Mr. and Mrs. Smith do NYC

Friday night, Mike, Jen, and I were treated to prime seats for the Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone. Evidently, Mike did a superior job at the conference, and he was rewarded with three tickets (orchestra level, five rows back, center…awesome). Bob Sagat was starring as “the man in the chair” which sounds odd but makes complete sense if you have seen the musical. Oh, yeah, go see this musical. It was really good and is in my top five. Anyway back to Bob….he was so perfect. I remember him from Full House and then America’s funniest home videos. The only thing that would have improved the performance is if Uncle Jessie (and the rest of the Full House cast) showed up on stage and then was hit in the crotch with a football.

Afterwards, we headed down to McSorely’s. Okay, okay, I tend to take all my visitors there, so I will stop only when it starts to suck. Yeah, it hit a homerun again! I talk about people getting thrown out for not drinking right. Well, the surly waiter kept telling us “I want to see some empty glasses (i.e. drink faster)”. He at one point grabbed a mug out of my hand and poured the remaining contents into another mug on the table. Okay okay, we get the point.

After an hour of non stop power drinking, Mike and Jen had to head to their hotel…in Jersey! My neighborhood is flooded with cabs; however, convincing one of them to head over to Jersey at 1am is another story. I guess they had all sorts of characters giving them different estimates which does not make sense since the hotel has not moved!

The next day, the Smiths consulted the hotel concierge, and ended up taking the ferry back over to Manhattan. They found amusement from a child seated behind them who asked his parents “can I lick the boat”. Okay if he has to ask, then you know he has done it before and has gotten in trouble for it. I can only imagine a day in the shoes of his parents…can I lick the dog, can I lick door, can I lick the bum…

So we put in the typical lower Manhattan tour because EVERYBODY wants to see the Statue of freaking Liberty. Mike and Jen commented that I seemed to know a lot about the area (you know, Wall St., Ground Zero, Battery Park, etc), and well I should…I’ve been down there a dozen times. One truly unique experience was when a high school choir (nothing like seeing ’09 on the letterman’s jackets to make you feel old) sang the National Anthem in the middle of St. Paul’s church. A lot of 9/11 memorials, notes, stories, pictures, etc are on display in the church, so the somber song just added an experience that is beyond words (believe me, I have been thinking about how to describe it for minutes now, and none of the other drafts do it justice).

We stopped into Katz’s deli on Houston. We figured Mike should be treated to the best (and biggest….the thing was at least two pounds of meat) pastrami sandwich since Jen and I were forcing him to accompany us while shopping in SoHo. Although, I think Mike secretly likes to shop. One time, Jen and I observed Mike on his own in a store. She whispered to me “oh, look…he is shopping…it is so weird to see him shop…like watching animals in the wild”. Ah ha ha ha.

That night, the Smiths went to another Broadway play, Avenue Q. Afterwards, we grabbed some beers at Mercury Bar in Hell’s Kitchen. They had to catch the 12:30am bus to Jersey or otherwise face the nightmare that is taking a cab across the river. We had just gotten our second round when I checked my watch…12:15! We left the untouched drinks on the table (soooo sad to leave a full good beer), and started to run down the street. The bus station was only three blocks away, but it is five stories tall with over 50 bus terminals! Of course the information booth was closed and they didn’t have any LCD information screens. We then split up and started running around the terminal. Jen and I tried to ask people if they knew which gate the 1578 (or whatever bus number it was) bus was at, but they were not much help (okay, I am sure we looked all crazy since we were panting and all frazzled and half shouted the questions at them). We eventually found a small display case with a single sheet in it that indicated all Jersey bus gates. I dashed up to gate 301 to hold the bus while Jen frantically call Mike. He finally showed up with three people left to board….time 12:29am. Whew, talk about leaving NYC with a story!