New York this week: one pick from every category, May 18 to 25, 2026
A heavy Memorial Day week for the techno-and-tickets crowd, with both nights of the long weekend locked down. Rødhåd is back at BASEMENT splitting an extended set with Rene Wise. Nowadays runs the smarter sister-version on Saturday with Ben UFO on a Nonstop selector-only bill. Chance the Rapper takes a Midtown nightclub paycheck at Marquee. MoMA finally rolled out the long-promised Marcel Duchamp retrospective. And The Stand has Janeane Garofalo on a Wednesday lineup with Mike Falzone and Sahib Singh, which still feels like a particularly New York kind of cheap thrill.
The full live map is on the New York map. This is the editor's cut, one pick per category.
Parties
Rødhåd, Rene Wise, Quelza, The Carry Nation, Sevyn
BASEMENT is the closest New York has come to a working version of a Berlin Hauptraum, which means it pulls a different kind of touring program than the rest of the city. Memorial Day weekend gets a particularly clean bill: Rødhåd and Rene Wise splitting the night in half on extended sets, Quelza warming the edges, The Carry Nation working the room into the gay-disco gray zone before dawn. Rødhåd in form is the kind of operator who can make 90 minutes of straight-line techno feel architectural rather than relentless, and that's exactly the move on a holiday night when the room wants to be levitated, not fragged. Doors at 10:30 PM. Sleep is for Tuesday.
Comedy
Mike Falzone, Sahib Singh, Janeane Garofalo & more at The Stand
The Stand still books like an actual room rather than a YouTube clip mill, which is how Janeane Garofalo ends up on a lineup with Mike Falzone and Sahib Singh on a random Wednesday in May. The set isn't headlined and isn't billed as a special, which means you're getting whatever's on her mind that night, which is the version most people who care about Garofalo would prefer anyway. Falzone runs in the more confessional self-deprecating lane. Singh is one of the sharper crowd-work writers operating in the city right now. A $15-ish midweek show with Garofalo on the bill is a kind of New York comedy economics that doesn't fully exist anywhere else.
Live music
Chance the Rapper at Marquee New York
Chance the Rapper at Marquee New York is the kind of booking the city does in May to remind itself that summer money is real and moving. The room is a Midtown nightclub with table service and an aspirational dress code. The set is closer to a DJ-driven appearance than a full live show. The crowd is going to be exactly the cross-section of upper-east-side birthday tables and Chicago expat 30-somethings the venue was built for. Take it for what it is. If you actually want to scream "Sunday Candy" at strangers, the better bar is across town at Webster Hall the next night with the Toadies. The Acid Rap nostalgia move at Marquee is more of a vibe than a show. Tickets are released in waves and the door tonight is going to be brutal.
Art
Marcel Duchamp at The Museum of Modern Art
MoMA has finally done the full Duchamp retrospective, on view from April through late August, the kind of show the museum has been quietly building toward for twenty years. The framing question, lifted from MoMA's own wall text, is "why is this art?", which is a refreshingly low bar for the institution that owns Bicycle Wheel to take seriously. The galleries reportedly run heavy on the small assemblage works and lighter on the Glass and Étant donnés, which is the right balance if you've never sat with how funny Duchamp was. Go on a weekday morning. The afternoon is a cattle drive of school groups and headset audio guides and the line at the cafeteria is genuinely 40 minutes long.
Anniversary tour
Toadies with Local H and Vandoliers at Webster Hall
The Toadies on the Charmer anniversary tour with Local H and Vandoliers in support is exactly the kind of bill that pulls a particular slice of Webster Hall back into the building. Both headliners have been making the same kind of grown-man post-grunge tour stop for fifteen years now, and the 2026 version is heavier on the nostalgia, which is fine. Nobody is selling a $35 ticket to "Possum Kingdom" on the pretense of innovation. Doors at 6, openers at 7, headline at 8:45ish. If you've still got the Charmer-era playlist in rotation, you'll be home by midnight and you'll have screamed something out of your system you didn't know was still in there.
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