#13 Walk on the Brooklyn Bridge–CHECK!

So this weekend in NYC I set aside my fear of heights (particularly involving bridges, isn't that ironic?) to check off #13 on my 30 for 30 list. I have this very vague glimmer of memory of walking on a rickety, old suspension bridge as a young girl, probably traipsing around in some foreign country with my family on some vacation or other. Although I can't recall the details, try as hard as I might, I certainly suspect this is from which my irrational fears stem.

For years visiting the city as a kid, the Brooklyn Bridge has always beckoned at me from my grandmother's window in Lower Manhattan. When my parents and sis walked the FDR Bridge one July 4th to see the fireworks, I declined, citing a disdain for large crowds and holiday commotion, but the real reason was my fear of being crammed together with a ton of people ON A BRIDGE. Nothankyouverymuch.

Until 9/11, when images of a mass exodus of New Yorkers escaping the attacks on Lower Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge burned into my mind. An influx of pedestrians flooded the walkway to reach the safety of Brooklyn. And then this was repeated during the Blackout of 2003. I just couldn't get these iconic images out of my head and the desire to experience that moment of crossing the bridge, like thousands before me, and so, that's how this became #13 on my list. 

My breath was absolutely taken away by everything, the majesty of the city views soaring over the lower East River, the lego-like buildings from afar, the seeemingly delicate lacework of steel-wire cables intertwined, the dramatic buttressed towers, the hum of traffic just below my feet. And, it was yet another perfect day in New York.  

{ Outfit, head to toe* }

About a hundred pictures and an hour later, we made it to Brooklyn. I wish I could have remembered the name of the famed pizzeria on that side of the bridge. (For anyone who's wondering, I just googled it, and it's called Grimaldi's Pizzeria on 19 Old Fulton Street.) Wouldn't it have been just perfect to top off this adventure with a blissful slice of New York pizza in Brooklyn, of all places?

I leave you with this 1930 poem by American poet Hart Crane, a great tribute to the world’s greatest bridge in the world's greatest city, in my humble estimation–

"To Brooklyn Bridge"

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
–Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,–
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,–

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path–condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

* Blazer, Express circa 2004

White button-down, Express circa 2004

Wool tartan vest (not a mini poncho!), vintage circa 1940s

Black stirrups, Modcloth.com

Leather walking boots, Zara Spain

Leather bag, Granada, Spain