The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) brutally bisects Brooklyn’s Hicks Street and separates the Brooklyn Waterfront District neighborhood – which I wrote about once before – from the neighborhoods of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. There are several points at which one can cross over the BQE to and from Columbia Street Waterfront District. Columbia Street Waterfront District itself sits between Brooklyn Bridge Park and Red Hook. If one walks to the end of Columbia Street Waterfront District toward Red Hook, the final BQE crossing point at which one can turn off into Carroll Gardens is on Hamilton Avenue.
This stretch of Hamilton Avenue is not well-designed for pedestrian foot traffic. It features two busy street crossings with no traffic lights, and it runs directly along-side the Gowanus Expressway, which serves as a sort of barrier between Red Hook proper and Columbia Street Waterfront District and Carroll Gardens. On occasion, however, I take the path less traveled and exit Columbia Street Waterfront District from Hamilton Avenue instead of one of the earlier and nicer – not to mentions safer – crossings.
On this occasion, I came across an unusual site early in my walk on Hamilton – an L-shaped computer desk in pristine condition sitting on what would have otherwise been an empty stretch of sidewalk.
In the picture, you will observe a note taped to the far side of the desk. That note encouraged passersby to give the desk a new home. I would have considered it but for the fact that I would have had to carry the desk several miles, which would have been somewhat on the impractical side. Considering its size, it may have been a difficult rescue for many passing cars too. Given the lack of stores, homes, and parking on that stretch of Hamilton, it was an unexpected place to find a nice work desk, but I hope that someone who could both use it and transport it where it needed to go stumbled across it after I did.
While I was unable to rescue the L-shaped desk, I did save a fallen City trashcan within the half hour when I reached Smith Street. You can read about the trash can rescue in my article on that heroic deed.