An interesting weekend, all in all. No secretive dance clubs or Greenwich Villiage piano bars (too weary) but tons of walking (got blisters on the balls of both my feet to prove it) and some interesting experiences.
Left Philly early Saturday and rolled into Penn Station, NYC a bit before noon. We decided to walk to the hotel rather than deal immediately with the Subway and so ended up taking a nice stroll down 5th Avenue. But, I’d seen it before. Dropped by the NY Public Library, stood where Uncle Ben got shot but couldn’t get into the stacks to recreate the Ghostbusters scene. Oh well, maybe next time. Rolled into a smashingly nice hotel – the Intercontinental at 48th and 5th more or less – but couldn’t get into our room so we dropped our gear and proceeded uptown. Decided that, being in NYC on my bro’s birthday, a Broadway show was in order and so proceeded to Studio 54 of all places to book tickets for Cabaret. Kept on cruising after a good lunch in a pub replete with well-formed Irish waitresses and wandered through the Cooper-Hewitt – the Smithsonian’s museum of design in Carnegie’s old mansion uptown. Nifty cool place, they even had Invader Zim playing as an exhibit. Gotta love that.
Back down to the hotel for a quick rest and then off to see the show. Not only do you get to see a pretty ripper, if racy show, but you get to see Debbie Gibson parading around all night in lacy undergarments. Doogie Howser, MD was supposed to play the sort of bi-sexual Emcee but had the night off, pity. We did get to see Tom Bosley of Happy Days fame play the token Jew so it wasn’t entirely a wasted effort. Nifty cool: Nazis, dance numbers and a silhouette orgy. You can’t ask for more than that.
Sunday was breakfast at the diner from Spider-man followed by a trip around Battery Park with a swing by the WTC site and the new Irish Hunger Memorial. Pretty sobering all in all.
So, now I’m completely exhausted, can barely walk and am speaking in tongues. I gotta say, I dig NY but I think it’s just too big. I’m telling you, after spending two days in that town, arriving back in Philadelphia was an amazing change. After NY, the pace of things in Philly is positively glacial and the scale is nigh-microscopic in comparison. I didn’t feel any less comfortable with the Philly traffic and activity than I did when I got home to Gettysburg. Amazing really.
Probably something everyone should do once but only now and again. The economies of scale are something to behold.