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After a less-than-stellar wakeup at the Hilton in Port Chester, New York following a much-less-than-stellar performance by yours truly at a Ween concert the previous evening, I gave my head a proverbial shake to try and pull myself together, showered, coffeed, and took the hotel shuttle with m’lady down to the nearby train station.
It was November 27th, 2016 and we were midway through a two-night run of Ween shows at the Capital Theatre (well, she was anyway). Rarely satisfied to just sit idly in a hotel room all day, weeks before I had scoured the internet and discovered to my pre-booking delight that Baie-Saint-Paul’s greatest export, Cirque du Soleil, had a show running in NYC at the time, and it was one we hadn’t seen before.
Which made it a lock. Fortunately there were still cheap seats left for the matinee and we booked it.
By the time push came to shove I probably would have paid double to have bailed on the Cirque and spent the day recovering in the hotel room instead but I hadn’t, and into the city we went.
Walking towards Randall’s Island hunger and spare time led us straight into a Popeye’s, m’lady’s first time at the franchise. This being New York City and all, the staff served us through bulletproof glass and while we waited for our order two different people tried to bum change from us. Yes, while we were actually inside the Popeye’s.
One young guy with his designer jeans slung down around his kneecaps actually looked up from his iPhone 9, pulled one of his earbuds out and asked me if I could spare fifty cents.
“Sorry man,” I said, lying.
“Aw c’mon,” he said, looking positively insulted. “It’s only fifty cents!”
Then, while we were eating, another guy came to our table (again, inside the restaurant) and asked us for money. M’lady wasn’t enjoying her food at all so she offered her barely-touched chicken strips and fries to the guy. “Can I take the drink too?” he asked.
“No, sorry,” replied m’lady. “I’m going to drink that.”
“But you have a bottle of water right there,” he said, indignant.
“Sorry.” Dude picked up her box of chicken strips and walked off in a huff.
We continued on and walked across the bridge to the island, where the path (if you can call it that) led us through a policecar parking lot and through a concrete industrial area until finally we saw the candy-striped Grand Chapiteau in the distance.
The show was called Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities; it was a steampunk affair that centred around a scientist engaged in abstract time travel, or something like that. The important thing is that it was all wrapped up in the classic Cirque style, with constant movement wherever the eyes pointed, spacey live music, gibberish language, and two sets of mind-bending feats of strength, agility, flexibility, and creativity, with each act the result of unimaginable levels of practise and endurance.
One of the major strengths of the Cirque empire is how it can be so darn consistent without feeling at all repetitive, and Kurios was another perfect example. After the show we walked back from whence we came, passed right on by the Popeye’s with it’s crew of pushy panhandlers and got back on the train to Port Chester, where a couple hours of relaxation served me well for the upcoming evening of Ween.
Which is, of course, a whole other story.
Todd Man Out 