Edwin Canela sits outside, on a white chair on a north Manhattan sidewalk, with an old boombox to his right, and a mini barbecue to his left. He watches on, and smiles as children and adults play in a busted fire hydrant.
He remembers doing this, too, years ago as a kid with his two brothers. The 54-year-old introduces his two baby granddaughters, his daughter, and his niece, all sitting and standing around him outside. He may no longer be dancing in front of hydrants himself, but it is still a summer tradition he cherishes.
“If not, we’re burning up in here. It freshens the air, and the kids love it,” he says.
As this year’s summer takes hold and heat soars into the 90s Fahrenheit across the New York City’s five boroughs, there is one quintessential tradition that has remained intact along the decades: busted fire hydrants.
You may no longer see it close to Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, or in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, but venture into eastern neighborhoods of Brooklyn, into the Bronx, north of 110th Street in Manhattan, and there, just as they were in 1950s, are the improvised urban showers. Kids dart in and out of the water squealing with happiness, delighting in the thrill of the temporary cool, while mini rainbows rise up to the backdrop of concrete buildings and fire escapes.
But with rents on the rise, and gentrification taking hold, are these the scenes – typical of lower-income neighborhoods – of a dying New York?
Late one Sunday afternoon in New York City’s boiling, sticky July heat, Bullet assumes his usual position close to the corner of his block in upper Manhattan. He is sitting on a foldable chair, in a white T-shirt, beige shorts and Nike flip-flops. To make the still soaring temperatures more bearable, Bullet has placed a wet towel on his head.
Over the way, kids on bikes are riding the sidewalks, groups of men are gathered round domino tables, slowly considering and then loudly making their moves, and three generations of families are sitting on makeshift chairs, sharing in conversation, food and drink.
A couple of feet to Bullet’s left, an open fire hydrant is gushing out gallons of water by the second. The urgent, intense rush of water is strangely relieving and exciting.
“This is poor people’s pool: it’s the closest thing to a pool we have. It’s always been there for us, you know,” the man says.
Bullet, who is in his late 30s and makes for a tall, elegant figure, has lived on this block his whole life. He says that open fire hydrants in the summer have been a staple of summer city living for as long as he can remember.
There are codes to it, he explains. Very specific rules and regulations, it turns out. “It’s the street rule to the hydrant.”
There is always an adult keeping an eye on the kids, “just like at the pool, where they have lifeguards”.
“Everyone knows not to get too close, never underestimate the power of the water,” Bullet explains, adding that most people you talk to will know of someone who has fallen or been pushed across the street by the clamoring strength of the exiting water.
If it’s a really hot day, the hydrant will get busted at the beginning of the day, and providing there are people – mostly kids, but not always – taking advantage of it, the hydrants will stay turned throughout the day (“If nobody is getting wet, we’ll close it”). End of afternoon, to accommodate people taking showers in their homes, or starting to cook, the hydrant will be closed, regardless, he says.
Busted hydrants release around 1,000 gallons of water by the minute, according to New York City’s department of environmental protection.
So deciding when the hydrant will stay on and off is a balancing act in terms of being amenable and in tune with community needs.
Overall, Bullet says busted fire hydrants are a summer necessity he doesn’t want to see go, even if some white newcomers, he knows, will sometimes call the city to come and have the hydrants turned off. Frightening signs of changes to come.
“It’s too hot out here, man. This is good for the kids, and it cools the whole block down too.”
A few streets to the north, with bachata music blasting from the fifth floor of an old, brick building, 10-year-old Diosnel Contreras and his friends are dancing in and out of another busted fire hydrant.
“It’s very fun to be here, I like it a lot,” Diosnel says, pointing and waving to his father across the street, and showing me the apartment where he lives, just a few feet away.
“I come here every day when it’s hot. Today, when I saw on the television that it was going to be 90 degrees, I said, Dad, can I get wet please? He said yes.”
Diosnel says there is a fountain at the park a 20-minute walk away, but it is not as fun, and besides, it requires someone going with him. He prefers the fire hydrant water, because the pressure is harder, and he gets to stay on the block.
“I just love to be around this block. I have a lot of friends around here.”
As you look to Diosnel’s left and to his right, up and down the street, other hydrants are also producing their own arc of water. Cars are making U-turns to get a quick clean. Some cars even roll their windows down to get some of the cooling mist.
But all of these, unlike on Bullet’s block to the south, have fitted “sprinkler caps” on them, provided by New York’s beloved fire department. In New York City, this is the broad difference between legal and illegal.
A fire hydrant with a sprinkler cap on it only leaks out between 20 and 25 gallons a minute – a fraction of the 1,000 it does without. A cap not only means that block residents keep the adequate pressure in their showers going, but it also means that in case of an actual fire, firemen coming to the rescue would not risk fatally losing required water pressure in their fire extinguishing hoses.
The full, legal procedure for turning a hydrant on involves being over 18, turning up to your local FDNY fire station, filling out a form, and having firemen themselves come to the requested block, turn the hydrant on, and returning later in the day, to turn it off.
Few seem to go the full, legal path, though. Firemen do not always have time, and besides, many residents have figured out how to do it themselves.
“When you live in this neighborhood, you find ways to adapt,” Bullet explains.
He points to the top of the fire hydrant and explains that under the metallic cross is a negative magnet. “All you need to unlock the cap is a positive magnet” – and a wrench, it turns out. You can make a large, positive magnet by recovering them from old speakers, and putting them all together.
Bullet makes a phone call to the block’s “magnet guy” (“every block has a keeper of the magnet,” apparently) and delights in demonstrating the process first hand. Minutes later, a smiling, large and gentle young man turns up and diligently executes the turn-off ritual.
Lenny Victoriano, a dashingly dressed 40-year-old chef, who sits atop a milk crate on another fire hydrant-freshened block in the area, says the tradition of busting open fire hydrants is one of the few things that has been left for his community.
“You can’t play football on the street any more, you can’t cook outside. We used to have after-school programs, we used to have summer workshops, training in crafts. This [open fire hydrants] is the best thing we have going now except for going to the park. It’s all we have left.”
Victoriano says the big change happened during Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as New York City mayor in the mid to late 1990s, during which an unproven and highly criticized theory of broken windows policing was championed, resulting in much of the neighborhood’s way of life – involving activities and congregating outside – being criminalized.
Now finding ways to occupy your kid in a safe way can be expensive, Victoriano explains. “There is not one person on this block that doesn’t struggle to put food on the table,” he says.
“Fire hydrants are a necessity for them to be here, kids having fun close to home. Every block needs a sprinkler.”
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