What are your thoughts on the eve of 9/11? The floor is open

Since March 11, 2002, the six-month anniversary of 9/11, presented jointly by New York's Municipal Art Society and Creative Time, MAS has annually presented the now-iconic Tribute in Light, which in the words of MAS President Vin Cipolla "has become an international symbol of remembrance and hope, honoring both the victims of the attacks and all those who worked tirelessly to help New York City through its greatest trial. It is a testament to the profound losses we suffered that day and to our city’s determination to persevere.” Now MAS is asking all of us to Help Guarantee the Future of Tribute in Light. (By the way, you can click on the photo to enlarge it.)

"While other comedians show us persons tormented by bad luck and enemies and so on, Bob and Ray's characters threaten to wreck themselves and their surroundings with their own stupidity. There is a refreshing and beautiful innocence in Bob's and Ray's humor.

"Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive.

"And this I believe."

-- from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Foreword to
Write If You Get Work: The Best of Bob & Ray

"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre."

-- from the first chapter of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

by Ken

Is there anyone who hasn't thought so much about 9/11 over these ten years that there's hardly anything left to think?

Maybe that's why every path in my brain right now is leading me back to this lovely insight of Kurt Vonnegut's, which I shared last month ("Bob and Ray Tonight: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. remembers being interviewed for a job by the fellows"). And since Vonnegut surely knew way more than he wished about evil, I'm led to that line from Slaughterhouse-Five, that Vonneguttishly phantasmagoric novel set against the backdrop of the World War II fire-bombing of Dresden, a book I haven't read in a bunch of decades and undoubtedly need to read again.

I don't know that I would have planned any "activities" for the 9/11 anniversary. Luckily, the Municipal Art Society did my thinking for me, scheduling a rare members-only "walk around the World Trade Center site, "The World Trade Center: 10 Years Later." I know it's sold out, and guess it sold out pretty quickly. (As you know, when the new MAS tour schedule comes out, I stop everything and do my registrations for the tours that require reservations and squeeze the ones that don't into my schedule.) I love the plan:

We will survey the progress of the rebuilding, recount the history of the World Trade Center and of its neighborhood, and contemplate the future. The tour will not enter the site itself, which will be in the middle of intense preparations for the ceremonies of the following day, but we will be able to look down upon the site from a nearby vantage point. We will conclude the tour with a visit to a nearby rooftop for a discussion of the MAS Tribute in Light, which will be in the process of being readied for the following night.

And who better to lead the tour than architectural historian Francis Morrone, with whom -- in theless than a year since I joined MAS -- I've done more walking tours than I can remember, in three of the city's five boroughs, each of which left a powerful imprint on the way I see the world, a different kind of imprint in almost all cases. (For last weekend's "Dawn Powell and the Greenwich Village of Her Time," for example, never having read a word of Dawn Powell, I began reading the 1954 novel The Wicked Pavilion, which I've nearly finished -- and I've ordered the two Library of America volumes containing nine of her "bitterly satiric"novels and also the published Diaries of Dawn Powell, which Francis insists should be read "by everybody," for their bold and frank insight into, well, the complicated and messy process of everyday life. From the tour itself I got, as I expected, a particular and vivid connection to the geography and history of the Village.) Between Francis and the people who've registered for this evening's tour, I can't imagine better company for this grim 10th-anniversary lookback.

At some point, as I'm sure Kurt Vonnegut understood as well as anybody, that line between stupidity and evil gets blurred, as it did with Osama bin Laden and his followers (oh, they got themselves plenty of attention, but did they really imagine they were going to do their cause, whatever it was, any good? unless their goal was to cause disarray in the U.S. that would help send us down a path of self-destruction), and as it did with the apostles of American moronitude who used it as a tool for slathering their poisonous, delusional view of reality across a country that deserved better. But I don't know that there's anything new to say about any of that, anything that Howie and Noah and I and our large contingent of guest posters and of course commenters haven't been saying here for years.

What I'm thinking now, perhaps inspired by the lively discussion I was delighted to see sprout from my post last night, "Is anyone listening to President Obama anymore? (How about President Obama?)," I'm wondering what readers are thinking on this doleful occasion. The floor is open.


URBAN GADABOUT REMINDER: JAMES RENNER'S SERIES
OF NORTHERN MANHATTAN WALKS STARTS TOMORROW

For six Sundays at noon, starting tomorrow and running through October 16, the official historian of Manhattan Community District 12 is offering walking tours of selected locations in "WAHI," the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood, plus little Marble Hill, which on maps looks like it should be part of the Bronx but is actually part of Manhattan. (I listed the subjects of the individual tours in my last post on the subject.)

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 12:00 noon
JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL

JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL are noted for the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Sylvan Terrace and the moes of famous African American entertainers Paul Robeson, Count Basie and Duke Ellington at 555 Edgecombe Avenue. The area is home to a local bookstore and the Washington Heights branch of the New York Public Library. Nearby Coogan's Bluff is where baseball fans watched the New York Giants play at the Polo Grounds at 155th Street.

There is an admission fee to the Morris-Jumel Mansion; $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students.

DATE: Sunday, September 11, 2011
TIME: 12:00 noon
MEET: 160th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in front of the Library

I've been grappling with scheduling conflicts for a number of the six WAHI tours (which are $15, $10 for seniors and students) but have managed to keep tomorrow clear for this one, which syncs wondefully with the free "Highbridge Park Hike" -- essentially along the upper edge of Coogan's Bluff -- I did in July with expert urban geologist Sidney Horenstein. We started that walk at the lower edge of the park (and the bluff), on 155th Street opposite the northern edge of the famous northern Harlem enclave of Sugar Hill.

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Urban Gadabout: NY Transit Museum tours announced plus those "WAHI" Upper Manhattan tours

Wikipedia offers this view of Washington Heights beyond the George Washington Bridge, from the west. For a listing of historian James Renner's upcoming tours of the Northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, see below.



by Ken



Since I last wrote, the New York Transit Museum tour schedule has been announced (you can find it on the Calendar of Events page of the website, and the early registration period for members is in full swing. As I mentioned, all the regular tours on the fall schedule are offered at least twice, and some of the especially popular ones, which in the past were generally already offered more than once, are offered even more often.



The four I pounced on start with two led by peerless "urban geographer" Jack Eichenbaum. With Jack you not only begin to understand why neighborhoods and regions have developed the way they have, but you see things you just wouldn't see with less tuned-in tour leaders.



PENN STATION "ECOLOGY"

Saturday, September 17, 10am-12n, and Sunday, October 9, 1-3pm

Constructed in a once squalid are known as the "Tenderloin," Penn Station united rails from Long Island, New Jersey and points south that previously terminated on the other side of the Hudson. Urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum will lead this walking tour through the remnants of the neighborhood's past and look at its proposed future, including the Farley Post Office building, the historic Hotel Pennsylvania, Herald Square, and "Koreatown."

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN

Saturday, October 15, 10am-1pm, and Saturday, November 19, 10am-1pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route. We will explore the West Village and Meatpacking District -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to Bushwick and Williamsburg, noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods.

By the way, Jack has announced some additional fall tours of his own, including an on-the-ground survey of the area he's currently watching with perhaps the greatest fascination, What's New in Long Island City? (Saturday, October 22, 11am-1pm) and one in his home area, which has already undergone an unrecognizable transformation, Religion on the Land: Polytheologic Flushing (Saturday, November 12, 12n-2:30pm). I've already done a fair amount of wandering in both Long Island City and Flushing with Jack, and I can assure you it's a special experience. (I would definitely do LIC with him again if I weren't already registered for the Municipal Art Society tour of the Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District at the same time.)



Jack also invites us to "hold the dates" for a pair of cold-weather tours ("both partially indoors"), with details to be announced: Keeping Off the Streets of Midtown Manhattan (East Side) (Saturday, December 3) and Flushing's Chinatown (Sunday, December 18).



The other two tours I couldn't resist are:



POWER UP! A SUBSTATION INSIDER

Saturday, November 5, 10am-12n, and Saturday, December 3, 10am-12n

As part of subway construction in 1904, the 59th Street Powerhouse was built to supply the massive amounts of power required to move trains and light tunnels in the new subway. Robert W. Lobenstein, former General Superintendent of New York City Transit, will take us inside magical Substation No. 13 and lead a sidewalk tour of the 59th Street Powerhouse.

MOVIN' ON UP: 75 YEARS OF SUBWAYS UNDER QUEENS BOULEVARD

Sunday, November 13, 11am-2pm, and Saturday, December 10, 11am-2pm

Seventy-five years ago the Independent Subway System was extended from Jackson Heights to Jamaica under Queens Boulevard, now a shopping mecca. Ridership at Forest Hills station now ranks 40th out of the system's 468 stations. Ride sections of this line and walk its surrounding neighborhoods with subway historian and retired LIRR manager Andrew Sparberg.

These are all $30 for NYTM members, $45 for nonmembers.



Two perennial favorites are offered four times each but are so popular that they're likely still to be tough to book.



At some point I will definitely do the CONEY ISLAND YARD tour again, and prepare for it better by schooling myself on the various kinds of subway cars that are serviced in this giant maintenance facility, and how exactly they work, to better appreciate this unparalleled close-up view of how that maintenance done. But the pièce de résistance is the visit to the tower where New York Transit personnel oversee the extraordinary coming together at Coney Island of four separate subway lines.



This is a must. It's being offered Tuesday evenings, 6-8:30pm, on September 13, October 11, November 8, and December 13 ($30 for members, $50 for nonmembers), and you're going to need photo ID -- they take security very seriously at the Coney Island Yard. (Anyone who didn't understand how essential the subways are to the life of the city got a demonstration when they were shutdown in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.)



The visit to THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN: OLD CITY HALL STATION is also enormously popular. When the old City Hall station was built, it was the anchor of the original subway line, and the station was built on a decorative scale that was never repeated. You're really traveling back in time here, and the station may be less "wow"-inspiring than you expected. (For one thing, it's not that large. The trains of the time were only five cars, cars that were much shorter than later ones.) But more than anything, you're seeing history here. The station was abandoned both because of lack of use and because the extreme track curve on which it sits could never have been adapted to handle the much larger, multiple-trains that became standard on the NYC subways.



You can glance at the station by staying on a no. 6 train after its last southbound stop at Brooklyn Bridge, when it makes the loop that turns brings it onto the northbound local track of the station -- and you are allowed to stay on the train, we were told, unless Transit personnel tell you the train is going out of service -- but you won't see much. The tour is the only way to get out onto the station platform and actually see what there is to see. This is the one NYTM tour that's members only, and may be itself be reason enough to join, though there seem to me plenty of other reasons, not least all those other tours. (Note that in addition to using my early-registration privilege, I paid $120 for my four tours, which for nonmembers would be $180.)



And oh yes, as I mentioned last time, there's one more of the museum's famous day-long NOSTALGIA RIDES, once again riding the old IRT lo-V cars up the Lexington Avenue line to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (Sunday, October 23, 10am-3pm; $35 for members, $50 for nonmembers). This time it's offered as a package deal with a box lunch and a tour of this final resting place of some of New York's Fanciest citizens (with cemetery architecture by some of New York's fanciest architects).



And I haven't even mentioned the museum itself, in downtown Brooklyn, which is terrific, both for its permanent exhibitions and the special ones offered for limited periods. (I was grateful at the two cracks that the summer Nostalgia Rides that departed from the museum gave me at the incredible exhibition on the Triborough Bridge, an amazingly thorough documentation with photos, archival documents, models, plans, etc. of how the concept for this complex of structures took shape and how it was executed, including what it displaced.)



Nor have I mentioned the numerous other special events, including all sorts for kids (many of whom are incredibly knowledgeable about the subways; at the Coney Island Yard, the youngsters on the tour knew everything about those trains!). Or the Museum Annex at Grand Central Station, which has free admission and is currently hosting an exhibition called "The Once and Future Penn Station." If you're visiting the city, you should definitely try to get to one if not both locations, and if you live here and haven't been yet, you really should go. For basic information, the Transit Museum website is a great starting place.





"WAHI" TOURS



Well, I've gotten my copy of James Renner's Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, and it's a terrific book. But it didn't register for me before that it's part of the valuable Images of America series, which means it's basically a book of photos. There are lots of fine historical photos, informatively captioned, but alas no, it's no substitute -- as I was hoping -- for the tours I'll have to miss, owing to schedule conflicts, in this six-Sunday September-October series offered by the official historian of Manhattan Community District 12.



By way of overall introduction, James writes:

Washington Heights and Inwood (WAHI) are communities that have, over the years, gained recognition in massive demographic changes. People from other parts of the city are visiting and moving here because of its affordable housing and beautiful parks. These tours will demonstrate to the resident and visitor alike how upper Manhattan has changed and adapted to suit the needs of its new inhabitants and tourists.

