Last weekend, I was at the bow of a boat finishing up a trip from Alpine in New Jersey to Pier 40 in Manhattan. It gets to be quite boring back there, and you’re left to your own thoughts a lot of the time—much like how I’ve been thinking a lot more while walking around the city because my iPod is broken, and I don’t have music to accompany me.
About 30-40 minutes after we went under the George Washington Bridge, passengers in the boat are treated to the sight of New York City in all its glory. In one view, you can see the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, a scattering of hotels and other skyscrapers that, to paraphrase Wilco, seem to “scrape the sky.”
During a break from rowing, I sat back and just began to look at the city without any real concentration on any one particular thing. From the river, New York City seems almost quaint and not filled with the kind of hectic running around that its normally associated with.
And I was treated with this sight:
But then I began thinking about all the great music that has been recorded there: Bringing It All Back Home, The Ramones, Highway 61 Revisited, The Velvet Underground and Nico; and where the New York Dolls, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Duke Ellington, bebop, and the Talking Heads, among others, all either got their start or advanced their careers.
And the city didn’t seem so quaint anymore.
Here are some more pictures:
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