18 AWP Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 February 22–28, 2019
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SQUIBB...
likely expand — and without
space to accommodate
that growth, a ring on that
finger could quickly cause
problems, he said.
“Now imagine that the finger
is a big piece of wood,
and the ring an airtight metal
clamp. Imagine what happens
when that wood-finger gets
humid and expands, with no
soft skin and blood to brace the
impact,” he said. “This is what
happened to the bridge , and
the engineers and contractors
should have known this.”
Rike followed the story
of the $4-million, taxpayerfunded
Squibb Bridge for
years, he said, from its highly
anticipated opening, to its
2014 closure and subsequent
$3-million repair, to its 2017
reopening, to its second closure
last year. And he concluded
that the wood itself isn’t
to blame for the recent problems
after studying pictures of
the span, and consulting with
other engineers also familiar
with black locust.
“From all the pictures I have
seen, I think the support structure
of the wood is the issue,
and that’s what causing the
structural problems,” he said.
“Where the wood is deteriorating,
it’s simply caused by
the design of the bridge. It’s
really simple stuff.”
Even Landau admitted how
unusual it is for black locust
to rot months before he announced
the bridge would face
the wrecking ball.
“Every wood expert we
spoke to said black locust
is the best there is — you
could put it into a vat of water
for 100 years and you’d
never have deteriorat ion,” the
park-keeper-in-chief said back
in September. “So we were
Make-A-Wish Foundation
really surprised, as was our
wood expert, when they discovered
that we had a piece
with decay.”
And the bridge’s too-tight
connectors aren’t its only flaw
— its architects did not let the
black-locust planks dry long
enough to develop healthy
cracks before putting them
to use, according to Rike.
“The wood did not air dry
long enough. We think that because,
based on the pictures,
there was no cracking of the
wood,” he said.
The expert is so confident
of the wood’s integrity that
he shared his hypothesis with
Brooklyn Bridge Park leaders,
telling them he’d take the
planks off their hands. But he
has yet to receive an answer
to his offer, he said.
“We’ve been in touch with
them to tell them, they haven’t
responded. We’d also like to
buy the wood and reuse it,”
Rike said.
Rike — who unsolicitedly
contacted this newspaper,
and was not involved in
designing, building, or repairing
the Squibb Bridge —
claimed he did so to set the record
straight about the wood,
which he admitted is a popular
material used by his forprofit
company.
“The only motive I have is
to make sure that black locust
doesn’t get a bad name,” he
said. “We did not supply the
black locust wood, but we do
have a black-locust wood company
and want to make sure the
true story gets out on this.”
Brooklyn Bridge Park leaders
— who plan to shell out
$6.5 million for the bridge’s
replacement span — denied
Rike’s claims, but refused to
share the report that led them
to shutter the bridge.
Continued from page 1
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Nothing scares me quite
like nature. It does not
ask forgiveness when it
trespasses. It just comes at
you, a force that must be reckoned
with.
These thoughts flashed
through my mind as I looked
out on the Caribbean Sea,
somewhere on the northern
coast of Jamaica, in a small
village called Robin’s Bay.
Crabs scurried as I plopped
myself down on the ground,
near border walls workers built
to protect against the tides.
My family and I were on
vacation on the island, where
we rented a bungalow open
to the sea on three sides. The
surf broke loudly on the jagged
volcanic rocks outside our
hut, its spray blowing with
the wind like a boat.
It was the perfect place to
contemplate fearlessness —
and how I choose my vacation
destinations, a process I still
am not entirely sure of, despite
traveling to new places often,
ideally every few months.
Like any relationship, travel
locations and I have a weird
kind of alchemy. There is a feeling,
an instinct, and you just
know you have to go with it.
To reach our bungalow, we
drove and drove — or rather,
our friendly driver Leibert
drove, just to the left of the
coast, except when he veered
right to avoid the potholes. We
saw the sign for “Strawberry
Fields Together” a good while
before the ravaged, coastal
road gave way to the camplike
property itself, where we
would shack up in our openair
bungalow, Sunrise Magic,
for the next three nights.
