Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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  • jandrese

    Having defrosted a few freezers in my time I do not envy these guys.  A normal freezer can put out a pretty powerful funk when you defrost it, I can’t imagine what a 90 year old meat market freezer smells like. 

    • bcsizemo

      That’s exactly the first thing I thought.  I hope they have an industrial supply of baking soda/clorox/febreze on hand…

      • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

        Given that they are doing a pretty serious renovation(and this was a fairly stark industrial interior to start with), they might be able to get away with bringing in a fairly punchy ozone generator and running that for a while.

        The ones that allege to be usable in occupied spaces tend to be dangerous or lying; but if ‘compatible with human health’ isn’t a problem, ozone will oxidize its merry way right through just about anything organic(but is sufficiently unstable that it will decay back to ordinary oxygen in relatively short order).

  • Nadreck

    Cool!

  • ohbejoyful

    !!!!

    ‘s wonderful.

  • chgoliz

    This is in an area of town that has been experiencing a lot of change in the last two decades: used to be bustling at 4:00am with all the restauranteurs and store owners buying fish, veggies, etc. for the day from open stalls.  Now many of the buildings have been converted into loft apartments and all the necessary neighborhood amenities have been added, such as dry cleaners, grocery stores, etc. (which literally didn’t exist there 20 years ago).  Basically, the area went the way of coopers and blacksmiths.

  • Nash Rambler

    I’m imagining giant-sized versions of items that normally get uncovered during a defrost.  A half-consumed vat of Cherry Garcia, crystalized beyond recognition.  An entire herd of freezer-burned cattle.  Rafts of mummified spinach blocks.  Captain America.  I’m sure you get the idea.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZH5LQHHJPERMWNVHCR2Y5GRHHE Jose

      Unfortunately, the video ended before they defrosted Jimmy Hoffa.

      • Donald Petersen

        Doubly unfortunately, the box the camera is sitting on was a crate containing the mortal remains of Messrs. Macready and Childs, discovered in the ruins of the U.S. National Science Institute Station 4 / Antarctic Outpost #31.

        Hey, what happens to the camera at 40 seconds?

  • Mark Dow

    Frost forms directly (water vapor to solid ice) without vapor condensing back into liquid. Physics nitpick.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost

  • wonkyjes

    Those pictures are beautiful. I would hope that the designers for the new space take the buildings history into account. They could really make some neat offices.

  • euansmith

    Someone’s shut the Pork Futures Warehouse?

    • Nash Rambler

      It’s true!  You can almost see the ghostly outlines of hams that are yet-to-be. . .and look!  There’s Chrysoprase the troll!

  • Scott Laird

    IIRC, Seattle had a similar freezer thawed out a few years back, and found a *fascinating* new problem.  The entire building was sitting on top of 20′ of permafrost that had built up over the decades, and partially sank into the muck over a few months after they turned the cold off.

  • http://twitter.com/pishabh pishabh

    Damnit, they thawed it before speaking with Hollywood!  That looks like the perfect location for a Bruce Willis action flick!

    • euansmith

       Thaw Hard?

  • M. Ellis

    The linked comment about the smell of fish and meat not having subsided was somewhat stomach churning. I hope that as they reduce the building to its concrete shell, they can blast off the offending olfactory layer.

    And kudos to SRAM for attempting to recycle the building if possible.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      We used to call our grocery store in San Francisco “Rotting Meat”. It was clean, but a half century of dribbles into the (probably asbestos tile) flooring under the butcher counter does build up a residual aroma.

  • Jonathan Roberts

    It’s like my old apartment in the spring.

  • Lyle Hopwood

    I seem to remember that when Billingsgate Fish Market in London moved in 1982, the defrosting took some time and there were fears that as the permafrost under the building went away, the building might collapse. Scientists stood by to retrieve crates of fish as they emerged from the ice pack and I vaguely remember (but can’t find on a five second web search) that several interesting things were recorded regarding the change in average fish size over the decades and (I think) levels of parasites in the fish over the years. 

     (Remembering things became much easier after they invented the internet.)

    Edit: can’t find any specifics, but the news articles I found did remind me that Billingsgate was 900 years old when it moved.

    • euansmith

      What was the world like before mobile phones and the internet? I lived there and can’t remember how we got anything done.

  • http://twitter.com/dargaud Guillaume Dargaud

    I have some pics of ‘frost’ taken in an Antarctic cold-storage (not an oxymoron): http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/Glacio.html#Ice 

  • Beanolini

    Many years ago, I was told that a farmer bought the land previously occupied by an ice rink, and approached the soil science department of the local university to find out how long it would take to defrost… he was disappointed to be told it would take about 150 years.

    • awjt

      Depending on where it was, that could have been a huge boon. He could grow colder temperature crops in a hotter area, frinstance.

      • Beanolini

        Not much use if it takes a decade before the soil’s thawed deep enough for ploughing, though.

        • awjt

          lay down new topsoil

        • Antinous / Moderator

          One word: fracking.

  • http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

    Quintet