Saying Goodbye to the City (Bye, Bao! Bye, New York Times! Bye, Broadway!), Then Seeing my 30th Show

I’m choosing to think of this entry as my “Last Day in NYC — For Now” post rather than as a final farewell. There are still so many adventures I want to have here — 10 weeks simply wasn’t long enough!

My last day in the city took me all over Manhattan. I started the day without a ticket to my 30th show this summer (because ending at 29 would just be anticlimactic), and spent much of the day trying to get one.

My first target was the free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Coriolanus.” I entered the digital lottery the night before, then started my day by showing up to the in-person drawing at The Public Theater (which is a five-minute walk from my apartment in the East Village). However, I struck out on both counts. My name wasn’t drawn from the lottery spinner, and I got an email a few minutes later letting me know I also lost the digital lottery. Grrrrr.

Undeterred, I headed uptown to the Circle in the Square Theatre on 50th Street, where this year’s Tony winner for Best Revival of a Musical, “Oklahoma!”, is currently playing. The box office sells standing-room tickets, but only when the show is sold out — which, unfortunately, Friday’s performance wasn’t. The box office representative told me to check back around 7:30 p.m., though, to see if they’d gotten there.

And, of course (backtracking for a minute), I had a subway adventure on the way. The closest station to the Public Theater is Astor Place, a.k.a. the station that always plays mind games with me and makes me swipe on the wrong side of the street (that is, swiping on the uptown side when I want to go downtown, or vice versa).

Here’s the issue: The uptown and downtown entrances are on the correct sides of the street for the direction you want to travel — the uptown platform is on the right side of the street; the downtown platform on the left. BUT (and this is a big but), the staircases to enter the platforms face the wrong direction on both sides of the street. So the uptown staircase is on the right side of the street, but faces downtown. So you walk south down the staircase when you want to go north. This means I almost always get faked out and try to go uptown from the downtown platform, with its stupid north-facing staircase. This also means I have to ask the subway station employee to unlock the gate for me, since if you have an unlimited MetroCard, you have to wait 18 minutes between swipes. Not an embarrassing thing to have to do at all on my last day in NYC (then again, it happens pretty frequently at this station) ...

Currently out of options to score a seat to a show without shelling out $100 for a ticket, which I was unwilling to do, even on my last day in NYC, I headed back to my apartment to clean, pack, box up my Playbills and other NYC memorabilia to ship home in a USPS box, and otherwise get my life in order, since I optimistically assumed I’d be back late after a show, and thus wouldn’t have time to pack in the morning before checking out and then taking a taxi to LaGuardia Airport to catch my flight back to Indy.

After cramming, shoving, wedging, and stacking my life into a couple of suitcases, I took my Playbill box to the nearest post office, about 12 blocks uptown. I sent all the memories of my NYC adventures down the chute, and am hoping they arrive intact in Brownsburg today. :)

While I was in the area, I got one last pork belly Chairman Bao from Baohaus on 14th Street. I’ve discovered a love of pork belly this summer, whether inside a bao or in Ivan Ramen’s Triple Garlic Mazemen. Crispy bacon just can’t compare to this softness.

After dispatching my package (and one pork belly bao later), I headed up to 86th Street on the 5 line for a final visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One downpour later, I arrived at the Met, with two targets in mind: the “Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography” and “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibits. The museum will still be there when I make my return visit to the city on a date TBD, but these two temporary exhibits won’t.

The “Apollo’s Muse” exhibit was interesting, especially the first daguerreotypes of the moon. But where I spent the majority of my time was at the larger, and fabulously flamboyant, “Camp: Notes on Fashion” showcase.

First of all, to fully appreciate the photos that follow, please imagine that every wall in the room you’re currently sitting in is painted light pink, and that “Over the Rainbow” is blasting.

All set? Good. Strap in.

The main draws are the elaborate and eccentric dresses, suits, and hats by noted designers. But one thing I didn’t expect to find (but that I should’ve seen coming — this is a camp showcase, after all) was the trove of Oscar Wilde artifacts.

Case in point: An annotated “The Picture of Dorian Gray” manuscript! With Wilde’s handwritten edits! I saw a similarly intimate edited manuscript of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” (my all-time favorite novel) at the British Library in 2016, and was exhilarated. While this couldn’t quite compare to seeing my favorite author’s handwriting in person for the first time, watching Wilde’s brain work on the page was still a pretty neat experience.

One thing the exhibit does repeatedly in each gallery is try to define what “camp” is. One definition: “Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers.”

I also said hello to Andy Warhol (the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis currently has one of these dresses on display).

Then it was on to the main showcase room, which has a two-story design similar to the diorama displays at the American Museum of Natural History, except, in this case, filled with costumes.

Another characterization of camp: “Camp demonstrates an exhilaration in identifying with the lowest of the low.”

I saw someone wearing a pair of these Croc platforms outside an East Village bar the other night! They were yellow, though, not pink.

