T Minus 90 Days: A Gathering in New York (Part One)

"If we left tomorrow morning, this would still be the most amazing trip we've ever taken!" As we drove back from Manhattan to our Jersey hotel Saturday night, Barb leaned over and said that to me and I realized it was true. We still have a full week left on the East Coast, including two days in Washington, two days in Massachusetts and another weekend in the Big Apple, but after last night, we knew that this was one for the books.

Friday (the 13th!)

Just to bring things up to date, we took the Staten Island ferry in to New York on Friday early afternoon. Barb got her first close-up glimpse of the "democracy's daughter" from the ferry. We pulled into the new South Ferry building in Manhattan and it was cold and blustery. I had the same pangs I had on Thursday evening, looking at the gaping hole in the skyline left by the absence of the twin towers. I was just 18 when I was working and going to school in New York City (1969) and they were in the midst of building the World Trade Center. For two years, I watched the buildings grow up out of the ground like metallic flowers, and although I moved to California before both buildings were completed, I remember my first trip back to New York and my first visit to Windows on the World at the top of the One World Trade Center (the North Tower).

We did a walking tour of NYC on Friday, including a stop at Tams-Witmark where we delivered the last contracts for HAiR and made our royalty payments! We figured since we were going to be in New York anyway, why not have some fun and go to the Tams office itself. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us up past the guard (who are these two weird people coming from California to sign a contract that they could have just mailed in!!?!? :-), so we handed the documents and check to one of their clerks and were on our way. We got to spend some time watching the ice skaters at the Rockefeller Center skating rink (brrr!) and on our way back cross-town, we stopped in at Saks Fifth Avenue to see how "the other half" shop (and its in the same league as NYC hotels, WAY out of the normal spectrum - Barb visited the sale racks and noted that the least expensive clothing item ON SALE was over $250! Ouch!)

We also passed by the New York City Main library building (actually the Research Library for the Arts and Humanities on 34th street) and we spent a few hours watching the film on the building of the library and browsing the reading rooms. Whoever said that Texans have the monopoly on scale needs to visit this library. 13,000,000 books for research plus another 5,000,000 for lending purposes! Amazing. For fun, we looked up RAGNI and RADO and found references to the original scripts and librettos of HAiR (hand-written!) but they aren't available except by advance reservation for research, but it was cool seeing the entries in their online card catalogs.

We took the ferry back to Staten Island late Friday afternoon and took a nap at the hotel. We nibbled on the snacks we had brought back from the city and then drove in to Manhattan around 10:00 PM and spent the evening checking out the city's late night life in the Village. We finally crawled into bed at 3:00 AM and slept soundly until 11 AM Saturday morning.

Saturday (April 14, exactly 3 months until we open HAiR in San Jose!)

When we woke up, we realized that if we were going to get to see a show on Saturday afternoon, we probably would have to take a car in and park so we did just that. The Hair gathering was scheduled for 7:30 PM so we packed up everything we figured we might need and drove in. I dropped Barb off near TKTS so that she could see what was available and I went looking for a reasonable place to park. Its true that parking is not cheap in Manhattan, but its not as bad as people might think. ICON Parking is all over the place, and I found a lot on the corner of 49th Street and 10th Avenue that charged $19 for all day until 2 AM. Again, given the price of the hotel (about $200 less than the cheapest Manhattan hotel we could find that was remotely decent), the 20 minute drive in from Jersey and $20 parking tab plus about $10 in tolls is a pretty decent financial trade-off.

Note: If you want TKTS (up to 1/2 price on most Broadway theater tickets), and you are willing to be flexible on what you see, DON'T waste your time in line. If you get there at 11 AM for the 2 PM matinees, you will spend most of the next two hours in line. By 1 PM, the line is mostly gone and Barb was able to place her order about 10 minutes after she got there!

We had hoped for Avenue Q, but it turns out we think we did better (Q was sold out). Instead Barb got two tickets to The Drowsy Chaperone, and its hard to imagine a better show to have seen as Barb's first Broadway musical. We had both heard accolades about the show, but neither of us had seen it, and it is both hilarious and touching all at the same time. Anyone who is a musical theater buff (as we both are) will be delighted by the premise (a man sitting in his apartment pining over his record - not CDs, these are real RECORDS! - collection of musicals, introduces us to his "favorite" old musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, by playing the records for us and the show magically comes to life in his apartment).

It is totally funny, filled with lots of insider jokes for musical theater aficianados, the songs are wonderful, and the cast, sets and costumes delightful. We had seats on the aisle in the fourth row orchestra for the price of $75, not quite 1/2 price but still $70 less than the normal total of $220 the seats would have been. We couldn't do this every night for sure, but considering what they charged at AMT in San Jose for a lukewarm Camelot rehash (regular price tickets were the same as we paid here), this was Broadway at its finest. Nothing like HAiR, of course, but still terrific. And in this show, they even had an overture (they actually cut the Camelot overture, one of theatre's finest overtures ever written, for the AMT show! - OUTRAGEOUS!)

The "Moment"!

After the show, we decided to walk up-town since we still had several hours before the gathering of the HAiR tribe at Bricco's. And then, we had one of those moments that stun you beyond belief.

As we walked up Broadway and were about to cross 51st Street, we heard the sound. That unmistakable "da-dum-dum-dah-da-da-dum-dum (pause) da-dum-dum-dah-da-da-dum-dum" of the bass guitar. We both looked at each other for a second, turned and saw the sign. Ellen's Stardust Diner (Singing Waitstaff). We stood there in shock, and listened as a voice came over the loudspeaker at the front door of the restaurant. "We starve, look, at one another..."

We were dumbfounded. It didn't sound like the OBC recording of James Rado as Claude. We rushed in the door, and I was scrambling for my video camera. Sure enough, there was a young man, about 25 maybe, in a red apron with the Ellen's logo, and a wireless handheld mic, singing the opening lines for Flesh Failures/Let The Sun Shine In. They were using the SAME "Hairaoke" music we have on our practice CD. And the young guy did a terrific version of the song, wandering around the restaurant singing to the patrons.

Unfortunately, the video camera battery was dead. ARRGGHH! I so wanted to capture even a few fleeting seconds of that moment! But it wasn't to be. We stumbled back out of the restaurant, both disappointed but also exhilirated. We were heading to have dinner with members of the worldwide HAiR tribe, including the original producer, just a few months before our own production will hit the boards in San Jose, and we happen by pure chance to pass by this restaurant in Manhattan when the waiter is JUST STARTING TO SING THE SIGNATURE SONG OF OUR SHOW! We both looked at each other and there simply weren't any words.

Jupiter is truly aligned with Mars... (More to come in Part Two!)