{"id":1873,"date":"2004-02-20T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2004-02-20T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2004-02-20T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2004-02-20T19:09:00","slug":"paradise-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2004\/02\/20\/15\/09\/paradise-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Paradise On Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/02\/22\/magazine\/22RATS.html\"><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Rikers Island sits in the East River at the opening of Bowery Bay. Once it was small and bucolic and green, an 87-acre patch of land owned since 1664 by a family of early Dutch settlers named Rycken. The city bought the island in 1884 and used it as a dump for old metal and cinders. It was one of the first designated dumps in New York. Rikers Island worked as an antidote to the city&#8217;s garbage problem until people began to complain about Rikers Island itself. Very soon, it had grown into a 415-acre island ? a mass of garbage on and surrounding the original island &#8230; Rats from all over the city came to Rikers Island, arriving on the fleets of garbage scows. Within the island was a huge lake of stagnant water, and the rats lived along the shore, feeding on garbage, drinking in the refuse-infused lake; in its putrid isolation, Rikers Island was a rat utopia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/a>Earlier <a href=\"..\/Blogfiles\/2003_08_10_WeekArchive.php#'106090605476326700'\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rikers Island sits in the East River at the opening of Bowery Bay. Once it was small and bucolic and green, an 87-acre patch of land owned since 1664 by a family of early&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}