The Sleeper

Kevin Walsh sure does know a lot about this city. I was very interested to learn that Gowanus may mean 'sleeper' in the language of the Delaware Indians. The canal does seem sleepy, even for all it does for industry around it, for all it's done in transporting the stones that built the houses on the slope and elsewhere, for all the sediment it still floats in for the cement plant so crucial for a place like this. It's still like water everywhere, looking for that lowest possible place to lie as still as the push of the air, the convection of temperature, the pull of the moon or shifts in the earth will allow it. Of course, now the canal has not only its watery sleepiness but a quality of having been embalmed.

I wonder, when The Gowanus Lounge blog was named, by R.S. Guskind, I assume, was he thinking about that Delaware definition ? Or is there really a lounge over there, which spawned the blog. I always sort of imagined that the lounge was a very groovy houseboat. Of course, one should always try to imagine groovy houseboats if given even the smallest excuse.

There, just in case you were hankering for my analysis of that blog's name. I don't think it is necessary for me to present any analysis on the poetics of the name New York Shitty so I'll just do you the favor of stopping right here.