While I always love my time in St. Louis, my people there, and having a deep familiarity with a city that is no longer mine, these shots from my return flight from St. Louis’s Lambert to New York’s LaGuardia help illuminate why I am so in love with the grandeur of New York City, a city of unimaginable size and scale:
For starters there was the actual takeoff out of St. Louis. Now, first thing to note is that the airport is in the County, not the City (limits). Still, it’s all part of the St. Louis “region”. However it’s a distinguishing fact to keep in mind that when you land at LaGuardia you’re landing in Queens County, one of the five counties that constitute the boroughs of New York City. Also, look at how green this place is:
So here’s a shot flying east over the Mississippi. That’s downtown St. Louis in the background, the most-distinguishing building being the TWA Dome/Edward Jones Dome, the white hump of a building that the Rams play in:
We dropped below the clouds just in time to catch the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn to the north with Staten Island in the corner:
One thing you’ll recognize immediately is how much closer you feel. And what I really love is having a relational proximity to this city that I’ve really only experienced elsewhere in London. You live here for so long and you really start to develop a memory-map of the city based on prior experiences, in ways that I never could in St. Louis. Like the week before I was underneath the same bridge I was now 3,000 feet above:
(Staten Island in the background)
Or take the Rockaways, here pictured in the background behind Coney Island/Brighton Beach, I was at a beach on the left top-middle edge also just a week prior:
And to give you a sense of scale, it took an hour to travel from Lower Manhattan to said beach by ferry – that’s how huge and expansive this city is!
A shot of Brooklyn, this time a view of that building at the intersection of 4th Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue (which I’ve got a shot of from below as well!):
Here’s a view of Governor’s Island in the lower-right seen over the right wing. I was at Governor’s Island just a couple weeks prior for the Tangent public art festival!
Continuing on.
Here’s a great shot of the AT&T building near Canal and Broadway, which can be seen just above the AT&T building (see detail):
it ain’t called Empire State for nothing
Madison Square Garden, the round building in the lower-right, much more impressive than the Edward Jones Dome highlighted near the top of this post.
Yankee Stadiums new and old (left and right, respectively) – I have yet to visit the new stadium.
A view of Co-Op City in the Bronx, the largest cooperative housing development in the United States.
And then suddenly you’ve landed.
This flight was incredibly short for some reason. We departed about 30 minutes late it seemed, so they must have made up for it in the skies because we landed 2-3 minutes early! Nice.
Oh yeah, this was an American Airlines flight, and given their flight path if you want these remarkable views from St. Louis get a window seat on the right side of the plane! I sat in 18F, so a few numbers less (17, 16, 15, etc.) would probably remove the wing from your view. Yippee!
(these photos from my full set found on my Flickr account)