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Photograph: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/Paula Soler-Moya

12 mysterious liquids you'll encounter in New York

Will Gleason
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Will Gleason
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We've already undertaken some important, clear-eyed explorations of the gross things you'll experience in New York in summer and the things everyone does here that are actually kind of gross. Today, we're turning our attention to the various, mysterious liquids that we walk through, try not to notice or that drip on us each and every day. How many do you recognize?

1. Garbage leakage
Often found in small tributaries flowing from a pile of black garbage bags to the edge of a sidewalk.

2. Mysterious air conditioner drip
The devil's rain, will fall on you from a stranger's window when you least expect it.

3. Urine
Can be found applied directly to the street, a wall outside a bar or, in some cases, contained with an sealed Poland Spring bottle placed in the middle of the sidewalk.

4. Animal urine
A more socially acceptable form of the previous.

5. Discarded food items
Juice, coffee or applesauce that someone had decided they had finished, but were incapable of making it to a trash can to dispose of. 

6. Food cart runoff
A flowing river springing forth from a street meat vendor. Potentially the same water they cook the hot dogs in.

7. Snow melt
Water that can be found covering the streets every spring revealing month's worth of untold mysteries. And dog poop.

8. Leaky fire hydrant water
Urban geysers, predominately active in summer. 

9. Spit
Spit. 

10. Bench sweat
A light layer can be found on many subway seats, wooden benches and park chairs immediately after someone has vacated a public seat.

11. Underground subway river
New York's very own River Styx found between the rails of the subway and ferrying garbage, rats and the occasional smartphone into the darkness.

12. Overflowing sidewalk grate water
Best case scenario: it can't flow into the drain fast enough. Worst case: it's coming from the other direction.

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