Only in New York #6: Urban camping

Back in the day, when I was young and naive and thought New Yorkers were particularly strange, I featured several posts labeled "Only in New York." Come to find out, after living here for a few years, I've turned into kind of a crazy person myself.

On Friday night, Lauren, Bethany, Hannah and I decided to camp out for Saturday Night Live tickets. Our fav Taylor Swift was hosting and performing as the musical guest, so we were dying to go! SNL tickets are virtually impossible to come by, though, making the standby ticket experience... well, quite an experience! Numbers are given out at 7am on Saturday, and we arrived on a sidewalk at 30 Rock around 6pm Friday for a night of urban camping.

Knowing that the low that night was somewhere in the ballpark of 32 degrees, we prepared ourselves for a long night. This included beach chairs, puffy coats, coffee, snacks, books and magazines and earmuffs.








Seriously, we were rockin' and rollin' for the first half of the night. We discussed our favorite candy for at least 45 minutes (chocolate bar, chocolate piece, non-chocolate, with sub-categories for movie theatre and trick-or-treating), and, around 11pm, we ordered a Papa John's pizza to be delivered to us at 30 Rock, a BRILLIANT idea from Lauren.

However, around 3am, it started getting cold. REAL cold. According to our iPhones, at one point around 4am, the windchill was below freezing. We were sleepy but couldn't really conk out (we were on a sidewalk in New York City in beach chairs, after all).

Luckily, we rallied through. I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban around 5am. Bethany and I switched places so I could stretch my legs and she could enjoy the chair. And around 6am, the sun started rising. We stood up, gathered our things and prepared to get our number.

Once at the front of the line at 7am, we were assigned #42-45 for the Dress Rehearsal. This was not ideal, but it was also just enough of a chance that we felt optimistic. We high-tailed it home, crashed in our beds for a few hours, and arrived back at 30 Rock at 7pm to find out if we made it in.

Sadly, we did not make it in to the show (they cut off at #27). We were pretty bummed, but it was such a memorable New York City experience with good friends that none of us minded too much.

To console ourselves, we came home to 9A, put on pajamas, busted out some pita chips and hummus, made puppy chow, poured a few glasses of wine and watched Sex and the City the movie.

And Lauren, Bethany and I - despite running on 4-ish hours of sleep - stayed up to watch T Swizzle on SNL. She was perfect and adorable, as predicted. Love her. Loved her "Monologue Song." Most of all, love my friends.