“Mad Men” signs off with its series finale May 17, but New York City isn’t done with Don Draper.
The Big Apple has made a big deal out of the AMC drama’s swan song by hosting special events and exhibits, including a fantastic one at the Museum of the Moving Image through June 14.
“Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men” is a collection of props, costumes and other curiosities from the Emmy Award-winning series about Madison Avenue ad executives of the 1960s.
The sets for Don’s office and the Draper family kitchen in Ossining, N.Y., were schlepped cross-country from the show’s studios in Los Angeles and re-created at the museum in Queens.
More than 30 “Mad Men” outfits are on display, including the bloodstained frock Joan wore during season three’s lawn mower incident and that little black number Megan rocked while crooning “Zou Bisou Bisou.”
A glass case contains a slew of Weiner’s handwritten notes about story lines and characters — some old enough to be scribbled on stationery for “The Sopranos,” the HBO hit that once counted Weiner among its scribes.
The $12 admission fee is waived from 4 to 8 p.m. Fridays at the museum, 36-01 35th Ave.
In midtown Manhattan, have a seat and snap a selfie next to Draper’s silhouette. The so-called Draper bench will spend the summer outside the Time-Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, home of the fictional offices of Sterling Cooper & Partners.
If you want to follow in Draper’s footsteps, stay at Madison Avenue’s Roosevelt Hotel, the philandering protagonist’s home away from home after his first wife, Betty, gave him the boot.
The bar at the Roosevelt is one of the stops on the Mad Men Cocktails Experience Tour, a guided journey to some of the iconic watering holes featured in the show. Vintage ’60s attire is encouraged on the Thursday and Friday evening excursions, priced at $150. (Cheaper daytime tours also are available; visit http://www.madmentour.com.)
“Mad Men” fan and Sidewalk Food Tours owner Josh Hirsch leads most of the nighttime jaunts, which he started offering roughly two years ago.
“We definitely had an uptick in demand with the beginning of the first half of Season 7,” said Hirsch, who anticipates interest to continue long after “Mad Men” ends. “Ten years later, that ‘Sex and the City’ bus is still packing them in.”
Rackl is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune
