paean to ny

New York is like a cesspool. Now, before I get barraged with a various assortment of appropriately scented hate mail, please let me explain. I've continually made comment about the quality of various greenways and other sorts of contrivances that line this rough hewn metropolis, but it is clear to me that it's not a particularly habitable locale. Not in the sense that a place like San Francisco might be considered -- temperate climate, topography that shows off a view from nearly every street corner, natural physical beauty around each and every corner. New York doesn't have any of that physical nature. It probably was a terrific bog of flat land at one point in time. But, it has what San Francisco may never have, and something that only a city raised by Dutch settlers might manage -- a sculpted character. It seems to me that only the legacy of the mental attitude of the Dutch, a country that legitimately staves itself off from certain doom strictly through engineering ingenuity and a fair amount of willpower, could bear the fruit that has made the cesspool that is New York City so unbelievably amazing.

I biked up through Brooklyn to Queens and took a tour of the Socrates Sculpture garden. Today, a free tai chi class was busy building up their...umm..chi or chi-chi or whatever it is tai chi does. And it was a bit like watching fast moving butoh (or slow moving ballet class). Mixed among the various dog walkers (or yellers) and strollers, were a number of intriguing sculptures. All of this on a hunk of land that juts out slightly toward the east river and seems littered with the refuse of the industrial age. From there, it was on to the Triborough Bridge, which links up to Randall's Island/Ward's Island (though I'm unsure of the distinction between one or the other), a place that I'd be willing to wager most New Yorker's never see (unless they play soccer or baseball or belong in a mental institution...or rather, are in a mental institution). Cirque du Soleil is apparently cordoned off here, as well (very close to the mental institution), which I hadn't realized. But, good to know. A pedestrian bridge links Ward's Island with the upper east side (presumably to allow for a quick transfer of potential patients?).

In any case, it struck me that a less vigorous and determined population would've just not bothered. But New York and those that have shaped the city into what it is today, do. They bother. They ask questions, they think, they act. Yeah, there's a lot of talk here, but there's also an awful lot of action. The greenways and bike paths are a good example (as I have taken fine advantage of them over the past few weeks). They are carved out of bits of sidewalk and pedestrian pathways and chunky parts of concrete, but somehow they manage to connect up enough disparate pieces of the metropolis to link it all together in some kind of warped fishing net. And in every corner of it, it seems to have something going on, if not going right. The corner near Vernon & Jackson, where dilapidated buildings mingle with hip looking coffee joints that seem to have drifted like flotsam from Williamsburg. Hollowed out factories near wide open parks. Parts of Queens seem like they're small mill towns that have only a handful of residents, but you can turn the corner and get an unobstructed view of the UN building. You can bike alongside one of the busier thoroughfares without another soul nearby. And if you're feeling peckish, it seems as if there isn't a food option that hasn't been explored somewhere. Today: The Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory received its fair share of my wallet.

Which is to say, that somehow, through the genius of it all, somehow a group of people took a bunch of unformed land and turned it into one of the most varied and entertaining places I've ever been. And I think that the people who choose to find themselves here reflect that character, too.