First posted on the 46th Street Tour page after the Intrepid was tugged away for its $115 million makeover:
For over thirty years, the Intrepid fought in wars and recovered spacecraft for NASA, but for the last few decades the Intrepid has been a museum and peculiar party venue. My first visit was in 1994 as part of Columbia's Senior Week when hundreds (maybe thousands, I don't remember) danced on the flight deck between A-12 Blackbird spy plane and a Polish MiG-21, both powerless to stop the relentless beat that was Ace of Base.
My favorite visit took place in 1997 when I worked as a guide on an award-winning program designed by Tony Napoli at what was then Briggs Red Carpet. (Now just Briggs.) The owner of a successful temp agency in the Netherlands wanted to celebrate his company's silver anniversary in style. He brought over six hundred of his employees (most in their twenties) as well as six hundred guests of those employees. There were Broadway shows, tours, and a gala party held in the ballroom of the Marriott Marquis hosted by one of their own local television personalities. Then came the surprise.
Months earlier, when the client was asked for the first thing to pop to mind when he thought of New York City, his answer was emphatic: "Aerobics." Aerobics? Not one to argue, Napoli set to work, and so on the Sunday morning after the gala, twelve hundred drunk or hungover Dutch and Belgian twenty-somethings wearing identical blue shorts and white t-shirts were bussed over from the Marriott to the Intrepid where five of the city's best aerobics instructors were waiting. I climbed to one of the balconies (to use the nautical term) and watched below me as twelve hundred temps in unison stretched, waved their arms, squatted, and bounced up and down. And just as there are now over a thousand more Europeans who associate Manhattan with aerobics, I will forever link aerobics with aircraft carriers.
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