elloiknow:

Bridgeport Stacks

Photo by Jess - Yale Harvard Game Day 2009

While most of the Connecticut coast is idyllic, there is a little industrial patch in Bridgeport that changes the shoreline.  Fortunately, the rising sun was forgiving to the smoke stacks as I made my early way to New Haven for the Yale Harvard tailgate that morning.

An unintentionally hilarious caption.  “Little industrial patch”?  Connecticut’s ports and harbours are on massive shipping lanes for natural gas, coal, & petroleum.  Bridgeport was once a manufacturing titan & although it is experiencing a muted cultural renaissance it is primarily hollowed out factories & low-income housing.  Our shorelines are picture-perfect where the wealthy stock traders who crashed the entire world economy have their little property tax havens in Fairfield & Greenwich & Mystic.  Hartford, New Haven, & Bridgeport are slums.  Our status as a “rich” state is due primarily to misconceptions furthered by those who do not venture out of their gated enclaves to engage the world around them.  Our ambulance unit at school responds to gunshot wounds & stabbings every weekend in the industrial shells that were once functioning communities.  The fire department carries bulletproof vests.  Those smokestacks you see belch toxic fumes at the behest of conservative institutions who do not employ ANY green energy resources (such as Yale University) despite our bountiful wind power assets.  It is due to people who do not want their “idyllic” coastline sullied by wind farms that we burn nonrenewable coal to power our state.

People who you can typically find, & I don’t mean to stretch your imagination here, at the Yale-Harvard game every year.