High Line Park - From jumpy junkie to graceful host
I still have New York on the brain. I promise to come back down to earth here at Walkabout tomorrow.
If you're one of my bike-and-pedestrian friendly readers and have not been to La Gran Manzana lately, get there. And take your bike without trepidation. Or rent one there.
I had been reading about the city's transportation commissioner,Janette Sadik-Khan, and her transformative work in four and a half years on the job. The creation of more than 250 miles of on-street bike lanes (see map left) has ramped up NYC's increasingly civilized demeanor. She has detractors, of course. Drivers won't give up supremacy without a fight. But she plows right on.
Some of the bike lanes lie between parked cars and sidewalks to prevent bicyclists from being doored or having the bike lane ignored by a driver. Some are on huge avenues that used to be suicide stretches for the unwitting bicyclist. They are painted green and, in most cases, inviolable.
Under her authority, the NYCDOT has also established car-free summer streets, weekend pedestrian walks and a new street design manual for design standards.
The pedestrian must-do for me was a stroll through the newHigh Line Park, an extended boardwalk that has been systematically created from an old elevated train route. (Photo at right; note the tracks.)
The photo below looks down 24th Street from the High Line, with the magnificent London Terrace Towers apartments on the left.)
This is from theHigh Line's website:
"The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan's largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park."
It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues.
Section 1 opened on June 9, 2009, section 2 this June. My friends Pat and Steve met me at the Megabus stop at 9th and 31st and we walked through Chelsea to get on the High Line.
The rails have been left in place and native grasses and flowers flank the pathway, which curves and narrows and widens.
The place was so packed at times I was wondering where the rides and saltwater taffy were.
At various points there are elevators and steps to the street. Pat and I went down to check out theChelsea Market while Steve stayed on the High Line reading. The photo below is of the Chelsea Market, NYC's reuse of a former Nabsico plant. It's a lovely indoor, street-level concourse but it's best if you just look. Two stuffed eggplant patties cost us $13.50.
The High Line affords you views you would never get, being three stories in the air and cutting across intersections, so you can stand along the rail and look buildings from interesting angles.
I have been visiting New York since the early '70s, when things were darned grim. It felt dangerous in many areas and was. It was hard. The city was on the edge.
The Daily News
For years and years and for some unearthly reason, this existence was a point of pride for many locals. I knew some who thought there was something heroic in those times, being a nasty New Yorker.
Then, in the early to mid-90s, a combination of innovative policing and police crack-downs merged with relentless subway clean-ups and investments and New York was on the rebound.
In my last two or three visits, it has felt miraculous. Despite its degradations, I fell in love with the city as a teenager. It was like a jumpy junkie back then and now, after all this rehabilitation, it is this lovely, gracious and graceful host.
You can still walk fast but you don't have to. You can stop and look up at parapets and no one plows you down. You can stop someone and ask where such-and-such is and that person acts like someone in Pittsburgh when you ask for directions, except the NYC person doesn't reference something that's not there anymore.
In the old days, a couple days wore me out. As eager as I had been to get there I was more eager to get home. Lately, the city as given me back the energy it used to sap me of.
I so heart New York It's a great little tryst away from the city I love even more
