My Beloved Bronx

In Casablanca (1942), there's an exchange between a Nazi officer and our hero, Rick:

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Major Strasser: How about New York?

Rick: Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

I don't think I'm the only one who always imagined Bogie was referring to the Bronx, which has a reputation for being our toughest and grittiest borough. It's a great line, because, well, wouldn't we all like to see Hitler get his ass kicked in the South Bronx? But it got me thinking that Paris oddly has something fundamentally in common with the Bronx: topography.

Paris' natural high point is Montmartre in the 18th arrondissement, crowned with the Sacre-Coeur Basilica. To reach the basilica, you can either be a tremendous dork and take this little white Disney-esque trolley up the hill, or you can climb hundreds of steps. But steps are something you see throughout Montmartre, because even in the residential areas the elevation change between parallel streets can be dramatic.

The Bronx's high point is in the western part of the borough in Van Cortlandt Park, and throughout the area you will also find steep staircases that traverse the terrain. As in Montmartre, these "step streets" actually extend mapped roadways and are endlessly frustrating to motorists unfamiliar with the area. It just goes to show that despite our prevailing perceptions of the Bronx, it has its own je ne sais quoi!

Left: Montmartre
Right: Bronx (photo courtesy of sixes & sevens)

Fairwell and Adieu to You, Fair Spanish Ladies

I blame it on Jaws, but whenever I'm in a body of natural water, my flight response kicks in the second any fish or, let's face it, piece of seaweed comes anywhere near me. I also have an all-consuming fear of suspicious dark objects in the water, which usually turn out to be rocks. Well, it could have been a man-eater.

Despite my Spielberg-induced neurosis, I'm excited to report that, as a part of the effort to restore the Bronx River's ecosystem, the Parks Department's Natural Resources Group (NRG) has reintroduced two types of herring to the river. The alewife and blue herring are diadromous fish, meaning that they live in salt water, but migrate to fresh water to spawn. The Bronx River, New York City's only freshwater river, was prime spawning ground for the herring until access was compromised by the construction of several dams beginning in the 17th Century. (Just think what would happen to Park Slope if subway service was disbanded – adios triple-wide strollers.) The dams are here to stay, but NRG will be implementing fish ladders – which are exactly what they sound like – to allow passage over the dam so the herring can successfully get it on!

"Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..."

Orchard Beach: A Transplanted Oceanfront

I purchased Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York in 2007 with every intention of diving right in. But all 1,246 pages of that tome have sat on a bookshelf for the past three years. I never even cracked it. That was until last week, when I eagerly foraged through its index for information on Orchard Beach in the Bronx.

Before Robert Moses got to it, the beach was a narrow pebbly sand bar that linked Rodman Neck and Hunters Island, two of the easternmost landmasses of the Bronx in Pelham Bay Park. Moses reconceived Orchard Beach by connecting Rodman Neck, Hunters Island and the Twin Islands (east of Hunters Island) using fill and white sand dredged from the Rockaways to create 115 acres of parkland and a mile-long crescent-shaped beach. The result, even seen from satellite photos, seems otherworldly.


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What I'm beginning to understand from Caro's book is that Moses was practically an unstoppable force. He rearranged the city with a confidence fed by brilliance and arrogance. The pebbly sand of the Long Island Sound wasn’t good enough for Moses, so he simply transported tons upon tons of white sand from oceanfront Queens. Ecosystem, shmecosystem.

This type of urban planning would never fly today, but I can’t wait to check out Orchard Beach for myself this summer.

More, I'm sure, to follow on Robert Moses....

A Failed Attempt at a Positive Outlook: Legacy Vs. Men in the Cities

In hopes of redeeming myself from my "I Hate Winter" post from mid-January, I had planned to write about Joel Meyerowitz's photo collection Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, which includes some breathtaking wintertime images of nature. Meyerowitz's photos of the furthest reaches of the city's parks provide a glimpse of what so few New Yorkers experience – actually being in nature, completely cut off from the trappings of urbanism, all within our five boroughs. These photos express a calm and beauty that is transcendent.

As I said, my plan was to write an uplifting, positive post about natural beauty. But as I was shuffling through our collection of monographs in search of Meyerowitz's work, I came across Robert Longo's Men in the Cities.

The Men in the Cities series, created by Longo in the late 70s and early 80s, includes large-scale drawings of suited men and women writhing in response to unseen stimuli. Longo saw the figures as representative of Downtown types – both CBGB's and Wall Street, and he described the violent gestures he captured as emblematic of the time: "that jerking into now." What's special about the book I have is that it focuses on the photographs Longo used as the basis of his drawings, and many of these, unlike the drawings, which are closely cropped, are set against the backdrop of New York City as seen from the rooftop of Longo's South Street apartment building.

It's easy to identify with Longo's frenetically contorted figures. In wending my way through early adulthood in New York, I frequently feel pulled in too many directions, not sure which expectations to fulfill, all the while my business casual attire twisting uncomfortably.... But it's nice to know that Meyerowitz's New York City is out there too, and someday I'll get there.


















Left: Pelham Bay Park, Hunter Island, marsh grass and tidal pool, winter, Joel Meyerowitz

Right: Photographic study, Robert Longo

Snapshot: Urban Forest

I thought I’d start with a snapshot of New York City's urban forest. According to the Department of Parks & Recreation (DPR), there are currently 5.2 million trees in the city. Through the 2006 tree census performed by DPR staff and over 1,000 volunteers, at least 168 different tree species were identified in NYC. The most predominant type of tree planted along the city’s streets is the London planetree (Platanus x acerifolia), easily recognizable by its peeling bark.

5.2 million trees is a lot of green, but there is room in our city to expand the urban canopy. Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative has set the goal of planting one million trees across the city over the next ten years. I had the pleasure of personally planting about 30 trees, mostly Pin Oaks (Quercus palustris), in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx last fall. If you are interested in getting involved, you can go to the milliontreesNYC website. Here, you can volunteer to plant, as I did, donate money, or simply give DPR’s Forestry division a heads-up about streets in need of trees.