My morning commute.

I've never really appreciated the Brooklyn Bridge the way everyone else in the world seems to. Like yeah, it's a cool bridge and all, but there are much more impressive ones out there, in my opinion.  Like the Manhattan Bridge -- I just think it's more visually striking!  However, my new internship's offices are located at South Street Seaport (and I thought it was just a tourist trap, ha), so I walk by the Brooklyn Bridge every morning on my way in.

I snapped this on my walk this grey morning -- how sad is it that my cell phone has a better camera in it than my first digital camera did in 2004? -- right after I thought to myself, "Okay, so maybe it's kind of a cool bridge."  Then I got on Wikipedia:

The occurrence of the decompression sickness (the bends) in the caisson workers caused engineers to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand.

At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh — by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty.

Crazy! Also, the bridge was completed in 1883 but didn't get its first jumper til 1885, which to me indicates that the bridge lifted 19th century New Yorkers' spirits. And, in May of 1884, P.T. Barnum marched the gigantic Jumbo the Elephant (later to become the mascot of Tufts University, where they have his ashes in a peanut butter jar) across the bridge in a parade of 21 elephants to prove its stability (and promote his circus) after an 1883 stampede triggered by a rumor that the bridge was going to collapse killed 12 people.

Also on my walk to and from the train, I pass this flower stand, which always has the most gorgeous blooms out for sale.  Yesterday, though, I got a good chuckle out of this:

Ahhh, Engrish.

Happy Friday!