“As a person who has tried to bike over (the Brooklyn Bridge) before, I think the lane is great,” said bike commuter, Ann Sanders of Brooklyn. “Before the bike lane, you would run into pedestrians, obviously, tourists, who weren’t paying attention or people taking pictures. You had to kinda dodge the traffic.”

Pedestrians enjoying the walkway without cyclists. Photo taken by Nikol Mudrová

Before the decline of tourism during the pandemic, the Brooklyn Bridge promenade has been the number one tourist attraction in Brooklyn and in the top five for NYC, DOT data shows.

Even though bikers are now separated from pedestrians, some riders  still want more improvements. 

“I just wish the cars weren’t right next to me,” said Nereide Kluger, a photographer from Manhattan who was making her first ride on the new bike lane, “With all the noise and pollution, it makes it very unpleasant.”

Nereide Kluger, a photographer from Manhattan, after her first ride on the Brooklyn Bridge bike lane. Photo taken by Nikol Mudrová

Kluger believes a wall could help. She said  and the 8-feet lane is too  narrow, but understands that there has to be space for cars too. 

According to The National Association of City Transportation Officials   8 feet is the minimum in constrained locations and the desirable two-way cycle track width is 12 feet. 

But the minimum width is not enough for Kathrine Willis, co-chair of the Bridges 4 People . The group advocated for the bike lane. 

“As soon as you have people coming toward you, it will be too crowded and dangerous,” Willis said to Gothamist. In its current form, she thinks it would be an ideal one-way lane. 

To ensure a safe bike ride in the two-way path, the Bridges 4 People suggests  widening the lane by using an additional car lane.

View on the new Brooklyn Bridge bike line from the pedestrians path. September 16, 2021. Photo taken by Nikol Mudrová

Ethan Kent, an advocate for the nonprofit Placemaking X which focuses on improving public spaces, said the lane is still a big improvement. 

“What also deserves more attention is how the space for walking, viewing and gathering on the bridge is now much safer, larger and more comfortable,” he said.

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Protestors prepare to march across the Brooklyn Bridge on Juneteenth. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Woman shows her support to protestors marching on Juneteenth. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Demonstrators march across the Brooklyn Bridge. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Protestor chants passionately at Juneteenth March. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Rodrick Covington, a broadway actor, guides the chants and music during Juneteenth march. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Protestors march through Brooklyn Bridge. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Demonstrator holding a sign which urges the government to defund the New York Police Department. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Protestors deciding which direction to turn after arriving in Manhattan. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

NYPD stands on sideways, watching protestors from a distance. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

Teenager showing his support for Juneteenth protests. June 19, 2020. Photo by Bessie Liu

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With memories flooding lower Manhattan in the form of annual ceremonies and commemorative architecture, Brooklyn residents found their own solace in remembering Sept. 11 from a new perspective.

In a somber room at the Brooklyn Historical Society, locals relived the story that shaped many of them forever. Filling nearly an entire wall was a screen playing live footage of the attacks that brought the Twin Towers down. The footage, which captured a seamless timeline of moments from the morning of 9/11 into several weeks after, was played in sync to Tuesday’s clock.

As people watched, many were overwhelmed with the memories of being within the smoke that overtook the screen in front of them. Some observed the piece for up to an hour, tearing up and sharing stories with strangers and loved ones.

One Brooklyn Heights resident, Pat Lucey, now in her 60s, recalled that she had just arrived to work on the 33rd floor of a building adjacent to the World Trade Center when the second tower was struck by a plane.

“It was a rumble like tumbleweed to where we were, and we all said there was no way we were going back up,” she explained of the view from her building’s lobby prior to her and the rest of her coworkers vacating the premises and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. “There was black soot we all got covered in. Some people panicked and started running over the bridge.”

Despite her safe return home more than two miles away from the World Trade Center, Lucey described the scene from Brooklyn Heights as one flooded with smoke and despair as people watched what unfolded across the East River.

“Right across from the Brooklyn Bridge, people went to the promenade every day just to watch and all we saw was smoke for days,” she said. “This neighborhood was very impacted.”

That impact was spread throughout generations of long-time residents and newly welcomed New Yorkers.

