Fort Tryon Park, Washington Heights, NY

In being home with kids all day, one of the things that NYCity Mama has found to be the easiest thing to do is to take them to the park.  Ideally, this is the place where they can run around and make new friends, while the she sits on a bench and chats it up with the other parents/caregivers.  

Well, at least that is how it is on those band aid commercials. You know the ones?  Where the moms are talking and laughing, when suddenly, one of the kids falls down and without fits or tantrums he/she runs over to their mom who then reaches into her readily available first aid kit and cares for her child?  Yeah, well, like that.  

In the few months that she has been home with the kids, that has yet to be NYCity Mama’s experience.  She doesn’t really have time to sit on a bench and relax because she is always running after one toddler or another, neither of which ever want to play in the same area. Most of the parents have their little cliques going on, and aren’t always the most welcoming bunch, and few have ever greeted her, let alone acknowledge her presence.  And she never, ever has a stash of band aids, or Neosporin with her, no matter how many times she tells herself that she will pack those things in the diaper bag.   Instead, she often has to wipe blood off with her spit and hand, while her child wails at full lung capacity over the sight of his bleeding ouchie.

As a resident of the Washington Heights area in Manhattan, one of the parks she most frequents with her little ones is Fort Tryon Park on Ft. Washington Ave. and 190th St.  The park encompasses 66.63 acres of land extending from Riverside Drive to Broadway, West 192 to Dyckman Streets.  NYCity Mama discovered upon her return to NYC that the newest residents of the area and realtors alike, have renamed this area Hudson Heights, but to long time residents of the area and throughout the city, it is still known as Washington Heights.  She finds this annoying, elitist,and exclusive, and definitely a way to separate the neighborhood and increase rents.  She hopes more people will see “In The Heights” to get a true sense of what the neighborhood is like, and not this stuck up, yuppified version she returned to.  

 The truth is, Washington Heights has been changing throughout the years.  A lot more downtowners in search of bigger apartments, at affordable prices, have ventured and set shop here.  Most of them closest to the park, from 181st St and Ft. Washington Ave. on.  One could say that the border dividing the neighborhood is Broadway Ave.  Separating the East from the West, with West being the Hudson Heights everyone keeps moving into.  The East side of town is, well, loud.  NYCity Mama’s Irish-American husband once described it to her over the phone as “lively”, as he stood waiting for a realtor to show him one of what must’ve been a handful of available 3 bedroom apartments in all NYC (under a million dollars) which they desperately needed to all move back to the city.   Of course, she knew better.  As a Latina, she often refers to it as “ghetto”, but in the most endearing way possible, she swears.  It’s loud, and crowded, and dirty, but not dangerous.  On this particular day, as she sat in her bedroom,  she could hear a vendor outside her window yelling out “pastellitos! pastellitos!”, which are Dominican empanadas that he is selling out of his shopping cart.  This is where she lives.  In the “lively” part of the neighborhood.

Which is why her 5 minute walk to Fort Tryon Park is often such a welcoming relief.  It is beautiful there.  Quiet, uncrowded, with tree lined streets that lead up to its lush entrance and peaceful surroundings.  As she makes her way closer and closer to the park, she often feels the tension releasing from her body and while her breathing relaxes at the same time.  

The park has two playgrounds (Jakob K. Javits and Anne Loftus), and beautiful green areas overlooking the Hudson River for picnics, playing, or morning and afternoon strolls.  And though she does not have a dog, the park has an area that caters to dogs and their parents, and is often a fun distraction for her kids.

The picnic area is next to a busy street, one lane each way, for cars and public buses that cross the park.  There is definitely room to let the little ones run around, but it isn’t fenced in at all, so if you have more than one child to watch and don’t have assistance, it might be best to avoid this area and stick with the playgrounds on the outer skirts of the park.  

Mama has visited Jakob Javits playground the most.  The kids like it, referring to it as the “orange weeee!” (“orange” because of the huge looping slide they have, and “weeee!” is what they call playgrounds.) It is a pretty large playground and keeps her on her toes, since it is next to a basketball court and weight training area where grown men often commune for a good ol’ game of b-ball, push ups, and cussing, something which often annoys her, but is really more of a problem in the afternoons.

The social groups she’s encountered are often made up of moms (and a few dads) with small children or nannies on weekdays, with weekends and late afternoons consisting mostly of dads who are off from work.  

There is a social categorization in NYC playgrounds she hasn’t quite figured out, a certain sense of ownership or “members only” feeling she gets from most moms who frequent the playground the most and who all know each other.  Membership into this club is not easily accessible, sort of like in High School, and especially when your the mom who lacks the sense of daily structure and military style organization most others seem to have mastered (again, NYCity Mama is the mom who forgets diapers, or snacks, and whose boys are bigger than most kids in the park and louder.)  She figures she doesn’t make it easier for them either.  She is a woman of color with green-eyed, White babies.  They may wonder: Mother?  Nanny?  Kidnapper?  She understands, it’s tough for them to grasp.  But she enjoys watching the moms, often in awe of how clean and quiet their often single kids are, how they manage to organize all of their child’s toys into the back of their single stroller, toys which the kid doesn’t want to share, but will flaunt, or doesn’t want to share, but is forced to, and how they manage to get their kids to eat raw broccoli, dried papaya, or seaweed, without any hesitation, vomiting, or disgusted looks in response.  Her kids, on the other hand, are muffin-bread-strawberry-banana-eating freaks.  

When the kids were smaller and easily pushed in a stroller, she would jog around one of the loops in the park, but on lazier days they would be content just taking in the beauty of Heather Gardens. But Heather Gardens is also often where she goes to recover from the insanity of the playground and its frequent visitors, and where she can get her boys to chill out before taking them back home for naps (if she is lucky).  In the Summer, Spring and Fall, it is a breathtaking display of botanical beauty that she thinks everyone should experience.

The park is also home to the Cloisters Museum, and though she has decided to wait till the little ones are bigger before entering this site, she has been there many times before and it is a wonderful, beautiful collection of Medieval Art. Mama has managed to convince her boys that a dragon lives in this former monastery, thus encouraging absolute silence when they pass by it on their walks with the hope of hearing if only a whisper of the dragon’s roar.

 

Path in the park on a Winter day.

NYCity Mama decided that they will soon be trying out the New Leaf Restaurant and Bar, brought to us by the ever fabulous Bette Midler, and located on the Southern end of  the park. But she’s not fooling herself.  She admits that she is scared  to go in there with her two tasmanian devils. From the outside it doesn’t seem very child friendly, and certainly not tasmanian devil friendly, but she will soon find out. 

The New Leaf Restaurant and Bar

In the meantime, they are content with walking to their favorite grocery store, Frank’s Market on 187th St., where they often stop in to treat themselves to some of their fresh baked goodies.  Mama’s favorite are the baguettes, her boys love the muffins, especially the double chocolate ones.  Mama digs into a cappuccino muffin with shear content and she knows that as delicious as this is, even The Divine Miss M would be pleased!

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Tags: Museums
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