Walk-Up City (formerly known as Lift City)

Williamsburg was known as much for the mustachioed hipsters as for her massive bridge at the dawn of the 21st century. But as the tides rose and washed out most of the aged and neglected structures, the bridge endured. It is no longer a conduit for commercial and recreational traffic between the two islands, Long and Manhattan, but rather it has become a destination itself. An elevated refuge from the ever-rising water levels that have engulfed most of what was once known as the South Side of Williamsburg.

This place is now known locally as Walk-up City. The buildings that survive on either side of the bridge act as access points to the bridge, creating a network of passageways that lace across the superstructure like a web. Why Walk-up City, you ask? Well, it was once known as Lift City, which was an allusion to the use of elevators as well as the bridges ability to “lift” the residents from the mire below. But as the hydroelectric turbines failed, due to lack of maintenance (that’s another story) people have had to use the stairs instead. It is that reason, as well, that many in Walk-Up City stay in Walk-Up City, and this has caused many basic services and businesses to emerge.

Anyway, it’s a long tale about how we got to this point. It seems like only yesterday we were sipping mojitos at Diner and playing ping-pong at Iona. After Obama was elected, he did create a slew of new jobs, all of which were of good quality and reasonable pay. But a scarcity of “grunt labor” emerged. Americans no longer wanted to do what was seemingly below them (as we would learn, this could be taken literally in only a few years time). To deal with this problem, the government funded the creation of genetically manufactured beings to do humanity’s dirty work. As the sophistication of these androids increased, so did their responsibility. CalTech finally engineered the best and last version, BRODIE (bio_regulated_organic_dimensional_individual_experiment), which was deployed en masse across the country. These workers helped build the hydroelectric turbines, shore-up crumbing infrastructure against the crushing weight of water, and run new and enlarged service lines, including sewer systems, water mains, and communication cables to serve the exploding population. Think Blade Runner.

These BRODIE units that worked in Williamsburg became affectionately known as Snorkels, or Snorks. They could be seen from the bridge glowing under water while they worked. These industrious Snorks toiled away day and night while the tides rose. That was how it went along South 5th Street and Broadway for nearly a decade. And then one day it stopped.

As we now know, BRODIEs had feelings, too. The sophisticated machines learned how to love, how to care and, most troubling, how to hate. As they abandoned all that is necessary to our existence here on the bridge, we are left having to construct a world anew. Aside from this elaborate access network to skiffs below (and the occasional hovercraft), the community of the bridge has developed much as slime mold might form on a log, contracting and expanding as dictated by the climate and need for defense. In the cooler winter months, it appears as if huddled in a large mass while in the warmer months, the structures disband, stretching out to the farthest reaches of the bridge. Perhaps this need for movement has allowed us to create lightweight modular and moveable structures that tie-in to the larger bridge structure. The bridge is now an armature of sorts, where we festoon our lives around its stanchions.

Check out this amazing time lapse video of slime mold, it’s really intense and may make you uncomfortable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suvDQoXA-TA