I settled into my seat at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in Manhattan on Saturday well in advance of the curtain’s rise. My wife and I were eager to see “God of Carnage,” which had received great reviews and featured a high-profile cast. For a change, we had seats in the mezzanine section – rather than our usual preference for orchestra. It wasn’t a big deal, and we were prepared to accept the greater distance from the stage. By the end of the show, however, we vowed never to sit in the mezzanine section again. The people around us made the difference.
I see it all the time, and I know I’m not alone. A busload of tourists stumbles onto the sidewalk and crowds around the theater‘s doors. Some push; others linger. Both fail to understand the concept of forming a line … or joining one that already exists. Or, a group of people who live a mere hour from the city spend six months planning their annual trip into the thrilling metropolis and can’t contain their excitement at being able to see an actual celebrity working. You are noticeable a mile away, and yes, you’re being judged.
So, if you are headed into Manhattan to enjoy a Broadway production, please heed the following advice. You’ll make the experience better for everyone. Most of it is common sense, but unfortunately, there are people out there who need a detailed list.
Don’t be loud; don’t linger As I climbed the stairs, I was stuck in the middle of a crowd of nine people who made their annual trek from New Jersey into Manhattan to get a bit of “culcha [culture].” They screeched as they plodded about how they should be featured as the Real Housewives of New Jersey, poking each other about their respective shitty marriages. The conversation kept them from taking their seats efficiency, causing a logjam that stretched all the way back to the entrance. So, while we were treated to diatribes about their husbands, guests out of earshot were stuck in place without even knowing why.
Advice: Shut up, and get to your seat quickly. Talk when you’re settled in … and do so quietly.
Arrive on time This seems as though it shouldn’t need to be said, and I’ve only rarely encountered it when sitting in the orchestra section. Yet, in mezzanine, it’s more common. A man arrived around five minutes after the production started, had trouble getting to his seat in the dark and tripped over my foot (okay, I’m not entirely innocent here). He was the punctual half, though. His companion arrived 15 minutes later and made an even bigger scene.
Advice: Do I have to spell it out? You know when the show starts: plan accordingly.
Don’t clap when the curtain comes up Yes, when you see the likes of James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden on stage, it’s exciting. Your urge is to applaud, to slap your hands together as violently as possible. Meanwhile, what are James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden doing? They’re talking! And, we can’t hear them! Let the actors perform. That’s why they are on the damned stage.
Advice: If you just want to see celebrities, hang around outside the theater and wait for them to arrive or depart. Otherwise, watch and listen. That’s the whole reason you spent $70 a ticket.
Don’t talk during the show … duh Again, does this really need to be explained? For some reason, the people down in the orchestra section have figured out that the actors do the talking; the audience does the listening. In the mezzanine section, however, the actors do the primary talking, and the spectators provide a running commentary. Guess what? Everyone knows that James Gandolfini played Tony Soprano. They don’t need to be reminded. And, it’s no better when you complain about the nine New Jersey housewives in front of you who have been talking through the entire play. Are you really any better?
Advice: Shut your mouth, and remember that the only people who should be talking are (a) paid to do so and (b) told what to say.
That’s all it takes – four simple rules. I know it seems unwelcoming of me to dump all this on you, but if you exercised even a shred of common sense this article would be unnecessary.
Now, if you live in New York – or did at one time – here’s the best advice of all: sit in the orchestra section. At the risk of being called a New York snob (as my wife and New York snob friends have done already), you’ll have a better time if you join the other New York snobs who … guess what? … are there to enjoy the production.
If Times Square experiences traffic jams now, just wait ’til late May when the streets around the Square will be bumper-to-bumper and the sidewalks along Broadway will be filled with — not cars — but feet, and (not to mention) a lot of construction.
I know, it may be the hardest thing to imagine, but starting this Memorial Day through the end of the year, the streets surrounding New York City’s most crowded thoroughfare will be converted into a strictly pedestrian walkway.