Sunrise Magic was one of
a handful of colorful cottages
dotting the magical campus
on a hill above the sea. In my
head, I panicked. Maybe I’d
forgotten how to relax. What
would we do in this windy
paradise with a 15-year-old?
And how would I keep him
off of his phone?
But it was my son who made
us to wake up early one morning,
to see the sunrise from the
property’s point that jutted out
into the Caribbean.
It was cloudy that day, so we
waited. We were, seemingly,
on the edge of the earth, with
layers of the Blue Mountains
in the distance. Suddenly, the
rays emerged out of the clouds,
like beacons from beyond. It
was clear: we were small.
“Take a picture!” my boy
screamed at me as he spotted a
type of bird we didn’t know. His
phone was in time-lapse mode,
stabilized on a rock with a beer
bottle he found nearby.
When I missed the shot,
he was annoyed with me. I
smiled.
And, despite my initial
fears, we would go on to do
a great deal more in our days
on the island. We went to the
store in nearby Anton’s Bay
with the resort’s cook, Jennifer,
and its driver, a Rasta
gentleman named Brian. We
bought chicken parts instead
of goat, since I don’t know how
to cook goat, and because the
goats we passed on the road
were just too cute.
We bought rum and Red
Stripe and curry spice and
coconut milk.
We dined on fried mahimahi
and festival, the long local
corn cakes we came to love,
inside our bungalow’s kitchen
— which also opened to the sea
after we lifted a big wooden
shutter and tied it to the gate.
We sailed out into the rough
waters on a fishing boat with
our guide Damon, and got
dropped on a beach, from
which we hiked out to a waterfall.
There, we swam in a
cove while Damon cut wood
from a tree with his machete,
and grilled local fish and yams
on an open fire.
We ate fresh almonds and
guavas that Damon cut open
for us on the long trail back to
Strawberry Fields, on which
we made a pit stop at a fresh
fruit-and-juice stand. It was
enough to forget that big cities
also exist in this world.
We played with the cats that
roamed through the breezy
open-air dining area on the
hill, as waves smashed into
the rocks below.
Waves, crashing on rocks.
Nature. That’s what we were
here to see, I realized. And it
wasn’t so scary after all.
Facing nature forced me to
rid myself of the expectations
of city life, of my thoughts
of other people and society.
It forced me to confront the
powerful force of the elements,
and myself in them.
Watching the water crash
into those rocks will always
amaze me. It reminds me that
there are some things in life I
can never control — and that
there is nothing wrong with
that.
Fearless
Living
By Stephanie Thompson
By Maya Harrison
for Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn is bursting with wish
grantors!
Big-hearted locals from around the
borough helped a do-good group grant
more wishes of critically ill kiddos
in 2018 than ever before, according
to leaders of the organization, who
cheered the Kings Countians for their
overwhelming generosity.
“In 2017, we had a severe problem
where we didn’t have enough grantors
for the kids awaiting wishes,”
said Brooklyn Make-A-Wish Counsel
Chairman Khari Edwards. “Last
year we broke records, now having
more wish granters than kids waiting
for wishes. It was amazing.”
Edwards joined the leadership of
the Make-A-Wish Foundation’s local
arm about a year and a half ago. And
since then, the chairman amped up
the chapter’s outreach in the borough,
and relocated the training headquarters
from Manhattan to Borough Hall
— two changes he said resulted in the
program’s recent success.
“Many think that the Make-A-Wish
Foundation is a distant, multi-milliondollar,
non-profit organization,” Edwards
said. “My call to action was to
educate Brooklyn that it’s an organization
that anyone can jump right
into and get their hands dirty to make
a tangible impact.”
Edwards and other Make-A-Wish
leaders toasted those locals who helped
the youngsters’ dreams come true at
Downtown’s City Point shopping center
during the third-annual Make-AWish
Day bash on Jan. 24.
Max Reznik and his sister Elizabeth
Reznik walked the red
carpet at the Make-A-Wish Day
event on Jan. 24.
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