Late In The Day And Semester

 

In the US, you don’t have to be on the West Coast to ride into a sunset on the ocean.

Here in New York City, you can go to the south shore of Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island, or certain parts of Staten Island, for such a ride. Actually, a ride to Battery Park in Manhattan also counts, as New York Bay—where the Hudson River ends—is technically part of the Atlantic Ocean.

A narrow passage of the Bay separates the tip of Manhattan from Red Hook, Brooklyn, where I took a late-day ride to celebrate the end of a torrent that inundated this city for nearly 36 hours—and to take a break from reading papers and other end-of-semester duties.

Voices Of My Rides

In "Sounds of Silence," Paul Simon wrote, "the words of the prophets are written the on the subway walls."

I've been riding daily and haven't been on the subway.  But I have seen, if not the words of the prophets, then at least expressions of the zeitgeist, if from different points of view.

During my Saturday ride to Point Lookout, I chanced upon this in Lido Beach:

I don't think I've seen such a large US flag anywhere else, let alone in front of a suburban house.  When I stopped to take the photo, I talked to a man walking his dog.  He said the house is "outsize for this neighborhood" and that he's seen "the flag more than the people who live there."  I quipped that I've lived in apartments smaller than that flag.

Not only is its size overwhelming:  It's placed so that in whichever direction you walk, ride or drive, you can't not see it.

As I've said in earlier posts, ostentatious displays of outsized flags--often seen on the back of "coal rollers"--seem less like expressions of patriotism and more like acts of aggression.

In contrast, during yesterday afternoon's ride down the waterfront, from my Astoria apartment to Red Hook, I saw something more inclusive on one of the last ungentrified blocks of Long Island City.

The author of that bit of graffiti, I suspect, also gave us this:

That person is not the enemy of the flag-flaunters and coal-rollers--and would surely know that I'm not, either. 

What Would They Have Seen?

In the Hollywood version of the immigrant's story, a poor young person emerges--his coat, but not his spirit, tattered--from the dark, dank steerage section of a ship to a deck, just as the sun breaks through clouds over the Statue of Liberty.

I can't help but to wonder how many actually had snow swirling around them, or were soaked in a downpour or struck by sleet, as they gazed out onto the harbor.  Or, perhaps, their first glimpse of Lady Liberty was shrouded in mist.

For a couple of days, we had an early taste of summer:  the temperature reached 33C (91F) in Central Park on Friday.  Then the clouds rolled in and and fog enveloped the city--especially the waterfront--late on Saturday and Sunday, interrupted by rain on Sunday morning.

I pedaled through a bunch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, from my western Queens abode to East New York, and zig-zagged along the waterfront.  I stopped for a mini-picnic (some pistachios and Lindt's 85 percent dark chocolate) in Red Hook. 

I have ridden to the Hook a number of times and still can't get over the irony of my riding--or people from all over the city, and from outside it--to it for pleasure.  I mean, what would the relatives of mine who worked on the docks or the nearby factories have thought of people whose "Sunday best" are airbrushed, more expensive versions of the clothes my relatives wore to work. Or of the three young men munching on matching artisan chocolate-coated Key Lime ice cream pops as they sauntered along the pier.  Or, for that matter, of the fancy wedding taking place inside a warehouse turned into an "event space."

 

My relatives walked and took streetcars to those piers and never went anywhere near them after they clocked out, let alone on Sunday.  And, of course, the folks who arrived from further away--as my relatives or, at least, their parents--came by boat.  What would they have thought of someone like me arriving by bike--Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, to be exact--on her day off, just because she could?

Or, for that matter, that I am a she?  What could they have seen through the mist?

A Ride In The Basin

Yesterday, as predicted, was the hottest day of the year--so far.  Therefore, as I've been doing, I took a morning ride fueled by coffee and a bagel with a piece of Saint Nectaire cheese.