Post-camp immersion, I checked out some gorgeous Islamic decorative art next door on the floor.

Then it was on to round two of my trying-to-get-a-ticket quest: A return trip to “Oklahoma!” to see if tonight’s show had sold out, which meant the box office would now have standing-room tickets available. I arrived, and … alas, nope.

Considering it was now 7:30ish, and most shows start at 8 p.m. on Friday nights, please appreciate the subway acumen and luck that then unfolded. I ran over to 50th Street Station to catch the C train to the 81st Street Museum of Natural History station; the closest one to the Delacorte Theater in the middle of Central Park, where “Coriolanus” is currently playing (and which I still did not have a ticket to). By some miracle, the subway was actually running on time for once, which was good because that trip takes at minimum 15 minutes on a good day (because, with the C line, you have to make all the local stops and UGH).

I ran out of the 81st Street station at around 7:50 and across Central Park to the Delacorte Theater, where I joined the standby/cancellation line for Shakespeare in the Park. I got there a couple of minutes before 8, but, like most Broadway shows, Shakespeare in the Park shows don’t start until around 8:10 (again, I’m struck by the difference between NYC and London, where shows start exactly on the dot, intermission is exactly the stated length, etc.)

Anyway, probably thanks to the fact that it had dumped rain not all that long before, they had a substantial number of standby tickets available, which usually isn’t the case (people have been known to camp out at 6 a.m. for tickets, packing picnics and games while they spend the day waiting). And, with that, I was in for my 30th show this summer!

I saw “Coriolanus” last August when the Indianapolis Shakespeare Company performed it as their summer “Shakespeare in the Park” production. I missed the first five minutes of the show while waiting in the standby line for last-minute tickets to be released, but this was fine because a) I was familiar with the production, b) It’s like three hours long; five minutes wasn’t going to kill me, and c) Did I mention the ticket was free?

Of the two Shakespeare in the Park productions I saw this summer, I preferred “Much Ado About Nothing,” which I saw in June. But Jonathan Cake’s take on Coriolanus was definitely entertaining, His Coriolanus is addicted to war, and most satisfied when he looks like he just took a blood bath. But, at heart, he’s really a mama's boy.

Coriolanus’s mother, Volumnia (Kate Burton), is the one pulling the strings as Coriolanus returns home to Rome and attempts to (reluctantly) court favor with the people, even though he despises them (“whose breath I hate as the reek o’ th’ rotten fens,” he says). Their relationship has distinct echoes of the relationship between Macbeth and his wife in “Macbeth,” except in this case between Coriolanus and his puppetmaster of a mom.

Unsurprisingly, the populace revolts and banishes their self-absorbed failure of a ruler, who then joins the enemy Volscians to attack Rome. After various twists and turns and a mama-fueled change of heart, Coriolanus meets a tragic end, and the lights go out over a fiery, flame-riddled set. Shakespeare will always be a great way to end my last night in New York.

After the show, it was on to The New York Times to bid a final farewell to the office and return my laptop. The night tech guy was unexpectedly suitably sad for me.

Him: “Aww, is this your last day here? That’s sad.”

Me: “I know, right?”

This also seems like a good time to share the final story I edited for The Times, an investigative piece about a Silicon Valley start-up whom major cities are relying on to help save lives in emergencies, but whose promise and competency some people fear has been dangerously exaggerated.

After bidding farewell to 620 Eighth Avenue (for now, at least!), it was time to say goodbye to possibly my favorite spot in NYC: Pier 35 on the East River waterfront on the Lower East Side.

Riverside swings with this view are the GOAT, in my opinion. Add a breeze (which I got), and you’re golden. And, wrong city, but looking out at the twinkling Manhattan Bridge always makes me think of the Lily & Madeleine song “Chicago” (“city lights,” “speeding cars,” “swing with the pines,” “the moon inside your eyes,” “my head and my heart collided”).

Many meditative minutes later, I headed back to my apartment for my final night of sirens and cab horns below my street-facing window (it was Friday night in the East Village, after all). It’s so strange to be back in Brownsburg and have ...quiet streets outside my window? Wait, what? How am I even supposed to sleep without the strident curbside lullaby?

Also of note from Friday night: My for-real NYC food finale. You knew this was coming when I told you the first time around that this ramen was so good it made my eyes explode: The triple garlic pork mazemen from Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop inside Gotham Market in Midtown. This time around, I went all-out and added slabs of melt-in-your-mouth tender pork belly (an A+ move, it turns out) and extra noodles (because they’re just too good to get a single order of). Aside from the rainbow bagel, this is my favorite dish I’ve found in NYC.

*Jumps ahead one day*

Saturday morning, I checked out of my apartment and hailed my first taxi (which went better than I thought it would) to LaGuardia Airport and my flight back to Indianapolis.

