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May 8, 2008

Staten Island Redux

Before 9/11, I often went to Staten Island for the ferry ride, and to drink in Manhattan from an aqueous remove. The ride was always a thrill, no matter how many times I took it, no matter the weather. As Melville says, “Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” Every ride was exactly that, a meditation.
~
The ferry would dock with a grinding bump. As it scraped the spiles (each uniquely ringed in bronzy-green, Miss Liberty's hue), the ferry screamed like seagulls, bellowed like bulls, and added scars to its berth. Shaking off the thick crowd at the gangplank, I’d walk up to Richmond Terrace, turn right, and head for a comfortably lowlife donut shop, after which, replete with caffeine and sugar, I’d start my wandering. I loved looking at the houses which were decomposing but inhabited, and I’d venture through the hilly streets above, to see those houses too. On the highest elevation I could find, I’d stare at the World Trade Center, stage center from that vantage, rising above the clutter of lowly edifices like a pair of giraffes among a bovine herd. The towers glinted and winked, answering Miss Liberty's salute. They seemed to be giving the peace sign.
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After the terrorist attacks, I stopped going. Now, seven years later, I’ve broken my ferry fast by going to see some artists’ studios at Bay Street Landing. Leaving the ferry, I had always turned right, onto Richmond Terrace. I’d never thought to turn left (intrepid traveler that I am), onto Bay Street. On a map it looks like the same road with two names. So onto Bay Street I turned this time, a new route of exploration.
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At the edge of the East River, near the Verrazano Bridge, is a former coffee warehouse, now condos and artist studios. The lofts I got to see were as different one from another as the art in them. Some spaces were places, fixed up and fancy; but I liked best the ones left somewhat raw. My favorite was cavernous, with such tall ceilings—15 feet perhaps—that two small rooms had been built near the ceiling, treehouse-like; and below them was a permanently dark sleeping cave with a narrow, tossed bed. I liked the contrast between the undomesticated height of the large painting space, and the three or four burrow-low chambers tucked within--a propitious combine of warehouse and dollhouse, which I call cottage-industry. (A few days later, I read a quote by an architect in The Most Beautiful House in the World: “A building in which ceiling heights are all the same is virtually incapable of making people comfortable.”)
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In seven years there have been many changes to the ferry terminals on both the Manhattan and the Staten Island sides. A fire destroyed the Whitehall terminal, on the Manhattan side, which was rebuilt as a sterile, hi-tech, even colder facility. Fewer vagrants camp out there, fewer proprietary pigeons swoop grandly from the rafters. The St. George terminal, on the Staten Island side, was improved just last February with the inclusion of two ten-ton, eight-foot-tall salt-water fish tanks, in which 400 exotic fish in unimaginable colors swim, spaciously. The silvery squares of the tanks reminded me of the dead towers.
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Still, I was unprepared for the sad shock of seeing, for the first time from that angle, the City without them. Was this why I’d stayed away so long–to postpone the inevitable shock? I'd moved into the neighborhood three years after the World Trade Center opened. Before I knew I'd be moving downtown, and without knowing that Philippe Petit would be my downstairs neighbor, I’d saved the Times article about his famous tightrope walk. The Towers were New York, which was, perhaps, their doom. People joked about them with affection, e.g., “There’s the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. And there are the boxes they came in.”
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On the ferry back, gazing at the spot, I thought: Before them, there was nothing there to miss. I’m guessing that anyone who knew the Towers, whether up close or from afar, always will miss them, even when the Freedom Tower takes their place.

Posted by Jane on May 8, 2008 7:57 PM

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