My NYC experience – part 3
Aug. 5th, 2004 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leighblackMonday, Day 3 for the Midwest girls in the Big City
We managed to roll out of bed a little bit earlier than the day before, as we had a lot of plans for the day. I spent the night having WAY weird dreams all night long. First, I dreamed that I was standing in my parent’s family room and looked out the window, only to see the Peppermint Creeps standing out there. They were in full costume and had ridden little motorcycles to the house. Traci told me that he had heard it was a good place to crash. I just shrugged and told them it was fine. I started making room for them when my mom came in and started yelling that there was no way they were staying in her house. I said that was fine, and took the boys over to my apartment instead. I was making room for them around my place, including sharing my bed. My mom came screaming into my apartment and said that there was no way I was sharing my bed with one of those guys. I looked at Eddie, Eddie looked at me. I just told her that there really wasn’t going to be a problem with it, but she wasn’t listening. (About…one…two…three…four of you are going to get that) I woke up after that, very confused.
I finally went back to sleep and had a dream about N’Sync’s Chris Kirpatrick. Ugh! I blame this all on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
duckduck! Thankfully, I don’t remember much about the dream, other than I met him at a party and he was all hitting on me. I was trying to get away from him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone.
After all this, we got up and went down for breakfast. They had raised the terror alert to Orange the day before and specifically mentioned the Stock Exchange. Perhaps you saw some of the zillions of news reports from there, showing the guys with the big guns securing the area. Jess got nervous about it, and decided she didn’t want to go down there like we had planned. She’s not into politics or following the news and she’s very conservative, so she didn’t really believe me when I mentioned that it was all a ploy to steal attention away from the DNC. So, we decided to go up to Central Park instead. I was completely fine with that.
A quick trip Uptown on the subway and we were at the park. I was happy to just wander around aimlessly, but Jess wanted to see the Central Park Zoo. That was fine too. Except that there were about a thousand kids running around. Everywhere. But I can deal with that. I was completely amused by the penguins! I just love those little suckers. We also saw various birds, bats, snakes and other things.
Feeding time for the penguins!
A pretty view of the skyline around the park
A red panda, which has nothing to do with a bear
We did the zoo fairly quickly and I bought a stuffed penguin and a zoo magnet (yes, magnet #5). We were going to wander around the zoo for a while, but Jess decided that she wasn’t going to be scared and wanted to go down to Wall Street and Ground Zero after all. So we hopped back on the subway to go Downtown. And that’s where we discovered my subway map was out of date, as we ended up in Brooklyn instead. grrrrrr… We hopped onto the right train and eventually ended up in the correct place.
After getting our bearings, we walked down to the World Trade Center site. Now, those of you that know me, know that I am very literal minded. Often, perhaps, too much. So, I wasn’t really affected by visiting the site. Jess was having a much harder time being there than I was. I was more bothered by the people taking photos of the site. I couldn’t understand why you’d want to keep mementos of something like that. I did take a few photos of the buildings around the site, though. The skyline was pretty, and I thought it was interesting to see the buildings still being repaired.
We decided to walk over to Federal Hall, as Jess wanted to look around the museum. We had gotten drinks along our walk, so we sat on the front steps while we finished them. This gave us a good view of the men with the guns in front of the New York Stock Exchange building. We also got to watch the endless lines of news people jockeying for the perfect shot.
Wall Street under an Orange alert
After we walked through Federal Hall for a while, we just decided to walk East until we hit water. We made it to the River and walked South along the water. We saw the Statue of Liberty, but didn’t care to take the ferry over to Ellis Island. We walked through Battery Park and got hot dogs. We decided to head back uptown, since we needed to get ready to meet Jess’ friend for dinner. We stopped at a little deli for Italian Ices first. And I watched a CBNC report from NYSE, saying “Hey! We were just there!”
We made it back to the hotel, got ready to go out again and met Jess’ friend, Stephenie. They grew up together in Rice Lake, WI, but she’s lived out East for quite a while. We went to a pasta place not far from our hotel for dinner. It was quite good! Jess & Stephenie hadn’t seen each other in years, so spent the meal catching up on things. I just kinda sat there, trying to contribute. Then Stephenie split the bill three ways, when I didn’t get any wine, seafood or expresso like they did. I just don’t take well to people like that.
We left the pasta place a headed back to the hotel since Rent would be starting soon. I have loved, loved, loved Rent for years. I’ve seen the touring company twice in Minneapolis, but I have always wanted to see it on Broadway. So when we decided to go to NYC, it was a no-brainer that I’d be getting us tickets to Rent. I was a little concerned about how Jess would react to it, since she’s a little homophobic and hadn’t reacted well to the gayness of Oz. But I talked to her about it beforehand and I knew the beautiful music would win her over.
