{"id":869,"date":"2006-01-18T08:35:37","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T12:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/18\/things-fall-apart\/"},"modified":"2007-07-28T20:31:49","modified_gmt":"2007-07-29T00:31:49","slug":"things-fall-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/18\/things-fall-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"Things fall apart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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aahhh. The Tappan Zee Bridge<\/a>. The bridge of my childhood. Spanning from Rockland (where I grew up) to Westchester (where everyone assumes I grew up), the Tappan Zee loomed large in my youth. Going to visit my grandparents in the Bronx? went across the bridge. Wanting to go to the "good" mall in high school? went across the bridge. The GW too far away (and way too intense) for drivers’ ed? why, go across the Tappan Zee! Want a quick way to explain where you grew up to someone who had never heard of Rockland county? Just point out that it was the "other" side of the Tappan Zee from Westchester (which no one ever had a problem finding on the map)…and no, it’s not New Jersey (no offense, my friends from the Garden State – it just gets a bit irritating when you have to pay New York taxes yet you keep getting disowned through ignorance).<\/p>\n

Well. The good old bridge has reached the end of its "useful life". As in, it was only built to last for 50 years and that 50 years is up. The article goes into the political infighting that appears to be making getting a new bridge that much more difficult, but it just made me a bit nostalgic.<\/p>\n

They called the bridge ugly (built during the Korean War, it was done on the cheap), but as a child, crossing the bridge almost daily to stay with my grandparents while my folks went to work in the city, I was fascinated by the way the steel framing of the suspended section would flicker past like a strobe light. I would stare out the window mesmerized. And the bridge itself crossed the widest part of the Hudson. Which meant that you spent a wonderfully decadent amount of time staring outward at the sailboats and barges that would pass underneath. Particularly if you were stuck in traffic.<\/p>\n

I don’t often have a reason to cross the bridge anymore. None of my friends still live in Rockland, and it’s a quicker drive to take the GW to the Palisades from where I am on the rare occasion that I go to see my semi-family during the jewish holidays. The bridge doesn’t make sense for commuting into the city – it was really only a commuter link for folks to get from Rockland to the Metro North trains on the east side of the river (Don’t get me wrong – that’s a whole lot of people).<\/p>\n

Thanks to the bureaucratic morass that is the New York State transportation authority, it’ll be around for a while longer, but I’ll miss it when it’s gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

aahhh. The Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge of my childhood. Spanning from Rockland (where I grew up) to Westchester (where everyone assumes I grew up), the Tappan Zee loomed large in my youth. Going to visit my grandparents in the Bronx? went across the bridge. Wanting to go to the "good" mall in high school? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[22,14],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-architecture","tag-new-york-city"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-e1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}