A New York State of Mind

Though I posted about our trip to New York City while still on the road on Facebook and other social media, most of which were re-posted on this blog, below is a more comprehensive account of our trip. Or click here for the full photo gallery from our trip. 

Over the past year or so, we’ve contemplated a major vacation, particularly with our 25th wedding anniversary looming this year. While Europe was on the table, so was New York City, primarily to see some Broadway shows.

The announcement last October of a new production of the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross, with Bob Odenkirk, Keiran Culkin and Bill Burr, was what convinced us to pull the trigger. I’ve always wanted to see it on stage and my wife agreed that this might be the show to plan our trip around.

I put myself on a mailing list for the show and, in February this year, learned that the dates for the production had been scheduled. After grabbing tickets for the April 3 show, we soon found flights and a great deal for a hotel in the heart of Times Square and Broadway (via Expedia—my plan was to see if I could find a better price for a hotel later, but learned that we indeed got a terrific deal).

Almost at the same time, George Clooney’s stage production of Good Night and Good Luck was announced, based on his 2005 film, about journalist Edward J. Murrow. We purchased tickets for that as well and, after a little research, thought that a new stage musical, Maybe Happy Ending, which received some nice reviews, sounded like good counter programming for the two stage dramas we signed up for.

Flight and Arrival

We’d booked an early morning flight so scheduled a Lyft pickup for 5:30 am for a 7:45 am flight. All went smoothly except for one little glitch. After going through the TSA checkpoint and settling in our gate, I was paged over the terminal loudspeaker by my full name, telling me to report back to the TSA security checkpoint. My wife said later half-jokingly that she wondered if she’d ever see me again when I walked off. It turned out I simply left my ID in the bin at the checkpoint!

Though I’d heard horror stories about JetBlue, we found the flight and crew perfectly lovely. The free wifi on board was a great boon, as it allowed me to be productive and get a lot of social media done while en route.

On our trip to Seattle back in 2023, my wife taught me a great life hack for flying that we took advantage of on this flight. Like most people, we don’t check in our luggage to save on the baggage fees and just use carry ons. However, when a flight is fully booked, at the gate the airline often asks people if they are willing to check in their bags, for no charge. On our trip to Seattle, I opted not to accept this offer while my wife did, but on this flight, I agreed—and it was rather nice not having to board the plane with any luggage. (This trick worked for us on the flight home as well!)

We arrived at JFK at about 3:30 pm EST. I’d researched in advance options for getting into Manhattan and, similar to our last trip to NYC in 2010 with our kids, there was a set price by taxi, though considerably higher than our last visit: about $85, but after tolls and tip, $105.

Our lodging, the Millennium Broadway Times Square, was on 44th Street (with a rear entrance on 45th). Though the room could’ve used fresh paint or wallpaper, and new carpeting (or perhaps a good steam cleaning), it was otherwise good sized and the bathrooms looked like they’d been updated fairly recently. That all said, we did get it for a reasonable price for the area, and the location couldn’t be beat: we were a half block from Times Square and within walking distance of all the theaters we were going to, as well as to Rockefeller Center. Conveniently, a 24-hour Walgreens was next door! In addition, two of the four shows we were seeing were on the same street as our hotel (one just at the end of the block); the third only a block over; and the last about 4 blocks north of us. Since my wife tends to like to sleep in and I am an early riser, I often used the mornings to get breakfast (usually a croissant and orange juice) that I ate either in the lobby, or often just while sitting in the middle of Times Square, while posting to social media and catching up with the news and on email.

The evening of our arrival, we explored our surroundings a bit and had a lovely dinner at an old school Italian restaurant, Tony di Napoli, and ordered waaaay too much food!

Day 2

Our first full day in Manhattan, we took the subway down to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. (We loved the ease of riding the subway by simply using a tap on our mobile devices to pay our fares, though early on we had trouble with the subway turnstiles properly reading them.)

Though I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, I told my wife there was no need to visit the borough as we have on previous trips—a trip to Staten Island would essentially kill a day and there was no need for me to revisit my old haunts as I have done in the past. Nearby Battery Park was unfortunately closed for renovations, but we could still see the Statue of Liberty from the terminal. From there, we walked up to the Financial District/Wall Street, briefly stopped at Trinity Church, and then visited the 9/11 World Trade Center Memorial.

