On the George Washington Bridge Project: March 31, 2008
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge.
Time and Date of photograph: March 31, 2008, 9:48am.
Notes: The gray tone of the sky nearly matched that of the bridge.
“The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in the world. Made of cables and steel beams, it gleams in the sky like a reversed arch. It is blessed. It is the only seat of grace in the disordered city. It is painted an aluminum color and, between water and sky, you see nothing but the bent cord supported by two steel towers. When your car moves up the ramp the two towers rise so high that it brings you happiness; their structure is so pure, so resolute, so regular that here, finally, steel architecture seems to laugh. The car reaches an unexpectedly wide apron; the second tower is very far away; innumerable vertical cables, gleaming against the sky, are suspended from the magisterial curve which swings down and then up. The rose-colored towers of New York appear, a vision whose harshness is mitigated by distance.”
– Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White, 1947.
Filed under: Architecture, GWB Project, Infrastructure, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | 4 Comments
Tags: Fog, George Washington Bridge, Le Corbusier, March, Morning Light
The Gay Recluse 
I, too, have an obsession with the George Washington Bridge. However, mine involves a nagging compulsion to complete a football pass from the deck of the bridge to a buddy on the ground below. Different strokes…
Hey Ryan–that would fucking RULE! Even better would be a pass to a guy on one of the barges (?). I want to see a video of this when it happens.
Oh, believe me, this is so going to happen as soon as I can procure the followingL
-A whole shit-load of footballs (very expensive).
-At least six receivers on the ground (very doable).
-At least three high-quality cameras and camera operators (very not easy to come by).
It would have to be some kind or world record and if you have enough footballs, it’s just an odds game.
I’ve considered taking it so far as to make a publicity stunt out of it. Round up a couple hundred WaHi neighborhood kids to stand on the ground while I launch an endless stream of footballs off of the George Washington Bridge. I’m pretty sure that it would make national news. I may spend a few hours in jail but it would be sooo worth it.
I know you have a fair amount of readers, so please don’t write a separate post about this, as this idea would be easily poached. Let’s keep this in comments right here.
Cheers.
P.S. I noticed that you have ties with Gawker. I used to be a regular contributer via their now defunct “blogorrhea”.
Ryan: Definitely keep me posted–all of this sounds potentially amazing. One thing I was thinking about was whether you might substitute a Nerf football (or something even more attenuated, like drawings of footballs or — because I’m gay — flower petals?) for the real thing, not only for purposes of expense, but I was worried that someone might get injured trying to catch a real football thrown from that height (would gravity make it the equivalent of a smalll boulder?). (I’m thinking about the urban rumor of people getting killed from a penny dropped from the Empire State Building, etc, etc.)