Highline Ballroom

Last night I checked out some music at the Highline Ballroom. The Highline is a new venue in the Meatpacking district.

Out with the old, in with the new. Every year there is some small club or music hall that closes down. Sometimes they are monumental in stature and historical importance. Since I have been in New York i have lost some of my favorite venues...like the first venue in NY i went to, Tramps (i think i saw Bela Fleck and the Flecktones). Then there are venues that close that are seminal centers and meeting places for musical communities like Wetlands. Even more important are the places that are so connected with a musical scene and social movement that closing it down is outright criminal...like CBGBs.

These places are all gone, but it seems that new ones pop up just as often...usually with some corporate name attached like the Nokia Theatre, or upscale bars turned into music halls like Coda. I am usually not very impressed with these new places. It might seem that my dislike of new venues comes from some misplaced nostalgia for the old haunts...but I don't care. Music is not just noise...it breathes. Seeing live music is as much about who you are with and where you are then what you are hearing. I am much happier sitting in a place like CBGBs staring at the old graffiti then sitting at some new sweatbox looking at adds for lavalife online dating service.

But that's just me.

Anyway, back to last night. To start with, I hate the meatpacking district. It smells of rancid meet and ratshit. I got there early, and had a half hour to kill. I went around the corner to one of the dirtiest and sleaziest bars in the city, Red Rock Saloon. I sat down after getting carded by a big hairy biker that recognized me from where I bartend...that's right, he knew first hand that i was a bartender and still carded me. I ordered a Wild Turkey and paid $8 bucks. I realized this was no longer the bar it once had been and was drinking fast so i could leave. After the self-labeled "queen of trash" bartender called me a pussy for not drinking a kamakazee shot, i got up and left.

I won't be missing that bar any time soon.

I got back to the Highline Ballroom just as my friends got there and we went in. Here are the things we noticed about the new venue.

• Nobody was checking bags or frisking the concert goers.
• There was no VIP section.
• The beers were $5...cheaper than the local dive bar.
• The stage was easily accessible and close to the crowd.
• Nobody got busted for smoking.
• Not too hot.
• Clean bathrooms (that won't last long)

I loved it. Great venue. It opened in May and was obviously put together by someone who really loves live music. The sound was great everywhere, it was a nice wide room and easy to get back and forth, and looking at the schedule, they have good taste in music. Last night, it was a split bill between Assembly of Dust and JJ Grey & MOFRO.

AOD was good, but we were there to see MOFRO. For those of you who mock my hippie tendencies, this is not a Jamband. They are much loved in the live music scene but they are blues musicians. More to the point, they are down home-Florida swamp-sweaty funk, blues band...blues with and attitude. They pulled off a normal set last night, but the highlight was most definitely the cover of Muddy Water's Mannish Boy.

good night of music!

Socrates Sculpture Park

Along my long trek along the western Queens waterfront a few day ago, i came across a little sculpture garden on the water in Ravenswood called Socrates Sculpture Park.

It's hidden away along Vernon Blvd. Between Rainey Park and Hallets Cove. It is a small tract of land, next to old half emerged broken down piers and a private lot used as storage for some rusty industrial equipment. There are a few nice permanent sculptures surrounded by temporary exhibits. One in particular was very striking. Takashi Horisaki has an exhibit that makes note of Hurricane Katrina 730 days later. There is a recreated "Dislocated house from New Orleans". What wasn't clear was whether it was made from materials actually from the disaster...but it certainly seemed to be implied.

Up until now, i had never heard of the existence of such a park. So it has taken me a few days to find some more info on the area. It has a very good history. It was an artist reclamation project. Local artists, most notably Mark Di Suvero, took over a riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite and turned it into a vibrant public space. 20 Years later, it is under the umbrella of the New York City Parks Department but still run by the artists themselves.

It is not a place that most people will likely visit, but it should be known by many more people and used as an example by others. The waterfront in the area is getting not so slowly taken over by one real estate firm after the next. The waterfront should be public space...So, lets make sure it is!!!


I

King Of Queens

As a lot of you know, I have never been very fond of Queens, or at least i like pretending i dislike it. I have always had fun calling it Long Island slittle cousin or poking fun at my friends who lived there. I don't know where that attitude came from but I do have some great history in Queens. I used to work at Queensborough Community College out in Springfield and at an environmental campaign office on Bell Blvd. in Bayside.

