Buck and a Quarter

    14-04-2008  Brooklyn, NY

This weekend brought about some of the most glorious weather so far this year. The air had a different smell to it, one that reaked of long grass, apple blossoms, and slowly baking concrete. You could hear life slowly coming back to the city, out from the cold damp caves and into the light. What better way to experience the break from hibernation than a nice walk through the city with my sister, Melanie. For a fifteen year-old kid, she really has her head screwed on tighter than a new jar of jelly. Thinking of what I was like at that age, she’s light years ahead on the maturity front. I also found out her boyfriend, Jeff, was coming along for the walk. It would be a prefect opportunity to grill him and put him through the ringer. We strolled over the Carroll street bridge, had some pizza on Court Street, poked around the heights as I bored them with tales from days of yore. One thing they both hadn’t done was walk across the Brooklyn bridge. As I’d yet to walk my favorite expanse this year, the weather and company couldn’t have been better. On May 24th, 2008, the Brooklyn bridge will be celebrating its 125th anniversary. I wonder what the best way to celebrate this milestone would be? Obviously a walk across will be necessary, followed up by some libations in a DUMBO haunt afterwards. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. 

I poked around google today reading up about the history of the bridge and found this account from an eyewitness as the sun set over the city on May 24th, 1883:

As the sun went down the scene from the bridge was beautiful. It had been a perfect day. Up and down on either side of New York the bright blue water lay gently rippling, while to the south it merged into the great bay and disappeared toward the sea. The vast cities spread away on both sides. Beyond rolled the hilly country until it was lost in the mists of the sky. All up and down the harbor, the shipping, piers and buildings were still gaily decorated. On the housetops of both Brooklyn and New York were multitudes of people.

 

The great buildings in New York loomed up black as ink against the brilliant background of the sky. The New York bridge pier looked somber and gloomy as night. But in Brooklyn, the blaze of the dying sun bathed everything gold. The great building looked like burnished brass… In the west, the sun sent its last tribute to the bridge in a series of great bars of golden light that shot up fan-like into the blue sky. Gradually the gold melted away, leaving the heavens cloudless. The sky was a light blue in the west, but grew darker as it rose, until it sank behind Brooklyn in a deep-sea blue.

 

Slowly the extremities of the twin cities began to grow indistinct. The towers of Brooklyn lost their golden hue. They seemed to sink slowly into the city itself. In New York, the outlines of the huge buildings became wavering and indistinct.

 

Then one by one, the series of electric lights on the bridge leaped up until the chain was made from Brooklyn to New York. Dot by dot, flashes of electric light sprang up in the upper part of New York. The two great burners at Madison and Union Squares flared up, and the dome of the Post Office in New York set a circlet of diamonds out against the relief of the sky. The streets of the two cities sparkled into life like the jets on a limitless theatrical chandelier, and the windows of the houses popped into notice hundreds at a time. Long strings of lanterns were run over the rigging of the shipping in the harbor, and red and green port and starboard lights seemed numberless. The steamers sped on the water, leaving long ripples of white foam, which glistened in the light like silver.