The Bridges of New York County Part 5 - Crossing the Hamilton

There's another bridge without a pedestrian path next to High Bridge - the Alexander Hamilton Bridge that serves as an extension of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Its sole purpose is to funnel traffic from the Cross Bronx over into Manhattan and out to the George Washington Bridge. As part of the Interstate Highway system, it doesn't have a pedestrian path.



Photo courtesy of Shane Perez - www.shaneperez.com

As much as I like walking across bridges, I have to admit there isn't much need for one - it's not a heavily trafficed route, the Washington Bridge path is right next to it, and the High Bridge path will (supposedly) open soon as well. Still, that didn't stop me from trying to find a way to cross it one summer day.

The Alexander Hamilton bridge has a flat roadbed, supported by a steel arch underneath, arcing from the Bronx shore of the Harlem River to the Manhattan shore. I figured I could walk this underneath arch and knock it off the list. A couple friends and I decided to give it a shot.

Now these friends are photographers, and sometimes photographers have a tendency to take risks for the sake of pretty pictures that us non-photographers wouldn't. One of these was to do this underneath transverse during the day. We drove out there in the early evening.

The Bronx support of the bridge is in Roberto Clemente State Park, which has to be the least utilized waterfront park in the City. It has a lovely view of the river and the bridges, as well as a nice peaceful atmosphere. I'd been down there a time or two before, and the only people I had ever run across were a father and son fishing. This time was different. First we passed a police car. Then another unmarked car rolled by when we had parked the car and were hanging out debating what to do. Then the first police car passed us coming back.

This is when you usually bail on a project. And quite honestly, I'm usually the one who tends to be the voice of reason in these scenarios, as some of my colleagues in extralegal urban excursions take more of a "if you don't get caught every once in a while, you're not really trying hard enough" kind of attitude. But events earlier in the day had me feeling frustrated, antsy, and generally not in a cautious mood. So I said, "Fuck it, let's go."

Now "Fuck it, let's go" often leads to some great, great adventures. And 9 times out of 10, I'm glad I said that instead of "Fuck it, let's go home." But this time wasn't really one of them. We scampered up the archway at dusk, took a couple shots (seen above), and noticed flashlights. Well, when you have three guys hanging out in the middle of nowhere, a bunch of cops with nothing to do, and one of you leaves a tripod at the foot of the bridge, what do you expect?

It was easy enough to get away, we just crossed to the other side, navigated the gates (not on the Bronx side for some reason) and climbed out of High Bridge Park in Manhattan. It all would have been simple enough except for the fact that we had driven. We sent one guy home with all the camera equipment - at least we were smart enough to do that - and walked back to the park to pick up the car. Needless to say we encountered the police (well, State Park Police) as soon as we arrived.

General rules for dealing with police: be polite, say as little as possible, and deny everything. It also helps greatly if you're white, don't have anything illegal on you, don't have a Muslim sounding name, and basically look like the most plausible reason you're in a park in the middle of nowhere is to have gay sex, not to blow up a major transportation artery. I was glad as hell I'd shaved that morning. As soon as I heard "if I even find one stupid little joint on you..." when they were searching us I knew we were fine. A whole lot of being polite and saying as little as possible later, and we got in the car and got the hell out of there. One more bridge down!