November 5 – Day 60: The Final Full Day

Was a bust in some ways.

Way back early in this whole process, when I started mentioning restaurants, Pidge’s niece’s husband (an FBI agent!) recommended a place in Little Italy—Parisi’s Bakery—that he used to go to when they lived in the city.

I’d neglected to go (mainly because I’d forgotten about it), even though a sandwich place that bakes its own bread—and has been doing so since 1903—sounds right up my alley. I’d gotten to sleep really late on Sunday, so I slept late, with plans to go over and up and down and up and down the island. I was going to start in Little Italy, then head up to 45^th, then go back to TriBeCa, then back up to 51^st, then back home.

The first step involved walking over to Mott Street. My map wanted me to head to Houston, then west, but I find Houston an incredibly boring street and wanted to avoid it, which meant just cutting east and south through various streets and alleys to get where I wanted to go, which I found much more interesting route, despite the intermittent rain. I finally arrived at Parisi’s a little before 3:00, only to discover two staffers cleaning up—which is never a good sign to someone who wants to eat. As I walked in, I was taking my earbuds out of my ear so I didn’t hear what the woman said to me. I turned off my podcast, asked her to repeat it, and learned that they’d sold out of bread for the day and were closed, so I was out of luck.

 I'll get there eventually.

Since I hadn’t eaten breakfast, I was hungry, so I started looking for someplace that looked passable and came across the Fiat Café across the street, a restaurant that confused me (not hard, I know, but go with me here). For whatever reason, the place is named after an Italian car (and there are little model Fiats all over the place) and the menu is Italian-based, but the people who run it are extremely French (the nice friendly kind of French, I hasten to add; not the snotty tourist-hating French—though they were extremely loud when some Francophones came in). I looked at the menu, thought “this’ll do,” and went in, although it did take me a few minutes to settle on an order, which ended up being a meatball panini and a hot tea. While it was a good panini, it was a little blander than I’d have liked, so I had to do what I could to spice it up. The service couldn’t have been friendlier, though, and when I went downstairs—way downstairs—to use the restroom, the cooks were all eating stuff from the restaurant, which is always a good sign to me. It was a very cozy place to spend a rainy afternoon, and I might have stayed longer if I hadn’t had to get uptown by 5:00.

 Fiats, Fiats, Fiats ...

I was headed to 45^th between 10^th and 11^th for the annual membership meeting of SDC, the directors’ and choreographers’ union (of which I’m an associate member, and which I encourage all directors and choreographers to join). It wasn’t so much that I wanted to go to the meeting (though I was curious if I’d see anyone I knew) than it was that I wanted to say hi to Pam MacKinnon, who’s the president of the union and the new head of ACT.

When she came to town, I threw a “welcome to San Francisco” get-together for her, inviting the nearly-50 SDC members in the Bay Area. Only about ten or twelve of them were able to make it—though considering how well it all went, that was enough. We had a lot of good conversation about the challenges of working in the theatre, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Ever since I attended the Directors’ Lab West in Pasadena in 2004, I’ve been trying to find a way to get directors together in a non-competitive way to discuss the things we all go through, but never get a chance to talk about with our peers, and this was the first step toward that. I’m planning on making it as regular an event as I can, and just wanted to reconnect with Pam. My other reason is actually something I don’t feel ready to talk about yet, but it involved speaking to Howard Sherman, whom I’d met when I visited the SDC offices a few weeks ago.

I left the restaurant at about 4:15 and walked through the wet streets to catch the R, took that to 42^nd and the south end of Times Square, but cut over on 8^th to go uptown. As always, that part of midtown is a mystery to me and the streets were deserted enough (because of the weather and the fact that there’s just nothing around there) that it felt like I’d gone into a time warp and was in the 1950s. I reached the building where the meeting was, took the elevator to the second floor, found the meeting, and realized it had actually started at 4:00, and that I’d missed the first 45-50 minutes. Frankly, though, I mostly wasn’t regretful, because it was a lot of talking about matters that—as someone who’s not directing at high levels on a regular basis—didn’t affect me. The highlight for me was the discussion of the health plan, when one guy complained about having to spend $2400 a year when all he’d done health-wise was to get a $300 physical. I could almost literally hear people’s eyebrows knit in disbelief, and at one point, a bunch of people actually literally yelled out, “That’s why it’s called insurance!” and “That’s how it works!”

