Williamsburg

 Last week I went to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, which I haven't been to in years.  Williamsburg is now known as the hippest area of NY, where all the younger types go to live and hang out, and where the latest restaurants are.  How hip is Williamsburg?  When I stopped to get a coffee at a coffee joint, the barista, after serving me, when over to the cafe's turntable, and put on an LP of the Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet".  How many coffee shops do you know that play vinyl?   (Though it is debatable whether geezer rock can really be hip...)

Williamsburg is mostly very low rise architecture, with very little of the predominant historic details that characterize area like Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope.  But a interesting mix of styles, nonetheless.   Some Long Island style renovations...(vinyl siding?)

The most fun, though, was walking back to Manhattan on the Williamsburg Bridge, which was the longest suspension bridge in the world for 20 years, and lives in the shadow of its more famous neighbor.   It has a great pedestrian walkway, for some reason painted in pink.  You walk above the cars, and slightly parallel and above the subway lines.  It lands you in Manhattan in the middle of the Lower East Side.

Some pictures  (click to enlarge):

Graffitti, chain link fences and pink railings at the beginning:

The Empire State Building framed:

Strange metal things:

The walkway in pink, with decorations;

The end, as you descend to Manhattan:

The official nameplate for the bridge, as reconfigured by New Yorkers:

Some buildings in Manhattan, as you get off the bridge;

A building in Chinatown, with all windows filled with boxes: