Watching “Mean Girls,” Eating Fried Shark, and Catching a Cotton-Candy-Streaked Sunset Over Queens

What a fetch day! I started the morning by scoring a rush ticket to “Mean Girls” on Broadway. I’d tried before to get a ticket for a Wednesday performance of this one and failed — the show is so popular that unless I want to line up at 5 a.m., the only real shot I have at a ticket is by rushing on a day when there are two shows (and even then, it depends on availability). Anyway, I got row M for the matinee at 2 p.m.!

Before I listened to the cast recording six months ago, I never would’ve thought I’d want to see this show. I didn’t see the movie until (very) late in high school, but as was the case with “Be More Chill,” the fabulous cast recording landed the show on my list of want-to-sees (but unlike “Be More Chill,” it didn’t underwhelm me).

I had a few hours before I had to be back at the theater, so headed to the Frick Collection, which — surprise! — I got into for free with my New York University student ID.

I had my credit card out ready to pay the $10 student admission fee, but the woman at the desk handed me a comp ticket and I was just like, “Umm, OK, not questioning this.” I did some sleuthing a few hours later and learned that NYU students get in free through a partnership with the university. If you’re confused (I don’t blame you), I’m NOT an NYU student. But because I’m living in NYU student housing for the summer, I have an NYU student ID, so hello New York student discounts! I also was excited to discover I get into the Whitney Museum of American Art free with my NYU ID — visit coming soon! Between my NY Times and NYU student IDs, I’ve only paid for admission to one or two museums this summer.

But back to the Frick, which is Henry Clay Frick’s art- and fountain-filled home. The only photos allowed in the home are in the garden court room, but that just gives you an excuse to stare deeply into the eyes of all the portrait people. Frick clearly enjoyed portraits of beautiful women -- they make up about half the collection.

I was so impressed with the Constable landscape, which I stared at for a good five minutes. And I'm always in awe of how the Impressionists, Turner in particular, render water. And it was fun looking at Vermeer and Rembrandt pieces side by side, trying to pinpoint the qualities that make work by each artist immediately identifiable, even from across a room. And I loved that the Fragonard room had not just towering paintings, but chairs and couches with the painted scenes sewn into their backs!

After my 45-minute Frick visit (it’s a guy’s house, so it’s not exactly enormous), I stopped by my favorite dirt-cheap souvenir place around the corner from the NY Times building to grab this Wall Street bull for my desk. I’m not even sure the shop has a name (you really don’t need one here — you could call your restaurant ‘Food’ or ‘Drink’ and you’d still have a line).

The store has the best deal on postcards in town at 15 for $1 (hello, plane-ride-home entertainment). And I’ve been scouting this dude for weeks — though the store has the cheapest souvenirs I’ve found, the quality also, umm, varies. But they finally got some new non-chipped/faded/misprinted ones, and I found the perfect #deskbull! Still on the lookout for a quality Statue of Liberty — the ones here are less than half the price of all the other shops in town.

After that, it was time to head back to high school at the August Wilson Theatre. SO MUCH PINK! Even the flowerpots outside are painted pink, and approximately half the audience had on pink shirts and jackets. The crowd was overwhelmingly female, and definitely filled with “Mean Girls” fangirls. One unique quirk about this show — after the first eight minutes of intermission, the men’s restroom becomes gender-neutral (again, I should stress that the crowd was mostly female).

As for the show itself, original cast members Erika Henningsen (Cady Heron), Taylor Louderman (Regina George), and Grey Henson (Damian Hubbard) are still rocking their roles (so it was neat to hear the voices I’d be listening to on the cast recording for months). While the show didn’t get “The Prom”’s “Dance with You” tune out of my head, the lineup definitely included some catchy anthems. The standout number for me was Louderman’s “World Burn” performance. I’m glad my high school experience wasn't like this.

The “Mean Girls” set is mostly backgrounds projected onto a wall behind the actors, from a “Dear Evan Hansen”-esque social media collage of Facebook and Twitter posts to bedroom walls and cafeteria railings. As would be expected, the word is pink.

This was (I believe) the 22nd show I’ve seen in NYC this summer (counting Broadway and Off Broadway productions and one Met Opera ballet). I’ve had the chance to take in a variety of theatrical storytelling, from comedic musicals like this one to dramas such as “All My Sons” and “To Kill A Mockingbird.” It’s been so great!

After “Mean Girls,” I was craving some pickle ice cream from Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co. near Central Park. (If you were wondering, it’s felt like 100+ degrees here day and night the past few days. Taking the subway is currently an exercise in how much you hate yourself, as many of the stations are roasting, and service is delayed on many lines due to heat-related outages.)

Unfortunately, the host informed me that they DIDN’T HAVE PICKLE SOFT SERVE TODAY. Me: *Cries* *Leaves* But I might be back later, depending on if I’m in the area again. (Pictured below: the object of my desire.)

