Step 43:NYC continued

New York Continued

Wednesday afternoon I arrived fresh from Philadelphia off the BOLT bus at Penn Station. I had been texting with Lisa to find out about getting back into her apartment and plans for the night. The exciting thing was that tonight was gonna be a total ACE reunion and one of the other members had already arrived so Lisa suggested I get in touch with Sabrina --cause she had the keys. Sabrina!!! Lisa and Sabrina (along with Leah down in Florida) were two of the other members of the club (ACE) I was a part of in college and had been the people who really made Rollins tolerable for me my first two years of college. The last member of our reunion night and another member of ACE was Kyle…who would be arriving later that night!

It was so weird that I hadn’t any of them for 5 years or more.  When you haven’t seen people in that long it has you wondering if too much time has passed and if there will be anything to connect on; but as proved during my time with Leah in Florida, Marc in Florida, and even at dinner with Lisa the first night I was in New York…it seemed that wasn’t the case.  In fact these people, despite not having seen them in years, had remained in touch with me through other avenues and seemed more interested in my life than my friends from Aspen.

I connected with Sabrina and we caught up on all sorts of life --chatting away non-stop until Lisa arrived home. When she did, the three of us walked to their local Whole Foods and stocked up on food for dinner. Walking NYC with them felt empowering. They are both such fashionable, intelligent, and hot babes! It was seriously the best Whole Foods I’ve ever been to! Two stories, and the most insane salad bar you’ve ever seen!!

We ate and hung out with Lisa’s other roommates, including Kyle’s boyfriend (Geo) waiting for Kyle to arrive off his flight from LA. It was awesome catching up and when Kyle got there we all had massive hugs and screams --continued chatting for a while and then everyone crashed.

Thursday: EPICLY LONG DAY!

On a seriously limited amount of sleep over the past 4 nights I woke up having some major problems in my mouth and was determined to see a doctor but after about an hour wasted to discover my options I decided instead to seek out the all curing wheatgrass shot. Once that was accomplished I headed out on a run along Riverside Park where there was a nice running path. Despite being a major city, NYC really does have a lot of green space.

Lisa was working, Sabrina had errands, Kyle and Geo were packing (they were moving to LA soon). So for lunch I headed downtown to do some window shopping, hit China town, and my friend Doug (from New Orleans) brother’s art gallery. At around 4pm I started heading to Rockefeller Center where I was meeting Ali Crum, a friend I grew up with from Aspen for a quick hello before she headed to the airport for a presentation in Brazil. After we found each other we found a little deli to put her bags down, have a bite to eat, drink, and catch up some. Then I walked her to Penn Station and she set off on her way to the airport.

Street performers in Central park

After that I went back to Lisa’s to get showered and changed. The day had already been long, but there was so much more to come. Tonight I was headed to the theatre.  I was meeting another Rollins friend in Times Square at 6pm to see HAIR, the musical.  There I was, dressed up as much as a girl like me gets dressed up on a Thursday night, in Times Square and the city was everything you see in the movies. Lights, noise, people, a real buzz. Soon enough there was Lauren looking far more fabulous than me and we did a series of jumps and screams at finally seeing each other after 5 years.

Lauren was one of the first girls I met when I went to college. She lived in the room right across the hall from me and to be frank she intimidated me when I first met her. She’s from New York, she has big opinions, and she could talk anyone under the table. But soon enough I found Lauren to have one of the biggest hearts and we became fast friends despite our enormous differences. She of course joined a sorority and was popular with the most popular people, but we always remained friends and she always treated me with respect.

Lauren & I in Times Square before going into the show

Now there we were in Times Square. We had some time before the show so we decided to look around. We went into the “W” hotel and took some pictures, had a hot cocoa, and then we were off to the theatre. Once inside the beautiful theatre my heart started to race; I guess I am a bit of a theatre geek after so many years participating in and loving it so I was thrilled to be there.  Before the show started it was announced that everyone was welcome to move down lower since it wasn’t a sold out show and we ended up with amazing seats despite paying for the cheapest seats in the house!

You can't take pics in the theatre sadly...this is all I've got!

http://hairontour.com/

The show as bizarre yet fabulous. The music was amazing and acting superb. Despite the hallucinated plot line the fact that the actors regularly were out in the audience interacting with the people -even giving us all flowers- made me forget trying to follow the story and instead I was on my feet dancing away. At the end of the show they invite the audience onto the stage for an all out dance party and we had a blast. I literally danced on the stages of Broadway!!

After the show Lauren and I were pumped and so decided we had to keep the night going. We headed downtown to a Jazz club called ‘Fat Cat.’ Here’s the cool thing about ‘Fat Cat’ their open til 5am, they have live Jazz, and the majority of the room is dominated by games. All sorts of games. Pool, Shuffle Board, Ping Pong, even tables at which people are playing, and you can join in on, board games like Pictionary, Scrabble, Monopoly and exedra. It was packed!!  It took us a while on the waiting list to secure a ping pong table, but once we did we kicked ass.

 http://fatcatmusic.org/

Lauren rocking the shuffel board

We were placed between these two tables of Asians who were essentially professional at ping pong so when we strolled up I don’t think they were expecting much, but we proved them wrong. It was a fun night of all sorts of games and music. And around 3:30am we went back to Lisa’s place to get my stuff and head to Lauren’s mom’s place up in Riverdale. We arrived there at around 4:15 am and my exhaustion hit me hard. I didn’t wake up the next day until noon.

It was Friday…or rather in Riverdale it was the day before the Sabbath. Lauren’s family is Italian Catholic, but the majority of Riverdale seems to be quite Orthodox Jewish. After spending some time with Lauren and her Mom at hom we headed out to treat ourselves kindly. And when we arrived that afternoon at the nail salon it was packed with women determined to get their nails done before the Sabbath. It was quite an entertaining afternoon locked up in that salon with all those women listening in on all their little life antidotes.

On Lauren's deck in my new HAIR tee shirt

After that we found a place to have dinner, it was an Indian restaurant and we had the funniest waiter you can imagine—so Indian. He was so involved in our life and meal by the time we were ready to go that he insisted on hugs all around. After so many days on the go-go-go, it was nice to have finally had one to just relax and we went to bed early after making plans for what would be an epic Saturday.