13 Women, 7 days, One Great City

Half of the Group at a Show

This is a long overdue post on the Loop+ Trip I took in June. 10 days or so after returning from the move down the West Coast, I made my way east with 12 friends (or soon to be friends since I hadn't met everyone yet). This was a first, our Loop Trip was opened up to also include other loop worthy women. We represented 4 states and had 4 groups that we maybe could have put in a Venn Diagram and come up with a central overlap. We had the original Loop, we had out of state relatives of a Looper and one of their friends, we had a mother of a Looper's son's girlfriend and her best friend (of the mother, not the girlfriend), we had Loop co-workers and a mother of a co-worker who was also an ex co-worker of the Loopers. There was an out of state friend of a co-worker. We also had pop-ins at the house that included a niece of a looper and the son of the looper's son's girlfriend's mother. You probably could have popped in too and we wouldn't have noticed.

We had a great 5 story brownstone in a historic neighborhood of Harlem (don't be scared, it was fine, really. Except for the manhunt that went thru our backyard and necessitated everyone who was home on the block at the time to lock themselves into the house and stay away from the windows. That rarely happens there, though, REALLY). It was huge, with 5 bedrooms, a media room, elevator, garden and 6 bathrooms and breathtakingly beautful.

In as few words as possible, 5 Broadway shows were seen, we saw Amateur Night at the Apollo, David Letterman, the Bronx Zoo, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Bldg., Central Park, the Gay and Lesbian Pride Rally, Ground Zero, Century 21, a couple of flea markets, a half dozen resale shops, more Hasidic Jews than most Texans even knew existed (my personal fascination)

and between all of us, all of the Boroughs. Throw in a few celebrity sightings, we won't even talk about the food, and you've got yourself the best New York trip you can imagine.

Can this be topped? Next summer, same bat time, same bat brownstone....