Before I identified as a New Yorker, during my salad days on the North Shore of Massachusetts, I fantasized about moving here—the exhausting summer days, narrated by the superfluous chit-chat of haute-as-hell socialite-types over Negronis at Locanda Verde and the half-baked sales pitches of the drained and destitute; not to mention the nostril-stinging stench of the boiling hot city air. From above, in the summertime, the streets of New York look like grill marks on a massive hunk of meat.It's hotter than the devil's smartphone in New York between the months of June and September, and with a population of nearly nine million people, the need for some damn relief is pretty huge. New Yorkers can cool off in one of 34 outdoor pools, 19 outdoor mini-pools and 12 indoor pools in the New York City parks system. They're all free and open to the public throughout the summer until Labor Day.Despite the fact that the city is mostly surrounded by water, you won't find anyone swimming off the shores of New York. That'd be nasty. These rivers suffer from ongoing pollution issues caused by PCB contamination, accidental and non-accidental sewage discharges, urban runoff, heavy metals, furans, dioxin, pesticides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. You know, shit that makes mutant fish and whatnot.I'm not saying people should ever swim in the toxic rivers but wouldn't it be nice? A few dudes in Brooklyn think it's a cool idea, so they're planning to build a plus sign-shaped pool, appropriately named Plus Pool, that'll float in New York's surrounding waters. What's nuts is the thing will actually be filled with river water that it'll have cleaned because, what the hell, it's a huge filter, too…Read the rest of the article and find out how it works over at Motherboard.@Yeatons
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