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.