“My darling New York, I’m a man who doesn’t think much of myself, but unfortunately I am all I can think about.” This seemed to be the common sentiment last night, orated out over a crowd of 500 aboard the Tall Ship Wavertree by Ronald Wohlman. The writer was one of 15 performers in Dream Baby Press’s first “I Love New York” reading, instructed to come prepared with a love letter to New York.
Matt Starr, who co-founded Dream Baby Press in 2022, was the glue that brought this motley crew of performers—and at least 95% of the audience there to watch them—together. Wohlman first encountered him at Sweet Pickle Books. Real Housewife Carole Radziwill, who recounted an evening at Lucien, had run into him at a Burger King. Jemima Kirke, a Dream Baby Press reading regular, had once been his roommate. Nearly everyone on the ship, in addition to the readers, many festooned in stripes and sailor hats, seemed to have some personal connection to Starr; he spent the night ricocheting back and forth between the bow and stern, hugging what seemed like no fewer than 20 patrons on each trip.
In its six years of existence, Dream Baby Press has become something of a self-contained scene, ever-growing in scale while retaining all the intimacy and bootstrapping affect of its DIY origins. On the Tall Ship Wavertree, drinks and dining meant boxes upon boxes of Joe’s pizza stacked in the boat’s gangways, as well as melted ice pops, lollipops, Chandon spritzes, and fast-going glasses of champagne. The drinks, Matt announced to the aimlessly wandering throngs, were in the back and the bathroom was across the street. Despite the low groan the latter proclamation prompted, no one seemed to mind too much. The point of Dream Baby Press events is not perfection, but to try something in a literary landscape too often resigned to staid readings—even if each new venture has seemed to push against the limits of what one man and his admittedly bottomless roster of connections could feasibly pull off.
Events at Church Street Boxing, the Museum of Natural History, and on a dodgeball court led to this: hundreds gathered on an 1885 cargo ship, the last of its kind, preserved by the South Street Seaport Museum and flying a 20-foot, neon green Dream Baby Press flag. The museum’s directors appeared near giddy at the prospect, handing out vouchers to return and tour the museum to guests spilling beer and candies on the floor of the ship for what felt like the first time since 1800s sailors decided to bunk off work and kick back.
“If you think about it, even when people were on a voyage at sea, they were having fun. You can have fun at the museum,” Director of Engagement Zach Risinger told me, as the crew swept away the detritus of the evening. “This is why we do programs at the museum, to try to bring people here to experience New York history in a different way. We had an amazing turnout; I hope people come back to the museum again.”
The museum’s president, Jonathan Boulware, was the last reader of the night, treating the crowd to a rendition of E.B. White’s Here Is New York. Interview’s Mel Ottenberg also selected a pre-existing text, an entry from The Andy Warhol Diaries detailing Liza Minelli’s many affairs. Couples Therapy’s Orna Guralnik said something about Brooklyn. City Councilman Chi Ossé recounted a friend vomiting directly onto a rat outside a club. Aminatou Sow remembered watching a woman get swept away in a wave. Kirke both chuckled along and teared up reading her own eloquent account of spending a night with Roald Dahl’s daughter at the Carlyle. The quality and preparedness of the readings, as per usual, varied wildly—in turn deeply moving, somewhat confusing, and riotously hilarious. But Starr’s central tenet has long been to get more people involved in the scene, one he seems intent on building himself if no such thing exists, and it is as such reflected in his madcap approach to curation.
“I wanted to create my love letter to the city,” he told me of putting together the event. “I’ve lived here for 20 years. I was trying to think, What is my version of a real life romantic comedy? The feeling I feel when I watch Annie Hall, when I watch You’ve Got Mail, and When Harry Met Sally, can I create that experience?” That explanation, I thought, explained the live rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and cabaret dance number that had opened the event. “I’ve never done such a long reading, but I just wanted as many of the people who make New York, New York in one setting on the oldest boat of its kind in the world,” he continued. “I want to create the things that I read about when I was in school in Indiana.”
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