Good Seat

Dear Diary:

My husband and I got tickets for “Take Me Out” when it first played in New York in the early 2000s.

We had seats close to the stage, and I started a conversation with a woman sitting to my right who had a thick Texas accent.

She and a male colleague were on a business trip and had gotten last-minute tickets that were unfortunately not next to each other.

She and I discussed the play. With a twinkle in her eye, she said her colleague had given her the seat closest to the stage so she would have a better view during the nude scenes. They planned to switch at intermission.

At the start of the first nude shower scene, I felt a poke in my ribs. I turned to look at my new friend, who was nodding at me with a big grin.

She did not switch seats at intermission.

— Elka Grisham

Long Day

Dear Diary:

After a long day of navigating trade-show booths at the Javits Center, I made my way to the 7 train. When one pulled in, there was an empty seat in the car I got on. I sank into it gratefully.

Next to me was a gray-haired woman who was resting her hands on a large canvas bag with its contents peeking out. She looked as worn out as I felt.

Suddenly, a memory surfaced: A friend once confided her frustration that after a long day, all she really wanted from her boyfriend was a simple acknowledgment: “How was your day, dear?”

I smiled, and then turned to the woman.

“How was your day?” I asked.

She offered a small, tired smile.

“It’s been long,” she said. “I can’t wait to get home, have a quiet dinner and put my feet up.”

I nodded.

We didn’t exchange any other words. The energy for conversation wasn’t there.

As the train slowed to a stop at Queensboro Plaza, the woman stood, got ready to exit, then paused and turned to meet my eyes.

“Thank you for asking,” she said before disappearing into the crowd.

— Carol Bradbury

Home for the Holidays

Dear Diary:

Back home from Boston for the holidays, Dean and Dylan and I watched “Anora” at the Angelika because we were the last ones still on winter break.

We walked uptown afterward, laughing about the movie and about the guy next to us who had laughed though the whole movie.

I was going to turn off at 23rd Street to go to the PATH station. Dylan and Dean were going to keep walking to 33rd Street to catch the Q train.

We walked a few blocks backpedaling as the cold wind blew hard at our faces.

“I’ll see you guys again for spring break,” I said as I got ready to turn.

“I think I’ll be on a spring break trip with some school friends,” Dylan said.

“All right,” I said. “Well, some time else then. Love you bro, see ya.”

“No, bro,” Dean said. “Keep walking to 33rd. There’s a PATH station there too.”

And so we kept walking uptown, the Empire State Building in the distance. At 33rd, we said our goodbyes, and I ran down the steps to the PATH station as I had all through high school.

I caught the last train home.

— Ryan Rizvi

Sunny Side

Dear Diary:

On a recent cold day, a friend and I met for lunch at a restaurant on the Upper West Side.

When we came outside, we had the light to cross Amsterdam Avenue, so cross we did, onto what turned out to be the sunny side of the street.

As we crossed, we started to sing “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” We were in the middle of the song when we got to the corner and then waited before crossing 79th Street.

“May I?” asked a woman who was standing there.

I nodded, and she joined right in.

— Dorothy Cantor

Going for It

Dear Diary:

The M57 bus had just pulled away from my stop as I got there.

Might the driver let me on as he was merging into the line of traffic, just a few yards from the curb? No. Had he even seen me, looking plaintive and hopeful? Apparently not.

I decided to go for it, to catch this same bus at the next stop, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Weighed down by a backpack, a shoulder bag and a shopping bag full of groceries, I ran as fast as I could, dodging pedestrians as I went.

The bus beat me to the stop, but because a few other people were waiting to get on, I made it before it pulled out.

Huffing and puffing up the steps, I fished out my senior MetroCard.

The driver, without making eye contact, covered the farebox with his hand.

“You’ve worked hard enough today,” he said.

— Elinor Lipman

Read all recent entries and our submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter.

Illustrations by Agnes Lee

As Adrienne Adams officially kicked off her mayoral campaign on Saturday, she urged potential voters at a rally in Jamaica, Queens, to view her as an alternative to the city’s two most recognizable candidates, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

But many of her supporters see her candidacy as something else: an opportunity for Democrats to elect a qualified Black woman to lead the country’s largest city, less than a year after the bruising loss of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket.

