Solstice Walk

With the folks at www.burnsomedust.com we set out on an all night walk through the longest night of the year - 14 hours and 46 minutes.

Matt had a great concept for a route, which was to do a random draw. We'd all put vague destinations in a hat (A Christmas tree, the beach, Japanese gummy candy), and rely on our collective knowledge of the city to find them, inventing our own route along the way. No maps, no google phone, just us and New York. In winter. In the dark.

I loved the idea, and was looking forward to using my City Skills to the max in some unfamiliar areas. However, every self-respecting NYC urbanist can navigate Manhattan and Western Brooklyn in their sleep. And that was out problem - we started in the furthest corner of western Brooklyn. Going east through Brownsville and East NY was vetoed by some folks in the group for safety reasons (I know it's 2008 and we're with a dozen people, but I don't really blame folks for not wanting to wander around Brownsville at 3:00 AM). So we ended up basically in the familiar realm of west Brooklyn and southern Manhattan all night. You can see our route and a writeup here. Highlights include midnight sledding in Prospect Park, seeing crazy Christmas houses and taking the group up on a little bit of the High Line which was fun.

I got a few census tracts in Borough Park in, but for the most part this was simply an exercise in walking endurance, not exploration. Because of this, I had brought a couple extra pairs of socks and my old sneakers along. The best moment came when one guy's boots started falling apart, and my old sneakers just happen to fit.

After 29 miles, we finished at Stuyvesant Cove - nobody was going back my way, so I hoofed it back to the #6 train. So let's call it an even 30.

Neighborhoods: Tracts Walked:

The Bridges of New York County Part 7 - Above the Gates of Hell

If all human beings on earth vanished tomorrow, 1000 years from now the last human-made structure standing in New York City would be the Hell Gate bridge. The Hell Gate isn’t my bridge, and means much more to other people than it does to me. Still, it will always hold a special place in my heart for being the first one I ever climbed.

Climbing the Hell Gate isn’t the tough part – getting there is. Generally, you're looking at about a half-hour haul along the rail tracks. Trains aren’t really a problem - the bridge is wide enough that there's no real danger of getting hit by a train, and there's no third rail to worry about. No, my Hell Gate problem was that a few years ago I had chosen the absolute most balls-cold, windiest day of the year to pop my bridge cherry.

Bridge climbing is not really meant to be done in sub-arctic conditions wearing thermal underwear and two overcoats. But as we drove out to Astoria I couldn't have cared if I had to do it naked. A passion isn’t measured by enjoyment – it’s measured by how much you’re willing to endure to see it through. Thoughts of climbing bridges in New York City were literally keeping me up at night, and once I had made the chance for myself I wasn't backing out because of something like the weather. I was nervous, thrilled, and utterly freezing as we hopped up onto the tracks and started toward the bridge. We took a flask of whiskey with us not to get up the nerve to do it, but to stay warm enough to keep moving.

One silver lining was that I couldn't imagine there would be anyone else out. A couple years before I went up there a few people I knew ended up getting arrested on top of it - every once in a while there’s complaints of kids throwing things off the bridge and patrols get stepped up a bit. But a cop would have to pull a serious fuck-up to get stuck out on a bridge in the dead of winter.

After an appropriately hellish schlep and hiding from a couple Amtrak trains, we made it up the tracks to the bridge. The stone pillars are hollow, and are a pretty interesting space in their own right. There's stairs from the bottom, to the track level, all the way up the platform on the top.

You can see the interior staircase and just how cold it was) on the right.


Once we got to the platform on top of the stone pillar, I could have hung out there forever. The space was amazing and the view was great. I thought of what a waste it was that this space wasn't utilized as an observation deck, event location, or even just a park. The excitement of getting to experience such an amazing urban space seen by so few was vastly outweighed by my frustration at lack of greater accessibility for all the people who would appreciate it so much, but maybe weren't in the position to take the risks to see it that we were.

Compounding this frustration was the fact that the pillars actually serve no structural purpose. In 1916 the Hell Gate was built as the longest and strongest steel arch bridge in the world in order to provide a direct rail connection between New England, through New York, and to the rest of the United States. The towers were built at the same time, but only for cosmetic reasons. In the Hell Gate's protege, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the towers serve as a lookout point - and they'll also let you have much the same experience we were having: minus the cold, the walk along the tracks, and a few hundred bucks of course.

But we didn't come to hang out on top of a pillar - we came to climb a bridge, so up we went. It was an easy climb, but I felt like I had ascended Mt. Everest as we posed for pictures at the top.

I by no means consider myself among the superstar NYC bridge climbers, but I’ve been up enough to consider myself a pretty solid journeyman. I can't really say I have a favorite -different ones mean different things to me. Whenever I see the Hell Gate now I think of that bitterly cold day when I first embraced my love of the Bridges of New York County.

Dyker Heights Lights

You don't have to go to Dyker Heights to see crazy Christmas displays – pretty much any neighborhood with the magic combination of detached houses and Italians will do the trick. Houses at Westervelt and Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, Beach 144th and Neponsit in the Rockaways, East 93rd street and Flatlands in Canarsie, and 81st street at Colonial in Bay Ridge all easily rival the big displays of Dyker Heights.

But Dyker Heights has quantity along with quality. I've included a handy-dandy map of the highlights below. The map is for the heart of the area - surrounded by 15th Avenue, 86th street, the Gowanus Expressway, and 79th street - but you'll find lights well beyond these borders.

Now, keep in mind that pretty much every block in this area has at least one house that would take the cake on whatever street you live on. With that being said, red blocks are streets that are especially worth a stroll down, while blue blocks are can't-miss. Green points mark exceptional displays, and bathrooms (Nathan's and Bklyn Pizza) are indicated by the familiar symbol. The area's about equidistant from the R at 77th street or 86th street on the west, or the D at 79th street or 18th Avenue on the east.


View Larger Map

As you walk around, the displays start to seem a bit repetitive. You notice the same sparkling reindeers, inflated ferris wheels, and Christmas Countdown clocks. For the really big boys (and some of the smaller guys) I'm pretty sure the lights remain a labor of love, but for others the yard signs proclaiming designs by B&R Decorators and V&J Lighting show that the Dyker Heights lights are mostly about the social pressure of keeping up with the customs of the neighborhood.

No, no pictures – go see them for yourself. If you can't take the schlep, check out Gothamist or Flickr.

Tracts Walked: B140, B144, B146, B148, B150 (every street in tract), B186, B184, B170