On July 22, 2025, I published Happy Cleaners Cargo Trike in Gowanus. The article was centered on photographs I had taken in the previous month of an adorable and endearing three-wheeled laundry pick-up and delivery vehicle seen outside an associated laundry establishment in Gowanus, Brooklyn. I was inspired to publish the article and my photos for two reasons other than the fact that the vehicle is adorable. Firstly, it was the second of four articles I would publish in five days involving laundry. Secondly, my most “popular” article at the time of publication featured Amazon’s now-ubiquitous (in Brooklyn, New York City, at least) e-cargo delivery “bikes,” so I figured that small endearing vehicles that fit in bike paths was a popular topic.
On August 13, 2025, I encountered the Happy Cleaners Cargo Trike again. One may think that I had published everything that was fit to print about it a few weeks prior. But there was something different in this new encounter – specifically the location. I found proof that the cargo trike was mobile (unexpectedly?). When I photographed the trike in June 2025, it was located at the corner of 4th and Hoyt Streets in Gowanus, near Happy Cleaners’ location at 55 4th Street. At approximately 5:03 PM on August 13, I encountered the Happy Cleaners trike parked just off the Third Street Bridge, which sits atop Brooklyn’s beloved waterway and eternal environmental clean-up site, the Gowanus Canal (see approximate location). If that were not so dramatic as to warrant an article, what if I told you that it was raining?
In my first photograph, we see a side-view of the Happy Cleaners motorized tricycle with a Cubesmart storage location in the background. There are a few of those Cubesmarts in the Gowanus area. They make one think of Borg Cubes with a coat of paint, but I cannot bring myself to disapprove of them.
In this second photo, we see the Gowanus Whole Foods location in the background. I only went in once and did not buy anything. But the Whole Foods itself is a nice building and they take care of it, so it meets with my approval if not my wallet.
Here, we are looking down the Third Street Bridge, which, as I noted, crosses the Gowanus Canal. The Gowanus Canal cuts in two a large chunk of the neighborhood, but there are several crossings, with one being Third Street. Third Street sits between the Ninth Street and Union Street canal crossings (it would be between Ninth Street and Carroll Street but the Carroll Street Bridge has been closed for maintenance since 2021).
I do not have anything to add about the Happy Cleaners tricycle beyond the photos and the results of my research in the previous article, but I think my rainy photos came out well and paint an inspiring picture of a little motorized tricycle hard at work in unpleasant conditions. It also foreshadowed an article I would write about an injured Amazon e-cargo “bike” in the rain seen on September 6, 2025, but I ended up writing my funny vehicles in the rain articles in reverse-chronological order.
Speaking of the unpleasant conditions, I cannot remember whether I knew it would likely rain on my walk that afternoon. Because I took a good number of pictures on the walk, I know that it had only started raining close in time to when I photographed the tricycle and that it stopped while I was still out walking. Speaking of being still out and walking, I took the photograph that prompted my Coca Cola Liquid Death Tag 24 minutes later on that same walk.
After photographing the Happy Cleaners vehicle and having determined that I would likely use it in an article, I decided to capture the scene with my back to the cargo trike.
Here, you can see the beautiful Gowanus Canal. Unfortunately, I captured my finger in the photo, but fortunately I was able to crop myself out without impairing your view of Brooklyn’s finest waterway. You may notice a very tall building way off in the distance behind the new condos popping up on the Gowanus Canal in the foreground. While you can see the Manhattan skyline from certain angles, that startlingly tall building is Brooklyn Tower, the tallest building in Brooklyn by a good margin. Brooklyn Tower, however, is a topic which would demand its own article (foreshadowing).
While I have joked often about the toxicity of the Gowanus Canal, the clean-up effort in recent years has been impressive. I cannot remember the last time it caused me olfactory offense, something which was a constant in the olden days of 8-10 years ago. The canal clean-up effort is so impressive that some people(?) have taken to calling it the Venice of Brooklyn.
I captured this “Welcome to Venice” sign near the Gowanus Canal on August 9, 2025, four days before I took the above photos. I do not remember precisely where I saw it, but it was close to the 9th Street Bridge crossing. Many years ago, I remember seeing sardonic “Welcome to Venice Graffiti” on a wall over-hanging the Gowanus Canal near the Union and Carroll Street crossings. That was back when the Canal tended to smell strong enough to reach pedestrians crossing any of the bridges, so I laughed. While I would not go so far as to say “Venice in Brooklyn” is in the future, they are throwing up condos in Gowanus at a remarkable pace and, as we saw in my Canal photograph above, Gowanus now has grocery stores and mobile laundry services. Things are on the upswing, at least – although I would be disinclined to test my luck.
