More Cheap Theater

As I mentioned in my last post, I FINALLY got to see Spring Awakening - a musical that takes place in 1890's Germany about repressed adolescents figuring out life, sex, themselves (the original play was banned so you know it's scandalous) on Tuesday night. I found the story a bit predictable and depressing, but the music was excellent and the passion within each of the actors was surely intense - that made for a good show.

Here's the great part (and probably why I enjoyed the show so much), for $40 you can sit on-stage. I don't mean off to the side somewhere where you can barely see the show, but I mean on the stage, with the actors - you can hear their voices from their mouths as opposed to just a mix out of the speakers. This is sometimes a drawback because you miss some words when the music gets really loud, but on the whole, it was an amazing experience that I'd highly recommend. Plus, you pay so much less than all those clamoring for front row seats.

You can buy these tickets online by choosing "on-stage seating" or by going to the box office day of. But hurry! The show closes January 18th!







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Too Broke for Theater? No such thing!

Although I discovered the Roundabout Theatre's HipTix mailing list a few months ago, I only recently realize how amazing it is and I feel it's time to share.

The Roundabout Theatre Company is actually based down the street from my office on 46th Street. Over the years they have produced shows like Cabaret and an original reading of Spring Awakening (which I am going to see finally tonight!), and now they are promoting Pal Joey with Stockard Channing and have some more coming out with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the Spring. Most of their tickets sell for regular prices ($74 and up), HOWEVER (this is a BIG "however" - notice the caps), if you are between the ages of 18-35, you can get tickets to ANY of their shows for only $20! Only $20! That's awesome! Also, they will have periodic promotions to get $10 tickets, sometimes with free after parties.

I went to see the play currently showing in their Black Box Theater on Sunday night called The Language of Trees about a family where the father is captured in Iraq in 2003 as a translator for the war. I thought it was good. The staging was excellent...almost a diagonal stage. There were a lot of underlying themes about different generational bridges in communication which I found fascinating. My dad was in town so I bought him (well, he ended up buying me...) a $10 ticket. Too good to be true right? Well, sort of. It turns out that not only do you have to be under 35 to buy the tickets, but also under 35 to USE the tickets. They let my dad and me pass this time, but they said it can't happen again. Oh well, at least I can still go :)

I'm going to see Streamers with some colleagues for only $15 in a few weeks. I'm telling you, if you like theater and have no money (or have money but are cheap and under 35) you should sign up for this mailing list.

http://www.hiptix.com/







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No Time Wasted is More Time Celebrated

If there's one thing I love to hate about New York is that New Yorkers do not waste any time. It's practically a mantra around here. 

Emerging from the Subway station near my apartment on the way home from my Thanksgiving meal tonight - the sidewalks were quiet and crisp and you could hear faint grumbles of the tryptophan working its way through stuffed Manhattanites - I found my usually empty sidewalk decorated with holiday lights, garland and rows and rows of Christmas trees.

Welps boys, turkey's barely digested, dishes aren't done yet, hey, some people still have Jack-o-Lanterns out, but we are going to start selling the pine and Douglas fir! Maybe if we start early enough and overcharge a bit, we might actually break even this year!

Even though these Christmas tree sellers are part of the majority I despise for making time run faster year after year, and even through they have set up shop on a public sidewalk, you have to applaud them for their efforts. And I guess I won't mind the fresh pine smell wafting through the grimy Subway station morning after morning and evening after evening - that is, until the evening of December 25 comes and we can go out and buy our Valentine's chocolates.

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Play Nice with Tourists, It's Better for Your Bank Account

It’s that time of year again – holiday season. The city overflows with tourists meandering through the wind-tunnels of streets, eyes focused everywhere but the sidewalk. Subways fill with map-laden passengers who don’t know how to properly squeeze and make room for others during the Monday morning rush.

Fortunately for me, I always escaped the Thanksgiving rush in Boston, leaving for the suburbs just before everyone would arrive to the largest city closest to the Pilgrim’s landing point. Thus, now living in NYC, this is my first experience with a tourist holiday in a tourist city.

With the state of the economy, I wishfully expected a slight lull in holiday traveling. But, oh no, people will never stop coming to worship the neon of Times Square and the golden Atlas of Rockefeller Plaza. I spoke with a man named Nain (pronounced nay-en), who owns and manages the café downstairs from where I work. He told me that if anything, the number of tourists has increased. The sad difference for him though – they are not spending as much money.

Well, traveling on a budget has always been big. You can’t take the curiosity out of adventurous travelers, but you can take the money out of their wallets. So we have the current dilemma of all these tourists running wild down the streets and subways of Manhattan, but less of an economic benefit. At least when they were spending hoards of money on black and white cookies and Ray’s pizza, the locals would put up with the annoyance because of the massive inflows of money. Alas, now we must cope with these outsiders even though they are no longer funding our summer concert series or our mailmen.

But hey, it’s the holidays. Sometimes I think I’m too hard on tourists, knowing that I used to be one not that long ago. Also, I realize that they don’t even have to travel, but at least they are doing what they can. Some support is better than none especially for New York City – I’m sure those that lived here through 2001-2002 really know that.

So I’d like to put forth the thought that we should all be nice to tourists this holiday season, because everyone is suffering through the economic downturn, as we have come to call it, and the tourists, big cameras and all, are doing their best to help us out. Embrace those that walk through don’t-walk signs, love those that order enormously large corned beef sandwiches from overpriced delis, and thank those that may accidentally on-purpose steal your cab.

Happy almost Thanksgiving!








