As I was scrolling through my phone the other day, passing words of a Gothamist article caught my eye - “ - dismantling of the 24th street sky-bridge - ” Wait, what? No, I thought with some sight panic fluttering in my chest. It can’t be. The Art Deco piece of architecture was one that dazzled and filled me with wonder from the first instant I had laid eyes on it. And, having become part of my daily commute, every time since. It had also become a sort of “the one that got away” if you will, in the photographer corner of my life: I could never quite capture its magic on film, not the way it evoked it within you when you gazed upon it in real life. And now, it was apparently being strategically dismantled and removed from the Manhattan skyline for good, to make way for a new office building.
This wasn’t even a new story, or a worse-than-usual one. New buildings replace the old all the time, with reports of the latest casualty littering city newspapers as if it were no more than the weather. In fact, it’s been the very reason I give when I tell people why I love this city, my city: like me, like any living breathing human, this city evolves, it shifts, it morphs. Streets will never be the same twice. Favorite bars will close and become a distant memory that tugs at the heart. The skyline oscillates like a restless sea; and you? You can fight it, or learn to swim with it. But it’ll keep going, whether you’re along for the ride or not. And there’s a magic in that, too.
Why then, was the news of this sky-bridge hitting me so hard? Perhaps because most things are hitting me harder than usual this year. Loss is a difficult emotion to grapple with even in the best of times, but 2020 has been a special level of ass-kickingly brutal. So, on my walk to the train tonight after work, I decided to walk past the 24th street sky-bridge, see if it was true. Maybe I’d mixed it up with another sky-bridge, I thought desperately. Maybe the article got it wrong. I had just seen the thing, just last week...how....
I headed up 24th, towards Park Avenue. It was cold, dark; though it was barely the end of November, the brisk air was framed with the quiet only found in the depths of a city winter. I was half a block away now, and my heart leapt. Yes - even in the blur of the shadows, I could see it. It was still there. But as I drew closer, squinted up past the glare of the blinding construction lights that lined the street beneath it, it was...a skeleton. A desolate ruin suspended by rusted threads. The Art Deco plating was entirely gone. All that remained was its hard, tired metal underbelly that was closer in aesthetic to the Gates of Mordor than a gateway through heaven.
My heart felt heavy as I crossed Park Avenue. “Really though,” I thought with annoyance, noting the street had been unnecessarily torn up to be repaved; Park Avenue wasn’t exactly ridden with potholes. The crosswalk timer was ticking down, and my feet were making their ginger way across the jagged concrete. I was torn between keeping an eye out so I didn’t trip, and glances up above at heartbreak in the sky. I saw that clock dwindling down to 4, 3, yet I slowed my pace, wanting to take my time, to exhale. To live in a leisurely moment looking upwards at something miraculous, that was all but erased. But the clock was out, and the headlights of the cars champing at the bit were bathing my legs. Begrudgingly, I stepped onto the curb, pausing for half a second.
Despite it being thirty minutes into curfew, there were still a handful of others like me, in black coats, rushing to get to wherever New Yorkers rush to get to. That strange winter quiet was gone for the moment, with muffled sounds of rushing cars and rushing people swirling around me. I wanted to stop. I should’ve stopped. Even there, in that briefest of pauses that felt like time itself had halted just for me, I was filled with regret. I wanted to look up, and take up the whole crosswalk to do it, cars and cabs and passerby be damned. But this pause was getting messy, loud, dizzy. And I had to get home. With a sigh, I gave that bare, drab looking thing in the sky one last glance before tucking my head down and making the left to walk up 23rd.
In the long avenue blocks I had left to walk to get to the F train, I became a sea myself, of thoughts and emotions and questions. Was this just me, going through what everyone goes through as they age – wanting to cling to something from their time, from their life, no matter how outdated it might be? Was this me, refusing to accept the inevitable cycle of this city, hell - of life, one I’ve always so adamantly defended and even applauded? Was this me, mourning a year that had already taken so much away from all of us – why this, too? Was this me, being privileged as fuck, that this is the thing I’m mourning?
I didn’t know. I still don’t know. But I know I hate that I’m going to take that walk to work, that I’m going to bike up that street, and never see that sky-bridge again. Maybe not everything should be born only to fade into a memory, lost when the pages of time have dissolved its faded photos and the hearts that held it dear are gone. But... isn’t that what we're all destined for?
I got to the train station. I saw on the train arrival clock that I had a 13-minute wait until the next one. 26 for the one after that. Which meant-
I clattered down the steps. Yes, the train’s here, oh my god, can I catch it in time- I hurried through the turnstile, saw the doors closing, the conductor held it for the guy in front me – closing again – I ran –
The doors opened one more time, and I dashed on, waving a quick
hand of gratitude to the conductor. God, nothing clears the head like trying
to catch a train, I mused. And then I smiled, almost drunkenly, woozy from the the spectrum of emotions I'd lived from that walk, to the sky-bridge, to the steps, to the rushing through closing doors, to sitting down here, now. This city really is like a tumultuous sea. It gives and it takes, it pushes and it pulls. It lifts and it sinks. And it's brutal and unforgiving in all of it. But that, in essence, is life itself. It's up and downs, it's loves and loss. And honestly? I wouldn't have it any other way.