When I bought the tickets, I knew that Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice from the Spice Girls, would be playing Mimi. I was a little concerned about that, especially since the reviews of her performance weren’t very good. But, I was thrilled when I found out a couple weeks before the show that Jai Rodriguez from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would be back in Rent as Angel, starting the night we were going to the show! YAY!! This totally made me happy as I had heard nothing but good things about his performance.
Leigh & Jess before Rent
There was a huge line all the way down the block from the theater once we got back there. I guess there was some delay before the crowd could be let in. But soon enough we were in the Nederlander Theater and seated in our lovely fourth row seats. I was seriously so excited I could barely breathe! I was totally in awe.
And the show was nearly perfect! Everything I had imagined! I cannot make it through Angel’s death scene and I was crying like a little baby. I’m sure Jess was amused by that. Jai was fabulous as Angel! Absolutely perfect! As was Jeremy Kushnier as Roger. He was definitely the best Roger I’ve ever seen. No wonder the Rentheads love him! The new Maureen, Kelly Karbacz, was great too. She put a lot of spunk into the role. Maureen’s part is my favorite of the whole show, so I was glad it was played so well. Melanie Brown, was…well, okay. Not horrible, not very good either. She couldn’t hit a lot of the high notes and some of the songs sounded weird because of it. But she was much better than I expected and she didn’t ruin the show or anything. Jess did love it, as I had predicted. I don’t know how you couldn’t! The music is SO beautiful!! I was so happy that we had decided to go!
I wasn’t missing out on meeting Jai, so I pushed my way through the departing crowd to get to the stage door. I managed to get right up to the barricade. Yay! Jess didn’t want to deal with the crowd and decided to go back to the hotel and sit at the bar. That meant I lost my camera bitch. Jai came out right away. He is SO adorable! He was super nice with all the fans, taking time out to actually talk to people as much as he could.
Jai Rodriguez
What was said in our little conversation:
L: “Hi, Jai. The show was fabulous!”
J: “Thanks” *takes my Playbill to sign*
L: “Thanks” *Jai glances up at me and my hard-to-miss-even-if-you’re-gay cleavage*
J: “I like your tattoos. They’re cool”
L: “Oh, thanks!” *Jai hands me back my Playbill* “Can I get a photo with you?”
J: “Sure!”
I pushed my camera at some poor soul standing next to me since Jess had left, and she was nice enough to take the photo.
Leigh & Jai – aren’t we cute??
This one’s for you,rockerlee
Melanie came out while Jai was still working his way around the crowd. The little Spice Girl fans were freaking out. It was quite amusing! She was also very nice with the fans, making sure that people actually got the photos when cameras were messing up and such. She felt bad that my friend had abandoned me when I again had to shove my camera at a stranger.
Leigh & Melanie Brown
So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want
They both went back inside, and I turned around to see that some of the other cast members were out by the front doors of the theater. I got Jeremy Kushnier, Matt Caplan (Mark), Kelly Karbacz and Merle Dandridge (Joanne) to all sign my Playbill. Yay! I felt bad that I was running out of cash, or else I would have bought Jeremy & Matt’s CDs. Thankfully, they’re for sale online at CD baby too. I begged one more poor person to take my picture with Jeremy before I headed over to the hotel bar to find Jess.
Jeremy Kushnier & Leigh – yep, he’s the sexay
What a happy surprise! Bar 41 actually had Raspberry Vox! Faboo!! I sat and had a drink with Jess while we talked about the show. It was so fabulous that I could have talked about it forever! But my drink was really strong, and I was exhausted from walking around in the heat all day, so we decided to call it a night. We went out and took photos of the theater and the hotel before going up to bed.
The marquee at the Nederlander Theater
Jess in front of Hotel 41, next door to the theater
Tuesday, Day 4 for the Midwest girls in the Big City
We got up early again, and Jess decided to walk up to Jude’s law firm to see if she wanted to have coffee. So, I gave her careful instructions on how to get there, and sent her on the way. I went down to have breakfast, then got dressed and started packing. I was going to miss our teeny, tiny hotel room! Jess returned and we got everything packed up and checked out.
