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An End Of A Trip To Trumptown..!
Aug. 5th, 2017 09:34 pmI know you may feel that we’ve laboured it a bit, but wow! What a bad choice of President you appear to have made, when he is in his home city and he required 1 MILLION dollars a day to keep himself safe (at US taxpayers’ expense) is he really an extravagance worth having?!
Thankfully though, he has made himself an easy target for potential assassinators, by having so much prominent real estate across the city, stuff that everyday folks like me and you can walk up to and have dozens of camera lenses and probably a few rifle crosshairs targeted at us, probably..? But as I launched the odd double fingered salute at his apparently empty building, I did wonder if I would be on some kind of ‘hitlist’, such is his incredible touchiness to criticism!
Nonetheless, I did it anyway! If I did get shot, I hoped I could be some kind of martyr for free speech!
We had roughly nine hours to cram in everything that we still had left before getting a 6PMish subway out of there for 10.30PM flight back home to Manchester. The Box Office for Broadway opening at 10 meant that we could insult the toupee-d one and take in Carnegie Hall at our leisure before heading into the centre to purchase whatever was available.
En-route (and after trying ALL holiday to find one) as Toni’s pregnancy app told her that TJ was the size of a vanilla slice cake, we located one in a bakery. Delighted, Toni got one and I got a Canolli to celebrate being near Jersey and The Sopranos!
This ‘everyone turn up at once policy’ on Times Square means that there is an insane scrum to get the few remaining ‘big name’ tickets. If you want Lion King or Aladdin, you’re dreaming, anything else, it’s very possible. With those two out of the running, Toni oddly let me sway her into Avenue Q (just off Broadway) later that afternoon, which meant we had time to go to the cinema on Times Square.
It’s possible that by that point, we were a tiny bit sick of the hubbub, the rappers selling their wares and the minorities dressed as cartoon characters trying to fleece you, so the cinema was one of the quietest places we experienced all day.
Partially, as it had so many screens and a tad because ‘La-La Land’ had been out for ages, we went up onto the third floor of about a zillion to watch a fantastic movie.
I had many concerns after the opening traffic jam song and dance number but if you persist with it, the film opens out on many levels, the dialogue is sharp and to the point and the music edges on seamlessly. Both Stone and Gosling showed once again that they are far in excess of just pretty faces and the ending is far from predictable.
Toni loved it more than I did but I was hugely impressed too.
Once more into Times Square’s squall of nonsense, it’s no place for a pregnant lady but even if she was appearing to have a boulder strapped to her stomach, I’m pretty certain someone would have walked into her.
So, we headed away from there, found the theatre and that it was located next to a small park, one that felt totally discordant from all the rest of the scene of rushing arts fiends, phone-transfixed hipsters and faux-Irish pubs!
Oh yes, New York! Can I have a word? You are not Irish! Please just have a few more pubs/bars, they don’t have to be Irish (or for that matter Scottish or English), can they just be a grand place to get drunk and have some beers that don’t taste like dogwee? Thanks!
We got really lucky with the tickets and are ten rows from the front but sat outside the New World Stages theatre, it looks like it holds about a dozen, what is going on? Trying Kinishes from a food cart didn’t help solve the puzzle, instead it made me feel intensely disappointed, yeuch!
The answer is, it’s all underground, deep underground… Even it is sparsely furnished with green neon lights, it is homely due to the bitchy male actors staffing the bar and doing the stewarding (with hilarious announcements beforehand!) They also serve Rolling Rock, so I gratefully reduce the amount I need to change back to pounds on my return on that!
The performance is top notch, songs like ‘Everyone is a Little Bit Racist’ and ‘The Internet is for Porn’ are riotous every time and they’ve updated the script to include everyone’s favourite President and to reassure everyone that good times will come around again! As demonstrated in this pic:
I’d recommend the hotel we stayed in, ‘Pod 51’ to anyone wishing to stay here, for the price (about £70 a night) while being so central and with cheap but with tasty bagels for breakfast. In addition to many reasons for staying there is the rooftop garden.
Winter in New York comes with few negatives, one of them being that the weather will have an impact on your stay.
It stopped us visiting the Roof Garden for the first seven days of the holiday, although did afford us outstanding views of the Manhattan Skyline from the 14th floor of the building, looking down on the snow-topped roofs of the other blocks was a treat too, it was great to get out there and use some of the many seats provided by the staff.
The view continued to be breath-taking, hence me and Toni hassled various fellow guests for photographs our stubby arms couldn’t reach out for!
Once again, (albeit in a less precarious skyline position than on Thursday!) we could gaze across Manhattan and watch the lights slowly come on and unveil New York at night. All the while, kind of wondering how we managed to get across there and be lucky enough to have such an unbelievable holiday.
When the sun gave up on New York City for another day, so had to give up on the Big Apple for another however many years, it’s a hard place to leave lightly (apart from in your wallet!) and neither of us wished to depart the top of the tower and head down into the hotel to leave.
As chance would have it, New York wasn’t entirely keen to let us go either..! And for the first time in the Big Apple, we experienced travel problems, as the subway crawled through Queens to JFK and another altogether more nervy trip on the Air Train (as Toni’s fear of being late and mine of being left behind to get another flight) crept into view…
Eventually, we got there with a bit (but not much time to spare), there was still opportunity for a mildly unpleasant incident with a Muslim lady and airport security and the traditional pint in the airport bar, after some nice Greek food!
The flight back was quick and largely uneventful apart from being the people in the seats who open the emergency door in the event of a crash (assuming we still have arms left to operate them!) in exchange for more leg room!
