Work travel is exciting the first few times but when it becomes a habit, to the point you are spending more nights in hotels than your own bed, it changes. It stops becoming exciting and instead you are faced with the prospect of finding ways to create habits that would mimic being a resident of the cities to which you travel.

The city where I have been spending an unusual amount of time is New York City.

Sexy, Exciting, Cool, right?

More like sweltering, interesting and packed. Those aren’t negative’s, simply reality.

So what to do to escape the heat and the tourist crowds?

Off-Broadway/Off-Off-Broadway Theatre, baby! New Yorkers take their Off-Broadway seriously.

I arrived in plenty of time to collect my will-call ticket at the 59E59 Theatres for my Off-Off-Broadway show. I made my way up to the second level and settled myself on one of the hard wooden benches while I waited for the theatre to open. The closer to the shows start the more the small lobby filled with people. Women, chatting in groups of two’s, cleverly studying their fellow theatre goers; Men, mostly on their own, fidgeting with their paper stubs.

7:00pm sharp the doors opened and I made my way in. The usher greeted me and pointed to the first row of seats in the theatre.

I looked down at my stub “AA6”, easy enough and counted 5 seats on the left and 5 seats on the right of the aisle. Perplexed. Which direction to start counting?

“Sir, can you help me with which seat is AA6,” I asked quietly.

“Hmm,” he replied and then started counting in what seemed a random pattern followed by, “this one, this is yours.”

I turned to thank the usher but was interrupted by a gentleman briskly brushing between us.

As he stormed by he said to the usher, “I don’t need your help, I know exactly where my seat is.”

And with that I settled in for the performance to begin.