Williamsburg is the neighbourhood that changed the most and wears it openly: the factories are shops now, the waterfront is a park, and the river that used to carry sugar carries commuters. Three and a half kilometres from the L train down to the water and along it.
Start on Bedford Avenue, the spine — the shops and cafés and record stores that the name is shorthand for. Then cut west, where the brick turns industrial and the old warehouses have become galleries and music rooms. Keep going to the river and Domino Park, built in the shadow of the Havemeyer sugar refinery, its brick hulk left standing on purpose. Walk the gantry path with the skyline straight across the water.
The NYC Ferry pier is here if you want the East River properly. And on a Saturday, Smorgasburg fills the lawn just north — dozens of food stalls and the river behind them, though only on the weekend, so time it.
End inland at Marcy Avenue, up on the elevated tracks under the bridge approach. The J runs over the rooftops here, which is the right way to leave.
