New York 92
The seven clerical windows at the front (only three of which are manned at any one time) have an oddly whimsical touch: green and red "traffic light5
above each pane, which signal whether the civil servant is ready to receive you. There is a sign saying that if your car has been "booted" in the towing, you should proceed to the last window. The people in the bullpen awaiting their turn with the bureaucracy speak mostly Spanish to each other, and look philosophical regarding this latest sorrow. If you stay long enough, however, you will hear in English the various raps of people at the clerical windows trying to talk their way out of paying the fine, all quite
unsuccessful.
EXCURSUS
SHIPWORMS
Teredos
'"inoria
W
ITH THE CLEANUP OF THE RIVERS AROUND NEW YORK CITY, THANKS TO NEW SEWAGE TREATMENT
PLANTS AND STRICTER ENFORCEMENTS AGAINST
industrial dumping, and the waterfront's revival for recreational uses, the shipworm, which had been repressed by aquatic pollution, has returned to the harbor to chomp away at piers, causing major damage, and leading to an ugly outbreak of the word "ironic" in the media. New Yorkers, noton ously indifferent to the ecosystem's larger intricacies, can see no explanation for marine borer activity reaching its highest level in a century than that they are being made to suffer for their virtue, as in the cynical adage "No good deed goes unpunished."
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the partial collapse of a pier platform underneath the FDR brought about by marine borer damage, required the temporary ' of that crucial artery.
At the moment, onehalf of Hudson River p k's $400milli0n budget is earmarked for repairing rotting piers and f undations. Battery Park City alone recently expended $90 million, using divers and advanced construction technology, to pour a 740footlong concrete wall under the water to reinforce a timber wall. Since waterfront work is the most costly type of construction, next to tunnels, it becomes clear why the final bill for repairing marine borer damage could approach a billion dollars, thereby devouring any future municipal surplus.
We must not take the shipworm's depredations personally. This "termite of the sea" or "ocean woodpecker," as it is sometimes called, has been around always. The oldest fossil shipworms are 60 million years old. Misnamed because of their resemblance to worms, they are actually a species of mollusk related to clams. There are other marine borers in the harbor, such as the gribble, a shrimplike crustacean that gnaws away at the surface of timbers, leaving them with an hourglass shape; but they are a less significant player at present than the shipworm, which burrows from within, making it difficult to assess until too late how much damage has been done. Teredo navalis (the pest's scientific name) attaches itself to any available wood, democratically reducing it, whatever its quality or density-soft pine, hard oak, mahogany, or scrap-in time to wet sawdust.