Photo Essay: Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (Open House NY)

On many a summer evening, I have stood on Sebouh's roof in Greenpoint and gazed longward, away from the Manhattan skyline, towards the teardrop-shaped orbs, eerily lit in blue in the distance. Like something out of the 1964 World's Fair, or a sci-fi novel from the same era, the bulbous, shiny shapes seemed to pulsate in the distance, attracting my eye and my inquisitiveness.

They are...the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Digester Eggs.

It's increasingly more common in the U.S. for something so utilitarian and industrial to take on a second function, of design and beauty - thereby making it somewhat of a tourist attraction and a new addition to the Open House New York annual schedule.

view from the creek

front entrance





We had the joy of talking with one of the architects from Polshek Partnership Architects, the design firm that worked with engineers to completely rehaul the sewage treatment plant on the famously polluted Newtown Creek, at the northernmost point of Brooklyn, up Greenpoint Avenue. The digester eggs are only one small part of an entire complex of tanks and tubes, much of which functions heavily several hundred feet underground.

dirty windows

This plant processes the waste of about a third of Manhattan, as well as some of Queens and Brooklyn.







We climbed to the top of the digester eggs, and walked down the catwalks that connect them for a bird's-eye view of the whole process. After aeration, heat, and bacteria break down the solid waste, and the resulting "sludge" is removed, the eggs break the, ahem, "material" down even further, resulting in what they call "cake" - which gets shipped off to the midwest to be used as fertilizer.



We got to see everything except one walkway...



...making for a surprisingly satisfying trip to something we would never be able to see otherwise.

The eggs have only been finished for about a year and a half, and the plant itself is still an active construction site that won't be completed until 2014.

For a slideshow of the eggs, especially at night, visit the DEP's website.

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Photo Essay: Masonic Hall NYC (Open House NY)

After years of seeing it on the schedule, we finally decided to go check out the Masonic Hall on 23rd Street as part of Open House New York.

The masons are a secret society, a fraternity that pledges to "take good men, and make them better." Their ways of going about that - and many of the other things that they do - are mysterious and steeped heavily in symbolism and, somewhat bafflingly, geometry (as evidenced by the glowing "G" in every room).

"Marble" pillars are plaster

There are a number of meeting rooms, each built, designed, and restored in a different color palette, style, and theme, ranging from French to Greek to English castle.



painted to look like cloth





The garish designs of the rooms are reflected in likewise stylized pipe organs, one in every room.





There were plenty of ornate touches, including gold leaf pillars, wood carvings, altars, and glowing chandeliers...





...and a gold statue of George Washington, also a mason.

Hollender Room

Although this site isn't particularly hard to get into (there are even more extensive tours given six days a week), it's one of the weirder and more inexplicable stops on the OHNY itinerary, and therefore, in my book, worth a visit.

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Photo Essay: MTA Substation #13 (Open House NY)

For the last seven years, I've looked forward to one special weekend out of the year: Open House New York. Its all-access ethos has fueled my inner urban explore, has given me much fodder for photography and blogging, and has taught me a lot about New York City.

Every year, OHNY provides limited, reservation-only tours of an MTA substation in Brooklyn, and I can never get in.

This year, they moved the tour to Manhattan, and didn't require reservations.

Which meant I finally got in. I just had to wait in line with a bunch of irate retirees, who couldn't understand why they couldn't just leave and come back and get in.

waiting in line

story of my life





Substations take high voltage AC electricity and convert it to DC to power the subways. As I noted during my live tweeting from the tour, they used to be manually operated, and still contain huge machinery for it, relics featuring switches and nobs and alarms and cables and wires, much of which is out of commission, now that a lot of the work is done automatically and by remote control from a few blocks away.

our tour guide

rotary converter













Still, especially upstairs, the substation is alive with electricity, buzzing in your ears. As we approached the loudest area upstairs, our tour guide told us, "Don't touch anything that looks like copper," so we shoved our hands in our hoodie pockets and peered wide-eyed at the equipment around us.



This is what powers the dreaded and deadly third rail. Zzzzt.

Regular substation tours are available through the Transit Museum, whose membership is totally worth it for access to special programs and tours of the abandoned City Hall station.

