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Elton John Achieves Rare EGOT Status with Emmy Win for Concert Special 

Elton John performs on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Sept. 23, 2022. (AP)
Elton John performs on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Sept. 23, 2022. (AP)
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Elton John Achieves Rare EGOT Status with Emmy Win for Concert Special 

Elton John performs on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Sept. 23, 2022. (AP)
Elton John performs on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Sept. 23, 2022. (AP)

Elton John has achieved EGOT status.

The famed British singer-pianist secured an Emmy Award on Monday night for best variety special (live) for “Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium,” a three-hour concert documentary that streamed on Disney +.

John said he was “incredibly humbled” for joining the elite group of EGOT winners who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“The journey to this moment has been filled with passion, dedication, and the unwavering support of my fans all around the world,” John, 76, said in a statement after winning his trophy.

The superstar performer has five Grammys, most recently for “Elton John & Tim Rice’s Aida” in 2001; two Oscars for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King” in 1994 and “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from “Rocketman”; along with a Tony for his original score on “Aida.”

He is one of the top-selling solo artists of all time, and he holds the record for biggest-selling physical single of all time thanks to the 33 million copies sold for “Candle in the Wind” in 1997.

John became the 19th person to reach EGOT status after Viola Davis achieved the feat when she won a Grammy last year. Other performers who have EGOTs include Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson and John Legend.

David Furnish, a producer on the concert special, said John was overjoyed Monday night about winning his first-ever Emmy. Furnish said a “incredibly honored” John was unable to attend the awards ceremony since he's recovering from recent surgery.

“We Facetimed him. We woke him up in the middle of the night,” Furnish said while holding John’s award backstage. “He’s back in the UK. He’s had his left knee replaced — which isn't surprising when you think of the number of pianos he’s jumped off.”

John’s concert was the last of a three-night stand at the stadium in Los Angeles as part of the North American leg of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which began in September 2018 with the first of the 300-plus scheduled dates. It was suspended in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed in 2021.

His final show, which drew more than 50,000 people, had guest appearances from a new generation of stars, including Dua Lipa and Brandi Carlile.

The singer’s aired special beat out the Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show starring Rihanna, as well as ABC’s Oscars telecast, CBS’s Tony Award telecast and Netflix’s “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage.”

“Tonight is a testament to the power of the arts and the joy that it brings to all our lives,” John said. “Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my career. I am incredibly grateful.”

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Entertainment

New York City's Freewheeling Era of Outdoor Dining Has Come to End

People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
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New York City's Freewheeling Era of Outdoor Dining Has Come to End

People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
People eat outside a restaurant in New York, Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Outdoor tables saved thousands of New York City restaurants from ruin when they were forced to close their dining rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But four years into an experiment that transformed New York’s streetscape — briefly giving it a sidewalk cafe scene as vibrant as Paris or Buenos Aires — the freewheeling era of outdoor dining has come to an end.
Over the weekend, restaurants hit a deadline to choose between abiding by a strict set of regulations for their alfresco setups or dismantling them entirely — and thousands chose to tear down the plywood dining structures that sprouted on roadways in the pandemic's early days.
Fewer than 3,000 restaurants have applied for roadway or sidewalk seats under the new system, a fraction of the 13,000 establishments that participated in the temporary Open Restaurants program since 2020, according to city data.
Mayor Eric Adams said the new guidelines address complaints that the sheds had become magnets for rats and disorder, while creating a straightforward application process that will expand access to permanent outdoor dining.
But many restaurant owners say the rules will have the opposite effect, dooming a vestige of the pandemic that gave them unusual freedom to turn parking spaces into rent-free extensions of their dining rooms with minimal red-tape.
“They’ve found a middle ground to do one thing while saying another thing,” said Patrick Cournot, the co-founder of Ruffian, a Manhattan wine bar. “They’ve managed us out, essentially.”
Ramshackle plywood dining structures seemed to sprout from New York City’s streets almost overnight in the early days of the COVID pandemic.
With its crowded sidewalks and traffic-choked streets, the city had never really been known previously for an outdoor dining scene. But with customers banned from congregating indoors for months, the city gave restaurants a green light to expand dining areas onto public sidewalks and roadways.
Simple sheds for outdoor seating were soon replaced or expanded into more elaborate constructions, which have remained standing long after the days of social distancing and disinfected groceries. Restaurants added planters, twinkling lights, flowers and heating lamps so people could dine outdoors well into the cold weather. Other outside dining spaces appeared inside heated igloos, or with open fire places and under tiered rooftops.
Now, these structures must conform to uniform design standards, with licensing and square footage fees that could total thousands of dollars a year, depending on size and location.
But the most significant change, according to many restaurants, is a requirement that the roadside sheds be taken down between December and April each year.
That's a deal-breaker for Blend, a Latin Fusion restaurant in Queens that once won an Alfresco Award for its “exemplary” outdoor set-up.
“I understand they want to keep it consistent and whatever else, but it’s just too much work to have to take it down every winter,” said manager Nicholas Hyde. “We’re not architects. We’re restaurant managers.”
Blend's 60 outdoor seats “kept us alive” during the pandemic and remained well-used with diners who “since COVID just want to be able to enjoy themselves outside,” Hyde said. But after looking over the application, they decided to remove the curbside structure, opting instead to apply for sidewalk seating that can remain year-round.
Of the 2,592 restaurants that have applied for the new program, roughly half will forgo roadway set-ups in favor of sidewalk-only seating, according to the city.
Karen Jackson, a teacher, was going to lunch indoors Tuesday at Gee Whiz diner in Tribeca, one of the restaurants that took its outdoor shed down ahead of the deadline.
Jackson said she has mixed feelings, recalling how having coffee outside in a shed was one of the few entertainment options available early in the pandemic, The Associated Press reported.
“Some of them were really cute,” but others were unattractive and rat-infested, Jackson said.
“Unfortunately I think the places with more money were able to build the cute sheds and the places that were struggling couldn’t,” she said.
Andrew Riggie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, said the city should examine why so few eligible restaurants have applied, and consider how costly it will be to take down, store and rebuild the structures each year.
Applications for roadway dining structures must also undergo a review from local community boards, where some of the fiercest debates over outdoor dining have played out. Opponents have complained that the sheds eliminate parking, contribute to excessive noise and attract vermin.
On the Lower East Side, a row of sheds owned by a sushi counter, a coffee shop, a Mexican eatery and a Filipino restaurant stand side-by-side.
Paola Martinez, a manager at Barrio Chino, the Mexican restaurant, acknowledged the trash headaches and neighborhood conflict — on one particularly busy night, an angry neighbor hurled glass at the structure from an upstairs window, she said. But her restaurant has applied to stay in the roadway.
“It attracts a lot more people to the area,” she said. “It’s been great for business.”
City officials say restaurants who missed the deadline are welcome to apply in the future, while those that haven't will soon be fined $1,000 each day their set-ups remain.
Watching contractors take a crowbar to his once-vibrant dining shed, Cournot described a sense of relief. He said the sheds had come to symbolize an incredibly challenging period when a coworker died from the virus and a drop in sales nearly ended his East Village wine bar.
“When people say it’s the end of an era, I think it’s the end of a uniquely awful era for restaurants in New York,” Cournet said. “Like going through any kind of extended group trauma, the positives that we feel collectively are a little bit of a mirage.”