So this is neat. I’m going to be in NYC next weekend. I’ll be staying at The New Yorker Hotel, which is also neat.

It’s located in the Garment District, which is cool if you’re into Project Runway. But it’s also the location where, in 1943, Nikola Tesla up and died… and that is GEEK HISTORY, MAN!!

Other bits of, “No way! WAY?! So cool!” history associated with the hotel include Spencer Tracy staying there, as well as Joan Crawford, and both the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Tommy Dorsey Band played there regularly.

While in the city I will be having dinner at Mario Batali’s Del Posto.

Hopefully the actual restaurant is less tilt-y

Mario is originally from here in Seattle, and the local boy has done very good, so it seems fitting to visit one of his many places where you put food in your mouth.

What I am most excited about though, (being a proper theatre nerd) is seeing Follies! at the Marquis Theatre.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I am a HUGE Stephen Sondheim fan, and while it also would have been awesome to  see The Book of Mormon, they are sold of tix until April of next year (even for the crap seats)… and I was afraid that the same would be true for Follies!… but we got really lucky with some pretty decent last minute seats.

I am so excited to see what has been hailed as one of the (if not THE) finest productions of one of the greatest musicals EVER WRITTEN. On top of that, the star performer is Bernadette Peters! She is Broadway Royalty!

Bernadette with my favorite fuzzy, felt-y, people!

Not only is she Broadway Royalty, but you could argue that she is royalty because of her association with Sondheim musicals. Sondheim himself has praised her as “flawless” and she has appeared in numerous productions of his shows over the span of her career, going all the way back to when she was just 13 and understudying “Dainty June” in the second nat’l tour of Gypsy – for which Sondheim had written the lyrics. So, the prospect of seeing HER in one of Sondheim’s greatest works on BROADWAY…well… I’m trying hard not to vibrate out of my seat from the excitement.

This is my umpteenth trip to NYC. It’s one of my absolute favorite cities to visit (would NOT want to live there, though…I’m way too west coastie to handle the pace) and there’s something so nice about going to a place as large and complicated as NYC and feeling totally comfortable navigating the landscape. It’s kind of like having a vacation cottage in the woods to get away to, except the cottage is a multi-story hotel and the woods are Central Park.

I’ll be sure to take photos and share my experiences when I get back! You can also follow my Twitter Feed to see what I’m up to when I’m in the city next week.