You can find the full schedule with tour descriptions here. There are parts of the city it's easy to find covered by multiple walking tours; these aren't among them. The tours on the schedule ($15, $10 for students and seniors) are:



JUMEL TERRACE HISTORIC DISTRICT & SUGAR HILL (Washington Heights)

Sunday, September 11, 12n (additional fee for Morris Jumel Mansion admission)



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER (Washington Heights; 165th to 168th, Broadway to Haven Avenue)

Sunday, September 18, 12n



FORT GEORGE (Washington Heights; 190th to 193rd, Amsterdam and Audubon Avenues)

Sunday, September 25, 12n



SHERMAN CREEK (Inwood)

Sunday, October 2, 12n



TUBBY HOOK (Inwood; Dyckman Street, Riverside Drive and Broadway)

Sunday, October 9, 12n



MARBLE HILL

Sunday, October 16, 12n

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Two updates: (1) The GOP presidential field -- very funny! (2) Fall NYC tours -- breaking news!

(1) THE GOP FRONT-RUNNERS IMAGINED AS CHARACTERS FROM THE SIMPSONS

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

Is this brilliant or what? It's by Rob Tornoe, whose work I was unfamiliar with.





(2) NYC TOUR UPDATES -- BREAKING NEWS!



As I wrote Sunday, given how perilously close we're getting to September, the new tour schedules of the Municipal Art Society had to be released momentarily, and now they have been, more or less. I've done some difficult triage and filled in a lot of my fall calendar.



NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM



Again as I wrote Sunday:

In the case of the Transit Museum, the smartest thing you can do for now is to become a member. While it's technically true that very few of its tour offerings require you to be a museum member, in fact members take such advantage not just of the lower members' price but of the early registration period that it's awfully hard to squeeze onto most of the tour lists if you aren't a member.

Members have now received the full fall tour schedule, and the members-only early registration period is set for August 31-September 8, and this time it's going to be doable online as well as by phone. (I've got my sights set on four tours.)



I assume there will be a general announcement of the tour list shortly. I don't feel at liberty to pass on what we've been told, except to note that the cutthroat competition for tour slots should be eased with all of the fall regular tours offered at least in duplicate, and some of the likely most popular ones being offered even more frequently. There is, by the way, another one of the Transit Museum's famous Nostalgia Tours, scheduled for late October.



My advice still is to join immediately, and ask to have the tour list sent to you if it's still not posted.



MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY

The September and October listings are now up on the "Tours" page of the MAS website, and there's lots of exciting stuff. I'm conflicted out of a couple I would have loved to do: The Architecture of Literacy: University Heights, the Bronx (Saturday, September 17, 11am, with Jean Arrington), Arts for Transit: Brighton Line (Sunday, October 2, 11am, with Amy Hausmann, registration required -- when I moved to NYC at age 12, the Brighton line from Brooklyn was my lifeline to "the City," as I learned to refer to Manhattan), and Crown Heights North (Sunday, October 16, 11am, with Suzanne Spellen and Morgan Munsey, with whom I did an MAS tour of sections of Bedford-Stuyvesant a month or two ago -- unfortunately that's the day of my Working Harbor Committe Circumnavigation of Staten Island, also mentioned in my Sunday post).



However, in a frenzy of excitement I've already registered for seven tours. Except as noted, the tours are all still $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers.



Dawn Powell and the Greenwich Village of Her Time. Sunday, September 4, 2pm, with Francis Morrone

The World Trade Center: 10 Years Later. On the eve of the anniversary, Saturday, September 10, 6pm, with Francis Morrone, $20

The Architecture of the Garment District. Tuesday, September 20, 5:30pm, with Andrew Dolkart

Starchitecture NYC, 2011, "a concentrated three-hour tour via small motor coach and on foot of some of the city's most talked-about buildings, structures, and spaces," Saturday, September 24, 10am, with Matt Postal (also offered Saturday, October 15 -- I think! the schedule says "Sunday, October 15), $49 for members, $55 for nonmembers

East Village III: The Bowery, the third in a series of East Village tours Francis Morrone is leading. Sunday, October 9, 2pm

Chinatown-Little Italy Historic District. Saturday, October 22, 11am, with Kerri Mulhane



Then there are a bunch of tours offered on a walk-up basis (as I've mentioned, tours director Tamara Coombs likes offering the tours in both formats, to accommodate the widest range of potential tour-walkers) which I've inscribed on my calendar:



Sixth Avenue and the 1961 Code Revisited, the first of two walks looking at the wave of high-rise construction that was build in accordance with the major changes in the code implemented in 1961 (Sunday, September 18, 11am, with Matt Postal)

Battery Park City Evolving, "love it or hate it," focusing on the northern section. Sunday, September 25, 4pm, with Francis Morrone

Catalysts for Change: East Midtown and the 1961 Code, the East Side continuation of Matt Postal's Sixth Avenue walk above (September 18). Saturday, October 1, 11am

Forest Hills: Garden City in the City. Sunday, October 23, 2pm, with Francis Morrone

Downtown's Forgotten Neighborhood, the immigrant-rich "Lower West Side" that remained a multicultural hotbed until it was largely displaced by the World Trade Center. Saturday, October 29, 11am, with Joe Svehlak ("whose family settled here in the early 1900s")



There are also a pair of "Beyond Sight" tours specifically conceived for people with visual impairments (though open to others), stressing "visual description and multi-sensory exploration," led by art historian Sylvia Laudien-Meo (reservations required for both): Grand Central Terminal, September 3, 11am, and The September 11 & Irish Hunger Memorials, October 20, 12n.



And a tour of a project that was never built --



I'm also delighted to see that Matt Postal is once again doing what was my first MAS tour (only last fall!), one I talk about all the time: LOMEX Remembered (Thursday, September 15, 5:30pm) -- a tour of a project that was never built (!), Robert Moses's planned Lower Manhattan Expressway, when a local community threatened with destruction discovered that it could too fight City Hall, in a long series of battles (Moses didn't give up easily; every time the opponents thought they had thwarted the project, he came back with a revised plan and they had to start all over) in which Jane Jacobs's name was heard for the first time.



I STILL HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THOSE "WAHI" TOURS



It's a series of six, covering areas of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, being offered Sundays at noon from September 11 to October 16 by Northern Manhattan historian James Renner, author -- by strange coincidence -- of the book Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill (Arcadia Publishing; I've ordered my copy!) and the official historian of Community District 12 Manhattan. Again, you'll find the schedule here, and the tours are $15, $10 for students and seniors.



I'm sorry to say that after the triage with the NYTM and MAS schedules, plus other tour plans (like, again the Staten Island circumnavigation, which I have no intention of missing!), I'm probably only going to be able to make two of the six, but they're two I'm especially eager for: Jumel Terrace Historic District & Sugar Hill (Washington Heights and Harlem, the first of the series, September 11) and Sherman Creek (Inwood, October 2). I'm hoping that the book will help me plug some of those gaps. And of course I assume James will be offering more tours in the future.

