Bostonian in New York (Day 4 & 5)

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4/5
DAY 4 (January 8th, Thursday): Cronuts, The View (Baba Wawa?!? + Douchebag security guards), a train mishap and Murphy's Law

Below 10 weather does not deter people from getting their cronuts, apparently.

My cronuts alarm went off at 7am. We arrived at 6th avenue at 8am, right on the dot for when Dominique Ansel Bakery opens. Despite the 8 degree weather, there was a LINE. After waiting more than 2 hours for the Daily Show in the type of cold that would make a polar bear cry, I was so done with waiting. But, believe it or not, there were nearly 15 other psychos shivering their asses off in front of us. Thankfully, we were let in as a group at 8:10am. "Single file line, please," one of the bakers said, like we were 5-year olds in kindergarten again.

If there's a line like this on a dangerously frigid, off-holiday morning, I can only imagine what it's like in the summer. Therefore, I actually recommend getting cronuts in January instead of July. Cronuts, rich and seriously indulgent, are also more of a winter food in my book.

The cronut flavor this January is - get ready - caramelized malt valrhona milk chocolate w/maldon sea salt. Basically, it's caramel with sea salt and milk chocolate. I bought two, and my sister bought a Modern Black Forest. One of the cashiers shook her head at the sight of the amount of people willing to brave the wind chill for this. I shook my head at the people still ordering their frozen s'mores. My sister and I sat in "the Garden" which is actually a sunroom with nice lighting and accessible from the back of the bakery. Now for food porn..

Behold - the January 2015 cronut, Caramelized Malt Valrhona Milk Chocolate w/Maldon Sea Salt.
There is a very high chance that I just consumed an entire week's worth of calories in one sitting. No regrets.

A couple months back, I bought the "croissant doughnut", one of the many faux-nuts, the cronut's cheaper distant cousin by Dunkin Donuts. This does not compare to the real cronut. At all. Real cronuts are pricier at $5 each, but I would still save that $1.59 for the ~cronut experience~. It's not necessarily life-changing, but it's still mind-blowingly decadent and delicious.

My sister's Modern Black Forest. It's really a work of art.

The Modern Black Forest was a work of art that looked better than it tasted. I mean, that detail. That intricate white chocolate shell sitting on a tiny bed of chocolate-cherry cake. A tiny twig made of chocolate rolled in cocoa powder. Edible gold. Man. How can you eat this?

Not long after our nice cronut adventure, I took off to join middle-aged moms to wait in line for the afternoon taping of The View. My friend and I together scored 7 priority tickets, so we invited some friends and my sister. We arrived at ABC studios around 11, secured a place and were not let inside until almost 12. Before we passed through security, they passed out golden release forms; an alarm rang in my head because this indicated there would be some form of a giveaway. Ooh lala. They were also kind enough to offer snacks and drinks while we waited to be seated inside. Hands down, this was a million times better of a waiting experience than yesterday's for the Daily Show.

My sister was coming by a bit later due to a scheduling conflict, and I had asked a security guard a few times to ensure that she would be able to get a seat later on - after all, I had a priority ticket reserved for her. He repeatedly reassured me that it would be fine, she just needed to get here by a certain time. Lo and behold, my sister arrived 20 minutes before that time; however, most attendees were already inside the waiting room by then; plus, staff members had started to seat groups, and nobody was allowed to leave. Concerned, I spoke to an intern (these shows are run by interns, seriously) about how my sister was being kept outside despite how I was reassured that she would have a seat. So the intern said she would help figure things out. Long story short, after some of back and forth and more waiting, I was told that she would not be let in because "the studio was full" and that I could leave the waiting area to explain to her what happened, especially since the phone signal sucked in the room.

As I walked to the building entrance to meet my sister, who had been waiting outside in below 10 weather for more than 20 minutes, I was startled as a group of security guards began to yell snarky comments at me

"Awww, are you gonna kiss her goodbye?" one guard sneered at me in a high-pitched whine. "Give her a bigggg hug," another cracked. They (around 5 men) continued to throw snide remarks at me and laugh at each other's jeers as I reached the entrance to explain to my sis that I was sorry, the studio was filled, and I had no idea what happened because one second I was told one thing and another second, I was told the opposite. This experience left me with a very, very poor impression of some of the people working at The View. I would have understood if the show was in very high demand that day (it wasn't - in fact, there were at least 2 empty seats visible) and seats were quickly filled, but now I was being forced to deal with unsolicited reactions from a group of  security guards who decided they would spend their time ganging up and heckling a young woman. Just being there made me feel extremely uncomfortable and, ironically, even unsafe. I walked as fast as I could without making eye contact or acknowledging their comments.

Around 10 minutes later, as I was sitting in the studio waiting for the show to begin, the intern I had previously spoke with suddenly walked over and said, "Call your sister and tell her to go to the front door. Now." At first I just blinked, a bit stunned at what she was telling me and a bit miffed over the entire situation. Well, looks like someone had miscounted, and those 2 empty seats needed to be filled. Turns out that the moment that my sister picked up the call, she had just stepped onto the train home. And so she turned around and ran back out, all the way back to ABC studios.

That situation aside, the show itself was a mixed bag. Sadly, we missed Whoopi, who was absent for health reasons. But guess who came on instead? Freaking Baba Wawa! The one and only Barbara Walters. They jokingly welcomed her back with a massive spray of confetti.

View from my seat: Barbara Walters, Nicole Wallace, Cristela Alonzo, Rosie O'Donnell.
Sadly, no Whoopi today.

