Happy Birthday, Queensboro Bridge!
The Queensboro Bridge (aka the 59th Street Bridge and the namesake of this blog) turns 100 this month, and people are very, very excited! There are walking tours, fireworks, art exhibits, a parade and lots of other fun events around the bridge’s centennial.
The bridge was built in 1909 as a way to connect Long Island to Manahattan, and turned out to be a primary factor in the growth of Queens. The bridge includes two cantilever spans, which are spans that stick out and are supported from a central support pillar, and several suspended spans. The bridge was originally known as Blackwell’s Island Bridge, which was the original name of Roosevelt Island, and the bridge once had a vehicular elevator to raise and lower cars to the island (which the bridge crosses over). It was known as the 59th Street Bridge until just after World War II, when it was renamed to the Queensboro Bridge.
You can find a full schedule of events surrounding the centennial on the NYC Bridge Centennial Commission’s site.
Notify NYC Goes Live on May 28th
One of the lessons of the recent Air Force One flyover debacle is that there needs to be a viable way for New York City to communicate emergency or important information to residents. Even if the FAA HAD tried to alert people to the flyover, I’m not sure they could have reached me, and I consider myself to be a very connected citizen.
It turns out that for the last several months the city has been piloting Notify NYC, which is a program the allows residents to register for notifications that can be sent either via email or by text message. To reduce the number of irrelevant notifications sent you can register to receive only ones that are pertinent to particular zip codes.
The program was in beta and only available to four areas until the mayor recently announced that it would be available city-wide starting May 28th. If you’re a city resident, you should definitely head over to the Notify NYC site and pre-register for the service so you can make sure you’re in the know in the event of an emergency or other important news.
While you’re at it you may also want to sign up for the free New York Times breaking news alerts to arrive via text message. They don’t send them often, but when they do it’s usually important.
Introverted Travelers of the World…Unite! Or, Umm….Not….
People I know who travel a lot love to tell me about the amazing people they meet and parties they go to, but that’s just not really my cup of tea. I tend to be the quieter type who would prefer to explore a city on his own than as part of a noisy group, one who would rather find a spot and watch the locals than be in the middle of things. I never really thought about it before, but I guess I’m really an introverted traveler!
Photo by Sophia Dembling
Sophia Dembling writes an essay about introverted traveling over on Worldhum that seems to have struck a nerve among readers. It appears that I’m a member of a much larger group of like-minded people than I would have thought, even if that group isn’t a particularly vocal (or easy to find) one.
Sophia received so many comments about her essay that she wrote a followup called Six Tips for Introverted Travelers. If you’re like me, these essays and tips make excellent food for thought, and helps validate a form of traveling that it’s easy to feel slightly guilty about if you’re not part of the vocal majority.
If you’d like to learn more, there are great tips about solo travel to be found on Wikitravel (and you can even contribute your own).
On LocatioNYC Website is Up!
Many of you know that I’ve been developing plans for an interview project called On LocatioNYC. On LocatioNYC is a project that allows you to take walking tours around New York and hear the stories of the places you visit in the words of people who were there.
I’ve created a website for this project where I am posting periodic status updates, initial inteviews and finally completed walking tours as the project develops. It’s looking like initial inteviews will happen the weekend of the 30th.
It’s very exciting to be moving on this project. Thanks to all of you who have helped develop and refine the plan for this over the last few weeks!
What’s IN there?
Ever stand somewhere overlooking New York Harbor and wonder just what’s under there? Christopher Bonanos at New York Magazine has, so he went out and interviewed divers and other folks with specialized knowledge of the harbor to find out.
Some of my favorite items hanging out there under the waves:
- Four foot long worms that eat concrete;
- A gas main that runs to the Gulf of Mexico;
- Surveillence systems that can detect swimmers in inappropriate areas, and
- 160,000 pounds of silver sunk in a lost shipwreck.
So, to all you treasure hunters out there, it turns out you don’t have to go far from home to strike it rich!
