More Gowanus Views

BAX has hung works by Angela Jimenez that portray South Brooklyn's most alluring subject. I think the widespread appeal stems from the Venice effect mixed with some cozy effluviana and a fascination with plastic surgery and embalming as the canal is not at all what it once was in either form or content. It has some serious industrial botox. Long ago the artery sheltered anadramous fish that sought fresh water for spawning, later dredged, shored up with concrete the channel became the mule of the brownstone builders and industrialists. Now, nifty condos and studio lofts later, the canal elicits devotion. One day I'd love to watch Miyazake's Spirited Away projected on its greasy green scum. Maybe the fish will come back, some already have.

I really enjoyed Angela's work, because like many I can't get enough of the Gowanus. It's creepy, scary, beautiful, monstrous, the last "brook" in Brooklyn. Historic essays by Victor Favorotino accompany Angela's Silver C-prints. I found them all interesting, but was most captivated by the story of the sailors kept captive on the cement ship. Double click the page below for details.

From the Viaduct

You only get a good view of this traveling into Manhattan frompoints beyond Smith/9th on the F train. I spied it before, a few times when heading towards Coney Island, but it's not worth a photo from the other side of the track. The roof, before it caved in, was expansive and sparsely outfitted with apparatuses resembling space capsules qua retroviruses, translating easily into a low-lying lunar landscape. Beyond the ruin, the area which I believe is called the public space, toxic, I hear, and now boasting one of the most extensive meadows I've seen in Western Brooklyn.

Seeing it, I think of Guskind, and wonder how he would have reacted to the ceiling collapse, and what he knew about this site that I'll never learn.

The subway window schmutz apparent in the images I gift to you at no extra charge.

Sunday Around Gowanus

The potted cactuses sit on the windowsills of Michiyo Ihara's studio, keeping her company as her delicate, spell binding snowflakes emerge from her pencil point. I love to think that in her drawings, she is channeling her plant's dreams.

When she saw us come through the door with our three children she kept her cool and appeared with a bag full of mini candy bars, which she emptied into a bowl. My son would have been happy to stay in her studio, next to that bowl, all day. And I could have spent much more time gazing at her snowflakes, and her happy plants.

Too bad I only made it to 543 Union and Proteus Gowanus, where I viewed an installation from a friendly neighborhood Bachelor, an amazing collection of artificats, and some beautiful and conceptual beadwork by Annette Tacconelli-a stiff mix of delicate and industrial. I hope next year I'll cover more ground.

buttermilk

An unexpected joy of seeing "Hoffman," an Offenbach opera performed on the Red Hook Pier, was getting such a close view of the Buttermilk Channel, and being shocked by how close Governor's Island seemed. It is, as I read, only a quarter of a mile away. So maybe it's true what Whitman wrote in a newspaper article, that during Revolutionary War times the channel was so narrow and shallow that at low tide dairy herds waded across, leaving a milky trail in the brine. In watercolor painting, that would be called a wet on wet technique. All of this would have been before some hard core dredging, obviously. Now the channel's depth is 35 to 49 feet, deep enough to support the business of the piers, and only passable by very bouyant cows.

The other explanation for the name is that by the time Breukelen dairy farmers made it across the channel to sell their milk in Manhattan it had soured from the rough ride.

Hmmm, these are 2 very different explanations. Being an HUGE fan of the bathers tradition in painting, I fancy the wading cows explanation STRONGLY.

I would have favored a warmer night for the opera. We froze, but luckily the strength of the performance plus a little wine prevented the blood from curdling. We sat there in the outdoor theater flanked by stacks of shipping containers 3 high. The moon was visible through a break in the two stacks on my right, and by the time the show was over it had risen above the highest container. Meanwhile broad swathes of clouds, ethereal drifting proscenium, seemed to embrace The Vertical Players endeavors.

I wondered how far away from us was the pipe that draws the water from the channel a mile inland to flush and oxygenate the Gowanus. If the 600 horsepower pump is the Gowanus' artificial heart, that pipe is a critical ventricle, slowly rinsing the canal of whatever effluvia made it lavender before the pump was fixed in 1989. Of course its original heart was not mechanical, just the endless evaporation and condensation cycle, the tides, and the local watershed created by all the Brooklyn brooks that must have creased the slope of the Slope.

In the Pipe Organ Workshop

Mamie Minch kindly led me through the organ workshop when I was leaving Retrofret on Saturday with my repaired student-grade violin. What a terribly exiting pass that was, I was too amazed by what I saw to know what to do with myself. So I took pictures while Mamie patiently waited. The shop occupies part of the ground floor of 233 Butler, in a space that may once have housed the animals the ASPCA protected from neglect and abuse. Where once there were howls, barks and meows, there stand the organ pipes, which even silent practically send one to any cathedral or vampire's lair imaginable, propelled by their latent sonic ballistics. Staggering.

Here's more about the workshop and the man behind it. And by the way, one can hear Mamie's own renowned pipes when she performs at Barbes tonight with C.W. Stoneking. 9pm. Can I handle so much beauty? Sigh...