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Urban Gadabout: Hiking Highbridge Park -- you might think terror of heights wouldn't matter much to an urban gadder, but you'd be wrong

Once upon a time the Polo Grounds sat at the foot of Coogan's Bluff.

by Ken

For your avid urban gadder, does this sound fabulous or what?

Highbridge Park Hike with Sidney Horenstein
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.

Highbridge Park is situated at the edge of a Manhattan cliff that overlooks the Harlem River and the western edge of the Bronx. Vistas from the park reveal topographic features that provide insight into the areas underlying geologic structure. The park is also the home to a segment of the old Croton Aqueduct Trail which you will traverse. With Sidney Horenstein as your guide, discover these fascinating artifacts as you learn about the Harlem River and some historical features adjacent to the park.

Sidney Horenstein is a geologist by training and Educator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History. His geology and history walks in Northern Manhattan Parks garner rave reviews from neophytes and veteran rock hounds alike.

Because there are staircases on the route, the program is not wheelchair accessible.

This program is made possible by the generosity of the Greenacre Foundation.

Location
West 155 Street & Edgecombe Avenue (in Highbridge Park), Manhattan

Location Details:
Meet at the northwestern corner of 155th Street and Edgecomb Avenue.

Cost
Free

Event Organizer
Northern Manhattan Parks

I'm looking forward to it, and by this time tomorrow should have the walk under my belt. Or else I will have fled in terror, or maybe not fled, because when I find myself in places -- a steep hill, a bridge, an elevated subway, a steeply raked theater or stadium -- that the pit of my stomach and especially the balls of my feet tell me are too high for the likes of me, and I'm caught between the seemingly equally fraught options of moving forward or retreating, my locomotion tends to be in increments of a fraction of an inch.

Maybe I'll write about this at greater length some other time, though my experience is that the only terrors people tend to have interest in, and patience for, are those that they find personally terrifying, and non-acrophobics probably think we sufferers are just wusses.

I'm really hoping to be able to do this walk with the apparently eminent geologist Sidney Horenstein, much as I was looking forward to a scheduled walk a few weeks ago in Fort Tryon Park. Since I live in Washington Heights, at the northern end of Manhattan, Fort Tryon Park to the north and west and Highbridge Park to the east are more or less my "neighborhood" parks. Somehow, though, even though I managed to make it all the way from the southern end of Manhattan to the starting point of the Fort Tryon Park tour by about a minute after 6pm that evening, I found no trace of Professor Horenstein or the tour. So tomorrow, assuming I can screw up my courage, I plan to leave early enough to be at the northwest corner of 155th Street and Edgecomb Avenue in plenty of time.

The thing is the northern end of Manhattan is, shall we say, highly vertical. When I missed the Fort Tryon Park walk, instead of just making the 10-minute walk home, I did some wandering around the park, and frequently found myself in icky height-challenging situations. I don't know if it would have been better or worse if I'd been with the group. On the one hand, the need to keep up might simply force me to gut it out; on the other hand, it might simply amp up the humiliation quotient without in any way impinging on the terror factor. (The photo shows a tiny bit of sample terrain from Highbridge Park.)

In my advancing years I've gotten a little better in some ways. Last month when I did the Municipal Art Society walking tour of Newtown Creek, knowing in advance that a central feature was walking across the Pulaski Bridge over the creek from Brooklyn to Queens, while it's true that most of my thoughts for days ahead involved incipient terror at crossing the bridge, I did in the end actually manage it -- though there were times when it was close. Our access to the bridge roadway was a four-flight staircase, and the transition from the second to the third flight left me feeling so exposed that for a couple of minutes I just didn't think I could make it. But as the elderly and infirm tour members sauntered on past, eventually I sucked it up and did it, and then shuffled my way across the bridge, even managing occasional quick sideways glances for bits of the wonderful views. Still, I was so relieved to make it to the Queens end -- also aware that I now had to get down those four flights of stairs -- that I foolishly forgot to look out for what should have been a splendid view of Hunters Point, the southwestern tip of Queens, where Newtown Creek empties into the East River.

As I say, in some ways I've gotten better than I used to be. I can now sometimes force myself to accomplish a feat like the above. A couple of weeks ago I was seriously tempted to attempt my second-ever crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge, understandably one of New York City's most famous and beloved walks, but for me one of the more nerve-wracking experiences of my life. Can I maybe do it now a little less stressfully?

I haven't tested it yet, because in some ways I'm worse now. I'm much more aware of height-frighting situations, like elevated-subway platforms, where I never used to pay much attention to the height.

And I'm expecting a lot of verticality in the Highbridge Park walk. At 155th Street, for example, the park's southern edge, its eastern edge is Coogan's Bluff, which to me is not a Clint Eastwood movie but the site of the old home of the New York Giants and Mets, the Polo Grounds -- except that the stadium sat at the foot of the bluff. Not that many years ago I unintentionally found myself attempting to negotiate what I eventually figured out was Coogan's Bluff, and I can still remember the terror I felt even when I was safely at the top of the cliff.


TUESDAY EVENING UPDATE: Back from Highbridge Park

The path along the edge of Coogan's Bluff overlooking the Harlem River brought us out from the right to the Manhattan end of the High Bridge, built in 1848 to carry water to Manhattan as part of the Croton Aqueduct system.

Well, I made it! We had a swell walk through the path in Highbridge Park along the upper edge of the bluff -- and I do mean the edge, with a pretty steep dropoff much of the way which forced me to edge as far away as the not-especially-horizontal path allowed. Luckily for me, there's enough growth on most of the cliffside to block the view. I had my rough stretches, but hey, I'm here to tell the tale.

And it's always an incredible treat to be guided by someone who knows so much about the underlying geology of the area as well the history. And even I was able to enjoy some of the views across the Harlem River to the Bronx. Luckily again, Professor Horenstein was there to lift our gaze to the farthest distance over the Bronx to a ridge in the farthest distance: the Terminal Moraine that divides northern and southern Long Island, marking the farthest reach of the same glacier that shaped the geology of Washington Heights, where we were.

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Urban Gadabout: Newark Bay or bust! (Is there anyone else whose pulse is sent racing by the prospect?)

