New York is a city of nooks and crannies, discovered and undiscovered, above and below the waterline.
Read MoreArthur Kill, that slim waterway that prevents Staten Island from being part of New Jersey, has a surplus of discarded watercraft. Scuttled, sunken, or just eternally moored. The Rossville Tugboat Graveyard is certainly best known of these sites, but wander the other industrial neighborhoods of western Staten and you’ll find yourself in places like this one: some dozen vessels, ranging from seemingly-operational to scrap-heap, all tucked into a narrow cove hidden from the road by a veil of trees. A hidden salvage yard? Temporary storage inadvertently become long-term? It is difficult to say.
Read MoreNew York is a city of nooks and crannies, discovered and undiscovered, above and below the waterline. Years of industry and years of the collapse of that industry have left much of the city ringed in relics: sunken piers, cement edifices, twisting metal. Recent times have seen much of the coastline reclaimed by municipal projects and developers, much more remains as it had been. And whatever the changes on the shore, it seems likely that the oil-slick surfaces of inlets like Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal will hold onto their mysteries for much, much longer. All of this is worth investigating, and worth documenting along the way.
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