The $1.5 million (that’s it?) project will provide green landscaping, tables and benches between 42nd and 47th streets. Currently, the number of pedestrians quadruple the number of cars in Times Square. Roughly 350,000 people pass through per day, which pretty much explains why it has one of the highest injury and death rates in Manhattan. That rate will certainly be curbed with the newer, greener look to the square.
Nearly 50 million tourists paid a visit to Times Square last year alone. With a friendlier and less dangerous feel, I imagine that number could very well increase come the new year of 2010. There will be something worth celebrating in Times Square indeed.
January 4, 2009 was a very sad day on Broadway in New York City. While it is said that all good things must come to an end, does that really have to include the critically acclaimed Broadway show, Boeing Boeing? I mean this was one trip I didn’t want to end. Ever! But when the doors finally closed and the lights went to black, I was there (along with a full house) to say Buh-bye to an era of glamour and excitement so many people love to recall.
In the comedy, which is based on the movie of the same name (staring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis), an American architect living in Paris is juggling three flight attendants – I mean air hostesses – all of whom are his fiancee. How can one man juggle three different women? Easy. You make sure each woman is a stewardess from a different airline – Lufthansa, Alitalia, and TWA. Then you consult a timetable as if it were a bible, marking down each woman’s scheduled layover. Of course to make it run smoothly you must employ an overworked and disgruntled housekeeper who acts more like an air traffic controller. But when an old school chum comes into town things are turned upside down. As most of you know, schedules change and flights get delayed, resulting in turbulent chaos. That’s where the fun began.
While the simple set never changed, the talented cast took the audience on a fun filled ride. In fact, it was so much fun that I was barely conscious of the guy rustling a paper bag full of who knows what in my ear, or that my knees were practically under my chin, and that I could barely move my feet because the seating was so tight – much like a cramped middle seat in coach. Not to mention I purchased the cheap tickets that put me near the ceiling of the intimate, but ornate, Longacre theater, a beautiful theater that was built in 1913.
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The talented cast gave an excellent performance. I wonder if they could imagine the impact they had on the audience that night, the night they took their very last bow. As I looked around at all the people standing and clapping enthusiastically, I couldn’t help but wonder how many actually had a connection to a particular airline. Or were they aviation enthusiasts? Or were they just there to see a good show? Probably all of the above. And like that the show was over, the lights went to bright, and we all slowly filed out of the building, Playbill in hand, and onto the cold dark streets of New York.
“Boeing Boeing is done? Over? NOOOO! ” wrote our own Gadling writer, and pilot, Kent Wien when I mentioned I had seen the very last show. “I didn’t get a chance to see it! Is it going to pop up anywhere else?”
Pop up again, it will. Boeing Boeing will be back, touring in the fall of 2009.
Being the only pilot on reserve, I figured I’d be getting a call to fly over the weekend. Sure enough, Camille called on Thursday to tell me I’d be departing at 6:30 the next morning. It was a new sequence that I hadn’t flown yet. They took away our Panama City and Caracas trip and replaced it with a Caracas and New York layovers.
While I wasn’t really itching to fly to Caracas again, the idea of a day in Manhattan sounded like fun. We seem to get N.Y. layovers every year or two for a few months at a time.
John K. was the Captain and he was yet another one of the Boston pilots I enjoy flying with. I know I’m constantly pointing out how nice it is to fly with the Captains I’m paired up with, but I sincerely believe that Boston has the most good-natured group of pilots at the company. I have no scientific proof of that, but I’m sticking with it.
John and I had a great time in Paris a year ago, when he showed me that some bread, cheese and wine at the local grocery store can be the perfect way to enjoy Paris on a summer evening. So I knew we could find something interesting to do in New York.
%Gallery-21407% He gave me the early morning leg down to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The sun was just coming up while we were waiting our turn to takeoff, affording a good opportunity to snap a shot of an airplane crossing the path of the rising sun.
