Bryant Park is one of the thousand places in New York I keep meaning to visit more often. It's located on 42nd St. about halfway between Grand Central Station and Times Square which puts it about as close to the middle of Manhattan as it's possible to be. It's illogically peaceful there, despite the fact that streets choked with cars are a mere stone's throw away.
There's always something going on at Bryant (which is another reason it shouldn't be peaceful). During the summer, they showed classic movies there once a week (Bonnie and Clyde, Twelve Angry Men, etc.) and loads of people sprawled out on the grass to enjoy one of the few opportunities to get something cool for free in New York. Today's schedule includes a morning birding tour of the park (for pigeon enthusiasts, I imagine), juggling, live piano music, and an evening ping pong tournament. All of this is up for grabs for people lucky enough to have part of their Wednesday free.
I was wandering through recently, when I saw wheeled bookshelves arranged between the tables. Naturally, this is the sort of thing that draws me like a magnet. There were signs everywhere designating this area of the park as a reading room and demanding quiet. I perused a shelf of classics like Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities, but settled on one of those quirky, light books of fun facts about the English language, as I was on my way to meet Dave for a free lunch at his bar. The book was disappointing, but I loved the idea of a reading room in the middle of the park. People had borrowed novels, cookbooks, magazines, newspapers, and reference books from various shelves and were either absorbed or else staring off into space with the pages spread in front of them. Both looked like great ways to unwind a little in the frenzied center of this madhouse of a city.
No comments:
Post a Comment