We had about three hours before our shuttle was going to arrive, so we decided to just walk around. Jess still had a couple souvenirs that she wanted to get, so we hit a bunch of NYC stores. We also went to the massive Times Square Toys R’Us. It has a ferris wheel inside it! I could look at toys forever, but we moved on. We went into Midtown Comics, which I had been dying to do since we’d gotten there. So many comics! I finally had to leave so I didn’t start buying things. We then just randomly walked around. We went into Macy’s, but only to use the bathroom. The heat was getting to us, so we sat down at a pizza place for lunch. We walked around some more, and hit another comic store, before we finally decided to just go sit in the nice, cool hotel until our shuttle arrived. It was only going to be about an hour, and we both had books to read. Jude ended up calling, and she came down to chit chat with us until it was time for us to leave.
This shuttle ride was not nearly as scary as the one into town. Or maybe I had just adjusted to the traffic. I’m not sure. We made it to the airport in plenty of time. And here’s where the trip starts to go downhill. Our plane was late coming in from Detroit. So we started out a little late. Then the runway was backed up, so we sat in line for a really long time. There was only a buy on board meal offered, but we had brought snacks so it wasn’t so bad. Then, there were bad storms around Eau Claire, WI, so we couldn’t fly into the Cities from the East. Instead, we had to fly north towards Brainerd, MN and fly in from there. This was going to add about 35 mins to our flight. Then, we couldn’t land right away, because so many flights had been diverted for the weather. We were told to circle for a while, but since we had already detoured, we didn’t have enough fuel to circle. So we went back up north and landed in Duluth, MN.
Lovely Duluth, MN at sunset
Now, I love Duluth. It’s very pretty, but I really, really wanted to get off the plane and go home at this point. The only positives were that the guy manning the fuel truck was cute, and there were a bunch of fighter jets taking off from the airport, which was cool to watch. Still, I was very happy when we were back in the air. We finally got back to the Cities, and after circling a little bit, finally landed at MSP. And only two hours late. Sigh… Yeah, it really sucked. But I finally made it home, unpacked, and eventually fell into bed.
All in all, the trip was amazing! I had so much fun!! And I got to (sort of) meet Hugh Jackman!! Yay!! Plus, I saw two fabulous shows, met a bunch of new people, became the Subway Master and saw a lot more of NYC than I thought I would. I wasn’t sure how I’d take to the city, since I’m more of a West Coast girl. And I hate people, and they’re everywhere in New York. But I really loved it! And I could SO see myself living there. Not that I’m moving there or anything. But I can’t wait to go back!!
And there you go! My whole trip in three parts. Hope you liked it!
We managed to roll out of bed a little bit earlier than the day before, as we had a lot of plans for the day. I spent the night having WAY weird dreams all night long. First, I dreamed that I was standing in my parent’s family room and looked out the window, only to see the Peppermint Creeps standing out there. They were in full costume and had ridden little motorcycles to the house. Traci told me that he had heard it was a good place to crash. I just shrugged and told them it was fine. I started making room for them when my mom came in and started yelling that there was no way they were staying in her house. I said that was fine, and took the boys over to my apartment instead. I was making room for them around my place, including sharing my bed. My mom came screaming into my apartment and said that there was no way I was sharing my bed with one of those guys. I looked at Eddie, Eddie looked at me. I just told her that there really wasn’t going to be a problem with it, but she wasn’t listening. (About…one…two…three…four of you are going to get that) I woke up after that, very confused.
I finally went back to sleep and had a dream about N’Sync’s Chris Kirpatrick. Ugh! I blame this all on
duckduck! Thankfully, I don’t remember much about the dream, other than I met him at a party and he was all hitting on me. I was trying to get away from him, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. After all this, we got up and went down for breakfast. They had raised the terror alert to Orange the day before and specifically mentioned the Stock Exchange. Perhaps you saw some of the zillions of news reports from there, showing the guys with the big guns securing the area. Jess got nervous about it, and decided she didn’t want to go down there like we had planned. She’s not into politics or following the news and she’s very conservative, so she didn’t really believe me when I mentioned that it was all a ploy to steal attention away from the DNC. So, we decided to go up to Central Park instead. I was completely fine with that.
A quick trip Uptown on the subway and we were at the park. I was happy to just wander around aimlessly, but Jess wanted to see the Central Park Zoo. That was fine too. Except that there were about a thousand kids running around. Everywhere. But I can deal with that. I was completely amused by the penguins! I just love those little suckers. We also saw various birds, bats, snakes and other things.
Feeding time for the penguins!
A pretty view of the skyline around the park
A red panda, which has nothing to do with a bear
We did the zoo fairly quickly and I bought a stuffed penguin and a zoo magnet (yes, magnet #5). We were going to wander around the zoo for a while, but Jess decided that she wasn’t going to be scared and wanted to go down to Wall Street and Ground Zero after all. So we hopped back on the subway to go Downtown. And that’s where we discovered my subway map was out of date, as we ended up in Brooklyn instead. grrrrrr… We hopped onto the right train and eventually ended up in the correct place.
