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Published 11:30 am Sunday, March 1, 2026<\/p>\n
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0312 CW Fran speaks1.jpg
Fran Lebowitz will bring her wit and wisdom to the Liberty Theatre in Astoria March 16. At 74, she has brought her acute observations to stages around the world. Vogue magazine has highlighted her \u201csignature uniform\u201d of an Anderson and Sheppard blazer, blue denim jeans and boots.<\/p>\n
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(mandatory photo credit))
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Fran Lebowitz (Brigitte Lacombe photo)
((with pull quote))
\u2018Success didn\u2019t spoil me, I\u2019ve always been insufferable.\u2019
\u2014 Fran Lebowitz
humorist<\/p>\n
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((Infobox))
An evening with Fran Lebowitz
Liberty Theatre, Astoria
7 p.m. March 16 (Doors open 6 p.m.; concessions available).
Tickets online at https:\/\/libertyastoria.org. Reserved seating, $29 to $49.<\/p>\n
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((head)) Lebowitz, \u2018the last flaneur,\u2019 returns to speak in Astoria<\/p>\n
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By PATRICK WEBB<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too simplistic to shape an agenda for Fran Lebowitz with two questions:
1. \u201cHow did the United States get into this mess?\u201d
2. \u201cHow does it dig its way out?\u201d<\/p>\n
But that might be a temptation at the Liberty Theatre in Astoria 7 p.m. March 16 when the New York humorist returns for another stop on her world speaking tour.<\/p>\n
Lebowitz, 74, is usually introduced with a sentence containing the word \u201cacerbic,\u201d which dictionaries define as sharp and forthright.<\/p>\n
Somehow that doesn\u2019t seem to go far enough.<\/p>\n
An interview in the British Sunday newspaper The Observer last year, summed her neatly. \u201cShe makes her living as a wit, as a bearer of bon mots, and as the poster girl for a certain kind of crusty but erudite and essentially good-natured New York archetype, intellectual and judgmental, and walking the line between rudeness and frankness with engaging grace,\u201d wrote Maria Spann.<\/p>\n
Her web site at https:\/\/franlebowitz.com is peppered with clever words to spoon-feed any interviewer or audience:
\u2022\u00a0\u201cGreat people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.\u201d
\u2022\u00a0\u201cThe opposite of talking isn\u2019t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.\u201d
\u2022 \u201cSuccess didn\u2019t spoil me, I\u2019ve always been insufferable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her biography lists almost random early survival jobs, including cleaning apartments and selling belts. Her literary path began when recruited to write for Andy Warhol\u2019s magazine, Interview. Later, she published books of essays called \u201cMetropolitan Life\u201d and \u201cSocial Studies.\u201d \u201cThe Fran Lebowitz Reader, which reprints them, has been translated into nine languages. She has penned a children\u2019s book,\u00a0\u201cMr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet the Pandas.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the early 2000s, she appeared as a judge in 12 episodes of the TV cop show, \u201cLaw and Order.\u201d Director Martin Scorsese has made two films about her, \u201cPublic Speaking\u201d (2010) and the Emmy-nominated \u201cPretend it\u2019s a City\u201d (2021). In between, she had a cameo role, also as a judge, in Scorsese\u2019s dark comedy-drama \u201cThe Wolf of Wall Street\u201d (2013).<\/p>\n
Interviewers seem aghast that Lebowitz lives an \u201cunplugged life,\u201d one of the nation\u2019s few citizens not glued to a cellphone screen. She defends this practice vigorously, maintaining it allows her to better absorb what\u2019s around her.<\/p>\n
ABC-Australia host Sarah Ferguson, on screen ahead of a 2025 Sydney performance, suggested dubbing her \u201cthe last flaneur,\u201d a detached urban stroller who observes and comments, a term coined in 19th-century Paris.<\/p>\n
Similarly, author and journalist Mateo Hoke in San Diego Magazine, offered his own label. He called her \u201can articulate curmudgeon and the patron saint of sarcasm.\u201d<\/p>\n
While his wide-ranging 2025 phone Q&A interview was distracted into apparent trivialities like dress choices and her coffee obsession, it included a core exchange:
Hoke: \u201cThe world keeps getting worse in so many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lebowitz: \u201cYes, well, let me assure you, this is improvable. You know, anything that\u2019s created by human beings is fixable by human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matt Winters, regional editor at The Astorian and Chinook Observer, was able to interview Lebowitz on stage during her last visit. \u201cShe has one of those exceptional Manhattan dry wits,\u201d he said. \u201cI was reminded of that \u2018Kevin Bacon: six degrees of separation.\u2019 She just has one degree of separation from Martin Scorsese and Andy Warhol.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is one of those people that you just might encounter on a Manhattan sidewalk. She\u2019s just an ordinary denizen of the city \u2014 but has these deep connections to just about anybody you can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Astoria, Lebowitz hits the Midwest then Canada before flying to Australia and New Zealand. London, Berlin and Scandinavian stops loom in late fall.<\/p>\n
Tickets for her Astoria appearance are on sale at https:\/\/libertyastoria.org. Reserved seating is available, $29 to $49.
Her last appearance at the Liberty included problems with the sound system. Theater managers assure these have been rectified. For attendees who would like additional support, a limited amount of hearing-assist devices are available. To reserve one, email boxoffice@libertyastoria.org.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source discoverourcoast.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lebowitz, \u2018the last flaneur,\u2019 returns to speak in Astoria Published 11:30 am Sunday, March 1, 2026 \u00a0 0312 CW Fran speaks1.jpgFran Lebowitz will bring her wit and wisdom to the Liberty Theatre in Astoria March 16. At 74, she has brought her acute observations to stages around the world. Vogue magazine has highlighted her \u201csignature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2307924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2307923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Lebowitz-\u2018the-last-flaneur-returns-to-speak-in-Astoria.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307925,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307923\/revisions\/2307925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2307924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}