I was in New York City yesterday; not for St. Patrick’s Day, but to see an opera (it was the best scheduled performance I could get at the Metropolitan Opera, so I gave up my scheduled subscription seat at the Walnut Street Theater and took a performance there on another day just for this privilege). St. Patty’s Day is as big an event in NYC as in Chicago or Philadelphia, with the added big attraction being it is a city that never sleeps and, therefore, can handle huge hordes of revelers at all hours, even after March 17 became March 18. My intention was to be out of there well before that.
The city was in a strange condition when I arrived on the early bus (the only one I could get), as Broadway was almost a ghost town with everybody crowding to Fifth Avenue for the festivities. It did give me an opportunity to go places which would otherwise be crowded. The main qualifier for emptiness was that none of them served alcohol.
Imagine walking into a Starbucks with no line. Parts of Broadway were undergoing one of many cosmetic changes which occur with the city reinvents itself from its most famous block outward: stores had relocated, while others shut down over the past few months since I was there last. The parade participants dwindled as I walked toward Lincoln Center. Still the walking itself was wonderful, and I figured I did quite a few miles (forgot to strap on my pedometer at 6:00 in the morning, but my guess is about five to six miles overall).
Took a detour downstairs in the Shops at Columbus Circle to visit the Whole Foods market. The place is extraordinary compared to the one I visit in the progressive yet somewhat Luddite world of southern New Jersey. A huge fish called an Opa was on display on a table. The minute I pulled out my cell phone camera, a crowd followed along, snapping shots of the poor thing as it lay in state waiting for somebody to come to the seafood department and ask for it to feed a huge horde.
Once past the dwindling bunches of folks clad in green for the parade or baccanal, I headed into Lincoln Center to find that people removing their coats still wore green for the day, as did I. The performance was short (one act) but not without some–and the only negative–drama from my spot in the audience. A woman seated behind me, whom I assume is a subscription diva and possibly well-known as one with an attitude, poked the woman seated next to me as the house darkened, stating she could not see without some shrinkage in front of her, to which my seat partner curtly replied no without any further repercussions. At the conclusion came the real drama, when a dark shaft appeared within my eyesight to my right: it was the same diva, poking her walking cane over my shoulder to jab the woman seated in front of me who had stood to join an ovation for a performer at curtain call, with the same lament that she could not see. Perhaps she should’ve considered a small periscope.
So strangely enough, the best people in New York that day were the St. Patty’s Day celebrants, and the only problem person I encountered was inside a respectable establishment on the outskirts of the party and merriment part of town.
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