You can take Cyndi Lauper out of Queens, but you can’t take the Queens out of Cyndi. The Ozone Park native shows her true New Yawk colors every time she opens her mouth. And she’ll be doing lots of that in “Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual,” the WE reality show premiering Jan. 12. It shows the frazzled 59-year-old who also wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway-bound “Kinky Boots,” juggling music, showbiz and life with husband David Thornton and their 14-year-old son, Declan. One of the show’s opening shots is of her washing dishes in their Connecticut home, but Lauper has also kept an apartment on the Upper West Side since 1993. This is her New York.
1. MoMA, 11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues
“With all my album covers and music videos, I try to make paintings. Going to MoMA is very important to me, because I try to take what’s there and put it into my work. It’s great because the shows rotate. Sometimes you get to see an installation or you get to see a multimedia thing. But I love the paintings — there are certain paintings I just want to go back and see, like the [Roy] Lichtenstein one of the girl [saying] Brad. When I go there, I stop by that painting, always.”
2. SIR rehearsal studios, 520 W. 25th St., between 10th and 11th avenues
“Everybody rehearsed there, from Paul McCartney to the Rolling Stones — well, I don’t know if the Stones did, but Paul McCartney did, I did, and so did David Bowie. It’s one of those places where you walk in and there’s always brouhaha going on. There’s an energy about being around people preparing to go perform. And they have everybody there, from a wedding band to somebody famous. But the one thing we have in common is music. No matter what level it is, it’s music.”
3. Screaming Mimi’s, 382 Lafayette St., near Fourth Street
“I still love to go to [here]. It was 1980, I was in a group called Blue Angel, and I was wandering the neighborhood and was excited to find [it], because it had the right clothes for me. I bought a car coat that was beautiful and vintage. I bought a pair of capris. But the car coat I just loved, loved, loved. It was rust and had, like, you know what honey looks like raw? It had black like little octagons, like a honeycomb.”
4. Central Park’s Literary Walk (Poets’ Row) and the Delacorte Theater
“I’ve been going to the Delacorte since I was a little kid. I remember watching [the Euripides tragedy of a murderous mother] ‘Medea’ and asking my mother, ‘Mom, what are you trying to tell us?’ [Giggles] My father-in-law has a bench down on Poets’ Row. Dr. Robert Thornton — he was a very special guy. He passed away, and my husband and I put a bench near Robert Burns’ statue, because he was a leading biographer of Burns’ life. We watch the Peruvian band that always plays there. That’s our favorite thing.”
5. Cafe Luxembourg, 200 W. 70th St., between. Amsterdam and West End avenues
The kid [son Declan] loves food! He likes Luxembourg. [It] has a nice atmosphere. I eat the country salad — it’s got frisée and egg in it, little bits of ham. But once you print this, I’ll never get a seat there.”
6. Rizzoli, 31 W. 57th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues
“Honestly, I like Rizzoli’s, because I can always find the more obscure art books there. Everything that I do is related to some painting or something that I saw, and then we do it with a rock ’n’ roll twist, usually. In 1988, I was going to do the Details magazine cover. I went to Rizzoli’s and found the [Alberto] Vargas book. So I went to Annie [Flanders, Details’ founder] with the book and said, ‘Maybe we could do this, the one with the gardenias.’ And then, in 1989, by the time my album came out, we kind of kept doing that — a kind of Vargas look with a rock ’n’ roll twist to it.”
7. Don Peppe, 135-58 Lefferts Blvd., Ozone Park, Queens
“It’s a really sweet, fun restaurant. I went there for years with my mom — she loves it. She knows the chef, who knows my stepfather. It’s a really great place. It’s got, like, blue walls, tables and chairs. It’s simple, it’s not fancy and the food is homemade, family style. He makes the best clams with linguine, not that I eat that anymore. I’m currently not eating meat of any kind. Just juice . . . I don’t wanna talk about it.”
8. Dominick’s Restaurant, 2335 Arthur Ave., The Bronx
“I like Dominick’s, by Fordham University. It’s a very Italian place. Dominick’s is a lot like Don Peppe’s. It’s simple. It’s legendary. It’s kind of what he’s cooking that night. Whatever. Could be he’s doing meatballs, he’s doing clams, he’s not doing clams, he’s doing different dishes. It’s really fun to eat like that.”
9. Staten Island Ferry
“In the summer, when the moon is full, I love to take the ride from Staten Island to New York, or vice versa. When I played with Rosie [O’Donnell] in Staten Island, we rode the ferry. It’s a beautiful angle to see Manhattan from, and its beautiful terrain. When you think of Staten Island, I dunno, you think of ‘The Godfather’ or something, but the movie coulda been shot in Great Neck. Who knows?”