Pizza, memory and dad

"Sex is like pizza. Even when it's bad it's still pretty good" Woody Allen

"Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table." Charles Pierre Monselet

Ask any New Yorker what the best pizza in town is and you will usually get the same answer, whatever pizza it was that said New Yorker grew up with. I am no exception, though I think an excellent case can be made for me being more right than most.

That pizza is Sal and Carmine’s on Broadway between 102^nd and 103^rd street. Known as simply Sal’s Pizza when I was a kid, the place has been an Upper West Side fixture since the 60s when Sal first opened up his shop. He was later joined by Carmine, his brother in law (I believe). Sal passed away last year unbeknownst to me until a few months ago, but Carmine and Sal’s son are still there, still putting out this most excellent example of classic New York pizza. Here is a link to the best write up I have found on about this slice. I agree with every point made. You have to scroll down to the part about Sal and Carmine’s but it’s a great read all around. http://theeatenpath.com/2009/06/07/sal-and-carmine-best-slice-in-manhattan/ You’ll get no less than 12 pages of links to different reviews, blog entries and diaries just by googleing “Sal and Carmine’s”

I started eating Sal and Carmine’s when I was 11, not long after my parents split up and my dad moved to a tiny studio apartment on Amsterdam Avenue and 95^th Street. Back then Sal’s, was a hole in the wall with no tables and white tile everywhere. The counter had barely enough room for the two men to work. But work they did. Making pizza after pizza, serving slice after slice after slice. It was rarely empty, rarely navigable and always delicious.

Their pizza was, and still is, so good that a plain slice/pie is more than good enough. Adding sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms or whatever actually ends up distracting you.

This isn’t gourmet pizza, you understand. This is classic New York by the slice pizza at its best. And it is indeed the pizza I grew up on.

Sure there's Lombardi's (where pizza was invented), Grimaldi's and John's (who both got their start at Lombardi's) and they are great, but that's sitdown eat a whole pie kind of place. Sal and Carmine are of a more common New York tradition and you are hardpressed to find something as classic and authentically Italian as they are save for parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Mulberry street in Manhattan.

I started eating Sal and Carmine’s when I was 11, not long after my parents split up and my dad moved to a tiny studio apartment on Amsterdam Avenue and 95^th Street from our place on 103rd and Central Park West. Back then Sal’s, as it was known then, was a hole in the wall with no tables and white tile everywhere. The counter had barely enough room for the brothers in law to work. But work they did. Making pizza after pizza, serving slice after slice after slice. It was rarely empty, rarely navigable. It was always delicious.

When the neighborhood yuppified in the 80s they were forced to move up about 7 blocks. It was worth the extra time. Back then, the real estate line was sharp…at about 99^th street the neighborhood remained a mix of middle class and sketchy, rental was still a bit cheaper than the rest of the area so the new space, now called Sal and Carmine’s had 7 tables in the back. The ovens and the flavor never changed.

Sal and Carmine never bought into the ridiculousness of putting every damned thing on their pizza the way so many of the newer, generally awful pizza places do. They stuck and continue to stick to the basics. Woody Allen's joke no longer applies in New York. The bad pizza here is pretty fucking bad. In my part of Brooklyn (Crown Heights/BedStuy) the local pizza makes you lose the will to live, it's that horrible.

When I moved out of my dad’s place 27 years ago part of my life became about finding places nearby that were approachable to Sal and Carmine’s. Not just because of the goodness but because of the memories.

When my parents split up I was of course pretty devastated. Dad was over ever Wednesday and we went to his place every other weekend. The distance between mom's place and dad's wasn't that far so we were lucky in that we still got to see him.

Dad had discovered Sal’s right after the move and Saturday pizza with Star Trek reruns on Channel 11 became the tradition when we visited. It was a tiny studio apartment and my brother and I slept on inflatable mattresses on the floor, but we had fun. There was always something to do and of course, Sal’s Pizza and Star Trek every Saturday.

