Thursday, January 21, 2010

The High Line

Eight and a half years in Washington, D.C. and I haven't make it to New York City. Kinda sick, huh? Last weekend Yummy had a mass birthday party to attend north of New York so we made sure to go through the city on the way back.

On the way up we confirmed once and for all that her GPS has computer madness. Instead of taking us on nice fast highways that would take us right where we wanted to be it switched to tourist mode and gave us the Ancient Barns of Pennsylvania Tour with the bonus That Jagged Mess of Ice is the Potomac? Tour.

In New York we had our eye set on one specific destination. See, about two years ago I read the book "The World Without Us" [my review]. One part discussed an elevated train track in New York that has been out of service long enough that it's accumulated dirt and grown plants. The book said that they were turning it into a park. Well, it overshot a bit. The park didn't open until a few months ago and even then it's only 1/3 of the line so far. But I wanted to go. So we skipped all the usual sites and went to the High Line [link]

New York.

It was raining and daylight. The only way to know there were lights under the railings was to see the light refracted by the rain drops.

Off towards the unfinished section.

Open park, but... where's the train tracks?

Here, under the benches.

And here, overlooking the river.

And more here.

If you see visions of the future from the 1930's (or Batman cartoons) you'll see zeppelins, deco architecture, and train tracks passing through buildings. The High Line was the inspiration for one of those. To the left you can see where the tracks passed into a warehouse for indoor loading and unloading.

Inside the warehouse. The windows are supposed to be an art project of their own. Something about select pixels from a picture of the river over time being used to pick the colors and used from left to right and top to bottom. I don't quite get what they did.

And, finally, we wandered around the neighborhood and took pictures. That's Yummy checking out some graffiti.

3 comments:

BrianAlt said...

And you didn't stop to say hello?

GreenCanary said...

Man but I LOVE ME SOME GRAFFITI!

Bilbo said...

"The World Without Us" was a very interesting book. Enjoyed your pictures.