A nice overview of the waters in and around New York City (which is in light gray), pretty much all really inlets of the Atlantic Ocean: 1. Hudson River; 2. East River, though the number indicates the wilder upper portion, which has more in common with -- 3. Long Island Sound, to the east (between Long Island and Connecticut); 4. Newark Bay; 5. Upper New York Bay, and on the other side of the Verrazano Narrows -- 6. Lower New York Bay; 7. Jamaica Bay (that big purple splotch along its shore being JFK Airport); 8. Atlantic Ocean. Newark Bay (4) connects via the Kill Van Kull (to the northwest of Staten Island) to the Upper Bay and via the Arthur Kill (to the southwest of Staten Island) to Raritan Bay, at the bottom-left corner of the map.

by Ken

Here's the news in a nutshell: a New York Harbor tour that targets . . . Newark Bay!

I realize it's a pretty small subset of readers who will share even a fraction of my excitement about this news. Newark Bay? The more or less inland harbor -- hidden from view from the outer coast by the big land blob that is Staten Island -- that is the, the industrial hub of North Jersey? Would it help to think of it as the maritime heart of Sopranos country?

It's still not exactly glamorous, but Newark Bay is now where the hottest action of New York Harbor, since despite its remove from the open ocean, thanks to diligent dredging of the Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, its outlets to that ocean, it can handle all many of the larger ocean-going freight vessels, and its western shore gives them access to the North American mainland, a major saving in shipping costs.

Maybe it's just this thing I've developed, this late-life fascination with the real geography of the harbor,now going beyond the obvious part that's on display from the Battery (the southern edge of Manhattan Island) and from the New York City Department of Transportation's gift to harbor hounds, the Staten Island Ferry. That's the Upper Harbor, 5 on the map --

* lying between Manhattan to the north, Brooklyn to the east, Staten Island to the south, and New Jersey (north to south: Hoboken, Jersey City, and Bayonne) on the west;

* with Governors Island sitting just south of Manhattan and east of Brooklyn, and with Liberty and Ellis Islands just east of the New Jersey coast;

* and with the Hudson River projecting north on the west side of Manhattan, separating it from New Jersey;

* and the East River to the east of Manhattan, separating it from Brooklyn (spanned in these lower reaches by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges) and as it continues northward separating Manhattan and the Bronx from Queens;

* and just visible from standard Upper Bay outposts, the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island on the northwest from New Jersey (with views from some angles of the Bayonne Bridge over the kill);

Nowadays there seem to be all sorts of boats cruising the upper harbor, and I've done those tours. Mostly, though, they seem to be about what you do besides harbor-viewing, like dinner, or brunch, or fireworks (or sailing on a yacht, or a sailboat, or . . .). In the summer there's now free ferry service to Governors Island. (In fact I'm headed to Governors Island tomorrow.)

I've been trying to fill in my picture of the harbor and the coastline. To the east I did my pilgrimage to Plum Beach, Brooklyn (on Rockaway Inlet, more or less midway between 6 and 7), to observe horseshoe crabs with Urban Park Ranger Andrew. Farther east I took advantage of an Urban Park Rangers walk along Rockaway Beach, and still farther east there was a Shorewalkers walk along Jones Beach.

Farther up the East River, I seized the opportunity of a Municipal Art Society walk to get a close-up view, and actually walk over, Newtown Creek, which forms four-plus miles of the border between Brooklyn (to the south) and Queens (to the North), the NYC boroughs that occupy the western end of Long Island.

For the harbor itself, for Jane's Walk weekend in May, the tour I chose took me to the north shore of Staten Island, with a good view of the working harbor, even on a Sunday -- you're reminded that ships don't get "days off" while they're at sea and under intense pressure to make their schedules), including my best view as of then of the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island and New Jersey, including a pretty good view of the Bayonne Bridge spanning the kill.

By now it should be clear that a major role in the geography of the southern part of the harbor is played by Staten Island, and for that reason, and also for my shocking ignorance of this borough of the city of New York, I've been undertaking a sort of crash course in Staten Island, taking advantage of Municipal Arts Society tours to Snug Harbor, on the Kill Van Kull shore (though we didn't get much of a view of the water): Tottenville, on Raritan Bay, at the southern tip of the island (to which I recently returned for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival), and Stapleton Heights. (In fact, I'm about to head out to an MAS tour of the budding cultural scene in Staten Island's St. George.)

In my mind, at least, all of this was pointing me toward -- what else? -- Newark Bay, but I honestly had no idea how I might tackle it as a destination. That is, until I was, as usual, perusing the week's listings in Time Out New York and found myself staring at this listing:

Hidden Harbor Tour: Newark Bay Tour

South Street Seaport, Pier 16, Tue 6:15pm. Fulton St (at South St)
(866) 977-6998circlelinedowntown.com
Subway: A, C to Broadway-Nassau St; J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5 to Fulton StGet directions
$29, seniors $22, children $15

As one of three of its New York Harbor tours, this trip around Newark Bay on Circle Line's Zephyr includes views of the Red Hook Container Terminal and Bayonne Bridge, a passage through Kill Van Kull, which divdes Staten Island and New Jersey, and an exploration of the busy container ports across the water.

Sure enough, the Circle Line Downtown website lists the three Hidden Harbor Tours:

Tour 1 - The Newark Bay Tour
Feauturing the Kill Van Kull, Bayonne Bridge and The Giant Container Ports of Newark Bay

Tour 2 - The Brooklyn Tour
Featuring Brooklyn's Maritime Heritage & Future - Brooklyn Navy Yard to Sunset Park

Tour 3- North River Tour
The Changing Waterfront of North River - Passengers Ships to Kayaks

There are much more detailed descriptions of each onsite. Still-to-come dates for the Newark Bay Tour, in addition to July 12, are August 9 and September 13; for the Brooklyn Tour, July 26 and September 27; and for the North River Tour, August 23. If there was any financial advantage to booking all three tours, which I was certainly prepared to do, I couldn't find any trace of any, but you better believe I went ahead and booked Tuesday's epic trip to Newark Bay.

Luckily for me, I work within walking distance of Pier 16, so with just a little fudging I'll be able to make that 6:15 departure. I've already printed my ticket, but I'm still supposed to be there 30 minutes before departure time. Can you tell that I'm excited?

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Urban Gadabout: Inside the Revolutionary Apple with a co-author of "Inside the Apple"

James explained that the fence around Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan is not only one of the city's oldest surviving artifacts but a participant in some key historical events.

by Ken

Is there any traveler who hasn't become wholly dependent on the Internet? Whether it's for scouting destinations, gathering information, finding timetables, making reservations -- even for a humble urban gadabout, it's hard to imagine doing it these days without the staggering range of resources online.