Years later I moved in with dad so I could go to the high school I wanted to go to, my brother stayed with my mother who had moved out to Long Island and we switched off weekends. The Saturday tradition never changed, though there would be additions of Space 1999 (we would talk about how awful it was), UFO, Battlestar Galactica (to this day I wish dad had stuck around long enough to see the new one. He’d have loved it). But Star Trek was always on the Channel 11 lineup and Sal’s pizza was always in ours.

This was dad/son bonding time and just plain fun. We’d call ahead and order by phone, then go pick up. They never delivered so we always went to pick it up…always chatted with Carmine mostly, Sal was usually silent but never unfriendly. We would vary sometimes and get toppings, just for fun…and they were always good. Even better, if there were leftovers, we’d have cold pizza for breakfast.

Trust me, this is a sublime pleasure when the pizza is good. It doesn’t work for all pizzas.

More and more as the years pass and the pain of my father’s suicide is layered over by years, experience and perspective, Sal and Carmine’s pizza remains my favorite dad related set of memories.

As some of you know, this past summer I tried my hand at apartment showing for a real estate firm on the Upper West Side. This was not a terribly successful venture, in the two months I did this I made under $700 altogether and generally ended up wanting to go postal on “clients”. It is an industry I may return to but not with that particular venue.

A plus though was that many of the apartments I showed were in my old neighborhood and I had some pretty surreal experiences showing apartments on blocks that we didn’t even go to when I was a kid because they were too dangerous. Wild stuff, and fun.

Mid July I was showing an apartment in the low 100s to a couple of college girls. I was in a pensive mood. It was what would have been my father’s 72^nd birthday and whenever it is his birthday or the anniversary of the day we found him I’m always a tad on edge. Even when I don’t realize what day it is.

It was warm, but there was a slight rain that tempered the warmth that made the day actually very pleasant. I showed the apartment (which I liked very much but the girl's typically didn't, that's another blog for another day. Spoiled young clients with no clue), afterward I chose to walk a bit before heading back to the office. Lo and behold, there was Carmine tossing away and spinning a pie.

At this point I was certain that Sal and Carmine’s was no more. I hadn’t been in this part of town in a very long time. The last time I had been I “misremembered” the location and found what I thought in it’s place one of those newfangled awful pizza places that specialized in dreadful toppings to mask the utter lack of flavor. At this moment I was in one of those rare states of mind here I am deeply grateful that I am wrong about something. I stared for awhile, took a picture and then walked inside and ordered a slice and a cherry soda which was my standard back at dad’s.

Carmine looked much older of course than the last time I’d been there which I think was about 10 years. I wasn’t aware at the time that Sal had passed a year earlier, but given how old they must have been I surmised and said nothing to Carmine, only that I was so happy to see him.

He remembered me after a few minutes and asked about my dad and brother. I lied and told him that dad was fine but had moved away years ago. I didn’t want to get into it. I was too happy with the sight of Carmine, the taste of my favorite pizza which had not altered a jot. I savored every bite, grinning the entire time. I wanted this moment to be about the good memory, not grief.

I thanked Carmine for the years of great pizza and that I couldn't wait to be back again then left. I stood outside for a few moments and said quietly “Happy Birthday, Dad”, then turned and headed back to the office.

Gateless

Picture from http://www.planetware.com/picture/new-york-city-new-york-statue-of-liberty-us-nyc005.htm

I’ve blogged on this subject before here and here. In fact I guess this is sort of an annual thing. Anyway, my readers won’t be surprised by what I have to say today regarding everything involving tomorrow’s anniversary.

What will shock my readers is that I’ve actually made a blog entry for the first time in four months. More on that another time.

As I’ve said before. I live here in New York City. I’ve lived here just about my entire life. I lived here before the Twin Towers were visible and lived with them as they dominated the city land and sky-scape.

Nine years later it is still strange to me to look out and not see them from various spots in the city. From West 4th Street and 6th Avenue, to the Smith and 9th street stop on the G and F train in Brooklyn, from the Staten Island Ferry to the Ditmars Blvd stop on the N train in Queens. Nine years later there is still something not there that ought to be there.

I remember my last visit to the Observation Deck at the World Trade Center with my then 10 year old daughter as we looked out at the Liberty Science Museum, Long Island, Upstate New York and of course Manhattan Island.

