Getting the flavor of...Old reliable Gruene, Texas

Old reliable Gruene, Texas

The “unofficial motto” of Gruene, Texas, could be “Gently Resisting Change Since 1872,” said Jordan Breal in Texas Monthly. Seated on the banks of the Guadalupe River, this historic town near San Antonio has long been a “fly-fisherman’s paradise by day and a two-stepper’s dream by night.” Not much has changed over the years, but that’s what gives Gruene its charm. There is comfort in knowing you can walk into Gruene Outfitters, an “angler’s Eden,” and pick up a new Sage fly rod along with some tips on fishing holes. It’s nice to know that every record at Lone Star Music, a website turned store, is “Texas-approved.” The regulars who’ve been coming for decades to Gruene Hall, “the state’s oldest continuously run dance hall,” hold “several truths to be self-evident: Live music is an unalienable right; dance with the one that brung ya; and everyone’s entitled to the pursuit of happiness”—or at least another cold Shiner.

Manhattan, the musical

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New York City’s The Ride is truly a “magic bus,” said Howard Shapiro in The Philadelphia Inquirer. I was skeptical at first, but this new visitors magnet is “not your ancestors’ 1950s-era bus tour.” For starters, instead of facing forward, passengers sit in stadium-style chairs that look out onto midtown Manhattan’s streets through a single “nearly floor-to-ceiling” window. And a guide’s patter isn’t the only diversion. Instead, the 75-minute ride is a “movable” production that uses New York as “both the show’s plot and its set.” Actors play people on the street, and, on cue from the guides, they break into song or dance in the middle of sidewalk passersby. A hopeful starlet belts out a tune in front of Carnegie Hall. Ballet dancers do pirouettes around Columbus Circle. As the scripted characters mix with the real life of the city, tour passengers become part of the show—and a tourist attraction themselves. (Contact: experiencetheride.com)