The lesser known Sky Line park

The High Line extension opened this week. The High Line was an elevated freight railway, which ran along the piers and warehouses of Chelsea and the West side - right through the middle of buildings to avoid darkening the avenues below. It used to go into the biscuit factory which is now the Chelsea Market, probably delivering butter and sugar and rolling pins, which was surely work of national importance.

After making a final delivery of frozen turkeys in 1980, it fell into disuse. Nature took the railway over and created something much prettier and quieter, but somewhat less useful for butter and sugar deliveries.

In 2009, as the local news anchor put it, in a rather Day Today-esque turn of phrase, 'what was once just the dream of a bunch of activists' became a reality: the High Line Park was opened. Between 21st Street and Gansevoort Street those crazy activists replaced the weeds you see above with pretty grasses and concrete slabs and little water fountains and public art.

It was a cool little park but rather on the short side. You could get from one end to the other in about 10 minutes flat. It was handy for us on our saunter back from the Chelsea Market but that's about it.

Until this week... when the extension opened. It runs past our block now, and all the way up to 30th Street now. I'm not quite sure when we'd ever go to Midtown but just in case... we no longer need to cross a single street to get to 30th Street.

The new bit is really good. It has a big patch of lawn and you get up close to the backs of residential buildings, in a way the first stretch doesn't really do.

Rabbit Hutch Towers is just out of sight on the right of the redbrick building

Also, we now have an icecream van parked right on our block most days. Most convenient.

 

The other, less exciting impact, is the arrival of a flood of tourists. West 23^rd Street was always relatively free of out-of-towners but the High Line attracts them like wasps to orangina. Most of them are probably off to get in the way of actual shoppers by taking photos of fruit at Chelsea Market’s Manhattan Fruit Exchange. Grrr. "Off my land, tourists!"

TLOML and I saw one chump yelling into his mobile, Dom Joly style, ‘I’m in the Skyline Park! No, the Skyline!’

We smirked at each other like the smug New Yorkers we have already become.

Yeah, maybe the onslaught of tourists isn’t such a bad thing. It's always nice to have someone to make you feel superior.

New traditions

Your happiness is not really determined by what happens to you, but about how you respond to what happens to you. My glamourous entrepreneur friend tells me so, and she is one of the wisest people I know.

So having been wrenched from paradise, aka Malibu, we can either bemoan the absence of the sound of crashing waves outside our window and the almost-always perfect weather... or celebrate living in one of the most exciting cities in the world within a stone's throw of a dozen incredible places to eat and drink. We could miss the spacious two bed flat with all that room for all our crap, or make the most of the zen experience of living in a Rabbit Hutch.

It's all about adapting, and finding some new traditions to replace the old ones.

For grocery shopping, instead of driving to Ralph's and treating ourselves to a Malibu FroYo, we walk to Chelsea Market and reward ourselves with a fancy gelato. Instead of a late night scotch on the balcony, we stop by our new local for a night cap. And the drive up to Malibu Seafood for a quick tuna burger has been replaced with a saunter down 9th Avenue for a slice of Gotham Pizza.

Some of the other adjustments we are making, and happily so, include replacing our balcony overlooking the beach with a rooftop deck with wicked views of the Hudson River and Midtown.

From one nice deck...

...to another. I know, life's tough eh?

I've replaced my contemplative constitutional walk along the beach with a stroll along the High Line and through the West Village. Instead of running on the track at the pampered Pepperdine campus, I make like a New Yorker and run by the river. I still get to look at water and rocks, just different ones.

My old walking route.

My new waterside view. I think these ghost piers are really cool, and looking at them is almost as calming as gazing out at the Pacific. Almost.

The closest I now get to a beach.

But who needs a beach to stroll along when you have the High Line?

Yeah, it turns out that 'what happened to us' in the move to NY ain't all that bad...