Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World's Great Metropolises; A Memoir of Urban Exploration

by Gates, Moses

  The top of the Manhattan Bridge is, perhaps, six and a half feet wide. A football field’s distance above the East River, I can lie down across the top, dangle my heels off one edge, and reach my arms above my head and grab the other. If you were to build a ten-foot-tall scale model of the bridge, the part we’re on now would be slightly more than two inches wide. It’s amazing to me that something so ephemeral can carry more than seventy thousand vehicles and several hundred subway trains a day. There aren’t any guardrails, unless you count the narrow tension wire that runs between the ornamental globes that dot its towers—nothing to keep us from falling if a nice gust of wind kicks up and we lose our footing. After a few minutes Dsankt pops his head out of the hatch, takes in the surroundings, and turns to me with a look of utter amazement on his face. I glance down and notice traffic is still running smoothly across the bridge, a sure sign we’ve made it up without being seen.

  As Steve and Dsankt start taking pictures, I gaze out at the city. I can make out downtown, midtown, the bump disturbing the symmetry of Manhattan where the Lower East Side juts out into the East River. Uptown, the Empire State Building is dark, but the Chrysler Building is still lit up in white. Downtown I can see the hollow part of the sky where the Twin Towers should be. The Brooklyn Bridge stands solidly, majestically, and tantalizingly to the left.

  I realize that at this moment we are more tenuously connected to the city than any other human being within its borders. We’re hundreds of feet away from the nearest person, about a quarter of a mile from the nearest inhabited building, physically attached to the city only by a thin piece of metal rising hundreds of feet above a narrow span to its shore. Out of the million and a half people crowded onto the thirty-four square miles of the island of Manhattan, none of them—not David Rockefeller, not Donald Trump, not Michael Bloomberg—have the sheer vastness of space to themselves that we have right now. But even with this removal I feel intensely, electrically connected to the city. Counterintuitively, these two feelings—removal and connection—aren’t at odds, instead reinforcing each other. It’s an amazing, almost spiritual experience.

  Think of your favorite place in the city—any city. There are five things about it I’m willing to bet are true.

  First, it’s not monetized. You might be able to buy something there—a beer, a hot dog, a memento—but it’s nowhere you pay to go. It’s not hard to understand: How can a favorite place be somewhere that’s merely borrowed for a price?

  Second, it has a story. It’s not just a random street corner in the middle of nowhere. It’s somewhere at least modestly noteworthy, somewhere that has some kind of history.

  Third, it has a personal story. It’s special to you in some way. If someone asks you how you found it, or about your first time there, the answer is more than one sentence.

  Fourth, it’s a refuge. Somewhere you can go to get away from it all: the hustle and bustle of the city, the people and problems of everyday life.

  Fifth, and last, it has a vista—a view. Maybe it’s of a skyline, maybe it’s of a streetscape, maybe it’s just of the people walking back and forth on the sidewalk, but it’s somewhere with a visual appeal. And places that offer both refuges and vistas are some of the most magnetic places in the urban environment, allowing you to both interact and be away from the city at the same time. Think of gazing at a skyline across the river while lounging on a rock in a secret nook by the water, or watching a sunset on a city rooftop, or sitting in a corner office high up in a downtown skyscraper long after everyone else has left work. It’s this simultaneous feeling of removal and connection, this feeling I’m experiencing right now, that people crave.

  Climbing to the top of one of New York’s great suspension bridges provides all of these things in spades: a refuge and vista together, a story both personal and universal, and a place that’s completely devoid of monetization. It’s what makes the activity so appealing, even for those who haven’t been. If you asked one thousand New Yorkers if, all things being equal, they’d like to sit alone, unmolested, where we are now, I can guarantee you that one thousand of them would unhesitatingly say yes. Well, at least those who aren’t afraid of heights.

