Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval (I)

Curlew Friday Nights - July Twenty-ninth, 2022

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There is a park in the Bronx named Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. Eight tennis courts, a football field, a track, two playgrounds. Above the track and past the playground there’s an elevated walking path, which is lined by wooden benches (painted green). They’re in front of the path and also behind the path, depending on which way you look. You can get to the Oval by taking the D train to the very last stop, 205-Norwood, then walking a few blocks up Bainbridge.

I like the space up there –––– not around the park, as the surrounding streets are as dense and narrow as most other streets in the city, but within the park, the Oval, the Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. If you’re walking up from Bainbridge and approaching from the south you walk through a tunnel to enter the park. It’s not a long tunnel, but it holds a dramatic effect all the same, as it’s clear that where you were (Bainbridge) is different from where you’re going (the Oval).

I like all of the different things that people can do there: football practice in full pads (two teams of boys, one in red, the other in black); jump rope, walk and talk; play tennis; ride bikes; smoke; listen to music and dance; play cards. Summer nights up there just keep going ––– well past midnight.

My favorite thing that I’ve seen at the Oval so far happened this past Wednesday night. I was having Chinese takeout on one of the park benches that surrounds the elevated walking path (which surrounds the track) when a teenaged boy in a black t-shirt and black sweatpants raced by on a Citibike. Yes, a royal blue Citibike, which he was really laying into, pedaling with a quickness and lunging forward with intention.

Just after he passed me he stood up on the bike’s pedals as he approached the ridge that separated the walking path from the rest of the park below. It was clear that he had fashioned the Citibike into a BMX bike, not because he made any changes to the bike’s frame, but because of what happened next: he sat back down on the bike’s seat, popped a wheelie, jumped the ridge, hung in the air for a few beats, then rode the bike ––– with force and with speed –––– all the way down the hill to the track below.

- Isaac Myers III