When he doesn’t spend the weekend at his Catskills house, Alan Cumming likes roaming his East Village neighborhood. The “Cabaret” and “The Good Wife” star, who recently released the album “Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs,” chatted with ELISABETH VINCENTELLI about his ideal downtime.
“On Friday night I would probably go to a couple of bars. My favorite is Easternbloc on East Sixth Street, a hole in the wall.
“Saturday morning I sleep late, then go to Tompkins Square Park with the dog [Jerry] and my husband [Grant Shaffer]. Foodwise there are more options now, but I’ve never found it that difficult to be vegan here. I’ve been meaning to go to Superiority Burger but there’s always a line outside. It doesn’t look like a veggie crowd — it’s always good when something bucks that stereotype.
“I would love to go to the cinema more. I look at Anthology Film Archives newsletters longingly, thinking, ‘One day I’m going to go to that film on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.’
“[Saturday late afternoon] there would be a nap and some sexual relations, I imagine. And then it would be cocktail o’clock. After that we could go to a lovely dinner somewhere. There’s a really good macrobiotic place called Souen [photo right]. And a little French place called Le Village that can do veggie things.
“I would probably go out drinking after that, maybe a bit of dancing. For late-night snacks I go to Ray’s on Avenue A for Belgian fries.
“Sunday there’s usually exercise involved, maybe swimming at the YMCA on 14th Street — it’s the only pool downtown that’s a decent size. Sunday evening we love watching a movie and ordering in — I’m a big fan of Seamless. I watch [‘The Good Wife’] when it comes on cbs.com. I actually like hearing the reactions about an episode before I’ve seen it.”