Photo of the Day: End-of-Winter Dreams, Bryant Park, NYC

Late yesterday morning, I was passing Bryant Park when I took the accompanying picture. I was surprised that so many people came out for this ultimate winter scene—we’re still only two-thirds through the season, but it has been so mild (the 3.2 inches of snow that fell in Central Park on Feb. 13 were the most since 2022) that it feels like spring will come early this year.

The organizers of the park’s “Winter Village,” organized by Bank of America, seem to be acknowledging this: Activity on this 17,000- sq. ft. rink will cease after March 3.

With ongoing climate change, the moments when children and their parents can enjoy skating and just hanging out are passing, like the sweet dreams of youth and innocence, always too evanescent.

Quote of the Day (Sara Teasdale, on the Ecstasy of Winter Skaters)

“Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.”— American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), “A Winter Bluejay,” in Rivers to the Sea (1915)
 
Well, maybe this is more of a collective urban experience than what Sara Teasdale had in mind when she wrote these verses a little over a century ago. (There wasn’t much room for “the wine of speed” on this crowded rink.)
 
But plenty of people experienced the ecstasy of ice skating when I visited New York’s Bryant Park when I took this photo in February 2018. It’s not quite winter yet, but it’s getting there, and some areas of upstate New York and other northern areas may already be witnessing the kind of scene the poet had in mind.

Photo of the Day: Bryant Park, NYC

I took this photo of Bryant Park on Monday just before walking down towards the Garment District to meet a couple of friends for lunch. Since the New York City government did a major clean-up of the park a couple of decades ago, it has become one of Gotham’s favorite places to relax outside, with those trees providing shade and the main branch of the New York Public Library and those skyscrapers serving as an imposing backdrop on the scene.

It was not until a couple of days later that New York announced its dramatic rollback of COVID-19 restrictions, but I think it’s obvious from this photo that many New Yorkers feel more comfortable being out with each other. Over the next several weeks, we’ll see how much of this is premature overconfidence and how much is reasonable certainty that the scourge of this disease is being pushed irretrievably back. Let’s hope it’s the latter.

Photo of the Day: Where Bees Gather at Bryant Park, NYC

A week and a half ago, on my bus ride back home from Manhattan, I talked at length with a guy I’ve known forever from my parish about what he and his family have been up to. It turned out that his younger brother had taken up a most unusual hobby: beekeeping. 

Visions of what would happen if I ever took up this pursuit quickly overcame me, all of which can be best summed up in one word: buzzkill. I told this guy that with my lethal combination of lack of talent and luck, I would probably end up massively stung in about two minutes if I ever tried to emulate his brother.

My friend’s brother has evidently thought of the same thing, because he dons a heavy-duty suit before he approaches these bad news bees. But he has devoted as much study as care to all of this, and the result has evidently been lots of delicious honey. (I wish I could have used a bit of that this past winter to keep bad colds at bay.)

Our northern New Jersey suburb has been the site of all this, but I think my friend’s brother would like the little project that began in Bryant Park, right behind the Central Branch of the New York Public Library, just before we spoke. Three million—yes, count ‘em!—bees were placed in the park as part of its Apiary, allowing residents and curious visitors like me to see bees in just about the last place you’d expect: a concrete jungle. I took this picture right after the installation.

The easiest place for the casual viewer (like me) to catch these bees is in the flower beds on the grounds. But for the more serious bee enthusiast, like my longtime acquaintance, monthly beekeeping classes are being held, free for park-goers.

Photo of the Day: Ping Pong, Bryant Park, NYC

Balmy temperatures in the early afternoon brought people out in droves on Saturday at Bryant Park, right behind the Central Branch of the New York Public Library. Hard to believe that only two months before, an ice-skating rink was out on the big lawn--and that, by early evening, wicked winds would be whipping up around me as I headed home to New Jersey. 

But one sign of better things to come came early in the afternoon at Bryant Park, this ping pong table and these two contestants. Many more such activities will surely take place here before the weather turns colder again, for a prolonged period, in late fall.

Photo of the Day: Skating Rink, Bryant Park, NYC

I don’t recall ever seeing Bryant Park in winter. But today, I had a bit of time to kill before a mid-afternoon Broadway matinee, so I decided to see what was going on in the space behind the New York Public Library’s central building. 

I wasn’t completely surprised to see throngs out in the space—after all, the sun had come out and temperatures had climbed again after the swift snowstorm of the night before—but I hadn't expected an ice-skating rink in the space. “The Rink” is part of Winter Village, sponsored by Bank of America. 

Perhaps because I work in the area, whenever I associate the word “rink” with anything in New York, it is with the one at Rockefeller Center. That one lasts through April 15, but it does charge. 

On the other hand, The Rink at Bryant Park, according to the park’s Web site, is “New York City’s only free admission ice skating rink.” It is open through early March. As you see from this photo I took, many took advantage of the middle of this long holiday weekend to enjoy themselves on the ice. It was nice to see this oasis in the midst of the skyscraper canyon better known as Midtown Manhattan.

Photo of the Day: Saturday in Bryant Park

Today, with a few minutes to spare before I saw the Roundabout Theatre’s production of The Road to Mecca (a review on that will come later), I walked over to Bryant Park. With one of the nicest days of this winter at hand, I wanted to get a shot of how this spot behind the Central Research Library in the New York Public Library system looked. As you can see, a full crowd was out in force to enjoy the day.

For a period not so many decades ago, Bryant Park fell into the kind of urban decay and disorder that once bedeviled New York City. Its more recent beautification and revival demonstrates what concerned citizens can do when they put their minds to it.