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By Its Right Name

In my last job, management kept trying to convince its staff that titles meant nothing, but people have a natural inclination for naming - naming stars, species, babies, and themselves, as well as nicknaming loved ones and pets and the otherwise nameless guy on the subway platform every morning.
When I started working out of college, I stopped using my last name in conversation. I never introduced myself by my first and last name, only my first, and when I answered the phone or made calls or announced myself to building security, I always addressed myself as "Sandi from Atlantic."

Since then, I've been "Sandi from Razor & Tie," "Sandi from Kidz Bop," "Sandi from Ziggy Marley," and now, "Sandi from Ultra."

People ask me what I do for a living, and I often tell them I'm a marketing consultant. I might tell them I work in the music industry. If I'm really brave, I tell them I'm a writer.

Earlier this week, the woman I'm filling in for while she's on maternity leave introduced me as her "temp." Duly noted.

I guess it doesn't matter what other people call me. But with my refusal to embrace my given last name and without a definitive career goal to serve as a surname ("Sandi the attorney," "Sandi from Peace Corps"), I'm not sure what my right name is.

What is "Sandi," all by itself?

This is a question that has plagued me since I first released myself from my last job, where I recoiled at being called a "marketer." Of all the things in the world that I am, that's the one name that someone should choose to call me?

Why not:

• adventurer
• explorer
• student
• teacher
• sister
• friend
• mentor
• instigator
• investigator
• sinner
• dreamer
  

?

Surely all of those would be true, and permanent.

I guess you can call me a "temp" now, for my current working state is temporary. But I hope for a longer-term impact out of my time spent there. Unless we figure out by what right name to call me, we will forever keep each other at arms' length.

I keep hoping for something or someone to get close enough to give me a name that really is right.

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Disappointments, I've Had a Few...

Avoiding disappointment = not going somewhere because you're afraid you'll go and not be able to get in

Avoiding regret = going somewhere even when it's sold out, when you're not on the list, when it's raining, when everyone has ditched you, because you really want to go, and you just have to try to get in.

If I spent my life avoiding disappointment, I would never interact with the human race. I would never buy a concert ticket for fear the show would be cancelled. (Come back, Lady GaGa!) I would never give out my phone number, even though I know they will never call.

Avoiding regret is about keeping up your end of the bargain. You do whatever is necessary and whatever is within your control. But sometimes when regret is avoided, disappointment remains...

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A Private Feast, in Pictures

I lived in Brooklyn for seven years, and while I was there, I tried to make the most of it. Instead of going "into the city," I hung out in my neighborhood, Greenpoint, quite a bit, even though there wasn't much happening there yet, and ventured into Williamsburg whenever possible to experience what the locals had to offer.

That was before the affluent hipsters living off their parents' wealth moved in. And the celebrities.

I often hung out on the south side of Williamsburg, by the bridge, when local artists like Vic Thrill were singing about the "Williamsburg Stranger" and lived a block away from the Chickenbone Cafe, where an up-and-coming chef named Zak Pelaccio made amazing pressed sandwiches out of an open kitchen with only a sandwich press and a hot plate.

Vic Thrill was forced out of his studio and Zak out of his kitchen, and I moved to Manhattan. The Brooklyn zeitgeist was over.

Since then, I've followed Zak to 5 Ninth, Fatty Crab, and Borough Food & Drink, never quite recapturing the homegrown quality of his original restaurant endeavor but gathering new fans along the way.

Today, Epicurious gave me the opportunity to sample a preview of Zak's return to Brooklyn, the soon-to-be-opened, BBQ-themed Fatty Cue, as part of their Epicurious Entertains New York festival.

It was hot, meaty, and juicy.



Zak





brisket

cucumber salad



bacon & clams, charred turnips

Banh Mi

Tecate w/Thai chili pepper and yuzu

Supposedly, today's menu was to be more adventurous than the restaurant's menu will actually be once it opens. Knowing we were experiencing something special, we were happy, satisfied, and burning and yearning for more.

New York allows you to have a favorite chef, who doesn't have a TV show and who isn't endorsed by a celebrity. You can follow them around to their various restaurants and champion them amongst your friends. And when they succeed, you feel like you've helped them a little bit, by eating their food and saying hello to them when you can. Sure, they're not celebrities like Mario Batali or Bobby Flay (who I also love), but they make damn good food and are actually in the kitchens of the restaurants they operate, charring turnips and winking at you when you greet them.

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