Shattered due to not sleeping on aircraft, I had harboured hopes of staying up and watching Swinton in the afternoon but instead I passed out, to dream of the awesome holiday I’d just had, I presume…
Thankfully though, he has made himself an easy target for potential assassinators, by having so much prominent real estate across the city, stuff that everyday folks like me and you can walk up to and have dozens of camera lenses and probably a few rifle crosshairs targeted at us, probably..? But as I launched the odd double fingered salute at his apparently empty building, I did wonder if I would be on some kind of ‘hitlist’, such is his incredible touchiness to criticism!
Nonetheless, I did it anyway! If I did get shot, I hoped I could be some kind of martyr for free speech!
We had roughly nine hours to cram in everything that we still had left before getting a 6PMish subway out of there for 10.30PM flight back home to Manchester. The Box Office for Broadway opening at 10 meant that we could insult the toupee-d one and take in Carnegie Hall at our leisure before heading into the centre to purchase whatever was available.
En-route (and after trying ALL holiday to find one) as Toni’s pregnancy app told her that TJ was the size of a vanilla slice cake, we located one in a bakery. Delighted, Toni got one and I got a Canolli to celebrate being near Jersey and The Sopranos!
This ‘everyone turn up at once policy’ on Times Square means that there is an insane scrum to get the few remaining ‘big name’ tickets. If you want Lion King or Aladdin, you’re dreaming, anything else, it’s very possible. With those two out of the running, Toni oddly let me sway her into Avenue Q (just off Broadway) later that afternoon, which meant we had time to go to the cinema on Times Square.
It’s possible that by that point, we were a tiny bit sick of the hubbub, the rappers selling their wares and the minorities dressed as cartoon characters trying to fleece you, so the cinema was one of the quietest places we experienced all day.
Partially, as it had so many screens and a tad because ‘La-La Land’ had been out for ages, we went up onto the third floor of about a zillion to watch a fantastic movie.
I had many concerns after the opening traffic jam song and dance number but if you persist with it, the film opens out on many levels, the dialogue is sharp and to the point and the music edges on seamlessly. Both Stone and Gosling showed once again that they are far in excess of just pretty faces and the ending is far from predictable.
Toni loved it more than I did but I was hugely impressed too.
Once more into Times Square’s squall of nonsense, it’s no place for a pregnant lady but even if she was appearing to have a boulder strapped to her stomach, I’m pretty certain someone would have walked into her.
So, we headed away from there, found the theatre and that it was located next to a small park, one that felt totally discordant from all the rest of the scene of rushing arts fiends, phone-transfixed hipsters and faux-Irish pubs!
Oh yes, New York! Can I have a word? You are not Irish! Please just have a few more pubs/bars, they don’t have to be Irish (or for that matter Scottish or English), can they just be a grand place to get drunk and have some beers that don’t taste like dogwee? Thanks!
We got really lucky with the tickets and are ten rows from the front but sat outside the New World Stages theatre, it looks like it holds about a dozen, what is going on? Trying Kinishes from a food cart didn’t help solve the puzzle, instead it made me feel intensely disappointed, yeuch!
The answer is, it’s all underground, deep underground… Even it is sparsely furnished with green neon lights, it is homely due to the bitchy male actors staffing the bar and doing the stewarding (with hilarious announcements beforehand!) They also serve Rolling Rock, so I gratefully reduce the amount I need to change back to pounds on my return on that!
The performance is top notch, songs like ‘Everyone is a Little Bit Racist’ and ‘The Internet is for Porn’ are riotous every time and they’ve updated the script to include everyone’s favourite President and to reassure everyone that good times will come around again! As demonstrated in this pic:
I’d recommend the hotel we stayed in, ‘Pod 51’ to anyone wishing to stay here, for the price (about £70 a night) while being so central and with cheap but with tasty bagels for breakfast. In addition to many reasons for staying there is the rooftop garden.
Winter in New York comes with few negatives, one of them being that the weather will have an impact on your stay.
It stopped us visiting the Roof Garden for the first seven days of the holiday, although did afford us outstanding views of the Manhattan Skyline from the 14th floor of the building, looking down on the snow-topped roofs of the other blocks was a treat too, it was great to get out there and use some of the many seats provided by the staff.
The view continued to be breath-taking, hence me and Toni hassled various fellow guests for photographs our stubby arms couldn’t reach out for!
Once again, (albeit in a less precarious skyline position than on Thursday!) we could gaze across Manhattan and watch the lights slowly come on and unveil New York at night. All the while, kind of wondering how we managed to get across there and be lucky enough to have such an unbelievable holiday.
When the sun gave up on New York City for another day, so had to give up on the Big Apple for another however many years, it’s a hard place to leave lightly (apart from in your wallet!) and neither of us wished to depart the top of the tower and head down into the hotel to leave.
As chance would have it, New York wasn’t entirely keen to let us go either..! And for the first time in the Big Apple, we experienced travel problems, as the subway crawled through Queens to JFK and another altogether more nervy trip on the Air Train (as Toni’s fear of being late and mine of being left behind to get another flight) crept into view…
Eventually, we got there with a bit (but not much time to spare), there was still opportunity for a mildly unpleasant incident with a Muslim lady and airport security and the traditional pint in the airport bar, after some nice Greek food!
The flight back was quick and largely uneventful apart from being the people in the seats who open the emergency door in the event of a crash (assuming we still have arms left to operate them!) in exchange for more leg room!
Shattered due to not sleeping on aircraft, I had harboured hopes of staying up and watching Swinton in the afternoon but instead I passed out, to dream of the awesome holiday I’d just had, I presume…
