What's the password?

Above is a shot of our first show in our new home last Thursday, and our first contestant, Debra, a ukelele player! It was a great show with a fun crowd, and the new venue is going to work out great. Getting used to the new name, but the Gameshow Speakeasy couldn't possibly be in a more appropriate spot then this former bathhouse basement (the picture above gives a glimpse of the barreled, steam-stained tile ceiling, a relic of its former life) converted into a ramshackle tiki bar under a club where upstairs, a sweet 16 party was at Drag Queen karaoke. We continue to field lots of questions about the name change; you can find out more about that if you're so inclined, by checking out the entirety of the current issue of Time Out, where we have a great piece in an article about live game shows around the City. But let's just say it involved one of the world's biggest multimedia companies, our little show, and let us speak no more about it. Onward and upward! For the first installment of our new first-Tuesdays show, upstairs in the gorgeous red-curtained environs of the Fortune Cookie Cabaret, we've got (thanks to Nasty Canasta for the name) a newlywed head to head! And our contestants are three of New York's favorite burlesque performers, Little Brooklyn, Peekaboo Pointe and Precious Little, and their equally fabulous new husbands.

Literally, last night's party.

Shots on Lastnightsparty.com of the inaugural Starshine Burlesque at the gorgeous Fortune Cookie Cabaret last night. A very fun time, packed with our friends onstage and off, and seeing the new space in action made us even more excited to kick off our own show on the brand new stage on April 1st!

Movin' on up! Several blocks.

This holiday weekend marks a big, exciting transition for us as producers: after a year and a half at the Parkside Lounge, next month What's My Line? Live in NYC! moves to new digs at Lucky Cheng's! While Lucky Cheng's is famous as New York's premiere drag club--it's the one the guide books send you to--the venue is adding a new stage in its lush, cozy, kitschy space, to be dubbed the Fortune Cookie Cabaret, which will add a range of new kinds of shows to the repertoire. The new stage will be filled with shows nearly every night of the week; we became part of the big transition sparked by Rififi's iminent closing, as the long-running Thursday night burlesque show there, Starshine Burlesque, led the way up 1st Avenue to Lucky Cheng's. Now, we'll be part of a family of independently-produced shows, including Starshine (which we'll lead into on the third Thursday night of every month), a new variety show led by What's My Line's favorite magician, Albert Cadabra, and more to come. Most of the new shows share a 10:00 start time, but What's My Line is inherently an 8:00 show; we'll stay an early show, and instead of being on the cabaret stage, What's My Line will occupy an intimate, retro tiki lounge with a separate bar below the main dining room--with a second back door leading into Lucky Cheng's sister bar, Waikiki Wally's. Meanwhile, on the first Tuesday of every month at 10:00, starting in April, Clams and I will co-produce a new show, bringing together gameshow greatest hits from every era!

The downtown nightlife landscape continues to shift, and the new family of shows at Lucky Cheng's, the result of collaborative efforts by a group of independent producers and bookers, is an exciting move for everybody.