Wearing a pink pantsuit, Ms. Adams entered to cheers at the Rochdale Village Shopping Center in southeast Queens and danced with supporters as “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross played.

“No drama, no scandal, no nonsense, just competence and integrity,” Ms. Adams said at the rally, summing up her candidacy.

Ms. Adams, the City Council speaker and a Queens native, faces a tough path to the mayor’s office amid a crowded primary field and her own considerable fund-raising lag. But to the city’s most steadfast Democratic voting bloc, Black women, Ms. Adams’s candidacy represents more than a litany of messaging and policy promises.

If elected, Ms. Adams would be the first woman to become mayor of New York City. So far, one other woman in the June 24 primary is vying for the job — Jessica Ramos, a Queens-based state senator who, if elected, would also be the city’s first Latino mayor.

Ms. Adams enters the race with roughly $200,000 in her campaign account, well behind the other candidates, who have been fund-raising for several months. She will need to quickly raise enough money to meet the threshold for matching funds. She will also need to rush to garner signatures before the city’s April 3 deadline for securing a place on the ballot.

But her allies say she may have a powerful lifeline in the city’s influential network of politically engaged Black women. Several prominent Black female Democrats, including Letitia James, the state attorney general, are supporting her campaign.

Ms. James, who made calls to influential labor and civic leaders and elected officials to gauge interest in Ms. Adams’s candidacy, said she was inspired to do so after hearing her speak at Albany Caucus Weekend.

The crowd broke out into a chant of “Run, Adrienne, run!”

“I could feel it,” Ms. James said. “Especially in the aftermath of the loss of Kamala Harris.”

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of Black women in New York City who had worked to elect Ms. Harris and were mourning her defeat began channeling their energy into assembling a wish list of Black women who could run for mayor.

They wanted Ms. James to run. They noted, however, that she had begun collaborating with attorneys general from across the country to file lawsuits against the Trump administration’s policies, including the mass firing of federal employees and the freezing of billions in congressionally approved payments to states, and did not want to take her away from that work.

Another person the women considered was Jennifer Jones Austin, the chief executive of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. In an interview, Ms. Jones Austin celebrated Ms. Adams’s entrance into the race, but added a word of caution about the pragmatism of Black voters.

Most of the city’s Black female voters will consider candidates’ policies and electability over their demographics in deciding whom to vote for, she said. Still, pointing to the unsuccessful campaigns of Ms. Harris and Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights who ran in 2021 to be the city’s first Black woman mayor, there remains an active base for Ms. Adams to court, Ms. Jones Austin said.

“I don’t think that because in both instances the women did not ultimately prevail means that Black women are disconnected, disenchanted or now apathetic in any way,” said Ms. Jones Austin, who is remaining neutral in the primary.

Three other Black women have run for mayor of New York City before Ms. Adams, including Ms. Wiley; C. Virginia Fields, a former Manhattan borough president; and Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive who identifies as Afro-Latina.

Yet, in many ways, Ms. Adams finds herself in a situation similar to that of Ms. Harris. She was drafted into the race as an alternative to Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo, both of whom, like Mr. Trump, have a history of ethical issues and allegations of sexual misconduct, which both men have denied.

That point was driven home by Althea Stevens, a councilwoman from the Bronx who referred to Ms. Harris’s defeat in her speech at Ms. Adams’s campaign launch.

“The last time a Black woman ran a couple of months ago, we didn’t listen, and now we are dealing with the consequences,” Ms. Stevens said.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found Mr. Cuomo leading with 31 percent of support from Democratic voters and Mr. Adams far behind in second with 11 percent. Ms. Adams, who is not related to the mayor, trailed with 4 percent, but the poll was taken last week before she entered the race, and she was still polling above some candidates who had been running for months. Ms. Ramos also had 4 percent.

Ms. Adams has a record of standing up to the mayor on the budget and even leading the Council to override two of his vetoes on public safety bills, the first time that had been done in two decades. She has notably dropped her last name from her campaign literature, making it just “Adrienne, Democrat for NYC Mayor.”

“I plan to build a winning coalition by appealing to New Yorkers who want a city government that has restored trust and effectiveness for every single community,” Ms. Adams said in an interview.

Black women have often been hailed as the “backbone” of the Democratic Party, a nod to their long track record of supporting Democratic candidates en masse. More than nine in 10 Black female voters cast a ballot for Ms. Harris in November and Black women make up a larger portion of the city’s Black Democratic base.

Ms. Adams, as a representative of that group and a product of Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, could have an inside track to galvanizing their support.

She has focused her tenure as speaker on issues such as maternal health, restoring budget cuts to libraries, community mental health and college access, and has cultivated a natural base of support, said Yvette Buckner, a Democratic strategist and co-chairwoman of the New Majority NYC, a group dedicated to electing women to the City Council.

“She understood the assignment,” Ms. Buckner said.

But Mr. Cuomo also understands the importance of Black women voters. Since he announced his candidacy last weekend, he has rolled out a steady stream of endorsements from Black women elected officials. Hours before Ms. Adams’s campaign kickoff, he announced that another Black councilwoman from Brooklyn had endorsed him.

For Black women in New York who are still feeling the sting of Ms. Harris’s loss, Ms. Adams’s entry into the mayoral race could be reinvigorating. Mr. Trump has interjected himself into the city’s affairs, seeking to cancel congestion pricing and calling for the dismissal of the federal corruption charges against Mr. Adams.

“We do think that this is a time where our leadership is needed,” said Waikinya Clanton, founder of Black Women for Kamala Harris. “Especially at the local level.”

The lobby lacks the swirly marble flooring and chandeliers of finer residential buildings. The long hallways are almost dingy. But behind one of the apartment doors on a recent night, the mood was anything but dull.

Butterflied branzino was about to go in the oven. A pan of glistening buns rested on the stove. Fariyal Abdullahi, executive chef at Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant Hav & Mar, and the private chef Nana Araba Wilmot were hovering over the dishes. At the bar, a punch of bourbon, sweet tea, mango juice, ginger liqueur and fresh mint was being poured.

The jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater arrived after a long evening at the recording studio. Her dog, Daisy, a fluffy Maltese-Shih Tzu mix, perched valiantly atop her wheeled suitcase.

The party’s host, Alexander Smalls, perused the scene.

“This is an interesting place to hang out,” he boomed in a baritone that rose above the party chatter.

The guests erupted in laughter.

In New York, members-only clubs with steep fees and private restaurants in luxury towers have become powerhouses for socializing and networking over food and booze. So many have opened in recent months that the monetization of community seems practically like a new business strategy.

But there are some spaces you can’t buy your way inside. Mr. Smalls’s cozy apartment in West Harlem is one of them, its own humble seat of power. There, guests find a setting for community and connection. They can generate buzz for a new idea or project and sometimes even find investors who are eager to listen.

“The Vanderbilts used to do that, and the Astors,” said Mr. Smalls, a well-known chef and former opera singer. “They created these enclaves of power and elevated air to breathe. They relished in bringing in creatives. The celebrities, they all pass through here on their way somewhere, and I feed them and nurture them.”

Last month’s dinner party organized by Mr. Smalls was partly a celebration of his new cookbook, “The Contemporary African Kitchen,” and partly a birthday bash: He had just turned 73. And it was a chance for Mr. Smalls to let two chefs, Ms. Abdullahi and Ms. Wilmot, show off their skills (he made one dish himself, a black-eyed pea and poached-pear salad). The guests were successful or up-and-coming painters, dancers, curators, musicians and chefs, many of whom have multi-hyphenate titles.

But mostly, it was just another evening at the home of an artist whose work in both cooking and music has earned James Beard, Tony and Grammy Awards.

“I live to throw parties,” said Mr. Smalls, outfitted in dark-rimmed glasses, a black suit jacket and Dolce & Gabbana slip-on loafers.

When Mr. Smalls was a child living in Spartanburg, S.C., he wanted so badly to entertain that his father built him a clubhouse in his backyard so he could invite friends over and make food for them. That impulse endured though his early career in opera.

“When I moved to New York and got my apartment, the parties began. It was my way of creating community,” he said. “What I learned as a child is the person with the spoon wielded the power.”

When his opera career took him to Paris and Rome, he held dinner parties there that attracted fashion designers, actors and dancers. His voice coach at one point told him that if he didn’t ease up on the dinners, he would never have a career in opera. Eventually, he felt like he had hit the glass ceiling as a Black man in opera.

