By Joan M. Wyand
[This article first appeared in The Agenda #19, July/August 2006]
A Monday in March was a beautiful day for a bike ride. After
scoping out the construction of the impending 195 bridge, I biked up towards
India Point Park.
I passed a dilapidated marina club that my friends and I had
previously explored at night. The building is three or four stories tall and
covered in rust colored paint. In the back there are two docks that could house
about 20 boats. Two staircases align with the boat docks, leading up to
multileveled cement decks with abandoned outdoor bars. The building seems as if
it went through a hurricane. The metal handrails are contorted in the same way
that the industrial steel billboards were demolished in New Orleans after
Katrina. I had come back to retrieve the turquoise awning material I scouted
out last time I visited.
It was about 5 p.m. and the construction crews were still
around the area. There are big blatant signs stating that the club building and
the property around it is owned by the State of Rhode Island. NO TRESPASSING.
Normally these superficial security measures don't stop me, but I did get
caught trespassing in Secaucus the week before. I biked past the building and
into the park.
I window-shopped the shoreline but there wasn't any good
trash. The weather was perfect, I didn't need gloves and I had my pant legs
rolled up. I tried to decide whether to play it safe and stay in the park for
an hour, or go back to the club building sooner to do my real shopping with the
work crews around. I didn't have fear, I just had a certain cautiousness after
my ticketed Secaucus adventure. I biked further up the path and saw the sewage
swans taking a nap in the bay. I lovingly refer to them as sewage swans because
they always show up to greet me when I play on the industrial shorelines of
Narragansett Bay. These hardcore creatures live in the bay all year round. The
bottom half of their bodies is coated with brown filth when they get out of the
water. But Monday they looked luminescent floating in the water with their
heads nested between their wings. I was happy to see them, but it was time to
go back. It was time to trespass and salvage material destined to be a dress
instead of another object in the Johnston Landfill.
I locked my bike, and walked towards the two bridge
construction trailers. A worker walked out the door, and I promptly introduced
myself. “Hello, I'm Joan and I am wondering if you have any connection to that
building.” He said that it was state property, and that they keep their trucks
in the basement. “I'm a fashion designer,” I told him, “and I want some of that
tattered turquoise awning fabric. I don't think anyone else will ever want it.”
We laughed, he agreed. “We'll I'm going to go over there and cut some off, but
I wanted to let you know what I was up to.”
"OK," he said. I walked over towards the building, hopped the gate and walked up the stairs towards the top bar area. On this level, there are huge piles of light blue safety glass that used to enclose an awesome
indoor bar area. This place must have been cocaine central in its day. I cut down about eight yards of the fabric—score! On the way off the property I waved to the guy I had spoken with, who was having a cigarette, and he waved back.
I have always been skeptical of asking permission to
trespass because most of the time owners say no because of liability. They
don't understand the beauty of these spaces. They see lost capital, trash, and
danger when I see a playground filled with raw materials. When I was caught
trespassing in Secaucus no one knew what I was doing, which caused all sorts of
negative assumptions. This time I stated my intentions, therefore killing any
fearful assumptions from the beginning. I had salvaged the fabric from its
predictable destiny, and I successfully used one of my creative visions to
cross a guarded boundary. Monday, March 27th was a beautiful day for
a bike ride.
