Late Day Ride In January

 I sometimes take an early morning or late afternoon ride down through Sunnyside and Maspeth and cross the Kosciusko Bridge into Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The entrance to the bridge flanks a cemetery and offers one of the more foreboding views of the skyline, especially in winter.

Fate And Mirth In The Morning

Yesterday:  Another early-morning ride.  Today:  Yet another, after I publish this post!

About yesterday's ride:  It turned into a pleasant ramble between Queens and Brooklyn, including a couple of what I've come to think of as New York Unicorns:  working-class neighborhoods where people live in houses, some of which were passed on through a couple of generations--or that still have those generations living in them.

I am talking about the corners of Ridgewood, Queens and the parts of Greenpoint near the Kosciuszko Bridge that haven't been colonized by hipsters and trust-fund kids.  One nice thing about them is that you don't encounter a lot of traffic on the streets.  In fact, I saw fewer motor vehicles throughout my ride than I'd anticipated.  There were a few spots where I had to navigate around traffic bottlenecks.  In all of them, crews of workers from the city's Department of Transportation or Con Ed were tearing off layers of pavement and excavating the layers of rock that underlie them.  I said "hi" to someone who appeared to be the foreman of one of those crews.

"Hot day for a bike ride?"

"Hot day for the work you guys do."

He demurred, "We're used to it.  I tell the guys to drink lots of water and Gatorade."

For a moment, I wondered where they went when they had to pee. Then I realized that on a day like yesterday, they probably didn't have to go, just as I haven't had to take "potty stops" during my recent rides: Whatever I've drunk, whether on my longer rides or short morning jaunts, was sucked up by the sun and wind against my skin.

'Take care,' the foreman advised.

'Tell your guys to be careful."  I pointed to the pit they were digging.  "My exes are down there!"

He guffawed. "Have a great day."  

"You too!"

Perhaps that somewhat-morbid joke was inspired by what I saw as I crossed the Kosciuszko Bridge.  (I probably won't ever learn to speak Polish, but I can write that name without using spell-check!):

From morbid joke to morbid thought:  The fate of all of us is, of course, can be seen in the foreground of that image.  The journey, for some, includes what's in the background.

OK, now that I've given you my deeeep thought for today (to the extent that I'm capable of such a thing), it's time for me to ride.   I want to get home before the temperature gets anywhere near the forecast high  of 36C (96F).

My First View, From A Bike

Yesterday I rode Zebbie, my 1984 Mercian King of Mercia, through the brownstones and rowhouses of Queens and Brooklyn.  Such a ride could easily involve a trip across the Kosciuszko Bridge, now that it has one of the better bike-pedestrian lanes in this city.

And so it was yesterday.  Tourists on Citibikes almost always ride across the Brooklyn Bridge for the views.  But no longtime New York resident does that.  Rather, in-the-know Big Apple cyclists opt for the Williamsburg Bridge or, if we simply want a visually interesting ride, the Kosciuszko.

In the spring and summer, the view consists mainly of skyscrapers foregrounded by trees and the factories and warehouses along Newtown Creek.  But the denuded limbs of winter reveal a landscape of differing verticalities. (Does that sound like a geeky phrase or what?)

When I lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn, one of my worst fears was--moving to Queens.  Mind you, I took many good rides, and enjoyed other activities, in "the world's borough."  But my first glimpse of it came from my family's car, en route to visit relatives:

Tell me, how would you feel about a place if the first thing you saw in it was a cemetery?  I'm guessing that I probably saw it for the first time on a winter day like yesterday, with leafless trees screening, but not shielding, the tombstones.  

But I did eventually move to Queens--to Long Island City, not far from where I live now.  Since then, I've visited Calvary Cemetery.  I know that there are tours of some of this city's necropoli, like Greenwood and Woodlawn.  Anyone who has a taste for such things (which I do, sometimes) should also go to Calvary.  Largely before of it, there are--wait for it--more dead than living people in Queens. (Thomas Wolfe once claimed, "Only the dead know Brooklyn."  What would he have said about Queens?)  In fact, more people are buried in Calvary than in any other American cemetery--or than live in Chicago!

Like Greenwood and Woodlawn, Calvary is the final resting place for some famous and infamous people, as well as everyday New Yorkers.  Also in common with them, Calvary began after the 1840s cholera epidemic: At that time, most of Queens and the farther reaches of Brooklyn and the Bronx (the locations of Greenwood and Woodlawn, respectively) were rural. And there wasn't enough room left in Manhattan to bury the victims of that epidemic, so the city mandated that they be interred elsewhere. 

All of those cemeteries have chapels large enough for masses or services.  But Calvary has a full-blown cathedral (not visible in these photos) at least somewhat reminiscent of the Sacre Coeur in Paris.

