Day 43 - Newtown Creek

As we nosed into the mouth and rounded the knob of land that is north Brooklyn, the Manhattan skyline drifted over the industryscape that lines both sides of the creek. I felt, for a moment, like I could be in the Meadowlands. Or Bayonne.

But it was New York. Old Newtown, in fact, on the creek that bears the erstwhile western Queens placename.

On September 16th, the Newtown Creek Alliance held a second boat tour of the creek (I missed the first one). While I've spent a good deal of time working and poking along both edges of the creek, I'd never been on it. So Megan and I headed over to the East 23rd St. marina, down the gangway past moored yachts and aboard M.V. Half Moon, the worn but reliable dinner cruise boat that NCA seems to get to use for a lot of its on-water programs.

The pictures below catalog a good deal of what we saw on this dynamic waterway. It has a very rich history in several respects. Part is economic. By 1910 the value of commerce along this 3.5 mile tidal estuary eclipsed that of the mighty, muddy 2,320 mile Mississippi River. It still abuts three of New York City's most productive industrial areas: Long Island City, East Williamsburg, and Maspeth, though its share of water-dependent uses has dwindled. It is, unfortunately, the receiver of millions of gallons of storm-water runoff each year during heavy rains. And because much of New York City's sewer system combines storm- and sanitary sewer pipes into one system, heavy rain often mean that tons of raw sewage wash into the creek. Then, of course, there is the huge plume of oil caused by years of leaking tanks at the former ExxonMobil site in Greenpoint which continues to send oil percolating up from the shallow water table to the skim of the creek.

The NCA's mission is to "revitalize, restore and reveal" Newtown Creek. The tour, if repeated, is a lovely way to spend and afternoon--malodorous though the upper reaches of it may be. Cotton puff clouds and a crisp late-summer breeze help to ease the smells a bit.

Day 30 - Waning Days of Summer, at Sunset

More surprises where I expected least to find them.

I took this long circuitous bike ride (with thanks to MFS for introducing me to bikely.com) from my place in Morningside Heights through Downtown Brooklyn, Crown Heights, Ditmas Park, down Ocean Parkway, through Brighton Beach, along the Coney Island boardwalk (stopped to watch a Cyclones game), through Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge--all real estate that was well-trodden to me: Riding over the Manhattan Bridge always reminds me of a Bernice Abbott photo, no matter time of day nor weather; I was familiar with the Victorians in Ditmas Park and they're as gorgeous as ever; I used to be a Cyclones season ticket holder and it's still the coolest thing in the world to watch double plays in one direction and the surf beating the shore in the other; I used to live in Bay Ridge and the limestone rowhouses are the handsomest I know in the boroughs.

I was riding with Megan and showing her some of these places for the first time, which was just as fun for me. It's always a little bit new to see a place again by telling someone else about it from memories: first apartments, run-ins, trysts, favorite pizza. Heady stuff.

So imagine my surprise most of the way up 6th Avenue, climbing into Sunset Park, to realize I'd never been there. Never once. Thirty-five years in New York, minus a couple of inconsequential ones, and I had never stepped foot in the actual Sunset Park. Been to the neighborhood a hundred times. Even skirted the park itself a bunch of times. But never once inside. Ridiculous, it seems.

Even more awing when we wound our way through the hundreds--maybe a couple thousand--of neighborhood residents lounging, barbecuing, biking, dribbling soccer balls, batting at tennis balls or slicing salted mango with paprika and lime, is the view from the ridgeline in the center of the park. Off to the west, through a thin afternoon haze, was the evidence of a still-working waterfront on the Brooklyn shoreline, a procession of rooftop watertanks and, almost within reach if you tried, the skyline at the Battery. I suspect we accidentally and quite happily stumbled upon this special place on the best day of the year: a picture perfect final summer day at, well, sunset. The stats I read tell me that Flushing Meadows is the most intensively used park in NYC's system; I wouldn't believe it today.

Much of the weekend was like that: expecting the familiar and being grabbed by what we didnt' expect. Somehow we totally forgot that it was the West Indian Day parade until we tried biking across Eastern Parkway and got caught up for blocks in grills, coolers, jerk seasoning, steel drum bands and a surprising trail of paraders in fuchsia.

And L&B Spumoni Gardens has a mouth-watering Sicilian slice that we were sorry to arrive too full to try more of. We stopped in as we passed by en route home. I assumed I'd just be crossing another good slice off of my list of pizza to try in NYC, and I almost wept instead at the idiocy of showing up to a place like this after a big lunch at Gambrinus in Brighton. It seems silly to worry over it, but the true pizza aficionados in the audience will appreciate exactly what I mean by this.

A day later I'm still grinning at the fond memories of happening into Sunset Park for the first time. It's a wonderful feeling to find the new in the familiar; we should all have more if it in our lives.

Day 4 - Gowanus Canal Paddle

I'm not spending as many hours lallygagging and poking around as I had hoped. At least not yet. But today was a great example of what I hope to get to do more of with during-the-day hours free.

Ellie Hanlon, Captain of the Gowanus Dredgers, took me on a canoe tour of the Gowanus Canal. It's not the first time I had been on the canal, but it's the first time in a couple of years. Some pictures from the water appear below.

There's a good deal of contention on and around the canal right now around land use and how to best make the canal part of the community. But putting all of that aside, at least for the moment, there are few places as intriguing to see as Gowanus from the water. It's stinky and smelly in parts and you have to be careful not to splash any water on your face. But it's cleaner than it's been in years and is worth a trip with the Dredgers one weekend soon.