Nocturne

Today I didn't go to a social function that I didn't really have to go to, but it might have been a good idea even though I might not have had the chance to see and talk with the people I really would've hoped to see there.  You probably have an event like that every year or two, or even more, especially if you work in the arts or "people-oriented" or "helping" areas like education.


Truth is, I was tired and wanted to sleep late.  I took care of a couple of errands and, at the very end of the day, took a quick spin out past PS 1 to the Long Island City piers.

The Long Island City Piers is one of the places to which I would bring a first-time visitor to New York.  I think the only  way one can get a view of the Manhattan skyline that's as good as the one from the LIC piers is to go to the Brooklyn Heights promenade, or to take the B, D, N or Q subway lines across the Manhattan Bridge or board the Staten Island Ferry in Staten Island.  However, each of those views is more limited in scope.  The wonderful thing about the view from the piers is that it's just about picture-postcard perfect, for only the narrowest part of the East River separates it from the United Nations, Chrysler Building (which has always been my favorite New York skyscraper) and Empire State building.  

Actually, the half mile width of the East River (which is really a tidal basin) wasn't stretching in front of me, exactly.  It was Marianela who got up-close and personal:

As I was sitting on one of the benches, munching on something called a "French wrap" (ham, Brie, Dijon mustard and a couple of other things) I recalled the times in my youth when I watched the sun set from the Christopher and 14th Street piers in Manhattan.  It was all lovely, although the view wasn't what I had today.  From those piers, you can look only toward the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.  That I sat there and gazed for as long as I did tells you that I was indeed intoxicated.  I can say that, as it was more than half of my lifetime ago!


So, instead of alcohol and illicit substances, I got "high" on the ride, the food I was eating and the view.  To all of you young people:  This may be what you have to look forward to in middle age!

Back in the day, I didn't know about the view from the Long Island City waterfront.  Then again, the piers were falling apart and the neighborhoods around them were a mix of grimly entropying industrial and residential areas.  That's also a pretty fair description of  what the 14th and Christopher Street piers, and their immediate environs, were like .  

As it got dark, I started to feel chilly and I hadn't brought a sweater or jacket with me.  That was all right:  I left feeling peaceful yet energized with twilight images of the city I reached on my bike.

The Bridge Called My Bicycle

As I rode this evening, I  was thinking about what "Velouria" posted yesterday on her Lovely Bicycle! blog.  In it, she talks about bicycles with "trusses":  an old design that is apparently being revived by a few small builders like A.N.T.  


The "truss" frames she showed are indeed lovely, and she mentioned that the bicycles that inspired them were built about 100 years ago and patterned after truss bridges.  


You simply can't spend any time in New York without going over some bridge or another.  Even the sorts of people who leave Manhattan only to go to Europe pass over stone or girdered spans over streets and roads that were, in some cases, streams or small rivers before they were filled in.  


And I can't help but to think of bicycles themselves as bridges.  After all, there is something "on the other side" of every bike ride.  This evening, it happened to be the wonders of New York--and Nature's-- architecture:

You all know the building in the center:  It's the one phoenetically-challenged kids of my generation used to call "the En-tire State Building."  I took this admittedly primitive photo from this spot:

The pier in the photo is part of Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City.  Of course, the opportunity to experience a nautical breeze while taking in one of the best possible views of the Manhattan skyline is reason enough to go there.  It also happens to be just a few blocks from the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center. 


What's interesting about the park and the museum--and much of the rest of the neighborhood--is that about 15 years ago, they were part of an industrial area, much of which was decaying or derelict.  Stolen cars were abandoned there; indeed, the area was, as I understand, the setting for part of the Grand Theft Auto series. In 1885, the Long Island City docks bustled with shipments of Long Island produce headed for Manhattan and points beyond; a hundred years later, those docks were all but abandoned.


However, even in its dilapidated state, the waterfront and some of the buildings on it shared a trait with those classic and classy bicycles that people sometimes find in basements and barns.  That trait was perhaps best expressed by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables:  "Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile.  Plus peut-etre."  ("The beautiful is as useful as the useful.  Perhaps more so.")


I apologize that my keyboard doesn't have those fancy and pretty markings the French and other speakers of non-English languages like to put on their words.  My favorite one in French is the "hat," or accent circumflex.  Since I couldn't type one, I'll give you a photograph of one.  In fact, this photo has a whole bunch of them:

Even if it's named after an auto company that got bailed out twice, it's still beautiful.  In fact, the Chrysler Building is still my favorite skyscraper, and one of my favorite buildings in New York.  This one ain't bad, either:

Still, to me, nothing constructed by humans compares to a bridge.  

And the bicycle is a bridge for many of us.