  After twenty minutes or so at the top, the other two wrap up their photos and it’s time to leave. New York City is rightfully known as “The City That Never Sleeps,” but there are some narrow windows of time when it dozes off just a bit. At about four-thirty a.m. on weekdays, the city starts to rise from this light slumber and, quite rapidly, regains the energy and dynamism of its daily routine. It’s now well past four, and we want to be safely on the pathway by the time this happens. Dsankt and Steve disappear back down the hatch, but I have one more mission. I’m still ten feet from the top. Next to me is one of the huge ornamental metal globes, and I know if I leave without climbing it I’ll never be satisfied. I take only a few seconds to pause at the summit, but they’re a few seconds that, untaken, would have weighed on my head for years. There’s something about being at the pinnacle of a structure that’s so much different from merely being up high. You can turn 360 degrees and see nothing in your way for miles, the last vestiges of restraint eliminated.

  On the way down we take a more roundabout way through the bridge girders that, while slower, allows us to rest. We reach the first catwalk, navigate the final climb down the superstructure, drop back down onto the pedestrian path, and start walking back to Brooklyn. After about thirty seconds of walking, I suddenly feel like I’ve been punched in the gut with a ray of pure sunshine. The sunshine expands throughout my body until I can’t hold it in anymore. I start to laugh. I start to scream. I jump in the air. I have a shit-eating grin on my face all the way back to Steve’s loft. In fact, I have a shit-eating grin on my face for most of the next week.

  “Addiction” is a strange word, a word that implies you’re doing something you don’t really want to do. It’s generally reserved for drugs, alcohol, and other things that affect the body chemically, and negatively. Graffiti, running, sex, rock climbing, bungee jumping—I’d heard all of these described as “addictions” before and had always dismissed this definition as crass hyperbole. I still don’t know if I would use that word, but after climbing the Manhattan Bridge, I understand. Every bridge I’ve climbed since then, I’ve been chasing the feeling from that night, chasing that explosion of light deep in the pit of my stomach, chasing that first high.

  • • •

  Dsankt heads back to his hostel, and Steve drives us back to his place, where we relax with some more whiskey. I don’t have to be up tomorrow, and it’ll take a while to wind down from the adventure. As we’re sitting and chatting, I notice Steve’s laptop on the table. It’s open and has a picture of a rocky landscape with sentences in large type across it. It reads:

  Skydiving

  go to Tibet

  do peyote in the mexican desert

  go to Alaska

  buy a good backpack

  climb with corwin

  travel with corwin

  “Who’s Corwin?” I ask.

  “That’s my younger brother,” Steve says. “He’s pretty cool. He’s really into fencing. I’m pretty sure he’s ranked somewhere in the top five in the nation in his age group right now.”

  “So what’s the climbing with him about? And going to Tibet and Alaska and doing peyote and all that other stuff?”

  Steve hesitates a bit. “Uh, so you know how I’ve got a bad hip?”

  “Sure, from breaking it when you fell rock climbing.”

  “Yeah, uh, well, the reason why it broke when I fell is because I had bone cancer in it.”

  I don’t quite know what to say to this, but luckily Steve doesn’t seem to expect an answer, instead continuing:

  “So, uh, for a while there the doctors said I was probably going to die. So I made a list of all the stuff I wanted to do before then.”

  I glance back at it. “Clim
b the Manhattan Bridge” isn’t on there. “Climb the Brooklyn Bridge” isn’t even on there. Instead it’s “climb with corwin.”

  “They thought you were going to die?”

  “Yeah. For some reason they stuck me in the pediatric ward of the oncology unit. There’s kind of nothing like spending a week in a pediatric oncology ward to make you appreciate life a little more.”

  I’m a bit baffled. All this stuff, this adventure, I’d always thought Steve was just ever so slightly insane, had just enough of a case of “don’t-give-a-fuck-itis” to let him take the risks that he takes. Realizing that he had come so close to dying—and not even in a blaze of glory, getting lost in the catacombs beneath Paris or falling off the Brooklyn Bridge, but in such a mundane way—makes me reconsider my assessment of him. I start to think that there’s something to going through that which makes you fundamentally change how you view your personal risk-reward ratio in life. Something that makes you view bad luck as fundamentally uncontrollable and unavoidable—so that instead of trying to minimize your risk, you focus on maximizing your reward. I think of what I’d do if some doctor came in and told me something that got me thinking about making a list like the one on Steve’s laptop. I think of where “Climb the Brooklyn Bridge” would be on the list. I can’t tell.