My favorite part of the show was during commercial breaks when there would be a Q&A with the co-hosts as well as when Rosie O'Donnell would spew hilarious rants about raising her son Parker ("It's like once they turn 16, they become possessed by Satan"). There was a lot of cheering and clapping. They even filmed us clapping at a pre-taped interview with Patrick Stewart that we never got to see - they just told us to clap, clap, clappity-clap. So to those curious about what goes on behind The View, there is quite a bit of script and methodical claptracks among the regular conversations and camaraderie (or lack of) between the co-hosts. In general, Rosie and Barbara were great together. I wasn't sensing that much chemistry among the hosts, however. At one point, Nicole Wallace enthusiastically invited Barbara to "go puppy shopping" with her, right after learning that Barbara's very beloved dog Cha-Cha had recently passed. Kind of awkward.


Overall, being a part of the audience is always a fun experience. I love the contagiously happy and jittery atmosphere, cheering and hooting with others in a derived but genuine way.   Being so close to the co-hosts was  surreal, and most of my favorite moments were off camera during commercial breaks - getting to see Rosie do stand-up and the Q&A with the co-hosts.

The least fun part was having to sit through what felt like the never-ending antics of their warm-up comedian, who my friend pretty accurately described as see-sawing between kind of funny to creepy and uncomfortable. There were plenty of awkward, cringe-worthy moments - joking about old ladies in the audience wanting to get lap dances from the young men in the audience (what the heck...?), inviting this poor granny to twerk onstage (please, just no), asking us to continuously clap and cheer for some poor boy he thought resembled Harry Styles (he didn't). Lots of granny jokes and boy jokes and granny/boy jokes and awkwardness. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Mario Cantone made a surprise appearance (he was there for the morning show) and cracked some joke comparing holding the audience in the studio to the ebola quarantine...that was pretty awkward, too.

Now, I normally love stand-up and improv, and I have a relatively higher tolerance for humor that others may find offensive. But lots of the "comedy" today was poor in taste, slapstick and void of wit, awkward and forced. Thankfully, television watchers won't get to see that because most of it took place during commercial breaks. I was bummed. Overall, the only comedy I enjoyed came from Barbara Walters and Rosie O'Donnell.

The View's giveaway: a Centrum goodie bag!

Finally, at the end, it was announced that all audience members would receive a goodie bag! Woohoo. It was a like a reward for clapping my hands numb and having to witness the warm-up comedian and three young men twerking against a granny onstage.

It was a little past 2pm when the show ended, and we stopped by the local Empire Szechuan to grab a quick and affordable lunch. I had the chicken and cashew lunch combo - satisfying American Chinese for roughly $8, but nothing outstanding.

Nomming on some American Chinese at Empire Szechuan Village

FYI "Kao ya" = Roast duck. It does not mean "sauce" like this trickster fortune cookie says. 

After that, I made a mad dash to Chinatown to grab some last minute pastries to bring home before catching my 6pm bus. BUT little did I know that there were some ridiculous train delays going on between the Chinatown/Brooklyn area. On our way downtown, the craziest thing happened. The train door wouldn't close properly because it was so crowded and people were standing far too close. The doors were doing this weird hiccuping open-close-open-close dance, and during an opening, a man tried to slide through. But then the door closed on his backpack. And the door freaking JAMMED. The entire train was now stalled because there was a large object sandwiched between its doors. People were getting increasingly agitated. Someone yelled, "Thanks for holding us up!", to which the man quipped, "You'll be fine." In the middle of this ordeal, me and my sister couldn't help but burst into laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation. Repeated screams to "open the train door!" proved futile. The train operation announced over the intercom that they were "investigating" what the issue was, which either pissed or amused everyone in our cart even more. Eventually, some woman waiting outside the train began pushing the backpack into the train while the man pulled. It was quite the struggle, but when the backpack was eventually freed from the jaws of the train door and the trains doors snapped close, everyone in our cart cheered and hooted, immensely relieved that we could finally move on and get going.

And then, the train operator decided to take the train out of service.

Given no choice, we filed outside, had wait for the train to leave and then wait for another train to come. If there's anything I've learned from this trip, it's simply: waiting sucks. Waiting really sucks.

The first bakery I spotted when I finally dashed out of the subway station was a familiar one: hello again, Good Century Cafe. I got two taro buns, a coconut bun, a pork bun and a combination lunch box as my dinner to-go, all for under $8. Gotta love Chinatown. Then, we rushed back to the dorm to grab luggage and made a run for the 6pm bus. It was all a blur.

We reached the bus stop at 6:05pm.

And in one of the rare instances since we've been taking GoBuses (which has been years), the bus had departed on its scheduled time. Amazing. It was just me, my sister and another lady who had arrived a few minutes later - also hindered by train delays - standing on the sidewalk with no bus in sight, exhausted. If I could name this afternoon like a chapter in a book, it would be called Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

So we trudged in the ice cold night back to the dorm, and I resigned myself to my combination lunch box (which I do not recommend; I would just stick to their baked goods) and another night in the sleeping bag.

Day 4 Food total: $20.85

Day 5-ish (January 9th, Friday): Leaving the city

Thankfully I was able to get on the 8am bus as a standby. The past four days have been incredibly fun, cold and quite the learning experience.

• I can now take the subway with confidence.
• I've learned that good food can come cheaply, especially in Chinatown. It just so happens that my costliest meal was also the worst tasting meal.
• Some things in life are worth the wait; others, not so much.
• When an activity calls for waiting outside, its advisable to do it in the summer. Or at least, not when it's dangerously cold outside.
• Always have cash on hand for food.
• I can't wait to come back.

No, I did not see the 50 Shades! The Musical Parody debut at the Elektra Theater, and sadly, I left before the No Pants Subway Ride took place. But, someday, I will return. With tickets to shows (Broadway? SNL? Who knows?), an open mind and a deeper appreciation for the city that never sleeps.