Eating a Carrot-Cinnamon Streusel Cone, Surviving the #Stormpocalypse, and Seeing 'Tootsie'

It was another early morning that started with me heading uptown to the Marquis Theatre, which is currently home to “Tootsie,” the musical Santino Fontana won a Tony for starring in this year. The Marquis is a unique Broadway house in that it’s located on the third floor of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The box office is still streetside on 46th Street, though, and the rush ticket line forms on the sidewalk outside the marquee.

“Tootsie” is also in the minority among Broadway productions in that it has a Monday show (which also, conveniently, is the day I happen to have off this week). I arrived around 9 a.m. and got a sixth-row rush seat for tonight. Hooray!

Next up was a trip to a couple of Upper East Side museums. First up: The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, which is the only museum in the country devoted entirely to historic and contemporary design.

However, it was a bit of a dud for me — I didn’t find the collection of furniture, baskets, garments, and vases super interesting, though there were some intriguing rooms like the prosthetics collection. You can see the whole thing in about an hour.

I liked my next stop much better: The Museum of the City of New York (which, like the Cooper Hewitt, I get into for free with my NYU ID). The museum isn’t overly large (there are three floors), but it’s packed with fascinating historical information about how New York City became the bustling metropolis it is today. I spent 45 minutes just scrolling through the slideshow profiles of influential figures in New York history in one of the rooms.

I wish I’d visited this museum when I first arrived in the city, as doing so would’ve made me more cognizant of the history I’ve heard parts of at other events/museums, as well as acquainted me with famous figures whom streets are named after and who are memorialized as statues around the city. I’d highly recommend a visit — I’ll be back for round two soon, as I only saw the permanent New York exhibits today. There are also a bunch of intriguing temporary ones about Jackie Robinson, the Blue Man Group, and the Stonewall riots.

The museum also has an eclectic range of New York City-related artifacts on display. Some of my favorites: A baseball signed by Jackie Robinson and his teammates, a guide to Spanish-speaking immigrants to the city entitled ‘Nueva York y Usted,’ and a 1970s fire call box from the Bronx.

Fun backstory about that call box: During the late 1960s and '70s, so many false alarms were called in from this box on Charlotte Street in the South Bronx that firefighters, overwhelmed by the frequency of real fires, tied the box shut and covered it with dog poop to deter the false calls. Wouldn’t want that job!

Next, before ‘Tootsie,’ I headed downtown to Brooklyn to grab a sweet treat from Mister Dips, an Airstream trailer parked at the back of the elevated Vale Park greenspace at the William Vale Hotel (it isn’t exactly easy to find — signage is pretty poor, which is unfortunate considering how cool the confections are!).

Now this is a dipped cone! I ordered the “Carrot Top:” Carrot cake-coconut-cream cheese swirl with cinnamon streusel.

It’s like granola meets pancake cream cheese frosting meets orange Kit-Kat bar. YUM. (And thank goodness for the heavy-duty drip catcher — don’t want to lose any of the creamy goodness to the ground!)

If I were here longer, I’d come back and try the “After Eight,” which is thin-mint custard, a grasshopper cookie, and fudge drizzle (photo courtesy of a presumably very happy Yelper).

Post-ice cream, I cut it very tight (as in, two minutes before the show started) making it back to Manhattan for “Tootsie” because the skies opened up and it started dumping rain — like, raining so hard you can’t walk through it dumping. I had an umbrella, but that wasn’t going to do me any good. I waited inside for 20 minutes with no relent in the downpour, so finally I just had to run through it to the L station, umbrella not really doing much to shield me (also, the streets — and subway stations — in NYC flood like crazy. If you’re curious, check out all the Twitter footage of gushing ceiling waterfalls and sudden staircase-step fountains. And I thought Indy’s streets were bad in the rain!).

I arrived at the Marquis dripping and cold, but I made it!

“Tootsie” is a comedy musical about a perfectionist New York actor who disguises himself as a woman to land a role after his agent can’t find work for him as a man. Then, of course, he (she?) falls for his female castmate, and things get complicated. In my opinion, “Tootsie” is funnier than “The Prom,” the other comedy musical on Broadway at the moment — Santino Fontana is a riot in heels and a wig!

Oddly enough, the name that immediately sprang to mind of an actor I’d also love to see play the role was Daniel Radcliffe. Maybe it’s because of this scene in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1."

In short, "Tootsie" is the party musical on Broadway at the moment — that is, the one to see if you want to have a good time.

There were also many unexpected notes of female empowerment and wage-gap interrogation due to the fact that the musical revolves around a man posing as a woman. One character's reaction to Michael (the man-as-woman) announcing his plan to become ‘Dorothy Michael'? “You know you’ll have to take a pay cut.” Yes, it's a comedy, but there's also commentary.

I can’t believe I only have three weeks left at The New York Times — it feels like I just arrived in NYC! Still to come: Shadowing and editing for Ben Brantley on Wednesday, the Statue of Liberty, more of the Met, Central Park adventuring. a Red Sox-Yankees game next-next weekend, and more! Stay tuned ...