For those of us that live here, we are constantly reminded. The skyline itself is an empty echo of the thousands of lives contained in those steel marvels of engineering. The many more thousands of lives left behind in loss and pain.

As I’ve pointed out, I somehow escaped personal heartache on that day. No one I directly know was amongst the murdered. But many I do know have lost lovers, friends, husbands, fathers and children. Every moment I talk to them on the phone, or see them on Facebook or have a cup of coffee I am reminded. Every waking day, they are reminded.

My heartache is for the heartache of those I care about and of course for the scar on the city for which I have a love/hate relationship and with which an indelible part of my soul will always belong.

It’s also no secret that aesthetically, I hated those buildings. While marvels of engineering they seemed out of place at the time. And I still feel that way about them then.

But now…

Like them or not, they were unforgettable, powerful and a kind of gateway to the city. A gateway this city no longer has.

The Statue of Liberty no longer stands in the shadow of that gate. A gate that increasingly seems to remain closed to what America is. There was a kind of sense of the Statue of Liberty showing her light to the harbor as she stood at the feet of the Gate that was the Twin Towers. A Gate now closed.

Liberty still shines a light onto the harbor, her words of welcome still inscribed. But God forbid you want to build a community center aimed at healing that gaping wound. God Forbid you make a place that yes, is primarily a Muslim Cultural Center but that also will house places of prayer for every religious practice available. God Forbid that an act can be made to reach out, to bridge the divide.

Oh you’re welcome here, but only up to a point.

September 11th must be a day of reflection, prayer and thoughtfulness. However it is you observe for yourself and ponder the nature of humanity’s penchant for cruelty and violence to each other and what we can do to grow from it, to be greater than it. To be better than we have been.

No, instead we focus on whackjobs burning books of worship, we throw parties to make money and then retroactively decide to donate the proceeds somewhere and claim that the party date was a coincidence. We claim to be thinking of the families of the fallen when we display our astounding ignorance of every conceivable fact and meaning. We exploit and wring our hands, but God forbid we actually solve the issue and learn to live WITH each other.

Clearly I stand in support of the Cultural Center known as Park 51. But I will not be joining the demonstrations tomorrow. I do not believe that September 11th should be marching or demonstrating for anything. ANYthing.

Anything else dishonors the dead and dishonors the families of the dead, whether at the World Trade Center, The Pentagon or that open field in Shanksville.

We need reflection. We need to think. We need to pray and send light. We need to volunteer. We need to really help.


As always I say we don't need to be told to "Never Forget". That's a self aggrandizing phrase promoted by people who are trying to be part of something that frankly they.just.aren't.

What happened was yes, a national tragedy. But the wounds are felt HERE. Not in Wasilla, not in Florida....HERE.


Any idiot will tell you that if you keep scratching a wound it will get infected. We need to stop scratching at the wound.

This city has lost its nads....

"Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I would advise you not to invade"

Rick Blaine to Major Strasser. Casablanca. 1942

Alright...Last week I bitched about how this city has utterly lost it's ability to handle snow and I complained to Mayor Mike Bloomberg that we are becoming something other than New York City....

That was nothing...

Now...apparently because Mikey has whined about not wanting Khalid Sheikh Mohamad here...he's all afraid of the security risks and police situation and cost, blah blah blah...that we have to set aside what is GREAT about this nation...and this city and .

So let me get this straight Mikey....

It was okay to move our cops from various neighborhoods in NYC to Central Park for a month to protect these ugly pieces of shit. These traffic cone orange shower curtains that you could NOT get away from ANYwhere in Central Park. By the way...crime rates rose in certain neighborhoods because of the cop "migration"  TO PROTECT SHOWER CURTAINS!!!!!

Christos pretentious "Gates"

And it was ok to pull all the cops and spend a gazillion dollars so that The Republican Convention THESE YAHOOS could live on their cruise ship and waddle into Madison Square Garden in the afternoon for their convention...shutting down businesses. (NYC lost money on this one).

