Travel writers suffer when describing the uniqueness of a unique landscape, and their prose shares that suffering with the reader. In this spirit I shall describe the cityscapes visible from the section of the Triborough Bridge found connecting Ward’s Island and Astoria.
But some preparation. I suppose most travel writers aren’t surprised while doing their jobs. I was. In fact, I wasn’t expecting to be a travel writer. I became one situationally, trapped by circumstances. The situation was my passage on foot, obnoxious bikers racketing past me, from Astoria to Ward’s. The circumstances were the views.
I was hiking the bridge just to know I’d done it. Walking on the Triborough means living awhile amid raw cement and metal. That’s a big, big part of the experience: the grim blocks pushed together, the cars that tear past and never let up. I wasn’t thinking about views. But you’re temporarily positioned high above a vast river working its way through a giant city. Look around and you see views. They drop into place, one spread after another. They do it with a finality that’s like showing off.
I was looking back to Queens, to get an idea of my distance, and found myself ambushed into a new role. Just looking back at Queens, which was… a gray-and-white surf of box houses. The sight seemed to boil up: too many edges and outlines to be plausible, all piled above or below each other. In the other direction, Manhattan’s east skyline rose like a style exercise, with the crowding of classic lines one after the other, like gods or celebrities consenting to part blue curtains (I think the clouds were getting dark) and look down through the sky.
Finally, to the north, running alongside the span, there was the Hell Gate Bridge. I had no idea. I never heard of the thing, but it’s battered and beautiful. I loved it, partly because it’s built with more shape than you expect at first, if I may use a homely way of indicating that its style of construction precedes the (I guess) greater austerity of midcentury modernism. Further, the bridge was painted red and the paint didn’t take all that much. Rose-red Petra was a city half as old as time, and the pinkish Hell Gate would appear to be a functioning but ancient survival from a remote age, a contraption of rust fashioned when different styles walked the earth, an artifact now serving its place in the landscape even while reduced by the mellowness of time. Not literally these things, since the bridge has been around 107 years and that isn’t ancient. But look from Triborough and that’s what you see.
I said the views ambushed me, trapped me into being a travel writer. They did and I survived. Now my duty is done and I have no regrets. Sights like this have to be described, no matter what. I’ll note that my walk took place late on a winter afternoon, and the light slanted in a way that was exquisite.