He shifted his focus to food with the aim of making sure Southern cooking had a place in fine dining. He had five restaurants in New York: Café Beulah, Sweet Ophelia’s, the Shoebox Cafe, the Cecil and Minton’s Playhouse, which he helped to reopen.

“I opened my first restaurant so someone else would pay for dinner,” he said. “Entertaining was an addiction. I almost forgot what it was like to eat alone. I had to find a way to support my habit.”

His establishments drew Gloria Steinem, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. George Clooney and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” showed up at Café Beulah one evening. Catherine Deneuve would sit at the bar. Glenn Close was a regular.

Mr. Smalls closed his last New York restaurant in 2018. He has written cookbooks and a children’s book and opened an African food hall in Dubai. He plans to start a similar food hall in Harlem. And he hopes to create a nonprofit, Smalls House, which will provide hospitality training and a community kitchen.

Meanwhile, he’s still throwing dinner parties. His aim these days is to elevate lesser-known Black chefs and chefs from the African diaspora, letting them do most of the cooking. He curates the party playlists and the guest lists.

“I speak the language of music and food,” he said, “and through those conversations I am able to introduce that circle to new chefs, artists and creatives.”

The setting — his apartment — is practically a museum, covered wall to ceiling with framed restaurant reviews, a plaque from Ms. Morrison and paintings, some of which are portraits and caricatures of Mr. Smalls by friends. Tables are piled with art books, cookbooks and novels stacked seven deep. It’s the kind of place that begs for annotation, which Mr. Smalls willingly provides.

As he divulged family secrets, the photographer Dario Calmese was chatting in the living room with Elijah Heyward III, a scholar of Southern African American culture, and Dr. Darien Sutton, an ABC medical correspondent. Conversation among another set of guests shifted to chatter about the chef and author Lazarus Lynch. Did you hear he plans to get his master’s degree in sociology?

“He went to Buffalo State, and I went to Fredonia College,” said Nia Drummond, a jazz and opera singer.

Mr. Smalls, hovering nearby, perked up. “I made my debut with the Buffalo symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas in the late ’70s. The photo is right there,” he said, pointing to the wall displaying a photo of the famed conductor and Mr. Smalls. “I was 24 years old.”

“I didn’t know he was in Buffalo,” Ms. Drummond said.

Mr. Smalls looked at his empty glass.

“I need some more bourbon before I tell you that story,” he said.

At about 8 o’clock, Mr. Smalls stood and beckoned guests toward the dining room hidden by green velvet curtains that he pulled back.

“Please, ladies, take it away,” he said to the chefs who were standing before the table.

“We have quite a spread for you guys tonight,” said Ms. Wilmot, whose parents grew up in Ghana.

Among the dishes on the table: Ghanaian buns bread made with nutmeg and evaporated milk, omo tuo (rice balls), nkate nkwan (peanut butter soup) and Ethiopian gomen (collard greens). The branzino was dressed half with Ghanaian green shito pepper sauce and half with doro wat, the national dish of Ethiopia.

“We wanted to create a dish that represented both of us,” said Ms. Abdullahi, who spent her childhood in Ethiopia, the other side of the continent from her co-chef’s family ties to Africa. “As gorgeous as this is, it tells a story of East meets West.”

“Can we eat now?” Michelle Miller, the “CBS Saturday Morning” co-host, interrupted, and everyone laughed.

Guests spread out across the two small living rooms with plates in their laps. A late arrival slipped in, a coconut cake in her arms, prompting whispers. Was that the soprano Kathleen Battle, the one who commanded a standing ovation last year at the Met? (It was.)

Plates were cleared, and Jim Herbert, a fashion consultant, slid behind the piano and started playing. Mr. Smalls sat down in the living room and began to riff along.

“This is out of a book,” said ruby onyinyechi amanze, an artist who spells her name in lower case. She had driven from Philadelphia to attend the dinner and marveled at the scene.

After a few minutes, Ms. Drummond walked into the room.

“You know, I feel like I want to take the piano. Jimmy, move your ass,” she said before sitting at the keys and launching into a Billie Holiday song followed by a spiritual.

She finished and stood up to a stunned room.

“Let the church say amen,” Mr. Smalls said.

In unison, the partygoers responded: “Amen.”