I'm the King (or Queen) of New York! Monday, April 7

Up early to catch the train to the World Trade Center today, passing once again through all the marshy areas on the way into NYC from New Jersey. It’s an interesting mix of natural waterways and rusty industrial buildings. Yesterday I saw a fox trotting along a railway.

Today’s first event was the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Museum. After the security line, complete with metal detectors like the airport, we boarded the ferry. It wasn’t terribly full, but there were more people than I expected first thing on a chilly April morning. Lady Liberty waited patiently for us, and it was interesting to learn that the statue had caused some controversy at its beginning.

The French donated the statue; many, many French citizens donated money for the project. The U.S. needed to raise funds for the pedestal and the costs of erecting the statue. People in New York felt like the whole country should contribute, while people elsewhere in America thought it should be New York’s project. Less affluent people complained that this was just one more rich person’s crazy outsized posturing, while wealthy people were complaining that the statue was too populist. Eventually they raised the necessary money. Even  the statue that became our national symbol was divisive.

Joseph Pulitzer, who later established the Pulitzer Prize, came from a wealthy Hungarian family and became wealthy in his own right as a newspaper magnate. He used his “New York World” newspaper to criticize both sides of the argument, and he helped goad Americans into ponying up the money.

To get to Ellis Island, you just get back on the ferry. This time it was a bit fuller, and it helped us explain the concept of steerage. At Ellis Island, we ate from the café is still basically closed from Hurricane Sandy—they have some limited food choices available at a counter, and you are left to find a small spot on the floor to eat it. I think the prices are the same as when they offered lovely seating in a room full of windows. We were the only Americans I saw who were dumb enough to pay that price—all the other people seated around us were Europeans, who think this is still a pretty cheap meal. After seeing the museum, we looked up a few family members in their databases. We found Ed Hunderman, who might have been Brian’s great great uncle, and I found a Markus Boersma who came at age 17 in 1913 and may very well have been my grandfather.

Our own tired, huddled masses.

When we were ready to go, we boarded the ferry one last time. This time it was packed to the gills, and we stood just inside the door, trying to stay out of the bulk of the wind. At this point we felt way more kinship to the tired, huddled masses. Those boat crossings, which took weeks instead of minutes, must have been very difficult for some.

After getting off the ferry we walked to the South St. Seaport, the former Fulton St. Fish Market, in an area that really suffered after 9/11, and then from Hurricane Sandy, and it is starting to come back to life with a kind of funky atmosphere. We were there to try to get discounted same-day Broadway tickets. They weren’t offering “Wicked” or “Lion King” tickets, so we got tickets to “Newsies.” We took a gander at the Brooklyn Bridge, stretching over one more span of water.

Afterwards we wandered around a few minutes, trying to figure out the bus line in the area. This is where, if I did not already love and want to have Brian around, he becomes an absolute necessity. He can figure out train lines and bus lines and get us going in the right direction. Alone and faced with an urban public transportation map, I would probably just go back to my hotel, assuming I could find it. We took a bus to Lower East Side, a bus loaded with kids from Chinatown coming home from school. The bus took us right through Chinatown, which was an easy and fun, if brief, way to see it.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a great follow-up to the Statue of Liberty. This old building has been stabilized (barely) and fitted out to show what life was like in the late 1800s as immigrants moved in and tried to establish lives in the United States. There are about 8 different tours, but we happened to show up at the right time for the Irish Outsiders tour. This is not a cheap museum, and if we were to do it again, we would take the time to look through all possible tours to choose the one that we were most interested in and make a reservation to make sure we got it. As it was, this particular Monday was not a busy day, and they could make room for us fairly easily.

We were taken up into the old bones of the building to see what an apartment would have looked like at the time (no pics allowed, sorry). They gave us the history of one family who lived there for a year, the Moores, a history cobbled together from public records and a family member’s reminiscences. The Moores each came as teenagers from Ireland, found jobs, found each other, and started a family under some very trying circumstances. In 15 years the Irish population in New York went from negligible to 40% of the city, so racial bias ran high. The information presented is well-researched, and Brian and I would both like to go back some day to take a couple of the other tour options.



The Tenement Museum is in an older neighborhood, obviously, with a mix of older businesses and newer, hipper things. After turning down suggestions from a certain 10-year-old that we eat at McDonalds or the corner pizza joint, we found good food at Goodfellas. Great food (they even served Founders IPA!) relaxed atmosphere, mainly locals there, and best desserts ever.



Andrew, always entertaining, at Goodfellas

Mmm, dessert.

At the restaurant we wondered how we would kill the next 3 hours until we needed to be at “Newsies.” We left with maybe 15 minutes more than we needed to get to Broadway. It was really raining now, and we battened down the hatches to make the trek to the Nederlander Theater—what other theater would a 100% Dutch family expect to attend?

Brian got us on the subway. As the train climbed over a river, he looked out the window and said “Oh no. We’re going the wrong direction.” Truly, this would happen to me EVERY TIME if I were the navigator. But it’s an unusual occurrence for him. The next stop was a long way from where we got on. We got off, ran down and around to the other side, and got back on the subway in the other direction. Our musical was starting at 7:30, and we got off the train at 7:28. We raced through the pouring rain and into the theater, and the musical had just begun. The usher assured us this was no big deal and after the first song, she ushered 5 drowned rats into the very front row.

Our front row seats were on the side, at the spot where the stage angles at the audience. Many times we had one of the actors approximately 3 feet from our faces. We learned a few things from this. Like, the actors sweat a lot. They also spit quite a bit. Natalie said we were sitting in the Splash Zone, like at SeaWorld when you sit where Shamu can slap his tail at you. We could also see one actress’s bracelet snap, sending a spray of beads all over the stage.

When the newsboys strike against the evil Joseph Pulitzer (yes, the very same newspaper magnate who brought you the Statue of Liberty), they crinkle up papers and throw them into the audience. Brian mortified his teens by getting out of his seat to grab one off the netting over the orchestra pit, and it is now Allison’s new treasure. We could peer over the rim of the orchestra pit and watch the percussionist working hard. He even chatted with us through the screen during the intermission. About halfway through the show I started wondering what possessions we could sell at home to pay for 5 more Broadway tickets the next night.

When you sit that close, you realize the physical strength and dance talent needed to do this. When they flipped and twirled and slid across the stage to “I’m the King of New York” we started to wonder how they do it every night and still keep it exciting for the audience. But they did.

I was so tired by the end of the show that a musical the next night was completely out of the question. Allison fell asleep on the train ride home—think we’ll get up a bit later tomorrow, that girl is wiped out.