vip in the city

Flag Day fireboats

Spent my lunch break at South Street Seaport for the FDNY Flag Day celebrations.

By the time CS and I arrived, we had just missed the bagpipe processional and the “Blessing of the Fleet” by Fire Department chaplain Monsignor John Delendick. The blessing is a centuries-old tradition originating in southern European, predominantly Catholic, fishing communities, to ensure a safe and bountiful season for the men at sea. The Fire Department began performing this yearly ritual over its fleet after the September 11, 2001 attacks. That day, the fireboats evacuated hundreds of people from Manhattan to New Jersey, then worked for days pumping seawater to fight the fires at the World Trade Center after a downtown water main went out. The FDNY Marine Division, now in its 130th year, is comprised of eight ships, which together cover 560 miles of the city’s waterfront, making it the largest division of its kind in the world.

The highlight of the afternoon: the Fireboats “Water Salute”. We gathered at Pier 17 among firemen, clergy, locals and tourists to watch as the marine fleet made its way from the Brooklyn Bridge to the seaport to give a Flag Day salute, spectacularly shooting streams of red, white and blue water 300 feet into the overcast sky.

Accompanying the procession was the retired John J. Harvey. The fireboat, which voluntarily returned to service for 72 hours after September 11, spends most days resting in a berth on the lower Hudson, at Pier 66 Maritime, which is also home to the National Register-listed Lightship #115 “Frying Pan”, which I visited last summer.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta:

Sheep Meadow

Central Park’s Sheep Meadow served as home to a couple hundred Southdown sheep for seventy years, until 1934, when Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had the sheep transferred to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. (Their shepherd was assigned to the lion house in the Central Park Zoo.)

The rural Victorian Gothic structure which had been the sheep’s pen was transformed into Tavern on the Green, host to countless events and film shoots (and the occasional high school prom.)

Nowadays, the expanse of lawn is popular with picnickers, sunbathers, and bare-torsoed frisbee players.

Pretty poison

A recent New York magazine feature examined the industrial pollution problem lurking beneath Greenpoint, and floating along the surface of Newtown Creek, the murky waterway that stretches some three and a half industrialized miles between Brooklyn and Queens that was once a site of mansions and flourishing shipyards.

Toxic waste continues to seep into the creek from a ten million gallon underground reservoir, which houses the spills, leaks, and waste left in the wake of over a century of heavy industry.

The creek has evaded cleanup due largely to its remote, secluded nature. The Pulaski Bridge, from which this photo of the estuary was taken, is probably better known as the halfway point of the New York City marathon.