music ushers working for $1 a night. That was Carol Lenhoff of North Adams, Mass. “She decided she liked the music,” Mr. Kosakoff recalled. “I came with it.”

Sixty one years later, they have a son and a daughter and five grandchildren.

His students kept him young, he said. Year after year, they were always the same age, so he had to be. “I’m on whatever level they’re on,” he said.

Week in Pictures for Jan. 31

See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include the frozen Hudson River, a giant crane on its way to New York and scenes from Super Bowl Boulevard.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Dan Barry, Mike Hale, Javier Hernández, Eleanor Randolph and Clyde Haberman; and the author Jennifer Senior. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.

New York Today: Halftime Show, Locally Grown

Tannen Maury/European Pressphoto Agency The Super Bowl halftime show will feature, among others, Bruno Mars.

Updated, 10:36 a.m.

Good Friday morning and welcome to the slush bowl. With the warming weather, beware of pools of salt and ice.

It’s two days before the Super Bowl across the Hudson.

We heard a local was producing the halftime show, so we gave him a call.

Ricky Kirshner, who has seven halftime Super Bowl shows already under his belt, grew up in South Orange, N.J.

Mr. Kirshner, 53, lives with his wife and kids in Manhattan.

Is it thrilling to produce this year’s show, which stars Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, on his home turf?

“You could be anywhere,” he said with the whimsy of a true New Jerseyan. “You’re between your office and the stadium.”

Anything make this Super Bowl stand out?

“The weather.”

“Growing up here, I knew what it was like in February,” he said. “I was like, why is everyone freaking out?”

“I was totally wrong because this week was really cold.”

Rehearsals required his team of 1,700 to be outside for three hours at a time.

Only last night could performers peel off their coats and rehearse in full wardrobe.

Spoiler alert: Sunday’s 12-minute halftime show includes five high school marching bands from New Jersey â€" South Brunswick, Nutley, Bergenfield, Morris Knolls and Roxbury.

Here’s what else you need to know.

WEATHER

Return of the big four-oh, if not today (forecast high: 39 degrees), then definitely Saturday (44) and Sunday (48).

Cloudy throughout, but good football weather if you’re into that kind of thing.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is suspended for Asian Lunar New Year. Meters are in effect.

Remember: Broadway is Super-closed to traffic from 47th Street to 34th Street through Sunday. Side streets in the area are also to be avoided.

Other Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- Daytime fireworks for Lunar New Year, at Sara Roosevelt Park on Chrystie Street. 11 a.m. [Free]

- Here’s a guide to Lunar New Year events across the city today and throughout the weekend.

- Mayor de Blasio is on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show at 6 p.m.

- Modern portraits of the 12th-century warlord Prince Igor go on display in the gallery at the Metropolitan Opera, in honor of next week’s opening of “Prince Igor” the Borodin opera. [Free]

- “Dance on Camera,” a five-day festival of films of dancing, opens at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. [Some free, others not]

- Learn about apple-stuffed upside-down French toast and other landmarks of Alabamian cuisine at the Art of Alabama Food exhibit at Chelsea Market, through Sunday. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. [Free]

- An open-mike throwdown for teenagers and young adults at Von King Park cultural center in Bedford-Stuyesant. 6 p.m. [Free]

- The percussionist Steven Schick leads a panel talk on percussion in the 21st century, at Columbia. 3 p.m. [Free] (He also plays a concert on Saturday at 8 p.m. [$25-$35])

- Walt Frazier tells a neuroscientist what it’s like inside the mind of a basketball player, at the Rubin Museum. 7 p.m. [$40]

- Last two days to see the Puppy Bowl in Times Square. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. [Free, reservations required]

- If you seek more Super Bowl-related fun, SocialEyesNYC.com has a big list of things to do. And here’s a guide from The Times.

- If, on the other hand, you seek to avoid the whole extravaganza, DNAinfo has a guide to non-Super events.

