And this one, also:
Then on Thursday Mandi and I were having lunch at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station and our waiter said, "Hope you brought a jacket, it's going to snow!" I'm used to Texas, where "It's going to snow" means it's maybe, possibly going to snow for an hour or so. But in New York if someone tells you it's going to snow, it's really going to snow. By Friday night the city looked like this [this is my favorite picture from the whole trip, by the way, taken from 'inoteca, the coolest little wine bar in the East Village]:
It was freezing, but it was so much fun, too. The snow made everything seem kind of romantic and different and it was beautiful until it all got plowed up and turned into gray slush. But it was beautiful for a while. To have the contrast of warm, sunny New York with snowy, gray New York was a nice experience.
And now for topics more interesting than the weather. Like food! It's a good thing I walked a whole lot while we were there, because, damn, did I ever eat. I love food. LOVE IT. I would gladly go on a vacation entirely devoted to eating, and Mandi is like me in that respect, so we tried a whole bunch of different restaurants, and Kymberli would come with us whenever she didn't have to be at work. We had delicious sushi at this place near where we'd catch the tram to go to Kymberli's apartment [The tram, by the way, was not a monorail, which is what I'd been envisioning whenever I'd talk to her on the phone and she'd be calling me from the tram. It was an actual aerial tramway, an enclosed box hanging on a cable, like the thing you take to the top of a mountain when you're skiing. Very odd.] Kymberli also took us to the Pinkberry in Koreatown, and I'd have eaten it four more times by now if I were still in the city. We had to get hot dogs from Gray's Papaya, of course. There was also the above-mentioned awesome wine bar in the East Village, 'inoteca, which was probably my favorite restaurant Mandi and I ate at all week. We split panini sandwiches and a bowl of these meatballs glazed with an orange/tomato sauce (sounds horrible, tasted delicious) and our waiter was awesome. When I told her I wanted to do a cheese plate but couldn't decide what to get, she asked what kind of cheese I like (answer: everything...or at least everything they'd have at a wine bar, since I love goat and sheep milk cheese and the only kind of cheese I don't like is American) and then she came back with three different kinds of cheese that were all great. She did the same thing with wine. I'd be like, "Okay, I want another red, but this time I want something smoother and lighter..." and she'd bring me the perfect thing every time. The last night we were in town we went to Bobby Flay's restaurant Bar Americain. We splurged, big time, but it was well worth it. There was a lot of other eating, too, but I'm trying to remind myself again that food talk is only interesting to me.
Let's see, what else? Well, there were the shows, of course. That's why we were there, after all. We ended up seeing A Chorus Line, Spring Awakening, and The Color Purple. All three of the shows were amazing in different ways. I think we must have seen the three best shows playing on Broadway right now. And if we didn't and there's something better out there, then wow, the calibur of show on Broadway right now is impressive. I especially loved Spring Awakening and The Color Purple. Spring Awakening was just so different, almost like being at a concert instead of a show. I think if I were taking a non-theatre person to New York I'd take him or her to Spring Awakening, for sure. The cast was hot, the music was great, and the singing was very strong (Kymberli will be pleased to know, because she keeps asking me about it, that the original cast recording is being delivered to my apartment as we speak). Oh, and the set and lighting was so cool! As for The Color Purple, I can give it one of my biggest endorsements, which is that I cried. In fact, I cried through the whole curtain call and for five minutes after the show was over. And I felt like a fool because we were sitting in the second row and so during the curtain call the entire cast could see that I was crying. Which probably makes them happy, that they clearly touched their audience, but still. I rarely cry, even when I am feeling emotionally taken by a show or movie, so the fact that I was emotionally involved enough to cry means a lot. I always feel like such an idiot when I talk about theatre here. I study theatre, critiquing theatre is what I do for a living, for god's sake, and all I can say here is a variation of, "It was so cool!"? It's like there is no in-between for me. I can either write you a three page critique of the show, or I can say, "It was good". Lame. Sorry about that.
The coolest thing about The Color Purple was that we had met one of the cast members at a bar on Thursday night, and he told us how we could get tickets for just $27. He also told us to call him if we ended up going and said that he'd give us a backstage tour. Well, Kymberli, Mandi and I got tickets and went, but we felt too weird calling him. What if he'd just been acting polite at the bar? We were afraid that if we called him three whole days after he'd given us the tip that he'd just go, "Who are you again?" So we weren't going to call him. After the show we decided to go back to the stage door just to tell him thank you for telling us how to get tickets, but when he saw us there he said, "Hey, come on in!" and he really did bring us backstage! Not only that, we got to go ON stage! It was amazing, seeing all of the props and set pieces lined up and ready to go for the evening performance and meeting cast members and thinking to myself, "I am standing on a Broadway stage!" Which is the only way I'll ever actually get to be on a Broadway stage, by the way. He was such a genuine guy, so friendly without any sort of ulterior motive, you know? It wasn't like, "Come backstage and I'll show you around and then you'll do such-and-such for me." He's just a guy that is excited about what he does and wants to share his enthusiasm with other people that are interested in the same thing. I love that.
Speaking of the bar, I haven't gotten a chance to tell you about our New York nightlife experience. And oh, there are some stories to be told. But this entry is already too long and I really do need to clean my apartment. So I promise to tell
a) the subway mishap story (because I owe you that one, too, even though it's probably not all that exciting)
and
b) about all of the weird and slightly less weird men I met in Manhattan
If I don't update about these things soon, remind me that I promised I would. Because it really is time I talked about something other than my thesis.
P.S.-The good thing about being home from New York is how cheap everything seems now. On Friday night we got dinner from Taco Cabana and I sat there for a full minute thinking, "I can't believe I just got two tacos and a drink for only $3.97!). When I mentioned this to Richie, he said, "I'm from Canada! I feel like that ALL THE TIME!"
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