If your main news source is tabloid newspapers covers (it’s OK, it’s ours too), you know New Jersey’s Bridgeghazi has left that fair state in complete social upheaval, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Jacobin France. That’s cool and all, but Jersey being more relevant than us is something we absolutely musn’t stand for. This is why we’re excited to have found a group of nyers ready to bring Brooklyn glory and put us back on the bridge scandal map. The folks at the Center for Investigative Research have a hunch that the Pulaski Bridge isn’t in great condition and are going to launch an investigation into his stable the structure is this Saturday. And they want your help! Tomorrow, February 15, they plan on circumnavigating the bridge, looking for rust, “officials asleep at their post,” and other signs of deterioration.
“We always take the official word that all is fine, but as we know, the city has starved its infrastructure budgets over the past 25 years,” Jeremy Hook of the CIR explained to us in an email. “With bridges falling (I-35 W) and viaducts crumbling (Seattle) and panels crashing to the ground (BigDig) we feel it’s perfectly appropriate to stage our own investigation.”
CIR plans on having a structural engineer join them on their tour and asks anyone interested to help them on their quest for The Truth. The investigators will be meeting at 10am at Milk & Roses (1110 Manhattan Avenue, Greenpoint) and encourage you to bring your chemistry sets, arc-welders, ph kits, and brandy.
The Pulaski Bridge, which crosses Newtown Creek to connect Greenpoint with Long Island City, has been getting attention because of how crowded its shared pedestrian-bicycle lane tends to get. In January Governor Cuomo announced the state would be contributing $2.5 million to convert one of the southbound car lanes into a bike lane. The city will be contributing an additional $625,000 to the project. While Governor Cuomo has allocated half a billion dollars to replacing the nearby Kosciusco Bridge, there hasn’t been much word on any major structural rehabilitation for the Pulaski. If you don’t feel up for wandering the bridge, you can find out what the CIR finds at their salon on Sunday, February 23 at 5pm in the basement of Diamond.