meet me in gowanus.

A fight broke out on my subway platform today. The cops were called, and for some reason the train wasn't allowed to leave. So we all filed grumblingly out of the station, and I walked with a charmingly indignant Caribbean woman to catch a different train. She bemoaned the burgeoning hooligan movement, and derided passing teenagers for "smoking blunts this early in the morning." I heartily agreed with her; getting high before 10 am is just bad manners.

More interestingly, we talked about the new stadium that is supposed to go up in my neighborhood. When I commented that building a stadium would probably change things, the woman just laughed. "Yes, it will" was all she said, but she looked at me like I might be a bit slow. While my new friend was a little off on the exact location of the new Atlantic Yards development, it's true that they're planning on tearing down a huge swath of housing to build a basketball stadium for the Nets just a few blocks from where I live. This does not excite me. If it was a soccer pitch I might be persuaded, but probably not even then. All those people from New Jersey coming to see the Nets? There goes the neighborhood.

I feel like this sort of thing is happening everywhere in Brooklyn. Even Gowanus is slated to get a face lift soon. I remember driving past the Gowanus canal on the bus on my way to elementary school, and it was a distinctly unpleasant experience, olfactorily and aesthetically. (Is olfactorily even a word? Whatever.) The canal itself is disgusting, or it used to be, and the neighborhood is all industrial. It's sort of amazing to think that one day people might be strolling along the Gowanus canal, enjoying the gentle breezes and feeding ducks. My strongest memory of driving through the neighborhood was a huge radiator factory that was next to a bridge, and every time I read about developments in Gowanus, I wonder where they are going to make radiators now. China?