Gowanus Canal, Gowanus, Gowanus Bay
On a tip from an old friend and urbanist from Toronto, Zach Youngerman, I wandered up the Gowanus Canal to an unfinished storefront in a new condo building overlooking this industrial stream. Inside were stacks of canoes and historical maps and photos of the canal’s past. The bare cinderblock walled storefront is leased on a monthly basis to a group called the Gowanus Dredgers, a local conservation group focused on building appreciation and agency of this historically ignored waterway.
In their words, the Gowanus Dredgers are “a volunteer organization dedicated to providing waterfront access and education to the public.” They regularly host drop-in clean-ups and offer paddles along the canal, with boats launching from a raised dock at the condo site where they rent their space.
The Dredgers offer a membership to the community that allows access to their inventory of donated canoes and kayaks, in exchange for some service time maintaining equipment and hosting one of their free programs. I haven’t signed up for a membership yet, but plan to do so soon.
Highlights from the tour
- It was a bit surreal to take a CitiBike to an industrial canal and then drop a canoe into the heart of Brooklyn. Gowanus has a variety of draw bridges from different points in history, and paddling carefully below them allows you to appreciate their construction and beauty.
- Most of the industrial/retail of the neighbourhood has turned it’s back to the canal, so the view from the water is mostly that of loading docks and the edges of large parking lots. There was the occasional boathouse or RV parked along the banks that appeared to be well lived in.
- Parts of the stream are filled sand sediment, almost to the water level. Under some bridges and inside a few stream basins, sand makes canoe navigation difficult or impossible. We nearly beached halfway through a tunnel that lays under the BQE, but managed to push ourselves free with paddles.
- The F/G line runs elevated high above the Gowanus in this section, as does the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and several arterials roads that are at times 5 storeys above your head. It exemplifies the intense infrastructure that makes up NYC.
What I’ll come back to see
- The paddle was quite easy, but we stopped at the estuary that leads to Gowanus Bay, the Red Hook Channel and Upper New York Bay. These are major shipping channels with barges, ferries and freighters running frequently that we were a little too uncomfortable paddling in a canoe. However, the Gowanus Dredgers run a summertime excursion to nearby Governor’s Island that I’m definitely hoping to check out one day.
- The Gowanus Dredgers clubhouse walls are covered in history, water charts, and other artifacts that celebrate the canal and the neighbourhood. They host a lot of programming and events out of the space that would be of interest to any outdoors person or paddler.
- A closer inspection of the neighborhood is in order. The bridges, trees, and riverbanks all showcase a long history of Gowanus that need to be explored up close.
Food/Drink Highlights
- The Gowanus Dredgers provided some coffee and donut holes, but other than that this was a food-free excursion. But we did paddle past a Whole Foods :)
Thanks to my friend Miriam who joined me on the paddle, modelled for all these shots, and was very patient with me when I stopped steering and paddling to take Instagram stories and videos, inevitably turning us towards the steep river banks or parked barges.
