Hike #743; NY Penn Station to Dyker Heights (Brooklyn)

 Hike #743; NY Penn Station to Dyker Heights (Brooklyn)

12/22/13 Holiday NYC; Penn Station/Tribeca/Brooklyn/Dyker Heights with Jack Lowry, Tom Vorrius, Jennifer Berndt, Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Colin Webb, Craig Nunn, Stephen Argentina, Ed DiSalvo, Al MacLennan, Angela Guinta Williamson, Jason Kumpas, Amanda Murphy, Jason Itell, Megan Reid, Eric Pace, Erika Daniels, Erika's friend, Brad Anesi, Pamela Berndt, Andrew Luchnick, Bob Jones, Bob's g/f, Erika Vera, Louis Hochman, Liam "Tubby" ?, Marcello ?, Ted Wright, Angela Wright, Chris Herbig, Carla ?, Betty Fisher, Jen ?, Yon Lee, Cory Salveson, Gregg Hudis, Tamara Sapilak, Dan Stone, Susie Duncan, Jon Wilson, Steve Levy, Steve's sister, Justin Gurbisz, ?, Tsuyoshi, Angela Castro, Haobo Lai, Haobo's friend, Jim Schlenker, Sean ?, Dan Lurie, Sue Olivar, Lenny ?, Carmen ?, Judy ?, Walt ?, Shanthi ?, Stevegam, Dennis ?,

The group along the Manhattan west side waterfront.

The Holiday New York City hike has become somewhat of a legend. I can think of no greater city to experience the holiday spirit than New York, and I always look forward to visiting here especially for this hike. This year in particular, I would break the largest number of participants ever gathered for one of my hikes.

Because there were so many people, I made it clear that we would probably lose people. In NY, it's not easy to be a big group, and I needed everyone to be aware to keep with us. I posted on my meetup group a brief itinerary of everywhere we planned to go, so that if anyone got behind they could use public transportation or move quickly to get ahead of us and re-join. With a total of 77 participants in the course of the trip, we somehow managed to keep together rather well!

Note that I have left some names off of the list of participants because I simply cannot be sure of who attended and who did not. I may also have not gotten the names right, etc. I get a lot more people sign up than actually show up, and with such a large group, and not everyone with pictures, it's hard for me to say who was actually there and who wasn't.

We met in the morning at NY Penn Station. I took a train in from Summit like I usually do, which went nice and easy. When I arrived at the big tree in the middle of Penn Station, there were already a lot of people there. I thought it would be difficult to get people together and move off, but it surprisingly went really well. I tried to get everyone promptly moving by 10:15, and we left at exactly that time. We managed not to lose anyone (I think) all the way from Penn Station to the north end of the High Line, at 30th Street.

We had hiked the High Line once before, for the holiday hike in 2009. The High Line was constructed because of too many vehicle vs. train accidents, especially on Tenth Avenue, which was nicknamed "Death Avenue". When we hiked it in 2009, only about ten blocks on the south end were open to public. Since that time, the High Line had doubled in length.

The newer sections were a little less "done up" than the sections I'd walked in the past. The pathway sections were a bit narrower, and some of it was a sort of metal decking rather than the material used on the southern sections, that seemed like a cross between deck treks and concrete.

The sections of railroad track that had been placed back on the High Line were also growing in with larger trees by this time, looking different than our last visit. We continued under the large buildings and past some views toward the Hudson, and stopped at Tenth Avenue which has an amphitheater built into it.

We headed from here to the southern end of the High Line, at Gansevoort Ave. From here, we turned right out to Riverside Park to follow the waterfront south.

We went out to the end of the second pier we reached, which had tent type structures on it. There were great views at the end toward Hoboken and Jersey City. Justin of course had climbed up the center brace of the tent structure before anyone had even noticed. We seem to have these "Where's Justin?" moments when we all look in the air, and of course there he is. Brad soon followed him up the middle of the tent as well.

The new World Trace Center 1 was in clear view along the waterfront, not at it's maximum height with spire on top. It really has a presence over the NY skyline, and was neat to see nearly complete. Some of the window sections near the top are not yet filled in, but most of it looks about done. It's supposed to stand 1,776 feet tall. We continued south along the waterfront, where Brad climbed on some sort of metal sculpture. I can't believe we didn't draw more attention to ourselves. Sure it was NYC, but we were quite the group.

