A Bridge Too Far?

Barges on the River Seine, Paris, France

I was checking out the Solo Traveler Blog recently, and couldn’t resist adding a comment to a blog post on the site written by Janice Waugh. Titled Bridges, New Perspectives and Solo Travel, Janice writes (in part: “To get the big picture of a city you need to stand back and the best way I’ve found for doing so is by walking a bridge. […] A bridge, by providing some distance, offers new perspectives on a city.”

In my comment I wrote:

“Wow! And I thought I was the only 'bridge walker' out there. I have a 'thing' about bridges anyway, but I will always walk across a bridge if the opportunity presents itself. Along with the usual Brooklyn Bridge walk, I have walked across the George Washington Bridge (I can legitimately claim to have walked from New York to New Jersey), and the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges. On my next visit to NYC, I hope to get an opportunity to walk across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that links Brooklyn with Staten Island.
Speaking of the George Washington Bridge (GWB), I walked across it a few months after the event referred to as the 'Miracle On The Hudson' took place in January, 2014. I'm referring to the incident in which Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed United Airlines flight 1549 in the middle of the Hudson River. Standing on the walkway in the centre of the GWB while looking down river gave me some sense of the view that Cpt. Sellenberger must have been looking at as he flew low over the bridge towards his eventual touch down on the river near Midtown Manhattan. And it was a very sobering view to be sure.
If you are looking for a new perspective on a well known city, do what I also like to do -- hit the water. I never miss an opportunity to take a ferry ride, river cruise, or some other type of water borne transport when I travel. Cruises around the waters of New York City abound, and the views from the Hudson and East rivers bring a whole new perspective to that amazing city. I've taken short cruises on the Mississippi (out of New Orleans), the Mekong River (out of Phnom Penh), on Melbourne's Yarra River, and numerous others. Then there are harbour cruises that can be just as interesting -- if not more so. If you have ever had the opportunity to cruise on, or just catch a ferry across Sydney Harbour you will understand what I mean.”

With regard to harbor cruises in particular, regular visitors to this blog will have seen my numerous entries and updates for the wonderful Hidden Harbor tours organised by New York City’s Working Harbor Committee. These provide a unique insight into the (generally) unseen industry that helps to keep New York City and New Jersey ticking.

A bridge too far? Not far enough in my opinion.

By the way, if you are a solo traveller already, or interested in going solo, the Solo Traveler Blog is a fantastic resource for all manner of information related to solo travel. Check it out and look for the free eBooks available via the site, and subscribe to the weekly newsletter as well. Happy (solo) travelling.

The Brooklyn Bridge

So much has been written and said about New York City's iconic Brooklyn Bridge that there is nothing new I can add to the thousands of books and articles already out there. I would venture to say though, that no visit to New York City is complete without at least going to look at the bridge.

If time allows, a walk across the bridge (Manhattan to Brooklyn) is highly recommended, if only because once you get to the Brooklyn side - especially if you make your way down to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade - your efforts are rewarded with some of the best views of Manhattan's skyline.

Better yet, time your visit for either early morning, or late afternoon/early evening (my favorite hours) to catch the light and shadows that play over skyline and East River. Yes, it’s a cliché, but the term ‘magical’ is entirely appropriate.

For the record, the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. It has a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed.

The bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling. While conducting surveys for the bridge project, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes he developed a tetanus infection which left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death, not long after he had placed his 32-year-old son Washington Roebling in charge of the project.

Washington Roebling in turn suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of decompression sickness shortly after the beginning of construction in January, 1870. This condition left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand.

Roebling conducted the entire construction from his apartment, aided by his wife Emily who provided the critical link between her husband and the engineers on site. Under her husband's guidance, Emily studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years assisting Washington Roebling, helping to supervise the bridge's construction.

When the Brooklyn Bridge opened for use on May 24, 1883, it was the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Fittingly, since Washington Roebling was too ill to leave their apartment, Emily Roebling was the first to cross the bridge.

Despite my opening comments regarding having “nothing new” to add to the volume of material already extant about the Brooklyn Bridge, here, set to the music of Frank Sinatra, is my personal tribute to this magnificent feat of engineering:

More Information

Wikipedia: Brooklyn Bridge entry…

New York Impressions

~ In a previous entry (My New York Marathon), I wrote about my first full day walking from Greenpoint, Brooklyn across the Williamsburg Bridge to Chinatown and the Lower East Side, down past City Hall, then back across the East River via the Brooklyn Bridge, and back to Greenpoint after passing through the Hasidic Jewish enclave in Williamsburg. Although I described in some detail my route on that extended - and exhausting - walk, on reading through it again, I see that it was light on my actual impressions of New York City. So I've decided to remedy that oversight in this post.

