What's the best thing ever built on a dump?
I may have cycled to it yesterday afternoon:
Shirley Chisholm State Park opened in 2019 but was only recently named in honor of the woman who represented my Congressional district (albeit with different boundaries) for seven terms. In 1972, she became the first woman to run for Democratic party's presidential nomination, and the first black woman (she was born in Brooklyn to West Indian parents) to run in either major party.
I would love to know what she'd think of the park's location: In addition to all sorts of substances not meant for human consumption, various rumors had it that the Mafia, other crime groups and individual criminals disposed of bodies there. I wouldn't doubt the veracity of those stories, and I'm even willing to believe that one reason the location was used was, in addition to its remoteness from central parts of the city, its chemical composition: Supposedly, the bodies dissolved quickly in the toxic stews and soups that festered there.
Ms. Chisholm, though, probably would be pleased that it's been turned into a park. It's officially been part of the Gateway National Recreation Area since the 1980s, when the dump closed and cleanup began, but was off-limits to the public. Some trails and a really nice loop for walkers and cyclists opened recently, and there are exhibits that explain the kinds of wildlife and fauna living in the area.
What would please the park's namesake most of all, I think is that the park borders East New York, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the United States. Not surprisingly, nearly all of East New York's residents are black or brown. An adjacent neighborhood, Brownsville, is like East New York but even poorer and tougher: One of Brownsville's projects (what the Brits call council flats), the Pink Houses, gave the world Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson.
Oh, and the park's entrance opens onto the bike/pedestrian path that runs along the Belt Parkway from Howard Beach, Queens to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. As it happened, I rode in and around the park on my way to Canarsie Pier, where I've taken many a ride.
Shirley Chisholm overcame many obstacles. So it's kind of ironic to see this:
A steep hill? A bump? Only sissies are intimidated by such things. I am a transgender woman.
