105. New York Mosaic: The Neighborhoods

     This post is about neighborhoods in New York City, some big and some small, some ethnic, some commercial, some residential, and many often a mix of two of these or all three.  I couldn’t begin to mention all these neighborhoods, which abound in every borough, so I’ll focus on a few in Manhattan that I have encountered personally.  They are well worth looking at, as they give color and verve and to the city.

The Diamond District

WE  BUY  GOLD

DIAMONDS

JEWELRY

So read the signs in the store windows or hanging around the necks of solicitors in the street (though posted signs warn consumers not to deal with the latter).  In the windows are lavish displays of scores, if not hundreds, of twinkling diamonds.  In the stores and on the street are numerous Orthodox Jews, all black hatted with black suits and shoes, and white shirts devoid of a tie, all but the young ones bearded, with ample sideburns or long side curls in front of the ears. 

     A shopkeeper, seeing a woman eyeing a gold necklace in his window, darts out to address her, “If you like something, ask me, gorgeous.”  Other salesmen accost other passersby, waving them in and promising a superlative deal. 

      This is the Diamond District on West 47^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, a busy little strip of Manhattan avoided by some because of the never ending hustle, but savored by others more tolerant of the hustle or simply in search of a necklace or ring at a reasonable price.  The district came into being from 1941 on, when dealers began moving uptown from an old district, still in existence, near Canal Street and the Bowery, close by Chinatown.  With the threat of Nazi Germany looming over them, thousands of Orthodox Jews had already fled the diamond centers of Amsterdam and Antwerp to find shelter here, and most of them remained here after the end of World War II. 

    

     I have often passed through this district, usually going to or rom the now deceased and much lamented Gotham Book Mart, a legendary bookstore that happened also to be on this block.  I was never hassled by salesmen, but always encountered black-garbed Orthodox Jews talking excitedly or striding down the street.  Though not all the shopkeepers are Orthodox, most if not all are Jewish, and the Orthodox impart a distinct and dominant flavor to the street.  I have also seen them waiting at the curb along Fifth Avenue and wondered why, until late one afternoon I saw a bus full of Orthodox Jews pull up to the curb and take on the waiting passengers, who were then whisked off to some Orthodox enclave elsewhere, probably Crown Heights or Borough Park in Brooklyn. 

Bleecker Street

     Here is an example of how neighborhoods change.  Bleecker Street in the West Village, which I can see from my windows, living as I do at the corner of West 11^th and Bleecker, used to have restaurants, antique stores, and bookshops.  But all that began to change when the upscale clothing designer Marc Jacobs opened a store across the street from us, its windows featuring fancy with-it clothing draped on faceless, soulless female manikins in odd postures.   That was the beginning.  Soon other designer clothing stores appeared, rents soared, and the restaurants and antique stores, faced with a tripling of their rent, moved out.  Now the street is all upscale clothing stores from Bank Street to West 10^th Street, though not beyond.  People flock and look in the windows, and I suppose that some of them buy.  But these displays don’t interest me, whereas I could always feast my eyes on the antique store displays, and Bob and I loved a Thai restaurant that has long vanished from our neighborhood. 

The Marc Jacobs store at Bleecker and West 11th Street.

     Yes, Jacobs has opened a bookstore, Bookmarc, across the street from us, diagonally opposite the clothing store, but when I ventured inside once, I found not a single title that interested me; the books too are all very “with-it,” very “in,” very upscale – whatever all that means.  I’ve just checked a few reviews of the store online.  One raves about the “cute little knickknacks” available there; another mentions “hip and cool titles that fashion types might read”; another, “a mix of (overpriced) humorous, kitschy items”; another, “fun stuff,” including books that are “pretty modern and chic.”  But here’s the one that really got my attention: “This is the type of place I like to visit when I’m in the mood to have twenty people pressed against me, elbowing my back, blocking my path, and whacking me with their purses.  Which is never.”  All of which confirms my initial reaction: too upscale, too trendy, too “fun stuff” for a confirmed fuddy-duddy like me.

     There was once an interesting biography bookstore on that corner, but it too, alas, is gone.  New York is constantly in flux, not always for the better.  At least the Magnolia Bakery is still downstairs from our apartment.  I don’t buy their sugary concoctions, and yes, they too are trendy and crowded, but I like their still being there, and those cupcakes in the window – real works of art – don’t turn me off.

