13 Going on 30 | Empire–Fulton Ferry, DUMBO — The Walk Under the Bridge

The quietest scene in the film happens on the Brooklyn waterfront, at 26 New Dock Street, on the strip of shoreline then known as Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park. Jenna and Matt walk by the East River with the Manhattan Bridge overhead and Manhattan itself laid out across the water — close enough to touch, far enough to look at properly. After ninety minutes of billboards and magazine parties, the movie finally lets her stand still.

In 2003 this was a small state park hemmed in by nineteenth-century warehouses and not much else. DUMBO was still turning from industry into neighbourhood. Since 2010 the land has been folded into Brooklyn Bridge Park, so the lawn is bigger, the paths are paved, Jane's Carousel sits in its glass pavilion nearby and the cobblestones fill with photographers most evenings.

The frame the film used is unchanged in the way that matters: the bridge, the water, the skyline behind it.

Come after dark. Every few minutes a subway crosses the Manhattan Bridge above you and the whole structure hums like distant weather. Jenna gets her real life back in New Jersey, but she works out what she wants standing here.