Oh, you’ve never heard of Dead Horse Bay? The old mill area, turned manufacturing zone (of fertilizer, created from dead animals), turned landfill, turned nature preserve – sits alongside Floyd Bennett Field by the entrance to Gerritsen Inlet. It’s rich with history, and perhaps richer with filth and pollution.
It’s the former that drew musician and photographer “chvad” to tour the area, but it’s the latter that most impressed him. He wrote, “This place and the surrounding areas don’t seem anything at all like Brooklyn. Not a lot of people and lot of vegetation. Also, an enormous amount of pollution on the shores. Some parts of the beach seemed to primarily be made of glass. If those aren’t reason enough to be careful, the beach also had it’s share of needles washed ashore.”
His slideshow, above, captures a lot of that grit and filth, yet in a hauntingly beautiful way. Check out his site to find more photos and learn about his music.
Carts put out with the garbage. (Photo by Ray Johnson)
By the time you see me, it will most likely be too late. I’ll be gone, gone, gone. Oh, but it’s not just me this time, it’s me and a small-sized pedestrian cart that got stuffed into me. Sure, that little thing is not as sturdy as I am, being more susceptible to breakdowns — but he is still recyclable!
I feel like a piece of garbage. The funny thing is, there’s nothing wrong with me. I have all my wheels about me. But, even if I’m missing a couple of screws, I’m sure it’s easily fixed. What’s wrong with these shoppers? They drag me all the way from my job at Pathmark Supermarket (3785 Nostrand Avenue) and leave here on the street. Who knows how many hands pushed me around since then, and why those hands left me here in front of P.S. 254 (1801 Avenue Y) for garbage pickup?
Why didn’t the Sheepshead Bay Pathmark supermarket pick up when a Good Samaritan tried to call? Let’s hope the New Jersey headquarters can get through to the store manager in time. If not, I might try and convince the driver of this yellow school bus to take me to Boro Park. Life can only be better over there at that school. Just so happens the only Hebrew word I can think of is, “chaim”. It just might be the one word I can utter to save my life!
Smog over Manhattan and Brooklyn - Courtesy of urbanfeel via Flickr
Whenever I see a Notify NYC alert in my inbox, I half expect it to be announcing the end of days.
Usually, though, reality falls far short of my expectations, and Notify NYC is sending a note about low-flying planes or something banal going on nowhere near here (and that’s good… boring, but good).
Today, though, I got this one:
Notification issued 06/04/10 at 11:40 AM. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has issued an Air Quality Health Advisory for Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and The Bronx from 1 PM to 10 PM today. For more information visit the NY State DEC website at http://bit.ly/ddZ0rw
Pizza left on sidewalk, E 18 St. (Photo by Ray Johnson)
This pizza and an unknown decoction in an olive jar was seen on the sidewalk on East 18 Street, between Avenue Y and Avenue X.
Leftover pizza for breakfast can be a real treat, but this Thursday morning leftover is no such thing. In Brooklyn, where pizza is practically worshipped, leaving a pie on the streets might be considered blasphemous. But to top it all off, children on their way to school at P.S. 254 were forced to look upon this horrendous sight.
What was it about this pizza pie and its accompanying beverage made the diners leave it for the rats?
Garbage overflows regularly at public trash cans. (Photo by Ray Johnson, two weeks before the storm.)
The storm has caused so much destruction, sending boats, trees and their limbs, signs, and houses crashing to the ground. But it’s not just the trees that got whipped in the wind. Garbage like this gets blown onto the streets by the strong winds, just as well.
Sheepshead Bay, we have a major cleanup to do. Let’s hurry and clean up our act before our streets become one big trash heap.
The garbage situation is growing larger around Sheepshead Bay — so much so, that maintenance people at this apartment building on Ocean Avenue (near Gravesend Neck Road) have put up four large garbage bags along the stretch of the front fence.
We’re thinking that the regular black garbage bags are just not bright enough for the polluters to spot. These bright blue bags will be hard to miss, though.
It used to be that the front of a building was dressed up for aesthetics with pretty flowers and shrubbery. In the modern day of excess packaging and people generating so much garbage in the form of empty bottles, coffee cups, and other junk, there is just not enough place to discard this stuff. There was a time, when most people just tucked the errant candy wrapper or chewed up gum and placed it in their pocket where they would discard it at home. Yes, people, I said home! Nowadays, without even a glimmer of guilt, many people just dump the excess weight onto the sidewalk, leaving a trail of debris behind them.
Sheepshead Bay needs to rediscover its roots, when people cared about the cleanliness of the environment. I’m sure you old-timers will know what we’re talking about, here.
After having seen a tremendous amount of debris in the lake during an electric boat tour and having sensed a threat to the delicate ecostructure of the lake in her own backyard, Tami decided that it was time to get involved.
We would like to congratulate her in her efforts to call attention to Brooklyn’s dirty waters — because, although Prospect Park Lake is not coastal or ocean, Tami and her 19 (and maybe, more) volunteers will do the cleanup on September 19. Check out the chronicling of her efforts on ioby (acronym for “in our backyards”) and on Facebook.
Here, in Sheepshead Bay, our coastal, stagnant bay waters are in desperate need of a Tami. Just take a look at the picture above. That’s just one instance of debris floating in the bay.
There’s almost a whole month to get something going and, of course, we know that Sheepshead Bay’s problems are way too big to be tackled in one day. For that matter, international coasts are large enough that there can be an entire year set aside to clean up. Still, even just one day where we can call attention to Sheepshead Bay’s cleanup is a welcome one, and even if a topical cleanup is done for cosmetic purposes, our stroll could be more pleasurable.
Will a Sheepshead Bay Tami step up? Or, will we be satisfied with garbage afloat in our own backwaters?
