Want to watch last week's mayoral forum at the Public Theater, hosted by Hell Gate and New York Focus, in glorious 4k multi-cam? You can watch the whole thing here. And you can see some great clips from it on our Instagram page.
On Sunday, the New York City Department of Transportation finally opened the Queensboro bridge's southern lower roadway to pedestrians—meaning the northern roadway is now solely for bikers and users of micromobility vehicles like stand-up scooters. I cannot stress enough how good this feels, and how necessary it was.
I've been biking over the Queensboro Bridge since I was in high school, when I first started commuting to a summer job in Harlem from western Queens. I'd ride down Northern Boulevard (perilous) to the bridge entrance at Queensboro Plaza, until I arrived at the safest part of my journey—the long uphill and then exhilarating downhill into Manhattan, along the Queensboro Bridge's northern lower roadway, closed to anyone but pedestrians and cyclists since 2000.
More recent users of that northern lower roadway may scoff at my description of it as "safe." But almost two decades ago, there just weren't that many people who used the bridge on foot or on two wheels. The ride up and down the bridge, aside from a scattered few pedestrians, runners, and other cyclists, was completely care and car-free. I could look around, a sweaty teenager, and like F. Scott said, see the city "for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”