NYC from the Rear-Gunner Seat of a 1943 Stearman Biplane

Abristol bulldog-style biplane executes a full barrel roll over the Verrazano, and my teeth try to break one another, my stomach tenses and I'm too afraid and exhilarated to exhale. It occurs to me that I've been a philistine my entire life. I've flown before, in jets even, and I've stared out the window numbly at geometric swaths of farm or series of lit circuitry, attempting to convince myself that I'm impressed by the grandeur of America's geographical tapestry. It's hard to appreciate the technological marvel and human improbability of flight when air travel is a mundane fact-of-the-matter, another way of traversing distance. Now that flight is ordinary, it makes roughly as much sense to marvel at the splendor of cars and trains.

But I'm in the rear-gunner seat of a 1943 Stearman biplane, painted an hilarious blue and yellow and flipping upside down at a terrifyingly languid speed, about a thousand feet above ice-cold water and certain death. I'm strapped down across my shoulders and waist, all the belts sealed tight with a heavy metal buckle, and above my leather-helmeted head is nothing but sky. The plane's two seats are open-cockpitted, and there's a meager windshield shooting as much breeze as possible away from my face. As the plane straightens out, I let my breath out at last, chest heaving, eyes widened even as the wind makes them tear.

I didn't think I'd be impressed, but on the plane I'm mumbling stupid things like "wow" and "incredible" in a little baby voice. It later occurs to me to be embarrassed, since my captain, Dominic Del Rosso, can hear me through the radio tube near my mouth. I sound like an idiot and can't believe I'm as awed as I am?it's a plane ride, simply that. But I can stick my hands outside of the plane and giggle like a fool. It is the greatest thing that I've ever done.

Del Rosso's flown the Stearman since 1976, using the name "Blue Baron" since 1991. A tough and friendly flight addict, he's dressed impeccably, like if Bob Guccione Sr. were an Elvis impersonator. Big gold eagle hanging across his chest. For $165, he'll fly you out of central New Jersey's tiny Marlboro Airport?a grassy field surrounded by the hangars of mostly noncommercial flyers?to the Statue of Liberty. It's a trip you need to take if you live in New York City. I've lived in Brooklyn my entire life, and occasionally find myself hating New York with the same sort of petulant resentment toward the place where I grew up that people in the suburbs feel toward their dead-end towns. Brooklyn can be nice, yes. Well, Prospect Park is nice; Coney Island Ave. leading the way to the park isn't so nice. Grand Army Plaza's some spectacle. The Flatbush Junction isn't. For some reason there are parrots in Flatbush and Midwood. Wow. What can impress you? Manhattan? I've been there.

Now swoop at 1100 feet over the Verrazano, and watch a square mile of Brooklyn all at once. The sprawling Belt Pkwy. at the bottom, spreading out along the rim of the island?goddamn! Strands of hair that escaped from my helmet are whipping my eyes, which open enough to see the shipyards lining the end of Sunset Park, and as we fly on I can see crumbling orange brick and minuscule billboards, all interrupted by the burst of green Prospect Park. My neck hurts from looking at such a sharp angle, and I whimper "wow" a few more times. I straighten out to be comfortable and all of a sudden I see Manhattan.

I swear I wanted to cry. At our height Manhattan comes at you as a panorama, with huge financial-district buildings guarding the entrance to the city. I stared the district in the eye; only the Twin Towers were above me. We glided over the west side, me babbling my appreciation and craning my neck to see the highway and the tops of concrete structures I've walked through and up, Dominic laughing to himself a static-inflected giggle, having seen my reaction from hundreds of other passengers.

I felt free is what it was. And New York looked beautiful?streets that curve off in curious directions, clusters of homes and plots of land designated for commercial areas all arose because people developed patterns of behavior across hundreds of years and somehow a city arranged itself to suit its people, however imperfectly. Manhattan makes a lot of sense, especially when parts of it jut out, park meeting building, mixing like oil and water. See it all at once. If you live here, you owe it to yourself.

We hammerheaded, tipping the plane up 45 degrees and sweeping downward, turning back to New Jersey. I twisted my head left now and looked at New York in reverse, commuting home. I looked at the water for a long time and emerged from my transfixion to see a verdant clump of land with lots of baseball diamonds. I asked Dominic what it was. "That's Staten Island," he told me, and then suddenly he pulled the plane up and I went through the same tension?total cessation of breathing, tight body, terror.

"Whoops!" he hollered, flipping the plane over twice. "Where'd it go!"