How To Play Golf in New York City: East River Bikeway Edition

Golf. You'd be surprised at how accessible it is from the island of Manhattan. One of my favoritest routes to get to golf is the one that runs along the shore of the East River and down the entire "Loisaida" (that's local-slang for "Lower East Side", you honky) to the doorstep of the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

FIR, Fringe in Regulation

Things are looking up for your old pal. I was half-watching some local tube on the YES (Yankees' Entertainment and Sports) Network the other night and just about had my mind blown out when a commercial for the Silver Lake Golf Course came on. Not just to see my regular course splashed all over the TV screen, but also to find out the course has launched a free shuttle service to and from the ferry terminal.

The Weekend Runaround

A flurry of activity lately. Weather's been hitting the sweet spot lately--around 40º with windchills. That's about the line that separates the hobbyists and the truly afflicted. This is what I've waited all year for, right? Time to get out there and get it, by train, bus or boat.

Inching towards summer's end

I am now in full longing for cooler weather and all the goodness it brings to golf courses everywhere. I now daydream about beanie hats and long sleeves; about saying "F off" to the sunscreen, bermuda shorts, all the thrice-a-year golfers that gum up the works during peak season.

Still, we are talking about clinical addiction here. As much I'd like to blow the whole thing off until around October, needs must be met. So it's back to Silver Lake.

Stuck in the mud

The happy roadtrip times are over. I am back in the city to ride out the dog days of summer. The weather has been unsettlingly cool this year, yet the deep summer blahs are still in full effect. At this point I feel like I'm only playing to fill a need, to avoid the withdrawals. To get back to zero.

Hanging out in the local scene

It had to happen. I've been playing at Silver Lake with some regularity now, and sooner or later I was bound to start mixing in with the locals. When I first discovered this course it was late fall, and I played largely on my own, zipping in and out in a matter of a couple of hours, almost wholly unnoticed for the most part. But now it's peak season and there's a lot of people out there and it has become more apparent that this is a locals-heavy place. You certainly don't see many high falutin' Manhattan folk like myself on this island, so it's probably best that I make an effort to blend in without rocking the proverbial boat.

Progress

The tee-time deals have cooled off a bit now that the weather's gone all hot and nasty, but I'm still surprised at what we're getting away with over here. The cost-of-everything is going up all the time isn't it? But I'm glad to report that my golf expenses lately are down to circa-2006 levels. I pushed my way through some massive tourist-herds on the ferry and made it across the water to Silver Lake.

Summer on Staten Island

It's been over a month since I've been on Staten Island. A nice tee time deal and some threats of bad weather made for an obvious choice for a quick round. I'm still new to this place so it'll be my first time playing here in summer conditions.

Walk or Ride?

Once upon a time this blog was launched, with the loose objective of discussing "your game, my game, the pro game, etc" but lately it's been falling into a sinkhole of self-referentiality. Don't worry I know.

I'm sorry. There's nothing else I can do. I can only go where the inspiration is and right now my own tail-spinning game is completely dominating my worldview. Besides aren't we all kind of realizing at this point that the golf blogsophere is already plenty full of redundant crap, unsurprising opinions, stories about stories, SEO-baiting cut-and-paste jobs and so on. At least my redundant crap is original. And untainted by corporate or advertising filth of any kind, not yet. Anyways I'm sure we'll get back to covering some golf-related ephemera soon enough. It's all a cycle.

Ghetto Golf, vol. 7: Silver Lake GC, Staten Island

Bye, home. See you in a few.

I've been in New York City for over a decade; I've been a NYC golfer since 2005. Yet in all that time, like a lot of Manhattanites, I've never set foot on the island known as Staten; never had a reason to. (After a while this becomes a weird, snobbish point of pride--never been there, never will!) Despite what the NYC transit map inaccurately depicts, it's not that close to Manhattan, and then there's that forbidding $13 toll charge if you want to cross the Verrazano Bridge by car.

But last week after the Brooklyn Open had finished, I was waiting at the bus stop in front of Marine Park when a tournament volunteer saw my clubs and struck up a conversation. He asked if I had ever played in Staten Island, and sang the praises of one of the courses there, Silver Lake. What's more, he claimed, getting there by ferry from either Brooklyn or Manhattan was quick and easy, even more so than the trip to Marine Park which, let's face it, is closer to the Atlantic Ocean than to actual New York City proper. Even for a lot of Brooklynites on the opposite edge of town, the trip to MPGC is forbiddingly long.