WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE
This 7,308-foot suspension bridge was the longest in the world when it was completed in 1903. Only the north side walkway is open, so once you get to Brooklyn, walk down South Fourth Street and make a right on Havemeyer Street over to Broadway. Turn left into the gritty kind of business district that seems to exist everywhere elevated trains rattle overhead. Then take the first right down Marcy Avenue past La Borinqueña, one of the area’s few remaining Puerto Rican-owned bodegas.
You’re headed toward Lee Street, the main Hasidic strip, a fascinating place to explore on a Sunday (on Saturday, businesses are closed). The signs are in Yiddish and Hebrew, and the restaurants divided into dairy and meat. Conservative dress — long sleeves, long pants — is required for men and women in some places.
That includes Gottlieb’s restaurant, on Roebling Street, which serves pastrami sandwiches and noodle and potato kugel. Your dairy alternative is the signless Cafe W, on Lee Street, a busy place with a salad bar, brick oven pizza and sushi. Williamsburg also has a kosher candy store, which opened last March: Chocolate Castle has Israeli brands like Klik and Elite/Megadim.
On your way back over the bridge, don’t miss the “Leaving Brooklyn — Oy Vey” sign.
MACOMBS DAM BRIDGE
The most human-scale of the three bridges here, with only four lanes and no trains, this is a metal truss swing bridge completed in 1895, where a dam once stood. Back then, the baseball stadium was on the Manhattan side — the Polo Grounds — but now, it is in the Bronx, your destination: the neighborhood around Yankee Stadium. Before crossing, check out the Hooper Fountain, with drinking fountains for humans and horses.
It’s about a 10-minute walk across the bridge. Up the Harlem River to the left, you can see the High Bridge, the oldest bridge in Manhattan, now closed.
Even if there isn’t a Yankees game, the area is bustling. Stan’s Sports World, purveyors of all things pinstriped, is open daily. The elegant Bronx County Building, which houses the Bronx Supreme Court, is three blocks up 161st Street from the stadium. The Bronx Museum of Art is just north on the Grand Concourse.
There are also plenty of food options; one of the most popular is the Yankee Tavern, which serves bar food and beer with attitude. You can sample Dominican and Puerto Rican cuisine at the equally informal Molino Rojo.
QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
You gain a perspective walking over bridges that you can’t get from a car. On the Queens side of this bridge, famously known as the 59th Street Bridge, about a half-hour walk, to the left are the Queensbridge Houses, with battlement-type rooftops that leave you half expecting to see Dorothy fleeing from the flying monkeys in “The Wizard of Oz.”
To the right is Long Island City, where many attractions are a 10-minute walk south. The easiest route is to follow Jackson Avenue. You’ll pass Court House Square, with its fountain, and the Citicorp Building, Queens’s tallest building. A little farther down is P.S. 1, the contemporary museum tied to the Museum of Modern Art and thriving in an old public school.
Down nearby Davis Street is the wacky 5 Pointz building, an industrial complex that houses garment factories but is covered with aerosol art that would be called graffiti if it had been painted illegally.
So, where to eat? There are several choices, from the Court Square Diner nearby to a few restaurants a few blocks farther down Jackson Avenue: the Jackson Avenue Steakhouse and the traditional Italian restaurant Manducatis, where the Times critic Frank Bruni recommended the “thick, juicy, first-rate pork chops smothered in scallions and red peppers,” but called the carbonara “gluey.”
Too bad, because a little carb-loading wouldn’t hurt for the trek back across the bridge.
