Chapter 6
6
Central Park
The Park is open 365 days of the year from six a.m. to one a.m. though there are no gates or locks, nothing to keep anyone out if there is a passionate desire to get in. At certain times of year, activity is prohibited on Pilgrim Hill due to significant dog-related damage, too much humping and romping—especially with the greyhounds and French bulldogs. Especially the males. The Great Lawn does close for the season—and is padlocked. It makes Park fondling harder in the winter months. It is harder, anyway, standing up, no warm surface to lie upon.
The Park was designed in 1858 according to the Greensward Plan, inspired by the English countryside and developed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who married the widow of his brother, John. There is a book about their romance, having much to do with the Park. There was a fierce design competition, with thirty-two other competitors—all of whom were tasked with including three battlefields, a winter skating ground, a drive, a parade ground, a grand fountain, a flower garden, an observatory, a music hall, and four roads traversing the Park—and a budget of no more than 1.5 million dollars. Olmstead was the only one who did it, which likely had everything to do with the inspiration and muse of Mary, the wife.
The Park is half a mile wide and two and a half miles long. There are nine bodies of water, including the Gill, the Loch, the Pool, and the Lake, all of which look natural but are actually human-made. There are five waterfalls, each one fed from the municipal water system via one forty-eight-inch pipe at the Pool grotto near 100th Street. There are more than eighteen thousand trees that cool and clean the air, including one of the country’s largest and last remaining stands of American elms. It is a habitat for wildlife and provides a stopover on the Atlantic Flyway for more than two hundred species of birds. There are also coyotes, most common during mating season, January through March. See the bite marks on the vet tech’s hand? He was trying to impress the woman he’d just met on AnimalLoversAndLoversInGeneral.com: @PussyLady123. You should stick to domestics, she said as they took a cab out of the Park to urgent care. Their first and last date. It could have gone either way.
In the Park, there are more than ten thousand benches. The North Meadow Butterfly Gardens provide a habitat for more than fifty species of butterflies that pass through. The rocks in the Park were formed through volcanic activity around 500 million years ago. Summit Rock is the highest natural elevation, and the second highest is Belvedere Castle, a site the National Weather Service has used to record temperatures and wind speeds since 1919.
Any true New Yorker knows that every Park lamppost, or “luminaire,” as they’re called, has an inconspicuous metal plate with four numbers: the first two or three indicate the street closest by; the last one conveys which side of the Park you’re in—even numbers mean east and odd mean west. This way, you’re never lost. When Max was eleven, he ran away. He planned to stay with Samantha B., the prettiest girl in school—though she hadn’t invited him. Just before the Sixty-Fifth Street exit, he changed his mind. The luminaires guided him home.
On the middle school history teachers’ first Park date, they compete with trivia. Did you know that a part of the Park used to be a village of more than fifty homes called Seneca Village, before the city claimed eminent domain and razed it to make way for the Park in 1857 and all traces of the settlement were lost to history?
Did you know that in 1847, the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity founded the Academy of Mount St. Vincent, the first institution for higher learning for women in New York, in what later became the northeast area of the Park? A fire destroyed the structure in 1881. Composting happens there now.
There is what happens annually in the Park, and what happens every year.
On New Year’s Eve, there is a NYRR Midnight Run. Everyone kisses at the end. Winter viruses be damned. On the day before Halloween, a pumpkin flotilla—happy faces, scary faces, hearts for faces—makes its way down the Harlem Meer. There are parents dressed as Barbie and Ken, Bert and Ernie, Meat and Cheese.
The Italian Garden in the Conservatory Garden has a small, discrete meadow perfect for a picnic for two. (It was also a setting for Stuart Little , the story, not the movie.) On Valentine’s Day, couples abound. Barolo and tiramisu recommended. Was Jaclyn surprised when her ex-husband brought her here? He wasn’t an ex then. Still, everything he did was set up by an assistant, the blonde or the redhead. What do you get when you google most romantic spots for lunch in NYC?
In the fall, there are marionette performances at Swedish Cottage—two monkeys live happily ever after. The Breast Cancer Walk begins at Naumburg Bandshell. She died at forty-one. I’m racing for her cure. Arguably, there are more fallen leaves per capita than any other place in the entire city. Why does it always smell like a fireplace? No one knows.
In the winter, there is sledding down Cedar Hill; Olmsted and Vaux’s “Winter Drive” of pines, spruces, and firs from Seventy-Second to 102nd Streets are at their most fragrant. The Arthur Ross Pinetum now features seventeen species of pine. Every December, the smell lights the way.
In the spring, there is weekly bird-watching with Birding Bob, as well as catch-and-release fishing at the Harlem Meer (largemouth bass, pumpkinseed sunfish, carp, chain pickerel, bluegill sunfish). There are fishing poles available to borrow at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, along with instructions and bait (corn kernels). The history teachers go. They break up. There is too much competition between them. Not enough sport.
In the summer, there is pickleball at Wollman Rink, swimming at Lasker Rink, a French festival for Bastille Day, Shakespeare in the Park—always a love story—as well as penguin and sea lion feedings at the zoo. We come here for the animals, but also for the breeze.
At SummerStage, there are eighty free and benefit concerts annually. The last big concert at Sheep Meadow was James Taylor’s in 1979. He played to 250,000 fans. That was also the night that Bea got pregnant, after the show. Her career was just getting started. She didn’t keep it. She never told Jane. Max was five then. This is her only regret: not the abortion; that was right. The not telling.
In the Park, the greatest number of injuries are due to cycling accidents, some fatal. At the southern end of West Drive, bikers often clock in above thirty-two miles per hour. In one weekend alone, there were 103 cyclist speeding tickets. Slow down! The Park is for everyone! Do you hear?
When the oncologist gets hit by the courier on his way east, she falls in love. It is absurd. She is a feminist, a scientist, single—thank God—and far too old for this shit. Still, there is something about the burl of the man, lifting her as if she’s a mermaid or maybe a broken kite. He places her on a bench, and as she looks at the cherry blossoms above her head, pink, innocent, she is reminded of her very own biker, decades and decades ago. Back then, she believed that love was enough—if only you could protect it from machismo and volatility, expectations and despondency, diseases of all kinds. She was younger then, sillier, but brighter too. That was before. It was all possible then. She only had to believe.