Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood

Brooklyn is a mythic place and the Gowanus Canal, pestilent and fertile, is its Nile. “Yous stay outta that f*cking water,” Uncle Honey used to warn us.

We never listened.

Mid-century Gowanus: Decades before the Whole Foods went up and the lofts were refurbished, a raucous, unruly, proudly Italian American enclave clings to the banks of the noxious canal. The Mafia and the Catholic Church—two centuries-old, rigidly hierarchical institutions defined by oppressive codes of silence—dominate the ...