 I know, Tom Delay is missing. On purpose. I hate that guy too much to allow his face on my blog

Oh yeah...then you created "Free Speech Zones" Where protesters had to stay in cages...Yeah...that was sooooo brave, Mikey. And nothing expensive about that. (By the way, thanks Democrats for deciding this was a good idea for your convention too. Can we go back to the First Amendment now?)

Thank you bakelblog.com

But now...now...it's time for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to face the music.

This guy

This.......guy

Now, we are so afraid of KSM and his buddies, that Mikey is afraid to have him here...it's too expensive. Too expensive for the man. Maybe Mikey can dip into that 85 million he spent to narrowly win re-election last year. Maybe he can come up with the dough from his buddies to cover the costs...The feds offered help...no no...still to expensive...read...I'm afraiiid.

Maybe we as New Yorkers can stand tall and proud and tell the world that KSM WILL stand in a civilian criminal court, because that's all he is...a little petty fucking thug criminal. Maybe we can stand tall and show the world that we stand for the rule of law and we even respect the rights of fucktwats that help engineer the murder of thousands. We stand for these things because we are Americans, we are New Yorkers. It is who we are. 

Nope...it's who we were. We are the city that can't walk to the subway in the snow. We are the city that never lets our children out of sight even as it is safer now for children than it has ever been. We are the city that was understandably brought to our knees on September 11, 2001, yet almost nine years later, we are demonstrating that we are still on our knees. We are still unable to stand.  

We are afraid of another attack. I've got news for you, my Mayor and my fellow New Yorkers. We may be attacked again, we may not be. Whether we try this schmuck here or not won't change that. We're New York. Ask London, Ask Paris, Ask Belfast, Ask Khabul, Ask Bagdhad. If you're a target, you're a target. New York is a target. 

So....Really? We're really going to let these shitheads think they won? Have they won? Really?

Granted, Rick Blaine (nor the writers of that great classic) could not have imagined the horror of jetliners flying into towers. He was talking about Nazis marching down Delancey Street. But he was still addressing the spirit of this city. He was still talking about our resilience and defiance. The way we say "Fuck you" when we think we're getting screwed or insulted.

See what a great middle finger the Empire State Building makes?

We sit now, on our knees, afraid of another attack because we were going to try this guy rightfully. We were gonna be New York but instead, we are being who they made us. The President and the Justice Dept. are now reconsidering the plan to try KSM here and to move it to a military court because they can't get the cooperation of the city. So, Military Court. Different rules. Rules we don't need because this guy is guilty by his own admission, (despite the water-boarding). It isn't as though he had a real chance of getting off. We are afraid of another attack. We are afraid of our own laws. We are afraid of our own Constitution.

Nope...we are not New York anymore. Not Rick Blaine's New York, at least. Certainly not mine.

Really Mikey? Really?

Snowbigfuckindeal

In April of 1969 I was newly 7 years old. I was going to P.S. 116 on Menahan Street and Knickerbocker Avenue. We had a ginormous blizzard. So big that we could build snow tunnels from our stoops to the cars on the curb...It was amazing.

This storm is famous for how it crippled the city and how Mayor John Lindsay handled it so badly it nearly cost him re election. Parts of the outer boroughs of Queens and New York were inaccessible for over a week.

Back in the 90s we had a huge blizzards that lasted the entire winter because of El Nino. Seriously, both years. I believe 1995 and 1996 the last of the snow that melted in April had actually fallen the previous November. People didn't even bother trying to shovel out their cars after a couple of weeks because it was just going to get buried again.

You know what we still had then? During all those storms? All those years ago? With weaker technology and fewer resources?

SCHOOL! WORK!...nothing got closed. If you could show up, you did. You know why?

We have these modes of transportation in New York...had them for about a hundred years or so

They are called SUBWAYS. THEY RUN UNDERGROUND. They suck a lot...but THEY RUN. It's how we get from point A to point B in this town.

But something happened in the last couple of years and I don't know what the fuck it is. But we've started closing school pre emptively. We've started cowering in our apartments.


