Brandon's Second Dérive- Snowy Walk around the Battery
March 22, 2018, by Brandon
For some reason the Dérive app did not record many of my map-points so I will do my best to try to retrace my steps from memory and the pictures I took.
My starting point was somewhere around West Street, which is more or less a big old highway, so I started at the corner of West Street and W. Thames St. As I was approaching the area, a few tourists asked direction towards Battery Park. Why they wanted to go there was beyond me since, I should mention, that this was during one of the many recent snow storms we had. It was a wintery mess but nonetheless there were still people out and about, either by necessity or desire.
My first card told me to “find a bright place” so I instinctively walked towards the Freedom Tower, even half-obscured by the white shield of snow, you could still make out its lights more than most other buildings around. I almost started walking up the bike lanes on West Street, which unfortunately reminded me of that bastard that ran over all those people in the bike lines by West St. further up in TriBeCa last fall. I made my way up the pedestrian path and had to avoid a few tiny pathway plow trucks doing their rounds. A card told me to find a tree, which wasn’t very hard since the path was lined with them.
There were a bunch of kids out to play in W. Thames Park, making good use of their day off from school. Having grown up in Jersey with ample room to play in on snow days, whenever we came into the city I wandered what it was like to be a kid on a snow day in Manhattan. Kids always make due, though. They always find a way to turn the world around them into its best possible version for enjoyment, no matter the geographical constraints.
I was told to “browse for a shadow” but it’s really hard for there to be shadows in the snow. It was really incredible amount of snow, it just kept coming down. Walking up West Street, I thought about that story of Roscoe Conkling, a US Senator, who tried to walk from his office in FiDi towards Madison Square Park during the Blizzard of 1888. He collapsed when he reached Union Square and died not too much later from pneumonia. Not really comparing the severity of our situations but I can only imagine how bad the storm must have been to kill him and how stubborn he must have been to attempt the walk. That’s the true brash and stalwart New York spirit, right there, for better or worse.
Then I was told to take a picture of a stranger’s shoes… so here you go:
Next, I was to “somewhat suspiciously, look for a good place to hide a body”. Well, I can’t really imagine a worse place to try to hide a body in NYC. There are cops everywhere. So being able to sneak past the armed guards around the World Trade Center to toss a body in the Hudson seems like a task. Anyway, I got lucky (similarly to my last dérive) with my next card and was directed towards a “watering-hole of some kind” to save me from the elements, briefly.
Inside a cozy, but overpriced (as expected), little joint called “Treadwell”, I thought about how little time I spend in this part of downtown. In general, I don’t spend that much time below Canal. I have a few friends that went to Pace, so when they were in dorms down in that area I would come visit but that’s about it for anything social. Given that the FiDi and Battery area really have only just seen a resurgence of nightlife, there’s never really been too much to do down here. I do really like the little European style pedestrian streets and places like Stone Street, during the summer when outdoor seating occupies the whole street. It’s an odd area. I doubt I’ll ever spend a lot of time here but I appreciate it more when I do.
So I made my way back outside and was told to turn left so I made my way up Southend Avenue towards Pumphouse Park. When I pulled the next card, which told me to find a conversation that I could overhear, I was already trying to ignore the card as the Hudson was pulling me towards it. Rather than totally abandoning the card, I figured I could interpret the sound of the splashing river could be a conversation of its own.
You could barely make out Jersey City on the other side. If asked to make a split second call, with the snowy obstruction, you easily could have been looking across the East River at Brooklyn. Plus, the island is so skinny down here that’s easy enough to walk from one to the other pretty quickly.
So, as per the next card, I walked eastward and was suppose to find “something unreasonable”. Being in New York, that’s usually not too hard to find but I was looking for something out there to catch my attention so I kept on this card a while. I made my way past the Trade Center again and up the stairs to Liberty Park where the Memorial Sphere is. It’s so hard to be in this area and to not think about 9/11. It was always strange being here those first few years after, even as young as I was, it always felt like visiting a war zone after the battle had finished long ago but there was still the uneasy and unforgettable vibes that you didn’t even need to speak of to know what everyone was silently thinking. It felt so empty with those creators just sitting there to remind you. Anyway, moving on.
I was beginning to realize that for whatever reason I was going to be deprived of any insane thing happening to satisfy the card when I mistook this bronze statue of a business man sitting on a bench for a real person and figured that was unreasonable enough. Befittingly called “Double Check”:
I looked up and realized he was placed at the West Side entrance of Zuccotti Park. It brought me back about 7 years ago when I came to check out the Occupy Wall Street protests. The park looked so different now, smaller when removed of the anti-capitalist picket-signs, the stacks of socialist literature, and the megaphone chants.
Making my way through a few more cards, I made my way further East and realized I overshot my goal of trying to end up around the Fulton Center. I found myself strangely more familiar with the streets than I usually feel so I knew I must’ve been close to Pace so I headed up John Street and realized I was across form the dorm I use to frequent, right across from the Fulton Center.
I finished my trip (before frustratedly realizing that the app had failed me) thinking about the opulence and convenience of the Fulton Center. Along with the Oculus Building/WTC Path Station also down here, I can’t think of any transit hubs in the city that are similar in their sleek design. They almost feel out of place when compared to the bland and dingy look of Penn, the anarchy of Union Square Station, or the aged elegance of Grand Central.