Bay Ridge Gets the Runners First
Most of the city experiences the marathon as something on television until it arrives on their block. Bay Ridge does not have that luxury. The TCS New York City Marathon starts on Staten Island, and the very first thing the field does is cross the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which comes down on this side of the Narrows. Before the race has reached any other neighborhood in any other borough, it is here.
In 2026 that happens on Sunday, November 1. The runners come off the bridge at Dahlgren Place, work east through 92nd Street and Bay Ridge Parkway, and then turn north onto Fourth Avenue, which carries them up through the length of the neighborhood and on toward the rest of Brooklyn. The course changed slightly this year, but the change is a stretch of about a mile up in the Bronx. The Brooklyn section is the one Bay Ridge has known for decades.
The timing is worth understanding, because it is the thing that catches people out. The first wheelchair athletes leave Staten Island at 8 AM. The last mass wave does not go until 11:30 AM. The fastest runners are on Brooklyn pavement within about twenty minutes of their start. Put those together and you get a morning that begins early, peaks late, and keeps producing runners into the early afternoon. Anyone who shows up at noon assuming they missed it has not.
What Closes, and When
This is the part that determines your whole day, so it is worth reading before you make a plan that depends on a car. According to the city's published closure and no-parking notice for the 2026 race, the following streets in and around Bay Ridge are closed from 7 AM to 6:30 PM on Sunday, November 1:
- Dahlgren Place, between the Verrazzano Bridge and 92nd Street
- 92nd Street, between Dahlgren Place and Fourth Avenue
- Bay Ridge Parkway, between Seventh Avenue and Fourth Avenue
- Fourth Avenue, between 94th Street and Flatbush Avenue
The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge itself is listed as closed from 7 AM to 4 PM. The same notice carries no-parking restrictions, which means a car left overnight on one of those blocks is not reachable by the time you want it.
The practical consequence is simple: Fourth Avenue becomes a wall running north and south through the neighborhood for most of the day. Getting from the waterfront side to the Third Avenue side on foot means using a police crossing point and waiting your turn. Getting there by car is not a plan. If you have anywhere to be on the far side of the course, the answer is to walk, start early, and accept that you will stand still for a few minutes at some point.
Closure times get adjusted. Read the city notice and the NYRR course page the night before, not a blog post from a cafe.
One more thing worth knowing: the R train runs directly underneath Fourth Avenue, which makes it the most reliable way to move along the course rather than across it. The Bay Ridge Avenue station sits on the route itself. If you want the fuller version of how to get around down here on an ordinary day, we wrote about parking and transit at the Bay Ridge waterfront separately.
Where to Stand
Fourth Avenue at Bay Ridge Avenue
Fourth Avenue is the best spectating street in Brooklyn and it is not close. It is wide and straight, which means you watch runners approach for several blocks instead of catching them for four seconds at a narrow corner. Because the closure list runs the avenue from 94th Street all the way to Flatbush, the stretch at Bay Ridge Avenue, which is 69th Street, is squarely on the course. That corner is roughly a half-mile walk east of our front door, call it ten minutes, and it is the spot we send people to.
The Lower Nineties, Closer to the Bridge
If you want the runners at their freshest, go south. The 92nd Street stretch between Dahlgren Place and Fourth Avenue is the first real ground the field touches after a mile and a half of bridge. Nobody is hurting yet, and the crowd is thinner than it is further north. It is the better choice with small kids who need room, or if you want photographs that are not mostly other spectators' arms.
The Quiet Alternative, If Crowds Are Not Your Thing
Here is the thing a lot of people in Bay Ridge forget. The entire waterfront west of the route is untouched. Shore Road, the promenade, Owls Head Park and the 69th Street Pier are all on the far side of the closures from the course. You can walk out on the pier with a cup of coffee and look straight up at the bridge the runners are crossing, with none of the noise and none of the barricades. It is a genuinely good way to experience marathon morning if standing shoulder to shoulder for two hours is not what you had in mind.
Get the Coffee Before the Avenues Disappear
We open at 7 AM on weekends, which is the exact hour the closures take effect. We are at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, at the waterfront end of the avenue, which puts us west of the course. You can walk here, order, and then walk east to Fourth Avenue without ever crossing a closed street or waiting on a crossing point. Doing it in the other order, getting to the route first and then deciding you want coffee, is how people end up standing on a curb for three hours with nothing.
The coffee is La Colombe, so drip and espresso both hold up, and the cold brew is on tap if the morning turns warm the way early November sometimes does. If it does not, the tea side of the counter is Rishi, and the hot vanilla chai latte and the hot matcha are the two things people reach for when they know they are going to be outside and stationary for a while. Hot chocolate handles the kids. If you are the person who is up before everyone else getting the order in, we have a whole piece on early morning coffee down here.
What Actually Travels to a Curb
Spectating is standing, which means food you can eat with one hand while the other holds a cup. The things that work are the things that hold their shape: the breakfast sandwiches, the avocado toast on thick sourdough, the Belgian waffle if you are feeding someone who will be bribed by fruit and whipped cream, the acai bowl with house-made granola if you want something that is not hot. Browse the menu before you come so you are not deciding at the counter at 7:15 with a crowd behind you.
We do deliver through GetSauce, but be realistic about it on this particular Sunday. A driver trying to reach an address on the far side of a closed Fourth Avenue is fighting the same wall you are. Pickup is the honest recommendation between 7 AM and the early afternoon.
If You Are Hosting the Spectators
A lot of Bay Ridge households turn marathon Sunday into a thing: people come in from out of the neighborhood, watch for a couple of hours, and end up back in somebody's apartment hungry and cold. That second part is where catering earns its keep. It runs on platters, trays and boxes with delivery and setup rather than plate by plate, and a morning spread plus a coffee setup feeds twelve people far more easily than twelve separate orders placed in a panic. Tell us the headcount, the address and the time through the party catering form or on the phone, and we will say plainly what works around the route.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave in Brooklyn, open 6 AM to 9 PM Monday through Friday and 7 AM to 9 PM Saturday and Sunday, with delivery through GetSauce. Check hours and directions, see what else there is to do on this side of the neighborhood in our waterfront guide, or read about coffee near the Verrazzano on the other days of the year, when the bridge is just a bridge.
Coffee Before the Course Closes
Open 7 AM on weekends at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, west of the route and a ten-minute walk from Fourth Avenue. Call (718) 777-6969 for a group order.