 The stairs in the lower right are well known to me, as I have descended there a number of times, usually banging my forehead on the way, to clear out the Magnolia's clutter of cartons, so Con 

Ed could read our meter.                 
WestportWiki

People have sold their soul for these.
WestportWiki

SoHo

     SoHo (from South of Houston) is a neighborhood bounded by Houston Street on the north, Canal Street on the south, Lafayette and Centre Streets on the east, and West Broadway on the west.  Today it is known for artists’ lofts, art galleries, and boutiques – another “trendy” location, but this is only the latest phase of its development.  In the nineteenth century the district housed residences, theaters, and fancy stores, not to mention brothels on the side streets off Broadway, but the growing commercial tone of the area drove middle-class citizens farther uptown, and small factories, lumberyards, locksmiths, and book publishers moved in, often into buildings with cast-iron façades.  By the 1880s and 1890s large manufacturers came there, and SoHo became the wholesale dry-goods trade center of New York. 

     After World War II the textile industry decamped for the South, drawn there by lower wages and the lack of strong unions.  The large cast-iron buildings they abandoned became small factories, sweatshops, warehouses, and printing plants, or were demolished to make way for filling stations, auto repair shops, parking lots, and garages.  Firefighters christened the district “Hell’s Hundred Acres” because of the frequent fires in half-abandoned warehouses, perhaps not unrelated to insurance claims. 

Cast-iron buildings on Greene Street, SoHo.
Andreas Praefcke

     Then, in the 1960s, artists began discovering these empty buildings with low-rent lofts offering large spaces, high ceilings, and large windows admitting natural light, and saw their possibilities as a combined residence and studio.  Even though the lofts were not zoned for residential use, they moved in and began adapting them.  The city tried to stop the movement, but under pressure yielded, amending the zoning regulations in 1971 to allow artists to reside and work in the lofts.  Two years later SoHo was made a historical district, further enhancing its status.  Already, in 1968, the name “SoHo” had been coined.

     I witnessed this development when two friends of mine, an artist and his banker partner residing in Brooklyn Heights, bought and moved into a loft occupying two-thirds of the fourth floor of an old building on Wooster Street.  For a New Yorker like myself, used to cramped studio apartments, the loft was magnificent: wide spaces, lofty ceilings, and huge windows looking out on the street.  Urban homesteaders of the twentieth century, my friends had to hire electricians and plumbers and carpenters to make the place livable, but the result was impressive: a bedroom, two bathrooms, an ample kitchen, a living area adorned with chinoiserie from the banker’s childhood abroad, a spacious indoor garden, and a vast area for the artist’s studio.  All this occurred before the city relaxed its zoning regulations, but they were confident that the city would not expel “squatters” who were doing such positive work to upgrade a neglected district – an assumption that proved correct.  So a desolate industrial area was transformed into an artists’ residential area -- further proof that the city’s neighborhoods are in constant flux.

     But that wasn’t the end of the transformation of SoHo.  From the 1980s on the district was enhanced or afflicted – depending on your point of view --  by a phenomenon known as gentrification.  More affluent residents began moving in, attracted by the area’s spacious lofts, interesting architecture, and “hip” reputation.  Lots of the artists remained, including my friends, but many galleries moved to Chelsea, just north of the West Village.  Trendy boutiques, restaurants, and fashionable clothing stores became the norm, tourists flocked, and real estate values soared.  Vibrant it certainly is, but trendy vibrant, money-driven, posh with a few rough edges.

A SoHo boutique.
BLI-DBP

Chinatown

     Chinatown stretches from Delancey Street on the north, where it rubs elbows with Little Italy, to Chambers Street on the south, and from Broadway on the west to East Broadway on the east.  For most visitors, it means an array of signs in a strange language; groceries exhibiting exotic foodstuffs such as jasmine rice, oolong tea, lotus root, lichee nuts, shark fins, bamboo shoots, black duck eggs, and water chestnuts, few of which I could recognize or identify; souvenir shops with gaudy junk, fine chinaware and jade, and benign little Buddhas; and above all, restaurants. 

