Times Square Timeline | NYC Fashion Blogger Samantha Angelo

Growing up in the world's crossroads...

September 1997 - My first visit to Times Square, at age 13.

1998 - Mom, that's quite a look you have going with those white stockings, and I'm not sure why I'm wearing a white button down shirt as a jacket over a dress...

2004 - On that particular night we went to the basement of Blue Water Grill and listened to some live jazz. I also recall Amy and I ordering a pot of chocolate fondue and feeding it to each other, silly girls. Evan coined this time in my life as my Britney/Malibu Barbie phase...   

January 2010 - Cold, very cold.

August 2013 - My niece Alyssa's first trip to NYC at age 15, this picture was taken right after we left Phantom of The Opera, where we had a backstage tour, thanks to my friend Chuck Willett.

My moment as Christine Daae...Yes, I went to the front of stage and sang 'Think of Me'. For those of you who don't know, I've had an odd fascination/obsession with Phantom since I was a child. This includes the sequel Love Never Dies. I felt much better about this after Rafael Nadal came forward a few years back and admitted that he listens to Phantom as part of his tennis ritual.

I even got to touch Phantom's wig, I'll keep that facial expression to myself.

Stories of NY

On my first trip to NYC (1997) my parents and I spent the night on the Grey Hound bus from Buffalo NY, they always loved making traveling to a place more of an adventure than the actual place itself.  (Why take a 45 min flight from Buffalo to DC when you can drive 8 1/2 hours, hit rush hour on the beltway, and get lost no fewer than 5 times? That always makes for a pleasurable start to any visit.) We even made a pit stop half way through the trip to pick up 10 more passengers. I remember laying down in the fetal position over two bus seats and around 6:30am I lifted my head from the seat to see the Manhattan skyline off in the distance. The sight of Manhattan never gets old, but there's something truly special about the first time a person lays eyes on that majestic cityscape, you can see and feel the energy radiating from that island.  My heart started to flutter and I got butterflies of excitement in my stomach, and all of a sudden my sleepless night was irrelevant.  As we walked out of the Port Authority with our luggage I vividly remember seeing a plethora of adult video stores... that was an eye opener.We proceeded to walk to the Howard Johnson on 8th & 51st, our home for the weekend. After we had a delicious Howard Johnson continental breakfast, where do you think we went first? Ding Ding, The Empire State Building, followed by tix tix to snatch some seats to Forever Tango. 

 On the very same street as the Howard Johnson there was a pawn shop where we found an exceptional Buffet R-13 clarinet, sitting in the window, just waiting for me. My dad played it cool though, he was like, "this piece of crap, no one's going to want this old clarinet, and what kind of brand is Buffet? Never heard of it, we'll take it for $700 and not a penny more." Deal! Well played, dad. I would go on to do many wonderful things with that instrument. 

 My mom referred back to her diary and told me that the next day they left me at Macy's. Yes, back in the day when cellphones didn't exist and I was 13 years old, they left me in one of the largest department stores in the world, which is exactly what I wanted. I always wanted to be alone in NY, It made me feel so adult, and shopping in the city for the first time needed my undivided attention. I was a kid in a candy store. My mom on the other hand loathes shopping/browsing with a passion, so you can just imagine how difficult that was, I just needed to find a way to get her to leave me there, and apparently it didn't take much convincing. 

 I remember traveling back to Buffalo on the Amtrak, and during that 8 hour ride I fantasized about NY, a trip that would leave a permanent impression...  

 The following year we took another trip back to NY and this trip was no less eventful. This time we flew on an airplane! Crazy. When we arrived at Hotel Pennsylvania they had over booked us and given our room away, so naturally they put us up at Plaza Hotel...!! When we walked into our room at the Plaza I remember thinking, "Wow, a crystal chandelier in our room!!" 

From the very beginning, NY showed me that anything was possible, between strolling down a street and finding your dream instrument in an old pawn shop to accidentally staying at the Plaza Hotel, the possibilities seemed limitless to me at that age and continues to surprise me to this day. That's the magic of New York.

The Supper Club

"The city seen from the Queensboro bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world." - F. Scott Fitzgerald