Michael Barron, a Brooklyn resident who turned 31 Tuesday, was only an eighth-grader in Oklahoma at Fort Sill while Lucey was in the midst of smoke and debris.

“I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was,” he said explained of his own 9/11 experience, noting that now, after living in New York for a few months, seeing the Historical Society’s installation firsthand placed the events in a new perspective.

“I’m actually happy that it’s not just the same thing looped over,” he said of the footage not being a continuous loop of the strike against the towers. “It wasn’t just that moment. There was a 9/11 for everybody. The meaning touched everything.”

The installation, called “2001,” was created by German artist Wolfgang Staehle, who captured the time-lapse on a webcam atop his apartment building roof in Williamsburg while he was filming the skyline for a different project. His original intent was to capture the mundaneness of the city in comparison to Berlin and a countryside in Germany. The footage he caught instead turned out to be 12-second recordings that played from morning until night on Tuesday.  

Visitors were encouraged to leave handwritten notes with their experiences and feelings about seeing the events happen on such a large screen. The anonymous notes were left in a basket donning words of encouragement and appreciation for Staehle and a sense of mourning for the lives that were lost.

“Those who watched the live footage from 9/11 wrote their reflections about rewatching the historical moments before they left the exhibit on Tuesday. Photo by Li Cohen”

“You forget about the impact it had on different areas,” Lucey said, “whether that be Oklahoma or Brooklyn.”

Barron concurred, adding that the visuals presented did more than just show a series of events.

“I guess the important thing is that it shows that 9/11 wasn’t just planes crashing into buildings,” he said. “It was a wider event that changed so much.”  

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As an epicenter of trade and commerce, it is not uncommon to see shipping containers on the periphery of New York City. It is odd, however, to see several dozen of them used as a makeshift art gallery like the one currently arranged at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

United Photo Industries, a New York based art organization, is the impetus behind the maze-like structure of shipping containers and while the set up may appear haphazard at first glance, it is anything but that. It is Photoville, the largest annual photographic event in New York City.

Photoville challenges the public’s perception of art by organizing shipping containers to function as gallery spaces in which curated works by an array of photographers and photojournalists are displayed. As a free event that is open to the public, the untraditional space liberates the viewers from expectations often associated with museums and brick and mortar galleries.

“I live in the neighborhood so I’m familiar with the space here and there’s a lot of containers that are for industrial purposes,” said Ananda Khan, 33,a Photoville attendee yesterday. “It’s nice to see it fit in with the neighborhood and create a whole new ‘suspended from reality’ space.”

Khan’s fashion photographer friend, Adrianna Favero, brought her to Photoville to not only explore the images, but to get in tune with the political and social climate of photojournalism.

“All of these are things that you don’t think about in your regular life,” said Favero of the themed installations showcasing issues like police brutality and war,.

Outside of one of the many containers stood Taylor Gamble, a representative of the New York New Abolitionists ready to provide information to the public on the effects of human trafficking. The New York New Abolitionists is an awareness campaign spearheaded by the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, which is comprised of roughly 150 organizations, dedicated to raising awareness of human trafficking issues.

“Most people don’t realize that it’s something that happens all around us even in our city,” said Gamble.

The Coalition hired a photographer to capture portraits of various survivors, politicians, and even celebrities that are standing up and taking steps to help those affected by human trafficking.

“This is a great way to get the general public to notice our thinking about it and it’s given us a good chance to have conversations with people who had never thought about the issue before,” said Gamble..

This year marks Photoville’s fourth annual event which runs for two consecutive weekends in mid-September. It has gained traction since its inception having spread among the photography community even drawing former visitors to exhibit their work, such as photojournalist Rita Leistner who made her way from Toronto, Canada.

Leistner’s shipping container showcased photographs that she took on a smartphone while embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan in 2011. Leistner was part of an experimental project titled Basetrack, which was an initiative to cover the war in Afghanistan using solely social media and smartphones.