- For even more listings, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- The de Blasio administration will settle lawsuits over stop-and-frisk tactics by agreeing to reforms ordered by a federal judge… [New York Times]

- … and will stop assigning rookie officers to high-crime precincts. [New York Times]

- A subway fare increase to $2.75 next year is possible. [Daily News]

- Hammer-wielding masked robbers smashed display cases at Cartier on Fifth Avenue and made off with $700,000 in watches. [New York Times]

- An artist calls attention to violent movie posters that dot the subways by posing, bloodied, in front of the guns pointed at him. [Gothamist]

- Authors will appear in person at your book club, for a fairly hefty price. [New York Times]

- And the city’s first professional cuddle therapist charges $60 a snuggle. [Daily News via Gothamist]

- Scoreboard: Knicks slay Cavaliers, 117-86. Devils extinguish Stars, 3-2 in overtime.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- Free coffee and other treats for humans and their dogs at a Coffee Bark in Prospect Park. 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

- The Wonderful Wizard of Odd, in which six clowns interpret scenes from “The Wizard of Oz,” at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. 11 a.m. [Free, limited seating]

- Make a Victorian-style valentine for a nursing home resident, and one for someone else, at a workshop at Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island. 1 p.m. [Free]

- Worship the so-called talk-radio “sports pope” Mike Francesa at the FrancescaCon, starting at Saloon on York Avenue at noon.

- Last weekend for the “War/Photography” show at the Brooklyn Museum. [$12]

- Who knew their audiences overlapped? “Girls” temporarily moves to Saturday to avoid the Super Bowl. As does “Looking.” 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m.

Sunday

- Worship Chuck the almighty groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo as he issues his annual augury. Doors open at 6:30 a.m., augury at 7:30 a.m. [Free]

- Last day for the stunning Mike Kelley show at MoMA PS1. Noon to 6 p.m. [$10]

- A lecture, “German Expressionism on the Eve of the Great War: The Artist as Mystic Vessel,” at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square. 10 a.m. [Free]

- Learn about the history of black barber shops in America at a lecture by Quincy Mills, author of a book on the subject, at the main Brooklyn Public Library. 1 p.m. [Free]

- Lunar New Year festivities, continued: a parade, with the usual cast of dragons, starting at Hester and Mott Streets. 1 p.m. [Free]

- If you’re looking for something fun outside New York City, The Times’s Metropolitan section has suggestions for Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

AND FINALLY …

This week in 1860, the head of a Manhattan synagogue, Morris Raphall, became the first rabbi to deliver the opening prayer in Congress.

Reviews were mixed.

According to a 2010 article in The Forward, one newspaper called the rabbi’s appearance “the triumph of an enlightened religious opinion over the vulgar prejudices of the world.”

But an Episcopal publication, The Churchman, wrote that it produced a sense of “extreme sorrow, and almost disgust.” The rabbi’s prayer, the publication wrote, amounted to “no less than the official rejection of Christianity by the Legislature of the country.”

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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A Jerk in the Subway

Dear Diary:

I was walking up a flight of stairs at the Times Square subway station behind a woman in a black leather jacket, who looked fairly young from behind. She moved, however, painfully slow. I wrung my hands a bit dramatically behind her, then moved over to the stairway on the other side of the handrail and passed her.

At the top of the stairs, I heard a man behind her bleat, “You need to go to the gym.”

“I have a broken leg,” she replied.

The man huffed and puffed past her. He was built like Humpty Dumpty and wearing a little nylon backpack.

I waited for him to apologize or, at the very least, look a little taken aback.

But instead he said, as he turned toward Sixth Avenue: “Yeah, well you should still go to the gym. Work out your other leg.”

With my jaw dropped, I turned back to the woman, expecting her to really lay into the guy. Instead she just continued to go slowly up the stairs with a pathetic hangdog expression. I turned away and trailed behind the mean man for half a block before I lost him in the Midtown commuter shuffle.

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