Derek Jensen

Martin Dürrschnabel

   It was always for the restaurants that my partner Bob and I went there.  We had a fixed routine.  First we would stop at Esther Eng’s Restaurant on Pell Street and settle in to a front table in a nook beside the entrance, have a drink there, and watch people pass by on the street.  We knew that she was a successful businesswoman and, rare for Chinatown, an avowed lesbian, but only now, researching this post a bit, have I learned that in the 1930s, before she went into the restaurant business, she had a distinguished career directing and producing Chinese-language films – another first for a Chinese American woman – in both Hollywood and Hong Kong.  She died in 1970.

     Leaving Esther Eng’s, we would go to the Port Arthur, a venerable Chinese restaurant founded in 1897 occupying the second and third floors of 7-9 Mott Street.  We dined on the second floor, at mahogany tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, on a white-tile floor under red lanterns, in a room adorned with ornate carved wood panels and ivory-colored silk screens embroidered with blue peacocks and other birds.  The food was Cantonese, not superb but reliably good, and reasonably priced.  On warm summer nights the French doors leading to a balcony with tables overlooking the street were opened, and all the sounds of Mott Street – bells and the babble of people passing on the street -- flowed into the restaurant.  We never dined on the third floor, which was reserved for private parties and banquets, but once we were shown its even more sumptuous setting, with many more ornate carved panels as well as screens, lanterns, chandeliers, inlaid tables, and teakwood chairs.  I doubt if any restaurant in Chinatown had more elaborate and dazzling furnishings.  Today, alas, it is no more, its site occupied by a supermarket.  Dining in the restaurant next door, through a window Bob once saw the Port Arthur’s ornate carved panels and other décor being taken out and loaded on a truck, bound for what destination we never learned: a sad farewell to a very special restaurant, unique, irreplaceable.  We still have one of its menus with a red cover adorned with a handsome peacock in blue.

The Port Arthur restaurant (seen in the center), in a postcard from the 1940s.

     Of course there are still many fine restaurants – and many not so fine – in Chinatown, but if we’ve gone there less and less over the years, it’s because Chinatown has come to us; there are good and not-so-good Chinese restaurants all over town.  But not long ago Bob’s brother Bill, on a visit from Maine, went to Chinatown with his daughter and dined in a restaurant recommended by a friend of hers.  For most of the time they were lunching there, they were the only Caucasians present.  Dining among the chopstick-wielding Chinese, Bill says he enjoyed some of the best Chinese food he’s ever had.  They started with soup dumplings, eating which is evidently something of a ritual.  You put one on a soup spoon, pinch a small hole in it, thus releasing soup into the spoon, after which you eat the dumpling and then the soup.  Sounds complicated.  Good luck!

The restaurant Bill Lagerstrom discovered.
Bill Lagerstrom

      Chinatown has a long and colorful history; I can only touch on it here.  Perhaps the first Chinaman to come to the New York City area was Ah Ken, a Cantonese merchant who claimed to have arrived in the 1840s, and who came to the city around 1858 and opened a cigar store on Park Row.  The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought an influx of Chinese immigrants, lured like countless Americans by dreams of elusive wealth, and many of them were later hired to work on the Central Pacific Railroad, dynamiting obstructions in the Sierra Nevada Mountains so the railroad could be pushed east onto the flats of Nevada and meet up with the Union Pacific in Utah in 1869.  Faced with growing discrimination in California, many of them came east via the new transcontinental railroad and settled in New York.  When the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers, there were some 2,000 residents in Chinatown. 

     At first these early Chinatown residents were mostly men, since only the most prosperous merchants could afford to go back to China, find a suitable bride, pay her family the bride price, and bring her back to New York.  These few wives were rarely seen; when they did go out, it was in a carriage with drawn blinds, depriving the frustrated bachelors of Chinatown of even the briefest glimpse of a woman of their race.  The solution of some of these lonely males was to marry Irish girls, though others found solace in brothels whose inmates were Caucasian, some of them under age; in gambling parlors where losers, having bet all they had and lost, departed clothed only in a barrel; and in opium dens where shadowy figures reclined in bunks, sucking on long bamboo pipes held over the tiny flame of a lamp. 

