Couples dip under the Boardwalk for privacy, cool shade and slats of light, sliced by the shadows of passersby and the squeak of stroller wheels and the slap of running sneakers.
The Skyway is too high to offer intimate shelter, much of it’s hulking footprint and shadow is off-limits to passersby, and the complexity of its interlocking black steel beams can’t challenge the Boardwalk for romance.
You have to stand right under the Skyway to contemplate its size, its age, and its looming industrial severity. It rules its alien turf, which is neither urban nor suburban; it defines that turf, serves as compass and spirit and motionless monster bestriding the industrial prairie.
Under the Skyway stands one of New Jersey’s most distinctively situated diners, the Skyway Diner.
The first picture was taken in a parking area for the diner directly under the Skyway’s vertiginous roadways.
The second picture looks out from the diner to the tribe of trucks always parked there, with the Skyway in the background.
More Skyway pix Wednesay.