TechCrunch went big in 2011 and turned a huge 133,000 square-foot working pier in New York City into a unique conference venue for the startup community.
By the middle of the 20th century, New York Harbor was the greatest port in the world, with more than 900 working piers.
And yet I think back to the map in my office, drawn at a time when the New York and New Jersey waterlines were thick with working piers.
Bellows's "North River," painted in 1908, looks down past the snow-covered bench on the hills of Riverside Park, past working piers and ships exhaling steam as they work along the white-watered, steel-blue river.
That does not mean we have to achieve that by retaining the current uses or current tenants on the piers". Many of Brooklyn's working piers fell out of use in the 1960's after the Port Authority built a modern container port in Elizabeth, N.J.
A modified post and beam will work with pier, perimeter wall, and slab; even better is a pole foundation, where your posts are embedded deep in the ground (about 4'), and transfer the full weight of the building directly underground.
Also working the pier was Aurelio Ramirez, 46, who was shirtless, his eyes hidden by reflective lenses.
Under a contract between the shipping companies and the International Longshoremen's Association, most longshoremen who work on piers in the city or northern New Jersey this year are guaranteed an annual income of $35,000, even if there is no work for them most of the time.
As I retire to the dock wall to eat my hoard I wonder what the stevedores who once worked this pier would have made of the cuisine, and if, like me, they decided that it would be madness to join a queue that long for a ramen burger, even if it was manna from heaven.
It is also important to realize that many of the infrastructure costs were already absorbed in this year's Cup, so work on piers, seawalls and on the Embarcadero will not be incurred the next time around.
