On Efforts to Watch a Broadway Show

When my friend asked me what I wanted to do while in New York, nothing was really coming to mind. Usually when I go to NYC I usually spend most of my time in Chinatown, but I figured that since I can get all the Asian food I like wherever I am, I should probably try to find something else to do this time around. The only thing I could come up with was going to see a Broadway show. Fortunately, my friend had quite a few tricks up his sleeve on how to get into a Broadway show without paying Broadway prices.

There are generally two ways you can get cheap tickets to see a Broadway show. The first is a lottery system, and second is rush tickets. We tried first for a lottery.

Man selecting winners for the Wicked lottery

When I got off the bus at the Port Authority, we were just several blocks away from the theater where Wicked is performed. We dashed over there to put our names in the lottery for tickets. Generally tickets for this show go for over $100, but if you win the lottery, you can see the show for just $30 per person. Each person can request one or two tickets each and they draw names two hours before the show. When we arrived, there were at least 100 people waiting for the lottery so we knew our chances were slim... but we went ahead anyway and gave it a try. But, alas, it was not meant to be.

Announcing the winners for the Wicked lottery. We were not one of the lucky few...

The next day we headed out early and got in line for rush tickets at a musical with good reviews called One Man, Two Guvnors. We counted heads in front of us when we arrived and thought we were doing ok since there were only about 30 people ahead of us. But unfortunately, a lot of them had been babysitting spots in line for others. When 12:00 rolled around and the line started moving we got our hopes up for a few moments, but after half the line had gone in and gotten tickets, it was announced that there were no more rush tickets available, only full price. We thought, if the prices wasn't bad we would just buy them, but the cheapest seats were $97.00. So we moved on.

In line for rush tickets to One Man, Two Guvnors on Sunday morning

Then my friend had a brilliant idea. We'd been trying to get into musicals, which are very popular, but what about a play? So, we headed around the corner to the Walter Kerr Theater to check if they had any rush tickets left for Clybourne Park. We strolled right in at 12:30 with no line, walked up to the counter, asked for tickets and got them. Four rows from the stage on the left hand side of the theater. Just $30.00 per person. Apparently plays just aren't that popular.

Outside the Walter Kerr Theater

The play itself started out slow for the first 10 minutes or so, but then the plot started to unravel and all of a sudden it was intermission... the first hour slipped away in what seemed like 20 minutes... And the second half was just as good as the first. The play is loosely based on A Rasin in the Sun, but with a modern day twist, half way through the performance.  And it is also the story of how one small event can change the course of history, kind of like how the butterfly flapping it's wings in one place can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. The play had us talking for a good hour afterward, it is definitely worth watching.

Inside the Walter Kerr Theater

So, if you're in New York and you want to see a show and can't get into that musical you were dying to see, try checking out one of the plays in town. You might be pleasantly surprised! But either way, if you're trying to save money, definitely look into rush tickets and lotteries!

Random things in NYC

 The Late Show!

With the exception of a Broadway show and a little night life, most of my trip to NYC consisted of random wanderings around the city. Which is fine by me, it's my favorite way to explore a city and it was nice to walk around after being carted around for long bus rides from city to city. Here are a few of the things I found along the way. 

 Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park

 Not so great photo of an amazing tap. All tasty, local beers with knife handles on the taps.

Graffiti outside my friend's apartment in Brooklyn

Morgan Ave Metro Station. Wish I had gotten a better photo of the subway mosaics... they were fantastic! 

Back of St. Patrick's Cathedral

 Dominican Parade

 Hershey's store in Times Square

 Walter Kerr Theater where we watched Clyborne Park

Grand Central Station 

Ceiling of Grand Central

Helicopter landing by the Hudson River

Koreatown, NYC

Our first stop on our blisteringly cold evening in Koreatown was Pinkberry, the hit sensation frozen yogurt shop that has taken Hollywood by storm. Despite the cold, there was a line (albeit short) to get some frozen yogurt on this frozen day. From Pinkberry's website and wikipedia, I found that this little frozen yogurt chain was founded by Korean-Americans in LA and is based on the Korean chain, Red Mango. It's spreading quickly and you can probably expect to see a Pinkberry in a city near you very soon.


I was very impressed with the frozen yogurt. Maybe I'm biased, because I've always preferred frozen yogurt to ice cream, but this was full of flavor and deliciousness. If you stumble upon a Pinkberry, I highly recommend that you give it a try.


After getting our Pinkberry we headed over to a little HOF style place called Pocha32. Walking in here I really felt like I was stepping into one of the chillest HOF's I'd ever seen. It was full of Korean-speaking people, Korean food and soju. The decor was basically netting on all sides with soju caps hung from the netting, plus some photos and Christmas lights. Sounds pretty relaxed, huh?

We ordered some bosam (which I never got around to trying in Korea, strangely) and tubu kimchi. Both were excellent and tasted like Korea... makes me excited to go back!


Tubu (tofu) kimchi.... looks kinda weird and nasty, but this was delicious!


