For the kickoff to five PR-savvy performances that straddle all of New York's boroughs over a 10-day period, Bowie chose to play a theater in the city's least arty and most inaccessible region. Fans who traveled from, say, lower Manhattan had to endure a 3 1/2-hour round trip in an unending downpour, while negotiating every form of public transportation short of rickshaw in order to reach the Snug Harbor Music Hall, the second oldest performance space in the city (after Carnegie Hall).

Yet those wilted and squishy fans who completed the trek got to see Bowie in a beautiful, acoustically perfect space that seats just 400. If the Stones playing Roseland last month gave their followers a rare closeup view, Bowie's show put the few here nearly in his lap.

(Saturday the star played St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. Wednesday he moves to Colden Center at Queens College, Thursday to Jimmy's Bronx Cafe, and Sunday to his more familiar environs of Manhattan's Beacon Theater).

Though Bowie acknowledged what he called "the isle of Staten" at the show with several attempts to pronounce the word "yo," he made a most unconvincing local. Then again, being out of place has always played a major part in Bowie's canon, both in his lyrical themes and performance style.

As the first major figure to inject a theatrical distance into modern pop, Bowie has always played roles with a balance of self-consciousness and elan. Here he chose, and mastered, the part of "song and dance man." While the 54-year-old star has spent much of the last decade making difficult and experimental music, his most recent works have returned him to sweet accessibility. Accordingly, for the two-hour, 22-song set at Snug Harbor, Bowie and his seven-piece band stressed his most embraceable songs, from "Rebel Rebel," "Life On Mars," and "Ziggy Stardust" to "Heroes," "Fame," and "Ashes To Ashes."

He also offered up seven cuts from his latest album, "Heathen," ranging from a classic rocker like "Afraid" to the convincing '70s-style R&B-pop piece "Everyone Says Hi." His band, anchored by guitarist Earl Slick and drummer Stewart Campell, slammed the stuffing out of Neil Young's psychedelic rocker "I've Been Waiting For You."

Even Bowie's artier songs got more oomph, including a more conventionally rocking take on the electro-industrial cut "I'm Afraid Of Americans" (whose lyrics benefited from a newly topical relevance). In such moments, Bowie's arch character meshed so perfectly with his band's hard grooves, it made a measure of awkwardness seem like a virtue.