Creek Freak - Greepoint, Calvary Cemetery, and Newtown Creek Perimeter

As I go about it, walking is mostly a reliably cheap form of recreation. If being cheap wasn't dull enough, I also find entertainment in baring witness to the renovations of a condominium on a familiar path or picking a different route to a regular location. So, there needs to be some novelty to the experience, but I would hardly call this thrill seeking. On occasion, I take pride in where I've walked or how far I've walked; I might even pick out landmarks that caught my interest. Relaying this information, however, often feels awkward. It feels weird giving statistics or historical facts related to a walk because it polishes the experience up. My recreation becomes packaged. I wouldn't tell people they should stare at boiling water and notice the nuances, so why would I write about tidbits in my lackadaisical walks? What I'm learning is that I enjoy telling about my experience and that details are important; however, I don't want the details to be treated as the reason for my experience.

Evidently, the learning is going very slow.

As I walked north on Meeker Avenue from Metropolitan Avenue underneath the raised BQE, I started preparing my justification for being within the gates of Calvary Cemetery if a groundskeeper or a patrolling police officer approached me. I knew I'd have to rehearse other reasons for this walk if I chose to relay this story to friends or family, but for now, I was paranoid about being called-out in a cemetery. I've never been to a cemetery where you need to show identification to get into it or there is some kind of security guard going around asking people if you're at the right tombstone, but I was still planning my excuse. Appreciating an albeit disturbing yet rare view of the Manhattan skyline with rows of graves and memorials in the foreground was sort of my goal, yet there was no way I could survive presenting such an argument to a person who perceived me as trespassing or worse. 

After making a left turn on North Henry Street and entering Monsignor McGorlick Park, I was able to distract myself from my anxiety. A quiet and lusciously green space with a beautiful covered pavilion built in 1910 at the center, this park provides a retreat from the prevalent concrete of New York City-living that I'm sure many residents would appreciate in their neighborhood. For a park of this size in a location that is not busy with commercial traffic, it feels safer than sketchy and more intimate than inundated. I'm really starting to appreciate and enjoy this park to the point that I even found out what the large reclining muscular male statue memorializes--it celebrates the first ironclad warship that fought for the Union Army, the USS Monitor, which was built in Greenpoint. In the near future, I'll sip a coffee and read the paper in McGorlick Park and see if it truly is a good fit for a Sunday afternoon. 

Leaving McGorlick Park behind, I walked up Monitor Street until it enters the industrial park that surrounds Newtown Creek, a recently rewarded Superfund site. After making a right onto Greenpoint Avenue, just beyond John Jay Byrne Bridge, I got my first glance of Calvary for the day, but I didn't keep my focus on this too long. As it seems with most structures surrounding Newtown Creek, they have not been well maintained or have been worked beyond the point of potential repair. John Jay Byrne is one of several drawbridges that cross Newtown Creek, and while it was under construction as I crossed, I couldn't help but think that no one would notice me doing so if they decided the bridge needed to be raised.

I survived the first of the three drawbridges I would cross for the day and walked the few blocks to the entrance of Old Calvary on Greenpoint Avenue. I quickly noticed the "No Trespassing" signs on the gate, but since the gate was open, I chalked that up as applicable to when the gate was closed and trampled on in. Finding a sidewalk that lined a main road leading the to the cemetery chapel, I felt I had found a path that would remove any suspicions around my wandering around. For extra precaution, I removed my ear buds and turned off my iPod. As most people I saw there were well in their 70's or 80's and were there to pay respects not to shun outsiders, I was very obviously out of place but not really paid any mind. I hiked through the many Irish, Italian, and Polish family plots and mausoleums and paused for a few moments outside the chapel, a stunning structure designed by Raymond Almirall, before quietly exiting the end of the cemetery that falls below the Kosciuszko Bridge. As little details do have a way of making memories stick, Almirall studied at Cornell University, he designed the library across from the school where I currently teach, and he also designed the Tweed Courthouse which now serves as the home for the Department of Education. I figure I'll keep these details connected and in mind if it serves to justify a rational for my walk in the future. 

With a few photographs documenting my view from Calvary, my walk around Newtown Creek was quick and vigilant--I didn't want to get hit by a cement truck or wander on a less efficient path. I walked down 56th Road/ Laurel Hill Boulevard, made a right on 49th Street and followed the creek on my right on 48th and 47th Street to Grand Avenue. I paused for a few moments at Maspeth Creek to capture a few Canada Geese swimming up towards Newtown Creek and ultimately out to the East River. Remove the industrial waste and the surrounded steel and cement and the previous sentence might flow with a piece on a picturesque kayaking adventure, but this is obviously not the story of this walk or these New York City waterways. The human footprint has left its mark; and for the most part, there isn't much else to do but appreciate it in this area until work begins on Newtown Creek. 

A right on Grand Avenue, and I'm back in familiar territory. For the first time, I walked over the Grand Street Bridge and the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge. Since the size of these drawbridges is not quite to the same scale as John Jay Byrne, I was not as nervous crossing them, but if I had to drive a ten-plus ton truck over these bridges every day as many men and women must do who work in this area, I'm sure I'd just be waiting for my truck or that of a coworkers to be the one that breaks the back of one of these bridges. These things were not built to last. I have no background in engineering, but if giant suspension bridges carrying exceptional volumes of traffic can unexpectedly buckle, ill-maintained drawbridges in obscure industrial parks can expectedly buckle. I hope I'm wrong or at least the tragedy that draws attention to these bridges is a Williamsburg resident on his or her way to band rehearsal in Ridgewood busts a wheel on their bike or drops their iPhone in the creek because of a bump. Folks will say they shouldn't have been texting while riding their bike on a bridge anyway, but it is what it is. 

Opting for Metropolitan Avenue, I avoid walking in front of Pumps, as if this entire walk were about avoiding embarrassment, and meander towards my neighborhood. After jaywalking across Marcy Avenue as I turn back to my apartment on South Second Street, I notice a police officer sitting in his car across the street. I guess he decided not to give me the $50 ticket, as he would be capable of doing everyday if he would just watch the intersection and get out of his car. No, I don't worry about this overt violation of the law, but I still have an exceptional excuse prepared for possibly the same police officer or any other inquiring authority who happens to be in Calvary Cemetery and happens to deem me out of place. I decided I'd tell them I was just going for a walk, and I suppose I'd just have to let my race, sex, gender, class, and other privileged American characteristics do the rest of the talking.