Bluejake

I decided to take advantage of today's weather and take my first skate in over two months. Usually I put my blades away for the duration of the summer- New York's humidity index makes skating feel a lot like swimming on most afternoons. Today was a little cooler, but I still waited until the late afternoon to avoid the worst part of the heat. I thought about some of the great skates I had taken this year- Two Bridges, Two Bridge Redux, West Side, and Williamsburg and realized that there was only one place I really wanted to go- around the Battery. Before September 11th, this was my favorite skate- but after, it was too depressing and dirty and dangerous to skate South of Chambers on Manhattan's West Side. The only attempt I made was pretty dissatisfying- I ended up having to truncate the skate by crossing East-West at Wall Street.

Today everything was different. The West Side park has been restored, so it was possible to skate all the way down without taking any detours. There was all this new stuff on the way down- a trapeze school a few blocks north of Battery Park, the Irish Hunger Memorial that just went up by the World Financial Center, and a view of Ground Zero from the West- the first time I've seen it from that direction. Skating around the Battery I noticed that all of the tourists are back- flocking to the ferries to the Statue of Liberty, eating hotdogs and staring out toward Jersey City. Skating up the East Side I stopped at South Street- more packed than ever- and watched a skateboarding competition. There was this midget or little kid doing flips- he was about 3 feet tall. Skating up the East Side really took me back to all the skates I took there in 2000- the smell of the BBQs and all the sweaty guys playing softball. I ended up skating all the way up to 18th Street along the East River- then paused to take in the view of the 59th Street Bridge and UN buildings and Williamsburg warehouses.

On the way back I stopped for ices and checked out the action on Avenue C- surprised as always when no one screamed "hey whiteboy!" at me as I skated past. How the times have changed.

Skating