I was 19 years old on my maiden voyage to the big scary city. I took the train from Trenton where I was at school. I had a role in a production of the United States Steel Hour. For all you kids out there. TV was live in 1962 and you had to be there. I stayed at the Barbizon Hotel For Women (just like the movie Stage Door, with Kathryn Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.) The US Steel Hour drama was called "Street of Love" and starred Millie Perkins and Doug McClure, neither of whom talked to us lowly cast members.
Every broadway show I went to was memorable especially my first which was "The Unsinkable Mollie Brown", starring Tammy Grimes.
I had the real working girl experience when I stayed at a friends west side apartment while working as a model at the Catalina swim suit showroom.
Lunch at Windows on The World at the top of the world trade center with a gaggle of my misfit friends was a unique experience where we laughed until we cried and looking back on it a kind of surreal day.
I've watched football in Yankee Stadium (Army/Oklahoma), eaten in Chinatown, shopped in Bloomies, had a carriage ride through central park, ice skated at Rockefeller Center, enjoyed the MOMA and the Met, toured one of the largest transatlantic cruise ships in the world, rode the Staten Island ferry, and yes got thrown out of the Playboy Club and mistaken for a hooker at a hooker bar and way too much more to tell.
The day I took the DH to the city was exceptional. We walked in Central Park, where he got taken by a hustler, saw "Le Cage Aux Folles" on broadway, and had dinner at the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center where I must say, we were treated like royalty.
Me and New York go back a long way. The city has always intimidated and excited me and my feelings in that respect probably put me in good company.
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