Photojournalist Rita Leistner pauses for a moment at Photoville outside of a shipping container that showcases the work she photographed entirely on her smart phone while embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan in 2011. Photo by Elizabeth Arakelian

In an increasingly digital world critics have wondered about the future of photography’s role now that the masses have become self-appointed photographers by virtue of their phones. According to Leistner the advent of phone photography does not degrade photojournalism or photography as an industry, but rather  “raises the bar higher particularly in terms of how we understand photography and what it can evoke.”

Judging by the thousands of people filing in and out of the shipping containers at Photoville over the past two weekends, it is clear people are still interested in glancing up from their phones to enjoy the physical photographs before them.

“Photoville, as a physical space that contains both material object images and people, is the joining point of these things and the fact that more than 70,000 people came through last year… to me that is evidence that my optimism about the future of photography is justified,” said Leistner.

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Rachel Smith was arrested last October protesting on Brooklyn Bridge. She's back this year, and still not afraid to fight against capitalism. Photo by Jordyn Taylor

Rachel Smith was arrested last October during an Occupy Wall Street protest on the Brooklyn Bridge. She spent 12 hours in jail. A year later she’s back, and ready to risk it all again.

Smith, 27, a student at the CUNY Graduate Center, got involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement last fall because she wanted to take a stand against capitalism. “Money for schools, not for banks,” read the cardboard sign she held on this morning. Rather than deterring her, the arrest made Smith even more determined to fight for her anti-capitalist cause.

“I was arrested, and I’ve been participating [in OWS] ever since,” she said.

A year after the arrest, Smith was still angered and driven by the unjust treatment she said she received from the New York Police Department on the bridge that day.

“The cops basically let us onto the bridge and then corralled us in on both sides and arrested everybody,” she said. “There was no point at which anybody told us we shouldn’t be where we were. I didn’t understand why I was being arrested at first, and they wouldn’t tell me. They just said I was acting disorderly. So it was just a bunch of bullshit.”

Smith was arrested in the afternoon, and spent the night in jail. While behind bars, Smith bonded with the other arrested protesters.

“They arrested like 800 of us,” she said. “They separated us by gender, so I was just there with women. We were in two to three person cells, and they kept bringing in more and more roomfuls of women. We sang, we talked. They were probably the best conditions under which one could be in jail. Cops suck, but the people I was with were excellent.”

Smith believed that the police purposely let her and the other protesters onto the Brooklyn Bridge last year because they wanted to make arrests. Along with her anti-capitalist goals, Smith was now looking to see changes in the NYPD.

“The Citizens’ Review Board is not functional, number one, “ she said. “Number two, I think there are some tactics that they use that are obviously unjust and wrong.”

Smith listed “stop and frisk,” “snatch and grab,” and “pen and arrest” as the NYPD tactics she most wanted to see eliminated.

“I don’t know how many of these things are institutional, that would be easy to change through policy, and how much of them are just embedded in the culture of the NYPD,” she said.

The danger of arrest might have been present again this morning, but Smith made it clear she was in the OWS movement for the long haul.

“Revolutions don’t happen overnight,” she said. “A lot of people have sort of gotten bored with OWS, and I think that’s really disappointing, because movements take a long time. “

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The Occupy Wall Street Direct Action march poster.

With a crackdown of Occupy Wall Street protestors in other cities across the country, the group in the epicenter of it all in Zuccotti Park is scheduling a massive day of “direct action” on Thursday with aims to have protestors occupying every block of New York City.

Dubbed the National Day of Action or N17 it includes a march from City Hall to the Brooklyn Bridge, the site of 700 arrests on October 1.

Bold flyers are being spread through social media via Twitter, urging followers to “Occupy Every Block,” and use the hashtag, #N17. A Facebook event is also in the works. Protests are expected to begin at 7 a.m. in front of the New York Stock Exchange where demonstrators will use “mass non-violent direct action” to “Shut Down Wall Street.”

The plan is for the protest to spread across the five boroughs simultaneously at 3 p.m. as protesters take over 16 central subway stations and ride into the city as one unit.

A presence of unity is one that the protestors have worked to develop. Bret Rothstein, 24, a member of the OWS press working group, explains that embracing togetherness has already occurred at Zuccotti Park.

“The goal is getting everybody together, all the occupations,” Rothstein said. “We are all obviously on the same page, we are all here for the same common goal.”

