One of my good friends who graduated last year, Jon, now lives and works in NYC and I was looking forward to seeing him here. He invited Audrey and I to join him and Val (his girlfriend who also goes to Rice and is in town visiting) for church this morning. We went to Redeemer Presbyterian Church on the East side at Hunter College. Redeemer is the home church of Tim Keller, a famous pastor and author. Even though he wasn’t speaking this morning, the service was very good, although much more traditional than I’m used to.
Audrey, Val, and Jon
After church we met a couple of members of Jon’s small group and then the four of us (Jon, Val, Audrey, and I) headed down into Chinatown for dim sum. I’ve never had dim sum before today, but it’s basically like a bunch of little baskets of food- dumplings, steamed buns, chicken feet, tofu, and lots of things I had no idea what they were but they tasted good so I can’t complain. It was a fun experience and something that Audrey and I have been talking about doing for a while so it was fun to do it as a whole group. And also surprisingly a lot cheaper than it would have been in Chinatown in Houston- the four of us ate till we were full for only $28!
After dim sum, we walked through a bit of downtown headed for the east river. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (it’s only about a mile) and ended up at a riverside park in Brooklyn. There, we got ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (I’d never heard of it but it was delicious) and walked around taking pictures of the Manhattan skyline and enjoying Jon and Val’s company for another couple of hours. We took the subway back towards the NYU area and visited Jon’s apartment. It was fun to see where he’s been living for the past couple of months since I’ve only seen him a couple of times since graduation. And it was great to see how happy he is here and how he’s settled in to his new home in the big city.
Audrey and me on the Brooklyn Bridge
Part of the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge
After leaving Jon and Val, we headed back to Times Square to try for more lottery and rush tickets at other shows. We ended up in the wrong places at the wrong times and didn’t end up with any of the shows that we were hoping for. We did, however, happen to stumble upon a lotto for Godspell, a musical loosely (very loosely) based on the gospel of Matthew. My name was called for the tickets and I happily secured two front row tickets for less than $30 apiece. (At the time, we definitely didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but more on that later.)
Winning the lottery for tickets to Godspell
After a quick lunch at the strangest excuse for an “Amish Market” I’ve ever seen, we headed back for the show at the Circle in the Square Theater. Definitely the weirdest theater I’ve ever seen, the stage is actually round and has seating on all sides. The “seats” that we bought were actually “stageside” cushions on the ground so that, sitting, we were actually at about chest level with the stage. The whole show was really interactive and the actors kept coming over, whispering to us, and even occasionally pulling somebody up on stage. It was completely opposite of everything that Porgy & Bessoffered- it was fun, light hearted, interactive, flashy, and just a really good time all around. There were trampolines, confetti cannons, absurd costumes, and lots of hilarity. I could have reached out and touched each actor at some point during the show we were so close. We had a lot of fun watching and interacting with the show, they even had free “wine” (grape juice) on the stage for the audience during intermission. At one point they even quoted some of the same scripture we heard at church this morning during the performance- definitely not something I expected. The end of the show was pretty surprising though. They skipped the resurrection! They crucified Jesus and then took bows. What?!? Who does that?!? They left out the best part!! I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone rap passages from the Sermon on the Mount though, so it had that going for it. I was really disappointed with the ending and realized, as I thought about it more, that they’d left out most of the actual “Who was Jesus” content, even though the entire musical was passages from Matthew. Strange. We went to the stage door again, but this cast seemed much less excited to see us than last night’s. But all told, we had a really fun night with the performance.
Jumping for joy for Godspell
I'm pretty sure the real Jesus looked absolutely nothing like this Broadway actor
A thought for today: public transportation here is a breeze. This morning was also our first time trying the bus system and we did just fine on that as well. Other cities should take a note from the NYC playbook. The whole city is incredibly simple to navigate, not only because of the numbers and grid of the city, but also because the public transportation is clear, extensive, and incredibly easy to use. We’ll both be pros at using the subway and buses by the end of the week. Or maybe by tomorrow.