Day 2 in NYC. It feels like a hundred degrees. It was about 80 at 10am. We hit the ground running this morning, like the thousands of runners we met in Central Park raising money for disability awarenes. We are a few blocks from Central Park and a GRRRRRRREAT bagel place, called Absolute Bagel, so we started there with the world's biggest most tasty bagel and then walked around the North end of Central Park. We had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but had to put that off (for this trip entirely, possibly, since it's not open tomorrow and we leave on Tuesday...) because the half priced ticket joint in Times Sq opened at 11. We walked to TS and then waited an hour in the hot but friendly line to obtain tickets to FELA, a story about a subversive Nigerian artist living in Nigeria from 1960s-1990s and how his music influenced and reflected the very bloody politics of the time.
The show had great dancing and music, but the second half sort of went on a tangent away from the story. The show had us up and dancing at certain points, which was fun, but sometimes confusing because one never knew quite how involved one could get in the performance: the audience/performer line was a bit unclear. Overall, the voices were immaculate and the format was like you were an audience member in Fela's walled and barbwired music club in Lagos. The set was amazing!
We lunched at Olympic Diner, a very cute Greek restaurant in Midtown with a family feel, full of locals and tourists, before the show and were happy to seek refuge from the heat for 2 hours to catch a piece of art unlike anything that has ever been on Broadway, let alone like anything playing anywhere else in the world. It's all about local tastes this first trip to NYC!
Now we're back cooling off and getting ready for a lovely dinner at home with our hostess, Wesley and her adorable cavalier king charles spaniel, Beatrice.
Dinner was tasty and fun! Joseph, Wesley's brother, came over to celebrate his birthday with his partner, Matt. Wesley made this fabulous cordon bleu chicken dinner with lovely appetizers and desserts: tantalizing tastes! Matt and Joseph invited us to their place downtown afterwards to show us the view from their condo near Park Ave. It was gorgeous! The whole city sparkled. So sweet and generous of Wesley, Joseph and Matt to welcome us so warmly!
Once Matt and Joseph found out we wanted to go swing dancing, they made some quick phone calls to their friends for some recs because our internet searches were spotty and somewhat fruitless. The first one came up and Jim and I were off on the subway to midtown to Swing 46 - Jazz and Supper Club. What a delight! There was a full live band, no cover and the dance floor was pretty unoccupied. The only other couple who joined us on the dance floor at first turned out to be the swing dancers who taught the lesson an hour before we arrived. They were charming! We invited them to our table and before we knew it, there were six of us enthusiasts up dancing.
These kind of spontaneous interactions often bring endearing and affirming networks of friends together. One of the dancers who joined us a bit later was Alex, originally from Vancouver, who actually knew my friend, Nardia, who introduced me to swing dancing years ago. What are the chances of that in a city the size of New York, let alone a continent the size of North America? It was a great connection to make and we hope we get the chance to visit each other again soon, once our respective lives and travels settle down a bit.
At the end of the night, we collapsed into a yellow cab and made our way home uptown happy and tired from a fabulous day of newly discovered friends in North America's largest city.
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