  Steve says: I got surgery on my hip in 2003, and for my twenty-fifth birthday got a pair of crutches. The physical therapist who was assigned to work with me asked me what I wanted to do, what I wanted to work toward. I said I wanted to go rock climbing. I didn’t say I wanted to go back to my office temp job, sitting at a desk for eight hours a day entering data into Excel. That moment has really stuck in my mind. I realized the adventures are the moments that stick with you, and that’s what I wanted to have more of.

  That was also the turning point when I realized I wasn’t going to live forever. When you’re young, you think you’ll live forever, and that informs a lot of the risks you take. I don’t think I take risks now. I do some things that have an element of risk in them. But so does everyone who ever crosses the street, right? You manage that risk, you know the potential dangers, you’re prepared for it. When I was younger I took risks because I didn’t really believe I could ever die. Now, even though I do much more dangerous things, I don’t think I take risks in the same way. I know that I’m fragile, I know that I’m potentially ephemeral.

  A few months after the climb, I check Sleepycity. There’s a new post, titled “Who Are You Midnight Wanderer?” I start to read . . .

  We’re closer than you think, you and I. We’ve passed within grasp upon the streets, late at night when the misty clouds of warm breath momentarily hang in the air. The paths of two wandering strangers intersect then diverge, threading through the thick shadows which creep from every crack and crevice; drifting like ghosts through the dim yellow islands that float below the sparse streetlights. There comes a familiar uneasiness as our faint outlines bolden and we approach each other. The distance closes and our heartbeats quicken, rising with the nervous pace of our feet. Maybe you dig your hands deeper into your pockets, or puff out your chest slightly, a quick intake of breath . . . the streets are dangerous around here, right. Anyone may be prowling, lurking, waiting.

  Our bodies pass unflinching, for all the build up there is no crescendo. I wish just once to validate that building tension. As we drift apart upon this cobblestone dotted sea of shadows, I consider where are you walking this time of night? Is it midnight cravings, an illicit rendezvous or something so innocent as missing the last train home? I peek around to catch the last glimpse as you’re enveloped by the city and my curiosity grows stronger. Perhaps for you this is a journey rather than a simple destination. If so, for what purpose do you roam? Your quiet, clean appearance may belie a host of secrets and ill intentions. As Tolkien penned, “not all those who wander are lost.” I have no answers to any of these questions, they come unbidden with each passerby and depart unanswered.

  I crave to ask of you whether you ask these same questions of me. I fight the urge to turn and yell into the empty laneways, to know what you’re thinking. Are you even curious at my passing? Surely you silently query my nocturnal ambitions. I wish to scream aloud my plans, to engage the world with my bold scheme and say This Is What I’m Going to Do And This Is How I’m Going To Do It. I’ve learned my lesson from the supervillains of old though and dispel such self-destructive notions, drop my head and march on. My meandering route conceals a carefully chosen path, a planned approach to the venue of nefarious deeds. I pass no others while tracing my path to the base of the towering spire. Am I the only one to embrace my human frailty and venture high above the city this night?

  MANHATTAN BRIDGE.

  sleepycity.net | sewerfresh.com

  TEN

  On Halloween, I go out with Steve, Molly, and a few other friends. I’m dressed as a burglar, a quick and lazy outfit I threw together in about five minutes. The others we’re with also all have generic costumes. Only Steve’s is creative.