     In New York too the early Chinese immigrants faced discrimination.  Dressed in broad-sleeved jackets and baggy pants, and wearing cork-soled shoes and the long  queue that the Emperor required as a sign of loyalty, they stood out, provoking curiosity and sometimes suspicion and hostility, even though they were for the most part decent, hard-working, and quiet.  Indeed, vastly outnumbered and surrounded by those whom they sometimes referred to as Big Noses or Round Eyes, they might well ask, when insulted and attacked by thugs in the street, who were the barbarians and who the truly civilized. 

     Slowly the number of women in Chinatown increased, as did the population, though even in the twentieth century many of the women rarely, if ever, strayed beyond the bounds of Chinatown.  In time Chinatown became a tourist attraction offering innumerable restaurants, and souvenir shops with wares ranging from the cheapest gimcracks to the finest chinaware and jade.  As for the 1882 exclusion law, it was not repealed until 1943, when China was our ally in the war against Japan.  Today the population of Chinatown is estimated at from 90,000 to 100,000, and Chinatown itself has long since spread north of Canal Street into what was once Little Italy.

Canal Street today, traditionally the border between Chinatown and Little Italy.  But as the Chinese
signs indicate, Chinatown is creeping north into the Italian district.
Derek Jensen

      My war with the creepies:  Yes, I am at war -- at violent, unremitting war -- with the creepies, my name for the bugs, ranging in size from infinitesimal specks to creatures about a third of an inch long, that have invaded my apartment.  They crawl over my toothbrush, creep into my empty coffee mug (used for tea), crawl into the straws we use to sip beverages, and have even been found in a large box containing Bob's medical supplies in the living room.  These aren't bedbugs or roaches, but their presence is reprehensible, since they don't pay rent.  They approach my food even while I'm eating (and often pay the price), and flee of the oven, one of their favorite nests, if I'm baking or roasting.  But mostly they are night feeders, and I discover them when, heeding the bladder imperative, I get up at night and suddenly turn on the light in the bathroom, and after that in the kitchen, which sends them scurrying in all directions.

     To keep these invaders in check, I have various stratagems.  I have cleaned them out of a nest in Bob's medicines, emptying the box and then dumping them out on the kitchen table, where I could massacre half of them -- about forty -- while the other half escaped.  My weapon: an empty pill bottle, held upside down, so that the cap, when slammed down on a flat surface, mashes anything organic underneath.  I also leave glue traps about in strategic locations in the kitchen, where they slowly accumulate dozens of victims.  One trap has now enticed some forty of the bigger ones, and so many little ones that I couldn't count them.  Also, since they seem to have a predilection for my coffee mug, I heave it half full of water and in the morning often find one or more floating on the surface, drowned.  R.I.P.

     But the real confrontation -- the true battle of battles -- occurs when I turn on a light at night and find a slew of them ranging about the bathroom or kitchen.  For best results, I leave most of the kitchen table free of objects, so as to create a broad killing field where I have a better chance of mashing them; other killing fields include the sink and stove top, and the wash basin and bathtub in the bathroom.  Against these white, smooth surfaces their dark bodies appear in sharp contrast, which gives me a further advantage.  Not that I massacre all the wee beasties so discovered; since they scurry in different directions and there's only one of me, half of them, and sometimes more,  escape.  Escape to where?  Any crack or crevice within reach, the undersurface of the table and sink, the dark, infernal depths of our ancient (circa 1930) stove, or any bit of clutter where they hide.  The little ones -- the specks -- can't run fast, so I get most of them, but the big ones are very quick indeed.  If, out of three of these, I slaughter two or (rarely) three, I feel great satisfaction and  deep glee.

     Browder a hunter?  Those who know me well would scoff at the very thought.  Long ago my father, a true hunter and fisherman, told me that hunting is an instinct, stronger in some people than in others.  And his younger son, a bookworm, possessed this instinct not at all.  I hated the recoil of a discharged shotgun, which made my shoulder ache, and had no desire to slaughter rabbits or blackbirds, the intended targets of my father's forays.  As for lake fishing -- the only fishing available in our midwestern setting --  I hated the long, hot hours in a boat waiting for something to happen; hated the sight of our bait, a squirming worm transfixed by a hook; and hated the rare spectacle of a fish thrashing about the floor of the boat in a frenzied panic.  So if I derive satisfaction from slaughtering the invaders of my apartment, it is much less the thrill of a hunter than the vigilance of a human defending his hearth against dark forces conspiring against it, invading it, polluting it by their very presence. 