Michael Frock, wears red paint from a morning meditation session in Zuccotti Park. Frock believes Thursday's Day of Action will be huge for the movement. Photo by Joann Pan

Michael Frock, 24, from the Upper East Side, has been occupying Zuccotti Park for approximately a month and believes the Day of Action will be big for the movement.

“I would love to see all the 99 percent go home, not go to work, not go to school and occupy with their families,” he said.

The movement is about letting the government know that citizens are upset and giving those living in frustration an arena to speak, according to Frock.

“If enough people do that on one day it will make the message loud and clear,” he said. “The message is that, ‘You can’t live without us.’ [The 1 percent] treats us like we are invisible, so now we are going to act as if we were, and see how they do on that day.”

Chris Carter, 28, believes the Day of Action, will bring the various groups in different cities. Photo by Joann Pan

Chris Carter, 28, from Bethlehem, Pa., said the Day of Action will be a step towards making the various occupations and their corresponding communities cohesive parts of the global movement.

“It shows that it’s not just city to city, but that we are all connected,” Carter said. “Hopefully it will show the solidarity we have, not just with the people in occupations, but all together. We are all a part of the 99 percent.”

Molly Smith, 35, of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, who was crocheting hats for those in Zuccotti Park on Sunday, is unsure of whether she will partake in the Day of Action. Still, she said she fully supports the idea.

“I like that idea. I really wonder if I would be gutsy enough to walk out of my school,” said Smith, a teacher in the West Village. “But I talk about it at lunch all the time and I can’t believe how little people know of it in terms of how it would affect them.”

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Occupy Wall Street protestors are blocked in on the Brooklyn Bridge. Photo by Joann Pan.

Around 700 Occupy Wall Street protestors were arrested yesterday afternoon after they staged a sit-in on the Brooklyn Bridge.

About 2,000 protestors attempted to march across the bridge around 4 p.m. As marchers beat their drums, chanting, “This is what democracy looks like,” cars cleared into a single file, creeping alongside the road until all traffic was at a standstill. Police officers walked along the highway directing vehicle traffic to the side. Police allowed protestors to march onto the bridge.

Where the bridge meets the South Street Seaport, police officers barricaded the protestors in with orange plastic netting. The crowd was so big that protestors didn’t know they were being blocked in.

When they saw they were being blocked, protesters then tried to induce a sit-in on the bridge to avoid arrest.

“They can’t arrest all of us,” someone shouted.

As the netting closed in, protestors climbed up the wall of the Brooklyn Bridge, about 10 to 15 feet, and onto the elevated walking path.

Stephanie Thibert, 26, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, was at the front of the march until she fell back and helped those who lagged behind. This was her first day with the movement.

“I think they purposefully diverted the pack away just to arrest them,” Thibert said. “I was actually with the first group then I fell behind on the other side of the bridge to watch the rest of the group. Everyone above on the walking path were trying to help those below.”

Sandra Thom, 53, and her two children, who were visiting from Virginia Beach, Va., saw police officers guiding the massive crowd of protestors onto the walking path and the bridge’s roadway.

“I saw that [the road] split,” Thom said. “I said ‘Let’s stay on this side of the street. Something is going to happen up there.’”

All the protestors on the roadway were arrested and bused off to nearby precincts, resulting in a bridge closure on one side for nearly five hours.

Occupy Wall Street protestors filtered into Brooklyn Bridge Park right after the protest and tried to compile a list of those arrested.

Aliya Birdoff, 18, of Harlem, Manhattan, believes this march will have a great impact on the momentum of the movement.

“This is really exciting. I think this is exactly what needs to be happening,” she said. “I think that’s how you get more coverage and that’s how a movement grows. I don’t know how I feel [about the arrests]. I feel like there was a lot of trickery going on.”

The movement continues to grow with chapters in cities across the nation including Chicago, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Albany, N.Y.;Dallas, Texas; and Sante Fe, N.M.; and another 21 cities worldwide.

Occupy Wall Street is planning a “New York Unites!” event Wednesday, Oct. 5, where student walkouts and union marches are scheduled.

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