The Ninth Street Bridge and its environs is a hallowed spot, a signature corner of Brooklyn where industry and transit converge in a dramatic way. (The picture above was taken from the platform of the Smith and 9th subway stop, the city’s tallest.)
The Ninth Street Bridge vista is at once bleak and majestic, an intoxicating mixture of everything I find wondrous about Brooklyn. When I first gazed upon this panorama, I felt the pulse of the sublime coursing through me and I actually swooned. Such breathtaking grittiness defines Brooklyn's mystique.
This panorama is dense with contradictions. It's a cold industrial landscape, yet also it pulsates with a warm neighborhood charm. The area radiates harmony, yet discord is right on the surface. The factories whose smokestacks and storage silos dominate the landscape are symbols of the past over which hangs an air of doom. These hulking relics of tangibility seem exotic compared to the gleaming towers downtown housing the apparatus of the ethereal new economy.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that you swooned upon seeing the great quantity of
trash next to the parking lot. I would be very concerned if you hadn't. It is time for you to get a pet hamster. This will work out
only if you love one another.
As for the relics of tangibility
versus the ethereal new economy,
you seem to be at peace with it.
I still prefer to bitch about it on
occasion.