Never Gets Old

Rockaway is blessed with some impressive views. Obviously, the ocean view is unbeatable. I don’t think I am being controversial when I say that it is the most popular of all the views. That’s the one that comes to mind first and foremost for the majority of people. The other view, however, is quite a knockout itself. There is something about the Manhattan skyline that never ceases to draw out a smile and a sense of awe. We are certainly blessed with that view, maybe even spoiled, but the view is not unique to Rockaway the way the ocean is around here. There are only a few different routes to drive from anywhere outside of the city to Rockaway. I avoid going through Manhattan like the plague so, for me, I know a long drive home is concluding when I am driving in Jersey, and I turn on some random bend and I am met with that skyline. So close, yet so very far away from where you want to go. Coming over the Verrazzano Bridge from Staten Island, we usually find ourselves looking to the right to see how traffic is building on the Belt (I don’t know why we look; we know what’s there). But if we were to look the other way, you get, in my opinion, one of the best views of the city. When I was working in the city for a few years, I would catch myself looking up and gawking at the buildings. It didn’t matter how many times I had seen them, there was just something bewitching about it.

The reason I write this small ode to that view is every time I look over the bay, the first, the last, the thousands of times in between, I think to myself “man, that never gets old.” Whether it’s on a clear morning when the sunlight is dancing off the buildings or as a storm is rolling in from the north and you lose the tops of the buildings in the clouds—it always does the trick.

I am starting to learn that in life, a lot of things “get old.” People, for one, but that’s a gimme. But other things, too. Some that come to mind right away are politics, radio stations, endless construction, speed camera tickets, a whipping cold wind and DFDs.

What is so impressive is that there are certain things that, no matter how often you experience them, they do not seem to get old. They are timeless and classic. A few of those that come to mind, other than that stunning skyline, are a perfectly poured pint of Guinness, the first plop in your beach chair after lugging everything down, “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes, a boardwalk bike ride, a one-man band and flipping through a local newspaper on a Thursday morning.

To each their own! Maybe an avid kite-surfer out there is spitting angry at my slight to whipping winds right now, and that is fine by me. I am no philosopher. I don’t know very much about much of anything. So, I will go ahead and state the obvious: I am starting to think we should all be spending a little more time on the stuff that doesn’t get old and a little less on the stuff that does. Thankfully, around here, you don’t have to look very far to find your personal “never gets old.”