A Friday Night of Chinese Food and Shakespeare

Poor, Poor Husband was forced to endure a night of Shakespeare last night. How did I entice him? Simple…it was free! (if you know him, you understand that Husband likes cheap stuff). The fact that I offered to take him to Chinatown for cheap Chinese food helped encourage him to agree to my plan a little as well. Chinese and Shakespeare--was actually a really great night.

My day began with waiting in line for several hours to get the free tickets to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” According the website, tickets would be distributed starting at 1 pm, but the line always starts forming around 10am. What else does one do when they are unemployed? I went down to stand in line! Much to my dismay the line was already quite long and people looked like they had been there for hours. I made my way to the end of the line, and I found my spot over two blocks away from where Others came prepared with books, games and picnics; I came with…well…nothing. I then spent the next three hours listening to a group of people in front of me talk about the different shows they had been in and what all their famous friends were doing. That provided some level of entertainment.

When Husband returned from the law school we headed down to Chinatown. We haven’t had good Chinese food in several years so this was going to be a wonderful treat. After walking by countless little places and looking at the menus in the windows, we finally stopped at a quaint little hole-in-the-wall that had feathered ducks hanging in the window by their beaks. Husband said the place looked good… I wasn’t so sure! After a brief conversation, we arrived at a compromise: we would eat a few pieces of diem sum at that place, grab something of more substance from a street vendor, then hop on the subway and eat our dinner at Central Park.

Central Park was an experience in itself. We saw not only a lot of great sites, but also some interesting people. We saw one international traveler visiting the park with his family; from what I could gather, he was there with his two wives and children. Husband was quite intrigued, and wanted to know how he too could get a second wife (oh, yah… I hit him for that one). We stopped at one of the public restrooms, where Husband observed one man shaving in the restroom and another man giving himself a bath in the sink (what Husband found odd is that not that homeless men were at Central Park, but that the bathroom was cleaned spotlessly and immaculately kept up).

After all my waiting in line we ended up with pretty lousy seats, but who am I to complain when they are free (Husband, on the other hand, had no problem complaining to me about the lousy view). While we were fairly close to the front, we were on the very side of the amphitheater making viewing much of the play a little difficult. From our vantage point, the side, the show was quite good. I enjoy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and laughed quite a lot (I even caught a smile or two and a few chuckles coming from Husband).

The play ended at about 11 p.m. Husband and I ventured onto the subway at almost midnight, which we were both a bit apprehensive about. Fortunately, our entire journey was well lit, well protected, and we both felt completely safe. The difficult part ended up being trying to figure out what subways to take. Late at night, the subway schedule changes, so we needed to make an extra transfer (which wasn’t well marked at all). I need to say it was a good evening. Husband got Chinese food. I convinced Husband to come to a professional play. Best of all, the entire evening cost us not much more than $5 plus our subway fare. These are definitely experiences we would get nowhere else but New York.