New York City - Part Two - Times Square and Broadway

When I was growing up, I used to watch the New Year’s Eve TV show on ABC TV from Times Square.  Dick Clark would introduce a few musical guests.  Cameras would pan, showing the huge, bundled up crowd milling about the buildings that seemed to have a million multi-colored lights attached to them.  The giant ball would slide down a building to the beat of a countdown and it would be time to hang up a new calendar.  That’s how I remember Times Square.

Times Square:  The Center of the Universe?

We’d heard that Times Square had been cleaned up considerably since some very dark days in the 1970s and 1980s, so were anxious to see it.  Sure it was clean but I think I’d prefer to remember it the way I did growing up.  It seems to be the center of the universe in NYC.  Well, a lot of subway cars and buses converge there anyway.  And while we weren’t physically assaulted we were assaulted figuratively by hustlers trying to sell us everything from bus tours to Rolex watches (REAL Rolex watches, we were assured).

The Theater District in Late Afternoon

 It’s filled with every chain restaurant you can find anywhere else in America, only with red and green lights and two more floors of seating area.  Applebee’s, Bubba Gump Shrimp, TGIFs, McDonalds.  They were all there and ready to sell you the same hamburger you’d get in Dayton, Ohio (for 50% more of course).  Give us a clean, independent hole-in-the-wall with decent food over this any day of the week.  For us, travel is about garnering new experiences as much as anything else.  Perhaps Times Square itself should be the attraction.  But it just didn’t register with us.

Renee and Kent and 30 Rock Plaza Before Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

 There were a couple of events in and around Times Square and Broadway (The Broadway District is next to Times Square) which were well worth it.  One afternoon we met some friends, who also happened to be vacationing in the city at the time, for a taping of The Jimmy Fallon Show at Rockefeller Center, where NBC is located.  This is a great value since it’s one of the few things in New York that is absolutely free (unless you consider waiting in line to have a cash value).  Everyone says it, and it’s absolutely true:  TV studios seem waaaaay smaller in person than on TV.  Fallon was funny, the guests were ho-hum (Rebel Wilson, hallelujah artist Joel Osteen and musical guest Lorde, who is 16 going on 40 years old).  I’d have snapped a picture in there but doing so and getting caught would have landed us a year on Rikers Island.

BowlingJoe (red shirt) and BowlingWidow in the Jimmy Fallon Audience

On another day we hit Broadway and went to a matinee showing of “Once", a very entertaining musical set in Dublin featuring lots of great Irish music and a pleasingly simple story.  The music was written by Glen Hansard who also starred in the film version (which we have to see now).  Something unique about this production is the fact that the stage itself became a bar for the audience to partake in before the show and during intermission.  I wondered why more people weren’t taking advantage of this until I got on stage myself and discovered that an average 12 ounce beer would set you back thirteen bucks.  I get that this is New York, but really???  One more tip:  seek out the discount kiosks called TKTS the day before or the day of a show for huge savings.  We landed 11^th row center seats for around $75 each.  Not bad at all.

"Once" at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on Broadway

Next post:  Sites and Destinations.  Now come on….can’t I narrow that down.  I mean, everything is a site or a destination, right?  Here's a preview of one in the picture below:  The Original Soup Man walk-up restaurant on 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan.  It provided the original inspiration for "The Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld.

New York City - Part One - The Museums

The skies were smooth and the late September weather was great as BowlingWidow and I coasted into JFK airport for our first ever trip to New York City.  After some initial confusion we hooked up with a cab company to set up the 45 minute ride into the city.  Other than some talk about our destination and cab fare, nary a word was spoken between us and the driver.  I wasn’t expecting to be on the Cash Cab or anything like that, but I thought New York cabbies were a bit more talkative than this one and the others which we encountered.

Our "Home" on the Upper West Side (2nd Floor...Open Windows)

We were in NYC for a full week, staying at a comfortable studio townhouse in the upper west side of Manhattan called (appropriately enough) The West Townhouse.  It was part of the endless brownstone row housing built in around 1890 that are abundant in the upper west side neighborhoods.  Our unit even came with a kitchen, giving us the ability to buy bagels, cream cheese and orange juice for the week and enjoy them at our leisure before hitting the streets and the subway.
 

Having a Kitchen Area Was a Nice Feature

For this blog post series, I’ve just made the executive decision to chunk the trip up into the following set of words and pictures:

Museums (that’ll be in this one)

Broadway and Times Square

Sites and Destinations

Walks

Food, Drink, and Concluding Thoughts

Let’s jump right into Museums…..

We regretted not visiting any museums when we were in Chicago, so wanted to make sure we went to the key ones in NYC.  We had plenty to choose from, and would have gone to all of them if we had a month to spend in the city.  That would have included places like The Frick Collection, The Guggenheim and the Jewish Museum of NewYork.  And then there’s the New York Public Library which we never got to.  Here’s what we did see:

The American Museum of Natural History.  This place has an amazing number of exhibits and buildings.  The planetarium show that we went to about the universe was interesting and well done.  There’s nothing like seeing one of these shows to help you walk out of the theater feeling really insignificant about your place in the solar system.  If you like exceptionally well done stuffed animals and dinosaur bones from all over the world, this is the place for you.   And it’s not just Natural History as the name indicates.  Artifacts and creations by cultures such as American Indian tribes are in abundance as well.

Well Made Stuffed Animals:  One of the Many Displays at the Natural History Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  At 2 million square feet, this is the largest museum of its kind in the country.  There’s no way one could get through this entire collection in a day unless you subscribe to the “speed theory” of art appreciation.  So we picked and chose.  They don’t just have paintings and sculptures here.  Sure they have Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso but their collection of musical instruments and armor, for example, is world class.

One of the Many Rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Knights in Shining Armor at the Met

Museum of Modern Art.  Smaller than the Met and located in mid-town Manhattan, modern art here appears to be defined as “from 1900 to present”.  Mainly paintings, some of the more famous works here include “The Starry Night” (Van Gogh), and works by Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.  I’ll admit it….some of the more recent modern art acquisitions look like something I might be able to make at home in a couple of hours, although I’m sure that’s not true.  I guess we just don’t “get” art as many do.

Andy Warhol's Soup Cans in the Pantry at the MoMA

The Cloisters.  This is a small collection associated with the Met, and is a short cab ride away on the north part of Manhattan Island.  It’s essentially an exhibit of art and architecture from Medieval England.  Made possible by an endowment  grant by  John D. Rockefeller Jr., this can easily be experienced in a couple of hours.  It’ll probably take you longer to get to and from here depending on where you’re staying in the city.
    

Courtyard Garden at The Cloisters

Next up:  Broadway and Times Square