My ride skirted the waterfront, from my neighborhood down to Erie Basin, the old cluster of ship docks in Red Hook that's now a park.  

I still can't get over an irony I've pointed out in other posts:  People, including relatives of mine, did hard physical work on this waterfront where I ride for fun and fitness.  Such laborers rarely, if ever, did anything that involves physical exertion during their off-hours:  They were too tired for such things.

 What would they make of my pedaling my fixed-gear bike up and down the docks--or that there are now cycling and pedestrian paths along the waterfront?

To them, wheels were for hoisting and moving objects larger than themselves--or for transporting themselves to and from places where they used those wheels, and other tools.  Those wheels were not attached to vehicles propelled by people in late middle age who were on the waterfront for exercise and the views.

The views?  I suppose that some of those workers--including one of my uncles--had some sort of artistic talent and inclination.  Still, I doubt that he, or they, were looking at the docks, boats, machinery and water for their lines and colors.

I am certainly not rich. And I have experienced bigotry.  But I am privileged--to ride where people once worked very hard, or anyplace.

The Waterfront, And Echoes Of Shell

Yesterday, I wrote about last weekend's varied rides.  Not only were the locales and sights different on each ride; so were the bikes I rode.

There was also variation within the rides, as there always is.  As an example, my Friday ride took me into Brooklyn and included two utterly different neighborhoods.

The metallic hues of New York Bay and its piers, docks, towers and bridges formed the vista of Red Hook

where one bridge rims the curvature of the earth, while another doesn't go far enough.

A few miles inland, a post-industrial streetscape stands a few blocks from where I grew up, at the edge of Borough Park, now one of Brooklyn's two major Hasidic neighborhoods.  

Change, however, can't seem to efface old identities and purposes:

Tell me that wasn't a Shell station.

I was tempted to check out the convenience store.  Perhaps I will if I take another ride out that way.  Whether or not they're different, I hope it doesn't sell sushi:  There should be a law against selling it any service station convenience store.  

But at least one law says it's OK for folks who'd shop in a place like that to eat sushi.  According to every interpretation of Halakhic law I've read, sushis made with vegetables or raw fish comply with Kosher dietary laws.  I don't imagine, though, anyone who likes sushi, whether or not they follow any religious edicts about food, would eat sushi from that place!

By the way, I had vegetable enchiladas after the ride.

In Its Wake, Another

I guess we're making up for last winter. 

Then, the weather belied a pandemic that was gathering steam:  It hardly snowed at all, and we didn't have an extended cold spell.  The reports I read confirmed what I thought:  The season was one of the warmest winters on record.

One week ago, a storm dumped about 43 cm (17 inches) of snow.  Temperatures remained below freezing until Friday, so much of the snow remained.  In fact, when I rode through Red Hook on Saturday, Sanitation Department trucks were still plowing it.  

I guess they had no place else to dump it.  So, a stretch of Clinton Street was blocked off and the NYSD created a temporary "ridge."

Well, they finished it--and I got a ride in--just in time.  Snow fell again yesterday:  about half as much as the first storm left, but enough to complicate things.

But when the storm left late yesterday, it left a lovely glow in its wake

about two blocks from my apartment.  

 

A Path From Work

Two of my uncles and my maternal grandfather worked on the Brooklyn waterfront docks. I don't think they could have envisioned anyone going there for a leisurely late-afternoon walk or bike ride.  They probably would have thought such an undertaking in the dead of winter was sheer insanity:  After spending the day working outside in the cold, they wanted to ensconce themselves in the warmth of their apartments and the suppers my grandmother and aunts cooked.  

For that matter, my grandfather and uncles probably could not understand how physical activity could be a way to "relax" at the end of a day.  To be fair, grandpa's last gift to me was a bicycle--albeit one I wouldn't be able to ride for a couple of years--and my uncles lived long enough to see that I would not give up two wheels and two pedals the moment I was legally old enough for four wheels and one pedal with a motor.

