I have learned many things through reading articles and resources on the internet collected through my feed subscriptions and articles linked from articles in my feed collection. I have also learned things through conducting research for my New Leaf Journal article projects. But in what will surely come as breaking news to New Leaf Journal readers, learning on the internet is not always smooth sailing. I need not waste key-strokes on questionable sources, and I already devoted a few to questionable mainstream fact-checkers. Today I highlight another danger. It is easy to identify questionable assertions on the internet, even in mainstream publications, about a topic with which one is familiar. I will demonstrate with an example below. However, one may readily identify a questionable assertion about something he or she is familiar in one instance before accepting it as true without further investigation of an assertion about a topic he or she is unfamiliar with. This is the “I hate everyone in Congress except my Congressman or Congresswoman” problem.
On August 19, 2026, New York Magazine’s Grub Street published an unwieldy-titled report by Zach Schiffman, described as “a supervising social producer across New York Magazine,” titled It’s Toxic. It’s Smelly. It’s Le Canal Saint-Gowanus. New bars are turning the notorious Superfund site into something actually sort of charming. You can also see the article in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. While the Japanese light novel length of the title is questionable, it is certainly less questionable than Grub Street’s recent descent into Middle East-flavored third-worldism, so I will let it slide.
The topic of the article is bars overlooking Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal. I will note there have been large bars overlooking the Gowanus Canal for some time, so I am not entirely sure why or how this is breaking news, but I digress. I would have closed the article without much of a second thought save for one quote in the final paragraph from Jericho Davidson, who runs a bar in the Gowanus area:
‘Cab drivers wouldn’t stop on Union Street because they were scared of getting attacked,’ he says. ‘That was 2012 — that wasn’t even that long ago.’
I cannot definitively say that Mr. Davidson is wrong for the simple reason that I never sought a cab to or from anywhere in Gowanus. For the most part, the only cabs I have taken this century have been to and from the airport, and I am not a frequent flier. I have friends who regularly use Uber, Lyft, and the like, and I have waited with them while they waited for their cabs, but the cabs are not for me. Thus, I will qualify the foregoing by noting that I was not engaging in conversations with people seeking cabs to and from the Gowanus stretch of Union Street in 2012, much less with the cab drivers themselves (I leave cab driver reporting to Thomas Friedman).
But nevertheless, I have a basis for doubting about Mr. Davidson’s story, as it is presented by New York Magazine’s supervising social producer.
I have published several articles featuring photographs I took at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (“BBG”) in 2007. See, for example, Rose at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Two ducks in a drizzle at the BBG, Proctoring a High School Exam While in High School, and our About the Perennially Virid New Leaf Journal page. This article needs a featured image, so I present for your enjoyment a photo I took in the rock garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on March 26, 2007:
What, you may ask, does my sharing my 2007 high school-era photographs at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden here in 2026 have to do with safety on Union Street in 2012? Quite a bit I dare say. Union Street starts from close to the East River in Columbia Street Waterfront District (“CSWD”) and runs all the way to Prospect Park, crossing over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (between CSWD and Carroll Gardens) and the Gowanus Canal.
Back in 2007, I walked to and from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Union Street, starting from Carroll Gardens and crossing over the Gowanus Canal into Park Slope, on at least two occasions in March and April (inferred from my two sets of photos). This took me through all the areas Mr. Davidson insists were perceived to be so dangerous in 2012 that cab drivers refused to stop there. Lest one thinks I am relying solely on two walks to and from the BBG in 2007 to question Mr. Davidson’s assertions, I assure readers this is not the case. I have taken the Union Street path to and from Prospect Park, crossing through Gowanus, on many occasions, including to my own high school graduation not long after my BBG photos (my graduation took place at the Brooklyn Museum).
Union Street, even in the then-underdeveloped area around the Gowanus Canal, was perfectly “fine” in 2007. It was also fine in 2012, when I continued to take that route once-in-a-while (including to and from the Union Street Subway station, which is close to the Canal). I even have photos from later trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden which also took me down Union Street through Gowanus.
For the elucidation of anyone who may think that I was simply ambivalent about the dangers lurking on Union Street in Gowanus, I submit there are many areas of my native Brooklyn, New York, that I have no interest in walking, both for aesthetic reasons and because while I read the New York Post, I do not want to be featured in the New York Post (I assume that would only happen as a crime victim). Because I referenced in prior articles walking to and from Forest Hills, Queens, from Brooklyn in May 2024, I will note that I spent a good amount of time studying my route options and endeavoring to avoid potential “editor of The New Leaf Journal in the New York Post” scenarios. Save for the dicey Broadway Triangle/Bushwick Houses stretch (especially on the way back), I dare say I did well with my judicious route-picking.
Similarly, you will not find me on Times Square in Manhattan.
Thus, based on my own personal knowledge of walking down and around Union Street in Gowanus for more than two decades, I have reason to call into question New York Magazine’s published assertions about the state of Union Street in Gowanus in 2012, with some suspicion that the point of the over-dramatization may be to lionize bar and restaurant owners in Gowanus in 2026 for the enjoyment of bar-hopping New York Magazine subscribers.
Returning to the introduction of this article, I submit that the reason I am able to question with some degree of authority New York Magazine’s description of Gowanus in 2012 is because I spent a good amount of time walking there, both in 2012 and for many years before. If they describe inaccurately things I know, they are no less likely to describe inaccurately things I do not know. The same is true for you the reader as it is for me. This of course is not to say everything on the internet is wrong, but instead to exercise caution in considering information about topics with which one is not already familiar.