After that, we took the subway up to the Society of Illustrators—where I saw a piece from a longtime fellow comics pro, Lonnie Milsap, on display in the museum’s 100 Years of the New Yorker exhibition. We initially thought about then walking across Central Park to get to Strawberry Fields, a favorite spot in the park of John Lennon’s, across the street from his building co-op, the Dakota, but thought better of it and took a taxi instead. (Our visits to the Society of Illustrators and Strawberry Fields are detailed in earlier posts.)

We got back to the hotel around mid-afternoon, so as to have some time to relax before going to our evening show, a schedule we kept on the other days as well. That evening, we saw the first of our four shows, Maybe Happy Ending (I will detail my thoughts and reviews about all the shows we saw in another post). This was followed by a dinner at an Irish bar, O’Donaghue’s Pub.

Day 3

The next morning, before my wife got up, I visited Midtown Comics (reported here). Once my wife was awake, we visited the FDNY’s Firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company in Tribeca—we’d actually meant to visit the day before when we were more downtown, but forgot, so took a quick subway ride there to see it, then shot back uptown where we saw the Ed Sullivan Theatre, home to the Late Night with Stephen Colbert show, which enabled to discover the location of the Winter Garden Theatre where we’d be seeing Good Night and Good Luck later that week, about 4 blocks north of our hotel. We also grabbed a lovely lunch across the street at an upscale dim sum palace, Din Tai Fung. (I later learned from my wife that this restaurant has a location near us in L.A., in Century City.)

We also found time to visit the Empire State Building—though it had been cloudy all day, the weather cleared up enough that we had great views atop the building. To get there, our subway stop was at Penn Station. We took the opportunity to see the commuter trains and platforms while there.

That evening, we saw Glengarry Glen Ross, followed by dinner at Brooklyn Diner (which frankly was our only disappointing meal on the trip).

Day 4

Our 4th day, Saturday, April 5, happened to be the date of the nationwide Hands Off rallies. Though we were 3,000 miles away from home and would have participated in L.A., we happily took time to participate in the NYC protests, at Bryant Park/New York Public Library.

Due to timing issues, we got afternoon tickets to tour Radio City Music Hall. After getting our tickets, we took a taxi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side in Central Park. Though we did spend quality time there, we did not get to see the entire museum and did have to leave after a few hours to make our Radio City tour, which was another taxi ride back.

One of the most interesting factoids from the Radio City tour was that the nearly 100-year-old hydraulic system beneath the stage is still being used—when the theater underwent a major renovation years ago, after inspection, that was one feature the engineers said did not need work or an upgrade. The system was an engineering marvel in its day, such that, before World War II, military engineers studied it for use on aircraft carriers. According to the tour, for this reason, a military presence was kept at the site during the war to safeguard the technology.

In the evening, we saw Good Night and Good Luck at the Winter Garden Theatre. This was followed by my favorite dinner of the evening at Gatsby’s Landing, where I had duck.

The restaurant happened to be directly across the street from the Belasco Theatre, where we had seen Maybe Happy Landing two nights before (as well as just a half block from our hotel). That night’s performance had also just let out and people milled around in front of the theater, hoping to get autographs and catch a glimpse of the show’s lead star, Darren Criss, and other members of the cast. As we waited for dinner, Criss did indeed come out. So I took the opportunity to run across the street to take some photos!

Day 5

We toured NBC Studios and 30 Rockefeller Center on Sunday, just before departing for the airport, and saw Studio 8H, where SNL is broadcast. No photos were allowed at any time during the tour. (I also looked into getting tickets months before. It turns out, they offer tickets during a week’s window in August and you are given a take-it-or-leave-it date, though they do also offer stand by tickets.) As noted in an earlier post, we ended up on the same flight back to L.A. as one of the musicians who had performed on the episode of SNL that had aired the night before, featuring host Jack Black. (This reminds me of another celebrity close encounter when I was once in NYC back in the day—we saw actress Téa Leoni at an ice cream shop with what I assume were her children and perhaps her parents!)

It was a memorable, terrific trip that confirmed for us that NYC is indeed one of the world’s great cities, with an incredible energy and vibe. I’m usually ready to go home near the end of my vacation, and while I didn’t feel the vacation went by too quickly, I happily could have stayed longer.

Click here to see the full photo gallery from our trip.