Some people travel only to see the famous attractions, while others travel to immerse themselves as much as possible in the locations they have chosen to visit. I prefer the immersive experience, and as such, I was happy to explore the city on foot as far as I was able to. Right from the start, I tried to blend in as much as I could with native New Yorkers. Of course, this was an almost impossible task given that everywhere I went I carried a digital still camera and a video camera - and nothing cries out 'tourist' more than someone running around taking lots of photographs of tall buildings and famous landmarks. However...

Maybe it's the songwriter and composer in me, but I loved listening to the sound and rhythm of the city. The wailing sirens of emergency service vehicles, the subway trains, the car horns, the whistles and shouts of traffic cops, and the constant hum a city like New York imparts 24 hours a day. But most of all, I tried to tune into the voices. The cadences and rhythms of the staff and regular customers at the Brooklyn diner where I ate breakfast each morning; the heavy accents of the Polish immigrants around Greenpoint; the Russians in Coney Island, and the Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg; and most common of all, the voices of so many African-Americans and Hispanics that now call New York City, home.

Although I was on my first visit to New York City, I had in a sense been there a thousand times before. In many respects I have grown up visiting New York vacariously over a period of some 50 years in the form of feature films, novels, television series, evening news reports, music videos, documentaries, and even Batman and Superman comics. However, it doesn't matter how many movies, television programs or other forms of second-hand experiences you use to form your opinions of New York City, nothing can match the experience of walking those city streets for yourself, taking in the scale of the place with your own eyes.

I loved the familiarity of the city, but even more I loved the serendipidous nature of simply wandering hapazardly around the neighbourhood of the Greenpoint YMCA and over to Manhattan and back again, all the while following anything that caught my attention, or looked or sounded interesting. In fact, New York is a city that engages all the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and even feel.

New York was everything I expected it to be - and more. Bigger, louder, faster, brasher, taller, grander, and so on. It was also safer, friendlier, easier to get around, and surprisingly, cheaper than I expected it to be. Unfortunately, it was also dirtier. But then the city does have a permanent population of around eight million, which is boosted on any given day by thousands of visitors who help add to the problem of trash creation and disposal.

Browsing through the hundreds of photographs I took during those first days, I see images of brownstone buildings, fire escapes, stoops leading directly onto New York sidewalks, a bright yellow Hummer, Polish language business signs, graffiti and large murals adorning city walls, and colourful dispensers for the many free publications that can be found all over New York. Then there are the images of unusual and interesting architectural features that are waiting to be discovered right across the city. Everyone takes photographs of the skyscrapers, of course, but my eyes were also drawn towards the swirling iron rails and curved wooden seating on the forecourt of the US Social Security Administration building on Federal Plaza.

Another series of images tries to record many of the other buildings around City Hall: The New York City Supreme Court; the United States Courthouse, and the US Court of Appeals office where I saw my first protest by (presumably) court workers, over some matter of great importance - to them, at least.

And there, in the midst of all this legal activity, I also discovered the magnificent African Burial Ground Monument (designed by Haitian-American architect Rodney Leon). The monument preserves a site containing the remains of more than 400 African Americans buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. According to the Wikipedia entry on the burial ground, historians estimate there may have been 15,000-20,000 burials there. The site's excavation and study was regarded as the most important historic urban archeological project in the United States, which in turn has led to the site being designated a National Historic Landmark and National Monument.

My first photographs of the Brooklyn Bridge fail to do that magnificent structure any sort of justice and are hardly worth keeping - but I keep them anyway. What is it about the Brooklyn Bridge that makes it such an iconic attraction anyway? Why do hundreds, if not thousands of visitors line up every day to take photographs of this bridge, and why do they not also line up to take photographs of themselves standing on the Manhattan Bridge? Or the Williamsburg or Queensboro bridges? I don't know the answer, but I too stood on the Brooklyn Bridge and tried without much success to capture an angle; a vision; a unique perspective that hadn't been photographed a thousand times before.

Back on the Brooklyn side of the East River I stumbled across the first of many public art works that are scattered across New York. This was the wonderful NMS - Nature Matching System mural created by Tattfoo Tan (see image above) with the help of the DUMBO Neighborhood Association. This huge, beautiful work can be found directly beneath the Manhattan Bridge on Front Street, Brooklyn.

And so it went. My two months in New York passed far too quickly, and I only got to scratch the surface of this vast metropolis. That I will return next year for another look is a guarantee I am prepared to make right here and now. If you have yet to visit for yourself, I urge you to put the city at the top of your 'bucket list' and start your planning now.