Dexter and Sinister

They aren't the new Belle and Sebastian, these are the two characters found on the NYC seal. I've found some nice examples lately of the seal of New York City, or as King James II might have preferred in fancy Latin, Eboracum. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn't. I found the top one on this building on the corner of Butler and Nevins, and the other on the license of a 5th Avenue plumber. If you are curious to know more about the symbols, than open up for this Wikipedia regurgitation. Do you have wikiphilia too?

First on the meaning of the word Eboracum:

Eboracum was a fort and city in Roman Britain. Today it is known as York, located in North Yorkshire, England. The etymology of Eboracum is uncertain as the language of the indigenous population of the area was never recorded. One theory is that Eboracum is derived from the Proto-Brythonic word Eborakon which can mean "place of the yew trees" or "the field of Eburos". Efrog in Welsh, Eabhrac in Irish Gaelic, Iorc in Scottish Gaelic. The name is then thought to have been Latinised by replacing -akon with -acum. Another theory is that the language of the indigenous population was a Germanic language similar to Old English and so Eboracum is derived from *eburaz meaning a boar.

Here's more about the seal with our friends on it, the Dutchman called Dexter and the Lenape, on the right, called , umm, Sinister. I didn't make that up! Curious? Open wide and read what our wikiphilies have to say about it.

The Seal of the City of New York, adopted in an earlier form in 1686, bears the legend SIGILLUM CIVITATIS NOVI EBORACI which means simply "The Seal of the City of New York": Eboracum was the Roman name for York, the titular seat of James II as Duke of York.

The two supporters represent the unity between Native Americans and colonists. Dexter,[1] a sailor colonist holds a plummet in his right hand; over his right shoulder is a cross-staff. Sinister,[2] a Lenape native to Manhattan rests his left hand upon a bow.

Upon the arms / shield, the four windmill sails recall the city's Dutch history as New Amsterdam and the beavers and flour barrels signify the city's earliest trade goods (see History of New York City). The flour barrels and windmills represent the tremendous wealth generated by New York City from the Bolting Act of 1674.[3] The Act gave the city an exclusive monopoly to mill and export flour. The shield and supporters rest upon a horizontal laurel branch.

The crest over the seal is the Bald Eagle, added in 1784, after the American Revolution. Prior to this change, a crown had been located in this space, representing the authority of the monarchy during the British colonial period. The eagle rests upon a hemisphere. At the bottom is the date, 1625, ostensibly as the founding of New Amsterdam, the colonial Dutch settlement which would later become the City of New York. This date, however, was chosen for somewhat unknown reasons and most historians believe no significant event actually occurred that year. The first Dutch settlers actually arrived in the region in 1624, and the town of New Amsterdam was incorporated in 1653.[4]

A laurel wreath encircles the seal.

The city clerk is the custodian of the City Seal.

I like the fact that the "laurel wreath" looks more like a circle of oysters in the seal cut into the blue plastic, the bivalves this place was once so rich in sort of get their due notice on account of someone's poor rendering.

Now for more weird fun: This morning I found a plummet, or something very plumb bob-like, on 17th St. At first I thought it was something a dog owner should have picked up except for the precision of its shape. On second look it was a very elongated rusty iron pine cone-shaped hunk of iron about 6 inches long, with a loop on the top. I can take a hint: seems it's time to straighten things up around here!

Here's what I still want to know... Why the names Dexter and Sinister? And what function do you think this metal pine cone served?

merrily merrily

I wish I could call it a Gowanus flotilla, but for that there would need to be several more vessels involved. This is more like a jerry rigged catamaran sans sail. The crew used long hooks to snag the base of the Union Street Bridge so they could carry out some sort of inspection. A friendly crew, they tolerated lots of excited waving and photography. Sadly, they couldn't tell me what kind of tree this was thriving next to the canal.

















In my mom's village in RI I saw a flyer describing the illuminated flotilla they were going to be having in the Bay. No motors permitted. In and around Providence they love to mix fire and water, but on Brooklyn's Gowanus, it's a pretty chancy proposition.

Viaduct View

Because I missed my stop coming home from a birthday party on Mulberry St. last Friday, the 13th, I wound up having to take the G to the F, which meant waiting at the elevated Smith-9th station.

Have you ever stood there on the South side of the platform and watched the scrap metal claw at work on the side of the Gowanus? I had never seen that before. I'm not sure why they were at it so late, Friday at around 10:30 pm. Maybe because the metal heap is so enormous they have to do it when they can, before it all slides into the canal. The claw rig has floodlights on it so the operator can see what he's doing as he grabs heaps of metals parts and drops them onto the barge floating in the canal. You can see the lights in the picture above, to the right of the Lowe's sign. The canal is the void of black beyond the parking lot. The distance from the platform to the metal heap reduced the impact of all the sharp edges in the scene, even the brutality of the claw as it tramped down the metal on the barge over and over again.

The scene had that aesthetic of grand scale industrial decay Spielberg drew from in Star Wars. And where did he get it from?

Russo Realty and Notary

Savoring the moment. How much longer do they have?

Corner of Smith and 9th

From the 3 blocks of cement piled in front of this door I would guess that no one has entered that way for a while.