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The Lost Artworks & Graffiti of Bayside Oil Depot

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Within the imposing walls of the Bayside Fuel Depot , also known as the Bushwick Inlet Refinery, eclectic art pieces and vibrant graffiti adorned every available surface, creating a sensory overload that was both chaotic and mesmerizing. The cavernous oil tanks and sprawling rooms of the main building played host to a lethal dose of creativity, transforming the depot into an unlikely graffiti wonderland. I arrived intending to document the refinery’s industrial history but found myself captivated by the dizzying array of colorful art pieces that had claimed the depot as their canvas. Every inch of the immense white walls inside and out was covered in a smorgasbord of rainbow colors, shapes, lettering, and characters. Playful figures from Disney classics stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the abstract, the surreal, and the subversive, forming a visual tapestry that mirrored the diversity of the city itself. In my opinion, the Bayside Fuel Depot was on par with the legendary 5 Pointz graff

Q Petroleum Inc

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I’ve had a strange fascination with an old petroleum products company along Riverside Avenue in Newark. Over the years, whenever I’m in the area, I make it a point to swing by and see what’s happening with the place. Once, I got curious enough to explore it more thoroughly. I was shocked by what I found—piles of paperwork scattered across the floor of an upstairs room. There were old timecards, business letters, and accounting sheets, all left behind in heaps of yellowing paper. Given the state of decay, I was honestly surprised the building hadn’t gone up in flames by then. In a smaller office, I found something else—Dexsil Clor-N-Oil-50 PCB testing kits, just lying on the ground. These kits, used to test transformer oils for PCBs, still go for about $123 on the market. Finding them just tossed aside felt strange, almost careless. On a later visit, after a particularly harsh winter, I noticed water pooling in the basement. A burst pipe, most likely. I had no intention of venturing dow