One of the toilets in our apartment exploded on Sunday morning (the fresh water intake hose cracked), so Laura and I took a trip to Lowes to pick up a replacement. It was a beatiful, crisp day, and the Lowes parking lot, which is on Brooklyn’s Gowanus canal, was glowing. It’s funny that the New York real estate posse calls this the up-and-coming Brooklyn Riviera, and they’re trying to inflate housing prices accordingly. The scrap metal reflects so well across the stagnat, oil-slicked canal. Apparently, it’s cleaner today than in decades, thanks to an industrial flushing system, originally brought in to reduce the stench that plauged the area for so many years.