Four hours later we were on approach to Puerto Rico. In the past, when you landed on runway 10 (pronounced “one-zero”) in San Juan, it would feel like you were about to lose a few fillings in your teeth. After a construction period that lasted at least a year, we were ready to give the freshly-restored runway a try. For whatever reason they used the more expensive concrete instead of asphalt on the runway this time and the results were excellent. There’s one less thing I can blame a poor landing on.
When you sign into the computer in operations at the beginning of every trip, it tells you how many hours you have on the type of airplane you’re flying and the number of landings you’ve made. The records indicated I had 2994 hours. I did the math and realized that I’d be reaching 3000 hours just after we took off from Miami on our way to Caracas. I figured I’d note the time and celebrate to myself after we leveled off.
John was explaining to me about the ‘issues’ he had with some beavers that had taken over his pond. He now has an otter that has been feasting on the fish. The image in my mind of an otter clearing out John’s half frozen pond of largemouth bass was all I needed to completely forget about my little milestone until the next day. The only way to properly celebrate the moment would have been to snack on some mixed nuts. I guess I’ll have to wait until 5000 hours now.
John flew the leg into Caracas. We’ve been landing there for the past few months only at night, so it was nice to have a chance to see it in the daytime. But I was a bit surprised at the smog that was coming from a series of smoke stacks along the shoreline. After we landed it took a while to get used to the smoke in the air.
After a quick nap, we met at the hotel pool before eating at the restaurant a few feet away. This is pretty much the only option, as we’re ‘encouraged’ not to leave the hotel. I had my favorite ‘pizza margarita’ and John had a steak. It almost seems like the prices had doubled since the last time we were there. I can’t remember what I paid before, but the pizza and an iced tea were $17.
The next morning I was checking my emails through the painfully slow internet connection when I got a message that my card had been ‘frozen.’ It seems the account was flagged with “unusual activity” just because I used it in Venezuela. I’m sure the fraud department at credit card companies must really wonder about a card that might see use in Panama one day, Venezuela later that night and then Miami or Boston the next day. I frantically tried to log into the banking website, but I could only load a page or two before the browser stopped responding.
Pickup was at 7 a.m, which was an improvement over the 3 a.m. wake-up time the day before. We made it through Miami and landed at LaGuardia by 2 in the afternoon. John made a perfect landing in the howling wind aboard the U.S.S. LaGuardia. (A nickname referring to the short runway surrounded by water just east of Manhattan.)
I had recently seen Nathan Lane on the Jon Stewart Show plugging his latest Broadway comedy, November. For a moment, I pondered the feasibility of flying down to N.Y. from Boston with my wife just to catch this show. I immediately came to my senses when I thought through the logistics involved in even a short outing like that. Not to mention the cost of a New York city hotel.
It hadn’t even dawned on me that I might find myself in New York just a few days later. I told John about the play and I could tell he wasn’t so sure about spending the $80 to see this play. I convinced him that we could find a good deal at the TKTS booth in Times Square. He was up for it.
The TKTS booth has temporarily moved to the Marriott at Times Square. Fortunately I looked up the TKTS entry on Wikipedia which mentioned that they only take cash. After convincing my bank in person that I wasn’t an international credit card thief, I was able to take some money out.
Amazingly, ‘November’ is one of the plays that’s available at the booth, even on a Friday night. It payed off to get the booth early, since some of these shows are sold out months in advance, and often the TKTS booth has only leftover or returned tickets. After we picked up our discounted tickets, we went to Johns favorite place to eat–appropriately enough called ‘John’s’.
‘John’s Pizzeria’ is located in a converted theatre. I couldn’t resist trying out the margarita pizza, even if I had it the night before in Caracas. I didn’t regret a single bite.
We had plenty of time before the play, so what else is there to do in New York city? Visit one of the city’s most famous landmarks; the Apple Store on 5th Avenue of course! John and I played with the super thin and feather light Macbook Air a bit before walking to the theatre on 47th street.
