We have thoughts about the Sixth Street Embankment. It would be odd if we didn't. Anything that heavy is bound to leave an impression on sensitive souls. The great stone sleeper has dozed for years, unperturbed, as the rest of the town has changed around it. Court cases, environmental studies, and action plans from transportation agency aside, our ongoing reluctance to change the Embankment has a superstitious quality about it. Do we see it as a giant paperweight, without which the entire Downtown will fly away into the turbine of international capitalism? Or does the long black wall feel more like the body of a beast, a serpent from a Hudson County version of Midgard, inviolable and primordial, and too dangerous to touch?