After getting our bearings, we walked down to the World Trade Center site. Now, those of you that know me, know that I am very literal minded. Often, perhaps, too much. So, I wasn’t really affected by visiting the site. Jess was having a much harder time being there than I was. I was more bothered by the people taking photos of the site. I couldn’t understand why you’d want to keep mementos of something like that. I did take a few photos of the buildings around the site, though. The skyline was pretty, and I thought it was interesting to see the buildings still being repaired.
We decided to walk over to Federal Hall, as Jess wanted to look around the museum. We had gotten drinks along our walk, so we sat on the front steps while we finished them. This gave us a good view of the men with the guns in front of the New York Stock Exchange building. We also got to watch the endless lines of news people jockeying for the perfect shot.
Wall Street under an Orange alert
After we walked through Federal Hall for a while, we just decided to walk East until we hit water. We made it to the River and walked South along the water. We saw the Statue of Liberty, but didn’t care to take the ferry over to Ellis Island. We walked through Battery Park and got hot dogs. We decided to head back uptown, since we needed to get ready to meet Jess’ friend for dinner. We stopped at a little deli for Italian Ices first. And I watched a CBNC report from NYSE, saying “Hey! We were just there!”
We made it back to the hotel, got ready to go out again and met Jess’ friend, Stephenie. They grew up together in Rice Lake, WI, but she’s lived out East for quite a while. We went to a pasta place not far from our hotel for dinner. It was quite good! Jess & Stephenie hadn’t seen each other in years, so spent the meal catching up on things. I just kinda sat there, trying to contribute. Then Stephenie split the bill three ways, when I didn’t get any wine, seafood or expresso like they did. I just don’t take well to people like that.
We left the pasta place a headed back to the hotel since Rent would be starting soon. I have loved, loved, loved Rent for years. I’ve seen the touring company twice in Minneapolis, but I have always wanted to see it on Broadway. So when we decided to go to NYC, it was a no-brainer that I’d be getting us tickets to Rent. I was a little concerned about how Jess would react to it, since she’s a little homophobic and hadn’t reacted well to the gayness of Oz. But I talked to her about it beforehand and I knew the beautiful music would win her over.
When I bought the tickets, I knew that Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice from the Spice Girls, would be playing Mimi. I was a little concerned about that, especially since the reviews of her performance weren’t very good. But, I was thrilled when I found out a couple weeks before the show that Jai Rodriguez from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would be back in Rent as Angel, starting the night we were going to the show! YAY!! This totally made me happy as I had heard nothing but good things about his performance.
Leigh & Jess before Rent
There was a huge line all the way down the block from the theater once we got back there. I guess there was some delay before the crowd could be let in. But soon enough we were in the Nederlander Theater and seated in our lovely fourth row seats. I was seriously so excited I could barely breathe! I was totally in awe.
And the show was nearly perfect! Everything I had imagined! I cannot make it through Angel’s death scene and I was crying like a little baby. I’m sure Jess was amused by that. Jai was fabulous as Angel! Absolutely perfect! As was Jeremy Kushnier as Roger. He was definitely the best Roger I’ve ever seen. No wonder the Rentheads love him! The new Maureen, Kelly Karbacz, was great too. She put a lot of spunk into the role. Maureen’s part is my favorite of the whole show, so I was glad it was played so well. Melanie Brown, was…well, okay. Not horrible, not very good either. She couldn’t hit a lot of the high notes and some of the songs sounded weird because of it. But she was much better than I expected and she didn’t ruin the show or anything. Jess did love it, as I had predicted. I don’t know how you couldn’t! The music is SO beautiful!! I was so happy that we had decided to go!
I wasn’t missing out on meeting Jai, so I pushed my way through the departing crowd to get to the stage door. I managed to get right up to the barricade. Yay! Jess didn’t want to deal with the crowd and decided to go back to the hotel and sit at the bar. That meant I lost my camera bitch. Jai came out right away. He is SO adorable! He was super nice with all the fans, taking time out to actually talk to people as much as he could.
Jai Rodriguez
What was said in our little conversation:
L: “Hi, Jai. The show was fabulous!”
J: “Thanks” *takes my Playbill to sign*
L: “Thanks” *Jai glances up at me and my hard-to-miss-even-if-you’re-gay cleavage*
J: “I like your tattoos. They’re cool”
L: “Oh, thanks!” *Jai hands me back my Playbill* “Can I get a photo with you?”
J: “Sure!”
I pushed my camera at some poor soul standing next to me since Jess had left, and she was nice enough to take the photo.