I also lived for a few months in Long Island City. That's where i took a trip yesterday. I biked through the great Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, over the Pulaski Bridge (a draw bridge over Newton Creek, one of the most heavily traveled lesser waterways in the country), and onto Queens territory.

Hunters Point is a very interesting neighborhood. Luxury apartment buildings rise above very old 3 story brownstones and cast a shadow over it's reputation as a lost neighborhood. On the water are 3 very nice restaurants, a tennis club and newly built public piers looking over the Manhattan skyline. Next to the park are the historic PepsiCola neon sign and 2 large boat cranes at the old mooring docks. This is pictured above as evidence that Brooklyn and Queens inclusion as part of Long Island is more than just a technicality.

The one thing I noticed on these docks and in the surrounding 5 blocks or so of upscale housing was the amount of police on duty. It might be that across the river is the U.N, but i bet that there has been some social growing pains so to speak from the sudden infusion of gentrified development...after all, you don't want all the nice people to have to walk from the water taxi to their castle without a police escort, do you?

North of this is Long Island City, home of the lone skyscraper in queens. When i lived in LIC, we used to joke that the Citibank building was a symbol of queens giving Manhattan the finger.
Traveling along the waterfront in Queensbridge, Dutch Kills and Ravenswood, is a scattered bike ride along Vernon Blvd. You can travel under the Queensborough Bridge, check out a few small waterside parks, and look across to Roosevelt Island. Also along this route are two very giant power stations...key span and con edison.

The ride gets very interesting as we hit Astoria we pass the north end of Roosevelt Island. There is a great little artist camp called Socrates Sculpture Garden and Hallets Cove Park overlooking a ragged waterfront, north Manhattan and the lighthouse on RI. Rounding this little hook into Hell Gate, the two northern bridges come into view. The Triborough and Hellgate bridges connecting the Bronx to Queens via Ward Island and Randals Island. Astoria Park at the foot of the bridge is a great place to hang out, but if you want a little more seclusion, check out a sunset over the bridges from Ralph Demarco Park right north of Ditmars.

That is as far north as you can get without breaking into the massive Con Edison Complex...which if you do (be careful) you can get a glimpse of Rikers Island.

I will be back soon to visit some of the sites of these fine neighborhoods, as for now, check out some more pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/

My Tour Is One Month Old!

I announced a month ago today to the world...and by world, i mean about 70 of my friends and family...that I am leaving NY. And to prepare myself for my departure, I would embark on a multi-month Farewell Tour of my city to see as much of it as I could and with as many people as would go with me before i leave.

This exercise is very Buddhist in its spirit. I am trying to look straight ahead at my path and follow it one step at a time. But maybe now is a good time to take a rest on this path...sit on a rock and reflect on whats happened so far.

• I have eaten at 5 restaurants that claim to have the best pizza in New York (and the world).
• I have explored the waterfront of half of Manhattan and almost all of Brooklyn.
• I've seen 15 sunsets...over water!
• I climbed down a manhole!
• Sat in over 3 dozen city parks including one built 70 feet in the air on top of a sewage treatment plant.
• Walked across the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges.
• Taken a few thousand pictures.
• Rediscovered NYC street art.
• Biked over 300 miles this month...at least! (maybe i should start counting)
• Seen music in central park.
• Accidentally broke the taxi strike.
• Forgot that I have a TV at home!

So...whats next for my tour? I haven't seen too many museums over the last 5 years, i haven't eaten in many restaurants at all in my NYC life. I was never at the top of the Empire State, Crystler or Woolworth Building. I never went to Ellis Island. And I have never circumnavigated Roosevelt Island. Perhaps I will do these things soon.

For now, while the weather is good and my bike holds up, (its a little injured now) i want to do more of the "explore as much of the city as I can do by bike" thing. I have the hope of being able to cover ALL of the waterfront in all 5 boroughs. So far, so good.

I did go on a journey to Queens today...but that's for next time.

THE COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE!!!

OK, maybe it wasn't the coolest thing I have ever done...but it was pretty cool!

Yesterday, I went with a friend on a tour of the oldest subway tunnel in the world: The Atlantic Ave. Tunnel. This tunnel lay abandoned and mostly unknown for the better part of 150 years. Now, for a short amount of time it is open to the public for small viewing tours.