     As I fight the good fight, a literary quotation comes to mind.  No, not Blake's line, "For everything that lives is holy," since I deny holiness to cockroaches, mosquitoes, and creepies.  No, it is a line from King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport" (iv.1.37-38).  This line is spoken by Gloucester as he wanders the heath, blinded, questioning if there is justice in the universe.  Is this how I appear to the wee beasties, assuming they have a modicum of intelligence?  "Why does this looming monster hate us so?" they may well ask, "when all we're doing is finding a little sustenance?  He has plenty; why not share it?  Isn't there enough for all?"  And if they wax philosophic, they might ponder the arbitrariness of doom.  When the towering monster strikes, some are pounded to a mash, while others escape.  Is this all simply a game of chance, or is there some underlying principle, some cosmic law that escapes their finite minds, but may be clear to a higher, perhaps divine, intelligence?  Ah, deep thoughts provoked by my slaughter of the beasties, but thoughts to be pursued with caution, if pursued at all.  For are we humans to higher beings as the creepies are to us, or as flies to wanton boys?  I dare not push this further; it's too unsettling, or maybe too ridiculous.  I kill the creepies to keep them out of my toothbrush, my mug, my meals.  Enough said; I conclude.

     Coming soon: Inanities of the 1960s, as recorded by me in an Inanities File, with thoughts about the inanities of today.  Another deep probing, leading I'm not sure where.

    ©  2013  Clifford Browder

104. The Beauty and Danger of the Palisades

     Just across the Hudson from New York City, cliffs of dark gray rock rise almost vertically some 500 feet above the river, sometimes clothed with vegetation and sometimes just bare rock.  This is the New Jersey Palisades, a solid wall of rock stretching from Fort Lee northward as far as the eye can see, all the way to the New York State boundary some twelve miles to the north.  Huge signs advertising patent medicines and other worthy products once blazoned forth their message from the cliffs for the benefit of steamboat passengers in the years following the Civil War (“Obscenery!” proclaimed Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune), and the rock itself was once quarried for railroad ballast.  And when, in the late 1890s, a movement developed to preserve the Palisades, the quarry operators used dynamite to speed up their work before conservation efforts put an end to it.  Fortunately, those efforts soon paid off; quarrying ended in 1900 with the creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission by the governors of New York and New Jersey.  In time, the Park Commission would undertake to acquire for the park all the private property both below the cliffs and on top of them.  In 1933 John D. Rockefeller, the robber baron turned philanthropist, donated to the Park Commission all the land he had acquired along the cliffs, on condition that the Commission acquire all the estates not owned by him and demolish their mansions, so as to restore unobstructed views of the river.

                                                                                                                                                                                  Beyond My Ken

     This park is a long, skinny stretch of green squeezed in between the Palisades Parkway and the cliff edge, often only an eighth of a mile wide, so that you can’t possibly get lost in it, but you are constantly serenaded by the sound of zooming traffic.  I have often hiked the length of it, though not all at once but in segments.  Two paths traverse it: the Long Path along the top of the cliffs and, far below, the Shore Path along the edge of the river; each has offered me a climactic experience, unique, at the end of my hike.  There are three real dangers in the park, two of which I have encountered; I shall deal with them all in time.  Let me now relate a hike on the Long Path, which is easily accessed just over the George Washington Bridge (which I have usually walked) in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The Long Path

                                                                                       Famartin

     Starting north from the bridge, I would pass through a shady, dank wooded area and turn onto a side path that took me to right up to the approaches to the bridge.  There, in late spring and early summer, in a dry, sunny spot I always found a stand of common milkweed, my favorite summer flower, thrusting domed clusters of tiny intricate flowers, dusty rose or lavender or dull brownish purple in color, and emitting an intoxicating fragrance.  That the plant is also toxic seems irrelevant, since one is tempted only to sniff it, not at all to eat it.  A nice beginning for the hike, in spite of the unending traffic sounds from the bridge.

