I spent all day yesterday ankle deep in black industrial sludge and broken oyster shells. Sound like fun?The northwest neighborhoods along the shore of Staten Island are nothing like anywhere else in the 5 boroughs. I went out to see what I can of a rumored boat graveyard in the Rossville Area, and ended up walking about 5 miles along the Arthur Kill Road narrowly avoiding getting hit by one trucker after another. (They really ought to put in a roadside pathway).
I took the bus all the way out to Rossville Road and immediately saw a glimpse of a rusted out tanker in the sludge out in the creek. There wasn't that great of a view and there were a few houses that warned of massive bodily injury if you were caught trespassing. I assume that was in reaction to many urban explorers like myself trying to get out to the boats. I thought about crawling down the small cliff side and head through the weeds, but it looked like the marsh was rather deep. Normally that wouldn't deter me very long, but this particular marsh was literally in the shadow of the largest garbage dump in the world.
The Fresh Kills Landfill has been closed down for a few years (Thanks in no small part to NYPIRG) but remains a monument to human excess and is one of the absolutely worst things we could have done to the future health of the borough. I wouldn't be confident about looking for any clean ground water on the island for some time. So there was absolutely no way I was going to wade into a marsh that has been in the dumps runoff for the last half century.
While i was snapping photos from the ledge and trying to find a creative way to get a better angle I hear behind me:
"Hey...what are you doing?"
"Just snapping some photos."
"Cool, you want to see a better spot?"
This guy was a local crab fisherman (yes he catches and sells shell fish from the Arthur Kill...yummy). He also is a local nautical history buff and gave me some good spots to go and see some of the boats. Great timing, I was about to call it quits and bus away with a few good shots of just a 3 or 4 wrecks. Instead i got 3 more hours of things to see.
You never know exactly how big something is until you have to walk it. I have been using my handy hagstroms map for 3 months now. You think i would understand the basic concepts of scale by now...you would think. Its not that walking 3 miles is hard to do...even in 35 degree windy weather, but walking 3 miles on an industrial highway without a sidewalk or anything resembling a shoulder is just outright unpleasant.
On one side of me was a great protected parkland called "Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve." On the other was a series of interesting points of interest. Along Arthur kill road which is a 300 year old roadway from Richmond Town to Tottenville I passed by The Arthur Kill Prison, a giant paint ball field, a 200 year old cemetery holding the remains of the Sleight family an enormous Mobile Oil Plant and several auto body shops (this is important for what i find later).
I tried to walk down a road to the shore (my new friend told me it was open to the public) but a big asshole of a man stopped me by skidding his truck in front of the gate to ward me off. Not being susceptible to reasonable conversation or even any conversation for that matter since he didn't open his window or stop spinning his big wheels churning up dust, i flipped him off and walked away.
After walking some more down to the Charleston area i found a better entrance at the end of a small dead end road. There was a old run down auto body shop with a broken down pickup that had "Shut Down" painted on it. I climbed the fence and found a small opening in a field of reeds. I don't know if anyone out there has even walked through reeds before but its downright eerie. The reeds were about 12 feet high and too thick to see 3 feet away. So for about 10 minutes I tried to follow other footprints through the marshy field hoping that there was an opening soon and that i didn't accidental run into some big fellas dumping a body in the muck.
Finally i came to a small "beach" and i use that term very loosely. There it was, a huge field of rusted burnt out ships and nautical wrecks. Forget for a second how dirty this whole thing is and how shameful it is for industry to ruin what once was a stunning landscape. Just for a second. The dirty, curious kid in me loves this stuff. It was amazing to see it all.
The first bout yard i saw up on Rossville road is from the Witte Marine Equipment Company and has many old NYC fire boats and abandoned tugs. Some of them were used in trying unsuccessfully to help the General Slocum Tragedy that took 1,000 lives in a fire. This second group of boats are mostly old ferries. The one above says New York and Astoria on the hull.
I walked through the reeds a little more to get closer and came across a car...that's right a car stuck right there in the middle of nowhere with no possible way to get it there by road. Then another, and another and then an opening with dozens of old rusty stripped cars. Some of them half buried in the muck that are probably covered by water most of the year, and others that are up on the rocks that still have visible char marks from fires. My first thought was...uh-oh this is where they hide the cars after burying the bodies. I guess i have seen one too many mob movies...and if you have seen the most recent "We Own The Night" there is a crazy chase in the reeds out in Floyd Bennet Field that look a lot like this. But in a guess more based in reality the cars are probably from illegal dumping from the auto body shops in the neighborhood.
I spent about an hour walking around the wrecks trying to get as close as I could. At times my foot sank to an uncomfortable level and I almost lost my shoes a few times. The colors for photographs were perfect but the weather was absolutely freezing. I wish i had a little row boat so i could get closer to some of the ships further out. The big metal ships were fun but i wanted to see the old wood ones that were left as nothing more than old skeletons.
A good day of urban exploring ended with a hour and a half bus ride, a 20 minute ferry ride, and a two subway trains home. If I wanted to document the New York City Transit system, this would have been a good start.
check out the pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/
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