I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Monday, May 7, 2018

Welcome to the working week



The evening commute on the Manhattan Bridge. This is the second of the four toll-free East River crossings -- Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg (or the easy to remember BMW) which all go to Brooklyn, and farther north, the Queensboro aka 59th Street Bridge, which as its name implies goes to Queens. (The Queensboro Bridge gets left out of the mnemonic, but it got the Simon and Garfunkel song, so take that, Williamsburg!)

The Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges both go to downtown Brooklyn, and this is the one I prefer. The pedestrian walkway has all the charm of the exercise yard in a maximum-security prison, and subway trains rattle by on the other side of the fence so it's noisy besides.

So it's loud, it's ugly, and despite the the hundreds of millions that have been spent on repairs during the decades I've been living in New York, no one would be shocked to hear that it needed to be torn down tomorrow. But it leaves you off at Canal Street on the Manhattan side, which is a lot more convenient, and it's much less chaotic.

And most importantly, the walkway is beautiful, opaque pavement all the way to Brooklyn.

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