Online is how I do essentially all of my planning with my "regular" tour providers, New York's Municipal Art Society, New York Transit Museum, and Urban Park Rangers. I'm so booked up for the summer that I have hardly a weekend "day off," and on a lot of those days I'm doubling up. Still, I'm aware that this only scratches the surface of what's available out there, so Friday, with a thinned-out schedule thinning for the 4h of July Weekend, I did some online searching, and stumbled onto, insidetheapple.net, the blog of Michelle and James Nevius, wife-and-husband authors of a combination history of New York and guidebook called Inside the Apple, and learned that on July 3rd James would be doing a "Revolutionary War Walking Tour" in Lower Manhattan, for which, as of a post from a couple of days previous, they still had places.

So I followed the instructions for e-mailing a reservation request and soon got back a confirmation, which left only the consideration of weather, which today started out dreadful, with intermittent heavy rain and overcast, and a not especially sunny forecast. Nevertheless, James sent out an e-mail to the reservation list expressing the hope that the storms would pass through by our scheduled assembly time, 4pm said, "Thus, I am going to be at the meeting place at 4PM to lead the tour and I do hope you will be too! Bring an umbrella, of course, and good humor, and I'm sure will have a great time."

So as soon as I finished puttering around with Bruno Walter and the Siegfried Idyll, I set out for Peter Minuit Plaza, in front of the Staten Island Ferry, and incredbily, just about the whole group of 25 walkers turned up. (As James pointed out, you're apt to get a bunch of no-shows even in perfect weather.)

And through intermittent, sometimes heavy rain, our hardy band trooped through a host of locales where way back in Revolutionary New York events of significance happened, though as is true of almost all of our two centuries of colonial history, first Dutch and then English, hardly anything except streets (and many street names) survives from that time. (A particular bête noire of James, we discovered, is the relative lack of attention that's been given to our four-century-old city's English century. Everybody loves the Dutch century, he points out, and of course the two centuries-plus since the Revolution are wildly popular. But the English century may be too closely connected with English rule, the city itself having been not just the site of the English military command but a center of Loyalist sympathy and activity.

James himself is wildly charming and personable, and an easygoing fount of information, so the tour was a resounding success. We wound up walking up Broad Street to the corner of Broad and Wall, and the Federal Hall that's not the Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president but occupies the same site (in much the way that what now passes for Fraunces Tavern, a famously favorite hangout of George Washington, is a re-creation of the building from Washington's time. Walkng up Broad Street we passed my office building, 20 Broad, and by then I had learned that there wasn't any great canal-like purpose to the canal that originally ran up the middle of Broad Street, as is described in the history of the street that's engraved in the new curbside that was created when the street was repaved with stones -- and security outposts -- from Beaver to Wall Streets a couple of years ago.

I was happy to buy a copy of Inside the Apple from James (I like the idea of a larger chunk of the purchase price going into the authors' pockets), and am just starting to get to know it. In an introductory note, Michelle and James explain:

The goal of Inside the Apple is to give you a different pathway into the city's long and rich history. While there are many books that focus on New York's notable events and famous people, ours is instead organized around the places where those events took place. By grounding the narrative in sites that you can see and visit, we provide concrete, tangible, connections between the city of today and its intriguing past.

People have long tried to answer the question: What makes New York unique? We feel the answer is deceptively simple: more than any other American city, it is primarily experienced on foot. . . .

As this suggests, the history-based narrative is grounded in places, with lots of cross-referencing to related chapters, and there are 14 full-fledged walking tours at the end. I'm looking forward to getting to know the book better.

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Urban Gadabout: Back from Tottenville!

Alas, the Pavilion at Conference House Park was used as a stage for the "musicians," and so was off limits to us Second Annual Raritan Bay Festivalgoers.

by Ken

So I really did it, and it all went off without a hitch -- the subway to South Ferry, the 10:30 Staten Island Ferry to St. George, the Staten Island Railway all to the end, at Tottenville, the walk to the Conference House Park Visitors Center for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival.

It's a good thing I'd been in the Pavilion at Conference House Park on my previous expedition to Tottenville. We ate our bag lunches in the Pavilion -- in the rain -- on that Municipal Art Society tour last month (link for Municipal Art Society tours: mas.org/tours/) led by the remarkable Justin Ferate, without whom I would never have gotten to Tottenville once, let alone wanted to go back, or actually known where the heck I was going. As I explained last night, the view from the Pavilion was so reduced by the dreadful weather conditions that I could hardly see anything.

Today the weather held pretty well. There was a threat of showers, and from time to time the puffy white clouds gave way to gray ones of varying intensity, but mostly it was okay. So today I could see that what I thought looked like a view of the open ocean, but was really Raritan Bay, was no such thing -- the low visibility simply lopped off the Monmouth County shoreline. (Also, I have to say that Perth Amboy, across the Arthur Kill from Tottenville, looks more picturesque in the mist and gray.) Oh yes, the reason I was glad we'd made it to the Pavilion on that first trip: It was closed off to festivalgoers, to be used as a stage for the, er, musicians (I guess any group of people holding noise-making devices attached to amplifiers and speakers qualify as "musicians") scheduled throughout the afternoon.

This time, however, I made it down onto the beach, where I gave a wide beth to the kiddie kayaking that seemed to be drawing most of the crowd that had arrived in the first hour, in favor of the half-hour horseshoe-crab walk offered every hour by a smart fellow from the Staten Island Museum. (This seems to be my horseshoe-crab season.) I scored some cool literature from the tables of the aforementioned Staten Island Museum and a couple of other interesting-themed organizations (even including a free DVD from one, just for signing up for their e-mail list), and by then I'd been there an hour and decided I'd pretty well "done" the festival, and realized I was probably within striking distance of the S78 bus, which I'd scouted on my way to the park and which would take me close to the train station -- and which came exactly, and I mean exactly at the posted schedule time, 1:07, though I didn't take it all the way, realizing that (a) I would wind up getting to the station way too early for the next train, and (b) I would be deprived of the opportunity to fortify myself with some local victuals.

So I got off at the corner of Amboy Road and Main Street, which passes for a bustling intersection in Tottenville, and bought some local specialties at the Main St. Deli -- Sprite Zero and a Little Debbie peach pie (we urban gadabouts know that while gadding you need to provision yourself to last at least to the next deli). Then I walked on to the station and made the reverse trip again without a hitch. Since I was going to be home so much earlier than I expected, and from the ferry terminal had the whole of the city at my (and my unlimited MetroCard's) disposal, I did allow myself an only slightly out-of-the-way detour to Manganaro's Hero-Boy on Ninth Avenue between 37th and 38th. It was easy to set my sights on s chicken parmigiana hero. The agonizing part -- all the way from the ferry terminal to Manganaro's, in particular the walk from Seventh Avenue to Ninth -- was whether to eat in, as I normally do, or get the sandwich to go, so I could really celebrate the early return. (It was a tough call, but in the end I chose the "to go" option.)

