This weekend’s run was a partial repeat of one I had done many years ago, along the southernmost flank of the Brooklyn mass. I rode the R subway all the way down to its conclusion in Bay Ridge, warmed up to the foot of the gigantic Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and launched into my return home on the waterfront. Staten Island stretched on the opposite side of the channel, large container ships were crossing the narrows and people were strolling, rollerblading, cycling or fishing the day through under an unusually warm October sun.
About half way in, though, the pedestrian path ended, and remained a no man’s land of dockside eclectic blocks, mostly abandoned, eerie. Train tracks subsist, embedded in the road and leading straight into buildings that have long forgotten train traffic and sealed entry spots. Some gentrification is showing already, with a bit of renovation and multipurpose use here and there. But mostly it is such a lot of unused space, in the middle of New York City, that I wonder what is holding growth back.
Towards the end, I ran past a Federal correctional facility of some kind, said hi to a herd of happy looking and well fed stray cats, stayed in the shadow of an elevated highway for a while, crossed the Gowanus Canal and was back in the hood – ten kilometers flat. A strange run of contrast and extremes. This is New York after all.
Bad phone pictures below, for documenting reasons more than anything else.
