Bed-Stuy Aquarium – The Weird Side of the Internet

Bed-Stuy Aquarium – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

We rely on the government for so many things. One of those things is entertainment. We rely on cities, towns, and villages to build us parks to play and hang out in. And that’s great, but then we’re penned in to a plot of earth and told where and when we can congregate. But what happens when we build our own parks, design our own monuments, something we take pride in? Inevitable they get the long arm of the public works department, who destroy these works of the public.

A while back in Chicago, an unfortunate rat met asphalt and became a pothole, perfect shape. And the people of the neighborhood celebrated it like the Virgin Mary in a water stain. And, to the dismay of the neighborhood, the city repaved. I believe candles were left in vigil.

So now in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of New York, a leaky fire hydrant created a puddle in a tree-bed, the perfect conditions for some goldfish. And so the community got to it, stocked some goldfish. They did it nice, pained a light pole in a fish motif, and people hung out there. They called it the “Bed-Stuy Aquarium.”

And the fire department just couldn’t deal.

To be fair, it was a leaky fire hydrant, and it would’ve been a danger in the winter. But they could’ve just fixed the leak. They didn’t have to fill in the hole and put the fish in a bucket.

In the case of the goldfish, maybe there was a reason to be a killjoy. But what about the Chicago rat-hole? Did it occur to anyone that maybe we celebrate the cracks in the matrix just because they are cracks in the matrix?

I think I’m going to go throw flower mix in the cracks in my sidewalk and create a botanical garden. Or fill in the potholes on Columbia Street with expoxy and action figures in it, posed. Yes, they’re that deep.

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