When Stayc and I drove up College Point Boulevard, the area looked as bleak and industrial as I imagined it would.
But down at the end of a dead end street, there was a pretty patch of green, and we lowered the boat down to the water.
There was a perfectly trash-strewn little beach,
and we inspected the various debris,
like these snails who made their home in a filing box.
We got out on the water as soon as Elizabeth came,
and passed this half sunk boat. It had a spruced up, old-time feel, like a movie set of Popeye’s house.
We were right under the flight path of Laguardia, and the planes roared overhead.
It turns out that Stayc is something of a naturalist, and she pointed things out along the way.
“Mugwort,” she said, “good for anxiety and to help regulate menstruation.”
She also brought binoculars for watching birds. There was something surreal about looking through them.
Seeing the private and unhurried gestures of the birds was like tricking time as well as space.
Elizabeth was on a mission too.
She is currating a show next year at St John’s University in Queens called “Silent Beaches, Untold Stories”,
about the neglected waterfronts of New York.
Not suprisingly, College Point is one of her areas of interest.
Up ahead, we saw a gauntlet of cement factories, with dust billowing out across the water.
We waited for a break in the dust,
and passed through.
There was a wide open space on the other side, with a few birds.
It was that kind of land that no one can figure out what to do with,
except for guys like ‘TRAP’,
and us, of course.
I was a little disapointed that we weren’t seeing better birds for Stayc.
Sometimes even a seemilngly poluted waterway can be just crawling with them, but not today.
The nice thing about Stayc though,
she is happy with simple things, like this pretty little barn swallow.
As we passed under the dock,
we could see her little nest.
There was another part to College Point that Elizabeth had seen on the satalite images;
just beyond the marina, there was another one,
a ghost marina of sunken ships.
It looked like we were passing into the area of the wrecks,
but the best was yet to come.
From the water I could tell this was not a normal kind of thing,
and we got aboard to have a closer look,
at the strangest sort of wreck.
It was an old barge that looked like it had undergone some kind of slapdash renovation;
an odd mix of the original, heavy, industrial metalwork,
and then all this crappy, slapped-on siding.
“I would love to see this guys business plan.” I joked.
“Maybe it was going to be a night club.” Said Stayc.
“But where are all the clues?” she asked. There was a weird absence of personal effects.
The main room was an absolute jumble of trash,
with a strange spiral staircase leading to a series of upper decks.
The staircase and upper level were clearly part of the renovation.
While we made our way carefully up,
we felt like we could see through the debris, and peeled siding,
to see the owner’s vision of what the barge could have been.
He would have had a great view of Manhattan.
In my head, I started to refer to him as ‘The Entrepreneur’.
Down at the bottom, the stairwell disappeared into a green abyss.
Stayc spotted a tiny eel moving around in the glowing light.
And then we found a clue! We now know that these inhabitants dated back to the cassette tape era.
“At least they had good taste!” said Stayc.
It was a wonderful find.
On the way home, Stayc and Elizabeth tried to figure out where they know each other from.
At first I thought it was a wild coincidence that two relative strangers, invited out in my boat, would know each other.
But then I remembered, it is a rare breed of person who likes this kind of thing.
Thanks Elizabeth for guiding us through a great New York waterway!
Thanks Stayc, for pointing out those determined little birds and plants who have made it their home!
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