English Kills: The Garbage District

English Kills (Dutch for creek) in East Williamsburg is a fetid body of water that leads to the even more fetid (and hyper-toxic) Newtown Creek. A big part of Brooklyn’s garbage industry is concentrated in the area, with both city and privately operated transfer stations lining the creek, and many small scrap/recycling companies nearby.




The creek is mostly hidden behind the gates of the transfer stations, all but inaccessible from the street. There is a spot, though, where one can not only see (and smell) the kills up close, but actually walk across it. The railroad tracks off Morgan Avenue, right across from Bushwick Terminal, turn into a bridge that spans the creek.

Indelible images from the bridge over English Kills: the claw machine in the scrap yard bobbing above the corrugated metal fence.


The price is right: someone is living in a shack right near the source of the creek.



Not for human consumption (it is water, though, technically).




On a hot day around English Kills, an infernal stench pervades and clouds of flies are like part of the landscape. The diesel roar of carting trucks is practically the only sound that can be heard in the otherwise barren place.

Off Off the Beaten Track: Dutch Kills (Borderland Wonderland, Part 3)

The sectors of a city . . . are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents.

—Guy Debord




The service road beside Newtown Creek, past the forking railroad tracks spanning Dutch Kills, looked ripe for exploration. The satellite photo was ambiguous, though; it looked like the only way onto the tracks was through a large truck depot, but was it accessible? Would the gatekeepers of industry bar my way?


Up from the subway



Onto the footbridge


Highway cash crop
Billboard harvest






Target acquired. Trespassing? I don’t know, but it felt like it.






On the rickety wooden footbridge between the forking railroad tracks. . . the rumbling and clanking of the scrap yards on the creek within earshot . . . I am ecstatic beneath the satellite photos that guided me here.







On Railroad Avenue I heard something rustling behind me and I turned quickly, thinking it a rat. It was a puppy from the scrap yard, a dusty little mutt, sweet as can be, rabidly frisky, nipping at my fingers—pure motion.



We had a moment together . . . Goodbye sweet little dusty scrap yard puppy.