Everyone’s perception and emphasis on how we see places are different. You can go online to learn about a certain place, look the place up on a map, or talk to people who know about the place. However, these measures will not suffice if one seeks the fulfillment that can only be achieved from personally visiting a place. Famous writer Walker Percy emphasized that seeing and experiencing things first hand gives you a different kind of fulfillment and satisfaction. He says that when tourists see a famous place or a famous landmark, it is not “the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the preformed symbolic complex (Percy, 2011)” that is given much emphasis. This means that if you have a preset image of a place in mind before you visit this place, whether it’s from online pictures, travel brochures, then there is a tendency that your preconceptions might influence your perspective of a certain place. When you finally visit the place, you tend to compare your expectations to the actual place and could then result to a false appreciation of the place (Percy, 2011). In order to avoid this, a person must avoid going to a place with other people’s opinions about it in order for him to personally perceive it from one’s perspective in order to heighten one’s firsthand experience.

            Take the Brooklyn Bridge, for example. It may be a familiar route for commuting to work between Brooklyn and Manhattan but for me, it is a great building that combines the magnificent vicissitudes of classical and modern architecture. Before I visited the Brooklyn Bridge, I didn’t know its history yet but I already had a preset picture in my mind about it because of all that I have heard about it from other people and through the internet. This picture is beautiful because I saw many photos and posters of the bridge on Instagram and mine has presented it in a unique way. The way that people have recognized the Brooklyn Bridge has made me appreciate it even more because it made me wonder what was so special about it. Through this, I delved deeper and I was able to actually appreciate it better, too, knowing how useful it is and how significant of a landmark it is for the city. At this moment, the Brooklyn bridge was like a web celebrity place for me and it is a place I simply had to visit.

            When the architects conceived the design of the bridge, in addition to the roadway, they also wanted a sidewalk so that residents on both sides of the east river could walk across the bridge and enjoy the riverside scenery along the way. Thus, the bridge deck is divided into two parts: the lower floor is for vehicles, the and the upper deck is for pedestrians and bicycles. However, there are usually a lot of people walking but a few bikes, so pedestrians sometimes occupy the bike path. At this time, an unpleasant drama begins. Some cyclists start shouting “watch out! Damn it!”, shouting some rude words. At this moment, the painters’ work was blocked, the pedestrians had no room to walk, the cyclists complained of the traffic, and the people who were taking pictures fidgeted with the bad background behind them. But this was only for a few minutes; then the chaos cleared itself up; the pedestrians stepped forward as usual, and girls are back to posing for their Instagram pictures.

My appreciation of the Brooklyn Bridge started when I visited New York for the first time. It was a hot summer day in August and I had the opportunity to visit the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time with a friend from St. Louis. Brooklyn Bridge is so different from other famous New York attractions because it is set apart by the history that accompanies its grandeur. Attractions such as the Empire State Building is a place high into the clouds which offers a view of New York but there are also other attractions that can make me see New York from above such as the Rockefeller Center or the World Trade Center. These iconic places didn’t impress my friend because they are already had very common attractions from where he was. However, the Brooklyn Bridge is set apart because it allows you to appreciate the city from ground level.

When we stepped out from the subway line 6’s Brooklyn Bridge station, the first thing we saw was the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge. We walked to the bridgehead where there is a significant bronze medal on the wall which recorded the time and event of the bridge’s construction. A bronze medal commemorated the workers that gave their lives to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. It also commemorated the designer of the bridge, Roebling, who had to have his toes cut off after they were crushed during construction. Roebling’s toes had to be amputated which led to tetanus. He was dead shortly after and his son Washington Roebling then took over the construction of the bridge. Without standing under the bridgehead, we wouldn’t know the story behind it and it would be hard to imagine the majesty and grandeur of these two behemoths made of 6,500 cubic meters of cement which looms over people and makes them realize that man can actually create beautiful infrastructure from scratch. However, I believe that our preconceptions of Brooklyn Bridge have really influenced our views regarding its majesty and grandeur.

