go(w)anus | February 15, 2008 | 08:50

I used to live in Gowanus. I moved from there for a number of reasons, some of them sound, most of them not so sound ... but for anyone who doesn't know, there's a disgusting, polluted industrial canal that runs along the western edge of the nabe.

Aside from the Newtown Creek, which borders Brooklyn and Queens at Greenpoint and Maspeth / Long Island City, the Gowanus is (I believe) the most toxic body of water in New York City.

From the New York Post today, in a story about the proposal to build luxury housing right on the canal's banks: There are "environmental concerns about the canal that include a regular flow of raw sewage and recent test results revealing traces of venereal and other diseases."

Mmm. I need some VD in my drinking water, please. Is this city that insane?

Sadly, the answer is yes. I'm sure people will pay a premium for apartments, regardless of the heavy metals, raw sewage, syphilis (or maybe it was gonorrhea -- or both!) and other diseases with a high potential to seep into their drinking/bathing water.

This city is so psychotic.

I continue to ask myself what I'm doing here. Why I pay a premium in rent for an apartment with a bathroom that doesn't even have insulation ... and that the exorbitant price I pay pales in comparison to the mind-boggling numbers forked over by people I know.

Horrible civil services, high taxes, immense cost-of-living, low-paying job and a majority of grossly unattractive inhabitants who are incredibly unfriendly. No sane person would live here, I reassert.

I live here because I'm a misanthrope, and I imagine that misanthropy I feel applies to myself, as well.