The love story of Fran Pado and Andy Newman is bracketed by controlled implosions — both of them occurring at the mouth of Newtown Creek, an industrial zone that could vie for least romantic spot in all of New York City.

In July 2001, Andy Newman's editor at The New York Times assigned him to cover the planned destruction of the Maspeth Gas Tanks, those decaying cankers on the landscape at the border of Brooklyn and Queens. But when Newman interviewed the locals, he found among them some who prized the tanks, with their elephant-gray flanks and oddly jaunty red-and-white checkered tops. One of those was Pado, who gazed at them out her kitchen window in Greenpoint while cradling coffee. She told Newman she found them "romantic" and would miss them when they were gone.

Newman quoted Pado in his story but then lost track of her. This is the tale of how they re-found each other; added Newman to Pado's band, Goddess; had a daughter named Violet; and, sixteen years later, returned to the site to witness a series of kabooms! take down the old Kosciuszko Bridge.