For years I’ve ridden the N or Q train into Times Square from Brooklyn, across the Manhattan Bridge, which provides one of the greatest cheap visual feasts in America. For the price of a ride you’re suspended 135 feet above the city, looking out the windows to the southwest across the mouth of the East River toward the choiring strings of the Brooklyn Bridge and, far beyond, the brilliant oxidized green of the Statue of Liberty. In an illusion created by the perspective of the moving subway car, she appears to be gliding along the deck of the bridge — the world’s most famous hunk of French neo-Classicism, disco skating backward into Manhattan.

As the train makes its way, you yourself have the feeling of being threaded into the thicket of skyscrapers at the foot of the island. Then going home the process runs in reverse. The big lady moves forward across the bridge this time, seeming to return wearily to Brooklyn just as you are, lighting the way with her lamp. The relentless grid of Manhattan releases you into other-borough airiness. And on still nights you’re awarded the lovely bonus of the Brooklyn Bridge reflected limpidly in the surface of the river, which looks like a ballroom floor made of polished glass.