I'm not having a good time! I miss all the faces that would be rushing at me in the crowded streets. I'm starting to get that ominous sense of emptiness, the one that comes on me in other cities, where the dense urban web starts to thin out-like the warehouse district of Los Angeles, or the border between Houston's downtown and its ship channel-and suddenly there aren't enough buildings or color to support a walk for pleasure, and I'm thrown in on myself, that worm! that bluffer! that emotional disappointment to his friends and family, leaving them always feeling hungry, or judged. There'd better be something interesting looming up ahead, or I'll have to do a number on myself. That funny truck mounted on the roof of a onestory building, a species of folk art? No, nothing much there. The place where they make H8cH bagels? So what? Hey, look at that weird sign on the World Yacht gate: DINNER AND BRUNCH CRUISES. Whoever heard of a brunch cruise? The problem with writing a walk down is that the details are infinite, therefore not worth pursuing. As the poet Louise Gluck said: "We have made of the infinite a topic. But there isn't, it turns out, much to say about it." At Pier 94, "The Unconvention Center," they are shooting an episode of Law & Order. Lots of actors dressed as cops stand about tensely. An empty canvasback chair reads: Jerry Orbach. The star is nowhere in sight. I remember seeing him recently at a bistro in TriBeCa, looking frail, sitting with a young admirer. After contemplating his memory, I'm thrown back on myself: you fraud, you dope, you don't know anything. Ah, but maybe it's not my fault, maybe it's because there really isnt a continuous path for walkers along the riverfront. The promise is in the air, but the reality is decades away. So I'm trying to make a coherent experience out of something that isn't one yet. All these pathetic little bike paths and dog runs that give out suddenly after three blocks. These makeshift "walkway" arrows that point you around a construction site, or the DAN GERPRIVATE PROPERTYKEEP OUT signs. If you would walk the waterfront, you have to do it in the spirit of a trespasser: follow the legal pedestrian route until it becomes ambiguous, or the sidewalk disappears, and you find yourself in noman'sland, dodging eye contact with the occasional workman who might shoo you away, or the derelict who might importune you for a handout-perfectly fine, under ordinary circumstances, but it bothers you now since you feel so illegitimate yourself. In any case, I tell myself, it's not my fault, I'm not a bad person, there are objective, tangible reasons for my malaise. NOTHING MUCH TO SAY about this mostly forlorn stretch of waterfront along the West Fifties, until I come to West 59th Street, where a marine transfer station is being reestablished to ship the city's garbage someplace else. The transfer station is graced with a wacky Greek temple portal, designed by Richard Dattner, and neonlit by artist Steven Antonakos, that tries a touch too hard to be playful, but at least it tries.