One quick, important thing before I get into the industrial wasteland that is the Greenpoint Nature Walk:
Artist and pal William Schaff is finally, hopefully, going to have a book out of his work! You might recognize him from Okkervil River album artwork or from What Cheer? Brigade. He also made an appearance in Fart Party vol 2 when I went to Rhode Island to visit him. His work is fucking amazing and it would be great to have it in a book, so if you can, please consider helping kickstart it. It’ll be worth it, I promise.
Now, on to the Greenpoint Nature Walk., which I finally got around to taking last week with John Porcellino and Gabrielle Bell. There’s a sign down on Provost st on the chain link fence that surrounds the sewage treatment plant that boasts of a “nature walk” yonder. If you follow it down to Paidge st and take a right, you’ll find this walkway next to a parking lot:
The cement corridor goes around the corner of a parking lot and opens up to…
a dump. Which is pretty much the antithesis of nature. You get where this is headed…
The walk meanders along Newton Creek, which was ground zero for one of the biggest oil spills in the US in the 70′s. Even today you’re not supposed to grow anything in Greenpoint soil unless you import clean soil. My landlord is always trying to give me cancer tomatoes from his garden which is suspect because I don’t think he likes me.
“Wash hands & clothing if contact with water of sediment occurs.” OR THEY’LL FALL THE FUCK OFF! Did I mention I live right around the corner from this place?
The last stretch of the nature walk provides a view of the sewage treatment plant’s giant cisterns filled with poop.
End of the walk the Nature Walk. When we were leaving, we all concurred that the walk had given us all The Fear. I don’t need to explain what that is, if you’ve had it, you know. If you haven’t, you’ll get it someday.
Gabrielle and I decided that showing John P trash, poop and a spray painted boner wasn’t a fair view of Greenpoint, so we took him to the end of Huron st, which is what I imagine post-apocalyptic New York would look like.
Gabrielle walking down the bridge that leads to the (newish) ferry that goes from Brooklyn to Manhattan at the end of India st.
If you cross over to the end of India St, there’s a “cat sanctuary” for wild cats who were caught, neutered and released by the Humane Society.
And here’s a turd covered in glitter. Merry Christmas!
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so…. was the turd PRE-glittered? Or did you happen to have glitter with you?
pre-glittered! I wouldn’t waste glitter of a turd, no matter how fabulous the results
Damn, even Your non-comic posts are fucking wonderful. It’s shit like this (and Bottle Beach, etc.) that makes me actually want to visit NYC someday.
Aww, did you at least notice the signage by the plantlife? The totally generic plants lining it actually have some interesting bits about them that make you go, “hey, these sort of aren’t totally generic plants after all!” And the stairs that lead bizarrely into the creek have symbolic geological eras of life etched into them that are actually really confusing.
But honestly, it’s those stairs that make me like this park in a perverse way. Literally, one of the most festering, toxic, polluted waterways in all of New York City…and they built a delightful stone staircase that almost invites you to swim. One day I’m going to jump in with a turtle and hope to become teenaged, mutant, and ninja.
I did notice, and photograph all that, but I dont know why I left it out of this post. I kind of felt insane all day after going there so maybe my memory of it is skewed a bit. Nice post about the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Works building today, by the way, I’ve admired that place for years. I just want to live in it SO BAD
I just couldn’t take it anymore and left – moved to New Zealand. Its summer here now….
Thanks for the photo essay. Can’t tell you how much this brings back and how i don’t miss it.
did you live in the dump? this tiny little area isn’t ALL of New York
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