I saw Howard taking photos and mouthed to him “I have a question for you.” He understood, but had to leave early to return his rented camera. (I emailed him with the question, which mainly involved the idea of creating an online forum on the SDC site for directors to connect in a virtual equivalent of the get-together I’d held in San Francisco.)

When the meeting broke up around 6:00, I moved up to the front of the room, traded some words with Pam, moved to the back to pick over some of the snacks on the table (which were very good), then headed over to Port Authority to meet someone downtown on the matter I don’t want to talk about. (So why am I mentioning it?) I got on the A to go downtown, realized I was on the wrong train, got off, realized I had been on the right train after all, then had to wait for an E to get where the other train would have taken me in the first place.

I came up to the sidewalk, and my unerring sense of direction took me in the wrong direction yet again, so I turned around, found the Starbucks I was looking for just as the other person found me, and we went in. It was an odd Starbucks in that there were plenty of tables, but nowhere near enough chairs. I’d ordered my tea on my app, so when it was suggested we move to the Dunkin Donuts across the street, the idea was a non-starter. We sat on a window ledge until two chairs opened up, then moved to a table to continue. Suffice it to say, the meeting left us both very hopeful. (More to come …) Oddly, at one point, I tried to get on the Starbucks wifi, and the log on for the Dunkin Donuts came up, so I used their network.

When we were finished, I went back downstairs (the entrance was, of course, directly next to the Starbucks the whole time) and took an A to 49^th. On Saturday, at the closing night party, GG had told me about a gathering for former Bay Area actors at the House of Brews on 51^st. It was supposed to start at 9:00, and since I’d arrived at 8:30, I ordered a Manhattan at the bar. The email said we should just go upstairs, but when I did, it was a tiny area with just two small tables. I went back down, asked the hostess if she knew anything about the group, and (unsurprisingly) she didn’t. I decided to wait at a table next to the door until I saw someone—anyone!—I recognized.

A little after 9:00, I saw a couple that looked vaguely familiar come in and head immediately upstairs, so I followed them and was surprised to find that the upstairs was actually larger than the downstairs, and that there was some kind of happening in the back room. I went into that room and looked around, but still didn’t see anyone who looked familiar. The waitress asked me if I needed help and I explained who I was looking for, and she told me she didn’t know anything about actors, but that that was a birthday party.

By this time, it was 9:07, so I texted Julia (who had planned the whole thing) to make sure I was in the right place. Even though the email specifically said “Go to the House of Brews on 51^st, not the one on 46^th,” I wanted to be sure I hadn’t screwed it up. Julia assured me that she was just outside and about to come in, which she did, just moments later.

We talked for a few minutes, then people started coming in, including the actor whose visit from San Francisco prompted the get-together (along with his girlfriend and her cousin). GG and his girlfriend showed, and then another actor and director (for whom I’ve auditioned), so there were ultimately seven of us, which seemed about the right number.

I don’t know if it was because it was Monday, but our section of the bar was deserted except for us, so it was quiet enough that we could all talk and be heard, and we generally had a great time. I had another cocktail (which I didn’t feel at all—except it being way too sweet; it tasted like it had too much simple syrup) and some of the nachos I ordered for the table. I ended up talking to everyone—even the people I didn’t know that well—and GG and I made tentative plans to meet up when he comes to the Bay Area (where his parents live) in December.

As these things tend to do, it all broke up kind of spontaneously and simultaneously, and surprisingly and gratifyingly, the waitress had broken all our orders into separate checks. We paid, bid each other good night, and all headed home, I for the last time on this trip.

The rain had temporarily stopped, but it was still wet out—and a Monday—so the streets were mostly empty, which was nice. I did a final walk down St. Marks, then Avenue A (briefly considering stopping for a final ice cream), then home.

Over the past couple of months, I’d DVRed a lot of stuff (mainly movies on TCM), but there was no way I was going to get through all of it, so I went through the queue and deleted it all, along with removing all the season passes I’d set up. There were a couple of things I wanted to watch before I killed everything, though, so I did that, which kept me up late—again! My car to the airport was due at 1:30, and I needed time in the morning to run some errands and pack before I left. I had hoped to get to sleep no later than 3:00, but it was well after 5:00 before I turned out the light, and since I was getting up at 10:00, Tuesday morning was not going to be easy.