To most people, the area under the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the shadows of the off ramps and against the hulking stone structure of the famous East River crossing, is not a place to stop. It is a place to leave.
It is a long, sloping plaza covered in smooth red brick, with a few trees stretching for rare beams of sunlight. Those who amble into this area generally are children passing to and from a nearby school, or misplaced tourists looking for the bridge's pedestrian walkway to Brooklyn.
But for generations of skateboarders, and an increasing number of BMX bikers, the place carries an iconic name and a sacred meaning. It is the Brooklyn Banks. It is the place to go, to be, and to be seen.
"It's the best skate park in the world, because it wasn't supposed to be a skate park," the professional skateboarder Mike Vallely said near the end of a popular YouTube video posted earlier this year to pay homage to the threatened Brooklyn Banks.
It is about to become little more than a construction zone during a four-year renovation of the Brooklyn Bridge. Any day now, a new fence will slice the Brooklyn Banks roughly in half, giving construction crews a staging area for trucks and equipment until 2014. Sometime this summer, the entire area will be closed off for about six months while an overhead ramp is painted, the city said.
Skateboarders are used to being displaced from public spaces. But the Brooklyn Banks has a decades-long history and a cultivated status as a sort of skating mecca. Besides, it was already saved once, with help from the city, only five years ago.
That was the last time Steve Rodriguez rode to the rescue. He has spent the past few months trying to do it again, making headway, thanks to city officials who see value in the Brooklyn Banks for skaters and bikers, but he is running out of time to keep them whole.
"I'm fine to close the Banks for six months to paint the overpass," Rodriguez said. "But four years for staging? Come on."
The plaza, officially unnamed (the transportation department, which oversees the area because of its proximity to the bridge, called it Red Brick Park in its latest news release), dates to about 1970, city officials said. It runs about the length of three city blocks along the northern flank of the bridge's massive support, between Pearl Street and past Gold Street. On a map, the location falls under what looks like curly spaghetti: the swirl of ramps to and from the bridge.
By luck or serendipity, the plaza, built before the first wave of skateboarding's craze arrived, came equipped with everything a street rider could want from a supersize playground: perfectly smooth, wave-shaped embankments (the banks) rising along the length of one side; walls, benches, stairways and granite tree boxes to perform tricks; pillars to climb against; and long stair rails to descend.
The range and alignment of obstacles create a rare harmony. The best-designed skate parks often feel like a suburban mall - the terrain is familiar no matter what city you are in - but the Brooklyn Banks feel real, soulful.
"Everything is perfect for skating," said Kori Lewis, who lives on Long Island but often brings his board to work in Manhattan so he can ride the Banks a couple of times a week.
The area is often featured in skating documentaries and can be seen in countless YouTube videos. Nike shot a commercial there on a recent night. The Brooklyn Banks is to New York skateboarding what Harlem's Rucker Park is to basketball.
"This is the street spot of the Northeast, if not the United States," said Chris Jennings, taking a breather from riding and spinning his BMX bike through the area last week. "Nothing has the brand equity of Brooklyn Banks."
Rodriguez, 39, is a well-known rider and founder of a New York skateboard company called 5Boro. He is widely hailed in the skateboard community for saving the Brooklyn Banks after arriving one day in 2004 to find the area surrounded by a fence.
A Parks Department plan to beautify the area, to fill it with planters and playground equipment in an effort to broaden its use, was under way. Rodriguez made himself heard.
"If you're going to make some changes, you should work with the people who use the space," Rodriguez said during a tour of the Brooklyn Banks last week.
He found allies in the Parks Department, including Bob Redmond, the director of capital projects for Manhattan parks, and Chris Crowley, a landscape architect. Compromises were struck. Dirt and plants and benches were added here and there, but so were skating obstacles, such as a 20-foot "flat bar," a horizontal rail. Most of the Brooklyn Banks survived.
"Steve showed us a much more efficient way to lay it out, because kids can skate in a more linear pattern," Redmond said. He said that the park "didn't function for what it was designed for" - an under-the-bridge plaza for people to sit - "but it functions well now."
Slabs of granite, once used for tree boxes and since unearthed (with city permission) as obstacles, are well worn from use. Lamp posts are covered in skating stickers. Homemade ramps are generally left for everyone's enjoyment.
But the bridge needs repairs. And the Brooklyn Banks is in the way.
This time, the city went to Rodriguez early to solicit his input. He helped negotiate a compromise to keep part of the area open for most of the next four years. But the city's plan to slice the long plaza in half lengthwise, while saving the entire ribbon of embankments, would eliminate much of the useful, flat run-up to them, an area where several other well-used obstacles stand.
Rodriguez would prefer that the area be chopped widthwise, leaving a square-shaped area with a little bit of everything left. He appears to have lost that plea.
Already, the plaza's trees have been surrounded by protective wood scaffolds, apparently to keep trucks from bumping into them. And, after months of quiet delays, the city said last Friday that the concrete barrier cleaving the Brooklyn Banks would be erected as early as this weekend.
Rodriguez's hopes for a sixth annual Back to the Banks skateboard competition, which has attracted thousands in the past, appear quashed.
His worries are fast-forwarded four years. He wonders what all the heavy equipment will do to the smooth brickwork. He wonders if construction will stay on schedule, allowing the entire Banks to reopen in 2014. He wonders if the intervening years will tempt the city to consider another sort of makeover in the plaza.
"You close this, and there will be more skateboarders on your sidewalks, in your parks," Rodriguez said. "I keep telling people that your solution needs to be a solution."
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