It’s a hole new day!
Transit workers are patching up a once-gaping chasm in a wall of Boerum Hill’s Bergen Street station that nauseated commuters for weeks while putrid odors wafted from it before a miniature glacier formed inside the gap.
The tiny iceberg’s natural splendor mesmerized some straphangers, but the shiny new tiles now covering the hole are a far more appealing sight for riders of the beleaguered subway system, according to the man whose nose first sniffed out the rank rupture.
“I’m glad that straphangers are finally able to have a normal, clean platform while waiting for their delayed train,” said Park Sloper Marcus Baram. “I don’t know why it took so long.”
Baram first whiffed the foul odor emanating from the cavity in a wall along the station’s Manhattan-bound F- and G-train platform in early December, and within weeks, frigid temperatures and a furious winter storm froze ice in place within it.
Transit leaders pledged to repair the leak they said caused the chasm to form, but first had to find the source of the slit.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers in late January slapped a wooden plank over the crater — concealing its unknown contents and smells — and three hard hats were on site last week busily replacing the cracked and dirty tiles surrounding the gap with new gleaming ones after scrubbing the rest of the area clean.
Authority leaders believe wet stuff that oozed up from down below created the rupture, and said employees are still putting finishing touches on the good-as-new wall.
“The source of the leak is believed to be groundwater intrusion,” said an agency spokeswoman. “The work is ongoing.”
And if it weren’t for Baram’s sensitive sense of smell, straphangers might still be bedeviled by the mysterious hole.
“We get results,” he said. “I’m glad it worked out.”
