Heartbeats in the Muck The History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor Book

New York Harbor Survives

There hasn't been such an intimate look at New York Harbor since
Joseph Mitchell's classic "The Bottom of the Harbor". John
Waldman captures the mystique and dark romance known only to a few
New York bayman. Readers will become familiar with New York events
like "Floaters week", underruns, blow out tides; fishing holes
with unlikely names such as Aquatic Appalachia, Tin Can Grounds, Acid
Grounds, and Cholera Banks; flotsam that will never be found in any
dictionary like "Coney Island Whitefish" and "blop-blops";
nautical entrepreneurs like the "Belford Pirates", illegal
pinhookers, Kenney's Killer Killifish, headboats and even an urban
sports fishing guide. John Watchman takes you to backwaters and
commercial dead ends where the "Fiftteenth Ward Smelling
Committee" once searched for the source of health-giving vapors,
sludge bubbles, perfume wagon stenches; and a criminal defense lawyer
even tried to use the black, bubbly water of the bay as a possible
neurological "The river made me do it" defense.
I spent many
of my early years wandering New York Harbor and it's many tributaries
in search of stripped bass, jacking for blue claw crabs, ice boating,
racing sailboats or simply drifting down the Harlem River on a warm
summer night listening to the urban mixture of steel bands, fire
engine horns, police sirens and elevated trains. It was a treat to
hear that you can still do many of these things and the hostilities to
this great body of water are being addressed by special people like
John Watchman. We owe him a lot.

Richard Quis now lives in Southern
California where the colorful flotsam is oranges, lemons and tennis
balls.