We live in a New York neighborhood that doesn’t seem like a New York neighborhood. Battery Park City is a relatively new notch added on the lower west side of Manhattan, built in the 60s and 70s from earth excavated for the World Trade Center buildings and a few other large-scale public works. Head west across the West Side Highway, and you leave TriBeCa for blocks that feel like a concoction of city and suburb. A good third of the area is given over to park, including a large lawn that runs up to the Hudson river, and an extensive playground with bars, swings, sand, and fountains that run from March to September. Kids have the luxury of playing the sport in season on a full-size ball field as their parents cheer them on. Follow the bike and walking path downtown, and you trace the outline of South Cove with its parallel-parked yachts and people looking at the river as they eat high-end lunches. An astonishing amount of joggers and bikers practice their fitness along here, dodging kids being pushed in or walking alongside strollers. Keep going south and you run into Wagner Park, with its own lawns and unobstructed view of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. Then on to Battery Park itself, now all park and no battery, full of tourists and vendors selling tickets and trinkets to them as they snake onto boats to Ellis and Liberty Islands.
