NY Mysteries August 22, 2020

Clamping = camping  + glamour. 

On Friday, A friend and I clamped on GOVERNORS ISLAND. We took the twelve noon five second ferry from the Maritime Building at the Battery along with ten million bikes and children, landed at Soissons and trotted south around the island. We passed Castle Williams (closed) and Half-Moon Battery (closed).  After we walked around the southeast corner near Buttermilk Channel, we came upon Collective Governors tent city !!!!  After gawking at the tents and peering at the double bed in the single tent rooms, we looked at one another: Could we, should we, dare we enter these hallowed grounds? The answer is evident. One of us was a native New Yorker and the other was a real estate agent. The employees at the entrance couldn’t have been more welcoming. We decided to have lunch and were escorted to a tent with an open view of New York Harbor. So Laurence of Arabia. Perfect luncheon of Rockefeller oysters, watermelon salad, flatbread and lots of beer. We politely snickered at the thought that our fellow diners (seniors, white and Asian) were paying close to $700 a day for the pleasure of bragging rights that you slept in a tent on Governors Island – or attempted to. The Ladies Rooms were across a gravel yard, past a fence opening, up a ramp and voilà, you had arrived at three little bathroom/shower combos with a sweet little vanity table. After, we circled around to the Soissons land and caught the three p.m. ferry back to Manhattan.