2001-08-02

One time, during the parties my grandpa threw that packed his apartment so that I inevitably managed to walk in to at least one cigarette, my grandpa and I finally settled our longstanding debate. When he moved into his apartment, he had a view of Staten Island; by the time he died, the view had dramatically changed as the world’s longest suspension bridge had been built right in the middle of his view. And in his small kitchen barely large enough for two adults, he would sit me on the step stool near the window and watch the Verrazanos with me.

Our longstanding debate was on whose bridge it was. I believed it to be mine, as staring at the window it felt as if it was put there just for me to get away from the smoky apartment and be entertained at the lights that ran the top of the suspension wires. It was mine because my parents drove over it to bring me to him. He insisted it was his bridge as he had seen it built.

It was a childish fight of me pouting and my grandpa egging me on just because he was endeared by me pouting. But that one night, after I had said that it was my bridge, he whispered in my ear Why don’t we share? That’s our bridge now. And from then on, it was. We would always refer to the bridge in the first person plural. It was made for the both of us.

Bridges and buildings. People have their thing, not owned but they feel as if it was created just for them. The bridge felt like it was mine. It was like nothing around my small suburban neighborhood. It was huge and lovely and imprinted itself in my mind as an image that appeared often in my day-dreaming childhood. The Verrazanos stood indifferent to us both, but we stood close and smiled at each other as we watched it. And now, without a grandpa, while flying over the bridge in my car or catching glimpses from all over the city, I know it is still our bridge and it will never be just mine.

All of these objects, silent and giving in their silence work their way into us. They ask us for nothing and stand indifferent to our existence, emotions. Watching and marveling at bridges and buildings. They are for us, for each of us to admire desire love. It’s fascinating how we all love them, call them ours. I love cities and the structures that can evoke emotion from us. The emotion is quiet and sincere. Nothing matches the simple marvel of watching.

I really must insist if ever going to a Yankee game, you take the boat. For $11 or so you can watch the city go by, not packed into a subway car or sitting pointlessly in traffic. Under all of the bridges that stand old and worn but reliable and needed. Past the small islands that most people forget sit in the East River: Wards, Randalls, Roosevelt, Governors (thankfully not Rikers). The old factories along the river, some abandoned, some still used including one that was nearly beautiful in bloodish brick with large curved steel pipes running along the exterior, the required smoke stacks.

From the South Street Seaport all the way to Yankee Stadium, I watched New York, Queens, Brooklyn. There was the occasional peak of the Verrazanos, its stop above the slope of northern Brooklyn. I went under the Brooklyn Bridge, twice, which was once the tallest structure built in modern history, the first suspension bridge and a general marvel of its time. It still is, standing tall in huge stone, the water lapping its foundation for a hundred years and it never rusting, moving or changing how the bridge stands there in the shadow of the downtown skyscrapers. I saw the suns rays stretching across buildings, turning the clouds early evening colors. I saw the predictable brick buildings with unadorned facades of the Upper East Side where the only way one could tell that the city had turned from posh penthouses to projects was the Mexican families gathered to catch their dinner from the river.

And at night, the lights. Their warm flicker through the air. The way the Chrysler building looked from the river, not blocked by taller less impressive structures of glass and seamless lines as it is while walking in the city. It stood beautifully and tall, outshining the Empire State Building with its horrible top lighted in Red White Blue. Coming down the river, the tide was in and the boat crept slowly under bridges, so many of them. Then, less than 10 feet from our heads was the underbelly of bridges, the occasional race of the subway trains causing everyone to look up and think "I've been under a subway train" and smirk.

Around the Williamsburg Bridge the smell changed from the mildly decayed rot telling of the pollution that lies in the river's bed to the salty brackish scent of the Atlantic moving in for the evening. Deposited, again on the peers of South Street Seaport, and walking past the Fish Market. The street was full of forklifts and boxes, men shouting instructions as they stocked up for tomorrow.