Post-171: In New York City (Part V, Under the Christmas Tree Like It’s 1999)

Previous Post: Part IV, “Paying Up”
Another post about cruising around Manhattan in Dec. 2013:
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I was inside Radio City Music Hall once, but not in 2013. It was back in ’99. That was the first time I went to New York City. It was on a school trip. The school rented a “charter bus” and we left at 4:00 AM, arriving back after midnight. I remember walking up the inner-stairs of the Statue of Liberty in ’99, and being amused by the substantial amount of graffiti on every square inch of that staircase, written over many decades.

I have another ’99 memory: In the evening, we watched
some kind of singing-and-dancing thing inside Radio City Music Hall. Our English teacher who was chaperoning us 8th-graders — a brash, humorous, selfconsciously-Irish, native-Chicagoan — decided that she was bored and wanted to see “the tree”, so conspicuously bailed out on the dancing down below. I was among the defecting grouplet. (Mrs. Brown later got a talking-to by somebody about that stunt). This was the same tree, I think:
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Next to this Rockefeller Christmas Tree were white flags, regally swaying. Ice skating below:
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Guess what a 90-minute session of ice skating there costs. — Per person, including skate rental, it’s $39! Geez, I say.