Staff spends full day in New York City after overnight flight

Most Saturdays on campus are quiet and uneventful, with the exception of the occasional sports game or church event. However, campus bustled with activity this weekend as volunteers helped set up for the FC auction and Feather staffers prepared to leave for their trip to New York City, March 10.

The Feather was invited to attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference in New York City after being nominated for a CSPA Gold Crown. Adviser Greg Stobbe has taken staff members to New York every year since 2003, and once in 2001. Staffers met in the Peoples Church parking lot before departing for the San Francisco International Airport.

Due to choir and ensemble also making a trip to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall later in April, a total of only ten Feather staff members and five chaperons are in New York this week. The rest of the staff will continue to run articles and cover events happening on the Fresno Christian campus.

Senior photo editor Cayla Rivas planned on attending the trip, but was unable to after learning she received a concussion in cheer practice only days before the group planned to leave on Saturday. The Feather staff wishes Rivas a speedy recovery.

After a Mid Town Manhattan walking tour, #thefeather staff took in Wicked Broadway show and dinner at @Gotham_West Market. #feathertakesNYC @CSPA #IvanRamenNYC pic.twitter.com/Z8giUeljpB

— The Feather Online (@thefeather) March 11, 2018

Despite taking a red eye flight, The Feather staff hit the ground running after landing at JFK Airport at six thirty in the morning. First year staff member Kyle Friesen, ’19, not only arrived in New York for the first time on Sunday, he also flew in a plane for the first time.

“It (the plane) was really cool,” Friesen said. “I’ve never been in something that has been able to go five hundred miles per hour, so that was really cool. I wish I could go five hundred miles per hour everywhere. The plane was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be. I imagined everything to be a lot bigger.”

Photojournalist Bethany Pouliot, ’19, is also taking in the sights of New York for the first time and looks forward to the rest of the trip.

“It is extremely busy and exactly like movie scenes, so it’s kind of cool walking through the streets and then realizing you’ve seen this place in a movie before,” Pouliot said. “I’m definitely looking forward to the next Broadway show. I also am excited for the hockey game.”

I thought it was really cool that we were able to go to the Grand Central Terminal because, in the U.S. history classes at Fresno Christian, we just covered the great millionaires of the Gilded Age. Some of those millionaires helped build the Grand Central Terminal which I thought was really cool. The artwork and the detail that went into the terminal is absolutely stunning and amazing. — Samuel Cross, ’19

Students rode in vans to Hotel Edison where they dropped off their luggage and gathered for breakfast at Friedmans, a restaurant connected to the hotel. Hotel Edison officially opened when Thomas Edison himself turned on the lights to the hotel at its grand opening in 1931. Feather staffers have been staying in the hotel for several years.

After breakfast, staffers walked to Grand Central Terminal. Around 750,000 people walk though the Grand Central each day, some for tourist purposes and others to travel on one of the many trains that funnel through the station.

The station is heavily guarded and has many employees to guide passengers to their correct destination. Bruce (last name withheld) is a conductor from the Metro North Hudson Line and has personally seen the station change through restorations.

“There is a lot of history in this station,” Bruce said. “You have the whispering wall downstairs, and the beautiful ceiling, complete with a piece that shows what it used to look like before the restoration. They have really cleaned it up a lot here, in fact twenty years ago it wasn’t quite as nice in here.”

From Grand Central Terminal, staffers walked to Rockefeller Center where they took the opportunity to take photos and watch ice-skaters.

Samuel Cross, ’19, appreciated the history behind both Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Terminal after learning about them in U.S. history this year.

“I thought it was really cool that we were able to go to the Grand Central Terminal because, in the U.S. history classes at Fresno Christian, we just covered the great millionaires of the Gilded Age,” Cross said. “Some of those millionaires helped build the Grand Central Terminal which I thought was really cool. The artwork and the detail that went into the terminal is absolutely stunning and amazing.”

After returning to the hotel to change, the students went to view their first Broadway play of the week, Wicked. Alexander Rurik, ’19, has seen the play several times before, both in New York and in Los Angeles, and found that each actor was able to make the character unique.

“Something about the play that stood out to me is probably the acting of Glinda, the good witch,” Rurik said. “She did a very good job of taking the role and making it her own. I have seen this play in Los Angeles, Fresno and this is my second time seeing it in New York. I think the two performances I’ve seen in New York are the best, probably just because they’re Broadway, but I also like how every performance is different, and every actor makes their role their own.”

Rurik will be posting a full review of Wicked later tonight.

Before heading back to the hotel, staffers walked to Gotham West Market for dinner. The group also checked out the USS Intrepid where it docks on the Hudson River.

Follow the Feather staff in NYC tomorrow as they will see New York City by river on the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruise and from The Rock atop Rockefeller Center. The Feather will also continue to publish from Fresno as more the half the staff is still in school this week. On March 14-16, The NYC Feather staff will attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s (CSPA) 94th  annual Spring Scholastic Convention before returning to Fresno on St. Patrick’s Day. 

Slideshow below includes photos from FC takes on NYC: day one, March 11.

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For more on our trip to New York City, follow The Feather on social media or follow our hashtag, #FeatherTakesNYC.

For more articles, read EDITORIAL: Letting go of trivial issues or Redemption: Berchtesgaden.

This author can be reached via email.