125 Years Young

The Brooklyn Bridge opened for business 125 years ago this weekend. I spent my early NYC years living in Brooklyn and my heart goes pat-pat-pat every time I see it. Anytime I had visitors, I would always take them on a walk across the bridge. You have to start from the Brooklyn side and walk towards Manhattan because that’s the better view. You can see all of lower Manhattan, the UN, and all the midtown skyscrapers you know by name, whether you’ve been to New York or not. Take the A train to High Street/Brooklyn Bridge, come out of the subway, cross Cadman Plaza, up a stone staircase and walk that beautiful walk. The cables look like a spider's web and there’s nothing more elegant than the cathedral-window cutouts in the center of the stone support towers. It’s an architectural masterpiece.

One morning, many years ago, a cable snapped and came crashing down to the walkway and killed someone who was walking to work. They said that the acidity in the pigeon guano that had accumulated over the years caused the cable supports to corrode. Pigeons 1. Humans 0.