Bluejake

Last weekend I took my first skate of the year, but I didn't really cut loose with real distance or speed. Today we got another warm day, so after coding most of the afternoon, I strapped on the skates and headed down Broome for the Williamsburg Bridge. Six months had passed since I last skated this route, and a lot had changed. The new Williamsburg path had opened- a well built, smooth, and wide ramp starting near the corner of Clinton and Delancey Street. The grade was pretty friendly- definitely easier than the approach to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. A part of me missed the old path with its broken wooden slats and open railings and steep stairs and unlit stretches, but for the most part the change is good. I got some speed coming down the Brooklyn side of the bridge, and was really happy when I discovered that the new path terminates very gracefully at South Fifth Street. The old path just dead-ended at Bedford, which often meant nearly crashing into trucks if you came off the bridge with too much speed.

The rest of the skate was beautiful- the sun was setting as I turned from Bedford into Greenpoint, and as I crossed the Pulaski Bridge, the sun was turning all the clouds bright pink. As I skated across Long Island City, the smell of cheap urban barbeque was in the air and everyone was out in that little park playing basketball. It was such a calm, beautiful day. That is, until I hit the other side of the Queensboro Bridge, and found myself back in War Zone Manhattan.

Things were pretty routine until I hit 42nd Street- from the news reports I expected some wild rioting in Times Square. There was definitely an air of something happening, and more people on the streets, but nothing really out of the ordinary. As I skated fast down the middle of 7th Avenue, night came on fast- it was dark by the time I got back to the Village. Around Washington Square park there were hundreds of protestors and cops and police horses and paddy wagons, and in the middle of the park about two hundred protestors were beating tribal drums and dancing. Apparently the preferred method of anti-war protest is now rave-style dancing, with the whistles and the makeup and everything. There were some serious protestors, but most of them were too busy taking pictures of each other to do much in the way of actually opposing the war. I didn't see my parents in the crowd, which surprised me, and I was late to meet the crew at the Gotham Comedy Club, so I skated home. The whole trip took about two hours.

Skating