Hell, I was to go to an event this evening but the snow was so heavy they decided to cancel it. Except the snow wasn't that bad and about 5 minutes after the cancellation the SNOW STOPPED.

Dear New York City,

What the fuck happened to your balls? Get up off your ass, put on some motherfucking Totes boots and WALK through the goddam snow!!!!

Stop whining. Fer chrissakes, they are laughing at us in Buffalo. BUFFALO IS LAUGHING AT US. BUFFAFUCKINGLO!!!!!! Are we seriously going to let them deserve to deride us?!!!!!!

Mayor Bloomberg, I thought you grew up here...are you seriously making us act like whiney little children around a bit of frozen rain. Is this the city you want us to become?

It's bad enough Giuliani began to turn us into a giant shopping mall. Do you have to turn us into castrati to boot? I love the pedestrian areas and cutting traffic from parts of Midtown...but if the price we have to pay for this is we become an emasculated little weak bunch of whimpering sheep, I say bring back the trucks.

I hate winter, I don't like the cold, but you know what? I go out in it. You know why? I HAVE SHIT TO DO AND  A LIFE TO LIVE!

This isn't snow so deep you can't open your front door like they get in Iowa. This is not even a foot and a foot isn't even that hard.

IT'S.JUST.SNOW.

Get the fuck over it! Grow some nads!

BE NEW YORK....not....I don't know....fucking NEWARK.

(sigh)

In Praise of passing teachers.

Most of us are pretty arrogant when we get to high school. Even the most modest of us. We are smarter than our parents who are exceedingly uncool and say the most ridiculous things. We know who we are and we know exactly what we are doing and where we are going and anyone that tells us otherwise is either full of shit or just has no idea what is going on.

This disease goes on until we start to approach 30. Then we start to realize that WE were the assholes and that we have a ways to go. If we are lucky.


A man named Jerome Eskow, who was the head of the Drama Department in my high school for many years before and after I went there, passed away a couple of days ago after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease.

I went to the High School of Performing Arts here in New York City. Most of you will know it as The Fame School. I hate that moniker, but that's a blog for another day. I entered the school in September of 1977 as a Sophomore and graduated in June of 1980. Yes, I'm that old.

To this day I consider my time in High School pretty much the most amazing years of my life. Not all happy, mind you, but every moment pretty fucking wonderful. I experienced all the awfulness that goes with adolescence. Confusion, anger, social awkwardness, etc. In spite of all that I enjoyed a level of creativity, exploration and artistic growth that I've never had since. Jerome Eskow was more responsible for that than any teacher I've ever had.

That's not how I felt about him through most of high school. Only toward the end did I begin to suspect how brilliant the man truly was, and how much he loved us and the school.

He came across as rather pompous, sitting on the edge of his desk, legs crossed, his hands cupped a foot or so from his face as his gravelly, slow voice expounded on and on about acting theory, theater history, "the business".

To so many of us, it seemed like endless droning by a man who loved to hear himself talk. While there's possibly a grain of truth to that, the fact is that we suffered from our own pomposity. The pomposity I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. We suffer from this pomposity to the extent that we don't hear the grains of wisdom that are offered to us. And as I came to realize later, Jerome Eskow offered a lot.

I won't get into the specific lessons here all at once. A lot of them won't make sense outside of the Theater. But one thing he said once has always stuck with me.

"We have to say I hate you a lot before you can really get to I love you" I don't remember the context of the day's lesson. But the point of what he was saying was that to truly love someone, or something, you have to really know them and accept them, warts and all. You have to pass through the negatives because at the end of all that is the positive that was there in the first place. The love.

As time passed and after I graduated, I would visit the old school, which later became the new school when it moved into a large and (to my mind) still soulless building a bit further uptown, I found that Jerry (who seemed to prefer me calling him that after graduation) had more to teach, more to talk about. But more and more it was about me and self acceptance. I continued to watch the way he would talk, the way he held himself...and it occurred to me that it wasn't so much pomposity as it was...PASSION.

Slow, gravelly, deep and I think even luxurious passion.

