So a bunch of internet fangirls meet up in NYC to see a beloved actor perform off-Broadway.
There are so many ways this can go.
But first things first… don’t take the SuperShuttle from JFK to midtown Manhattan. Oh, hell, don’t fly into JFK at all, really. That was our first mistake. The shuttle was really just a continuation of the original error. And it was a doozy. Maybe it was traffic, maybe it was insanity, whatever – but it was truly an eye-opening two hour ride. Yes, I said TWO hours.
Ok, big deal, right? Well, it feels like a big deal if you haven’t eaten in 10 hours. Remember, they don’t feed you on airplanes these days. They can’t. If they did they might have to give you a plastic knife, and that’s a real no-no.
Anyway. The single most amazing thing about the City of New York to this small town girl was the garbage. It was everywhere. No trash cans, just mountains of blue bags on every part of every street. It figures we’d arrive just in time for garbage pick-up, doesn’t it? It was surreal. I don’t even think the people who pick up garbage are on strike right now. I can’t imagine what the city looks like when they are. Or what it must smell like.
New York City in January. My husband shook his head in disbelief as I planned this vacation. He thought I was a little bit crazy. But the whole trip was based on crazy, I’ll be the first to admit that. It was a meeting of my Internet Girls. We all met on the showtime.com bulletin boards because we all loved the same television series. When the show ended and the bulletin board shut down we moved our happy safe little rooms to a place called LiveJournal and just kept talking.
So here are the Internet Girls, taking a trip to the Big City to see one of our favorite actors perform in a play. Hoping to look into his eyes and get an autograph.
Yes. I’m a woman over 30. I’ve never gone seeking an autograph ever before in my life. Not even as a teenager. So I’m pretty comfortable calling this trip crazy.
My husband accompanied me to New York because we have a rule that goes something like this: No meeting internet people alone.
But the girls were all regular people, and everybody was just the way they portrayed themselves on-line. Thank god. Imagine how uncomfortable that could be – sharing a hotel room with an icky person. Whoa. Scary.
8 women and my husband. He’s a tolerant fellow, isn’t he? This is how much fun he had: “Well, now I’ve seen NYC and I never have to go back.”
This is how much fun we girls had: “Think we can swing another trip in the fall?”
We saw: Times Square, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Ground Zero, Fire Station # 10, Battery Park, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Starbucks on every corner, various deli’s on every opposite corner, parts of Christopher Street, a whole lot of the subway system, and a lot of really tall buildings. Really tall. A lot of them. In fact most of my pictures contain some kind of building against some kind of sky because I was a tourist dork who couldn’t stop looking up.
We didn’t see: Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty close up, the works of Picasso at the Whitney, The Bronx Zoo, the Brooklyn Bridge and way too many other things to list. We only managed a fraction of the sights.
But we saw the play. And we met the actor. And we got autographs. It was all good.
I never imagined that typing on an internet bulletin board would lead me to New York City. Or that I’d ever make a crazy trip just to get an autograph. Or take a picture of my girlfriend kneeling in front of Bill Clinton. But perhaps that’s a story for another time…
Sometimes a dream you never knew you had comes true.
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