It as unnaturally warm. It got to near seventy degrees. I wore shorts and my Metrotrails tee shirt and was quite fine most of the time, even on the windy waterfront.

We continued on the waterfront until we reached Chambers street. We lost one participant while on the High Line, as he was taking pictures, and another had cut out along the waterfront, but Erika Vera also joined in here. We continued to Chambers Street, where a nice pedestrian bridge crosses West Street. We used the bridge, then regrouped. I took a head count, which came out right to me, so we all continued down Chambers Street until we reached a lovely arch building by City Hall. We didn't walk through the arch, but rather turned right and soon reached the walkway entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

I never tire of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's an absolutely outstanding structure. It was completed in 1883 in neo gothic style, complete with the pedestrian walkway that's still used today, well above the traffic lanes. I regrouped everyone when we got to each one of the piers. Every time I cross I think of all of the workers that got the bends while construction was going on. At the time they called it "Caissons Disease". The bridge's designer, John Roebling, died as a result of Tetanus from a leg injury while working at the bridge site, and his son Washington Roebling was maimed from the bends shortly after he took over managing the project.

We continued across the amazing bridge, then descended on the other side. From here, my plan was to follow as closely as possible to the Brooklyn waterfront. Of course, there are sections where we simply cannot reach the waterfront, and so to fill in the gaps, we had Craig Nunn, the undisputed king of urban hikes with us to show the way.

I left the hike up to Craig from Brooklyn for quite some time. He knew of a good park with open restrooms, which was a great idea. We took a break there before moving on. From that point, we headed to Squibb Park, where there was an old new shaking foot bridge constructed over Furman Street to Brooklyn Bridge Park. The bridge was really neat, and it bent to the right after getting out onto it. There was a sign that Craig found particularly amusing, that read "Made with Trail Bridge technology". We wonder what "Trail Bridge Technology" is.

We reached the walkway on the other side, which had superior views of the Brooklyn Bridge. Outstanding spot. We moved on from here along the waterfront southbound.

We continued along the waterfront, which was all done up interestingly with a lot of curves and such, but we couldn't stay along it. Craig had a suggestion of an interesting route to get to the next section to the south, which would involve a couple of interesting pedestrian bridges. We left it up to Craig from here, and we followed him onward.

Of course, Jack was constantly playing the guitar, and I often joined him to sing some tunes, which is always great fun. There were again countless renditions of Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad", which I think people get sick of hearing, but that's funny in and of itself. The only problem was that it was so warm, which just didn't make it seem like Christmas.

Along the way, we stopped by a little liquor store for some drinks. I had had a bottle of Amaretto that someone had given me as a gift, but we finished it, so Susie got me another one as a Christmas present! We had a splendid time as we continued to sip on this. Erika and Angela each got some sort of weird little shot ball thing, that looked like Christmas ornaments with strong stuff in it. We made our way from here I believe onto Carrol Street, and reached the first foot bridge across Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to St. Stephens church. We headed south then to the Hamilton Avenue which went over Hamilton Ave, then under a lane of superhighway traffic, then over two more, and under another. Craig pointed out how strange the foot bridge was, and he was certainly right!

From here, we followed streets out to Louis Valentino Jr. Park, which had some more nice views out across the outlet of the Hudson. There was also a famous place there that makes Key Lime Pie, and so a lot of people got on line to get some. Craig offered to take some of the group ahead to a grocery store to use restrooms while the ones on line got their pie. We agreed to meet up over at the store.

The store was near the Pier 44 Waterfront Garden. We managed to get everyone back together in this area, then continued on both streets and waterfront heading around the south end of Red Hook. Craig pointed out to us the Erie Basin along the way, which is technically the southern most property associated with the Erie Canal, where it had it's basin. Boats coming out of the Erie Canal onto the tidal and navigable Hudson on the south side of Albany would reach this point eventually.

We continued along streets and waterfront, and Justin and I headed off track a little bit to make friends with a cat looking for attention. When we caught up, some of the group was already checking out a burnt out shell of a car left sitting on the exact spot in burned in. We also walked all the way down the Columbia Street Esplanade, a fantastic spot that, although it was a ways out and back, offered an outstanding view.