I knew this tour was going to be different when I called to reserve my spot and was told to bring clothes to get dirty in and my own flashlight. Then when we got there on Sunday and we saw that we had to shimmy down a man-hole in the middle of Atlantic ave., i knew for sure this was going to be as fun as i had hoped.

More about this tunnel; The tunnel was built in 1844 to connect the canal system (Erie canal) that was becoming outdated with the newly emerging railroad system. The Long Island Railroad needed to get trains to the docks in redhook but couldn't go through Brooklyn Heights to do it. Without the invention of air-brakes for the trains it would have taken about 3-4 city blocks to stop. They weren't so concerned about hitting people, since it was still illegal at the time to sue the railroad, but they were concerned about derailing the train...so a tunnel it was.

It was built as an open-cut trench that was covered over using a barrel vault. It was 21 feet wide and about 40 feet below street level. A similar trench was later dug to build the Murray Hill Tunnel in the 1850's. It has been called the first subway tunnel ever, seeing as it was built 20 years before and used as a model for the London Subway. But historians point out that it was not truly a subway tunnel because there were no subway stations. Semantics aside, this was a first of its kind.

After the tunnel was completed it was used for shipping as well as a connector from downtown Brooklyn and the Ferry Terminals to Manhattan. The tunnel itself was 2,750 and ran from Boerum Place to Columbia street.

Walt Whitman who has written about all things Brooklyn, rode the route often and wrote this in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences; however, there will, for a few years yet be many dear ones, to not a few Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and promiscuous crowds besides. For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises. But its glory, after enduring in great splendor for a season, has now vanished—at least its Long Island Railroad glory has. The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals—the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that's a large proportion—into some tunnel of several days' journey. We'd perhaps grumble less, afterward, at God's handiwork.


It took Irish Laborers only 7 months to complete the entire tunnel. It was opened in 1845 and the ends closed over in 1861. After that, the existence of the tunnel was largely forgotten. In 1916 the FBI drilled holes into the tunnel suspecting that German agents were secretly making mustard gas underground. They found nothing and paved over the holes, but the tunnel side holes are still visible. It was broken into in the 1920 and used for bootlegging and opened once again in the 40's to search for spies.

After the 1950's it was once again pushed away from the collective memory of the public until an 18 year old student went searching for the tunnel he had read about. He had connected the many dots spread out over books, oral history and old documents sitting in unopened boxes in Borough Hall. In 1982 Bob Diamond found his holy grail under a manhole at Atlantic and Court street. And that is good for New York.

Yesterday we saw what Bob had found. We got to climb down the manhole to a small 3 foot opening, down a very narrow walkway and through another small hole. Once through all that, the tunnel opened up and looked like...well a tunnel. It was dark and hot and dusty and cool as hell. There were a few dozen of us down there and we were escorted by Bob Diamond himself, down the length of the tunnel, each of us lighting the tunnel with our own flashlights. Bob told us the tale of the tunnel, the tale of his rediscovery and his hope for the future of the tunnel and the Brooklyn waterfront.

It was obvious that bob loves Brooklyn. The fate of the tunnel is still in the hand of the city bureaucracy, but would probably do better in the hands of Mr. Diamond and his crew.

to take the tour yourself check out this page: http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2007/09/next_atlantic_a_1.php

For some pictures of the tunnel: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/

Fort Greene Park Tree Trail

I had big plans today to spend many hours visiting Central Park...but it rained. As much as i love New York when it rains, this wasn't one of those fun, poetic rainy days. This was hot, humid, almost unbearable type of weather. So i sat inside and read a little about my neighborhood here in Clinton Hill and nearby Fort Greene.

When the rain stopped, i decided to walk the whole 4 blocks and take a look at Fort Greene Park. It was still about 85% humidity and very ugly outside, which meant I had the park to myself. It's a small park in comparison to NY's large parks (about 30 acres) but it is as old as the City of Brooklyn itself.

I remember the first time i moved the neighborhood (across Atlantic Ave. in Prospect Heights) I knew nothing about the area and was biking around looking for a bike shop when suddenly I "discovered" Fort Greene Park, as if I was the first one to ever see it. Haha.

I was so enthralled with its giant hills that i promised myself I'd come back when it snowed to go sledding. I never did.

Sounds like I've got something already planned this winter!

