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For any non-Long Islanders reading, the sump she is referring to is a big hole in the ground with a chain link fence around it that the storm water from the storm drains flows into to infiltrate into the sandy soil. From what I could tell it looked like when they were built they locked the gate, threw away the key and never thought of them again. Therefore, they were all overgrown, kids broke in through the fence to explore, and trash tended to accumulate.

The only sump I knew was a hole in the basement floor that you put a sump pump into to keep the basement from flooding until I met my Long Islander wife.

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Some great music came out of that summer in New York. Plus an entire new genre (rap) started to go mainstream. And the art. You need some fuckedupedness to create art. You need a shitshow to create great art.

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