We headed back the way we came, then cut over through a trail that led near ball fields, then along side streets to I believe 9th Street which took us over the Gawanus Canal. This canal, not one of locks and such like ones I'm used to dealing with, was a widening and dredging of the Gowanus Creek, opened in 1869. It's considered one of the most polluted bodies of water in America! Near the canal area, Al, Angela, Jim, and maybe a few others cut out from the rest of the group to head back.

Once on the other side, we had to walk very far south on Second Avenue. Somewhere along the way, we split the group up once more, where Craig took some of the others off to the left to get to Dyker Heights a bit earlier. I led the remaining group further along. It was nice to have Craig's help for all of this time, because I could enjoy the hike, the scenery, and read the signs rather than constantly looking at my phone or the map to figure out where we need to be.

Those of us who remained continued along the streets heading south. Somehow, Tom got away from us in this section. Jen's phone had just about died, and I didn't have his number programmed into mine yet. I left him a message on his facebook to call me. We headed from 2nd Ave to the right after crossing Belt Parkway, and then skirted Owl's  Head Park. I think we actually walked through a portion of it. We came out on 68th Street, and one block from there we were able to turn right beneath the Belt Parkway to a nice dock area with nice views out over the New York Bay.

It was dark by this time. There was pretty much no light of day left at all. We continued to the left and followed the walkway as it neared the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Tom called me up on the phone and was just on the other side of the Belt Parkway, working on getting back to us. One of the road bridges took him across, and he quickly caught up.

It was really cool to walk under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the dark. It was also still quite warm. It drizzled for a little bit, but other than that it was almost perfect weather all day. When we were below the bridge, I seriously considered jumping into the water. I'd already swam under the Staten Island side, and if I got out quick enough I would probably be fine. I was convinced not to and we continued on.

We continued along the waterfront until we reached the bridge up and to Bay 8th Street in Dyker Heights. We were going to go to a place to eat that Stephen had recommended. Since he lives in Brooklyn, I wanted for him to share something he knew of it with us, but unfortunately it was just too far from where we were going, and not many had the patience to keep going more miles, so we went for he first pizza place we came to.

This worked out to be pretty good; the place had a tight area in the front, but it had a back room with large tables that no one had occupied, so our entire group pretty much fit back in there. It was like we had our own private party! We hung out for a while, and Stephen wasn't totally happy, although he managed to get some clams. I thought the pizza was really good, and I think Justin might have tried clams for the first time, though I'm unclear as to whether or not he really did eat any.

After eating, some of the group opted to continue on to the Subway station and head back. Only 13 of us remained to continue on. We made our way back and forth on several streets through Dyker Heights and checked out some of the famous Christmas light displays, regarded to be some of the finest displays in the country. Some of the roads were even blocked off by police because of pedestrians walking around and admiring the lights.

We wandered for a little while before finally starting to head back to the Subway station. It's i nteresting that they call it a Subway in this area, because across Brooklyn it's actually an elevated rail line, or at least exposed much of the way.

I was still feeling fine at this point, but it was starting to get late. We got our tickets and boarded the train. The ride was very very long back to Manhattan. Even after we reached Manhattan, we had to exit the subway, then go back up to the streets and make our way to Penn Station. Just as we arrived, some sort of game was getting out, and crowds of people came spilling out of the building. We had to try to navigate through this mess, and then we barely missed the next train to Summit. We ended up having to hang around Penn Station for an hour to catch the next train. After we finally boarded it was like another hour ride to get back to Summit. I think that was the most tiring thing about the entire trip, the transportation.

I walked with Eric back to my car, which was parked right next to mine. He had cut out a bit earlier, then managed to meet back up with us for pizza in Dyker Heights.

Those of us who completed the entire hike did at least 18 miles. I could not believe that with 77 participants we managed not to lose many at all. It was expected that the numbers would drop as we went, but even at the start of the day, in the most crowded parts of the hike, everything went very smoothly. I feel much more confident about running future trips in the city like this now. I think in the future though, I will only post these hikes to the Metrotrails group rather than to other popular groups. While that will certainly lower number of participants, it will be more manageable and draw more positive attention to Metrotrails.