Anyway, the park itself was developed around the Fort on the hill that was built to protect Brooklyn from British attacks during the Revolutionary War. There was never any need for the fort as no battle ever came near it, but the hill and the Fort has loomed over Wallabout Bay and the Harbor ever since.

After many years of prompting by the likes of Walt Whitman, who repeatedly called for a Brooklyn Park to act as a "Lung" of open air, the park was commissioned by the city to the famous creators of Central Park, Olmsted and Vaux, in 1864 and was named Washington Park (Olmsted later built a park in Albany by the same name).

The Fort, originally called Fort Putnam, and the park was renamed after General Nathanial Greene during the war of 1812. The defining features of the park are a small army salute ground with two ceremonial cannons, the very large staircase leading up to the summit and the large memorial to the Prison Ship Martyrs who were cruelly kept in a ship's prison and left to die by the British in the bay.

As I walked about the park today, i noticed something about the park that is fairly new. There is now a Fort Greene Park Tree Trail. Newly marked, there is a nice walk through the park you can take along a trail of 39 species of trees. Each one is marked with a small plaque describing the species and the local significance.

It was nice to see. I imagine it is a nice small half-day school trip or even a one-period trip for earth science class from the local Brooklyn Tech High School.

It wasn't the huge day through central park I had hoped for...but it was nice and very close.

Going Back To Brooklyn...Again!

Brooklyn is Huge!

I have been on my farewell tour for almost a month now and have spent most days exploring Brooklyn, and i feel like i could spend the next 5 months doing the same without seeing the same thing twice. At 2.5 million people, BK is our most populated borough. And if tomorrow, NYC split into 5 separate cities, BK would be the 3rd largest city in the U.S.

Brooklyn is, in my opinion, the most diverse and unique of all 5 boroughs. Before it was incorporated into NY in 1898, Brooklyn was a county of very individual small towns that still make up the very individual great neighborhoods. Each hood with its own flavor and signature sites. While biking back from Bay Ridge 2 days ago and again for a few hours yesterday i went riding through some of the less famous areas in my favorite borough.

There is Gowanus, known mosty for its dirty shipping canal and equally infamous section of highway.

Sunset Park, a very residential neighborhood with a strong Mexican and Chinese communities and a great elevated park with...you guessed it...great sunsets.

Windsor Terrace, a kind of crossroads of Western Brooklyn. Its adjacent to Prospect Park and Park Slope, but much more of a family neighborhood than those closer to Manhattan.

Ditmars Park/Kennsington. There is no actual Park in Ditmars Park, at least none that I could find. In a city and a borough that is known for its diversity, this area is probably the most actually diverse anywhere in NYC. Its newly renovated makeup includes a lot of young new homeowners and with it, new business and a new identity.

Dyker Heights. Not known just for its Golf Course, although the links and adjacent park take up most of the community. It is a very Italian Neighborhood closely linked to Bay Ridge.

Bath Beach-Gravesend. There is not much to say about a lot of these old neighborhoods. They are some of the oldest in new york and hold the feeling somewhat of a waterside town in Long Island, but much more close knit. There are a lot of houses in a small amount of space. These neighborhoods are ones that most New Yorkers will never see unless you know someone who lives there. Unlike the neighborhoods in the north-west side, there is no sense of Manhattan here. This is Brooklyn!!!

One very large spot of note in Western Brooklyn is Green-wood cemetery. 478 acres of rolling hills and a baroque style chapel, Green-wood is with Vesey Church and the African Burial Sites in Manhattan, one of the most significant cemeteries in New York. It holds the remains of great Brooklynites and New Yorkers like Leonard Bernstein, Basquiat, F.A.O Shwartz, Boss Tweed, Edward R Murrow and Brooklyn mobster Albert Anastasia.

There is so much to see in these neighborhoods, it is really hard to focus on any of them. I've set out to see all of new york, and when there aren't any obvious landmarks as such...its gets somewhat overwhelming.

I didn't really have any destinations in any of these spots. I just kind of aimlessly rode around. I've heard people say that you can't know a neighborhood without eating a meal there...or possible spending a few hours in a local bar, but i didn't know where to go, so just biking through will have to be enough for now. I don't want to do these area any injustice. I do kind of feel like I'm making sweeping judgements on the communities of probably over a half million people, but i hope I'm not. I'm just trying to see as much as I can. I am trying not to make any kind of judgements on people in this quest, just get a visual and sometimes historic sense of what makes up New York.


pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/