Rockaway

Duwand Works for Good Humor, Inc by Lashon Daley

Duwand wasn’t the must disgruntled employee at Good Humor, Inc.  His position as a Quality Control Inspector at the conveyor belt had its benefits. He was never asked to lift anything like the stock boys who wore back braces, nor was he ever blamed for anything– his supervisor was held responsible for all of his mistakes and those of the other 19 employees just like him.

Duwand’s job description stated 2 things: 1) Verify that Good Humor, Inc. is properly spelled and punctuated on each ice cream sandwich package wrapper and 2) Notify your supervisor when it is not.

From the age of 14, Duwand worked for Good Humor, Inc. at the conveyor belt. Since 1929, when the company opened its New York distribution center, Duwand read and re-read the words Good Humor, Inc. 5,980,003 times. He could spell it backwards in 4 seconds. He created 213 words from the letters and composed several different jingles based on its spelling. My ice cream has a first name, it’s G-o-o-od…

So after forty-three years of uneventful service, it caught all of Good Humor, Inc.’s 147 New York employees by surprise when Duwand drove a fleet of Good Humor, Inc. ice cream trucks off of a pier. › Continue reading

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Monday, February 7th, 2011 Authors, Body of Water, Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks, Lashon Daley, Objects, Rockaway 1 Comment

Once (Always) by Kate Overgaard

Lost boy,

Shipwreck in my life.

When your little hand found mine,

Suddenly

We were home,

You and I,

Meant to be

Tied with a seemingly tenuous knot,

Not of blood or biology,

But meant to be.

The current

Dragged you under and away

And—eyes closed—

My fingers released you.

Leaving me to drown in the loss of you,

Never to utter goodbye to you.

A rusted reef of ice cream whispers

In the depths of the Rockaways,

Cradled in the cool waves

Around my beating heart,

Still drowning.

About the Author

Kate Overgaard is an English teacher who is currently working on her M.A. in Creative Writing through Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in New Jersey.

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Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 Authors, Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks, Kate Overgaard, Rockaway No Comments

Beside by Nicole Haroutunian


Beside by Nicole Haroutunian

Beside by Nicole Haroutunian

Wharf Rats & Dead Giraffe

Ice Cream Truck & Grand Piano

Shopping Cart & Formica Dinette

Toredoes & Gribbles

Artist Statement

BESIDE is an edition of 2o. The images are printed with ink on a Gocco B6 press and the text is printed in Futura with East River water on a Chandler & Price Pilot Press. The envelope is handmade and soaked in East River water. Additional text and waves drawn in blue ink were later added to the prints and can be seen here.

When I began BESIDE, I hoped to print on handmade paper created from scraps scavenged from NYC’s riverbanks. But, after a month of walking up and down the Hudson, hopping fences to get close to the East River, I only had collected a scant bagful of scraps—not nearly enough for four prints in an edition of twenty. What better reason to have to reconceive the project, though—the riverbanks just aren’t that dirty anymore. Even when I decided to print using East River water instead, I was amazed that the water I collected, dipped off a rock in Williamsburg, had no discernable smell, no weird cast or color. So, rather than obscuring my images of objects—teredoes and gribbles, shopping carts and grand pianos, ice cream trucks and Formica dinettes, wharf rats and drowned giraffes—the text emphasizes their strange side-by-side presence in the city’s underwater landscape, making their identities all the more clear.

About the Artist

Nicole Haroutunian is an editor of Underwater New York. Her bio can be found here.

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Sunday, October 4th, 2009 Artists, Body of Water, Coney Island Creek, East River, Formica dinette, Giraffe, Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks, Grand Piano, Nicole Haroutunian, Objects, Rockaway, Shopping cart, Teredos & Gribbles, The Narrows, Wharf rats No Comments

Hog Island by James McClosky

In 1893 they were already hurting. Boss Tweed had died of pneumonia down in a jail cell on Ludlow Street fifteen years earlier, and even though the Tammany Machine still had plenty of juice to it you could feel them losing their grip: Charles Parkhurst was making noise from the pulpit and the Lexow Committee was gearing up, and they weren’t fucking around. Not to mention a new Grand Jury investigation and all the so-called “reform candidates” making a fuss.

The island wasn’t even really an island, nothing more than a glorified sandbar really. A barrier island, sandy, low to the water and flat, like poured gold. Some said it was shaped like a pig and that’s how it got the name. Other said that way back when the Poospatuck had raised hogs there and farmed. Either way the Indians were long gone and the name had stuck by the time the War Between the States was over, and then some of the boys came home and took it into their heads to turn that little useless spit of sand into a resort – the same idea was working over in Coney Island, so why not Hog Island too? Wasn’t the city full enough of people looking for a quick close getaway? Even the most average of average men could afford the train fare and ferry ride.

The sea grass glinted green and white when the wind blew, and you could pick up dry, pristine sand and let it run through your fingers while you looked back at the coal soot hanging over the city. The smoke from the Sag Harbor Branch. The Central Railroad of Long Island.

› Continue reading

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Monday, September 28th, 2009 Authors, Body of Water, James McClosky, Rockaway No Comments
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