Greenpoint’s polluted and beloved superfund waterway, Newtown Creek, received a visit from the Jimmy Kimmel Show along with actor and all-around patron of Greenpoint, Bill Murray.
The North Brooklyn Boat Club’s Patterson Beckwith and Michael Haskell brought the Kimmel show — which is currently filming in Brooklyn — out for a paddle through the creek for a view of the recycling and wastewater treatment plants.
Between the jokes, environmental issues regarding the creek’s pollution are discussed, including sewage overflow and the Buckeye Pipeline, which runs under Newtown Creek piping jet fuel to Laguardia airport.
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Canoe-dling! #BillMurray @IamGuillermo @NorthBKBoatClub #KimmelinBrooklyn
The North Brooklyn Boat Club is a volunteer-run organization on a small rectangular plot of land on Ash Street next to the Pulaski Bridge that was donated by Broadway Stages. A great way to tour the creek is to attend one of the club’s public paddles, which ran this year May through October.
For those interested in a yearly NBBC membership the cost is $40 and more information is available here.
I lived at 76 Freeman Street from June 1934 until sometime in 1960. Did you know that during WWII (1941-1945) the property at the Green Street Lumber Yard was an Italian Prisoner of War site? The lumber yard ran along the East River from Green Street to Dupont Street Park. They were considered low risk and therefore the Government allowed them to be housed at this site while high risk prisoners, usually Germans, were housed at remote sites in Arizona, I believe. I moved out of Greenpoint in September 1962 after marrying a Jersey girl.