Up shit’s creek: Gowanus swimmer Christopher Swain to jump in the Newtown Creek

Did you miss the media event of the century, our generation’s moon landing, Christopher Swain jumping in the Gowanus Canal to swim two-thirds of a mile and then coming out alive? If you couldn’t make it in person or shirk work responsibilities to follow along on social media, you might be suffering from some serious FOMO. Don’t worry though, your salvation is at hand, because Swain has told DNA Info he’s jumping into Brooklyn’s other poop-filled waterway, the Newtown Creek. Why not? We did more than just one moon landing, after all.

Like the reason behind his original toxic dip, Swain says that he’s hoping his drysuit and peroxide-aided swim will cause the people of New York City to rise up and demand the Newtown Creek be cleaned up faster so that one day people can swim in it without a drysuit and the occasional peroxide gargle. Despite the fact that it’s full of toxic chemicals from a legacy or pollution and just as likely to be full of poop and other toilet stuff as the Gowanus, the Newtown Creek hasn’t inspired as much dread and legend as Brooklyn’s favorite Superfund site. People can kayak on it and fish the gross waters if they’d really like to, but one thing you can’t do there is live on awesome party boat because sometimes life just isn’t fair.

Swain says he hasn’t picked a date yet, but we do know he’ll be bringing better production values with him this time around, telling DNA Info that he’s working with the city on a route to avoid the Gowanus swim’s delay due to police and city lawyers showing up asking “WTF man?” While it’s not the promised sequel to his Gowanus swim, you can think of this Newtown Creek swim as a spinoff of sorts, the Thor or Captain America to the Gowanus swim’s Iron Man, if you will, another piece of the puzzle in the Swain’s Toxic Swim Universe.

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