Leigh & Jai – aren’t we cute??
This one’s for you,
rockerleeMelanie came out while Jai was still working his way around the crowd. The little Spice Girl fans were freaking out. It was quite amusing! She was also very nice with the fans, making sure that people actually got the photos when cameras were messing up and such. She felt bad that my friend had abandoned me when I again had to shove my camera at a stranger.
Leigh & Melanie Brown
So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want
They both went back inside, and I turned around to see that some of the other cast members were out by the front doors of the theater. I got Jeremy Kushnier, Matt Caplan (Mark), Kelly Karbacz and Merle Dandridge (Joanne) to all sign my Playbill. Yay! I felt bad that I was running out of cash, or else I would have bought Jeremy & Matt’s CDs. Thankfully, they’re for sale online at CD baby too. I begged one more poor person to take my picture with Jeremy before I headed over to the hotel bar to find Jess.
Jeremy Kushnier & Leigh – yep, he’s the sexay
What a happy surprise! Bar 41 actually had Raspberry Vox! Faboo!! I sat and had a drink with Jess while we talked about the show. It was so fabulous that I could have talked about it forever! But my drink was really strong, and I was exhausted from walking around in the heat all day, so we decided to call it a night. We went out and took photos of the theater and the hotel before going up to bed.
The marquee at the Nederlander Theater
Jess in front of Hotel 41, next door to the theater
Tuesday, Day 4 for the Midwest girls in the Big City
We got up early again, and Jess decided to walk up to Jude’s law firm to see if she wanted to have coffee. So, I gave her careful instructions on how to get there, and sent her on the way. I went down to have breakfast, then got dressed and started packing. I was going to miss our teeny, tiny hotel room! Jess returned and we got everything packed up and checked out.
We had about three hours before our shuttle was going to arrive, so we decided to just walk around. Jess still had a couple souvenirs that she wanted to get, so we hit a bunch of NYC stores. We also went to the massive Times Square Toys R’Us. It has a ferris wheel inside it! I could look at toys forever, but we moved on. We went into Midtown Comics, which I had been dying to do since we’d gotten there. So many comics! I finally had to leave so I didn’t start buying things. We then just randomly walked around. We went into Macy’s, but only to use the bathroom. The heat was getting to us, so we sat down at a pizza place for lunch. We walked around some more, and hit another comic store, before we finally decided to just go sit in the nice, cool hotel until our shuttle arrived. It was only going to be about an hour, and we both had books to read. Jude ended up calling, and she came down to chit chat with us until it was time for us to leave.
This shuttle ride was not nearly as scary as the one into town. Or maybe I had just adjusted to the traffic. I’m not sure. We made it to the airport in plenty of time. And here’s where the trip starts to go downhill. Our plane was late coming in from Detroit. So we started out a little late. Then the runway was backed up, so we sat in line for a really long time. There was only a buy on board meal offered, but we had brought snacks so it wasn’t so bad. Then, there were bad storms around Eau Claire, WI, so we couldn’t fly into the Cities from the East. Instead, we had to fly north towards Brainerd, MN and fly in from there. This was going to add about 35 mins to our flight. Then, we couldn’t land right away, because so many flights had been diverted for the weather. We were told to circle for a while, but since we had already detoured, we didn’t have enough fuel to circle. So we went back up north and landed in Duluth, MN.
Lovely Duluth, MN at sunset
Now, I love Duluth. It’s very pretty, but I really, really wanted to get off the plane and go home at this point. The only positives were that the guy manning the fuel truck was cute, and there were a bunch of fighter jets taking off from the airport, which was cool to watch. Still, I was very happy when we were back in the air. We finally got back to the Cities, and after circling a little bit, finally landed at MSP. And only two hours late. Sigh… Yeah, it really sucked. But I finally made it home, unpacked, and eventually fell into bed.
All in all, the trip was amazing! I had so much fun!! And I got to (sort of) meet Hugh Jackman!! Yay!! Plus, I saw two fabulous shows, met a bunch of new people, became the Subway Master and saw a lot more of NYC than I thought I would. I wasn’t sure how I’d take to the city, since I’m more of a West Coast girl. And I hate people, and they’re everywhere in New York. But I really loved it! And I could SO see myself living there. Not that I’m moving there or anything. But I can’t wait to go back!!
And there you go! My whole trip in three parts. Hope you liked it!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 09:47 pm (UTC)I need that butt pic poster-size! lmao
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Date: 2004-08-06 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-06 11:29 am (UTC)That PC dream is hilarious!
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Date: 2004-08-06 11:41 am (UTC)