" It's the old story of the grassroots local organization that attaches itself like a barnacle to neglected public land and performs a service no one else will, only to be endangered when the whole area becomes desirable. For the moment, the River Project and the Hudson River Park Trust are playing a catandmouse game with each other, which could go on for years. THE S О H ОGREENWICH VILLAGE CORRIDOR And our landscape came to be as it is today: Partially out of focus, some of it too near, the middle distance A haven of serenity and unreachable. . . . -JOHN ASHBERY, "A Wave" I AM WALKING ALONG THE NEW HUDSON RLVER PARK. SOMEONE RUNS BY ME. I HAVE TO SAY THERE'S NOTHING SO UNPLEASANT AS THAT SLIGHT BREEZE BEHIND YOUR EAR OF A BIKER or runner overtaking you: you have no warning, and then you flinch, and feel like a fool for being so terrified. It's assumed, incorrectly, that bikeway or running tracks are also congenial to walkers; in fact, we are class enemies. ОНО village corridor 69 т и £ Hudson River Park has so far proven a godsend to bicyclists, joggers, d dogtrotters. It may not, I think, have the same appeal to recreational 4 alkers like myself who, staring into the face of oncoming headlights, can ever relax, never escape the sense of a jangling, if not scary, experience. Advancing in the face of oncoming traffic is never a pleasant experience, s it is hard to turn off your fear reflex. For the bicyclist, already vehicled, the car seems to be a friendly cousin, while for those morning runners high on pheromones, energy is eternal delight-they can match their speed with and even surpass the sluggish New York traffic; but for the walker, the sensation is something like the retreat from Dunkirk: trying to flee a battle while the enemy artillery keeps rolling in. Hudson River Park, that outdoor temple of physical culture, has been designed as essentially a transit corridor; perhaps because the land available for a park is so thin, there was no other choice than a transit corridor. Watching the weekend joggers, Rollerbladers, and bicyclists exercising in the waterfront park around SoHo and Greenwich Village, however, I am increasingly bored and uneasy, until I realize why I am more drawn to the center of the island. It's that in the streets you see New Yorkers in their most purposeful, urgent aspect, their presentation of self is dramatic or at least emphatic, they are navigating from one compelling situation to another-between work, say, and going to the doctor or picking up the kids-and if their faces hold the burden of being overwhelmed with all they have to do in the next twentyfour hours, you also sense their pride, or at least workaday stoicism, which is the genus loci of this particular city. Whereas at leisure they could be anywhere-Spokane, North Carolina, Sydney. On a Sunday in the park, their placid, selfcontented faces are emptied of content, save perhaps the strain of jogging one more halfmile, to burn off another centimeter of fat.