Bluejake

It's getting harder to find new short skate routes. I've been planning some longer ones for a little while (Coney Island, George Washington Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, Triboro Bridge), but those are all three or four hour trips, and I didn't have that kind of time today. It occured to me that you could join Two Bridges Redux with Two Rivers and come out with an interesting skate. I decided to do the bridges first when my energy was still fresh. As I skated up and over the Manhattan Bridge toward Brooklyn, I felt the great breeze coming up from the river with that smell of brine and ships and pollution. The smell of the BBQs in the East River park was also pretty strong- I thought of stopping for a sausage sandwich from one of those hotdog carts near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, but I was just getting over a stomachache from going out with Thorne the night before. While we were out drinking at Sweet and Vicious there was this big thunderstorm over downtown, and a 25 year old kid got struck by lightning and killed on the roof of a building on Broome Street. I thought a little about that as I skated, and it struck me how quickly the weather had changed.

Coming back over the Brooklyn Bridge I was surprised at how easy it was to get up to the top. Last weekend, approaching from the other direction, it was really a struggle- I felt every bump from the loose wooden slats the whole way up. This time, it was a breeze- up and over in like 10 minutes. It took about a half hour to round the Battery and skate up the West Side back to Houston. I was surprised by how fast I was skating up the promenade- it's definitely an easier skate going around this way. As I came back down Prince Street toward the apartment, I thought about sense memory. When you explore the city on skates you depend on it to direct you around the broken pavement and all the bad sidewalks, and to remember which corners are crossable and which aren't, and where the joints in the bridge platforms are so your wheels don't catch and send you flying into a pole or something. There's never any time to think- either you skate the right way or you fall.

Afterwards I got a lemon ice at Famous Ben's Pizza- which seems doubly famous now that it was featured in Men In Black 2. There was a kid standing by the counter and recounting all the scenes: "...and Will Smith stood right there and said..."

Skating