Meat-Eaters In New York

People in New York walk very quickly. Pregnant women can have trouble keeping up.

We were late or almost late everywhere we went in New York City this weekend, so we were always in a hurry. Starting with a rushed dinner and a quick walk to Mary Poppins on Friday, we rushed all the way through Saturday, barely making it to our basketball game, lunch, Spelling Bee, and dinner. It was a frantic pace, and R found herself lagging a little behind. She described it as "waddling." When the day was over, we had managed to get to all of our events, but we were worn out. Even our seasoned New York host (my brother T), crashed on the couch at the end of the night, without enough energy to change out of his clothes.

How about some of the fascinating details:

The basketball game was on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem. It was inside a church, so it wasn't the type of outdoor, playground experience that you might envision. It was too cold for that type of thing, anyways. The gym was so small that the 3-point line hardly had a chance to arc before it hit the sidelines. It was kind of like playing basketball on a volleyball court. We arrived to the gym just before the jump ball. My brother was the star of the show, leading us to a lopsided victory. Wearing some of our damp clothes, we had to walk many blocks to catch the subway home, through a biting wind. Later, we realized that we could have driven our car, since parking is abundant near the chapel. We are idiots.

We had some time for a meal before going to see The 25 Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. We didn't have a lot of time, so we had to scrap our plans for brunch at a place on Madison Avenue (where the line extended out the door) and opted for the Jackson Hole restaurant just down the street. Instead of your typical brunch food, we decided to try the burgers, because Jackson Hole has a reputation for fantastic burgers (according to my brother). I caught a look at the grill and realized why -- the burgers were so large that the gravy bowls they put over them (to cook faster, I presume) were hardly large enough to contain all the meaty goodness. I found out later that these burgers are 7 ounces -- nearly half a pound. They looked even bigger than that. If you go, don't bother ordering the platter, since you won't be that interested in the fries by the time you've finished the burger. R's burger was so large, and so completely buried in toppings (fried mushrooms, onions and green peppers), that she ended up eating it with a fork, kind of like a cheeseburger salad.

The Spelling Bee was a fantastic show. Whereas Mary Poppins had been an enormously ornate show with fantastic singing and somewhat weak dialogue, Spelling Bee was a intimately quirky show with fantastic dialogue and somewhat weak singing. Both of them were great, but I think I enjoyed Spelling Bee more -- probably for two reasons: 1) because I'd never seen the story before; and 2) because I love witty dialogue more than anything. That's why I loved The Drowsy Chaperone so much.

Now, no day in New York is complete without getting stuck in traffic trying to cross a bridge. A 10-minute car trip out to Queens turned into nearly an hour as we made a wrong turn and ended up in traffic gridlock in the Bronx. Finally, we arrived at cousin Kage's place for dinner and a movie. She brought the meatloaf and we brought the cheesecake.

A fantastic ending to a fantastic day in the big city --
A day filled with meat.