New York Shitty Day Ender: Audience Participation Time!

(Or: Divine Inspiration)

If there is one thing being unemployed and this downright frigid weather is good for it is contemplation. My mind has been awash with many an idea. Most of them are admittedly rather bad— but there have been some good ones. Which brings me to this:

I realize this doesn’t seem like much but I assure something very special is going on here. And this is how it all got started.

Yours truly (fairly) recently received an email from a Professor at the City University of New York. It read as follows:

Would you kindly consider giving me permission to use your photo of the Newtown creek Wastewater Treatment plant and Park?  This image very much suits my purposes in an article and book I’m doing on infrastructure. Both publishing organizations are non profit, and I do not receive a fee for the article.

However, I’d be willing to pay a small amount for use of the photo. I’m attaching a jpeg of the image. If this is ok, I will send you a form to sign.
thanks kindly.

Here’s the image in question.

As you can imagine I was absolutely delighted by this development. The Shit Tits have long been a source of fascination and adoration for yours truly. I would even go so far as to say I put these “girls” on the map, in manner of speaking. I allowed her to use this image without fee provided I get a copy of both the article, book in question and am cited credit. Yes kids, you have read me correctly: I will soon be adding “published photographer”* to my rather anemic resume! But instead of resting on my laurels I got to thinking:

Why doesn’t the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Visitors Center have a gift shop?

and more importantly

Why hasn’t someone seen fit to create a Shit Tit snow globe?

I have no control over the former— but I recently used an Amazon gift card to make the latter happen! My snow globe kit came replete with pink and blue “snow” which I have every intention of using as they look like the manifold number of plastic bags one sees on the creek after any given rainfall. It also allows for a musical movement. I plan on hacking a jewelry box the Mister purchased me (under the erroneous notion I would actually use it). “Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens will provide the soundtrack for this, the first and only snow globe featuring Greenpoint’s most prominent “assets”. After some informal “crowd sourcing” I determined a kayaker should be present. He is present and accounted for— as are tiny turds and “Coney Island whitefish”. I’m seriously considering adding a rainbow. We’ll see. But I digress from the purpose of this post.

As I have been feverishly sculpting miniature digester eggs and assorted detritus it hit me:

Why not do a series of snow globe souvenirs documenting places of dubious distinction?

This too, I have “crowd sourced”. One chap suggested the Greenpoint Terminal Market. I disagreed; this would be better rendered as an ashtray or incense burner (fodder for a later project, I can assure you). I for one think Woodhull Hospital and Karl Fischer Row are excellent candidates. As is Gowanus Canal, which was recommended by my/Greenpoint’s favorite “crazy yoga lady” Christina. Have any ideas/suggestions for my “Dubious Distinctions” series of souvenirs from hell? Tender ’em via comments or email at: missheather (at) thatgreenpointblog (dot) com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Miss Heather

*And contributing writer for another publication. More about that later (Think: March).