     Pressing on along the trail, which is marked with turquoise blazes, I passed the remnants of foundations of former mansions that always puzzled me, until, researching this post, I learned how, at Rockefeller’s insistence, the Park Commission acquired and  demolished them.  At times I would go to the cliff edge and look back at the bridge, measuring my progress by how much it had retreated into the distance.  Its sounds faded, but those of the nearby parkway persisted, and my quest of solitude in nature was further frustrated by the presence of a roadside gas station.  Just beyond it, however, I would come to Allison Park, a small, well maintained bit of greenery offering a nice view out over the Hudson, benches for picnic lunches, and water fountains and rest rooms.  It is named for the first mayor of Englewood Cliffs who once had an estate here and was a leader in the movement to preserve the Palisades.

     Continuing north through the oak forest that prevails here, I would come to High Tom, a rock promontory offering fine views north and south, and then to Rockefeller Lookout, another spot for good views, a mile north of the bridge and just across from the northern tip of Manhattan, where the Harlem River flows into the Hudson.  Here once, finding a bit of cliff just beyond the fence that offered an unusually fine view, I stepped out onto it, settled down, and enjoyed the vistas.  At this point another hiker happened by, saw me, and warned that in going beyond the fence I risked arrest for reckless endangerment.  He himself had been arrested on that very spot and had been obliged to go to court and pay a hefty fine.  Thus warned, I stepped back over the fence and never transgressed again.  It’s just as well, since in the summer of 2012 alone three deaths occurred here, two accidents and a suicide whose body was found 225 feet below the edge.  Yes, the cliffs are dangerous, and if Big Brother is out to keep you safe, however annoying he can be, his intentions are the best.  So much for the first of the three dangers to be encountered in the park, though we’ll return to it later.

                                                                                        Malcolm

     Continuing to the north, I would pass the fenced enclave of Greenbrook Sanctuary, a large nature preserve created to protect native species.  Only members are allowed inside, but for a season or two I became a member, so as to have a look at whatever treasures lay inside.  Near the entrance was a feeding station where the sanctuary naturalist put out quantities of seed to attract seed-eating birds, and there, along with sparrows and pushy blue jays, I had my first sighting of wild turkeys, who were scooping up the seed ravenously.  I had always wondered how so big and bulky a bird could survive in the wild, with hunters all about, but when I saw them run into the brush, I understood: their plumage was such that they instantly vanished among the weeds and bushes.  This was the bird that Benjamin Franklin thought should be our national bird, and not the bald eagle, whom he censured for grabbing fish out of the mouths of osprey – a spectacle that I once had while hiking this very trail in late autumn; it happened so fast I hardly realized what I had seen, but the fish-deprived osprey, and the triumphant eagle, fish in beak, convinced me.  But I still prefer the bald eagle as a national symbol, and not these bulky earth-bound gobblers, who can only fly short distances and have nothing majestic or inspiring about them.  Still, I’m grateful to the Sanctuary for affording me a glimpse of the creatures.

The concrete bridge to Grey Crag.
Famartin

    Passing the Park Administration Building, a former estate mansion that escaped demolition, I would come to Grey Crag, a detached bit of cliff only ten to twenty feet wide, accessed by a narrow concrete bridge without a railing.  I always crossed that bridge quickly, without looking down.  I’m surprised that the crag is even open to visitors; Big Brother isn’t always on the job.  And what do you find, once you’ve mustered up your courage to cross the bridge and reach Grey Crag?  Poison ivy!

View north from Ruckman Point, north of Grey Crag.
Famartin

                                                            Famartin

    Still farther to the north I would come to the Women’s Federation Monument, a little stone castle where you can climb up to a sort of battlement, though it doesn’t provide a spectacular view.  When I first encountered it, I wondered why it was there, seemingly so out of step with nature, so pointless, so useless, but later I learned better.  Dedicated in 1929, it honored the role of the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, who from the late 1890s on played a major role in preserving the Palisades.  God bless those girls; while their wealthy spouses were out making money, these wives put their leisure time to good use, helping to reclaim these magnificent cliffs from the quarrymen who were blasting them to pieces.  And God bless this pint-sized castle, even if it provides no rest rooms and, alas, reeks at times of urine.