It's ironic that those same trees I saw yesterday obscure the tombstones in spring and summer.  Could their lush leafage during those seasons be nourished by the "residents" of Calvary?

Crossing That Bridge--If You Can Get To It

Two years ago, the new Kosciuszko Bridge opened between Queens and Brooklyn.  While I didn't dislike the look of the old span, industrial and utilitarian as it is, I think the new one is much more pleasing to look at, especially at night.

One thing that neither span had, though, is access for cyclists or pedestrians.  Even though I subscribe to John Forester's idea of "cycles as vehicles", at least to a point, there was no way I would have ridden across either span, even if it were permitted.  There are simply too many vehicles driven by impatient people across a roadway that, in spots, has rather poor sight lines.  And while I normally feel confident about truck drivers, too many rigs cross the bridge on any given day, which is to be expected when industrial areas line the shores of Newtown Creek, the body of sludge and slicks spanned by the bridge.

The new span is really one of two that was planned.  The other is set to open later this year and include a  20-foot-wide path for cyclists and pedestrians in either direction.  That sounds good, right?

Well, it is, except for one thing:  How do you get to the bridge?  I have ridden the streets that lead to it many times, as they are only about 5 kilometers from my apartment.  I actually like some of those streets, as they wind through a patchwork of old industrial sites, graveyards, disused railroad tracks and the turbid creek. But other streets are simply narrow and warren-like conduits for short-tempered drivers.

That is why I have mixed feelings about the New York City Department of Transportation's plans to build a network of bicycle and pedestrian access lanes on the streets that approach the bridge.  The DOT's reports say that some of the streets are "overly wide".  They are indeed wider than other city streets.  But when you consider that much of the traffic consists of trucks, it's actually a tighter squeeze than people realize.  And there are places, like this stretch of 43rd Street in Queens, where there is "no way out":

I actually have ridden there, with caution.  A "lane" separated from motor traffic by only lines of paint would actually put cyclists in greater danger, as such lanes seem to engender a false sense of safety in cyclists and encourage more aggressive behavior on the part of motorists. And the "sidewalk" on the left side leads from a lane of traffic to an entrance of the Queens-Midtown Expressway. I know:  I took it by mistake!

And I am not impressed with the DOT's plans for other streets in the area.  Given the agency's track record, I don't expect that the "network" they plan will provide safe, meaningful connections from residential areas, schools and workplaces clustered just below Queens Boulevard.  Unless there is a network of paths that is as well-planned as the motor vehicle routes to the bridge, I don't think this new network will encourage anyone to ride for transportation:  People who aren't already regular riders simply won't feel safe, with good reason.

Review Of A New Bridge

No one will ever confuse Review Avenue in Long Island City with Route Departmentale 618 or the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and Tiburon.  

I had only one opportunity to do RD 618 and one other for the iconic California ride because, well, each of them is about 6000 kilometers away (in opposite directions) from my apartment.  Review Avenue, on the other hand, is only about five kilometers away (at least via the routes I take), which is one of the reasons I find myself riding there at least a few times a year.

Although it's gritty, to be polite, it is visually interesting.  There aren't any really tall buildings there, which allows the sky to serve as a kind of diorama backdrop for the street that separates the First Calvary Cemetery Wall from the sooty brick and stone industrial structures.  That same street also looks as if it's going to sneak in under the Kosciuszko Bridge, but it makes a sharp left and leaves that job to the railroad tracks and Newtown Creek instead.

Until a few days ago, the Kosciuszko Bridge was the steel-girdered span that looks like an Erector Set project left out in the rain and soot.  It still is, but it's also that other bridge that looks like it's hanging by red and white shoestrings from a couple of concrete tombstones.  

Talk about "build it and they will come":  The new Kosciuszko is already congested with traffic--and the old bridge hasn't been closed!  A second stringed structure is supposed to be constructed parallel to the current one in two years.  I think cars are already lined up to get across it.

Actually, I rather like the look of the new bridge.  And it's probably easier to drive, especially a truck, across as it doesn't have the old bridge's steep inclines and terrible sight lines.  At the dedication ceremony, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he heard his father--three-term Governor Mario Cuomo--use expletives for the first time when he drove the family across the bridge.

Neither bicycles nor pedestrians were allowed on the old "Kos".  As far as I know, they won't be allowed on the new ones, either.  Then again, the bridges are part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, where you wouldn't want to ride even if it were allowed!

The old bridge is falling apart.  But some things endure:

I wonder what Joe was thinking when he painted his name on the wall of the cemetery all of those years ago. (Maybe he's inside it now!) I'd love to know what kind of paint he used:  Anything that could withstand all of the fumes from the factories and trucks, along with the weather, must be pretty durable!