I love Broadway shows and live theater anywhere it is performed. One of the biggest losses during the pandemic was live music, theater and entertainment and I miss it. My friend, Ken Davenport, is a Broadway producer, sometime guest to my program and the most organized cheerleader for his craft I have ever seen has a great blog called the Producer’s Perspective and he talks everything Broadway there. He will join us next week on The Martha Zoller Show.
Let me back up for a moment. I am old enough to remember New York City in the 1970s and through my dad, hear stories all the way back to the 1920s. My dad was from Jersey City but worked in New York on Wall Street before World War II. Tragically, the owner of the firm he worked for and many of the men he worked with were killed in the war and he wasn’t able to come back to the company after the war. In some ways, he never recovered from that career blow. We travelled to New York City often, taking the Chrysler family car from Atlanta to NYC. The city was a mess in the 70s with many unsafe places. In the 80s, I travelled there regularly for business, and it was coming back but there were still “peep shows” in Times Square. By the 90s, when I was taking my children there, families were back, it was safe everywhere and Times Square was filled with bright lights and Disney shows. I love NYC.
Getting Broadway back safely is essential to getting tourists and residents back to “the city.” I believe Mayor DeBlasio was not the best person to navigate the pandemic in NYC. Also, because the subway system is controlled from the state government, someone thought it was a good idea not to close down the system for regular cleaning until late May 2020. Seems like that would have been the first thing you did when you had healthcare workers taking the train and everyone was in lockdown. I have said I will not hold people to what they said in March or April of last year, and I will stick to that.
But I am looking forward to going to New York soon. I will be in Long Island next weekend for a talk radio convention and then my daughter and I are going late in the year or early next year to resume our annual trip to see Broadway shows. New York will be back, but it might take a Republican Mayor.