Can you make out the Indian Head?
Erhudy

     Beyond the monument I would come to State Line Lookout, a park with a snack stand, picnic tables, and good views out over the Hudson.  Looking south, you can see a rock formation called the Indian Head, since that is what it looks like in silhouette.  I have often lunched in this park and found summer flowers, including catnip, from which I harvested a few leaves to offer a neighbor with a cat, so her pet could get high and roll about in ecstasy.  From here the trail crosses the state line, marked by a chain link fence, into New York State and advances along the cliff edge, but I would rather describe this section the way I have usually traversed it, coming from the state line bus stop on route 9W, near the entrance to Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory.  From that point the Long Path continues to the north as far as the Catskills and beyond.  I have done segments of that trail and have dreamed of doing the whole trail in another life, but that takes us far beyond New York City and its environs. 

     Coming from the bus stop, I would pass through a dank, shady stretch of forest, approach the cliffs, and climb up, up, up a staircase, huffing and puffing, to reach a point almost at the top of the cliffs, where I would emerge into morning sunlight and experience, once a year, the climax of the trail, the goal of my annual pilgrimage.  Here the path passes between the cliff edge on one side and a sloping wall of rock on the other, and here, and here only, I would find two spring flowers that thrive in rocky soil. 

     At the cliff edge, and even on ledges on the face of the cliffs, grow clusters of wild pink, a flower with wedge-shaped pink petals and a sticky stem: beautiful, but not to be approached too closely, given its preference for the edge of the cliffs.  

Other rock-loving spring flowers bloom there as well, mostly inconspicuous little mustards, but one flower growing singly here and there on the rocky wall opposite upstages even wild pink.  This is columbine, whose yellow-centered nodding red petals with long curved spurs have always fascinated me and drawn me year after year to this very special spot.  

The flower points down, but the spurs of the red petals point up.
Alan Vernon

I always lingered there for at least fifteen minutes, usually having the path to myself, bathed in the bright morning light, with the river scintillating in the sun far below, and overhead a blue arch of sky, with one or several turkey vultures gliding on unseen currents of air.  A magical moment, unique, not to be repeated for a year.

The Shore Path

You don't want him on you.
Jerry Kirkhart

     The path along the river, marked with white blazes, is a totally different experience, offering not breathtaking views out over the river, but, at intervals, impressive views of the cliffs rising from the riverbank.  The path is accessed by side paths leading off from the Long Path and involving a long descent to the river.  Taking the first of these paths, one goes down to the Ross Dock Picnic Area, where I have rarely lingered.  The first stretch of the Shore Path, between that area and the Englewood Boat Basin, is easy walking, but dull.  Then, beyond the Englewood Picnic Area and Boat Basin, the path proceeds narrowly between the wooded cliffs and the river and passes an abandoned bathhouse, a reminder that this area was once a popular bathing resort.  Along this stretch of the path, one spring I encountered the second danger of the Palisades paths: the wood tick (Dermacentor variabilis), which in May and June of every year swarms all over this stretch of the Shore Path.  I and a friend were so misguided as to hike this section of the path one May of a wet spring and spent all our time, not gazing out over the river or up at the towering cliffs, but flicking ticks off our pant legs, which made for a fiasco of a hike. Their bite can be harmless or infectious, so they are to be avoided at all costs.  Never again have I attempted the Shore Trail in spring.

     I am informed that this area once had a settlement called Under the Mountain, and a mix of small farms and quarries, fishing shacks, and manure and bone factories, of which the only remnant today is a small cemetery somewhere on an upper level that I have never seen.  At intervals the remains of a dock, usually masked by vegetation, jut out into the river; going out on them, I would get a better view of the cliffs to the north and the south.  Passing under Greenbrook Sanctuary, you come to Greenbrook Falls, a trickle in late July and August, when I often came this way to harvest raspberries, but an ice mass in winter and, in spring after rain, a gushing waterfall – sights I have never seen, since I avoid the Shore Path in winter, fearing ice on the paths leading down, and likewise avoid it in spring, not wishing to renew my acquaintance with the ticks.

