I have been a NYC explorer since boyhood; I used to make my parents or grandmother take me on bus rides all over Brooklyn in the early to mid-60s, all the local lines in Bay Ridge, the B16 down Fort Hamilton Parkway and 13th Avenue; the B37, on 3rd Avenue, and the B63, on 5th, bound for what we called “downtown”; the B64, on 86th Street and Bath Avenue to Coney Island; and if we really went far afield, the B35 on Church Avenue in Flatbush. My mother was reluctant to do that one to the end of the line, since it ended its run in Brownsville, a tough area then as now.
When I turned 9 or 10, it was time to start to be a little more independent and I acquired a bicycle and started to rove all over Brooklyn, expanding my reach a little bit every year; by college I was routinely reaching as far as Valley Stream and Elmont. When I was still small, though, my elders repeatedly warned me about Sunset Park. Don’t go there, they said, because “that’s where the bad boys are.” For many years, therefore, my only glimpses of this community that bordered my own, Bay Ridge, was what I could see out bus windows on the B63 (5th Avenue) and the B70 (8th Avenue). The temptation was to at least scratch the surface of this unexplored neighborhood, now that I am incorrigible myself.
But Sunset Park affords amazing views on clear days not only of the Manhattan skyline but also the Statue of Liberty and here, a Staten Island ferryboat making its way toward that island of myth and legend. Farther back, you can see a mountain range in New Jersey.
St. Michael’s domed campanile, at 4th Avenue and 42nd Street, is the tallest building between Downtown Brooklyn and the Bay Ridge Towers (an apartment complex) on 65th Street near 4th. The steeple resembles a bishop’s miter and is also reminiscent of the campaniles of Paris’ famed Sacred Heart Basilica and of the chapel in Calvary Cemetery (and it should since both are the design of architect Raymond Almirall).
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4/12/23