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Plugging in to Advertising

New York City is like the Mecca of advertising. I cannot think of a single place in the world where you would be surrounded by more billboards, neon signs, placards, postcards, banners, commercials, signs, posters, brochures – I could go on.

Walking through Times Square, I am often in awe of the millions and billions of dollars in advertising expenditures surround me with every step. I don’t know who brokers that space, but they must be making a pretty penny. After all, what would Times Square be with out all the ads? But even with all the lights and the glitz, I can’t help but wonder: does there come a point when your surroundings are so saturated with advertising that none of them end up having their proper effect?

I’ve always said that advertising doesn’t affect me like it does most people. I will definitely admit that I love the gecko commercials for Geico and I’m quick to point out the recent upsurge of Vitamin Water product placement in “Gossip Girl,” but I’m not about to call up for some car insurance or buy a leader of Dragonfruit (although that is my favorite flavor).

However, despite my ability to distinguish advertising from entertainment, I was extremely intrigued by a subway ad today. You’ve seen them – posters lining the walls of every single meticulously tiled subway stop; some for Broadway shows, some for Spanish speaking lawyers and many for [name your favorite TV show]. But today I saw a new take on the traditional subway ad.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Christina Aguilera’s large spider-mascara-ed eyes flirting with me to buy her new album. (I didn’t even know she was making another comeback, although I did fancy her last one). But poster after same poster of Ms. Aguilera’s peepers, I see a man with his headphones plugged into her. Wha..wha..what? How could this be? Headphones into the wall?

Remember when we used to buy CD’s and before you knew what was on the CD – because you only knew the two singles on the radio and had no clue what downloading music off the Internet was – you would use the headphones on the wall in Virgin Records or Best Buy or those other places you used to buy CD’s? Well, this ad worked just like that except instead of targeting people browsing a music store looking for CD’s, it targeted anyone with extra time – namely subway riders, almost all of whom already have headphones in their ears.

I think this is ingenious! What a way to make an ad so interactive and have a captive audience at the same time! I’m not advocating that the new album is any good or that everyone should love Christina Aguilera, but if I were a recording artist, I would want her marketing manager on my case.

Leave it to NYC to create the latest and greatest advertising trends, but this is a keeper. I expect to see more of these ads around town, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find me plugged into one.







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Lost and Rarely Found

Allow me to begin where I often do. Below the blacktop of Lexington Avenue, on the level of the rats and drip water, I took the subway to work this morning. Deeply absorbed in my light-hearted fiction novel (I’d highly recommend “The New Yorkers” to anyone who wants an escape and loves dogs), I was pressed between a pole and a hard backpack for several stops mindlessly enjoying my story when I hear something drop.

I’ve begun to be paranoid about losing possessions on the Subway these days. With so many people and so many trains, I always imagined it would be impossible to find lost items. So when I heard something drop and no one around me bent down to pick it up, I looked down and picked up a pair of sunglasses. Holding them up, I looked around to a sea full of blank I-would-never-be-so-irresponsible-as-to-lose-sunglasses-on-the-subway faces. No one claimed. “Maybe she already left,” a younger woman in a red tweed coat suggested, as if we were at a party and the lady had gone home early.

Now what was I supposed to do? I picked them up hoping to be the Good Samaritan who saved someone else from having to the bend-over surf in the subway – not an easy task. But now I was responsible for the sunglasses. “Is there a subway lost and found?” I asked with a half smile to indicate that I probably already knew the answer and, at the same time, that I cared about getting the glasses back to their proper owner.

So I did some research. A subway lost and found actually DOES exist in New York. The New York City Transit’s Lost and Found unit collects about 8,000 items each year, either by riders turning things in or by employees cleaning out trains. Initially when I saw this I was tempted to call the phone number and see what I could do. However, then I read on this NY Times blog that only about 18% of these items are actually claimed by their owners. Whether this is because the owners do not know there is a Lost and Found, or whether the owners even know they lost anything to begin with, I’m not sure. In the end, I decided there was nothing I could really do except maybe keep a pair of made in China black sunglasses with a gold stripe down the sides.

Now thinking about all the germs on the train floors, I should pry wash before wearing.

If you do ever lose something of real value on the Subway and think it might have been turned in, the New York City Transit's Lost and Found unit is open M, T, F, 8 AM – 4:00 PM and W, Th, 11 AM – 7:00 PM. The phone number is 212-712-4500.







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Fake Foyers

Being from California, I’m still not “used” to this weather. My Mediterranean-climate trained blood will probably never be.

Maybe it’s because of this fact that I am fascinated and captivated by all these winter-doors popping up all over the city. Restaurants, hotels, even Starbucks have their own canvas igloos, welcoming in the weary to inviting hospitality. If you’ve walked around the city you’ve seen them. Plastic windows line the flimsy magnetic latching doors. Some even have glowing heaters to truly ease the transition from outside to inside, although they usually end up creating a higher temperature in the “halfway space” than what is inside.

I can’t recall these winter-doors in Boston – maybe they were just built in. Ever heard of a foyer? (Even after working in a real estate office for two years, I’m still not sure how to correctly pronounce that…foy-err or is it foy-ay. Linguists?) Where are all the foyers in Manhattan? Better yet, where do all the fake foyers, halfway spaces, really hot rooms, whatever you call them go in the summer? Why are they suddenly erected all at once?

I suppose these venues could merely be trying to save space with the price of a square foot in Manhattan these days. If an establishment set aside certain space inside for patrons to remove their coats and close their wet umbrellas, what good would that space be in the summer?

Being from California, I guess I still have a lot to learn about New York. Have a great weekend!






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