I'm back home and have finally gotten some rest in the big comfy bed. Time to tie up a couple loose ends on my recent travels....
A little about the TKTS booth in Times Square.... The booth is only open for a few hours - check out pertinent info here - so the lines get long early. If you really have your heart set on specific tickets, you'll need to get there a couple hours before they open. Regardless of how early you go, though, be prepared with a list of choices since your first choice may be sold out or may not have seats as good as you want available. The tickets are usually about half off and aren't weighed down by all those fees Ticketmaster likes to tack on. There are two lines - one on either side of the booth - and if you get there early the sun isn't shining on either one. If you get there late or are going to be there for a while you'll want to get in the left-side line (as you're facing the front of the booth) because the sun takes longer to clear the buildings on that side and start melting you. Once the booth opens, the line starts moving pretty quickly actually - I got there an hour before open and had my tickets a half hour after. At some point when you're standing in line the rumor will start getting passed back that they only take cash. This is BS, but it happens each time I've gotten in line and it'll make you start sweating about whether or not you've got enough cash on you. They take all major credit cards. Also, there's a separate (much smaller) line if you're wanting to see a play instead of a musical.
I got in line thinking American Idiot would be my first choice and Million Dollar Quartet would be my backup. Well, AI is doing so well they didn't have any tickets on the board even at the start and after looking at all the billboards in Times Square for an hour, I decided Rock of Ages would probably be the best show for me to take Dakota to. I was able to score some really good seats to ROA and it turned out I was right, but I'll get to that in just a bit.
Tickets in hand, I collected Dakota from the movie theater and headed down to Chinatown. Now, I've taken Dakota to NYC several times, but always with other people. And usually those other people are newbies, so we have to do some of the touristy stuff - Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, etc. This time it was just going to be me and him, so I asked if he had anything in particular in mind that he'd like to do. He immediately said, "NOT the Empire State Building!" So, I started thinking about places I'd never taken him that could be interesting. Considering his love of Asian culture (mostly because of all the anime that he's been watching for years, I think) and my recent trip to Hong Kong, I decided a trip to Chinatown would be interesting for both of us.
Several subway lines stop at Canal Street, but I decided on the 4-5-6 line. When you pop up at the Canal stop on that line, you're right at the beginning of Chinatown. Just start walking East on Canal and you're surrounded by all the shopping stalls, fish markets, and Asian restaurants you can handle. Dakota bought himself a Dragon fruit right off from a street vendor. I'd never seen one of those things before, but they have got to be one of the coolest-looking fruits out there. We did a bit of browsing and wandering and settled on a little authentic-looking place called the Hon Cafe for lunch. The front part of the restaurant is a bakery and there wasn't one item that didn't look excellent! If we weren't stopping for lunch I would've picked up a bagful of pastries and rolls. As it was, Dakota bought a couple Bolo's on the way out and they tasted every bit as good as they looked. I ended up trying the Eel Fried Rice that I'd skipped in Hong Kong (it was very good) and Dakota ordered up some Hong Kong style beef and noodles which he made his own by pouring in some broth.
After lunch we did a little more wandering around Chinatown, then hopped the subway back to Broadway to catch our show. During the subway excursions Dakota really impressed me. On the way down he was approached by one of the many grifters you run into around town. He listened attentively to the guy's spiel (about losing his job and his divorce and about needing money to fight for his kids in court and could Dakota spare him a dime or a nickel even) then politely declined. The guy thanked him for listening and moved on. This is the safest way to handle those situations. You can rudely cut him off and tell him to move on, but you can never really predict their reaction to that kind of treatment. Best to listen, politely decline and wish them good luck. I've also found that "God Bless" is a good phrase for motivating them on their way - even grifters are afraid of being preached to. The second thing Dakota did to impress me was on the way back. We were sitting on the L train towards 8th Ave when a woman popped her head in and asked if this was the train to Brooklyn. Without skipping a beat he said, "No, that's the one on the other side." Normally when I'm dragging people around the subways of the world (be it NYC, London, Paris, etc) they really have no idea where they are. But Dakota, who hadn't been to NYC in about 2 years, knew exactly where he was at after hopping 3 different lines on the way back from Chinatown. The boy pays attention! I have a feeling he'll do quite well on his own in the city one day.
We made it to the theater for Rock of Ages just in time and watched a hell of a show. The acting is not the greatest, the dancing is sometimes laughable (and I suspect intentionally so), the story is predictable, but you can't beat the soundtrack and I have never had more fun or laughed so hard at a musical. For a couple hours of just flat-out fun you can't do better than Rock Of Ages. I liked it so much that I bought a block of 10 tickets for one of the Chicago showings coming up in September. According to the description on Broadway in Chicago, it should be the same cast as the Broadway show doing the tour. I sure hope so because I'm pretty sure I fell in lust with a couple of the dancers/ensemble players from the show.
After the show, we went for a nice long walk over to 5th Ave and north to Central Park to do a little shopping. We made the obligatory stop at FAO Schwarz, but it closed at 6pm before we got there (what's up with that??), so in all the years I've been going to NYC I STILL have not made it into that store...lol!
We caught the subway back to the hotel to rest up a little before dinner, but after an hour of chilling in the room we mutually agreed that sleep would be a much more satisfactory use of our time. Did I mention we started off the day worn out? By the time dinner rolled around, no piece of charred cow's flesh or dainty piece of raw fish sounded anywhere near good enough to pull me from the cozy embrace of my blankets.
We made it to La Guardia the next morning without incident (though I'm thinking our cab driver was either senile or drunk or both) and on the plane only a few minutes late. Then we sat on the tarmac for over an hour, including a trip back to the terminal so the ground crew could close a hatch on the plane that they'd mistakenly left open. I effing hate all airlines but Southwest! And I effing HATE La Guardia! But NYC was, as always, interesting and remains on my list of favorite places to visit.
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