The city always looks great right after it rains.
Everything is rinsed and glowing, all unfriendly thoughts forgotten.
The river does not benefit the same way, though, because the rainwater washes here.
Additionally there is the problem of the Combined Sewer Overflow, which was made very apparent to most New Yorkers in the recent flood,
but this was months before the flood,
when I picked up Tamara Capeda and Leo in Greenpoint, with a mission to visit Roosevelt Island by boat.
Tamara and I went on almost the exact same trip here during the second year of the Tide Taxi.
Manhattan looks much the same as it did back then,
but Brooklyn and Queens have changed dramatically with giant new condominiums.
here is how the Greenpoint waterfront looked on our trip in 2006,
and this is from the same trip, looking forward to Roosevelt Island. You will see the difference in a minute.
We land on a rocky bank and scramble up the side.
Film people, like Tamara and Leo, are exactly who you want on a boat trip. They like getting up early, and always seem to know exactly how to make the next thing happen right.
The park on Roosevelt Island is meticulously maintained and thoroughly staffed,
but no one seems to notice that we entered on the unauthorized side.
We walk over to admire the Manhattan skyline and Leo remembers a film that was made right over there at the UN building, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
“What if you could make a map of all the films shot in New York,” I wondered. You could show every building, every street, made famous in every scene,
even places standing in for someplace else, like the time they built 1920’s Atlantic City at the tip of Brooklyn for ‘Boardwalk Empire’.
The tide turned south,
and it was time to get back in the boat.
We let ourselves get drawn south past the new cement tip of Roosevelt Island,
and U Thant Island.
“What a wonderful introduction to the city,” said Leo, and I have to agree.
In looking for an image later, I read that Hitchcock filmed the entire scene in front of the UN building without permission. His film crew distracted a security guard by asking about the 193 nations’ flags.
Smart, I thought,
just like a film people.
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