Bosam, boiled pork, cabbage and spicy radish (?). You wrap the pork into the cabbage to eat it.
We also ordered a soju coctail to go with our anju. I've never seen soju cocktail served like this, in a bottle like this and frozen like a slushy, but I liked it :-)

The only downside to this restaurant is the price. I guess it's not expensive for the US, but paying 18.99 for soju coctail makes me cringe a little when I know how much it costs in Korea. The bosam and tubu kimchi were a little pricey, but not over the top, both I think each was between $13-16.
Typical signage in Koreatown. Everything is bilingual. Very cool, makes me feel like I'm at home...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

After our ramen lunch we headed over to The Met for my first visit ever to the museum. We really wanted to see the Egyptian exhibit, but we wound up spending the majority of our time in the Eastern art section. They also had an interesting special exhibit called "Art of the Samurai" which included many samurai blades, armor, robes, and some artwork.


Pitcher depicting frontiersman Bill Nye confronting a "Chinee" on the results of a card game. Very pitcher worthy, I'd say.

Ganesha

Very cute clay samurai man

Kick butt samurai armor

A very Japanese robe

I was super excited to see this, "View of Toledo" by El Greco. I studied this painting in high school Spanish class and it never made much of an impression on me until I went to Spain in my senior year of high school and went to Toledo myself and realized that it looks exactly the same. I took probably a whole role of film trying to figure out where El Greco must have been sitting to paint this landscape. Of course, I never found it, but that view of Toledo that I saw was really just breathtaking. No wonder why El Greco felt the need to paint it.

Some pottery from the Korean Art section. Pretty sure I saw this exact same vase in Insadong for 40,000 won. ^^

Ippudo: NYC and Think Coffee

As I mentioned in my last blog post, our first stop after arriving in Manhattan was a well known Japanese ramen shop over in the East Village called Ippudo. We weren't 100% sure of where we were going, not to mention the blisteringly cold weather, but we eventually got there, wind burnt and all. We didn't know much about the place, really, except that it got excellent reviews on many websites and was specifically recommended by someone my friend knows. Hence the trek to find this place.

Upon arriving, we were totally flabbergasted to find that the wait for a seat was an hour... at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon. We decided that all these people must be waiting for a reason, so we put our names in and got the heck out of there because there wasn't even a place to sit for that time there were so many people waiting around. We walked down the street and found Think Coffee. Think Coffee is an environmentally friendly coffee shop that does its best to provide organic and fair trade products and serve their coffee in biodegradable products.


I ordered a delightful hot apple cider and my friend got an americano. The prices seemed very reasonable for NYC and we sat there killing an hour waiting for our table at Ippudo talking and relaxing from our 4 hour bus ride and our 1/2 hour trek through the cold.

Just before 2pm we headed back to the restaurant, just in time as the couple ahead of us that should have been seated were nowhere to be found and we were called next. We each ordered a set lunch, which was comprised of a big bowl of ramen, small side salad and a big bowl of rice with meat on top.

Now, the ramen tasted just like what I had eaten in Tokyo, so I didn't find any problem with the authenticity of this restaurant. It did seem a little overpriced to me, considering I paid $6.00 for that bowl of ramen in Tokyo, and I paid $16.00 for this set lunch here (13.00 if you choose not to get the set). But, this is New York, and this is America where they seem to think it's ok to jack up the price 4 times for anything "Asian", so I guess I should have expected this.

My ramen set

My friend's ramen set

The ambiance of the restaurant was great. Since it was just the two of us, we were just seated at a big table shared with many others. Not something that bothers me at all. Big groups were seated in half enclosed booths covered in tatami mats (no sitting on the floor, don't worry). The kitchen was big and open and you could hear them shouting in Japanese every time an order came up or whenever anyone passed them leaving. Granted, I doubt any of them were actually Japanese, I saw various races cooking in the kitchen, but it was still fun to hear Japanese being shouted on all sides.

When we went downstairs to find the bathroom, we found a little window to watch the man behind the noodles... a young guy was working the machine making fresh noodles for our consumption. Very cool, I guess they had to prove that their noodles really were fresh. Too bad I'm so darn short, I couldn't see in very well...


Anyway, I'd give this place 4/5 stars too. The wait was a bit long and the prices were a bit high, but despite that it was very authentic. Feel free to check out their website to find out how they "turned ramen into an art" and all their other bragging rights they feel they deserve.

Trip to New York City

The nice thing about living in Boston, besides the fact that it's a great city unto itself, is the fact that NYC is close and easily accessible, even without a car. Yesterday my friend and I took a day trip to The City. From Boston, we took the 8am Fung Wah Bus from South Station in Boston, which is only $15.00 each way for the 4 hour bus ride. Granted they don't have the best safety record, but I've had good luck with them. Fung Wah drops you right off in Chinatown and from there we walked through the blistering cold wind (actual temperatures hovered in the single digit Fahrenheit all day, not including the wind chill) to a restaurant in the East Village called Ippudo, part of a Japanese based chain of Ramen restaurants that "transformed" ramen. The restaurant is wildly popular, so much that we had to wait an hour for a table at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

From there we went over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'd never been, so I figured we had to go. I still haven't been to central park though, but it was so cold we weren't keen on walking around any more than we had to.

After two hours in the museum, we headed over to Korea town, and though still not hungry from lunch, got frozen yogurt at Pinkberry, and found a place that was just like the chillest HOF you've ever seen. I felt like I was in Korea because there were probably only two westerners in the whole place and everyone was drinking soju and eating real Korean food, not the westernized stuff.

After that we headed back to catch the 9:00 bus, but didn't quite make it so we had to wait for the 10:00 bus. We got into Boston at 2:00am and thats why today I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed soon and I'll make some more detailed posts about Ippudo, the Met, and Koreatown later. Lots of photos to come, so stay tuned.