Can Standpipes Talk?

TSNY Researchers Detect Underground

Communications Network

Good news for standpipes and the growing number

of New Yorkers who care about them. It turns out

that standpipes situated even as far as apart as this

green and this red one on 6th Avenue in Chelsea are

not doomed to what Dr. Sandra Malamute, president

Things Standpipe in New York (TSNY) and the city's

leading expert in their culture and behavior, calls

"situational loneliness." 

"Our research has recently determined," says Dr.

Malamute, "that standpipes continually send patterns

of a rapid series of water pressure pulses to each

other, just beneath the surface of the sidewalk, and

are therefore never not in communication." These

communication pulse patterns, "not unlike our morse 

code," says Malamute, "run like vast electrical networks 

throughout all the city's boroughs." 

How they managed this achievement is, like most 

of the rest of what we know about them, unexplained: 

"So far!" Malamute adds cheerfully.

For further information about TSNY, a volunteer 

organization of New Yorkers concerned about what 

their pamphlet "Standpipes: Who They Are, Who We 

Are & How You Can Help" describes as "the plight 

of this under-appreciated and much misunderstood 

plumbing apparatus subculture," contact Guy 

Kettelhack, public relations director of TSNY 

and their best known exponent, on Facebook,
where he perennially resides.