     Approaching Alpine Boat Basin and its picnic area, you come upon the Blackledge-Kearney house, dating from about 1750 and now a museum, where Cornwallis, landing his troops here in November 1776 in pursuit of Washington across New Jersey, is said to have spent the night.  His troops marched up to the top of the cliffs by the very same switchback trail that I have often used to access the Shore Path here.  Beyond, one comes to a place where the Indian Head already viewed from State Line Lookout is seen from below; here, it isn’t the Indian or the patroon that is seen, but the Yankee pioneer.   

Blackledge-Kearney house.
KForce

     Now, 11.5 miles north of Fort Lee, comes the climax of the hike, the so-called Giant Stairs, a vast jumble of boulders that over the centuries have tumbled down to the foot of the cliffs, creating a lunar landscape such as I have never experienced elsewhere in the East.  The caves and cavities under these masses of rocks harbor raccoons, foxes, small rodents, lizards, and snakes, including the third danger of the park, the venomous copperhead.  I have never encountered any of these creatures except a harmless little green lizard, and least of all the copperhead, since in following the path over the boulders I make too much noise; he doesn’t want to face me, slithers down into the dark cavities under the rocks at the least hint of a human approaching. 

A copperhead.  Look close or you won't see him.

     I have traversed the Giant Stairs a number of times, following the white blazes of the Shore Path as they led me up, down, over the boulders or around them, in a zigzag path that took forty-five minutes to cover a mere quarter of a mile.  As you scramble over or around them, the boulders have a way of wobbling, which doesn’t make the hike any easier; in fact, you have to focus so on where you’re stepping next, you can easily forget to survey the unique landscape all around you, and the cliffs that tower above.

     A sign used to warn hikers that the going from this point on was difficult, and advised them to take a path blazed blue and white back up to the Long Path above.  It’s not just the Giant Stairs that pose problems, since beyond it the Shore Path is impaired by erosion; once, having survived the Stairs, I pressed on, only to find a short section of the path completely worn away, obliging me to drop down a few feet and continue that way, before climbing back up to the path.  So once the sign appeared warning of the problems ahead, I would go only so far as to view the beginning of the Stairs, then retreat to the path leading upward and return that way – an arduous climb, even so – to the Long Path far above.  Today, however, a sign simply warns hikers that the going ahead is difficult.

     That’s not quite the end of the story.  On May 12, 2012, a 500-foot rock face came crashing down from the cliffs, shaking the ground and dumping a fresh layer of boulders onto the Giant Stairs right down to the edge of the river, and sweeping a whole stand of trees – oak, birch, and paulownia --  into the water.  Witnesses on the New York side of the river reported hearing a sound like jet planes overhead, and seeing what looked like a big cloud of smoke as the rocks tumbled down.  Fortunately, because the slide occurred in the evening, no one was injured, but the path over the Stairs was closed until further notice, so heavy machinery could be used to stabilize the boulders and make the path safe again for hikers.  So nature’s raw power can be exerted at any moment, without warning.  I have often hiked that very stretch of the Shore Path where the rock slide occurred, which gives food – a whole feast – for thought.  Yes, the Palisades can on occasion be dangerous, and in those cases no amount of precautions can guarantee your safety. 

Taken by the photographer while kayaking on the river one week after the slide.
Michael J. Passow

     Another note on WBAI:  The financially beleaguered station continues to spiral downward.  One fund drive succeeds another, with ever more desperate pleas for donations.  I thought the award-winning evening newscast would be sacrosanct, but even that has disappeared.  I now listen to Gary Null at noon, but little else.  The Thom Hartmann program, replacing an informative program that I liked, doesn't hold me, when the host repeats his fund drive plea again and again in exactly the same words as before -- obviously a recording (maybe he's taking a rest break).  Hartmann is knowledgeable, but his self-promotion annoys me.  For the minimal donation he will give you a bumper sticker, "Graduate of the Thom Hartmann University."  I usually flee to WNYC.  

     Coming soon:  New York Mosaic: The Neighborhoods (the Diamond District, Chinatown, Soho, and much more).  In the offing: items from my Inanities File of the 1960s, ranging from hilarious to sinister, but always inane.

     ©  2013  Clifford Browder