  Steve and Molly have gotten to the place in their relationship where marriage is beginning to be discussed. It’s not quite shit-or-get-off-the-pot time yet, but there is a lot of tension about where the relationship is headed. Molly is looking for a left turn down happy matrimony road. Steve is not. They’ve recently had a serious fight about this, and are currently on something in between a “break” and a “breakup.” In addition to the fight, Steve has chosen another way to make a statement about his feelings on the subject, which is through his Halloween costume. He’s dressed as a groom, complete with tuxedo, large gold band around his left ring finger, and ball made out of thirty pounds of sheet metal about a foot in diameter that he’s attached to his ankle with a chain. That’s the bride—not Molly. Molly is dressed as a cheerleader.

  When I question Steve about the sheer assholery of this costume, he tells me he wasn’t counting on Molly showing up after their fight, that he thought this breakup was actually for good this time. Still, despite the costume, she somehow puts up with him for the night. At about two a.m. we get a text from Shane Perez, a Miami native who’s just moved to town and become part of our adventuring crew. Shane’s e-mail has the word “Hyposomniac” in it, which is an apt description of his personality: he’s a ball of endless extroversion and energy, one of those guys who seem to be happy only when they’re doing some kind of activity with somebody else.

  His text reads, “There’re too many girls for me at this bar. Come help out!” Steve, Molly, and I head over there and when we arrive we find Shane is right: there are too many girls. Shane is currently making time with one who’s dressed as Alice in Wonderland. I find another, costume-less girl, and quickly settle into flirting with her. Steve, with Molly in tow, can’t do likewise. Instead he plays pool in the back.

  While Shane and I are off with our respective ladies, six guys come into the bar, obviously spoiling for some kind of confrontation. I notice them acting up at the pool table where Steve is screwing around. As the lady and I have moved past flirting and are now making out in the corner, I figure I’ve got better things to do than get involved in this. But when I start to hear a scuffle and raised voices, I head over. I get one sentence out—namely, “Hey, what’s going on over here?”—before a heavily tattooed guy with a blond crew cut punches me in the face. I take a couple of shots before I even fully comprehend what’s going on: I haven’t been in a fight in ten years. I wing a half-decent right hook that hits the guy on the jaw, then get dragged off in a chokehold and thrown out of the bar. A minute or two later Molly comes out in tears. She’s followed a little while later by Steve, whose face is now covered in blood. The six guys have really done a number on him. The fact that he had smoked a king-sized joint on the way over probably didn’t help his chances. And of course neither did the fact that he was trying to fight while literally tethered by a ball and chain. Still, I learn that despite this insult to her dreams of settled coup
lehood, Molly had jumped headfirst into the fray brandishing a beer bottle. Shane, who is dressed as Wolverine, complete with two-foot metal claws, sat clueless in the corner the whole time.

  Strangely enough, Steve really isn’t upset as he comes staggering out of the bar. In fact, he’s absolutely ecstatic.

  “That was awesome!” are the first words out of his mouth. “Where are we going now? Hey, let’s go climb a bridge.”

  Molly, understandably, does not want to go climb a bridge. Amazed at my friend’s interpersonal cluelessness, I hail them a cab and shove them both in against Steve’s protest—“No, come on, I’m up for more stuff.” It doesn’t matter that he had received a pretty nasty stomping for absolutely no reason, or that he didn’t even land a punch, or that six guys against the two of us and a girl in a cheerleader outfit wasn’t exactly a Marquess of Queensbury kind of matchup. Climbing something is Steve’s way of responding to any kind of emotional scenario—joy, anger, frustration, celebration. Just got dumped? Let’s go climb a bridge. Just won a Pulitzer? Let’s go climb a bridge. Just got your ass handed to you by five meatheads and a guy who looks like a reject from the Yakuza? Let’s go climb a bridge.

  I remember another time he’d had this response, a spring night some months previous, around midnight. Steve called me up to commiserate after he and Molly had had a fight. It was a weekday, and already late, but I was itching to go adventuring. After a few minutes of relationship counseling, I decided to see if I could talk Steve into a quick trip.

  “You want to go do something? Maybe a little bridge, something like that?” I asked, expecting to have to slowly and carefully wheedle him out of his self-pity and into adventure mode.