For 12-year-old Lito Thomas and his friends, the best route between Mott Haven and their favorite park is a pair of 30-yard long concrete slabs over the Bronx Kill tidal creek.
A mere 50 feet and a creek away from the Bronx, the park on Randalls Island has long had access problems.
One way to make the trek is a pedestrian walkway on the Triborough Bridge towering overhead. And there's a bus that connects with another bus in Harlem.
But for quick access to the park's green fields, nothing beats the two slabs, origin unknown, that lead to a hole sawed in a wrought iron fence.
"The bridge takes too long," said Lito. "Everybody comes through the fence."
The park lures borough residents with 27 baseball diamonds, seven soccer fields, a miniature golf course, two batting cages, two playgrounds and Downing Stadium.
Jesse Owens won a 100-yard dash here en route to the Olympic gold in 1936 and in 1970 Jimmy Hendrix kissed the sky and electrified a summer crowd.
While the pedestrian walkway was conceived as a convenience, it isn't.
Using the walkway takes about half an hour, said Wanda Ramon as she poked through the fence bound for a favorite fishing spot. "I just live five minutes from here if I come this way," she said.
Ken Smith, an adjunct professor of landscape architecture at City College who has studied the park, said the walkway can feel isolated.
"It's not pleasant," he said.
Smith's study recommended that footbridges be built to connect the borough to the island. "These kind of bridges would not be very expensive," he said. "They would only have to cross a relatively short span."
City officials said improving links between the borough and the park is critical, but not simple.
The city has allocated $20 million for the first phase of a $250 million improvement project for the island that began this month. A Parks Department spokesman said budget cuts have not affected the project, which also will involve private investors.
A problem still to be resolved is the future of the 96-acre rail yard through which residents now trek to get to the slab link to the island.
"Up until a few weeks ago the Harlem River Yard was going to be a rail yard and possibly a de-inking factory," said Kevin Wolfe, the city architect for the improvement project.
On March 11 a state Supreme Court justice canceled a developer's lease on the state-owned property.
"Access through that would be great as long as you didn't have to climb over box cars," said Wolfe. "We would love to do something quick and easy, but we can't until the fate of the river yard is determined."
Until then, Ramon and her husband, Miguel, will keep climbing through to the hole in the fence with their fishing poles, to cast for striped bass and bluefish. And Lito and his friends will keep shouldering their bikes to squeeze through the narrow gap in the fence that is their gateway to the island's beckoning 273 acres.