Tour Day 8 – New York City – Broadway Show New York New York

I love the city.

I know, I know, it’s not an opinion that is held by all. Especially, those of us that had a choice to live somewhere other than Saint Joseph but chose the city bountiful anyway. I’m one of those people (Emily and I actually live in Kansas City) but every time I get a chance to come to the city, I relish it. The wonderful smell of street kabob vendors to the smell of the trash on the streets in the morning. I LOVE IT. New York is by far my favorite tour, though I am at odds with most sponsors.

Your singer has been exposed to an experience over the last couple of days that has for better or worse broken their idea of what the world is, and of what could be. It has shattered the idea that everyone everywhere lives basically like Northwest Missourians. Some of them are going to come away from this wonderful and awful city with either a sense of awe, or a sense of disgust, or some indifferent feeling in between; I find most people have pretty polarized feelings about the city. Some of them now have a burning desire to move here, and as the old song goes “make a start of it in old New York”. Some of them appreciate home more than ever. That is one of the great things tour affords our singers: the chance to see our beautiful country for what it is, the good, the bad, the ugly, and form their own opinions about whatever it is they find on this adventure.

However they now feel about NYC, your singer likely went to bed more tired than have recently or ever been. All in all, Emily’s apple watch logged 5.63 miles. And those aren’t country miles folks.  Those are hard city miles dodging people, cars, and odd men wearing Spiderman costumes. Them were haggling with street vendors miles, hopping on the subway miles, and walking through Central Park miles. They were adventure miles and growing up a little bit miles.

The morning started by breaking up into their Sponsor pods I talked about yesterday and hopping on the 1 train to China Town. We released them in groups to shop a 3-block stretch for some souvenirs in China Town which gave them an opportunity to get some trinkets at a far reduced price compared to Times Square. Many of them gave the time-honored art of haggling a shot and landed some sweet deals on fake Rolexes. We then released them in groups to eat lunch in Little Italy (or as Bemo calls it, “Litta Luttaly”).

But the real prize after all the sightseeing and the train ride back up for a quick walk through Central Park was heading over to the Broadway theater district to see “New York, New York”. It was a star studded occasion here in New G with all the girls getting dressed to the nines, and the boys doing something akin to getting dressed. We left early enough for everyone to have a couple of hours to eat at some of the iconic Broadway restaurants such as Junior’s or Sardi’s before we met back in front of the theater to get shuffled in the door. New York, New York is the best show I’ve seen on a New G tour for sure! And it even has a surprise ending that I won’t ruin for theater nerds…

After all of it, we all made it back to the hotel with the singers at absolute tilting levels of energy after the show.  I’ve rarely seen this that ramped up and starstruck. But eventually after bed check, we were about to get them settled to get a good night’s sleep before our performance tomorrow.

From the 17^th floor, here in NYC, this is Joseph signing off.