Blog: New York

On Sunday, I met Shayna for brunch, and following the meal we decided to go for a walk around the nearby Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, an industrial area around a canal that is in the very early stages of gentrification. Afterward, finding myself in Park Slope on a nice Sunday afternon with some free time, I kept on walking.

Mile 1

Starting at the Bergen Street 2/3 stop, I head down Fifth Avenue to brunch. After eating, we walk west on Union Street. There's a great community garden (composed of two separate gardens), Annie's Garden and Garden of Union.

Continuing west, we reach the industrial neighborhood around the Gowanus Canal. This is the northern part of the Gowanus, which the neighborhood's Comprehensive Community Plan wants to make mixed-use residential and light industrial. It already looks to be gentrifying; some industrial buildings appear likely to be condos, with nice new brick facades.

Mile 2

Past the canal, we get to Carroll Gardens, with pretty brownstones on tree-lined streets. There's a beautiful church here in the eastern part of the neighborhood, St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, at Sackett and Hoyt. The Catholics definitely had good taste in architecture.

Looping south and back toward the canal, going east along 3rd Street we pass through the more industrial part of the neighborhood. Here, the buildings mostly front loading docks to the streets, and there are no people in sight.

Mile 3

Shayna heads off to her next event, and I decide to keep walking. I head up the slope, figuring I'll walk through Prospect Park, but decide instead to head toward Ft. Greene. Along 7th Avenue, I pass the corner with Connecticut Muffin where a group of public-space activists recently staged a parking spot squat, taking over two metered spaces for public seating, usable by many people, rather than two empty cars.

Mile 4

Up 7th and across Flatbush into Prospect Heights, a recently gentrified neighborhood with beautiful brownstones, and then across Atlantic at Carlton Avenue, which would pass right through Bruce Ratner's controversial Atlantic Yards project.

Mile 5

I'd never been to Fort Greene Park, which looks downright Californian: the meadow ringed with a hill reminds me of Dolores Park, and the monument atop a long staircase, the Campanille at UC Berkeley. Myrtle Avenue, on the north side of Fort Greene Park, used to be called Murder Avenue and is now another spot at the edge of gentrification. Along its northern edge, just west of the park, are housing projects built in the "Towers in the Park" style - tall towers widely spaced, amid grass, and ringed with fences; the effect is to create large dead zones without people, and to deprive the street of shops and restaurants along its length. Ratner's aforementioned project would create a similar effect.

Mile 6

This segment of the walk was mostly about getting onto the Manhattan Bridge. The paths were recently reconfigured to create separate pedestrian and bicycle paths, but there aren't good signs yet, so I ended up on the bike side.

Mile 7

The north side of the bridge has stunning views of Manhattan.

Mile 8

I walk off the bridge in the heart of Chinatown. Nearby Sara D. Roosevelt Park is a public space at work. It being a nice Sunday afternoon, hundreds upon hundreds of neighborhood residents are hanging out at the park, sitting, talking, or playing in the playgrounds. Located in an extremely dense neighborhood, this park surely doesn't lack for utilization.

It's been quite a walk and my feet hurt, so I catch the D train at Grand St. to head home.