Nevertheless, the concert was wonderful. Especially the piece based on The Two Sisters, by which I was also mortified as a child.

I don’t understand why you or Father T didn’t leave. There are few things you can’t get anywhere else.

On the second occasion, husband and I had acquired pastry at the good muffin shop further up on Columbus Ave and had taken a seat at one of the (again many empty) tables in the cafe area. Husband then purchased one of the cafe’s pricey precious little Lincoln Center paper-cupped espressi. (I had snagged a larger (butcher) Red Eye at a Starbuck’s on the way.) Said Officious Homosexual swooped down on our table ( having arrived late to work, due, no doubt, to a protracted corporal work of mercy elsewhere) and explained that we could not eat food that we had not purchased at the cafe itself. He went on to explain that there was a clear, obvious and logical reason for this: were we to choke on the food we had “smuggled” into the Lincoln Center Cafe, or, were we to become ill because of having eaten said contraband on their premises, we could sue Lincoln Center, and the defendant would be hard pressed to prove that our misfortune was not caused by their food. I wish you could have seen the sincere delight on his face as he stooped over our table but proclaimed these secrets loud enough to be heard in echoes by the three other people in the cafe.
When I asked him if Lincoln Center’s liability phobia extended to the Starbuck’s coffee I held, or was that exempt because it was a beverage, he benevolently assured me that foreign beverages were acceptable. It was obvious to me that he did not see the humor in this, and Husband and I did our best not to play him any further although we were sorely tempted.
Like many others who live in that neighborhood, we like using the public spaces (or we’d live in spacious and cheaper Ohio for Chrissakes). What you’ve got here in the form of this cafe is a hybrid of a for-profit lessee in a for-public space presided over by that doltish O.H. Ah, the fine Lincoln Central acoustics of irritation.