It is rare in New York, where our endlessly diverse tastes are satisfied by a seemingly endless array of activities, to find so many people I know buzzing about the a single event. Yet since returning from Brazil, everyone I ask has either already ventured to Governors Island or really wants to go there. Apparently this quirky patch of land between Manhattan and Brooklyn is where it's at.
Right: A dragon sculpture made from found furniture by Benjamin Jones and Anna Hecker
A few weeks back, the New Yorker profiled this Island's storied history and uncertain future in comprehensive profile, details of which I won't repeat here (it would make a great urban policy case study). I will tell you that it was one of the cheapest and easiest city-exit-strategies I've found. Hop on a free ferry at South Ferry, watch as the island approaches for about 10 minutes, disembark, and wander.
It's a hard space to get a sense of and, were it not for the views of the financial district, Red Hook, and the Statue of Liberty as constant reminders of place, it could be quite disorienting. In one section I felt like I was on a New England college campus, complete with deans' houses, another section looked like abandoned housing projects, and one side of the island has a maritime feel with a series of decaying piers. Yet this spacial and temporal disjuncture lends the island a certain mystique while also leaving each visitor to discover the island as she wants, without a prescribed itinerary or agenda.
Part of the Wind Nomad exhibit of 400 "flapping" paintings set up all around the island.
We never figured out how they flapped
And this is just what we did. Our visit coincided with the New Island Festival (created by Dutch artists), so there was funky art around every corner and many performances including a jumping cow (we saw the cow twice, but never a jump). We wandered into a gallery space that had been created in one of the island's many empty buildings and enjoyed the pencil portraits of Flemish-New Yorkers by Ellen Depoorter. We took a ride to one tip of the island called picnic point and lunched in the shadow of our lady of liberty, watching families flying kites and throngs of bikers pedal by. We played mini golf on a course made entirely out of recycled materials. There was no one telling us where to go or what to see and therefore no pressure to do anything beyond what struck our fancy. In short, it was a beautiful way to spend an early fall day at no cost. If you haven't been to Governors Island already, you should go. But chances are you were already planning to!
This oversized table maze is actually a hole on the recycled mini golf course. It was really hard!
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