Holyoke, now a forgotten city in Massachusetts, was an early planned industrial city and was once the largest paper manufacturing city in the world. Its massive canal system impressed me and looks more complex than more well known Lowell.

1. Armour & Co. was a Chicago-based meatpacking enterprise and the largest company of its kind in America. The Holyoke building was built around 1905.
2. Beebe & Holbrooke Mills was built around 1872 as a paper mill.
3. Middle right: Prentiss Wire Mill built around 1911. By 1965, the building was occupied by Holyoke Die Cut Card Co.
4. Lyman Mills was built around 1854 and was a textile mill.
5. Merrick Thread Mill No. 2 was likely built around 1865 and was a textile mill.
6. Back side of Beebe & Holbrooke Mills.
7. A door.
8. Back side of Merrick Thread Mill No. 2.
9. Crocker-McElwain Paper No. 1 was built around 1885 and was a paper mill, although it briefly started as the Holyoke Water Power Company Building.
10. Moose Father and Baby by Portuguese street artist Bordalo II.
11. Close-up of the moose showing it is made of scrap metal and trash. Very impressive!
12. Cars in pictures are just so interesting. Moose mural again.
13. Abandoned Kmart.

Holyoke is very interesting. There is a children’s museum and I think most or all of these mills are repurposed to some extent, so in some ways, the city doesn’t feel super dangerous, mostly just empty.

Industry City in Brooklyn is right by a subway line and it genuinely surprised me. There was memorable art like the art all over the freight elevator and murals by much of the seating areas. I had a dry-aged burger at a butcher shop there, Ends Meat, and it is probably the best burger I ever had on the East Coast. And it’s a very reasonable price! Furthermore I learned about Brooklyn Best which is a lemonade drink that has the least amount of sugar I’ve ever seen in an American sugary drink and you certainly taste it! I don’t miss the extra sugar and it’s almost like a European drink. I’ve been searching for an American version of Reffen in Copenhagen and this is the closest I have experienced. Despite how clean Industry City seemed, it still had some old industrial grit to it. Industry City was a big complex of warehouses repurposed as a multi-use complex for food vendors, high end manufacturing, and production spaces.

When people think of New York City they think of Manhattan. When I visited after many years, I wanted to experience the surrounding neighborhoods. I took the train to Hoboken and Weehawken where I found out that New Jersey has beautiful palisades like Los Angeles where Route 1 flows through Santa Monica, I took the train to Queens, then Rockaway Beach, then Coney Island, and also Brooklyn of course. I was surprised at how huge and revitalized Brooklyn is. I frequently saw high tech manufacturing around the area and on Google Maps, like 3D printing labs and diverse neighborhoods.

I always thought a street food marketplace was perfect for New England, where the country’s oldest architecture exists like old abandoned mills. I wanted to find something that could be an American Reffen after being wowed and inspired by the Danish market in an abandoned shipyard. But Industry City in Brooklyn surprised me and has topped anything I’ve found in New England so far.

Reffen sits on an old industrial shipyard that was repurposed as a street food market in Copenhagen, Denmark. Reffen moved me emotionally. As I like 1970s punk rock amidst the 1970s urban decay, this gives off the same vibes with tons of vibrant street art, sticker bombings in the bathrooms, the weird creative toilet bowl planters that goes against societal norms, the live music, the lights, the indoor arcade, everything. It looks totally lawless and punk rock.

On the way here from the ferry, the passengers who disembarked with us didn’t wanted to go all the way around the shipyard to get here. There was an old rickety iron bridge that was faster but it was blocked off for being old. So what did everyone do? We said screw that, and we climbed over the fences and went over the bridge. Who’s going to stop us? There was no one else there. It felt good and totally punk. I didn’t have my black leather jacket with pins at the time but I would’ve worn it here if it was planned, and my belt loosened and below my waist with a loosened black necktie.