K.B.SKOBAC BLOG: The High Line Curse (the Ghost of the High Line)

6.23.2009

The High Line Curse (the Ghost of the High Line)

This weekend Angela and I made it over to the High Line park - a brand new park built on the old high line tracks high above the ground. The park runs right now from Gansevoort Street & Washington to 20th street & 10th Avenue, but it will eventually run all of the way up to the end of the tracks on 34th Street. The history of the park is pretty cool:

The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan's largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park.

Even on a rainy day the High Line was filled, and like everyone else I'm pretty excited about it. People were lounging in the chairs built right out of the rails and the overlook that hangs right out over 10th avenue. The view out onto Hudson River is nice as well.

BUT, we may never get to enjoy the park without grey clouds and rain, because it turns out the High Line is cursed. According to Train Jotting blog, the ghost of the West Side Cowboy, who himself died falling from the Train tracks in 1934, came to visit the pioneers of the High Line 2 years ago in a dream threatening that "he’d make it rain every day if the place of his death was trampled upon by the masses." Pretty much every day since the park has opened there has been rain, and the forecast for as far as the weather forecast goes says there will be rain as well. As long as people are happily climbing their way up to the park in the sky, will we ever have sunny skies?

(by the way, how much more am I impressed with the legendary West Side Cowboy from the 1930's than I am of the Naked Cowboy that romes Times Square today?)