Off the Cyber Shelf

It is autumn now in New York. The day is grey, the blanket of clouds hanging low over the Atlantic shore. And the air is damp with a heavy chil that blows up from the harbor.

It came late last night, when the Slope was quiet with sleep--after the bars along Seventh Avenue had brought down their rusted steel gates, and the neon lights had flashed a final flicker before dimming to the cool glass that brands their name. The night started with a calm, the last breath of summer helt quietly in the windless still of twilight; the way a child holds his breath when hearing the steps of a stranger coming down the hall, not to get a better listen of who approaches, but to hide one’s self in the silence.

Amidst the clanging repetition of the subway crossing the steel span of the Manhattan Bridge, LK and I sat on the shore of the East River, peering into the lights of Lower Manhattan. The bridges—at least the only two that really matter in this City, sat on either side of us, like centuries guarding the heights that lift up behind us into Long Island. Five years ago, this stretch of state park had not been completed. DUMBO, as this part of Brooklyn is called for being down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass, was growing with artists moving into old warehouse spaces. But it still lingered with the taste of a more dangerous New York, a New York that seems to linger in the eyes of tourists who file off of busses to get a view of the New York skyline from probably one of the better views in the City.

Now, DUMBO has lifted itself up by the ears, much like its namesake, and become quite a success story for this borough of 2.6 million people. It houses one of the highest concentration of artists in the country; and for a rather small neighborhood, I might say the highest in the whole world. Though the idea of a starving artist doesn’t exist so much hear as it did five or ten years ago. Next to the artist lofs, where artists do indeed receive affordable housing, massive high rise condominiums, with shiny new steel and fresh paint, raise themselves up from the shore, towering the old watch Tower for the Johova Witnesses that sits just over the ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. The old ice cream stand, that I remember being here before the massive rush of of real estate broakers looking for gold, now charges six dollars for a small milk shake and three dollars for a single scoop. It sits at the old Fulton landing, where the ferry use to carry Long Islanders across the east River into Manhattan, when Brooklyn was the second largest city in the country, before The Bridge was built and New York swallowed her hole like Joana and the fish.

The old landing is probably my favorite place in the City to come and sit and watch the boats and ships ride up and down the East River. Even when a new bus puls up, full of tourists asking where the bathroom is, or how to get onto the bridge to walk back to New York—Don’t they know that this is New York?—this landing seems as peaceful as that first beach of sand that breaks from the marshes on Fire Island.

The night was warm, but today has brought the first real chill of fall. Soon, the tourists will no longer come down to the landing, when the mist from the harbor will turn to frost on the old weathered wooden planks on the landing and Main Street will slow to an almost stop. And this city of nine million will fall into an even deeper silence, as the air conditioners are put away for the winter.

This is when New York is the most beautiful, when it’s the most timeless, when you stand on its shore and hear the same sound George Washington heard when he snuck down to this point with the Continental Army, and escape the massive offensive of the red Coats, leaving Brooklyn for the safety of Manhattan, where they could retreat and reenforce their ranks behind the wall of earth that had been erected behind what now is Wall Street.

But Brooklyn is much safer now than it was then, safer than it was even five years ago. So don’t fret or fear her next time you’re in the City, and come feel the cold ocean breeze fall upon your cheeks and see just how timeless this city is. Because time stand still when you stand between the Bridges and watch the cars race over you on the arms that reach out from Manhattan, and hold fast to its little sister across the water.