Broadway, Dance and Food

I think the title pretty much covered the evening activities during the week.  Our days were packed solid with meetings, and there were a couple of business meetings over dinner, but I made an effort to fill the rest of the evenings with seeing live performance. Our offices here are very well located for access to Broadway and City Center.

One of my evening meals included drinks and dinner at Rue 57 at the bar.  The bolognese sauce was delish and I should have take some back to the hotel, because I wasn't very hungry during east coast dinner time, but got hungry later, during west coast dinner time.

A second evening meal was at Mike's Bistro, a kosher restaurant on the Upper West Side for a group dinner that included Warner Bros., our design firms, ADI from NY and BDA from Los Angeles, our contractors, and MEP engineers.  The food was excellent, great service, fun company.  After dinner, a few of us stopped at a nearby Irish pub, P.D. O'Hurley, for a drink.  Pretty authentic too, the bartenders all had real Irish accents.  The food being brought out to fellow patrons smelled really good!

On the third evening, Holly and I went to see Billy Elliott on Broadway.  We got tickets at the box office in the front row of the mezzanine.  We had a little time to kill before the show (but not enough for dinner) so we headed to Times Square.  A couple of years ago, the city blocked off a chunk of street for pedestrians and people were hanging out all staring at the side of a building and waving.  Turns out one of the stores had a camera mounted pointing to the crowd, and people were waving at themselves, which seems like a pretty universal human response to seeing yourself projected on a large screen.  The show itself was great, the Billy I saw (Joseph Harrington) was exceptionally talented (I suspect all of the rotating Billy's are).  Apparently there is a special 'camp' for the various Billy candidates because they need to know ballet, tap, singing and acting, plus be able to speak in a Geordie (or northern English) accent.  After the show, the audience is let out at the back near the stage doors and there were several pre-teen girls waiting for Billy to come out, which he did and signed autographs and had pictures taken with girls and parents alike!  After the show, Holly's brother met up with us (he was at a dinner nearby) and we found a Greek restaurantm, Uncle Nick's, that Holly had been to before and enjoyed.  They were clearly getting ready to closed but there were some 15 to 20 staffers milling about.  They agreed to serve us so we ordered moussaka, pastitsio, flaming cheese and a tray of dips.  The food was excellent, we scarfed it down and Holly's brother had leftovers to take home.

By Thursday, I was exhausted, and I suspect our design team was as well.  We wrapped a little earlier, and I spent some time sitting under the Columbus statue at Columbus Circle.  We watched high school kids milling about.  We had a drinks meeting with our contractor and one of our subtenant contacts at Whiskey Park.  After a little bit of chit chat, I headed back to my hotel.  The day before Holly's brother told us the Thai restaurant, Topaz Thai, near the hotel was quite good, so I got in line and had myself a delicious plate of pad thai with seafood, plus creamy thai iced tea.  The restaurant was tiny and packed, with a line out the door.  The service was fast and pleasant and I paid and was out of there in plenty of time to walk down to the next block to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at City Center. I've seen the touring company in LA, but I loved this performance even more.  I thought the dancers were superb and I love his choreography.  And odd thing happened just as the house lights dimmed though.  I was in the rear mezzanine, and there was a major stampede of people up in the rafters heading for empty seats in the front of the mezzanine.  They made a major racket and it was really unpleasant.