That day, as I slowly walked on the Brooklyn Bridge, I was filled with holy reverence. The Brooklyn Bridge in August is a season filled with many tourists. I felt so overwhelmed by the noisy crowd around me which contributed to my dissatisfaction. But when I look up at the towers on the bridge, I was overwhelmed by their height. It is the first bridge that joined the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Two gothic bridge towers and four main cables supported the whole deck. Its construction began in the 1860s and it took 14 years to complete the project. From then on, the towers and steel cables have offered safe and scenic passage to millions of commuters and tourists, trains, bicycles, and cars.

As I strolled on the bridge, I bathed in the harsh sunshine and the blowing breeze brought the taste of the ocean and slight coolness to me which slowly drifted into every corner of the bridge. As far as I can see, there were many vendors on the deck, I saw a man standing by a blue and white picnic cooler, mopping his brow, cheeks and neck with a towel and then hanging it on his left shoulder before crying out, “Water one dollar.” We stopped and bought 2 bottles of water. There were also many painters, they put their hard work on the bridge to show everyone that passes by, but no one bought it.

These chaotic scenes led me to wonder whether our preconceptions of the bridge have already influenced our impression of it that day. Percy explained how one had lost an experience through various symbolic complexes which is the preconception you have before visiting the place, and by means of trying to achieve that experience through this preconception. In my case, the beautiful pictures of the bridge on Instagram I saw are what Percy says to be the “symbolic complex that has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind”. However, I don’t think he was entirely right. I wasn’t all that influenced by the preconceptions I had, and I didn’t come to the bridge with a desire to try to make situations measure up to the symbolic complex. The Brooklyn Bridge I observed is very different; my encounter with the bridge so far are not like people stated on Instagram “like a dream” or “amazing”. I saw the details, the points that nobody cared about such as the carefully thought out structure and the strong foundation of the bridge except the towering grandeur of the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, the scenes I experienced were like a microcosm of life because it is trivial, but everywhere, this is a vicissitude bridge.

I continued to tread carefully on the boardwalk, I felt the vibrations generated by the fast cars below me, it made my legs shake a little, and I was afraid if I dropped my phone while taking pictures. This led me to question the stability of the bridge, but then when I did some research on the bridge, I found this fun the fact that I thought was funny: “On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum led 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge to prove that it was stable (Percy, 2011).” On the bicycle lane’s side, there were padlocks that seemed to be put and locked on the fence. People write their names and ages on locks and attach them to structures. Most of them are recent, which makes me disappointed. I wanted them to be older as if they witnessed the Brooklyn Bridge story. It seemed to have the same purpose as the headphones, like a promise.

Compared with other bridges such as the Golden Gate Bridge with its golden glory and brightness, the taupe Brooklyn bridge is low-key and seems slightly sad. It is more somber, blunter and hard; those towers of stone do not laugh, and neither do the steel cables in their exquisite, lyrical webbed pattern. It is full of stories, full of legends and reminds me of the classic movie “Once Upon a Time in America”. The story starts here and ends there. Some people say that “Once Upon a Time in America” with a length of a film, accommodated all the dreams of a man: love, career, family, friendship, and so on. The Brooklyn Bridge, however, has become the starting and ending point of this dream. I don’t know if the film makes the Brooklyn Bridge more vicissitudes of life or vice versa, or they are the cause and effect of each other. What I am sure of is the fact that the Brooklyn Bridge may appear as a symbol of foundation for the stability of the country as was depicted in the film.

With the story of “Once Upon a Time in America,” we began to turn back. The golden sun slowly sets over the New York bay; it is exciting to stand on the board of the bridge and look at the Atlantic Ocean in the distance. All that remains are the quiet beauty; the incisively and vividly displayed Brooklyn Bridge. It’s like life in miniature, the culture and spirit of New York are all in full view here.  Because The 1880s were the beginning of the modern New York of skyscrapers and mass immigration, of explosive growth and intense creativity, and the Brooklyn Bridge is the embodiment of that age’s spirit. It unites different elements of society. You only have to come here to feel the charm, the quiet peace and its different beauty. The Brooklyn Bridge stands firmly in there no matter when, sunny or rainy days, early morning or evening, or through the unchanged vicissitudes of history. But then I thought of the chaotic scene on the bridge I began to smile. Life can be like the Brooklyn Bridge, charming and vicissitudes merge, full of unknown and trivial things is what makes it interesting.

Works Cited

Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature” Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay. Ed.

            Ephemeral New York, https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/the-  elephants-that-tested-the-new-brooklyn-bridge/.