My life went on...I drifted away from visiting, Mr. Eskow retired as did most of my teachers. The last of the teachers that were there retired just a couple of years ago (while my daughter was a senior in that soulless structure).

I sent an email to Mr. Eskow a couple of years ago. Or I meant to. I never heard back from him, it occurred to me and its possible that either his Parkinson's made it too hard or that I, in my ADD just flaked on it.

It is a regret. I don't think I ever told Jerry how much I've grown to admire him as I've gotten older (more mature?). I didn't tell him that despite my rather disappointing career (so far) that much of my deepening as an actor and a teacher comes from the things he taught me, even if they took awhile to soak in.
I had other teachers at P.A. that I loved. Some were inspiring, others were brilliant in subtle ways, some, honestly, weren't very good at all.

Jerry seeped in, sneakily...like someone planting seeds in the dark of night while every one is sleeping. Then one afternoon you wake up...and there's a tree.

Rest In Peace, Jerry. Thanks for the trees.

My Sunday Walk, Part 4

Clearly on the Brooklyn side and past the river, the signs of "gentrification are impossible to miss. As you descend the walkway onto Broadway this stamp is frequent. It's a little late for the sentiment, the hipsters took Williamsburg over awhile ago. Some of the improvements have been just that, others have taken the personality out and turned Brooklyn into Greenwich Village Lite. But at least there's some place you can find a semblance of the Greenwhich Village that was. In the meantime, the city gets more and more expensive to live in.

The southern walkway descends quickly and you can see the exit signs for the southern roadway as we sink below rooftops. The cupola of the HSBC Bank ahead, I believe was once the actual Williamsburg Bank before the downtown Brooklyn clocktower.


Here we are...the odd rooftops and unique Brooklyn attitude. Fuckin aye, you name it, we got it.

You get to the bottom and here you find this awesome statue of George Washington off of Roebling Street. It's really strong and stunning to behold. Here is the NY Times article from its unveiling in 1906. It's a PDF, so you will need Acrobat Reader.

And now...on to the journey to Mexican Coke...

My Sunday Walk, Part 3

Blogger, apparently, insists that pics and text lay out so that it looks like comments are supposed to be above the picture. Fuck that, I don't work that way. I like pic comments on the bottom, so bear with me on the spacing in the wrong place.

Looking north into midtown Manhattan. It is really mind blowing to see it all out there and the vast sky beyond and above it. The East River is much more interesting and windy than most give it credit for. Technically its not really a river, but who cares.

The walkway FINALLY opens up and you can see the Tower fully and the sky above it. If you click on the pic you can get a better sense of the incredible steel work and its impressive height. Some might say that the reveal after all that overhead beaming is meant to be dramatic. If they do....they are wrong. I wasn't filled with a sense of dramatic awe. I was relieved to finally see what should be visible from the get go. I really would have ended up disliking the walk intensely over all if this hadn't happened.

These are southern views. The first shows how sharply the river turns west. At a certain angle, it seems that the river is stopped suddenly. Oddly beautiful, especially when crossing the bridge toward Brooklyn at night when its all lights and darkness. Then you turn and see the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in the distance. I love this aspect of the view.

The J Train on its way to Williamsburg and eventually Jamaica Queens. When I was a kid living in Bushwick, this was my train home, though at the time it had a different letter designation to it. It remains elevated the whole way. When we used to take class trips to museums in Manhattan, the bridge had a lot of boarding that blocked the view from the train. One of my friends said they were building a new tunnel because the river water was rising so high that the bridge would be underwater in a few years. Being 6 or 7 years of age, we bought it and were terrified. That memory cracks me up.
The now abandoned Domino Sugar plant. Soon to become abandoned Condominiums under the present economy. Another childhood memory, crossing this bridge and smelling the thick scent of sugar, much like when we used to smell baking bread from the Silvercup Bakery when crossing the Queensborough Bridge.

Two more views of the plant as we venture further into the Brooklyn end. I took these because there's such a beautiful and creepy gothic feel to this structure along side the early 60s addtion that I was fascinated and charmed and thrilled by it. I am glad that they will be keeping the signage, as they did with Silvercup and PepsiCola.

