Today I biked across the Manhattan Bridge for the first time to return a gift my mother had bought me for christmas. The gift was a digital keychain photo album from The Sharper Image. I have no use for such a gadget and it would have sat unused in a drawer somewhere, so why not see what I could get in an exchange. There isn't a Sharper Image in Brooklyn (thankfully so) which is why I chose to bike into Manhattan to the South Street SeaPort location to make the exchange (Sea Port is closest and has most accessible bike paths).Now, I had never been to the Sea Port and all I had heard was that it was transformed into a tourist attraction. Okay.
The bike paths are easy to find, the view from the bridge is nice while crossing the East River, and there's a cool skate park under the Manhattan side of the bridge.
South Street Seaport is basically a mall implanted, like silicon breasts, into a historic district of an otherwise bleak part the city. Nestled amongst towering international style architecture of corporate offices is a cobblestone corridor lined with historic shop facades, a light house, brick, and every corporate chain store that you'd find in ANY mall in ANY mid-sized city in the US. And of course, there they are, all the tourists from across the country and beyond, toting bags from the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, Ann Taylor, and Sharper Image, all with googling eyes that say, "This is New York," "This is America," "This is History," "I'm really living it now," "Wow. All this in one place... what a place..." Posing for pictures that would be happy to end up on a Sharper Image digital keychain photo album.
And I thought the World Trade Center site was a big hole...
What a waste of history, of life, of beauty. And this is the direction New York and the rest of the world are heading. These places that were once forgotten, starved, and decayed are being raped like one of Baudelaire's dead whores, but now dressed in pretty garments and painted with a seductive face, poised as a marionette to arouse our fancy that we may take from this stale bounty and succeed this desire and need to feel connected and alive. So we buy and for a moment while staring off at the Brooklyn Bridge from the pier into the fading light of another busy day we are overcome with a sense of accomplishment, of wonder and power.
I biked back to Brooklyn, relieved as I found I have been upon returning to a city different from that which is buzzing and bloodless across the river.
For all the life we bring when we come into Manhattan, we certainly leave with less.
