Sesame Street, Seeing my First Off Off Broadway Show, and a Frooty Scoop of Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream

I started off my Saturday morning bright and early with a 9 a.m. Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference presentation on Gay Talese, delivered virtually via Zoom from my NYC hotel room. I’m not saying I wore a blouse and rainbow penguin pajama pants, but I’m also not saying I didn't.

I also had a conversation in Spanish with the housekeeper who came to clean my room (and didn’t speak English), which was my small victory of the day. Despite having studied Spanish for 13 years now, I’m always shocked when native speakers can, you know, understand me!

After my conference presentation, I went for a walk to the Upper West Side, passing by Lincoln Center and the American Museum of Natural History. Coronavirus aside, we’ve had some extraordinarily nice days in the upper 50s and lower 60s in NYC this week, and I’m doing my best to take advantage! One observation: By far the highest concentration of masks I’ve seen is in Chinatown. When I was there on Friday, nearly everyone was wearing one, yet all the open-air produce stalls were operating as per usual.

In other news, I discovered yesterday that Sesame Street is REAL. I looked up at the corner of 63rd Street and Broadway and was like, “HEY!” It’s the small things. :)

I passed a grocery line that extended out the door at a Midtown Target, but the bodegas and corner pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens appear well stocked. And when I walked by the Midtown Shake Shack a little after noon, it was still packed.

I realized yesterday that I'm acquiring quite the track record of being in the middle of crises: I picked coronavirus outbreak week to travel to NYC for a conference this year, I spent Summer 2016 in London during the Brexit vote (and toured Parliament the day after, amid all the “What the Hell Happens Now?” newspaper headlines!), and I was in NYC last summer during the Manhattan blackout.

Up next: I picked up another sushi donut (they don’t have them in Indy and I must maximize my sushi opportunities!) on my way to the Lower East Side to see my first Off Off Broadway show. (A couple of shows in the smaller theaters finished out their runs last night or will do so this afternoon.)

However, the one I was going to see, “The Siblings Play” at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, was at capacity for the evening (89 people). So I headed a few avenues over to Theater for a New City, where “The White Blacks” will end its run after today’s matinee. The theater seats 74, so it was well under De Blasio's new 250-person limit for events (there were about 50 people in the audience last night). Bonus: $15 tickets across the board for the last two shows!

As for the show itself, it’s the tale of a black New Orleans family throwing a party to celebrate their grandmother’s 75th birthday — but there are complicated racial undercurrents. A couple of the lighter-skinned daughters have cut themselves off from the family by marrying white men and passing themselves off as white (one even keeps skin whitening cream in her purse). They don’t acknowledge their black family to their spouses and pretend to be white in order to reap the financial, social, and cultural benefits. Yet that philosophy definitely isn't shared by everyone in the family — one daughter in particular is a loud and proud black woman with big hair, strong opinions, and an equally outspoken black, socially conscious boyfriend.

The production quality was on par with what you’d find at a community theater, and all four of the shows I saw in Indy right before I left were superior. "The White Blacks" had some of the same themes as “Fairview,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play I saw Off Broadway at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn last summer; they were just far less elegantly articulated. And while “Les Mis” can get away with a nearly three-hour run time, “The White Blacks” was far too long — entire scenes needed to be cut to move the narrative along. But, in a paltry time for NYC theater, beggars can’t be choosers!

After the show, I grabbed a scoop of ice cream from Van Leeuwen, an artisanal NYC gourmet sweet shop chain. I went with the Earl Grey Tea flavor, which tasted like Froot Loops (in the best way possible)!

On tap for tonight: “Stomp” at the Orpheum Theatre on the Lower East Side. “Stomp” is the exception among NYC shows in that it’s planning to continue its run for the foreseeable future, and I figured it was finally time I saw what’s become an NYC classic (the show opened in NYC before I was born, in 1994).

I was also curious if there were any shows still running Monday or Tuesday night, but I haven’t found any interesting ones yet. One candidate was “Perfect Crime,” New York’s longest-running play (it opened in 1987). However, the Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews are laughably awful — as in, 71% of reviewers on TripAdvisor rate the show as ‘poor’ or ‘terrible.’

A sampling of the reviews: “A crime in itself.” “NOPE NOPE NOPE.” “The actual worst play I’ve ever seen — avoid at all costs.” “The worst play I’ve seen in my entire life (and this includes productions in high school gyms). “Left before intermission.”

But my favorite? The guy who recommends donating the money to your ex-wife whom you hate instead of seeing it!

Bottom line: I’m still not thrilled about Expedia’s unprofessional decision to disconnect their customer service hotline, leaving me unable to bump up my flight and get a refund on my week of nights in a hotel DESPITE American Airlines and Holiday Inn policies that guarantee both IF I hadn’t booked through Expedia. But I’m still managing to have fun even amid #Coronaeverything — it IS NYC, after all!

So here’s to more “Sesame Street” discoveries and sunny days. Plus, NYC’s multicultural smorgasbord of restaurants remains operational — and clearly I can’t leave before I pick up some octopus!