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The Angel Tour

On Saturday I did the Angel Tour. There was a lot of press about this and the NY Post kind of gave away most of the secrets, so I made sure to avoid their coverage. The Times piece about it had me hooked, though. I’m a huge fan of strange walking tours and constantly think up my own all the time. I’ve really liked the Soundwalks I’ve done and when I heard about this one, I was salivating. The meeting point was Roosevelt Island, which was a drag since it’s a hard to get to depressing place. I figured ‘Angel Tour’ that means you’ll take the gondola that runs alongside the Queensboro bridge. There was a note on the ticket to meet at the gondola, but when I got there, there was a little sign saying ‘Wait’. In the meantime, I was about a half hour early, so I ended up talking to a lady who was on time. The whole point was doing this tour by yourself, so we sat there for a while talking our heads off about what we thought was going to happen. And then a guy in a golf cart pulled up and she got in.

My golf cart took me to the southern tip of the island, past the Bauhaus nightmare of the new hospital and the crumbling 19th century old hospital, where Spider Man killed Willem Dafoe. At the very edge, which provides a great view of the old Pepsi sign in Queens, there was an open field with a trailer. Inside, a lady gave me a booklet and subway pass and told me to follow the instructions and ABSOLUTELY not to take any pictures. ‘Right….’ I thought. I just paid $90, so I can remember all this. Anyway, first shock was I had to take the subway (!) to 42nd Street.

The first location wasn’t that special. I had to go up to a mostly vacant apartment south of Bryant Park. It was pretty creepy, though, like you’d snuck in a serial killer’s apartment. There was lots of old religious iconography. And on a table, there were pages of the phone book ripped out, and names were circled in red. A pair of binoculars sat on the window ledge.

The next building was a couple of blocks away. I had to take an elevator up to thirty-somethingth floor, which was supposed to be… the angel’s locker room???

Yes, these are feathers.

This was pretty cool. Some of the lockers opened and there were some cool things inside. My favorite was an old dance card, dated 1910. And the dance slots were filled out!!!

The next stop was the Peep-O-Rama on 42nd Street. I was really psyched about this one because the Soundwalk tour made you walk into one of the porno stores on 8th Ave., which was awesome and terrifying. I noticed the Peep-O-Rama, of course, cause it’s one of the last vestiges of old Times Square and it’s right next to Tad’s steak house, which is another vestige of old gross TS. This was the first point where I thought this tour was genius. Because the facade of this building is all mirrored glass. And when you walk in, there’s a dark room and about six chairs set up so that you can sit there and watch people walk by. I was in love since the only time I ever get to sit there and truly scrutinize strangers is when I’m editing, so getting to ‘go live’ was completely wonderfull. And 42nd Street on a Saturday afternoon is a perfect place to do this.

The tours were set up so that you always had to be alone, so everyone was dispersed at 30 minute intervals. But this was the one point where everybody started to bunch up since no one could pull themselves away.

Behind the ‘peeping’ room was this dark scarifying room chock full of religious books. When I was sitting in the front room, a couple walked in off the street — I swear they thought this was still a porno place, cause they kinda ignorned the group of us looking out the window and went straight to the book room. I wish I was in the book room same time as them, just to see the disappointed look on their faces. They quickly left, very confused.

Next was Times Square, where I had to walk up to the tip of the ‘island’, where a very old-school nun was praying. Was this part of the tour? She was very cute and didn’t look like any of the nuns that used to bitch slap me at Resurrection of Our Lord in New Orleans.

The next show-stopper was One Times Square, which is the building where they drop the ball on New Years Eve. It seemed entirely abandoned now, but had a beautiful desecrated lobby. I’m convinced they also shoot all movies here where there’s a scene where somebody’s sitting at their desk over looking the ’square’ (think Broadway Danny Rose).

This was the part of the tour that I thought Jeremy would have freaked out over because you got to walk around a creepy midtown office space and there were stacks of dead computers .

The floor was made entirely of sugar. I got yelled at for taking pictures in here.

Okay, everyone who likes chain food has been here. This is the Applebee’s/Chillis next to Madame Toussaud’s in Times Sqare. I was thinking, what are they going to do here? I’ve been to Chillis about a trillion times. But there was a tiny masking tape arrow pointing you to a door on the first floor. Then I went through this ante-room and entered this ancient theater space. It must have been from the 19th century. It’s called the liberty theater and it was amazing. But there were a lot of ‘angels’, actors wearing wings, sitting the balcony completely silent. I stood by the door when I left to see if they’d all start talking, but I couldn’t hear anything.

The final stop was an empty office on the 62nd floor of the Chrysler Building. I was really hoping to get to go in the triangle windows part. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine, which I no longer think is going to happen. There were A LOT of angels up here. At this point I was pretty sick of the angels. But I did see some topless sunbathing on the roof of a nearby building.

So all told it was pretty fun. But not worth all the $$$s. I would have thought $40 would have seemed fair, though I imagine they must have had to spend a lot to get all these places and have the staff dress and prepare them every day for two weeks. It was a blast getting to go inside all these locations in midtown,

On the way through Grand Central, I saw this Kenneth Cole window, which reminded me a lot of the St. Roch’s cemetary in New Orleans.

Later that afternoon I picked up my first Junior’s cheesecake and went to a BBQ at my sister’s house in Windsor Terrace.

Tonight I was looking for pictures of Joe D’Amato of Screw Magazine/’Fuck You’ fame because of his uncanny likeness to Danny Luck, former land lord and instead found this amazing site. I’m joining today.

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