No Day But Today

And the winner was. . .
#3: Go to an outer borough.

I woke up this morning and tallied up the votes (if you voted for two things, each was counted as half a vote) and 3 was the winner. I immediately grabbed my Time Out New York in search of something to do in an outer borough. I had an itch to cross a bridge, so I decided to focus on Brooklyn. I wish I had pictures, but I haven't figured out my hand-me-down camera yet.

I wound up at the New York Transit Museum, which is actually housed in an old subway station. It was pretty cool; lots of history about the construction and politics behind the subway's inception. And I learned that horses can poop like 10 pounds of poop a day, which was really bad in the late 1800s when there were tons of horses pulling buggies and carriages and whatever all across the city. Basically, the streets were lined with horse poop. (Oh, and before I forget: I usually can't stand horses, but there was a cop on a horse outside my building this morning, and that was really cool.) I managed to get out of the gift shop without buying any tacky subway crap, although the temptation was definitely there. (Playing cards shaped like MetroCards! Subway map umbrellas!) There was also a small exhibit about the subway's role in film, and I'm hoping that The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 is on TV soon.

Following that, I walked around the neighborhood for a while, but it wasn't particularly interesting--just one of those all-too-common outer-borough thoroughfares, every block the same: $.99 store, skeezy-looking cell-phone shop, McDonald's, etc. I did happen to see a few Idiotarod teams, which was pretty cool and made me wish I had my camera with me. (Think Iditorod, but with tricked out shopping carts instead of sleds. And no dogs. Just people in weird costumes.)

I wanted to get to the Williamsburg Bridge, but realized I was really freaking far away from any subway line that would get me near there. . . so I got on a train heading back to Manhattan and decided I'd get out when I saw something interesting. . . only I was on the F train, and we didn't stop anywhere I found particularly interesting, so I wound up going all the way to Queens, where---I found a station that linked me to another station that got me to the Williamsburg Bridge! So, an hour and a half after leaving Brooklyn, I began my trek across the bridge BACK to Brooklyn. I'd never crossed the Williamsburg Bridge--it has nothing on the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was still a nice (and long) walk. Here is a picture of the bridge. Those red cage-things on the sides of the subway track are where the pedestrian/bike paths are.:



I took the train back to Manhattan after that, largely because I enjoy riding on above-ground subway trains, which I guess aren't really subways at all.

So that was my day. . . nothing too exciting, but a step in the right direction. And. . . and. . . I'm planning it again next Saturday! I'll hopefully have the choices up by Wednesday night (when I get my next Time Out New York) and I hope you'll help me choose my own adventure again!

Oh, and one more thing: I capped off my day with pizza at my favorite pizza spot, and a guy behind the counter was trying to convince his friend that he saw a clip of Tom Brady on TV as a kid in an episode of The Brady Bunch. And I went over to him and said, "That's impossible. Tom Brady wasn't born till 1977, and The Brady Bunch ended in 1974. What you saw must have been a joke." And his friend said, "Whoa; you got some sauce in your head." And I freaked out that he was making fun of me for having sauce in my hair. And he was like, "No. You have sauce in your head. You know things." And that made me happy. Yes, dammit. Happy.