East Williamsburg/Bushwick

This morning I started on Maspeth Avenue. Despite its contamination, it too was part of the real estate boom. It has its share of empty condos.

The former Equity works site, now the site of a recycling facility, was already busy at 6:30 am. Trucks were lined up on Maspeth Avenue waiting to dump their loads inside. This site has not yet been tested but it has the potential to be truly toxic.

As I walked by Rewe Street, I shot this. It is one of the most inhospitable parts of the area.

The next site that I visited became toxic because it was a dry cleaning facility, Popular Hand Laundry, 88 Ingraham Street. While the area is industrial with a cement factory on the block to the west, the presence of the art community is also visible. The current building occupant is Astor Row, an art consulting business.

I had also planned to go to 121 Ingraham Street, which had been an illegal dry cleaning facility. I knew that there was a men’s shelter on Johnson street because one day when I was shooting in the neighborhood, a man came up to me and asked for directions. I had a map and was able to help him. When I looked down the block, there were 20 or 30 men in red and blue jump suits and quite a number of vans. My guess was that they were participating in some sort of program where they were being taken from the shelter to parks to clean for the day. Due to the crowd and all the activity, I wasn’t able to find the site.

The McKibben Street site, a former chemical works, is right up the street. It has gotten considerably overgrown since I was last here in March. As far as I can tell from looking at those photos, this is some new stuff that has been dumped.

A bunch of stumps had also been dumped on the street. It was hard to tell where they were from.

It is just sad here.

May 20th-Gowanus

On this beautiful evening, I walked around the Gowanus area. First, down 6th street where they were still working at the scrap metal yard on 6th Street.

Then I went to the Gowanus Canal landing off the end of 2nd Street. I wanted to take the same photo I had taken in the winter of looking through the razor wire on this side of the canal to the old Nassau Railroad Powerhouse on the other side. Now the view is filled with trees. It is more bucolic and the building behind is just a patch of red. There was an older man sitting on the dock smoking there when I shot this. We chatted. He was knowledgeable about the surrounding brownfields. He recounted falling into the canal once.

As I was leaving 2nd Street, the light as it hit this tree and fence was lovely.

View from the 3rd Street Bridge.

I was standing out side of the hole in the whole foods site fence trying to take some kind of a photo. I had seen someone go in earlier and I was nervous about being alone on the site with an unknown man. A young kid maybe 20 or so came by on his bike and said, “Why don’t you go in?” And leaving his bike outside, he went through the fence. I followed him. His interest was all the graffiti. The best light was leaving but I felt liberated and wondered what had made me so nervous.

April 17th-Gowanus

I went to my favorite spot on the Gowanus behind the Lowe’s parking lot, looking out at Benson Scrap Metal. In the shallow inlet there, an egret was fishing. According to the New York Sate Department of Environmental Conservation Remediation Database,this spot is right next to where the Metropolitan Gas works operated from the late 1800s until the 1930s. While NYSDEC also claims that no tar is escaping from this site into the canal, I felt very queasy watching this bird feed. Yet maybe it is a good sign that some fish must be able to live in the water.

The Callery Pear trees were in bloom. Originally from China, these trees were bred to be planted in cities. I assume that these were planted by Lowe’s. Behind them work went on at Benson Scrap Metal as it does 7 days a week.

As I was leaving,the Hamilton Avenue Bridge was raised for an incoming boat.It was the first time I had seen any of the drawbridges on the Gowanus in operation.