So last weekend Anne and I and three friends walked from the top of Manhattan Island to the bottom along Broadway. It took us 6 hours and was tiring as hell but still a lot of fun. I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook with commentary and historical footnotes for those on the FB.
One story I didn't fully share on fb was this:
The Polo Grounds was a baseball stadium for the New York Giants that was demolished a long while ago for a housing project. I had read that there was still something to be seen there so I decided I wanted to get a picture of it. So, at 157th St I headed east while everybody else in the group continued south. So far, the Broadway walk had been very nice, we'd only gone through bustling neighborhoods and felt very safe. As soon as I left turned onto the side street the atmosphere changed a lot. It was mostly residential with several boarded up houses. It's about a 4 block walk to site and along the way there I only pass three people. The first two are giving their pit bull water in a dish on the sidewalk. The leash is a thick metal chain and they give me the once-over/stare-down in a way that me feel like an intruder. The next guy I passed looked like a crackhead.
So, I get to the area where I'm supposed to look for a staircase that leads down to the picture-perfect spot. There's a big outcropping of schist in the middle, to the right are a few basketball courts, to the left is a fenced-off area and some trees. So I head to the right to go around the outcropping to see if the staircase is around that way. I can't find the staircase but I do see a shopping cart with clothes and other trappings of a homeless person's existence. So, I circle back around the outcropping and find a couple more shopping carts. I think that the owners of these carts are probably only a short distance away from them since they're pushed halfway into a stand of trees. I have little desire to awaken a crazy angry homeless person so I'm about to give up when I see that one part of the fence way over to the left has been pushed over. I decide to walk over to it and right as I'm starting that way two guys emerge from a line of trees about 20 yards away from me.
They both are zipping up their pants and when they see me they get a look on their faces that indicates I just saw them doing something that they didn't want anybody to see. These guys didn't look homeless, they just looked like they needed some loving in a discreet location.
So I very quickly make my way over to the fence, see that the thing I wanted to photograph is down there, and scramble over it. I cut myself in couple places on the chain-link, then walk down the stairs. As I'm walking down there I see that off to my right there's a gathering of a bunch of people that seem to be drinking heavily (it's about 4pm). They also appear to be the owners of the shopping carts at the top of the hill. A couple guys are peeing on trees while I take a couple pictures of the last remnants of the Polo Grounds.
I then head back up the stairs, go over the fence and start to head back to Broadway when I see the two guys from earlier sitting on benches near where I was planning to cross the street. They are staring at me HARD, so I cross the street right away and head back to Broadway on 155th st.
The arrow is approximately where the staircase was. To the left of the arrow would be the secret man-cave area.
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