Cowbells. In Brooklyn. Really?
Over the years, I’ve come to associate the sound of cowbells mainly with one of two things. Cows. In Switzerland. And ski races. On TV.
Cows, from when I was a child and would lie awake at night in bed with the window open during summer months. Cows grazing on hillside meadows near our house. Ski races, from when I walk into rooms with TVs blaring, ski races streaming. Fans cheering on slalomists, giant slalomsits, super giant slalomists, and downhill racers. On cows, the sound is, solid, steady, stable; quite calming, really. On TV, it’s more frenetic, frenzied, cacophonous; the opposite of calming.
But cowbells in Brooklyn? Indeed.
Their sound is perhaps the last thing I expected to encounter while going for a walk in Prospect Park this rainy Sunday afternoon. But then again, little did I know that today was the Brooklyn marathon. Taking place just two weeks after the widely publicized NYC marathon (which attracted about 50’000 runners this year), the Brooklyn marathon is an almost private affair with just 500 runners and limited entirely to Prospect Park. But what the run may lack in numbers, it made up for in boisterousness. A persistent, dull clanging of bells—somewhere in between that of the calming cows and frenzying ski fans—rang through the park, spurring on spent marathoners as they embarked upon their third, fourth, fifth, and sixth loops around the park. Running on, by way of cowbells.