East River Park

Sara D. Roosevelt Park isn't the only place where I spotted "snow soccer" this winter. East River Park lies in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge—or the "Willy B" as NY1's irrepressibly adorable traffic reporter Jamie Shupak calls it—on the Manhattan side:



Everything's been pretty solidly snowed in since the post-Christmas blizzard and the additional pile-ons that followed:



But life always goes on in the form of dog-walking, doesn't it?



And while these folks, unlike the organized teams at Sara D. Roosevelt, may not have had a cleared field, or enough people for a real game, or the right clothes, or even a soccer ball—no, I think they did actually have a ball—here they still were. Go USA!



The roots of East River Park go back to Robert Moses and the construction of the FDR Drive. Because of the intervening highway and the long, thin shape, it's surprising to learn that this park covers 57 acres. In addition to ballfields and walks and lawns and playgrounds, it has an amphitheater which in the 1950s hosted concerts, Shakespeare plays, and even Ancient Greek drama, became decrepit during the bad old decades that followed, but was rebuilt a few years ago and is being used again in summer.