Gowanus Dolphin

I opened up my Sunday paper the other day and saw a picture of a dolphin with some black gunk on it's bottle-nose with the following title:

Before I started reading the article, I sat dumbstruck thinking about what "canal" is in New York that a dolphin could swim in and end up dead, and then the word Gowanus caught my attention somewhere in a paragraph.

Gowanus Canal is an old spot in Brooklyn where industry had been set up for mre than a century, but now had very little action, but the pollution never was satisfactorily taken care of. Before we left, I was pretty sure getting it cleaned up was on the docket. I even went over and took pictures in 2007 because I heard they'd be getting it corrected. The surrounding neighborhoods are a mix of well-to-do and working class, the wealthy parts are newer and built over dilapidated industrial grounds in the near-past.

The day I was there was hot,and while the water didn't smell too bad, it certainly looked like it could ignite:

That's no joke, man. Here's another picture with the large iconic Williamsburg Bank Tower on the right side, in case you didn't believe that the picture's from Brooklyn:

Have you seen Goodfellas? The spooky scene late in the film when Robert DeNiro tells Lorraine Bracco to pick up the dresses, "Nah na, right around there!" he yells from down the way? That was filmed maybe within a thousand feet of the Gowanus opening, if that helps place something, anyway...