Crossing Borders

Thursday 8/03: Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East Williamsburg, Greenpoint (and Ridgewood, Queens)

Distance: 7.08 miles
Time: 0:55
Pace: 7:46
Temp: 85
Dewpoint: 74
Weather: warm & humid


click on image for interactive map

Unique Miles Today: 6.49
Total Unique Miles: 182.36
Percent of Brooklyn Run: 10.47

Route: I took the L to the Jefferson Street stop, went east to Scott, around Johnson to Cypress, down Cypress to Myrtle, a block west to St. Nicholas, up to Menahan, west to Bushwick Avenue, up to Kosciusko, and then west to Tompkins. Then I ran north on Tompkins (which turned into Harrison), made a right on Hooper, another right on Grand, then east to Humbolt and onto McGuinness up to Calyer.

Notes: Everyone knows how miserably hot it's been here, so I won't dwell on that. Yesterday, in an attempt to stay cool I headed into Manhattan to see the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" (which I thought was mostly funny and sweet, despite a few lapses into self-indulgent wackiness), but today I really am going to sit next to the little air conditioner and just read.

Instead, I'll mention that I made my first (though admittedly inadvertent) inter-borough run, covering 10 or 11 blocks of the Ridgewood neighborhood in Queens when I wasn't fully paying attention to where I was. I have nothing against Queens, of course (nor the no doubt lovely people who live there), but naturally, I meant to stay in Brooklyn. Anyway, today's run was visually a particularly gratifying excursion -- Bushwick seems to have a great number of handsome or interesting buildings, and the portion of Bed-Stuy I ran through today was also filled with a lot to see.

While it's been great to make some headway in the more northern reaches of the borough, my "big map" reveals a sizeable swath that I've yet to visit, from Red Hook and Downtown over through Fort Greene and Clinton Hill on through southern Bed-Stuy and east through the northern parts of Brownsville and East New York. So I guess I'll try to plan some runs in these neighborhoods over the next few weeks. Eventually, I'm hoping to fall into a schedule where I do two runs a week in the southern reaches, two in the middle parts, and one in the north. This is, of course, completely subject to change, based on my whims, compulsions, or other inclinations.

Blogger's been giving me fits again, but I finally managed to upload these pictures from this morning:


St. Brigid's Church on St. Nicholas Avenue


Mural on Tompkins Avenue


Window on a former school on Menahan Street


Leapfrog (off Harrison Avenue)