Our wonderful tour guide Johanna started off by walking us down St. Mark's place. St. Mark's place is, to say the least, a lively street. There are numerous shops selling souvenirs, food, and smoking devices (for tobacco only!) and plenty of people camped out on the steps leading up or down to storefronts.
We followed it all the way to Tompkins Square park, which we walked around for awhile. This is where I realized that, even though I've only been in New York for a few months, the streets and parks are no longer so unfamiliar. I'd been to Tompkins Square park before for a previous activity and gone back once afterwards to walk around and enjoy the greenery. Returning yet again gave me a feeling of home that has so far been rare in this strange, massive city. I feel a real sense of continuity and place when I walk around certain neighborhoods and don't need to check a map every three blocks to make sure I'm going the right direction.
After we left the park we walked south and wandered around the area between 7th street, 5th street, 1st avenue and avenue B. There I took these interesting photographs of...
A wonderful community garden
This thing (whatever this thing is)
And this Polish church (over 100 years old, according to Johanna) which was observing the death of the Polish president by encouraging people to place flowers outside.
I further discovered that this neighborhood is home to large Polish and Ukrainian communities, as evidence by the churches, restaurants, and grocery stores. Overall, I thought this was a wonderful neighborhood. According to Johanna it used to be quite unsafe, but has in recent years become what it is now: a safe neighborhood with beautiful shops and a thriving street life. It was great to walk around!
Before our next trip we stopped for lunch....
Our other wonderful guide Maya took us the rest of the way. Guess where this sign can be found...
THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE!!!!!
I had never walked across this breathtaking structure before. I have no idea why I waited so long. I lack words to do justice to the effect that standing for the first time on the Brooklyn Bridge, halfway between Manhattan and Brooklyn, has on a recent Texan. Strange phrases like "an ocean of buildings" kept popping into my head as I turned around in circles facing one and then the other borough.
After we walked across the bridge we wandered around an area called DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). I don't really know what streets we walked down, but I did photograph these things:
A totally empty playground
This awesome thing!
And woah, THIS THING!
Our trip ended on the waterfront for ice cream
I have no profound thoughts about urban planning theory. What I walked away with, which I feel like is at least as valuable, is a real sense of jubilation at the city I now live in. There are a lot of reasons to study cities. The majority of the American population lives in one, they are the site of some of the grossest displays of economic inequality, they mix together people who otherwise would not associate with one another, and they raise ecological questions that, in my opinion, will be the defining ones of our time. But they are more than that. Their meaning surpasses social, political, and administrative problems. They are also magnificent expressions of the human capacity to reshape the world we live in and of our collective creativity and energy. They are things we call home, they shape in innumerable ways our perception of the world, our conception of ourselves, our life experiences, and our aspirations. I walked away from this activity with a jubilant sense of place that I hadn't developed in New York yet.
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