Then it was time to head to show #2 of the day. I’d lined up a ticket a while ago to see “Fairview,” which is one of the hottest (or at least most critically acclaimed) Off Broadway shows right now. It’s currently playing at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, and closes August 11 (after many, many extensions). It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and is an exploration of race a la “A Raisin in the Sun.” My boss at The New York Times told me I should see it, and I was like, “Aye, aye!” (the last one he recommended, “My Fair Lady,” remains my favorite show I’ve seen this summer).

BUT. Remember what I said about heat-related subway outages? The D Line from Manhattan already runs Express and skips the Brooklyn stop for the theater on weekends, so I knew I’d have to overshoot by a few stations and walk back. But there were tons of delays today, and the evening outages and signal issues meant I’d have to take three different lines to get to the theater (did I mention all the subway stations are scorching at the moment?). This included one line on which I’d have to go many stops past the station I wanted to transfer at, then ride another line back downtown to the theater (with delays on those lines as well, of course). Basically, it was going to take me *days* to get there, assuming the subway didn’t stop service on those lines completely.

The good news is that “Fairview” is playing at a small Off Broadway theater, not a Broadway house. Yay, friendly neighborhood box-office people! I called and was able to swap my ticket for tonight for the matinee tomorrow, avoiding death-by-subway-roasting (service is back to normal at present — we’ll see if that lasts). Anyway, I plan on heading to Brooklyn well in advance of my show time tomorrow in case this happens again. Fortunately, Brooklyn is a cultural mecca with no shortage of things to do.

The good news after my subway snafu was that I now had a free evening to head to Queens and the Saturday-only Queens International Night Market in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It’s like Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, but open from 5 p.m. to midnight. And unlike Smorgasburg, pretty much every item is $5 or less (cash only). I ate my first shark sandwich tonight, but before we get to that, the best part might’ve been the ride to Queens on the 7 train from Grand Central Station.

The market is near the end of the 7 line, meaning I had a nice, long journey ahead of me. I also unintentionally timed it so I had a gorgeous view of a pink-and-purple sunset over Manhattan flying past as I headed east (the 7 line runs above ground). As a bonus, a subway-car musician started singing and playing a love song in Spanish on his guitar and the whole thing was just magical. AND the 7 line is also air-conditioned, unlike many of the underground ones, so it was a rather comfortable ride after I’d just finished baking on the way to Grand Central on the 6.

On a side note, like much of America, museums in Manhattan have no impulse control when it comes to air conditioning. I’ve taken to carrying a pair of jeans around with me in my backpack because after an hour in shorts inside one of those iceboxes, I’m shivering. But I don’t even want to think about tackling the sweltering subway heat in pants on a day like today. #FirstWorldProblems

Where was I? Oh, right. Back to the shark. I ordered a fried shark sandwich from a stall helpfully named “Fried Shark Sandwich” that only serves — you guessed it — fried shark sandwiches. I got one with “The Works,” a.k.a. coleslaw, cucumbers, pineapple, onions, and shark, plus four sauces, among them hot pepper and garlic. It tasted like a cod gyro — I give it the thumbs-up.

Post-shark, I walked over to the Unisphere in front of the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It reminds me of Spaceship Earth at EPCOT in Florida.

In my search for a subway station to get back home (since the one I entered Queens at doesn’t service Manhattan at night — gotta love the subway!), I walked through the park and then over the Flushing Meadows pedestrian bridge. When I got this view of a bunch of 7 trains flocking together, I knew I had to be close to a station.

The Mets station at Citi Field had special express trains running to Manhattan tonight, so I was good to go. That’s one perk of the subway — lines are often annoying in that they don’t make certain stops at certain times of day or start only running Express, but occasionally you get a bonus special train that takes you exactly where you need to go sans transfers. So while the subway and I have occasional face-offs, I’m not ready to break up with it yet. :)

My Queens visit was also an unintentional practice run for my journey to LaGuardia Airport in a few weeks to head back home to Indy (gah!). I’ll take the 7 and then catch a bus to the airport. I heard the announcement at my future transfer station and was like, “That’ll be me soon!” *Cries again*

Up next tomorrow: “Fairview,” of course. I thought earlier this week about heading to Coney Island tomorrow afternoon, but obviously now there’s a rather oppressive heat wave and standing outside for an extended period of time is pretty agonizing. So, that probably won’t happen this weekend — stay tuned for alternate exciting plans. If tomorrow’s anything like today, I’m sure it’ll be great!

Ending note of excitement: It also looks like I *might* get the chance to also shadow and then edit a review for Jesse Green, who is the other chief New York Times theater critic (he and Ben Brantley share the co-chief theater critic title), during my last week in NYC. My joy surpasses words yet again.