(22) New York City

Friday, November 14th: DAY OFF! Caroline, Jeffrey, Jill and I took the train from Newark Penn Station to New York Penn Station for a day of walking around the city. We walked from Penn Station up to Port Authority and then over to Dallas BBQ for lunch. We were meeting up with Cory, who went to college with Caroline and Jill. Lunch was quite an experience to say the least. I got ½ a chicken(way too much food) with yellow rice and a huge chunk of really good cornbread. I also had some vegetable soup with carrot slices that were about as big as a large watch face. We walked over to TKTS, where you can buy cheap/discount tickets to Broadway Shows, because Caroline use to work there and one of her old co-workers had gotten us some tickets to see Pal Joey at Studio 54. Patty told us to go to Studio 54 sometime before 6pm to pick up our tickets. We walked over to Rockefeller Plaza to watch them put up the Christmas Tree and then made our way over to Studio 54. When we got there, the box office told us that we had to come back just after 6pm. At this point we said goodbye to Cory and made our way downtown to 4th Street on the Subway. We got out and started walking back up 6th street. Eventually Jill left us to go see her Sister and Jeffrey left us to meet up with a friend of his. Caroline and I continued to walk up 6th street until we realized that we were almost halfway back to 54th street, where Studio 54 is located. We decided to just keep walking. We walked past the Empire State building, which you couldn’t see the top of because it was too foggy. Up and up we counted the streets until we made it to 54th street. We walked 2 blocks West and found ourselves back at Studio 54. Caroline picked up our general admission tickets. With these tickets, we didn’t have actual seats. We were given cards with numbers on them(we were #1 and #2) and we were told to come back at 7:50. We would then be lined up by number and seated in any open seats left in the theatre. We had an hour and half to spare, so we walked down a couple of blocks to Cosi, a little coffee house/restaurant, to wake ourselves up after all the walking. We came back, got in our line, and were seated just minutes before the show started in the 4th row just right of center. They were AMAZING seats and they were FREE! Unfortunately, the show was only ok. The story and script were not so great(it was rewritten from the original production) which killed the show. All of the designs were fantastic and the choreography was great as well. The orchestrations were good as well. Christopher Hoff(who was in the original Jersey Boys) was ok but didn’t have a good voice for the role. Stockard Channing was also not so good because she really couldn’t sing her role. Overall, it was worth a free ticket. Caroline and I jutted out of Studio 54 after the show and power walked our way back down to New York Penn Station, where we were meeting up with Jill to go back to New Jersey. There was lots of fun confusion about which train to get on and where we were finding Jill, but it all worked out and we made our way back to Newark Penn Station and back to the hotel.

Saturday, November 15th: We started the day off with an 8:00am load in at the Wilkins Theater at Kean(pronounced Kane) University in Union, New Jersey. The drive from the hotel to the venue was a little bit painful. We were following Google maps directions and started down a street that had a 12’ tall bridge for the Subway. Our truck has a 13’ tall vertical clearance. So we took the detour for trucks down another street and still couldn’t figure how to get around the subway bridges. We drove around a bit more and finally found a bridge tall enough for us to drive under. Load in went without any problems. The theater was a little warm during the show and Margo, who plays one of the main characters, felt like she was going to pass out. We spent most of the show trying to get fans pointed on stage and getting water into Margo’s hands. After our 3:00pm(34) show, we loaded out and drove a couple of hours to Purchase, NY. Caroline, Jeffrey, Jill and I had dinner at the Marc Charles Steakhouse, which was attached to the hotel. By the end of dinner, we were all exhausted and ready for bed.