Then again, they might have thought it odd that someone would construct a bike and pedestrian lane along the waterfront where they unloaded ships--or that anyone would make a trip, whether by bike, bus or car, to it--and pay money to shop in the stores or eat and drink in the cafes around it.  

Really, I had to wonder what they would have thought of me, spinning my pedals along a path that zigs and zags around places where drinks are poured and shopping carts are unloaded--in the very places where men like them hoisted crates and even railroad cars from ships.

What might have been the strangest thing of all, to them, about the ride I took late yesterday is that I actually find beauty in those places--such that I would stop to take a photo of two bare trees in a copse of steel and brick at the time of day when they would have left the Red Hook twilight's metallic haze  for the incandescent glade of their kitchen tables.

Riding And Working

Whenever I ride along the Brooklyn waterfront--especially in Red Hook or near Bush Terminal--I can shed a tear or two as I'm opening my wings.   At least, that's how it feels sometimes.  It's the joy of victory twinged with a little bit of sadness and guilt.

The views along those stretches of New York Harbor are always awe-inspiring, and not only because of the Statue of Liberty or the lower Manhattan skyline.  No matter how many towers are built along the shorelines, they are exactly that:  shorelines, which means that they can never fit into a grid pattern; they can only disrupt or stop it.  And whoever or whatever comes or goes, lives go on.  

For that is what those waterfronts have always represented to me:  lives.  Sure, the promenades and picnic fields built over the old piers are pleasant places to walk one's dog or hang out with friends and loved ones--or to bicycle.  But nearly anyone who goes to the waterfront now has never worked on the docks, on the piers.  Those who work in the concession stands or clean the paths or fields don't work on the waterfront; they work for companies in faraway places that contract with the city's Parks Department.  

That is not to say they don't work hard (for low pay).  But their work enables the leisure of others, nearly none of whom will they ever get to know.  Those who worked on the docks and in the nearby factories were working for and with other people who worked:  the people they saw all day, and sometimes at the end of the day.  They ate, drank, played ball and attended each other's (and their families') important life events.  It's hard to imagine the person making lattes in the snack bar going to the bachelorette party of someone who power-walks or takes an outdoor yoga class along the promenade.

It's still a little strange for me to be one of those people who goes to the waterfront for recreation or fitness--in my case, to ride a bicycle--after it was a place of work, and more work, for various members of my family, most of them gone now.  For that matter, the jobs or even the very work they did no longer exist:  the plant where one of my uncles made cement, the shoe factory where my mother and grandmother stitched and the old docks where two of my uncles were longshoremen--a job rendered obsolete by cranes, container ships and interstate highways.

To be sure, their work was difficult, draining and sometimes dangerous.  The pay was decent--at least for my uncles--but, really, it did not justify the risks to themselves they were expected to take.  Nobody should have to work under those conditions, or those my mother and grandmother endured.  But, at the same time, those jobs allowed people who couldn't, for whatever reasons, spend lots of time in school to make lives for themselves and, in time, to support families.  I don't think the man grilling hot dogs in the concessionaire can do that on his pay.

He, and his co-workers are probably working other jobs. And they don't have much time, or energy, for the sorts of things we do now when we visit the pier.  If he has a bike, he's probably riding it to the job and back, but not along this pier.  I'll bet he, and the woman making lattes, didn't get to see the "rainbow cloud" to the right of the Statue.

At the end of the day, they probably want to flop into a couch or bed.  I am more privileged: In the middle of a ride after work, I can enjoy the whimsy of something like this:

I imagine that the artist who created it was one of the people who, like me, cycled (or strolled or ran) along the promenade, or some path like it in his home town.  So we might say the waterfront is a place of recreation for him.  Then again, he created a public sculpture that is exhibited on the pier.  He is an artist; that is his his work.  Or is it play--recreation--for him?

I hope it's everything.  Then I will feel nothing but pleasure about it, and about having the time to ride by and see it.