This was my view of New York as I sped away from my dream summer and back to my final year of grad school in Indy, and it was better than anything I saw from an observation deck. I made myself a similar promise to the one I made when I left London three years ago: Some day, some way, I’ll be back, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Also, Jesse Green, the critic who had to cancel our “Sea Wall” outing, has promised me a show when I’m back (his words, not mine!). So, I may not have gotten to meet him this summer, but am more than willing to take a really long rain check. Just another reason I need to return!

Back in Indianapolis, when I walked through the airport to baggage claim, it was the oddest thing: It felt like the past three months were a weird, strange dream, and that I just woke up in Indianapolis at exactly the moment I left, with everything as it was before. Did I really spend the summer editing at the country’s most prestigious newspaper? Did I really have these adventures? Were the people I met real? It was hard to wrap my mind around when everything in Indy seemed so familiar.

Finally, back in Brownsburg, I went for a walk past the cornfields outside my parents’ house (disclaimer: this is not their house).

And I made a new friend — cow alert!

Many people have asked me whether I like New York or London better, considering I’ve now spent a few months living in both cities. My answer is London, mainly due to the fact that in addition to all the excitement of a bustling city, I had the cultural differences to contend with, and I immensely enjoyed immersing myself in a culture that was similar to mine, yet just divergent enough that each day was a fresh adventure of noticing and navigating the discrepancies.

And, of course, London was, at the time, the longest I’d ever spent away from home, so it had the added factor of being my first REAL big adventure (work and study abroad journeys have since taken me to L.A., Costa Rica, a number of Midwest states, and now New York). Plus, I discovered theater for the first time that summer, so though I saw some great shows in New York, that’s simply a magic New York couldn’t match, no matter how stellar Laura Benanti was “In My Fair Lady.” Well, maybe if Michael Crawford had been on Broadway this summer …

And history is everywhere in London. I came away spewing random facts about the monarchy, the Queen, England’s history, a variety of beautiful castles and gardens … of course, New York has many museums as well, but the history of America and even NYC, to some extent, was already familiar to me. It was exciting to learn all about foreign customs in England, plus the entire country kills the formal garden aesthetic. And the parks are giant! New York has Central Park and Prospect Park; London has Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Regent’s Park, Hampstead Heath, Greenwich Park, Holland Park (live peacocks!), St. James’s Park, Richmond Park, and more!

Plus, England has so many historic towns and landmarks just a train ride away that made for wonderful weekends, from Brighton, to Stratford-Upon-Avon (Shakespeare’s Birthplace), to Stonehenge, to Bath, to Salisbury …

All of which is to say, I enjoyed my time in both cities immensely, and would be happy living in either. London just has a historic cachet and delightful unfamiliarity that New York City can’t match, at least for an American.

Back in Brownsburg, today was all about unpacking and, soon, packing up again to move into my Indianapolis apartment for my final year of grad school.

Today in grad-school textbook acquiring: William Faulkner, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove … I have "American Literature and Culture from 1900-1945" and "Poetry, Gender, and Mid-Century Modernism" on tap for this semester, and it promises to be a great one!

As for this blog, I’m not quite finished with it yet. I’ve got a few top-10 lists in me as I reflect on my NYC experience (and finish unpacking when the rest of my things arrive). I’ll give you a top-10 list of the best shows I saw (which, considering, I saw 30, is actually somewhat prestigious), the best foods I ate (the ones that were actually good, not just Instagrammable — though, in a few rare cases, both boxes were checked), the coolest celebrities I met, my favorite New York Times stories I edited, and, probably the one I'm most looking forward to compiling, a round-up of the top 10 magical moments that made my summer unforgettable — those times when I had to ask myself “Is this even real right now?!!”.

And, of course, I’ll have to take a picture with the Playbills from every show I saw this summer when they all arrive. :)

So, you can look forward to a few more posts before I start grad school and get back to the writing you’re familiar with — journalism (consider this your warning that you’ll soon be back to the social-media barrage of “Hey, I wrote this really cool story and here’s why you should read it!” — which you should definitely do).

While I don’t have time to blog about my adventures during the year between work, class, and a bevy of other commitments, I have just as many adventures in Indy on a smaller scale (as you’ve probably noticed). Whether finally tracking down a Stuff-Your-Own-Jaguar (the IUPUI mascot) last spring after only, umm, a few YEARS of being thwarted (low supplies mean these things are hot commodities!), finger-knitting rainbow scarves for the dozen “Horizons” sculptures on campus in the middle of a bitterly cold winter, or covering my apartment fridge in Perler Bead unicorns, griffins, and Clifford-The-Big-Red-Dogs, life’s more fun when you view every day as an adventure.

And while I can’t have the time of my life *every* day, I can certainly try. :)

So, thanks for sticking with me for the past 70+ days as I’ve blogged my zany, thrilling, theatrical, and dream-fulfilling NYC adventures. I really do need to come back, as I have enough ideas for adventures in this city to fill an entire year!