Red Hook

Continuing in my efforts to walk through most of New York, I went to the neighborhood of Red Hook in Brooklyn.  Red Hook has a more complex streetscape  than many New York neighborhoods.   Surrounded by water on three sides, it was originally a port area (and still is, in part), and what residential community that was there was there for the people who worked in the port and the industry around the water.  It then became home to the Red Hook projects, one of the city's largest public housing projects, which eventually became a high crime area.   And now it has become home to both new artisanal industries like a winery, home to artists and other urban frontier types, and, of course, eventual gentrification.  It is far from any subway, though, which helps keep its character a little more distinct from other areas of the city.  So now you have scrapyards, polluted sites, wineries, artisanal gelato, empty lots with junk, an IKEA store, art galleries, abandoned buildings, etc.   It's all there.  Red Hook also took a big hit from Hurricane Sandy; the flood level was about six feet above the streets.  It all makes for fascinating walking.   Here are some things I saw:

I loved these bundles of scrunched up scrap metal:

 A typical view of a vacant lot with random debris:

Some of the industrial areas are painted bright colors, though:

This is an amazing enormous abandoned building, built as a grain terminal for barges coming down the Hudson River from the Erie Canal.   It was quickly made obsolete by the railroads, and has been empty ever since.  It's made of very solid concrete.

In front of this building are several ball-playing fields, except that they are now closed on account of too much pollution in the ground.

Detail of above:

Storage for those wire scaffoldings they use in concrete:

The main street of Red Hook is a curious combination of high-end bicycle shops, hip restaurants, and assorted abandoned lots like these.   Though they will clearly be gone in a few years.

And some odd store windows:

And some colorful piles of assorted stuff along the same street:

Eventually you get to some very active modern port facilities for container ships, etc.

But there are still the odd buildings overlooking the container port.   This one was isolated on a corner, and had views of the port.   Me too!

Don't know what this was about:

Or this:   (If I removed the green barrel, it would make an excellent red, yellow, blue picture.

And finally, home for the ice cream trucks:

There is a lot more that I didn't see, so I will be back for more.