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Community Corner

Punchlines, Plays & Pride at the Library

About Town covers Hoboken events. Send an invitation to alanskontra@hotmail.com

While every Hobokenite spent last week pining for the shore and , About Town stayed home and attended a full slate of events. What's that you say, there's nothing happening in Hoboken during the summer? Poppycock, we counter, there's plenty if you know where to look. Also, we had no choice as no one invited us to the shore.

We started our week by attending the Hudson Shakespeare Company's performance at Sinatra Park of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which of course is a new avant garde rock opera composed by Lady Gaga.

Actually Midsummer is one About Town's favorite Shakespearen Plays. It includes all of the Bard's best comedic elements – zany characters, misunderstandings, hijinks and a happy resolution. Basically it's a better episode of Three's Company.

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About 75 people gathered to watch the show, joined by two bandana wearing hoopleheads who parked their bikes three feet from the audience and carried on a loud conversation. All the actors did a great job of maximizing the large outdoor space, including mingling with the audience in character (something standard in Shakespeare's day). About Town particularly wants to cite Tzena Nicole for playing two leading roles - Hippolyta the Amazon Queen and Titania the Fairy Queen, and also Reynaldo Piniella for his comedic take as Bottom, a traveling actor who is turned into an ass by a spell and whom Titania is tricked into loving.

The Midsummer production was the first in the Hudson Shakespeare Company's annual three-part contribution to Hoboken's summer events series. The company will return to the Sinatra Park amphitheater to perform the war-themed Henry V on July 25 and August 1, and the misanthropic Timon of Athens on August 15 and 22 (neither of those plays is anything like Three's Company).

Find out what's happening in Hobokenwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Then, on Tuesday, About Town watched a screening of Paris Is Burning, an award-winning documentary about the 1980's New York City ball scene as part of the Hoboken Public Library's celebration of Pride Month. About Town was aghast. Not because of the cross dressing – totally cool with that - but from seeing ridiculous 80's fashions for 70 minutes.

The following night we caught live comedy at , where comedians Daniel Enfield and Steve Leventhal host . A lot of couples packed the Busker's back room for the free show. We learned that Leventhal is a Hoboken resident, as is Adam Lucidi, the comedian who opened the show. The lineup also featured comedians from New York City.

On Thursday we returned to the Library for our second Pride event of the week, a reading by Justin Crockett Elzie, a Marine sergeant who challenged the military's since rescinded Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy against openly gay servicemembers, and who later released the recently published memoir Playing By The Rules.

Elzie had been a decorated guard at American embassies all over the world when he decided to publicly share his sexuality in a nationally televised interview. He became the first servicemember to challenge the DADT policy in court, and served the remaining four years of his fourteen year term openly gay. Now a civilian, he continues to remain active in both LGBT and military issues and is often quoted by national media outlets such as CNN.

Later that Thursday we headed over to , which has begun holding monthly charity nights where guests can purchase a special $10 pint glass and discounted refills, with the money going to a good cause.

In May Green Rock hosted the Mile Square Theatre, and this month it welcomed Party With Purpose, which is gearing up for its big 7th annual 5k race on June 12.

Party With Purpose volunteers sold raffle tickets and also organized a sweetheart auction, where bachelors and bachelorettes offered themselves to be bid upon for dates. One woman named Sofia fetched $300, and Party With Purpose raised $2,000 overall.

About Town contributed by buying one of the special pint glasses and drinking the rest of the night, which wasn't the shore but still a nice time.

Alan Skontra was a big dork who never went anywhere. Then he started writing the About Town column for Patch, and now he's everywhere. Have a hot tip on an event in Hoboken? Send an invitation, questions and comments too, to alanskontra@hotmail.com, and peep his tweets @twitter.com/alanskontra.

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