We had no idea if the seats we were given were any good. I figured they’d be ‘obstructed view’ seats or something way in the back. We were rather shocked that they were 11th row orchestra (floor) seats perfectly aligned in the center of the theatre. Not bad for 35% off.
‘November’ is a play about a fictitious U.S. president, played by Nathan Lane, who is universally disliked by the people. He’s not ready to leave after his first term, but he’s completely out of money to continue his campaign. So he manages to blackmail the turkey industry by threatening to pardon every turkey before Thanksgiving unless the industry group coughs up $200 million for his campaign.
The best line of the show: “I’m thinking of a number so high, dogs can’t even hear it.”
We had a lot of laughs and John and I both gave it a solid 8 out of 10. Hopefully I’ll fly some more of these trips to sample some other plays in N.Y.
Leaving the theater, we marveled at the low clouds that looked as if they were caught on the tops of the buildings. I managed to snap this picture on Madison Avenue. We were almost expecting the “Bat Sign” to illuminate on the clouds at any moment.
The next morning those same clouds had reached the ground and fog enveloped the LaGuardia airport. To make matters worse, our airplane was located over at JFK and they were waiting on a reserve captain to get to JFK to ferry the airplane to LaGuardia. We were a bit confused as to why they didn’t call us a bit earlier to do the ferry before flying to Miami and then home to Boston. They probably thought that it would be faster to have a reserve pilot called out to bring the airplane over to us. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. We left LGA late and tried to make up as much time getting to Miami, but we landed just as a connecting flight to Belize was departing. This meant that ten of our passengers, including a really nice family that visited us in the cockpit while we were parked at the gate in New York wouldn’t make it to Belize until the next day.
We were in a bit of a hurry in Miami while we changed from one plane to another. We refer to this as the “bag drag.” When I got to the next airplane, I realized that I left my aluminum Sigg water bottle in the previous airplane. I knew we didn’t have time for me to run back to retrieve the bottle, and I was resigned to the fact that I had finally lost it. Amazingly, after we closed the door the agent showed up with the bottle, standing on top of a belt loader to get to my window. While the ground crew was still loading a few last minute bags, our incredibly helpful agent managed to toss me the bottle through the window. But it took two attempts:
Fortunately the bottle is well padded in a neoprene casing. After a quick turn in Miami it was back up to Boston. The whole northeast was covered in fog, and as we approached the Logan airport, there were reports of thunderstorms in the area. These are two conditions that don’t usually occur at the same time. The visibility lifted a bit, and the thunderstorms were well off to the west by the time we arrived. Still, the Logan tower reported a wind shear advisory to us while we were on short final. The major airports have equipment that looks for rapidly shifting winds. An alert means you may see a gust of plus or minus ten knots while landing. As ugly as it sounded, we had no issues getting in and we didn’t see any of the gusts that were advertised. Still, it was nice of them to let us know that the possibility existed. Technology has gone a long way to improve the level of safety in this industry.
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Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.
Earlier this week I wrote about Broadway’s surprising focus on plays for the upcoming season — but there’s one musical that is a must-see for every tourist with stars in their eyes.
For $31.50 you can buy a ticket at the new rock musical, Spring Awakening, that puts you in the middle of the action — on stage with the performers.
According to Jo Piazza of the New York Daily News, who recently experienced the production for himself, “Members of the cast sit in chairs right next to you and during the show, they stomp and sing inches away from your face. It’s enough to make even the most karaoke-impaired person want to reach over, grab a microphone and wail on one of the songs by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater.”
Tempting as it may be, disrupting the show with your own impromptu performance is strongly, strongly discouraged — both before the performance, and again at intermission. In fact, just to further minimize interruptions, the theatre makes you remove all personal belongings (coats, hats, phones, purses) and keep them in a locker for the duration of the show.
That being said, it’s sure to be a memorable experience for anyone drawn to the stage. Make sure to book your tickets well in advance though — as, with only 26 seats available, they can be fairly tough to come by.