From time to time we’ve touched on the topic of oysters in the Gowanus. We think they, and the Gowanus Oyster Stewards, are fascinating. Our oyster friends get some space in the New York Press this week, so we though we’d share a bit: “Oysters are native to the Gowanus,” explains Katie Mosher-Smith, a young […]

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Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn[Photo courtesy of Gary Mirabelle/Mirabelle Studios]

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Why, you might ask, is this picture interesting? Our answer: Because it shows what happens to the Gowanus Canal every time it rains as countless hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff and untreated sewage flow directly into the canal. This photo and the pics in this flickr set were shot by Raymond Tan […]

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Could the nightmarish toxic sludge at the bottom of the Gowanus be frozen in place with a “clay-based seal” called AquaBlock? Well, it’s one of the less expensive solutions to detoxing the canal being considered by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is coming up with options for dealing with the horror show of […]

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Those of you with courage who enjoy being out on the water can always take a trip down the Gowanus Canal in a canoe. Or, if that doesn’t move you, you can look at the pictures and read the words at Big Sky Brooklyn and enjoy the Big G from afar. A sample: Paddling through […]

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What you are seeing are some plastic and/or ceramic frogs placed and photographed on the Carroll Street Bridge by the creators of the NYC Frog Project blog. They, uh, take frogs of all different shapes, sizes and colors, place them in interesting spots and take photos. The latest entry, of course, is the Big G. […]

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Normally, we don’t post things offered up for sale on Craigslist, but when the thing in question is a sailboat that’s been docked on the Gowanus for a while between the Carroll and Union Street bridges, why not? It can be yours for only $22K: ’82 Irwin Citation 31′ – Great Condition – Now For […]

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Last week we noted photos of a heron and fish in the Gowanus. Today, we bring you jellyfish. A GL reader, who used to produce the fun blog Random Brooklyn, sent in the photo above and the one below of a Gowanus jellyfish. (Insert appropriate snark here.) She writes: I was crossing the 3rd Street […]

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Gowanus’ Issues Project Room is gone. In its place, starting this Sunday (7/1), is The Yard. They’ll be running shows in the performance space inside the silo next to the Carroll Street Bridge and on the shores of the Big G itself, and we’re personally happy to know that it will still serve as a […]

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We noted this at the recent Community Board 6 meeting in Park Slope, then promptly forgot until our e-missive arrived from nyc.gov. It’s of interest if you drive over the Hamilton Avenue Bridge over the Gowanus or take a car service that way or whatever. Here it is: Lane Closures on the Hamilton Avenue Bridge […]

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[Photo courtesy of Gowanus Canal/flickr] What you are looking at is a photo of a black-crowned night heron that makes its home on the shores of the Gowanus Canal. It has been given the name Manzana. Like all creatures one finds in, on or near the Big G, it represents the triumph of spirit and […]

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In the frenzy of keeping up with other things, we totally dropped the ball on something in our own backyard. The Gowanus Community Development Corporation and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy have a new executive director, Bob Zuckerman. He replaces Thomas Chardavoyne, who passed away earlier this year. The Conservancy–which will function as a sort of […]

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Here’s a vid we found on the YouTube that takes a look at Gowanus in the context of planning and zoning issue. It has a college lesson video feel to it, but is worth a viewing is your interested in some of the neighborhood planning issues generally. You can click over to it here if, […]

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You know we’re going to click on video called Ride the Wild Gowanus when we come across it by accident on YouTube. It’s got urfing clips edited with shots of the Gowanus with a surf soundtrack.

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Here’s a News 12 report from a couple of weeks back about oysters in the Gowanus Canal and the Gowanus Oyster Garden Stewards, which is how they are getting there.

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The author of Poop Culture, whose publication we noted last month, emailed us to note that his current blog entry might be of interest in terms of our Gowanus coverage. After all, he writes, “I’m a Gowanus-based writer and we all know the Gowanus’ sewage issues.” The Gowanus’ sewage issues, in case you haven’t been […]

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This could well be one of the only wedding announcements that GL ever posts, but yesterday’s New York Times brought news of the betrothal of the great-great-great granddaughter of Edwin C. Litchfield, one of Brooklyn’s first big developers and the man who built the Gowanus Canal. Her name is Emily Katherine Larned and she married […]

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We had heard–but hadn’t had time to follow up–that the Issue Project Room, the performance space on the Gowanus Canal next to the Carroll Street Bridge would be moving. We had been told it had something to do with the upcoming Big Stink as the Canal’s flushing system is shut down for repairs, but the […]

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[Photo courtesy of poopreport/flickr] Being the Gowanus Lounge and having the Big G as one of the many Brooklyn locales that claims our attention, we’d be remiss if we didn’t not that last night was the release party at Galapagos for the new book, Poop Culture. We’d noticed the crapper above–which was created for the […]

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Earlier this week, we posted an excerpt of an email from the Urban Divers about last weekend’s Gowanus Canal cleanup. It mentioned that a lot of “sanitary items” were in the canal after the recent Nor’easter. Ariella Cohen fills in some of the detail in this week’s Brooklyn Paper. Apparently the, um, sanitary items included […]

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We saw an email yesterday asking the Sanitation Department to do a trash pickup at 2nd Street and the Gowanus Canal. This is because volunteers appear to have picked up 1,500 pounds of trash and debris (about 50 bags) during a volunteer cleanup on Sunday (4/22) that was part of the 8th Annual Gowanus Earth […]

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It may seem frivolous to be sad about a whale dying during a week in which 32 people were murdered by a maniac and on a day in which nearly 200 people were killed by car bombs in Baghdad. The whale had gained the nickname Sludgie (originally bestowed by the Daily News because of Fudgie […]

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The technical term for what happens to the Gowanus during a storm is “CSOs.” The layman’s description of what happens is that sewers (both storm drains and toilets) flow right into the canal. On Sunday, the canal overflowed its banks in places during the Nor’easter, leaving behind filthy & toxics puddles.l This is what the […]

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A lot of people enjoyed the idea of a whale in the Gowanus, even though the Gowanus whale was really in Gowanus Bay rather than the canal itself, which is too narrow and shallow for such a creature. We don’t know who originally produced this image of a whale (which looks like a Killer Whale […]

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We never thought we’d type words like “Gowanus Whale Tale,” but there we go. Yesterday was that kind of day. A young whale wandered near the beginning of the Gowanus Canal, off 21st Street on the Sunset Park side of Gowanus Bay near a ship that has been docked there forever. We saw a boat […]

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