DUMBO

DUMBO is small, and almost all of it is worth walking. Nineteenth-century warehouses, cobblestone streets that destroy suitcase wheels, and then the ground opens onto Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is the best thing New York has built in the last twenty years.

The park is the reason to come. It runs from under the Manhattan Bridge down past the piers, with lawns, basketball, the little beach at Pebble Beach, and Jane’s Carousel glowing in its glass box after dark. The skyline sits right across the water, close enough to pick out windows.

Beyond the park, the neighborhood is a handful of blocks and a few institutions worth the detour. Empire Stores, a nineteenth-century coffee warehouse, now holds Time Out Market and a roof deck with the bridges lined up in front of you. St. Ann’s Warehouse puts on some of the most interesting theater in the city inside an old tobacco warehouse. Almondine on Water Street has been making croissants since before anyone called this DUMBO, and Powerhouse Arena is a bookstore that doubles as the neighborhood’s living room.

The catch is timing. Between about 11am and 5pm the photo block on Washington Street is a queue of people taking the same picture, and the park is full. Come at 7am and the cobblestones are yours, or come at 7pm in summer and watch the light go. Walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan afterward, or take the ferry, which is the nicest few dollars in the city.