it's free, no kidding, really

They told me the Staten Island Ferry is free. It said so right on their website. Can you believe it? Back in the Eighties, when I lived in Morris County, New Jersey, the Ferry was my go-to tourist thing when I had in-laws come down from the farm Upstate, especially if a foreign-exchange student was in the mix. Come on down! In those days, you could put your car on it and go across to Manhattan. It was a nominal fee (a few bucks?). It was my preferred thing because it was inexpensive, relaxing, scenic, almost a well kept secret. You breezed by the Statue of Liberty, had great views of the Twin Towers and their environs, the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, New Jersey, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the harbor or bay or whatever it is, tugboats, freighters, cruise ships, even a flotilla of sailboats here and there.

So I told KP, "Let's one of these days take a spin down to New York, hop on the Staten Island Ferry, touch Manhattan, sail back to S.I., and drive back. Maybe five hours each way. We could do it."

"Sure. Let's."

It became a hybrid of running joke and dare.

Then I got a new car.

We did it.

In the bronze sunset of an August Wednesday afternoon.

That's the Ferry part.

It was worth it. It will always be part of our DNA and memory databases, individual and dual, if there is such a thing.

It's free.

That knocks me out, as Holden Caulfield would say.

Why free? Someone suggested it's because no one wants to go to Staten Island har har. That would only be half of a round-trip reasoning anyway. Plus, as we rode the Ferry from Manhattan during rush hour there was a healthy crowd of commuters, and tourists like ourselves, headed to Staten Island -- more than the other way around in the evening rush hour.

Thank you, Gotham.

Glad to take advantage of your gracious hospitality. Pleased to mingle with myriad visitors with myriad accents and stories of their own.

I mean, how many cities can claim such gratis generosity? San Francisco's cable cars aren't free. Is the Coliseum in Rome? The Tower in London? The Sistine Chapel? Sure, examples of free stuff for visitors abound. (Tell me some.) Parliaments of many nations, the White House, the National Zoo (not free in the sense of paid for by our taxes if you pay American taxes).

But how many freebies are there that match the scale and convenience of the Staten Island Ferry?

You malcontents who constantly bitch that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and bemoan paying any taxes whatsoever (give it all to me, baby! fuckem all!), take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. Open your eyes, breathe the windswept air, hear the seagulls and the boat's foghorn, absorb the auditory mosaic of many tongues from near and far.

Enjoy the ride, if you can.

Sail on home. 

Or anywhere.