Broken Bench in Red Hook, Brooklyn

On May 3, 2026, I spent the afternoon walking around the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook with a friend. That walk led to my May 25, 2026 report on seeing a large warehouse fire in Belleville, New Jersey, from across the river. I took the photo of smoke rising from the Garden State that I used in my reportage at 3:59 PM. Now let us skip ahead 51 minutes to 4:50. After admiring the scenic water views (admittedly interrupted by the troubling smoke rising from New Jersey), my friend and I continued walking along the water in Red Hook. On one of the piers, we happened upon a seemingly randomly placed park bench composed of concrete and wooden slats (not uncommon in New York City). That would not have been too unusual – even in consideration of its random placement – but for the fact that the wooden slats where one would sit were broken, and the two sides of the bench were angled inward instead of being straight and parallel to one another. My friend noticed the bench first and pointed it…