Filmmaker, photographer and location scout Nathan Kensinger publishes two photo essays per month on his blog dedicated to “the abandoned and industrial edges of New York”. In yesterday’s offering, he turned a gritty eye to the Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station, which was decommissioned with the closing of the Fresh Kills landfill, but is now open for bids from solid waste management companies should any be interested in retrofitting the space.
Courtesy of Nathan Kesinger Photography
As it is summertime and as I am obsessed with this shit, I have been spending a lot of time lurking about the abandoned and industrial edges of the city. Luckily, I have friends who enjoy similar pastimes.
But in addition to a general interest in the waterfronts around my home, I have a particular soft spot for marine transfer stations because they were at the heart of my entree into the world of trash and subsequent life as a garblogger. As a journalism student at Columbia, it was following the debate over whether or not to reopen a nearby marine transfer station that opened my eyes to the fact that New York had no longterm solid waste management plan and that the impact of that absence of planning hit poor people first.
I got REALLY into that story. Once, while canoeing on the Gawanus Canal, I even tried to paddle into the Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station. That was five years ago. And as Kensinger’s post points out, the thing is still standing there, useless and empty (he also brings up the whole superfund Gowanus deal, which is about the millionth reminder that I need to read up on that). Anyway, useless though it may currently be, this space sure does look nice in Kensinger’s photos. I recommend clicking through to see them all.
More on marine transfer stations and my trash as class awakening after the jump. Jump!
This just in from Brazil’s Secretariat for Social Communications (SECOM): The hazerdous waste found in Brazil and shipped back to the UK last week may have been labeled as recycling materials, though the containers turned out to hold diapers, animal feed packages and other nastiness. In response, Brazil is envoking international law on the matter. According to Em Questao, SECOM’s online newsletter:
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked Brazil’s Permanent Delegation in Geneva to report the traffic of hazardous waste from the UK under the terms of the Basel Convention. On July 23, 2009, Minister Celso Amorim spoke with British Chancellor David Miliband, who said the subject will be given the required attention. Amorim stressed Article 9 of the Convention, which says that the exporter shall bear responsibility for returning the illegal shipment to the country of origin. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of the Environment and IBAMA are still evaluating the need for additional measures.
The Fellowship for the Interest of Dogs and their Owners (FIDO), “serving Brooklyn’s off-leash community” have had some trash-related gripes lately. Follow the drama here. Thanks for the heads up, Elizabeth.
Also from City Room/NYT: The electronics industry sues to block new recycling requirements (we take this as good news because that means the law is having an impact;
Buffalo and Philly get Big Belly solar powered trash compacting recepticles; and
Missing Ohio kids found alive in the trash (morbid but true fact: while we almost never post them, we come across a lot of baby in the trash stories that end another way, it’s so refreshing to read a happy ending in this one).
We hope to see all of you in the NYC area there and promise to post links and highlights after the fact. This event is part of the fabulous University of Trash program curated by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman.
Heads up, New Yorkers, the city just got trashier. From 1-6pm, Wednesday through Sunday until August 21st you can check out Trashion, a new show up at Gallery 151 at 350 Bowery—part of the Urban Green Initiative.
Trashion at Gallery 151
I have a good feeling about this show since they dubbed the opening “Trashion Tuesday”. Alliteration, word creation and trash-related punning = my people.
Out of towners who can’t make it to the show will have to settle for the music video below by Miz Metro, a local personality who attended the Fame high school, used to host gypsy circus parties and now blogs, sings and “scat raps”. I can’t say I love this song, but I dig the Metro Card minidress, random trash accessories and the Beastie Boys-feeling intro.
I just discovered my favorite RSS feed of the summer via Flavorwire: Recycle LACMA. It’s the blog of artist Robert Fontenot who heard the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was getting rid of a bunch of stuff in its costume and textile collection, bought up over 50 of those pieces at auction and is now reimagining each one into an entirely different object.
Hand woven linen textile wastepaper basket
Checking out the blog each day is like an advent calendar of upcycling. Today, for example, he posted this fab wastepaper basket fashioned from an old piece of Turkish embroidery. Trashtastic.
At the moment, the thing is parked at 125th Street and Riverside park, which is what caught my eye about the project in the CENYC email newsletter I received yesterday. Growing up on Riverside Drive at 125th Street, I observed many half-assed attempts to class up the waterfront at this location. It appears that with the West Harlem Piers Park, we’ve come a long way from the sketchy strip of my childhood when—to the extent living things populated this area—you would only see stray cats, hookers, johns, junkies and lunatic fishermen willing to eat from the (pre-Riverkeeper) Hudson.
This new park connects Riverside Park with Riverbank State Park (built on top of the sewage treatment plant at 135th Street) and encompasses the old marine transfer station between the two points where, once upon a time, my trash was tipped out of a dump truck and onto a ferry to be floated down to the Freshkills landfill (now also a park).
Anyway, the Waterpod sounds amazing. Sadly, the recycling and composting workshops being offered are during my workday. Regardless, I will try to get up there to check out the pod and waterfront renovations. Stay tuned.
Austrian-born, Boston-trained trash artist Gertrude Berg made this video of a woman picking up trash with high heels on the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn as a comment on the hypocrisy of gentrification: outsiders descend on an industrial neighborhood, gut and polish the insides of buildings while the streets remain as trash-strewn as ever.
This project reminds me of a similar venture my friend Myra designed in college called “Trash Bellies”. She has been promising since the beginning of this blog to dig up photos of that work. Myra, are you reading this? Send me pictures!
Note: Conflux 2009 will be held this September. And it’s not too late for artists to get involved. Sumbissions are due Agusut 15. I wonder what urban and trashy wonders the next event will hold!
This post was made possible by a tip from a supercool attendee of the NYC Repro Health Happy Hour. Thanks, tipster!
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last year, the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights at the UN collaborated on an Art for the World project to make a series of videos inspired by that document. This environmentally-themed clip highlights the reuse of plastic bags in Africa to create traditional Djembe drums: 2,000 drums = 20 tons of recycled plastic and offsets 20 tons of wood, which would otherwise have been used to make the instruments.
Last night, while waiting out service changes and delays on a very muggy Subway platform, my friend Linda and I got to talking about historical muckrackers, specifically, Jane Addams.
Jane Addams
It turns out Addams, in addition to Nobel-prize winning social justice work (including founding the Settlement House movement), was so concerned with the unsanitary conditions of trash piling up on the streets of Chicago’s 19th Ward that she applied to be a garbage collector. The mayor turned her down, but after pestering appointed her to the role of neighborhood garbage inspector overseeing trash collection. Details of this feminist trash story and many other anecdotes from Addams’ life can be found between the covers of Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy by Judith Bloom Fradin.
Brazil is returning more than 1,400 tons of imported trash back to the UK after discovering the shipments included hazerdous waste. A bunch of Brazilian waste hauling companies may be fined as well. While Brazil allows private companies to import and store trash from other counties, the country maintains strict regulations for toxic waste.
I love it when developing countries refuse to take shit (in this case, literally) from more developed countries. In the same way Brazil has told private pharmaceutical companies where they can shove their AIDS drug patents, the environmental agency didn’t flinch before sending 65 crates of blood, syringes, condoms and food waste right back to the UK.
via The Guardian
[In solidarity with this righteous trash policy, I just booked Labor Day weekend in Rio. Ok, ok, full disclosure, my vacation planning had nothing to do with trash and everything to do with sick deals on flights to Brazil. But I’m open to garblogging tips for when I’m there. Any Brazilians in the house?]
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