Finding a Beautiful Bridge, Searching for Ghosts on Broadway, and Eating All the Pastrami

Today was another busy day! After work, I headed to Shubert Avenue to meet my guide for this evening’s free “Ghosts on Broadway” tour.

We walked across Times Square to the theater district, and my guide shared that Times Square no longer has a visitor center because they couldn’t afford the rent! That tells you how insane rents are in Midtown.

One of the neatest stops on the tour was the Belasco Theater, which is haunted by the ghost of its eponym, David Belasco (Yes, eponym, not namesake — that’s a distinction I’ve learned while editing at The Times this summer. An eponym is someone or something that gives its name to something else; a namesake receives it).

Belasco, who was a producer, director, and playwright, called himself a priest (even though he wasn’t) and slept with most of his leading ladies. He had a room called “The Confessional” where the women would have to remove a piece of clothing for every sin they confessed to him. ICK.

Now his ghost haunts the place, and occasionally women will complain that it feels like someone pinched them on the behind, but they turn around and no one is there. Good luck explaining that one as an HR person: “Oh, don’t worry, it was the ghost!”

Another fun stop was the Algonquin Hotel, home of the iconic Algonquin cat.

He was napping in the window when we walked by. According to our guide, he started out skinny, and has grown fat on all the tuna treats visitors feed him. The hotel cat tradition has been around since the 1920s (Billy was the first cat), and the hotel has had eight over the last 96 years. This one arrived in September 2017. I give you: Hamlet VIII (Cat napping. Please do not tap on the glass).

I caught a view of the Empire State Building as we headed back toward Times Square. My guide said it’ll be only the 20th-tallest building or so in the city in the next few years because of all the new buildings under construction.

We also passed the Steinway & Sons store, where Billy Joel sometimes tickles the ivories before a gig at Madison Square Garden.

Our final stop was the New Amsterdam Theatre, where "Aladdin" is currently playing. It’s haunted by the ghost of Olive Thomas, a former chorus girl in the “Ziegfield Follies.” The women would parade across a glass runway at midnight, with men seated underneath to admire their petticoats (classy). They’d be dressed in outfits of flesh-colored balloons, which the men would pop with their cigars.

Thomas, who couldn't read French, died while on holiday in Paris when she drank what she thought was a sleeping potion, but that was actually her husband’s syphilis medication. She burned her esophagus and died a slow, painful death (it took five days).

My overall take: This was another great tour of New York. I’m loving getting to learn about the city from so many different angles! My guide also shared that the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks near the Brooklyn Bridge are a can’t-miss occasion. They’re synchronized to music over a local radio station, and she said they’re the best fireworks in the world. We’ll see.

After my tour, I headed back to the East Village and Katz’s Deli. This was another splurge experience, along with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” that was on my bucket list for New York.

The magic word at Katz’s Deli is “juicy.” The place is always hopping, and you get a ticket when you walk in that you use to pay for your order after visiting the stations. Katz's is open 24 hours a day on Saturdays, and until 3 a.m. on Thursdays.

I opted for a half pastrami sandwich (“juicy,” of course) with mustard and matzo ball soup. A matzo ball is a Jewish soup dumpling made with matzah meal, eggs, water, and chicken fat and served in chicken soup. Think chicken soup with a chicken-flavored-scrambled-egg ball floating in it.

The fun part about Katz’s is that the meat guys slice the pastrami or corned beef fresh for you (it’s still steaming when it hits the plate). You also get a plate of complimentary meat cuts to enjoy while they prepare your order. And look at the size of those free pickles! The big green one tasted much more like a cucumber than a pickle — yum!

As for the sandwich itself, pastrami is ham’s twin meat. It looks like ham and tastes like ham, but is actually beef. Rich, flavorful, and scrumptious.

My half sandwich (I can’t imagine trying to eat a full — the sandwiches are exploding hot, juicy meat towers!) and soup were over $20. So, again, splurge experience. But I’ve wanted to visit forever, and I got to pretend like I was in “When Harry Met Sally!”

I finished off the evening with a walk down to the Manhattan Bridge, which is where I’ve decided I’ll be spending my last evening in New York.

There’s a gorgeous observation deck, and one of those swings had my name on it. After all, who needs stars when you can bridge-gaze?