Total travel time, deducting the added stopovers, was just over seven hours door to door. Which means roughly six hours traveling for one hour of festival. Is that a good ratio? You might not think so, but I thought it was a pretty swell adventure.

And the sandwich was, as always, wonderful. You'd think you wouldn't want to schlepp a chicken parmigiana hero around for another 45 minutes, but in fact, great as it is when you eat it freshly made and hot, when you let it sit like that, so it cools off and gets a little mooshy, it's just as good. The flavors mingle or something.


SPEAKING OF TRAVELS . . .

Howie has a post up on his Around the World Blog about his further adventures in Kathmandu, "Kathmandu Essentials: Flying, Breathing, Eating."

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Urban Gadabout: To the end of the island (Staten) -- I'm headed back to Tottenville (weather permitting)

If you look out onto the water from Conference House Park in Tottenville, at the southern tip of Staten Island, you can imagine you're looking onto the open Atlantic Ocean, but off to the east skinny Sandy Hook juts northward from the Monmouth County shoreline, forming the eastern boundary of Raritan Bay. (For a larger view, click on the map.)

by Ken

If you don't have anything planned tomorrow between noon and 5pm, plus whatever travel time it would take you to get to Tottenville, at the southern tip of State Island, why not hie on down for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival?

It's going to be quite a schlepp for me from the northern reaches of Manhattan -- upwards of three hours if I do it the cheap way, by subway to South Ferry, Staten Island Ferry to St. George, the full length of the Staten Island Railway to Tottenville, then a 15-minute walk to the Conference House Park Visitors Center at Hyland Boulevard and Satterlee Street. I can cut a chunk of time off if instead I catch the X-1 express bus from Lower Manhattan across the Verrazanno Narrows Bridge, connecting with the S78 bus on Hylan Boulevard virtually to within a block of the Visitors Center, but I have to be prepared to spend the $5.50 express-bus fare.

THE "CONFERENCE" IN THE CONFERENCE HOUSE

A conference took place there on Sept. 11, 1776, in the hope of resolving the unpleasantness (you may have heard of it -- the American Revolutionary War) between the newly-declared-independent Americans and their erstwhile colonial masters, the British. The Americans were represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge; the British, by their military commander in America, Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who was then occupying the house of Col. Christopher Billopp, which had been built in 1680 by his grandfather, British naval Capt. Christopher Billopp. (That's a reenactment in the photo, not the original event!) The conference doesn't seem to have accomplished anything. After the war, the actively Tory Billopp family was stripped of its properties.

Actually, I'm kind of looking forward to doing the walk between the SIR station and Conference House Park in at least one direction, which will be retreading old ground, from a Municipal Art Society walking tour to Tottenville led by the inexhaustibly knowledgeable Justin Ferate, on which we actually got to the Pavilion in Conference House Park, and also in the course of our tour visited a stunning private home where we got to meet a special guest, the preeminent historian of State Island, Barnett Shepherd, author of the 2010-published Tottenville: The Town the Oyster Built, published by the Tottenville Historical Society. (To put it another way, or maybe more or less the same way, the town was built on, and prospered from, the rich harvest of oysters in surrounding waters in the 19th century, until pollution put an end to its oyster trade.) Barnett had had quite a schlepp himself -- from the other side of the island, we were told, on an island that developed as a plethora of separate communities, where it's frequently not so easy to get from there to here.

On the May MAS Tottenville walking tour we made it to the Pavilion in Conference House Park at the southern edge of Staten Island, with a view across the Arthur Kill (separating Staten Island and New Jersey) of Perth Amboy, NJ.

The one downside to that trip was the weather, which was mostly rotten. By the time we got to Conference House Park, the overcast and mist were so heavy that, while we could see across the Arthur Kill, which separates Staten Island from the North American mainland, to picturesque Perth Amboy, NJ, we couldn't see much else, and it wasn't exactly an ideal day for exploring the shorefront.

A ferry used to join Tottenville to Perth Amboy, nestled between the Arthur Kill and the Raritan River ("perhaps the major drainage channel along the ice front throughout the Wisconsin glaciation," according to Wikipedia) Now they're linked by the Outerbridge Crossing, whose name derives not from a geographical description, as most of us initially suppose, but from Staten Island resident Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge, the first chairman of the Port of New York Authority. It's called "crossing," it was explained to us, because how goofy would "Outerbridge Bridge" sound? There are decent views of the bridge from the Tottenville railway station, by the way.

The Outerbridge Crossing over Arthur Kill, from Tottenville

For tomorrow the Conference House Park Conservancy is promising 45-minute shoreline walking tours (hourly, at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30) plus "local musicians on two stages, crafts, exhibitions from maritime organizations and historic societies, and plenty of entertainment for children, including a petting zoo and water rides."

Provided the weather cooperates, of course. I mean, I've already seen the view from the Conference House Park in crappy weather, and it's not worth six hours' combined travel time for that again! (At the moment, NY1.org is holding out: "Morning clouds/fog. Partly sunny in the afternoon. Spot thunderstorms." Uh-oh.)

An aerial view of the Pavilion in Conference House Park

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Urban Gadabout: Two toxic-waterway tours in a single week -- does it get any better?

Scenic Superfund site: Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal

by Ken

The tease on the contents page of this week's Time Out New York got me: "Explore Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal, two of NYC's Superfund wonders." I confess that both of these industriaily befouled NYC waterways have fascinated me for ages, and I've become increasingly curious about having more or less direct contact with me.

Newtown Creek is the western segment of the boundary between the borough of Queens to the north and Brooklyn (which is Kings County, of course) to the south. Gowanus Canal is the man-expanded expansion of a onetime tidal inlet which links the onetime industrial heartland of central Brooklyn to Upper New York Bay. Both are massively polluted, and have been anointed Superfund sites, though it's my understanding that so little action is being taken on so many sites ahead of them on the list that one might not want to hold one's breath till the fund gets to them. One might, however, wish to hold one's breath around them for other reasons.

There has been increasing attention paid, and actual visitation, to both. Hence my response to the TONY tease. But imagine my horror when I thumbed ahead and found an entire magazine page devoted to a pair of events dedicated to these woebegone waterways, and it turned out that the events in questions are tours offered by the Municipal Art Society (MAS; the website is an incredibly easy-to-remember mas.org), which I already have marked as "must do"s on my calendar:

* Crossing Newtown Creek, this Wednesday evening (June 15), led by one of my most valued tour leaders, urban geographer (and Queens borough historian) Jack Eichenbaum.

* Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, this coming Sunday (June 19), led by MAS mainstay Matt Postal, an architectural historian with whom i've done countless tours, most recently day before yesterday: a tour of the skyscrapers of Park Avenue (starring Lever House and the Seagram Building, of course).

Now I hope it's blindingly clear that the horror to which I referred above is no reflection on the tours themselves. Let me stress that it would take some sort of personal crisis or mighty extreme weather (of the kind that would probably cause tour cancellation anyway), to keep me away from either of these tours. No, the horror is purely selfish. I'm just concerned about the effect this outstanding (and well-deserved) advance publicity is going to have on attendance.

You have to understand that the Municipal Art Society organizes its walking tours around the city, which it's been doing for 55 years now, in two ways -- some by advance reservation and payment, some by and pay-at-tour walkup. I have a personal fondness for the preregistered tours, which (1) put a cap on the number of registrants and also let me assure my place. In the mere eight months I've been a member (and it was, as I've mentioned, Jack Eichenbaum who first clued me in to MAS, when I did a sensational New York Transit Museum tour with him visiting three NYC subway nodes, which is to say places where two or more separate subway lines intersect, and seeing how being a transit hub has shaped those areas' development), I've learned to haunt the MAS website as the time approaches for announcement of the next two- or three-month bloc of scheduled tours, and to pounce on it and do a slew of online registrations.

HAVE I MENTIONED THAT THE STANDARD PRICE . . .

. . . for MAS tours is a paltry $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers? Longer tours are priced accordingly. For example, this Saturday (June 18) I'm doing a half-day visit to Staten Island's Stapleton Heights with the amazingly well-informed and informative urban historian Justin Ferate, with whom I did a truly memorable most-of-the day tour last month to Tottenville, the southern tip of Staten Island. The Stapleton Heights tour, which is by reservation, and for which I think there may still be places available, is $20 for members, $25 for nonmembers.

By the way, an MAS individual membership is only $50, and benefits include a chit for a free nonreserved tour.

Speaking of the nonreserved tours, I've done plenty of them in my eight months too. The thing is, if the weather is good, and especially if the tour has been picked up by one of the big-reach media outlets -- I sometimes wonder how many zillions of people who just don't know about these tours, the way I didn't for so long, would show up if they knew about them -- the group can get pretty large. (Sometimes there's simply no explaining why people do or don't come out. In March I did a tour of Brooklyn's Crown Heights North with Matt Postal, who's doing the Gowanus Canal tour, on a not especially pleasant-looking Saturday, a tour that Matt indicated hadn't gotten much media notice, and the turnout was huge. Fortunately, Matt is extremely good with large groups, keeping them organized and in good hearing range.) It's another mark of what a bad person I am that after the big TONY spread, maybe the weather won't be so great Wednesday evening and Sunday morning.

AS IT HAPPENS, I'VE ALREADY MISSED THE
"CROSSING NEWTOWN CREEK" TOUR ONCE

We'll actually be crossing the Pulaski Bridge from (r to l)
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to Long Island City, Queens.

It was in early November, not long after my Transit Museum tour with Jack Eichenbaum, and I had joined MAS and gotten my free-tour chit in time to make this my first MAS tour. What's more, I even worked out the formidable transit logistics of getting from the way north of Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and arrived at the tour location what I considered a perfect 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled start time. Or it would have been if the tour was Sunday, when I arrived. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, so instead of being early, I was 24 hours late, or maybe 23 hours and 45 minutes.

(And wouldn't you know, there are not one but two other events Wednesday night that I dearly want to do, one of them a class I had previously scheduled and had to cancel when for medical reasons, the other something that's not likely to be repeated this year. I spent a couple of weeks going back and forth between them, even trying to figure out whether I could attempt to do both, which fortunately prevented me from registering for either, whenl I finally looked at the calendar and realized it's the same night as "Crossing Newtown Creek.")

As it worked out, my actual first MAS tour, later in November, was one with Matt Postal, and as I think I've mentioned here, it's still perhaps my favorite from a conceptual standpoint: a walk along the route of Robert Moses's never-built Lower Manhattan Expressway.

For those who are curious about what TONY dubbed "Postindustrial waterfront tours," for each, writer Andrew Frisciano begins with sections on "Where it is," "The history," and "How polluted is it?"

NEWTOWN CREEK
Wednesday, June 15, 6pm-8pm

Will hanging out there kill you? Probably not, although small amounts of harmful vapors have been detected. “When you get down to the water’s edge, the creek itself is pretty dismal,” says Eichenbaum. “But it’s not completely dead -- I’ve seen cormorants sitting on the side of Newtown Creek. They dive for fish, so there have to be some there.”

What you’ll see on the tour: Eichenbaum will stop at the nature trail that surrounds NCWTP [the Newtown Creek Water Treatment Plant]: The walkway, lined with sculpted concrete walls and native plants, features an amphitheater-like area for admiring the water. “Once you’re down at the creek level, the city opens up and becomes a much more horizontal landscape,” he says. The tour also visits the Pulaski Bridge to visit Long Island City’s Gantry Plaza State Park, which sits next to a cluster of shiny new condos. “You’re seeing resurgence in all kinds of industrial neighborhoods,” says Eichenbaum. “The artistic community has found new niches in these places.”

Check it out! Crossing Newtown Creek walking tour; meet at northeast corner of Greenpoint and Manhattan Aves, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

GOWANUS CANAL
Sunday, June 19, 11am-1pm

Will hanging out there kill you? No, but you’ll probably get a whiff of something gross. “I notice [the smell] around Union Street or Butler Street,” says Postal. “There’s nowhere for it to go.” In 1999, the city repaired a flushing tunnel, which brings fresh water into the canal, to help ameliorate the stench. “There’s no question that it’s better than it was ten years ago,” says Postal. Plus, a recent study turned up an array of fish and even crabs -- though eating them isn’t advised.

What you’ll see on the tour: Postal will point out historic landmarks, including the retractable Carroll Street Bridge, built in 1889 and still functional today. He’s also interested in how the neighborhood’s residents interact with the canal’s industrial origins; off-the-grid types have built homes on the canal, while creative spaces embrace the canal’s less-than-pleasant past. “Proteus Gowanus [a stop on the tour] has an area of their building called Hall of the Gowanus, which is a kind of artistic response to the history of the area,” Postal says.


Check it out! Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal walking tour; meet at northwest corner of President and Smith Sts, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

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