Ferry Man

Life got so awful last week I just had to ship out.

I didn’t go far, but my brief voyages downriver did help wash away some of the rage, worry, and fear that have been eating away at me.

The city recently introduced a ferry service from my neighborhood in Bay Ridge that stops at Red Hook, Dumbo, (that's "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for all you out-of-towners) and ends up at Pier 11 in Manhattan.

Red Hook and Dumbo are difficult to reach by subway or bus from Bay Ridge so the ferry makes my life a lot easier.

The ferry leaves from the 69th Street pier, which is a few minutes from my house, and where the Staten Island ferry used to sail from back before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964.

I have an extremely faint memory of sitting in my parents’ car as we lined up to get on that boat. The city shut down this service shortly after the bridge opened and that was it for the ferry in my corner of the world—until now.

This ride costs the same as a subway, though it is infinitely more pleasant. When people say “half the fun is getting there,” this is what they mean.

And I’ve been taking that boat to Dumbo a lot lately. I’ve had a horrible time with my finances and I just learned last week that all of my hacked money may not be returned to me as I had been told.

I can’t say much right now because there could be some legal action springing out of this, but let’s just say I feel like I’ve been victimized all over again.

Shoving Right Off Again

I’ve been on the phone all this week screaming and cursing at all sorts of paper pushers from here to Bangladesh and I accomplished absolutely nothing except jacking up my blood pressure and endangering my health.

I know I was making progress in controlling my anger, so these last few days have been very upsetting.

Now on Friday night I had planned to hide in my house, guzzle wonton soup, watch a DVD, and wallow in self-pity. But the weather was so beautiful—the first day of autumn looked more like the first day of summer—that I decided, “oh, screw this, I’m going to sea!”

I sailed down the river to attend a music festival in Dumbo. People around me were taking selfies as if they were on cruise ship and, I think in a way, they were.

The city looks so beautiful from the water and there are no delays, screeching brakes, babbling lunatics or other such grief that you routinely run into on the train.

And this neighborhood is so vibrant and lively, especially on a warm night. There are shops, restaurants and beautiful parks. It’s such a contrast from the Seventies, when the area was empty, abandoned, and rotting. The streets were dark and creepy enough back then to make a dozen horror movies.

Now there's live music, great events, and people, people, people all over the place. It was just the thing I needed to shake free of my grief and I had such a good time that I went back again on Saturday.

My problems haven’t disappeared, of course. I know they’ll be waiting for me when I get up tomorrow morning.

But it was nice to sail away for just a little while.