A final look at Manhattan, taken from my iPhone.

To be continued...

My Sunday Walk, Part 2

The incline on the walkway is quite merciful. Takes a while to get up there and with my hip issue it worked nicely for me. But I found the sense of being caged rather annoying. The view, which is really good, is marred by making me keenly aware of what its like to be a hamster. I wasn't thrilled.

See what I mean? For me, most of the walk was a mix of enjoying the beauty of the view and day and wanting to take bolt cutters and remove every inch of this wire fence so I could actually enjoy the expanse and beauty the bridge reveals. I will show you more on the Wednesday post where sometimes I managed to get the camera between wires, but it limited the angle I was able to get.

Here too, the overhead beams, which later disappear and make me suspect they are structurally unnecessary, entirely block what would be an amazing view of the western tower of the bridge. Williamsburg Bridge, for all its bad structural history, is a beautiful example of late 19th century industrial revolution architecture. But you can't really admire it on this walk going toward Brooklyn and that's a real shame. Also the red paint is odd and very out of place against the battleship gray of the bridge itself. Also it contrasts the view.
Poor KB. She's going to think I hate this walk. I don't, I'm just somewhat disappointed by aspects of it.
Here you can see the Western Tower at last. The walkway splits into northern and southern paths and you can look beyond to see it. Still fencing in the way, but really cool.

Again my feelings are split on this one. This is the construction plaque that names the bridge and the date it opened (December 19, 1903), as well as the Board of Bridges and the mayor of New York at the time (Seth Low).
The grafitti both delights and annoys me. I assume it was kept in this condition as a kind of marker of the neglect the bridge received for so many years, which I appreciate. It is a bit like the rectangle of still dirty ceiling at Grand Central Station to demonstrate how extensive the restoration work was. It reminds me of my youth in NYC when it was dirty and crime ridden and in some ways desolate. I know I know, I'm one of the sickos that misses skeevy Times Square too. More on that another time.

The frustrating part is that of course, you can't read the damned plaque and the colors are just as jarring as the red walkway.

To be continued.....

My Sunday Walk, Part 1

KB_in_NYC has been telling me to walk the Williamsburg Bridge for awhile now on Twitter and this Sunday I finally had time to do it.

I integrated the walk with a plan that I'd had to locate Mexican Coca Cola which had been rumored to be sweetened with cane sugar and the closest thing you could get to the original formula without actual cocaine in it. A friend at work had told me about a place in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn that had it.

So, cross the bridge, walk through part of Williamsburg and into Greenpoint, acquire said Coke and head home...a fun urban hike of a Sunday.

So, I put on my shorts and a light shirt, my Teva sandals and took my sumac root walking stick and got onto the F train to Delancey street in Manhattan.

Blogger was doing odd things to my post today and I had to run to work...so I begin briefly:


My home street in Brooklyn before getting on the subway. Seemed a perfect place to shoot the sky to give you a sense of what a beautiful day it was. Ahead is Fulton Street.


The Essex Street Market just off Delancey Street. This is about the only thing left of the old Delancey area. Delancey Street has become what I think of as an urban strip mall of cookie cutter shops. Gone are the picklers and clothiers and wonderful ethnic restaurants and bakeries. New York, the city of reinvention has lost its imagination.

Having said that, this building does display some imagination and engineering innovation, though it is atrocious looking and completely out of place in this neighborhood. I look at it and expect Harrison Ford to fly down in his cop car and knock me over while chasing Joanna Gleason.

The Williamsburg Bridge, looking toward Brooklyn from Delancey Street. The red walkway seems so odd and out of place, but inclines well and adds dimension to this historically troubled but to my mind beautiful bridge. Up until a few years ago, there was not a day in the existence of this bridge in which it wasn't under some kind of repair work. Seriously, from its opening there were so many things wrong with the construction of the bridge, it was in a constant state of reconstruction and repair.

A brief view looking north from the walkway while still over Manhattan. You can see the Chrysler building among others. The view is great though I found the "chicken wire", presumably meant to prevent "jumping" to be an annoying distraction from this amazing view.

To be continued.....