New ferry links trendy and traditional Brooklyn neighborhoods

Eye on Real Estate: Bay Ridge has ferry service for the first time since the 1990s

June 14, 2017 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Bay Ridge residents can now sail off into the setting sun on NYC Ferry's new service. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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Trendy and traditional.

On the new NYC Ferry, they’re only 19 minutes apart.

That’s how long it takes Bay Ridge residents to get to Pioneer Works, the Red Hook cultural center where all the cool people hang out.

Or 42 minutes, which is how long the ferry trip takes from Bay Ridge to Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Right next to the dock there’s an art installation called “Descension,” which is a mysterious whirlpool designed by famed artist Anish Kapoor.

NYC Ferry’s new Bay Ridge service, which launched on June 1, also stops at Sunset Park and Wall Street’s Pier 11 and goes to Governors Island on summer weekends.

This is the first time since the 1990s that there has been ferry service from Bay Ridge’s 69th Street Pier.

It’s a game changer for Bay Ridge residents who want to do trendy Brooklyn stuff without spending a fortune on Uber (taxis are hard to find in our neighborhood) or languishing on the R train.
We live in Bay Ridge. We love Bay Ridge — every square inch of it, from the famed Gingerbread House to the deli where we buy our daily newspapers.

But if we had to give our neighborhood a label, we would call it traditional.

Now, when we want a touch of trendiness in our lives, it’s a fast $2.75 ferry ride away.

Riding the subway from Bay Ridge to trendy neighborhoods can be wearying, especially on the weekends when the R train is sooo slow.

To get to Red Hook, besides the R train ride, there’s a switch to the F train plus a 20-minute walk to the shoreline.

To get to DUMBO, besides an R train ride that theoretically takes 40 minutes but in reality often takes much longer, there’s either a long wait for the F train or a 15-minute walk to the neighborhood.

A scenic ride before sunset

Of course when we want to spend the whole day doing entertaining things in Red Hook or DUMBO, we’ll hop on the ferry in the morning.

But the most photogenic time of day for a voyage along the Brooklyn shoreline is right before sunset.

We tried out this scenic cruise the other day, when the weather was good.

The evening sunlight made Brooklyn Army Terminal’s gold-hued facades glow as our ferry docked in Sunset Park.

The boat followed the shoreline of Red Hook fairly closely, so we got an eyeful of iconic Civil War-era warehouses and Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier.

Even a dark-bricked modern building whose tenant is a Snapple distributor looked picturesque. A mural painted on part of it cast a reflection on the water. By the way, as we recently reported, the building is part of a $105 million, multi-property purchase by Sitex Group, which specializes in industrial real estate.

The ferry glided past gantry cranes into Red Hook’s Atlantic Basin and docked near the Mary A. Whalen, a decommissioned oil tanker that’s now a museum and floating cultural center.

Then the boat headed for the dock at Pier 6, where Brooklyn Bridge Park’s new Flower Field is located.

As we sailed along the shoreline of Brooklyn Bridge Park, flashes of sunshine reflected off the windows of condo building One Brooklyn Bridge Park and Brooklyn Heights apartment houses.

Finally, as the ferry swung towards the dock at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1, to those of us on the boat’s upper deck, it looked like the sun was setting right behind the World Trade Center. That proud tower was such a fine sight to see.