Jack Kerouac’s On the Road ends, rather sadly, as Sal/Jack looks over the Hudson River in Chelsea and thinks of Dean/Neal heading west. He writes:
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old brokendown river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unblievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it… I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.
The “brokendown river pier,” just west of Kerouac and his wife Joan’s apartment at 454 W 20th St, is no longer a dodgy spot where you’d think twice of walking past a loner lost in thought by the water. Renovated pier walkways with manicured lawns are filled, on nice days, with joggers, skaters, bikers, picnickers and dog-walkers. Even if you don’t like the book, it’s one of the city’s greatest spots to sit and watch that ball of fire drop over Jersey.
Last year I wrote about On the Road sites for Lonely Planet.
